#specifically the WLW portion of the fandom | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thefirstknife · 1 year

Note

This might sound weird but I promise this is in good faith--is there absolute confirmation that Saint and/or Osiris are gay specifically? Obviously they're together and both men in canon and anybody who pays attention to canon can't dispute that, but is it confirmed they're gay in particular and not, say, bi or something? I just ask because most fandoms I'm in sadly tend to collapse all multi-gender attraction identities into strictly gay/lesbian or straight based on either shipping or who a character is paired with in current canon. (Destiny has so many queer characters its a little hard to keep track of who is what sometimes, which is actually something I love so much--I wish more media were like this!)

There is!

I think the original confirmation is enough because Brookes immediately said they're gay. If they were anything else, he would've specified, especially since he himself is bi.

Another example is my bestie making a tweet about how Saint and Osiris are gay men and Brookes liked it.

And ofc, the article they made for National Coming Out Day where they gave a few LGBT+ characters unambiguous labels which states that Saint is gay (for comparison, Mara is given the bi flag and Drifter is given the pan flag so if Saint was either, he would've had that. This was also just a small portion of them and Brookes said that Osiris, Ana and others will be getting their flag at another date. Maybe for this year's National Coming Out Day!).

Bungie is pretty good with this and the variety we have! This article gave us some full confirmations about some of them like Mara and Drifter. We always knew Mara was wlw, but we never knew if she was a lesbian or bi/pan so this clarified that for us! Drifter was also obviously bi/pan and I pretty much did not see that as disputable and this article confirmed it!

We also know for a fact that Lord Shaxx is bi/pan (and polyam!) and so was Calus. It's highly likely that some other characters might fit in here; there's others that we know are LGBT+ but we don't know which label exactly. For example, we know Devrim and Marc are husbands, but either of them could be bi/pan. Ikora is wlw for sure, but we don't know much more than that. Eris is another one somewhat implied to be wlw, possibly bi/pan as well.

Fandoms can definitely be really weird with this, yeah. I've seen examples of situations where people try to insist that a gay/lesbian character MUST be bi/pan, and this usually boils down to people's personal ships. But I've definitely also seen the other way around as well where people just kinda want to ignore that someone is bi/pan.

Destiny definitely has rep for everyone, which is truly extraordinary given that it's not a romance-focused game and isn't even an RPG. Hopefully, we'll get even more in the future and some of the ones we have will get fleshed out!

#destiny 2 #saint-14 #osiris #o14 #lgbt+ rep #ask

104 notes · View notes

burr-ell · 1 day

Note

🏳️‍🌈🧡

🏳️‍🌈: Which character who is commonly headcanoned as queer doesn’t seem queer to you?

I'm gonna talk Fire Emblem. YOU DIDN'T SPECIFY SO HA.

I do happen to think more characters in Three Houses are mlm/wlw than a number of people are willing to acknowledge (I don't consider "can be romanced by either gender Byleth" to be the only metric when some of them kids got gayass endings); like, Dimitri is absolutely bisexual. Claude, though...?

So this isn't really "I don't think Claude is queer at all"—I personally headcanon him as aspec—but I think he's exclusively attracted to women. Like, compare his supports and paired endings with Lorenz (where "diplomatic relations" is the furthest thing from a euphemism) and Balthus (where Balthus straight-up just marries an unnamed woman) to Dimitri's endings with Dedue (fellas is it gay to take up vigil at your liege's graveside and then be buried alongside him) or Felix (I'm grieving for him harder than his unnamed wife did because we're PLATONIC FRIENDS obviously). As I just said, a character's relationship to Byleth isn't the only metric for this, but I think it's pretty telling that nothing about Dimitri's interactions with or about Byleth change based on their gender, while some of Claude's dialogue adds in lines specifically about finding female Byleth attractive.

I mean, both Claude and Dimitri have paired endings with female characters that are giving contractually obligated (I can't imagine Dimitri/Ingrid or Claude/Leonie are terribly popular), but I feel like people interpret Claude as bisexual because he's charming and Dimitri as straight because...I guess his route has the most traditional Fire Emblem elements? Meanwhile, the actual situation is the complete opposite in terms of like, raw homoeroticism.

(As far as Critical Role is concerned, while I don't have a preference either way, I do see where @revvethasmythh is coming from that Jester has some ally energy. I do like bi4bi Fjorester too though!)

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

For FE3H, I think Teacher Theory is still very stupid and hasn't been ridiculed enough*. Like Edelgard works with a mole man death cult that does human experimentation and kidnapping and she personally has a secret pet serial killer and starts a war, but hiring bandits to kill her political rivals is suddenly beyond the pale and El Would Never**? And the obviously smarter 4d chess play would be to...get the church to hire the aforementioned secret pet serial killer (who already works there) to be the head teacher of her house, thus putting him under increased scrutiny? lmao ok

For Critical Role...okay, this is retroactive, but I gotta admit that the "'did she know' was actually Rashinna!" theory was not good, at all, and would have been incredibly boring if it had been true. (Also, just logically, why would Rashinna have ONLY sent that message to the two Ruidusborn?) If my understanding is correct people didn't want to say anything on the slim chance it was right, but once the episode aired the general consensus was "PHEW we're good c'mon man, seriously? We gave airtime to that?".

*I'd address the fanon coming out of the hardcore "genocide is okay" Edelstans (straight up just "source: I made it up"), but like, the question specifies 'popular' and that portion of the fandom has only gone more insane because they know everyone thinks they're all absolutely corncobs.

**If in an attempt at media analysis you call fictional characters by nicknames, cutesy or otherwise, you have waived the right to be taken seriously.

unpopular opinions asks

#asks #also not to be like this but 'did she know was rashinna' is giving imidna twitter

2 notes · View notes

leighlew3 · 1 year

Note

Leigh, I'm so sorry to burden you with this, but I've followed you for a few years and witnessed how supportive you've been with SuperCorp fans and the shared disappointment with how the show ended, so I feel safe writing to you.

All the WLW shows getting cancelled fucking sucks. And it hurts. Not because I've necessarily been a big fan of them all, but simply because my voice and story, as a consumer and queer woman, doesn't feel valued.

When I heard Netflix cancelled Warrior Nun, I got angry, and I've been so ever since. It somehow hit different this time, and the cancellation doesn't make sense to me. I've loved the show since its first day on Netflix in 2020. I fell in love with the characters and the actors who portrayed them. I fell in love with the story they were telling and how it was told. Something about Warrior Nun just felt different to me.

Now it's almost 7 in the morning where I live, and I haven't been able to sleep. I was reading a Warrior Nun fic - as one does - and then all the feelings suddenly hit me. Angry turned into sad, and I feel sort of silly for admitting this, but I actually cried. I read somewhere that the brain can't differentiate real people from fictional ones, and I think I'm kind of mourning the loss of the characters 🤷🏻‍♀️ I've never felt this way before and I honestly don't know what to do about it. The whole situation just sucks.

Do you have any advice on how the consumers can be heard by big companies like Netflix and how we can get them to actually value their WLW shows?

Again, I'm sorry to lay this on you, but I don't really have anyone to talk to about this, and I'm just sick and tired of the situation and needed to rant.

(I appreciate you and wish you and your loved ones a happy new year)

It's not a burden at all, I'm glad you feel this is a safe space. 💜

Everything you're saying is relatable and valid as heck. When a show means the world to you, especially if you're part of a marginalized group and taking hit after hit after hit no less... it can be exhausting, infuriating, demoralizing, and so many other complicated emotions when you lose that art that struck you so deeply, that you related to, and that you looked forward to more of to get you through life.

To be honest, I feel like for the most part, fans are doing as best they can as far as efforts to keep shows around. There really are no more tangible specific solutions for fans aside from what's being done, and that's what's frustrating. The endless rewatches, fans doing street team style spreading the word on their own (even spending a lot of money) to make up for lack of official marketing, getting influencers and press behind them, etc. It's actually a sad state of affairs that in recent years, LGBTQ fans have WORK, and FIGHT and PUSH and even PAY constantly to keep a wlw show on the air or to try to get someone to make a ship canon after queerbaiting, or to get more screen time or respectful exploration for a wlw pairing, or to make TPTB see how bad the bury your gays trope is (time and again and again), etc -- rather than just sit back and watch and enjoy.

Fans shouldn't have to work so hard for entertainment, and yet queer fans so often do. And even when people successfully give a show solid numbers, sometimes it's still not enough, and like WN, a well-reviewed, heavily watched series gets the axe anyway.

So it's not on the fans. It's on those at the top, at the end of the day.

Alas, if I had to make some kind of a suggestion... all I can think to say is on the macro, bigger picture level. And this will take some self reflection and increased empathy for some people (sadly a thing some may not be capable of). But... collectively, some people in fandom spaces (small portions, but loud ones) for wlw shows have got to try to stop the silly fanon vs canon wars, and gatekeeping, and jealousies, and creating unnecessary drama and toxicity. There really should be no rival fandoms in wlw spaces at all, unless a show has a fully wlw love triangle or something and people are Team Ship 1 vs Team Ship 2, lol, but even still -- it should be a 'fun' battle, not a toxic war that hurts real people, drives away viewership, etc.

If most people in queer fandoms stuck together, and respected each other's ships even if they don't ship it or watch the show, and generally were supportive of each other as fellow queer fans in their battles against cancellations, in demanding queerbait to be made canon, fighting the BYG trope, etc -- LGBTQ fandoms would have such a collective, expanded power behind these positive efforts. And either way, even if all efforts fail to save a show, etc, at the very least, it would help create a safer, healthier space for queer fans online.

And I know, asking toxic people to not be toxic seems futile, but some people simply need to be reminded that we're all in this together and working together is always going to be ideal when facing off against the real opposition: corporate bias / phobia in the media / industry space.

Ultimately, it's 100% on TPTB at the shows and networks/streamers/studios to do better -- at times creatively, and other times as far as marketing efforts. Sometimes both.

But in the meantime, as far as fandom spaces, some LGBTQ fans gotta try to learn to stick together as much as possible. While there will ALWAYS be toxicity in every fandom from all backgrounds, and fans cannot control each other, I am noticing that as time goes on, and as more wlw fandoms get hurt by networks and streamers, the more angry people are understandably getting, the more reactive and protective of their shows and ships people are getting, and the more then they lash out and try to gatekeep and attack their fellow queer fans and allies, which is... just not it. It's counter productive.

Point is... fans are doing all they can IMO as far as tangible efforts to save (or fix) certain shows. And the rest is on the creatives, the networks and streamers, etc. But in the meantime, at the very least, people shouldn't attack true allies who have proven their support, nor especially attack fellow queer fans who just want to see what a show or ship is about or make positive parallels to their other faves, etc as it could be extra viewers for the show that they're running off.

TLDR: Stay focused on the real problem: corporate media's bias / phobia. Fight them collectively, not each other.

#lgbtq #lgbtq representation #fandom #wlw #sapphic tv

19 notes · View notes

hoolay-boobs · 6 months

Note

would you happen to know if nate stevenson ever confirmed glimmer & bow to be bi specifically (like she did with catra & adora being lesbians), or just not straight? don’t get me wrong, i know they’re bi4bi and i’m not dismissing that, but i’m just curious because i feel like if it wasn’t explicitly stated and they weren’t in a wlm/mlw relationship, everyone would be headcanoning glimmer as a lesbian and some would probably want bow to just be a butch lesbian too 😭😭😭 i’m not even saying it happens in this fandom cause idk tbh but i’ve seen it happen so many other times with bi sapphic characters (i.e. poision ivy ofc)

also like… this is probably gonna make #somepeople without proper reading comprehension mad just by misinterpretation of what i’m actually trying to say here but i often presume writers mean “lesbian” as in “sapphic” since the latter isn’t as well known — like, they use it as an umbrella term regardless of whether that’s (historically) correct or not. my prime example would be caitlyn and vi from arcane; i’m absolutely okay with them being lesbians and i’m not erasing that fact at all but i think it’s worth keeping in mind that they weren’t confirmed by riot to be exclusively homosexual/wlw/“nmlnm”/etc. even though they may or may not very well be (i personally agree that they are). it’s another case of the google dictionary being unreliable because it relies on uneducated cishet ideas of queerness + terms so it simply defines “lesbian” as “wlw” (not even inclusive of nonbinary people) and “sapphic” as “relating to lesbians” or something like that.

anyway! sorry for making this too long, i had some thoughts but ended up ranting lol

Nate said “definitely not straight” specifically! I know that’s not the same as saying word for word “they’re bisexual”, but within the context, of both the show, and how neither of them are gay/lesbian, neither of them are aroace, saying “not straight” confirms them to be bisexual!

IMO, since bisexuality is more common and is the blanket statement under pan, omni, poly, etc. when a character is shown to be attracted to 2+ genders, they’re canon bi- now it’s up to the writers or the context of the show to specifically state whether the character is pan or anything else under the bi umbrella :) and it’s the same way in real life! If you want to discuss being attracted to 2+ genders, you will sound bisexual, unless you specify you’re pan etc underneath the bi umbrella

And here are the sources!

I KNOWWW fandom wikia is a sh💕t source, but they actually have the livestream itself to back it up! (Warning: it’s 4 hours long lol)

Chase lmao Vi and Caitlyn ARE specifically confirmed to be lesbians, not just sapphic. They are indeed exclusively homosexual wlw. The riot and league of legends twitter page had them with the lesbian flag (the new one, like the orange, white, pink one) so yeah. And this is official art; not like that fanart of Bubbline with the lesbian flag that Cartoon Network used for some godawful reason when they’ve both (or at least Marceline, and possibly Bubblegum) shown attraction to men. You are right about how some people have no reading comprehension skills tho. Like when Willow Wilson said that the latest Poison Ivy run would be loved by fans of lesbian stories and a good portion of readers jumped on that and ran with it and said that Ivy is their “canon” lesbian like uh? Ivy who wants to touch Batman’s pecs Ivy? Ivy who dated (and liked) a boy in college Ivy? Like the discourse around her is just starting to become funny to me now tbh tbh

LOL who would be headcannoning Bow as lesbian? He showed attraction to Sea Hawk, not really open to interpretation, it was quite obvious. I have tho seen him be headcannoned as gay and like. He’s soooo in love with Glimmer that gay headcannon is tone deaf lol.

No need to apologize! You can rant to me anytime :)) Thanks for the ask Chase 💙💜

#beloved mutual #chase please send me more longass rant asks I love them /gen #I’m being serious 💕#send me paragraphs about queer characters #no pressure tho #mutuals #glimbow #bisexual #bi representation #poison ivy #league of legends #piltover’s finest #she ra and the princesses of power #she ra #spop #thanks for the ask! 💝#answered asks #asks

5 notes · View notes

dameronalone · 4 years

Text

okay this needs to be addressed because i keep seeing it and i keep seeing it and no one has addressed it, not that i’ve seen, not in a long time, and not specifically in regards to young mlm couples in fiction.

stop the constant fetishizing and sexualization of them. stop it. its gross. its everywhere, or at least it is in the three fandom i have found it, with zuko/sokka from atla, ronan/adam from the raven cycle, and slightly less of an offender, wylan/jesper from six of crows, although they come with plenty of problems including but not limited to the way fandom seems to treat wylan as uwu soft boy and jesper teaching him the ways of sex or some bullshit. thats just plain bad, but thats not what im here to talk about specifically.

im here to talk about how, especially with the atla renaissance, a rise in zukka, which at first i was pretty happy about, but the more content i began to interact with, the more i saw this consistent thread of sexualizing zuko and sokka, in art especially.

before i go any further, here is a disclaimer: am i going to get mad at people for drawing/writing smut of mlm characters? no, of course not, especially not when i occasionally consume that kind of fandom. here’s what i am going to get mad about:

sexualizing and fetishizing mlm couples (and espeically with zukka and wesper, they’re minors. if you arent making any effort to draw them so theyre clearly older or specifcally state it in writing that they’re older thats like. not okay. ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: yes i know theres a warning tag on ao3 for underage.) but this isn’t me seeking it out and getting angry about it. this is me minding my own business consuming ship media and finding that a good portion of it is sexual.

we need to talk about this. we also need to stop it. this is especially directed at any combination of cis/het white women. we’ve talked about the sexualization and fetishizing of wlw and it’s nowhere near as common right now as the sexualization and fetishizing of mlm is.

im not going to apologize on going on a rant. ive been thinking about this for a couple days, and it needs to be said.

(as an aside: i, a trans man, am going to point out that i think it’s great people are headcanoning characters as trans. i am also going to point out that i have seen more male characters headcanoned as trans or enby, and female characters headcanoned as enby, but almost no headcanons of female characters as trans. that also needs to be addressed, but as i am not a trans women, i don’t think im qualified to go on that rant)

#pynch #zukka #wesper #mlm #stop fetishizing the lgbt+ community #stop sexualizing minors #if im going down im taking all u nasty motherfuckers with me #catch these mlm hands

215 notes · View notes

whatiwillsay · 4 years

Note

the fact that she listened to cardigan and then just dipped was surely not an accident... what do you think it means?

ok let’s break down the cardigan stream because it’s 2020 and we’ve all gone insane anyway and why not

here are the scenarios we’re working with here:

1. it was an accident

this is possible. right after folklore came out dianna went private on Spotify and she’s gone private before. she knows how to do it and it seems like it’s possible she may have thought she was private. our sweet baby forgot how to use twitter for like 8 months and doesn’t always seem to be the best with technology (she doesn’t tag things right on Instagram stories and she was always getting her twitter hacked [sometimes i think she was fake hacked but sometimes she was legit hacked] back in her glee days). she may have thought she was private and screwed up.

however if it were an accident wouldn’t she have streamed something else to cover up her stream history or private and then unprivate to clear her history...seems like she has no issue with taylor’s song just...hanging out there in her stream history...still...even 36 hours later...there it is...haunting us. so it doesn’t seem like this was an accident tho i guess it’s possible she made the mistake and then decided to own it and pretend like it’s no big deal.

2. she’s finally swiftgroning to create a little buzz for herself. for 7 years dianna has only ever referenced taylor in the subtlest (subtle to hets anyways) of subtweets. other than showing up to snl (during which she was promoting NOTHING) and this spotify stream she has never publicly explicitly acknowledged taylor since their friendship went dark in 2013 (jeeze we live in crazy times!)

if she announces a project within the next day or two...a week at max my opinion would be that she streamed the song to get people talking about her to promote a new project. (in my opinion, if this is the case she gets one (1) swiftgron for clout moment like...for promotion...anything more than that is just obnoxious)

one thing that’s odd is dianna has shared music via her Instagram stories before so why wouldn’t she just do it there if it were a pr move. she has nearly 2 million Instagram followers and only 5,000 on Spotify. of course it was still enough to generate some buzz...sort of among a very very niche and specific tumblr and twitter gaylor/swiftgron audience. it seems to me like if she was specifically trying to calculate and make a premeditated pr/marketing move she would have shared the song in her Instagram stories or made a post about taylor.

3. she’s throwing the fandom a bone??? it sounds ridiculous to even suggest that she’s even aware of specifically the swiftgron fandom but her wlw fandom is a HUGE (if not a majority) portion of her fandom and the wlws love taylor right now right? and more specifically there’s us and well...i mean i’m certain she does not read this blog but it has been suggested to me by people in the industry that her team is probably at least aware of it so idk...i mean swiftgron is in right now. i was doing some research a few weeks ago and i saw that swiftgron/taylor and dianna/tayanna is more popular now in terms of google trends than it was even when it was going on in like 2012. maybe we’ve gotten loud enough that she wants to be loud too? i don’t think this for sure or anything but it’s just one possibility like maybe she just wants to kick it with the sapphics...i don’t know lol

4. even more delulu but i’m listing every possibility here - she and taylor are together and it was a declaration of love andoaifjdsijoaisdjjads i can’t even finish typing that out it’s so crazy lmao

5. she just likes the song and listened to it. (HOW BORING, THAT WASN’T EVEN FUN TO TYPE😤) 6. it’s a sign of things to come? maybe their public friendship is going to be reestablished and they’ll be hanging out in person sometime soon?

my favorite option is number 6 (well ok obviously number 4 but that’s even less likely) and/or i suppose number 3 and tbh i hope she’ll continue to swiftgron on main from time to time as long as she doesn’t do it in a way that makes the fandom think they’re together when they’re not and as long as she doesn’t do it to promote work stuff.

idk what do y’all think?

let’s manifest a swiftgron hang as soon as it’s safe!!!🕯✌️✌️🕯

#cardigangate 2020 #minipost #Anonymous

38 notes · View notes

secondsister-a · 4 years

Text

The Hella Sweet Munday Meme // ACCEPTING ↳ @graunblida said: What if i sent you all the munday meme symbols? 👀

I can’t believe you’ve done this. Under a readmore for length.

♻ Any advice on improving Tumblr RP experience?

The faster you learn to not care about other people and only do this for yourself the happier you’ll be. It’s not always easy, and I struggle sometimes too because I’m a very competitive person, but lately I’ve let myself just float between blogs wherever I’ve felt like being, doing my drafts at my own pace and it’s way less stress and made things much more manageable. Also dash only is a godsend.

⛅ Do you believe aesthetics are another form of expression?

I mean yeah? Although I think some people do it because they feel like they have to. I’ve had people say to me they HAVE to follow the trends and aesthetics or else they feel like no one will write with them. Which is a shame. But I’ve never felt that kind of pressure so I just do what I want with mind. I think they’re fairly moderate as far as aesthetics go.

☮ Are you feeling happy and inspired right now?

Kind of. I feel inspiration but I don’t have a lot of energy, unfortunately. It’s difficult for me to muster up the will to write after work when all I want to do is sleep lol.

☄ Has someone ever admitted to being inspired by you?

Surprisingly yes!

⚌ Who inspires you?

Oof pretty much everyone I follow. For someone specific though I’m gonna @queensloyal bc I was reading their threads earlier and thought their prose was really lovely.

♋ Are there any FC’s you believe should be used more? Why?

Not really? This is the first fandom I’ve been in tbh that was more real people so I’m not well versed in faceclaims and who is/isn’t popular.

☸ Do you reblog from the source when someone practices reblog karma or do you follow it?

Personally I don’t see why people get so upset about it, but I only reblog memes from people if I can send one in. Otherwise I’ll reblog from the source. I don’t care if they reblog from me though.

☯ Do you believe you’re a forgiving person?

Depends on what it was for. Slight annoyances I don’t hold grudges for ( and I’ll let people know if I they did something that upset me ) but I’m not one to let people treat me badly so.

⚑ Have you been forgiven for a mistake you’ve made?

Yes.

♛ Have you ever seen drama be maturely sorted out?

I don’t think I would have seen it if it was sorted out maturely lol.

♞ Do you tend to ignore drama?

For the most part yeah. Although I admit to being nosy.

☾ Have you ever tried to bring peace to a situation?

When it involved people I knew personally, yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t try to get in the middle of things that aren’t my business.

☻ Have you ever made someone a promo or a positive shoutout?

Yes!

☎ What do you think about bias lists?

They’re nice. I’m always surprised when I’m included.

☈ How many people would you say likes you?

Probably a good number.

♡ How many people do you like? Are there any people in particular that pop up?

So many people, @bleachsthetic @graunblida @fifthbornforrester @forcemetry @ordersurvived @twinwestars @sensedechoes ...... many more.....

☢ What calms you down after negativity?

Idk if I would say it calms me down necessarily but really the only thing I can do is go on an anger rant in private lol. And get it all out.

☠ What keeps you happy?

The illusion of productivity.

☘ Is there anything that makes you instantly want to follow someone?

Uhhh they know about JFO, they’re pro-Jedi, they HC their female muse as a WLW

☕ Is it often you hear people complimenting your blog? Characters, writing, theme, icons, etc.

I wouldn’t say often, but it happens sometimes :)

☂ What’s your best RP experience?

I don’t know, I’ve been rp’ing so long and all the different fandoms I’ve been in have had their pros and cons. I really enjoyed my stay in the Bleach fandom though with @bleachsthetic.

☐ What trends are you currently into?

I don’t think I’m really into any current trends? Unless you count the banners a trend lol. Writing wise I’m pretty much just bopping along doing whatever.

★ What fandom do you consider welcoming?

Steven Universe fandom was the most welcoming fandom I’ve ever been in, although this one was pretty warm too.

☆ What are some the perks with the fandom you’re currently in?

There’s different corners for the different parts you’re interested in. There are the prequel muses and sequel muses and original trilogy muses, depending which one is your favorite. Some are more active than others, but at least they’re all at least moderately active. And most people have AU’s for different eras.

☉ What fandom do you believe needs improvement? What could you do to do that?

Tbh, I couldn’t say; I’m not involved in a lot of other fandoms. But speaking from experience in big fandoms, the only thing you can do really is curate your experience. People are gonna be annoying and problematic. Block and move on.

♦ How has roleplaying on Tumblr improved since you started out?

In some ways. I think its a little bit slower than it used to be, but more in depth. So I suppose it’s a trade off.

♨ Have you ever roleplayed with someone that has been problematic but offered critique and then watched them improve?

Uhhhhhh no. I’ve modded servers before and had to tell people why they were problematic but they just sort...of left and never improved lol.

⚓ Are there any small details you tend to like in roleplays?

I love when there are opportunities to include head canons in actual threads, whether it be mine or my partner’s.

⚡ What are the good sides with duplicates?

Finding someone who likes the same character. JFO is a pretty small portion of the fandom. I actually don’t really see anyone writing Trilla actively atm.

☀ What’s the best thing about roleplaying?

Meeting new people and making friends :)

⛵ What genres do you like writing the most?

Just like...random slice of life and also shippy things.

☺ What tends to bring out your muse the most? What inspires you?

Talking and plotting ooc gets me excited to write and inspires me to tackle my drafts.

#AND I FEEL THE FORCE IN THIS CHILI'S TONIGHT / OOC.#graunblida #are u proud of yourself #long post

9 notes · View notes

johnmurphysreddit · 4 years

Note

I absolutely agree too many fans take the perspective of not stanning Clarke to mean ANTI Clarke. Your list of what anti Clarke means feels legit, because I also care about other characters more, think that Clarke makes mistakes, value relationships that don't include Clarke, etc. This fandom is one of the worst I've been in if you like characters other than the leads. Honestly a lot of what made me like Clarke less ARE Clarke stans who put down other characters in order to prop up Clarke. Ugh.

This fandom is a perfect storm of fandom disasters.

The widely shipped ship that’s still(?) not canon. Other examples: Klaroline and Destiel, and those two from Teen Wolf

Curse of the lead: when the lead is hated, ignored, thought irrelevant, or blamed for making things worse by a portion of fandom. Other examples: Elena from TVD and whatever the name of the Teen Wolf was.

A poorly presented canon. Have you ever in your life seen a showrunner tweet to correct the interpretation of canon as much as Jason has? From Jason trying to turn Raven’s first encounter with Wick into a slut shaming moment to the rape apologia for the Ontari scene to some characters’ entire relationships Twitter is used to tell us that what we thought we saw wasn’t what we really saw.

Bury your gays. If you weren’t watching in real time you’re just going to have to take my word for it that while BYG has always been bad, there was a lot of it in that single year in shows that specifically went after a wlw audience. It’s a before and after time marker across fandoms.

Social media and casts who use it poorly.

Accusations of racism meet Tumblr culture.

Backstage drama takes center stage.

Normalizing extreme stan culture.

And we get ALL of that in The 100. All of it. It’s too much for one micro fandom to take. Despite all the noise season five averaged under a million viewers and season six had multiple episodes in the half million range.

And it’s all hit at the same time that people have abandoned reblogging and interpretation so there’s not much incentive for makers to make here. I get a lot more feedback from other fandoms where I have far fewer works.

So, yeah, nonny. I hate that I agree but I do. This fandom is one of the rougher ones unless you’re sailing the Barkey seas and you better be interpreting those two a specific way.

Or use block.

#Anonymous

3 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Thoughts.

So I finally watched Good Omens. First of all I know some people were waiting for me to like, do breakdowns on the use of lore, sigils and whatnot -- I’m sure I’ll poke at it eventually, but so much of it reads of typicality, alongside strong artistic liberty, that when it comes to actual sigils there’s very few and I’ll need a good screen of them.

But that isn’t about that. This is actually about Good Omens and the audience response to queer content and queer coded content. I’m going to warn you, some of this shit is going to incense the fuck out of woke tumblr. It’s going to be a lot of hard pills to swallow, mostly in regards to parts of the LGBT community -- of which I’m a part -- moving around our own goal posts, inconsistencies in the placements of our goalposts, and the impacts of het culture. If you come into my mentions screaming away at me expect an ignore or a block.

No, this isn’t anti-Azri/Crow. It’s very pro Azri/Crow. And yes, I’m going to drag other fandoms I’m in, into it. But I’m also gonna drag general discussion into it.

First I’m going to source a link to a recent set of tweets someone made that I consider very insightful (x) and then highlight a bulk of it.

“When we call something queerbaiting, we're essentially saying: "source material X doesn't count as real or valid queer representation." Here is a thread on why we need to be cognizant about which real-life queer people & stories we're erasing when we expand our use of that term. First: actual queerbaiting, in which art-creators hint at queer representation in order to attract viewers and then insist their art was 100% hetero all along, sucks a lot. I am not advocating getting rid of the term. Nor am I saying it's not valid to feel jerked around when a show uses the promise of a specific queer relationship on their publicity circuit, and then doesn't follow through on it in the actual source. (Or follows through only to write out a character, a la #TheMagicians) However: when we narrow our definition of "real and valid queer representation" until the ONLY thing that counts as queer rep is on-screen queer *romance* or on-screen queer *sex*, we are telling a significant portion of the real-life queer community that they don't count. When we use the "queerbaiting" label to describe a millennia-long, loving asexual same-gender relationship (aka #GoodOmens) we are telling asexuals in loving life-long relationships that they don't count as queer. We are also telling sexual queers whose primary, life-organizing relationships are queerplatonic (me, this is me) that their queerness is defined only by who they fuck, not by who they choose to build a life with. I want a space where ALL kinds of queer stories get told: romances yes, but also stories of queer friendship; queer mentorship; queer animosity; queer competition and cooperation; queer found family; queer provocation and queer mistakes. None of that happens if we tell everyone whose queer content doesn't fit into the narrow box "Lead A & Lead B kiss and/or fuck onscreen" (even if A&B make a life together; even if A&B kiss & fuck other same-sex people) that their art is exploitative & doesn't count as queer rep. “

Why am I choosing to highlight this while implicatively mentioning my adjacent fandoms? Well, because blogs I follow that either haphazardly dismiss, say, Destiel as valid until (personally met goalpost, generally when arguing with the hetnorm or anti community wanting a kiss) are all on the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon.

And let me say, I adore the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon. I’m ON that bandwagon. Holy shit am I on that wagon, but we need to inspect our dialogue for people who are on one but not the other.

We can say, for example, “Well, Neil Gaiman and the actors have been supportive! So THAT’S why it’s fine!” I mean -- aren’t people always banging on about post-affirmation not being enough, or just vague support being enough, or this-or-that not being enough? Like people don’t flame Rowling over that? I mean, even if we handwave away that Neil Gaiman had literally uncontested authorship instead of 203492 hands in the author and ownership pot top-to-bottom which the average show doesn’t have -- which gives the liberty to say whatever the fuck he wants because it is wholly his product and under his contract and design -- do you notice that it’s actually a very, very small audience crowing about that? And rarely if ever the same ones that do about other pairings that could be considered similar? Like we haven’t gotten those moments from authors in other shows (Robbie Thompson “Destiel isn’t canon?” comes to mind) that we yell queerbait at then and decide isn’t enough. Because someone else moved a goalpost out.

Ah-- but they’re... confirmed asexual and agender and immortal! Okay... and... so is, for example, if we’re going to tilt this way, Castiel. And ace people can have queer relationships with bi or yes, even straight people. Mindblowing, I know, but that’s it, that’s reality.

So why on gods green earth am I seeing this disparity between blogs about the same content, banging on at different volumes of what we expect?

It’s something I’ve written about before, the loudest example being my Problem With DreamHunter post. Before any DreamHunter fans pick up the pitchforks, don’t worry. It, also, is in support of DreamHunter, but simply addresses the cultural problem in there not being a problem with DreamHunter. The blend of intersectional issue disparity between MLM and WLW, and also the simple fact that the fandom wasn’t positioned to have antis or rival ships screaming at it: het culture and shipping culture.

I’ve banged on about this before: in our race for representation, we often trample over content that’s perfectly good and valid and great in many ways, because we want to be able to win an argument against an asshole, we want to be able to bludgeon the gay so inarguably into somebody’s brain that they yield to the might of it, or at least, we imagine it reaches that point. Anti-shipping culture can be so loud that even slow burn het pairings that kiss will have antis explaining their way around it (eg, Mulder and Scully, off the top of my head). Anti queer culture will talk down men or women even making out on screen as experimentation. This cycle will continue.

So again, let me state: Good Omens is a masterpiece. I am utterly enthralled by it, but it does leave me sitting flummoxed about the uneven bars we put out there as marker posts based on trying to race to the finish of arguments.

I’m sure some hack job that doesn’t know how to rub brain cells together beyond “it’s straight” and, beneath the surface, “I don’t like it so I’m going to piss and moan about more expansive methods of thought than hard niching the complexity of human relations” is going to roll in here, thinking yelling “Jensen Ackles thinks it’s straight!” in supreme reductionism of things like authorship, be it intent OR death of the author, or whatever else is out there in this medium -- I’m sure they’ll show up, make the same repetitive ass of themselves as always, and roll on, completely missing the point that I’m not obligated to your arbitrary bullshit, and that nobody is.

I don’t HAVE to point out every single time a dickhat on a loop yells that, that Jensen Ackles himself spoke of the intangibility of the deepness of their connection with Castiel as an angel, and that a cishet dude from texas probably doesn’t understand the finest details of LGBT identity complexity despite being an ally while fumbling over talking about the difficulty of putting a label on it. I don’t have to explain that the actor doesn’t actually get to determine that. Viewership or author, take your pick. I don’t have to explain the “it’s never happening and wasn’t intended” never came from the authors every time some bumblefuck says it -- that it came from one account with a blurb that said he doesn’t speak for that writing room whatsoever. I don’t have to review the times that Jensen Ackles has almost verbatim mirrored the Good Omens creatives about the beauty of it being you being able to make your own interpretation even if it wasn’t his, and encouraging that. I don’t fucking have to, you entitled sniveling shits.

And no, it’s by no means about, say, Dean and Cas. It’s just about the dialogues I’m tired of seeing tilt unevenly even between typically well grounded and centered people.

So anyway Azriphale and Crowley are EternityMates and that’s the fucking tea. Call it queerplat or call it queerromantic I can see either, even if I do tilt towards the former. Destiel is queerromantic and you can fight me. Come at me. Except nobody really will over Good Omens, just Supernatural, because like magic, Good Omens isn’t geared for a fuckton of other bloated ships or antis who hate either of them by structure alone. And that, itself, is a point to be made, too.

And before some doodlefuck trolls along, no, there’s no such thing as incestromantic. Spare us the time and block me now if your knee jerk counter-troll is going to be subtextually along those lines, because I promise you’ll just get blocked when you try to roll into town with it. Since the Supernatural fandom seems to house corners of douchebags that don’t know how to control their primitive douchebag impulses and they do come into address in this post.

Moral of the story: Stop listening to homophobes, antis, or people with agendas. Listen to the content and what has actually been said. On all sides.

If you consider, for example,

the Ineffible Husbands canon with no admission of anything beyond friendship, with the hets loudly banging one scene over with “well the others are ace or whatever” as your reason (fair), a few lunches, basic dedication and a few well placed songs, and a few supportive notes from the general creatives,

But the Hunter Husbands not canon with talked-around love yous and need yous, intentional deletion of Castiel’s agender ace aspects, in spite of there being no evident banging or kissing in the show that hasn’t been a highlight of a problem since like season what six?; talk arounds of their meals together, infinite longer and classic romantic crafted dedication, innumerable well placed songs and yes, a few supportive notes from the creatives that are buried by yourself or others beneath intentionally obfuscated arguments and spun context,

You are, whether you want to gullet it or not, part of the moving goalpost problem. Whether it’s you running to meet a phobe or an anti, or just being coded into it by the screaming around you, there is no world in which one is representation and the other is not. It’s just fuckin’ not.

It’s not.

I don’t care what you yell and scream because it’s popular in your circles. It’s fuckin’ not.

It’s not.

Either both are rep or neither are rep. Personally, I adore both of them, and anyone that has a problem with that can eat me.

Good Omens is not a goddamn motherfucking breakthrough in representation. It’s the same very valid very real form of queer coding half this site screams at because someone got loud enough to scream about it early on, generally inspired by antis riding their ass, just it’s the first and second lead instead of second and third lead, and there’s no ‘rival’ in first and second leads as being intentionally dragged into vaguery. It’s. Fucking. Not. It’s literally. The same. Fucking. Level.

Now, I HAVE been banging on that it’s the level our content SHOULD be acceptable at (well, almost; frankly I’d consider Destiel better, as the show’s overall intimacy threshold is far lower while Good Omens has parallel overtness to the coupling in the actual canon, meaning Good Omens’ playing field, for fair treatment, would be indebted to matching volume -- not saying sex since ace but louder admissions and engagements that are just as clear.)

Unpopular? Good, I don’t care. I’m tired of people screaming about completely conflicting crap.

It’s where we SHOULD be taking ownership of our content. So if there’s any breakthrough, it’s the LGBT community themselves having some sort of spark of awareness that they can and should be able to own content at that volume, largely because the fandom isn’t swamped by asshats on the other side all yelling for their own crappy agendas clogging up your heads. There’s a few queerbait shouters. And you laugh them off, by and large, and accept it as canon and rep. Funny how that works without antis up your ass.

Sincerely,

A tired queer and newborn Crowley stan.

#not spn #but kinda spn #definitely good omens #but more lgbt commentary

46 notes · View notes

sulkybbarnes · 4 years

Note

Come on harry was not called fag and slurs for being feminine in 1d. He was seen as the cool masculine ideal the whole time he was in that band. He's still considered cool and while he breaks gender norms re clothing he's still not really viewed as 'feminine' by the wider population. Some of his fans act like he basically is a female (because wish fulfilment/projection) but thats not really how his image is viewed at all. In terms of 1d louis got more criticism for being 'feminine'.

He literally was called slurs and f*g, it’s on video because it happened multiple times while he was being hounded by paparazzi, just look it up. I’ve been in this fandom since 2011, tho I don’t engage with it anymore, but I can tell you that whatever attitude you’re seeing towards him now is the opposite of their early days. And I don’t know what you mean about the “wish fulfilment/projection” or your comment about his gender, nor do I have the time to unpack it tbh but a big portion of his fans are women and specifically wlw/lgbt+ people, so I wouldn’t generalize on the “wish fulfillment” part or how he’s viewed.

My response wasn’t comparing Harry to Louis or saying that Lou didn’t get a lot of shit too, it was simply stating that Harry got mistreated and it’s cruel to deny him his gender expression and confidence now when it’s something he’s finally comfortable with. Especially when he got attacked for it before.

I edited the part saying “the one member of one direction” in that response because it’s the wrong wording to use and I didn’t mean to imply Louis didn’t get homophobic slurs thrown at him too, so that’s fair criticism re the wording.

#f slur tw #asks #mara talks for ts #Anonymous

2 notes · View notes

lovestruckvoltageconfessions · 6 years

Note

1)I just gotta say as a trans person that some of these complaints about Bat's identity have a bit of transphobia in them. Like saying someone is tricking you for being a different gender than you thought or were originally told feels really gross to me and worse is some of the complaints about pronouns are just plain ignorant. People saying it'll be hard to refer to her with she pronouns now is just kinda assholeish. People say they would feel the same if it was the other way around but I think

2) that would be worse because the phrasing of tricking is very bad to refer to anything that could be considered a transwoman. Mainly it’s the wording of how people are talking about pronouns and stuff.

You’re right, that confession and my own comment about misgendering Bat could probably have been worded a lot better and that’s on me for not catching that before posting it. I am sorry about how that came across.

It just concerns me not knowing where to go from here. When I knew Bat was using he/him pronouns that was that you know because that’s what she wanted and that’s all I knew. But now that Juliette has specifically told MC that she uses she/her pronouns I would feel disrespectful using he/him pronouns because we know that those are not the ones she prefers. It’d be one thing if she said “oh I don’t care which pronouns you use” but she specifically said she uses she/her pronouns (at least in the screenshots I saw). So I feel a little uncomfortable knowing that I’m still using the “wrong” pronouns for what the character identifies with even though the MC in Duke’s route has no idea.

I also recognize that saying that a trans person “tricked” you into thinking they were a different gender is such an asshole thing to say. But no one is saying Juliette tricked them. Every single confession I got said that Lovestruck tricked them.

For two seasons Lovestruck showed this really awesome character that presented as male, and used he/him pronouns. The straight fans got excited about a potential new male LI! Like the fandom always does! This is nothing new! But then they got shut down pretty hard. They feel like Lovestruck dangled an awesome new male LI in front of them, and then took it away.

And that would be WILDLY unfair the other way around. This entire fandom would be in an UPROAR (as it should be) if a potential new female LI got so hyped up and the wlw portion of the fandom got so excited for it and then got it taken away in the same manner. It would be cruel to do that to the wlw part of the fandom.

The OVERWHELMING response to the Bat reveal has been positive. Out of 23 Bat related confessions, like 6 of them weren’t happy with it. There’s just a few straighties that are a little disappointed. They’ll get over it eventually. But they aren’t trying to be transphobic by saying a corporation led them to believe they were getting what they wanted and they aren’t

#villainous nights spoilers #spoilers #lovestruck spoilers

19 notes · View notes

motorcyclegirlfriends · 6 years

Note

What is the bechdel test?

Also relevant:

@lena-in-a-red-dress replied to your post “youngbloodbuzz: [me seeing everyone reblogging that post claiming how…”

With the Bechdel test, I couldn’t remember if it was a total conversation test (where any dude talk took the convo out of the running) or a time test (which the scene would tech pass), so I admittedly have research to do. But I do wish men hadn’t been mentioned at all… from a storytelling/performance perspective, they could have easily hit all the same plot-necessary notes elsewhere in the plot-necessary notes without infringing on girl time at all.

(Bare with me, I’ll also be addressing some other recently popular fandom opinions in this break down.)

Application of the Bechdel Test:

The Bechdel-Wallace test is simply, “The movie has to have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something besides a man.”

It was inspired by the writings of Virginia Wolf in which she observed that women were rarely portrayed in ways other than in relation to men, with particular note that this weasels it’s way into fictional female friendship.

I think I’ve seen individual studies expand upon this by specifying that it has to reach some designated length of time (one minute, for example), but I’ve never seen it interpreted so that men being mentioned earlier in the conversation negates the fact that they were afterward talking about something other than a man.

If it were so, it’d seem rather arbitrary a rule. Would the second half of the conversation suddenly pass if they had cut away to something else in the middle, making it a separate conversation? How does that method tell us anything about the quality of the show or the characterization of the women?

Furthermore, the Bechdel test is not meant for singular scenes, it is meant for entire works. In this case—entire episodes.

Sometimes whole conversations between women will, in fact, be about men. And that’s okay, as long as there are also conversations between women about things other than men within the text. In this episode, there certainly were. There will be more episodes in the future with multiple women interacting without mentioning men at all.

Something that people seem to be forgetting is that there’s nothing innately wrong with women talking about men, it’s when it’s made to be the entirety (or majority) of their characters that there’s an issue.

The point of the test is not to stop women from caring about men or having any storylines to do with men, it’s to make sure that there’s more than that. That they aren’t reduced to only that.

So people’s issues with the scene actually have little to do with the Bechdel test, and more to do the fact that these women got together on a girl’s night and, for about half of the portion of it that we saw, they talked about guys.

People are upset about it as a sort of… girl’s night trope in a feminist way, and—more strangely to me—in a queer activism way.

The Queer Activism Way:

Recently (the past few weeks or couple months), I’ve seen an alarming number of posts with regard to Supergirl in which people forget that their experiences are not universal and that their personal discomforts do not necessarily equate injustice.

Perhaps the mere mention of relationships with men makes you uncomfortable because you headcanon the character speaking about it as a lesbian or it reminds you of how alienated you felt growing up and not being attracted to men, but that does not actually make the mention of relationships with men homophobic.

First, the writers are under no obligation to make their characters the specific sexuality that you desire, especially when there is no lack of lesbian representation within the text. Moving forward with the romantic and/or sexual attraction that they have chosen for a character is not a violence against you, and believing that it’s a move designed just to hurt you comes off as rather paranoid and egocentric.

It’s also worth noting that the writers stating that a character is attracted to men in no way prevents fans from shipping the character with a woman. Because, idk if you know this but… bisexuality exists!

Saying “we get it, you’re straight!” every time the character mentions having had a relationship with a guy is reductive and inaccurate.

(And I think it’s also worth noting that you’re probably making your local bisexuals uncomfortable when voicing how horrible it is that your headcanoned wlw is mentioning her relationships with men.

It may be coming from a place of “but we were attached to her being a lesbian! I was attached to her representing me, and having projected myself onto her, I feel uncomfortable when she is attracted to men,” but fans acting as if it is not simply a personal discomfort but an injustice that the character is made to be attracted to men? As a bisexual, it’s not a fun message to receive.)

And with regard to lesbian alienation in the face of discussion of relationships with men, Alex and Maggie were not uncomfortable hearing about their friends’ past significant others.

That is your personal trigger that you are projecting on two characters who are not at all left out in that situation, and who are actually—as the only characters in the room in a relationship—in a more enviable place than those there who are attracted to men.

This was a group of friends talking to each other about their past relationships. Just as it wouldn’t be wrong for your straight friends to talk about their past relationships in front of you, it is not wrong for the writers to have Alex and Maggie talk to their friends about their past relationships.

(Also, It’s likely that if Maggie were not there, they probably would have had Alex talk about her relationship with her.)

The Feminist Way:

It’s a bit of a cliche to have girls get together and talk about guys, but is it really that bad a thing?

“But the scene perpetuates the stereotype that women get together and just talk about men!”

But the presence of stereotypical behavior within characters is alright, as long as there is enough representative content so that viewers do not get the impression that the stereotype is true for most/all people or most/all situations.

To compare, if there is a show filled with primarily bisexual characters and one of them cheats, it’s within the context of a group of bisexuals who have not cheated and thus can’t be mistaken for being representative of all bisexuals.

(This is why token characters can be so harmful.)

So if there is a show in which female characters regularly get together and interact in different ways and with varying topics, one half of a conversation in which they talk about their significant others who happen to be men is not indicative of negative representation of women.

This is why we use the Bechdel test, as low a bar as it is—to judge the discussion of men against the rest of the work. If it were not important to judge it against the whole of the text, the test would simply be “The movie has two have two female characters who never talk to each other about a man.”

Could this all have been avoided?

I really don’t think there is a different, natural way to bring up all of the elements that they wanted to bring up in this scene without mentioning significant others.

These are the topics they likely wanted to touch on:

1. Faith as a theme (“he asked me if I was baptized”)

2. Alex’s want for kids vs. Maggie not wanting them

3. Sam’s struggles with Ruby

4. Kara’s depression

Bonus: The tangible dynamic of Alex and Maggie being fully in the know with Kara, Lena knowing the half truth, and Sam knowing nothing

I’d be interested to see if any of you can actually come up with an alternative script for this scene in a way that isn’t too heavy or addressed later in the episode.

(Using mothers as the link between these topics would work logically, with Kara’s depression being linked to the loss of her mother, but it’s a Heavy topic in a way that can’t be moved passed as easily as Kara’s “break up.” Not to mention Lena’s issues with her mom… It’d screw up the tone of the scene, and would be just a bit too on-the-nose with Alex’s current predicament.

It’d also effectively skip through Sam’s storyline this episode right to the climax, because Lena would logically have given her the “my mom sucked, you’re doing pretty well” speech right there. (And again, that was a heavy scene that has no place at girl’s night.)

I also don’t quite know how you’d introduce faith as a theme or have Lena tell a funny story that doesn’t make everyone mildly uncomfortable if the topic is mothers.)

Perhaps you can figure out a way to have them avoid mentioning men at all, but you’re also more focused on that than the development of a natural and effective character interaction.

I think there’s a certain point where this becomes less about feminism and more about an intolerance to hearing about men.

And it’s understandable that this tolerance has suffered after last season’s focus on Mon-El to the detriment of Kara’s characterization and the Danvers Sisters interaction, but if you’re expecting them to actively avoid mentioning him or other men, you’re simply expecting too much.

#supergirl #kara danvers #lena luthor #alex danvers #supercorp #sanvers #long post #Anonymous #analysis: you're gonna suffer but you're gonna be happy about it

162 notes · View notes

the-cryptographer · 6 years

Text

i decided to follow a politely worded ‘yaoi is morally bad’ post back to OP’s blog, and it kind of confirmed to me what i already suspected - that at least a sizeable portion of people do not understand this word to mean the same thing i understand this word to mean.

it became clear that they were distinguishing between what the western fandom has at times coined ‘shounen ai’ and ‘yaoi’ and the JP fandom has universally called ‘BL’. this person said they really liked dokyuusei, and were planning to look into no 6. i don’t really know anything about no 6, but dokyuusei is BL. i read it at some point, and it’s pretty exceptionally well done for it’s genre, but it is pretty typical in many ways of its genre. it is simplifying and distorting the experiences of gay and bisexual men into a format that is intended to have a cathartic emotional appeal to the female audience it’s specifically marketing to. the author of dokyuusei is a woman - and, while dokyuusei itself isn’t sexually explicit, the author has also written a dozen explicit BL, or ‘yaoi’, titles.

this person also said on their blog that they’re okay with m/m shipping and fans talking about their ‘gay babies’ - that that wasn’t the intended target of their post - and... to me that’s not really a step away from people talking about ‘yaoi babies’ (and is only a few steps away from people affectionately calling characters their ‘gay son’) i... kind of try to understand that people are joking and having fun a lot of the time they say these things - but to me it’s still calling on an all too real impulse to infantise and condescend and objectify, to treat LGBT+ people as a kind of commodity and accessory, like a kind of cherished pet instead of a human being. to me there is something fetishistic about this, even in the lack of explicit sexual content.

idk, that someone is fine with others appropriating aspects of a mlm experience in media for their own emotional gratification, but not for sexual gratification- i can understand on a personal level why one of these might be more uncomfortable than the other. i am personally often very uncomfortable with the former with regards to wlw in media - i really vehemently hate the trend of portraying f/f romance as an entirely nonsexual experience that is the pinnacle of purity and kindness and ethereal emotionality that the men people just can’t hope to achieve in their relationships with women (nice try, guys - you don’t get to duck out of trying to be nice to your female lovers by blaming it on the fact that you’re a dirty, dirty man person and just can’t help yourself. no one is automatically capable or incapable of kindness and respect vis a vis their gender - everyone has to work on it. shove those excuses up your ass and try harder.) Okay, but is this actually any worse than media that show women having unemotional sex with each other simply for the gratification of the male voyeur. Yeah, probably not. But it hasn’t fed into my own damaging brand of internalised homophobia as much, so it bothers me a lot less on a personal level. I realise for some people it’s the opposite... I just feel to argue against one but not the other on a kind of mass scale is kind of hypocritical.

to argue against sexual objectification of LGBT+ peoples in media and, in the same breath, prop up media that objectifies and commoditises other aspects of LGBT+ peoples, that seems to me just to be an anti-pornography position. (or an anti-pornography-of-marginalised-peoples’s position. i guess i’d have to look into what OP’s opinion on f/m pornography or pornography of other minorities is.) which is... idk, there is a lot of pornography, the majority of ‘yaoi’ included, that i find repulsive - but, idk, it’s too far a jump for me to find the consumers of it repulsive when i don’t know their baggage or how they’re interacting with it. and it’s a further jump for me to move to a position of censorship where we’re trying to draw lines in the sand about what type of LGBT+ representation is okay and what is bad when there is such a huge risk of silencing other people within the community in doing so. and within the midst of a majority that’s pushing for silence regarding LGBT+ experiences as a whole.

#long post #idk ppl's criticisms of yaoi are so very valid #i think i can count the number of BL titles i've liked on one hand?#but- idk- it seems like a lot of wlm and mlm felt reassured by it - even if so much of it was extremely flawed #i'm not sure how to weigh that against the experiences of ppl who felt it was damaging to them #i know i'm probably preaching to the choir - but i want my thoughts to escape #status update

4 notes · View notes

thedeadflag · 7 years

Note

Hi I just want to thank you for being there yesterday I was having a bad time coping. Reading so many dismissive attitudes about things like the g!p issue knowing it boils down to most people as don't like it don't read it. Just bc its tagged doesn't mean it isn't doing harm. So many are supporting writers who know better but blatantly use it in a public forum makes me feel like i can't even be here sometimes. 1/2

2/2 I was thinking what if there was a popular genre that involved depicting/fetishizing black women with large breasts and small brains? What if that was a thing? Would ppl stay quiet bc its tagged? Wld ppl speak out? Thinking of all the things that ppl never speak up over but pretend to be allies? This performative allyship? It makes me sick. THIS is the toxic side of Tumblr. Thank you for being here.

It really is an issue of performative allyship vs actual allyship. Lots of people with “No TERFs” on their blog headers, folks asserting up and down that trans women are women and are “obviously” included in women’s spaces.

But then they fill those spaces with cissexism and transmisogyny and trans fetishization, and all sort of attitudes and behaviours and words that make it clear to us that we’re not truly accepted and seen as women, that we’re only welcome on their terms and that our voices don’t mean anything. So who are they supportive of? Who are they welcoming of within the spaces/communities we’re supposed to be able to safely exist in? It becomes intensely conditional. We’re accepted and welcomed so long as they get to demean us, misrepresent us, expose us to (and sometimes encourage) harm and sexual violence and social hostility, see and treat us like cis men in dresses they can put on a pedestal every once in a while for ally points.

If trans women are only conditionally accepted in women’s spaces, then our womanhood is being treated as conditional. It’s that simple. And it’s really clear that’s the case among those reading and writing those trans fetishistic works.

As for your example, I don’t need to use anyone else as a barometer for what’s acceptable in fandom, or how folks would react. Racial fetishization is distinct from trans fetishization.

But I do have a strong feeling that if Amber Riley had been thinner, if she’d fit the fetishized “thick girl” figure…I guarantee that we would have seen that sort of thing blow up in the Glee fandom. She was already treated as shrill, loud, and brainless/small-minded (misogynoir at play). Being fat disqualified her from being treated as a viable character for most sexual works (classic fatphobia), but yeah…if she’d been a “thick” girl with large breasts, yeah, absolutely people would have treated her character as a mindless sex receptacle. I’m not even sure anyone would be so kind as to tag their works with anything specific, outside of maybe the shudder-inducing “eb*ny”, since that seems to be the norm of how black women are treated in sexual media.

I doubt much of anyone aside from black women would speak out, or do anything about it. Hell, you’d probably get a bunch of folks who’d think it was positive rep. You’d get her paired up with all the white male leads in pursuit of pregnancy fics with mixed baby fetishization. And you’d get a slew of g!p fics in femslash portions of the fandom, with her as the ‘voluptuous’, ‘primal’, ‘aggressive’ partner with the BBC to ravage and fill up all the nubile, innocent white female leads. The fandom mostly shoehorned in Santana to fit that role, as the predatory mindless sex pot, but I don’t doubt that they’d have jumped on the possibility of using Mercedes if they’d seen her as viable. And fandom would have done nothing about it, because they didn’t do anything about it with Santana, dismissing criticisms left and right, and even trying to use canon material to justify twisting her character that way. Latinx fans were vocal as hell, and were roundly ignored and dismissed.

So yeah, in your given example, that’s exactly what would happen. Had racial fetishization been done in canon material, fandom would have maybe rallied a bit against that harmful rep (they did a few times in Glee to events.portrayals in canon, certainly), but when the finger’s pointed at them? Nope. Fandom, by and large, would not give even half of a shit. But they would be vocal here and there about being against racism, of how there needs to be more support for woc, especially in wlw fandom. Calling out #BlackLivesMatter while gleefully fetishizing black women is something I absolutely suspect would be common.

There’s a lot of issues in fandom. Trans fetishization is just one issue among a great many others. It’s the one I focus on, because it affects me directly, and I can speak on it and educate on it, but there’s absolutely racial fetishization in fandom. It’s rampant. And fandom spaces for LGBT+ fandom really do tend to mirror real life spaces. They’re white-centric and cis-centric for sure, to name a few pertinent issues.

And they don’t think they’re transmisogynistic. They don’t think they’re racist. Many of them can’t even get a sniff that there’s anything wrong with the works they love that fetishize and dehumanize real marginalized groups of people. And there’s all that toxicity right under the surface, and too many aren’t willing to do anything about it.

“It’d cause too much drama for my liking”

“I don’t want to rustle feathers”

“I don’t want to get anon hate”

“I don’t want to upset anyone.”

“I don’t want to lose any friends”

“I come to fandom to escape and have fun, not to argue”

Except for those of us being dehumanized and fetishized and excluded, we don’t have the luxury of dipping into fandom all peacefully and comfortably. We don’t have the ability to just ignore the harm being done to us and move on, nor should we have to.

Like, in real life, when folks see transphobia, or racism, and they do nothing? That can at times be understandable, if unfortunate. But online? There’s zero real risk/danger. There’s always, always ways to help. But people still shy away. When there’s practically an epidemic of people not commenting on fanworks, who’s going to put in the effort to fight these fights that isn’t already directly affected? Hardly anyone.

And I’ll admit there are times I could have done better, done more. I need to do better, there’s always room for improvement.

I just need to hope there’s enough out there trying to make things better for some sort of positive change to happen. It’s just hard sometimes, as you know.

I’m here if you need me.

7 notes · View notes

stardustinoureyes · 7 years

Text

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

- I’m not really into Supercat or Lucy/Kara. Percahlia is my NOTP of all notps. And really, I don’t get any heteroship over a good wlw ship.

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

-Pikelan. I know a big portion of Critters think that it could have been canon, but I like the “Pike is secretly harboring a crush on Vex” train of thought. Percahlia is also one I just Brotp. Carolsen is one, Oliver/Laurel and Oliver/Sarah are others. I briefly shipped Barry and Caitlin, but that was SOOO wrong.

Any fandoms that don’t appeal to you?

- Honestly, mainstream fandoms suck. Like, don’t get me wrong, there are still flame wars inside smaller internet fandoms, but I’ve been in a couple of fandoms while they were building and the community there, before everything goes crazy, is just really wonderful.

Have you ever unfollowed someone? Why?

- I regularly unfollow people who haven’t posted for a month or more, unless I have a specific reason why I wouldn’t. But usually, if I see a bunch of posts in a row that make me uncomfortable for whatever reason, I’ll unfollow that person. Like, the first time I remember unfollowing someone it was because they kept posting gory pictures and I just finally was like, enough.

Do you have a NoTP in [insert fandom here]?

- Percahlia is my number 1 Notp. Followed by Caramel and Bellarke.

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

- Kind of? I used to be on board with the Vaxleth ship because it was 2/3 of the way to my true Critical Role ship, but sometimes the fandom just makes it too saccharine sweet, or makes it so that Keyleth is “fixing” Vax, and I don’t like that. I still ship Vaxleth, but not as much as I used to. (And I still will argue that Keyleth/Percy/Vax would be a much more interesting dynamic than Vaxleth and Percahlia...)

Is there anything you used to like, but now can’t stand?

- Superwholock. Avengers. The 100.

Unpopular opinion about [insert fandom here]?

- Too much of any fandom is just people whining that other peoples opinions are different than their own. It is possible to ship people with more than one person. And just because I don’t like the ship you stan, so what? Get over it. There are more important things to get angry over other than the fact that I think Sarah and Jane should kiss and you want Sarah to kiss John. Do we really need to get in a fight about it?

Have you received anon hate? What about?

- Yup. For breaking up with someone way back in my early days, and then recently for telling people that they could come out to me on Coming Out day and for supporting them in that.

Any fandom you’re ashamed of being in?

- I’m ashamed that I was the type of person who called myself a Superwholockian once upon a time.

#I was bored #so I did it anyway

1 note · View note