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#they were just a biphobic piece of shit I guess
euphorial-docx · 9 months
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ok maybe i’ve just been seeing way too many twitter arguments about this, arguments which i don’t think really exist on tumblr, but i guess i wanted to share my opinion here.
when i was reading atyd a few years ago, i never read the characters being misogynistic in a “oh this author must hate women” type of way and more in a “sometimes people in the 70s were misogynistic without even realizing it” way.
like… i don’t get it when that’s included as like a “problematic” feature of the fic, because i felt it was realistic and i feel strongly that writers can write bad characters/bad things without they themself agreeing with those characters and things.
i simply don’t think writing something bad = endorsing it.
idk maybe it’s been a while since i last read atyd, and i know it does have some poor representation in other areas, but i never really felt offended as a “woman” (whatever that even means for me) when the characters said some misogynistic stuff because i just accepted the fic as a period piece trying to be somewhat realistic. like i’m sorry, a lot of guys in the 70s said some weird shit about women— yes, probably even the guys you like. ofc not every author has to be realistic about that stuff, but clearly a little bit of realism was an aim for atyd, and i don’t think that’s bad.
even in my own writing, i write stuff i don’t agree with. for example: opev. regulus is very progressive in that story because of his education and blah blah blah, and yet he still treats women, namely emma, in a way that i don’t necessarily like. i would never treat someone like that, but i realize that not only is the time period’s views different from now but also regulus has his own personal reasons to be behaving the way he does. i also write stuff like murder and cannibalism… but i am very against killing people and i am vegetarian. clearly i do not practice the things i write in my personal life.
i’m just telling a story that happens to have complex behaviors that i don’t really like but wanted to explore. i think, in some instances (although not all instances; there definitely are some real issues sometimes), that’s what happened in other fics like atyd.
(side note: i also don’t get it when people say atyd was biphobic? again, maybe it’s just been a while and i’m forgetting shit, but is the biphobia supposed to be remus sleeping with women when he labels himself gay??? is that the biphobia? or is there another example? i’ve been seeing that and i’m confused.)
(additional note: atyd does have some hurtful things written in it. my brain goes to the representation of irish travelers first. the writer themself has even acknowledged that. the issue of their apology or whatever isn’t one i’m going to be arguing, neither is those real hurtful issues otherwise written in that fic— i agree those things should’ve been handled better. this is just about my take on the depictions of misogyny and writers being allowed to write bad things without it being representative of them as a person.)
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luisleyyaoi · 3 years
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@that one youtuber that said Luz is straight and lumity wouldn’t happen, explain how this is heterosexual please
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popcorn & pronouns
Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: Janus, Remus, Roman Rating: Teen & up Relationships: Dukeceit, Creativitwins  Warnings: Not much to warn for in this one. Language, a little bit of suggestiveness, vague non-detailed descriptions of a horror movie.  Word count: 3402
Read on AO3!
My writing masterpost
Starlight Universe masterpost
Dukeceit Week 2021 start - previous - here - next - masterpost
Summary: A movie night date leads to an important conversation. Already being t4t makes it a lot easier. Or, in Remus's own words, “This is just, like, going to be a week of people coming out to me, I guess. Huh.”
Notes: Day 6 of Dukeceit Week 2021! Almost there! @dukeceitweek Takes place in my Starlight Universe, where each piece can be read without any context. Takes place 9 months after college; at the start of the story, Janus uses only they/them pronouns. 
-- 
“Ooh, popcorn! Can I have some?” Roman popped his head into the kitchen of the apartment he, Remus, and Logan had shared in the nine or so months since they had all graduated college.
“No, Jan and I are having a date in twenty minutes,” Remus said, waving Roman off without looking away from the air popper.
“Okay, I don’t see how that’s relevant to my question.” Roman pushed himself to sit on the counter by the sink. “I mean, that’s really cute, I hope you have fun. But can I have some popcorn?”
Remus rolled his eyes. “Make your own when I’m done.”
“But you make it better!” Roman pouted overdramatically.
Remus raised an eyebrow. “All I do is plug in the machine?”
“Right, which is better than me doing it.” Roman grinned at them. “Less work for me.”
“Hey!” Remus swatted his arm. “The transphobia, honestly—”
“Well, if you making it for me is transphobic to you, then you not making it for me is—” Roman broke off quite suddenly, his expression undergoing several shifts very fast that Remus could not make sense of. Which was… unusual, to say the least. Roman was normally the one person they could always count on understanding. They didn’t like this new development one bit.
“Ro?”
“Iiiiiit’s… queerphobic to me,” Roman said at last, a worried pinch to his eyebrows. He laughed, and it almost didn’t sound forced. “So we’re at a tie, so you should just make me popcorn.”
“First of all, I’m queer too, make your own damn popcorn. Second—” Remus turned away from the popcorn machine and gave Roman his full attention, leaning back against the kitchen island and tilting his head to the side. “Do you wanna talk about whatever the fuck that was?” So far as Remus knew, Roman was bi; that was the label he’d been using for years and years, so long that it practically felt like forever. Since almost the very beginning of high school. Since before Remus had questioned their gender, even. Only last week, he’d called the light switch biphobic without hesitation when it broke.
Whatever had happened to make him so very deliberately not call himself bi just now, it was new.
Roman’s expression closed up very fast indeed, but not before Remus caught a flash of something he was almost certain was fear. “No.”
“You know it’s okay to question, right?” Remus inquired awkwardly. “No matter what specifically, and no matter what the outcome is? Yeah?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know I’d still love you no matter what, right? Even if you were, like, a straight man—like, I would make so many jokes about not agreeing with your lifestyle, but—Ro, you know everything is always gonna be okay, right?”
Roman glared at him. “Remus, I don’t want to talk about it.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I’m definitely not straight.”
Remus blinked and raised their hands. “Alright. I didn’t mean literally straight, I just meant—you could be literally whatever, and it would be cool. That was—like—the most extreme example I could think of, you know?”
Roman let out a slight huff of laughter. “Thanks,” he said reluctantly after a pause. “It’s nothing, though.”
“Bullshit,” Remus said immediately.
“It—” Roman swallowed. “I need it to be nothing, okay?”
“If anyone’s making you feel shitty, I’ll beat them up,” Remus said immediately. “Even if it’s Patton. Just drop the names. I’ll do it. I’ll—”
“Remus, it’s fine. I want to stop fucking talking about it now!” Roman snapped.
Remus hesitated, fumbling for what to do or say next, everything about the conversation feeling just a little wrong and sideways.
Roman sighed. “Sorry.” He pushed off the counter, went to the fridge, and stared into it for a solid thirty seconds, then took a cheese stick out of the door. “I’ll make my own popcorn later,” he mumbled and retreated back to his room.
“Damn, alright,” Remus said to the empty room. “Be like that, I guess.” They flung their hands into the air and went to get the butter they’d been melting in the microwave before Roman’s appearance.
Roman would talk to them about it, whatever it was, eventually. He always did. And whatever was bugging him, Remus would figure out a way to bug it back until it stopped and Roman was all happy and bubbly again. Because that was what Remus always did. It would be fine. It was just a waiting game.
Remus sighed. He always hated waiting.
***
“Mmkay,” Remus said, when Janus had arrived, and they had worked together to move the TV out of the living room and into Remus’s room, and they had settled in on Remus’s bed—Remus sitting up against the headboard and Janus half-laying in Remus’s lap with their long thin legs stretched out along the bed and their head on his chest—and the popcorn had been set beside them where they could both reach it, and the blanket nest had been fluffed once more. “What shall we watch?”
Janus was silent for a long moment. Actually, come to think of it, they had been quiet since they’d arrived at the apartment—even more quiet than usual. But Remus was almost certain they weren’t nonverbal, seeing as they had exchanged a few fond words with him. It just hadn’t been very many words.
“Janny, baby?” Remus leaned forward, over their shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of their face.
Janus had their fingers knotted in the blanket that was spread over their lap, fidgeting with it anxiously, a thinking-hard expression on their face.
“Baby?” Remus curled one hand lightly around theirs. “You good?”
“Choices are too hard right now,” Janus said at last.
“Okay, that’s okay. Do you know what you need?”
“I want to watch a movie.” Janus frowned. “I just can’t choose.”
“Gotcha. No problem.” Remus pressed a kiss to their cheek. “I’m really good at choosing.” He threaded his fingers through Janus’s long hair, scratching soothingly at their scalp in just the way he knew they liked, and pulled up the library of movies, switching from Roman’s profile to his own.
“How’s some really cheesy horrible horror film we can make fun of sound?” he asked, scrolling with the remote and still playing with Janus’s hair with his other hand. “I know we have a bunch of those, I loved ’em when we were kids and I think they’re funny.”
“That sounds fine.” Janus nodded and relaxed a little further against Remus.
“Good.” He kissed the top of their head. “Do you need anything else?”
Janus shook their head. “I’ve just been kind of stressed lately. Work’s been shit, and all that. It’s fine. I just want to cuddle and things.”
“Ooh, ‘and things,’ I like the sound of that,” Remus teased, sliding his hand gently to their chin and drawing them to twist around far enough that he could kiss them soft and slow.
“I didn’t say what kinds of things,” Janus said innocently, their eyes still closed and so close to Remus that their lips brushed against his as they spoke. “Perhaps I could be persuaded later.”
“I’ll be sure to prepare my best arguments,” Remus said, leaning slightly up to kiss their forehead and then back down to their lips for another lazy kiss, taking his time and exploring Janus’s mouth until they sighed and melted against him.
“A compelling preview,” they murmured, their eyes still closed and the slightest smile curling at their lips.
Remus meant to make some kind of witty quip in return, really he did, but all that came out of his mouth was a quiet, awed, “Holy fuck, you’re so beautiful, Jan.”
Janus’s eyes opened and met his for a moment, soft and vulnerable, before they turned and hid their face in his neck. “Love you,” they whispered against his skin.
“Mm, I love you too,” Remus said happily, wrapping his arms securely around Janus and kissing the top of their head. “Love your pretty eyes and skin and hair and body, love how clever you are, love your scary goth clothes, love your snark, love your stims, love you—”
Janus whined wordlessly into his neck, pressing kisses to it and fisting their hands in the front of his shirt.
Remus chuckled, taking a handful of their hair and gently tugging until they looked up at him once more. “Do you want to watch a movie at all, or do you just wanna make out? Cause I’d be good with either, but if you wanna do a movie, we should get on that before we’re too distracted.”
“Oh.” Janus leaned their head back a little until it was resting against Remus’s hand. “Not that I don’t want to make out, but—”
“Nah, I gotcha. Gotta at least get through the popcorn, am I right?” Remus cast about for the remote, lost in the blanket pile, as Janus shifted about until they faced the television again.
“There it is!” Remus snatched the remote up, clicking through the library on the television until he saw the particular film he was thinking of and pulled it up. “This look good?”
“‘When moving into their new house, little do our protagonists know it is haunted by a demonic serial killer. Will they get out in time? Or will they be his next victims?’” Janus read the summary aloud. “Sounds absolutely thrilling. Extremely original. Love the bad Photoshop on the cover. I’m sure the acting will be of the highest quality.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s so shitty, I love it. So many cheesy effects and fake blood, it’s the actual stupidest shit,” Remus assured them. “I love it, though. Went as the demon thing for Halloween when I was nine. Nobody fucking knew what I was, but I had the time of my life. And got fake blood on Roman when he wasn’t looking. It was great.”
Janus chuckled, reaching up to brush their fingertips against Remus’s cheek. “Well, with such a glowing review from someone so attractive, how can I resist?” they said fondly.
“That’s the spirit!” Remus hit play.
Remus had watched this particular movie more times than they could count over the course of their childhood. He peppered commentary throughout the film:
“This is my favorite part, if you pay attention you can see her real fingertips holding onto the fake hand she’s about to get chopped off!”
“There’s a jumpscare in this scene, I know you hate those—okay, hit the skip-ten-seconds button in three, two, there. Perfect. Dumbass demon movie can’t even trust itself to be creepy without cheap scares.”
“Look, I know the mom is supposed to have some kind of hot blonde thing going on for the horny straight men in the audience, but she’s got nothing on you.”
“For some reason they made a director’s commentary and it actually includes the fake blood recipe they used, I’ll show you sometime!”
Janus, in turn, provided brilliant, extremely snarky roasts, mostly of either the actors’ absolute lack of skill or the gaping plot holes:
“Oh, yes, going alone to the attic at midnight without so much as a candle is a fantastic idea, nothing bad could possibly happen in this scene.”
“Listen, I can excuse the children because they’re about eight years old, but do you think this man has ever even heard of acting? Or even, like, speaking in a non-monotone?”
“I am truly fascinated by the special effects department’s understanding of human anatomy.”
“So, the demon feeds on misery? Why hasn’t it taken up residence in a large office building? I mean, come on, hundreds of souls in an environment designed to grind out constant levels of misery? It’s perfect. The poor thing must be starving out here in the two-point-five-kids-and-a-dog suburbs, every meal it gets is tiny. I would be so much better at its job than it is.”
At last the credits rolled.
“Wanna see pictures of the costume I made?” Remus asked.
“Sure.” Janus sounded amused.
“Lemme just—” Remus scrolled through their camera roll for a minute. “Oh, here they are.” They displayed their phone to Janus; tiny nine-year-old Remus, who sported long tangled brown hair in two ponytails, was draped in a black curtain, donated by his great-aunt, that he had very enthusiastically taken a pair of scissors to to create a tattered effect; the curtain was splattered with bright red goo, and tiny Remus had a pair of plastic knives in his hands, which were blurry in almost every photo because they’d hardly stopped making stabbing motions all evening. To their right, their little sister Gabby, who’d been six at the time, was dressed as Elastigirl and making a punching motion; to their right, Roman—who had already been a full three inches taller than Remus, even at nine—was wearing a Belle dress with a poofy skirt and a sword strapped around his waist and a huge smile that was missing one front tooth.
Remus swiped through the photos; a delightful scene unfolded, as tiny Remus posed for a few pictures, then in one was blurrily turning towards Roman, then dumping something on him, then Roman was screaming and Remus was laughing as red goo dripped down the poofy yellow skirt; Gabby watched with both hands clapped over her mouth, eyes huge.
“You two really have not changed at all, have you?” Janus asked, stifling laughter.
“Absolutely not,” Remus agreed with an answering laugh. “I think the most that either of us ever changed was when I chopped off all that hair and dyed it green.”
“When was that?” Janus asked.
“Sophomore year of high school. I did not have permission to chop it all off, but I did get permission to dye it afterwards, so that was pretty sick.”
“And that didn’t go against dress code?” Janus inquired.
“No, actually. Not sure how. But I bet my parents would’ve kicked up a big stink about it if the school tried and made me change it; they were always super big on self expression and shit.” Remus gestured towards the picture, indicating tiny Roman in his princess dress. “We always got to wear whatever we wanted, and shit like that. It was nice. Made gender shit way easier when that became a thing for me, you know?”
“It sounds nice,” Janus said softly. “I’m happy you had that.”
Remus nodded and pressed a kiss to their forehead, reaching for a handful of the popcorn dregs in the bottom of the bowl.
Janus shifted in their arms, rolling over to face Remus and propping themself up on their elbows. “Actually,” they began.
Something on their face told Remus that whatever this new topic of conversation was, it was important. He swallowed the half-chewed popcorn in his mouth. “Yeah, baby?”
“Speaking of gender.” Janus picked at the edge of the blanket.
“I love speaking of that, go on.” Remus tousled Janus’s hair fondly.
Janus took a deep breath, staring at the blanket in their hands. “I want to start using he pronouns again. In addition to my regular ones. Or.” They wrinkled their nose. “My current ones, I guess. So, he/they.”
“That’s great, he/they pronouns are very sexy,” Remus said at once.
Janus laughed, looking up at him at last. “That’s true, you are the sexiest person I know,” he said fondly. A shadow passed over his features. “But,” he went on slowly, chewing on the inside of their lip and picking at the blanket once more.
“Yeah?” Remus encouraged.
“I really don’t like the idea of telling anyone else about that.” Janus grimaced. “I keep worrying I’ll get asked stupid questions about ‘oh, so are you a man again now?’ when—like—no, and I never was one in the first place. So.”
“Oh, that sounds gross,” Remus agreed at once. “I can see why you’d be worried about that.”
Janus nodded. “I just—I don’t want to explain. And I don’t want people to ask questions. And they might. And I just—I don't want any of it. I want to skip to the part where they know and it’s all how I want it to be.”
“That’s reasonable,” Remus agreed. “But, I mean, if they can get me using he/they pronouns and being nonbinary, they had better fucking wrap their minds around the concept of you doing it too. Yeah? Or I’ll make ’em. Violently, if you want.”
Janus snorted. “I appreciate the offer, darling.” They reached up and touched his cheek. “I… don’t know if I want to tell anyone else yet. But I did want to tell you.”
“You got it, cutie.” Remus booped Janus’s nose once. “Just let me know if anything changes. I’ll punch people for you. Anytime. They don’t even have to have done anything. Just point me at them and consider it done.”
Janus did laugh at that, outright, scrunching up his face and burying it in Remus’s chest. “I should not be this into you offering to punch people for me,” he said wryly.
Remus grinned and flipped their hair. “Nah, I think it’s definitely very sexy of me and should absolutely turn you on.”
Janus smacked Remus’s arm. “I did not say that!”
“You implied it.”
“Not… necessarily. That was one possible interpretation—”
“Oh, right, I see, mmhm, very interesting.”
They smacked his arm again. “You’re teasing me.”
“Only a little bit. You’re so pretty when you get all flustered.” Remus bent their head at a somewhat awkward angle to kiss Janus’s lips gently. “Are there any new words you want me to use, by the way?” they asked. “Besides updating pronouns?”
Janus tilted his head to the side, considering. “I think… I still like all the sorts of things you call me already. Pretty, and partner, and—and baby, and so on.”
Remus smirked. “That’s good, I like calling you baby.”
“Oh my god, shut up.” Janus hid their face in their hands.
“Why, baby?” Remus asked innocently.
Janus made a strangled noise, and after a pause carried on. “I do think I wouldn’t mind adding a little bit of… masc terminology? I guess? If that makes sense? Adding that into the mix. Not all the time, and not as much as the things you already call me, but… just a bit would be nice.”
“Gotcha.” Remus nodded. “I can do that. So, like, my baby is very pretty and handsome?”
Janus’s cheeks went bright red in an instant, and he hid his face in Remus’s chest again, letting out a tiny wordless scream. “Yes. That. That—that’s nice,” they managed after a pause, sounding almost entirely composed.
Remus chuckled and ran their fingers through Janus’s hair. “Good to know,” he said teasingly. “I will definitely keep this in mind.”
“Oh my god,” Janus mumbled. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Absolutely, but only in a sexy way of making you happy.” Remus kissed the top of their head. “This is just, like, going to be a week of people coming out to me, I guess,” they mused. “Huh.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, something’s clearly eating at someone else we know, and I think they’re going to tell me about whatever it is within the week. That’s all. It was just funny timing.” Remus kissed the top of Janus’s head again. “So, the movie’s over,” they noted, which, sure, was a blatant and deliberate change of subject, but he felt this was justified, both for avoiding-speculating-about-Roman’s-personal-information purposes and, more importantly, for fun-after-movie-things purposes.
“That it is,” Janus said, a particular innocent tone entering their voice. Excellent, he was of a similar mind to Remus, then.
Remus grinned and drew them up for a kiss. “So, what does the very pretty and handsome and lovely human in my arms want to do now?” he inquired.
Janus made another small, wordless, flustered noise and promptly dragged Remus into another kiss. “You can’t just say things like that!”
“What, about how you’re the loveliest—prettiest—sexiest—” Remus pressed tiny kisses to Janus’s lips with each word, until at last they caught his lips with their own in a proper kiss to shut him up. “Pretty sure I can say it, actually,” Remus murmured against his lips. “Cause it’s true.”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk,” Janus said, sounding very pleased indeed, and kissed them again.
--
Taglist (ask to be added/removed!): @theimprobabledreamersworld @peruviandesertfox
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thatsamericano · 3 years
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That Thing That Isn’t Biphobia
Pairings/Characters: America/Romano. America and Japan brotp. Mentions of Belmano and past Prumano. Very brief mentions of Giripan, Gerita, and Lietpol. Human AU.
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mentions of biphobia and violence (though no actual biphobia or violence). Mentions of ace/arophobia from Alfred’s parents, who don’t appear in the story.
Word Count: 3317
Summary: Alfred thinks he’s biphobic because he gets unreasonably angry and upset whenever he sees his roommate having relationships with men or women. He hates himself for being prejudiced against Savino, but an honest conversation with another friend helps him realize his “biphobia” wasn’t biphobia at all.
Note: Prequel to That Thing Where You Fall In Love With Your Best Friend. Inspired by the reddit story of the “straight” guy who fell in love with his gay roommate and mistook his jealousy for homophobia.
Alfred was supposed to be eating lunch with Kiku today, but after fifteen minutes he had only moved the sushi around the plate with his chopsticks several times. Guilt was gnawing away at his mind, and he couldn’t focus on anything else, even sushi that he knew would be tasty since Kiku had chosen the restaurant this time.
At least he wasn’t nauseous, like he would be when Savino was around his girlfriend.
Emma was perfectly sweet, and Alfred had no reason to dislike her. She was genuinely friendly to him and Tolys, even if her main reason for stopping by the apartment was to spend time with her boyfriend. She and Vinny were affectionate, but they didn’t engage in enough PDA to bother any reasonable person. Yet every time Savino would casually drop his arm around her shoulders and she’d snuggle up to his side, Alfred had to look away to keep his stomach from roiling. Every time he called her some sappy Italian endearment and she giggled and replied to him with something in Flemish, Alfred wanted to drive spikes into his ears just so he’d never have to hear them again. When they kissed in front of him, Alfred felt like screaming or crying, and he didn’t understand why.
The same thing had happened a few months ago when he was hooking up with Gilbert, that albino German dude he’d met because Vinny’s little brother was dating Gilbert’s little brother. Gilbert and Savino didn’t call each other sappy nicknames, because it was just a friends with benefits arrangement, but they did spend a few nights together. One morning, Alfred was in the middle of eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch when Gilbert emerged from Savino’s room wearing only a pair of boxers. After nearly choking on his cereal, Alfred finished his breakfast as quickly as he could and left the apartment to circle the block five times, which calmed him down enough to refrain from punching some poor guy just for having sex with his roommate. By the time Alfred had returned, Gilbert had left, thank fucking God. But whenever he thought of the things they must have done together or the things Savino had done with Emma, a painful tightness seized Alfred’s chest, and it became extraordinarily difficult to breathe. Even after they had gone back to being just friends, Gilbert liked to visit occasionally, and he liked to tease Savino with comments made him splutter and blush. Every time he saw Savino’s reaction to some comment Gilbert had made, Alfred felt unreasonably angry, and he wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off Gilbert’s face with his fist.
Alfred knew it was wrong. Savino had never judged him for being ace/aro, and Alfred had absolutely no right to judge him for being bi. Savino was an amazing friend and a wonderful roommate, and he deserved all the happiness in the world. He certainly deserved better than living with a biphobic piece of shit like Alfred. What kind of fucked up asshole couldn’t stand to see one of their best friends happy just because the way they were happy was different from what they wanted for themselves?
Alfred hadn’t mentioned a word of how he felt to anyone. He didn’t want to hurt Vinny with this stupid prejudice that came out of nowhere, and he didn’t want everyone in his life to hate him the way he deserved. Savino, of course, wouldn’t want anything to do with Alfred if he knew, and neither would Tolys, who was bi too. All of his friends would be disgusted by the ugly and vicious sentiments Alfred harbored, and he would have to move back in with the shitty parents who thought his asexuality was a silly, immature phase he would grow out of eventually once he really came out of the closet. Even his own twin would want nothing to do with him. Mattie was straight, but unlike Alfred, he was a decent person who would never hate someone for being themselves.
But the sad truth was that he didn’t hate Savino. Vinny didn’t smile that much compared to Alfred, but when he did, it resembled the sun coming through the clouds. When he laughed at Alfred for doing something dumb, Alfred felt giddy, and he wanted to do something even stupider just to hear that beautiful sound again. He was a talented artist and an amazing cook, and Alfred had grown addicted both to Savino’s cappuccinos and to sitting at the counter and chatting with him while he worked. Vinny was like a human space heater, and he always smelled like fancy cologne Alfred wasn’t sophisticated enough to use himself. When they hugged, Alfred never really wanted to let go. The idea of not having Savino in his life was the worst thing Alfred could imagine, so he had to pretend everything was just fine and that nothing had changed.
He was frowning down at his sushi, too heartsick to eat any of it, when Kiku hesitantly spoke up. “Alfred-kun, are you all right? You’ve been unusually quiet, and you haven’t touched your food today.”
Alfred sighed and made eye contact with him. “I’m fine. Just not hungry, I guess.”
Kiku looked worried. “If you aren’t in the mood for sushi, we could go somewhere else. I don’t want you to skip lunch because you were trying to accommodate me.”
Alfred set down his chopsticks, which he hadn’t been using for their intended purpose. “It’s not the sushi, dude. I’ve just been feeling kind of off lately.”
“Off how?”
Alfred hesitated. Kiku was his close friend. In some ways, he understood Alfred better than anyone else because he was asexual too. The only difference was that he was gray-romantic, because he had gotten very close to someone once, and he wasn’t sure if what he’d felt for Herakles years ago was romantic or not.
That meant Kiku might be attracted to guys at least a little. So he would see the way Alfred had reacted to the mere idea of Savino being with a guy as a personal attack, and rightly so. He wouldn’t want to be friends with someone like that, and Alfred couldn’t blame him.
Alfred hunched in on himself and fixed his gaze determinedly on the table top. “You shouldn’t worry about it. It’s a dumb problem, and I need to get over it.”
“But you’re my friend,” Kiku stated plainly. “Of course I’ll worry when you aren’t acting like yourself. I care about you.”
Alfred took a deep breath and blinked his eyes rapidly to stop himself from crying in the middle of a Japanese restaurant, which would unnecessarily embarrass everyone around him. Kiku’s concern only made him feel worse. He didn’t deserve it at all.
“I think I’m a bad person,” Alfred muttered. “I might’ve picked up on some prejudices from my parents, but it’s not like I want to feel this way. And I can’t blame it all on other people. It’s my responsibility to quit being a dick to people for no reason.”
“You’re prejudiced? Against who?” Kiku already sounded annoyed at him, and he hadn’t even heard everything. He’d barely heard anything.
“Bi people, I think. Either that or I just really don’t like Europeans, which isn’t okay either.” Alfred squeezed his eyes shut, dreading Kiku’s reaction.
For a long moment, all Alfred heard was the sound of people at others eating and talking to each other. Finally, Kiku spoke. “Alfred, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s biphobia, dude! Of course it doesn’t make sense.”
“But both your roommates are bi. And European, for that matter.”
Alfred groaned in despair and fisted his hands in his hair. “I know. And if they found out, they’d hate me forever and want nothing more to do with me.” Fuck, if he couldn’t make this go away, he was going to lose two of his best friends. In addition to Kiku, who he’d probably lost already.
“You’ve always seemed so fond of Tolys and Savino.” Weirdly, Kiku didn’t sound pissed off. He sounded like he was trying to reason through a complex math problem. “If you were prejudiced against them, wouldn’t this have come up sooner? You’ve been living with them for years, and you never mentioned having a problem with their orientation before.”
“Because I didn’t have a problem before! I didn’t know I was like this until Vinny started hooking up with that German dude a few months ago. I saw him coming out of Vinny’s bedroom one time, and ever since then I’ve hated Gilbert for no fucking reason.”
“Knowing they’d been together in that way made you uncomfortable?”
Alfred grimaced. “It was more than uncomfortable. More like angry. Really angry. I had to leave the apartment to calm myself down. I still feel like punching something whenever Gil teases him and makes him turn red. And when I think about them doing stuff with each other, my chest feels weird and it’s hard to breathe.”
Alfred dared to glance up at Kiku, who had a carefully neutral expression on his face. “I see. And what about his girlfriend, Emma? She seemed nice when I met her.”
Alfred sighed. “Emma is nice. But it’s a similar deal, only more sappy because they’re an actual couple. I feel queasy when they cuddle on the couch, and I feel so upset when they kiss in front of me, even if it’s not like they’re Frenching for five minutes or whatever. I can’t stand it when I hear them getting all sappy in Italian or Flemish. And I’m just as mad if I think about them having sex, which is why it’s probably biphobia and not homophobia.” Alfred chuckled weakly, disgusted with himself. “Apparently, I’m such a crappy friend I can’t let Savino be happy, even with a girl.” God, Alfred loathed himself.
Kiku’s next question surprised him completely. “How do you feel about Feliks? They’re still with Tolys, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, they are. Feliks is cool. I like hanging out with them. I think I might have accidentally gotten them a little too addicted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though.” Alfred smiled fondly at the thought of Tolys’s partner. Feliks was a fun person. Alfred had never had a problem with them.
“Were you ever uncomfortable when they showed affection in front of you?”
Alfred furrowed his brow. “Not that I can think of? But maybe it’s because Feliks and Tolys have been together for a while, so I’m used to it.” They’d been together since before Alfred developed this sudden, unexpected biphobia problem. God, he hoped that he didn’t start hating Feliks too. That would really suck.
Kiku nodded to himself. “I think I’ve figured out what’s going on. And contrary to what you told me, I don’t think you’re biphobic.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I think you’re jealous.”
“But why would I be jealous? Because Vinny goes on dates and hooks up with people, and I’ve never been with anybody? That doesn’t make any sense. I never wanted to be more than friends with somebody.”
Kiku gave him a pitying look. “But I think you do now. I think something must have changed, and now you have feelings for Savino. You were jealous of his most recent partners because you wish you were them.”
For a moment, Alfred was too stunned to say anything. He glanced down at his uneaten sushi. “But I don’t like people that way. I can’t. I never have.” He felt scared because so much of his identity was shifting away underneath him. It hadn’t been easy for Alfred to tell people who he was, especially when he had to explain it to people who wouldn’t inherently understand him the way Kiku did. Not everyone had accepted him. His own parents had made him feel like crap for it. He didn’t want to prove them right, because asexuality and aromanticism weren’t phases.
Every time he told people he was ace/aro, he’d been sure of himself. He’d been more certain of that than anything. But now he didn’t know who he was anymore.
“Alfred, how do you feel about Savino when he isn’t with another person?”
“Just being around him makes me happy. But that could totally be a friendship thing, right? It’s normal to feel happy around your friends. I’m happy around you and Tolys too!” But maybe it wasn’t normal to compare your friend’s smile to the sun or to think that the sound of their laugh was beautiful. Maybe you could enjoy hugging your friends, but something other than friendship was going on if you felt so warm and safe in their arms that you never wanted to let go.
Alfred glanced up into Kiku’s eyes, which were a warm, dark brown, filled with compassion and understanding. He felt calmer looking at his friend’s face, but he didn’t feel enraptured. He didn’t feel mesmerized when he stared into Kiku’s eyes, like he could do nothing but sit across from him and stare at him for hours. He had felt like that with Vinny.
Alfred coughed awkwardly and looked off to the side as he felt heat starting to creep up his neck and over his cheeks. His thoughts were weird, embarrassing, and really confusing.
“How do you feel about the idea of being in a relationship with him?” Kiku asked.
“I hadn’t really thought of it before,” Alfred admitted. “But it doesn’t sound bad.” Not much would change, really. They’d still be close, just in a different way. He’d be the one snuggling up to Vinny instead of Emma, and that would probably feel nice, considering how much Alfred liked hugging him. He’d be the person getting called something like “tesoro,” and the idea of a special nickname made him feel fluttery, just like he felt when Vinny had started calling him “Fredo,” only more intense. And the idea of kissing Savino on the lips instead of just that cheek kissing thing he did with his friends…
Okay, that made Alfred nervous. But not bad nervous, more like “I’m about to go on the biggest rollercoaster at the theme park” nervous. Alfred had always enjoyed the thrill of rollercoasters, the experience of screaming his head off as his heart raced a mile a minute. If kissing could feel like that, then he definitely wanted to kiss Savino. At some point, he might even want to do more than kiss Savino, which wasn’t something he’d ever considered before. The mere fact that he was even thinking about having sex without immediately recoiling said a lot.
Alfred grabbed his drink and quickly slurped up a lot of soda through his straw. He felt like he was about to explode from all the feelings inside him, and the soda helped cool him down a little. He kept a tight grip on the glass afterwards.
“I like him,” he confessed, near tears. “I like Savi so, so much, and I have no idea what this means for me. I don’t understand who I am anymore.”
“You’re the same person you always were, even if you’re discovering something new about yourself. And you’re still my friend. That will never change.”
Alfred released the glass slowly. “Thanks, dude. That means a lot.”
“If you like, I could help you look on the AVEN website sometime. You might not be completely asexual and aromantic, but I’m sure there’s a term out there for what you’re experiencing. It might help you make sense of things.”
“I appreciate that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad I’m not a secretly horrible biphobic asshole, but my head’s kind of a mess right now.”
Kiku chuckled softly. “That’s understandable.”
Alfred finally felt good enough to eat something, so he picked up a piece of sushi with his fingers, since chopsticks were still awkward for him to use, even if he’d eaten with Kiku many times. Fortunately, it wasn’t considered rude to eat sushi with your hands. Alfred chewed his food, and he thought things over. “Vinny has a girlfriend, and he seems really happy with her. Having a crush on him and knowing I have a crush on him is gonna be awkward as hell. Maybe not as awkward as thinking I’m an evil prejudiced monster, but still.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell him that part. But I do want to tell him and Tolys something once I figure all this stuff out. And my brother too. But telling my parents is… God, that’s gonna be a fucking nightmare. They were so shitty to me before, and they’re gonna be really smug and annoying if turns out they were right. I don’t wanna play into stereotypes like that.” Most people who said they were ace/aro didn’t change their minds later, but in his parent’s view, asexuality and aromanticism weren’t real, valid experiences, and any person who said they were asexual or aromantic was lying to themselves and using those labels as a mask for something else. Or maybe they just hadn’t found “the right person.”
Alfred had never intentionally lied about his sexuality, but his parents wouldn’t see it that way. This stupid crush on his roommate was reinforcing stereotypes that hurt people like the really awesome friend who had taken him out to lunch today and helped him realize his feelings, and Alfred felt guilty about that.
Kiku had an uncomfortable look on his face. “It’s not your responsibility to represent all people on the ace and aro spectrums. You have just as much of a right to explore how you feel as anyone else does. I think you should give yourself time to do that and only tell other people about this when you feel ready.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Right now, I don’t even know what to tell people.” Alfred picked up another piece of sushi and started to eat it.
“You told me today. That’s a good start.”
Alfred waited to swallow his bite, and then he gave Kiku a toothy, grateful smile. Kiku smiled back at him, and they finished their lunch together in a much more relaxed mood. Alfred didn’t have the dark cloud of guilt hanging over his head anymore, even if realizing he might be in love with one of his roommates gave him a lot of new things to worry about.
After they finished their food, they split the bill based on what they had ordered. Kiku had to take the bus back to work, so they would part ways outside the restaurant.
Alfred was a little surprised when Kiku inched closer with a shy look on his face and threw his arms around him. He wasn’t normally big on the whole physical affection thing.
Alfred returned the hug and laughed a little. “What’s all this about?”
“After our conversation today, I thought you might need it. Take care, Alfred.”
“Yeah, you too. Talk to you soon, bro.”
Kiku pulled away, nodded, and turned around to start walking to the bus stop. Alfred headed in the opposite direction, and he reflected on what had just happened.
Hugging Kiku was nice, but it didn’t make him feel tingly and floaty like hugging Savino did. Alfred appreciated the hug as a friendly gesture, especially since Kiku wasn’t the world’s huggiest person, but it had been easy to let go of Kiku when he wanted to leave. His arms didn’t feel empty, the way they did when Vinny stepped out an embrace, muttering under his breath about Alfred’s clinginess with a scarlet blush on his face.
Alfred didn’t feel the same way towards Savino he did to his other friends, but that was okay. Alfred was confused and a little scared by everything he’d realized today, but he wasn’t a terrible person, and he would figure things out eventually. He would be okay too.
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thegeminisage · 3 years
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oh i am about to be so petty just for a second here i’m having a REALLY good day and idw expend negative energy on anything today but i am feeling SO validated no i will not name names don’t r*blog this i’ll block you
a long time ago a certain tumblr user was talking a lot about gay!dean headcanons and everybody was like “that’s biphobic” and like half my social circle at the time blocked them and then i guess either we all forgot or someone in the extended social circle liked gay!dean so we had to pretend we didn’t think it was biphobic like “it’s just a headcanon people can have headcanons” which is true about 99% of things but not gay!dean, and i also unblocked them because people kept sending me their posts and it got awkward to keep going “no i can’t see that sorry” but TODAY i just saw them make fun of [redacted] which is like a huge red flag for aphobia actually! and i accidentally touched something on my phone and LOST IT so i don’t have proof anymore but like i FUCKING KNEW they were a piece of shit. not that anybody cares about aphobia on this website but every biphobe is also an aphobe and that’s why we have ace/bi solidarity i FUCKING KNEW IT god i am SO validated
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popculturebuffet · 3 years
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Darkwing Duck Reviews Halloween Special: Fungus Amongus and Ghoul of My Dream
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Happy Halloween! Halloween Havoc races to the finish with another Darkwing Double Feature! Love is kinda crazy with a spooky girl like Morgana, and in this case “kinda crazy” means a board of ghouls stealing pizza, sentient mushrooms, grumpy spiders, student lone debt, and a gremlin who somehow sees himself as a valid romantic option. It’s a Darkwing Duck Halloween under the cut.+
We’ve made it! While I got less Halloween reviews done than I would’ve liked, I’m still happy with the ones done and there’s still two more to get in the pocket before the day’s up. So with Halloween today it seemed fitting to talk about the Justice Ducks resident sorcerer and Darkwing’s Girlfriend, Morgana Macawber. Morgana was the only one of the four to stick around as a recurring character out of the four Justice Ducks: Gizmoduck would show up once more after the four parter, and sadly Neptunia and Stegamutt just seemed to vanish but the crew clearly liked Morg a lot and her relationship with Darkwing, so she stuck around for the rest of the series, and is even the focus of the final episode “Malice’s Restaurant”, as well as a sizeable part of the comics. And it’s easy to see why as Kathie Sourcie had great chemistry with Jim Cummings and Morgana’s very presence, being a sorceress raised by the munsters and living in a creepy mansion, allowed for diffrent stories than what Darkwing usually dealt with. While magic didn’t feel like it contrasted with the world, as Darkwing’s world feels like your standard superhero fantasy kitchen sink where anything is possible, most of his foes were either super villains or the kinds of super spies you’d find in a comic book. So fighting ghoouls, goblins, and Satan himself, yes that’s an episode that actually happened, no it’s sadly not on Disney plus, and yes I will be covering it eventually, was a nice out of genre experience and a nice way to put our daring duck of mystery out of his element.
She brought something diffrent to the table, both forcing Darkwing to grapple with letting someone into his life, and with having something to focus on other than Gosalyn or crime. So I wanted to see how this plays out, so expect me to cover all her episodes and not just the Satan one or the Valentine’s Day one, though like my Tom Lucitor retrospective, expect this one to also take some time. So with that all set up, Halloween is the perfect time to begin our journey with her first two episodes.. and Morgana’s Villian Career. Yeah while she only had about 9 episodes to her name, 2 of them are as a Catwoman or Black Cat style antagonist, someone whose likeable and who are hero is attracted to, but is on the wrong side of the law.
She eventually came around, but it’s still an intresting way to start things and an intresting dilema for our hero I wish stuck around for just a smidge longer. These aren’t bad episodes with Ghoul of My Dreams being a pretty good one. If I had to guess though the reason the dynamic fizzled out.. is they simply didn’t have a lot of ideas of how to use her as a bad guy. Part of the reason i’m covering these two episodes together is that they follow basically the same plot beat, the only differences being Darkwing meets Morgana in the first one and they know each other in the second, and that the evil entity who ends up turning against her she works with is different for both. The third act is also entirely unique to each episode, so it feels less like them lazily repeating themselves on an episode and more like they genuinely realized they didn’t have a ton of ideas for Morgana as a villain and thus had her reform with the Justice Ducks two parter. And I can’t blame them: fan would get annoyed if basically every Morgana plot played out the same, and this way she could know Drake’s secret identity, and thus allow the stories to use Gosalyn, though I do wish she’d shown up in one of the villian ones just to see how that played out. But still her time as a Villian is there, and is even a plot point in the valentine’s episode, so let’s see how it played out and see what I think.
Fungus Amongus
The plot here is fairly simple: there’s been a rash of mysterious thefts in St. Canard, and Darkwing is stumped.. until Launchpad asks if they can go for pizza, because he’s hungry and Darkwing is the terrible kind of boss that doesn’t’t care about meal breaks. It makes our hungry hero realize that each of the thefts are connected to PIzza Toppings, and after thwarting the bats and spiders stealing some anchovies, figures there’s only two left: Green Peppers and Mushrooms, and so he decides it’s time to split up gang and while Launchpad guards the peppers, Darkwing goes to visit the head of the mushrom company, who naturally turns out to be Morgana. The two end up taken with one another, to the board’s annoyance as Darkwing is onto them and could stop their whole evil plan and they want to just murder his ass and be done with it. But Morgana proves seduction’s a bit more useful as she sweetalks our hero into leaving, and points out given he’s also a creature of the night in a sense, she plans to turn him.. or kill him if she has to. More on that in our next episode. The facade dosen’t last long as Darkwing goes to help launchpad at the pepper place, and ends up finding out oh no the hot lady he met five minutes ago is bad! While the board plans to feed Launchpad to mutant mushrooms, while Morgana seemingly turns Darkwing into her mindless slave.. but really just played the board and switched sides, not wanting to hurt the guy she just met because he’s cute, they defeat the mushrooms and the board who turn into mushrooms in the light because....
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The day is saved though we do get the one standout bit of the episode. Darkwing despite his attraction to her, wants to turn her in, while Morgana simply teleports her house away. And thus the dance begins. As for the episode... as you can tell by how brief I was... for one i’m not doing my usual died in wool recapping for these two to get them out on time. And i’m also not because this one.. is pretty thin. The mutant mushroom and boards’d esigns are cool and Morgana is intresting.. but having seen Ghoul of my Dreams first.. it’s just not as fun, funny or good on the Morgana Darkwing dynamic. Morgana just decides because she wants to ride that dick she’ll be good for a moment, and throw away her hard worked scheme, and the board is turned into mushrooms because.. well see the lex luger pic above. It’s not a TERRIBLE episode, just not a terribly intresting one. It has good elements, but they just don’t come together well and the pizza scheme isn’t as funny as the episode thinks it is. I can kinda see why this one was buried deeper into the series and Ghoul of My Dreams is where they put focus. I just don’t have a lot to say about this one, it’s just bland and uninteresting. It’s kind of why I just sorta plopped it next to Ghoul, I needed to review it for completion’s sake, but lord if I can think of a lot to say about it that isn’t tied into the next one. So since I can’t...
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Ghoul of my Dreams:
Now this is better. The basic plot is still simple but allows for a lot more intresting set pieces: It’s a slow night in St. Canard, to Darkwing’s natural annoyance, until a bunch of fire fighters start sleepwalking and throwing gold to some spiders and bats. Something is afoot and since the bats belong to Morgana, Darkwing goes to investigate her. Granted we just MET eek and squeak, but it’s easy enough to assume Morgana struck again off screen and some time has passed. And i’ts honestly what makes this episode more interesting: now it’s more of a cat and mouse game, with Morgana using their chemistry against him, but still being genuinely drawn to him and not wanting to hurt him. It’s better than “I met you five minutes ago might as well throw away my money for you”.  Instead Morg truly likes Drake, but wants to keep doing crimes to, in easily the best joke of the entire series “Finally pay off my student loans”.. which makes her already not really a bad guy. I may not haves em but I know people who do. Those loan people do not play around. It’s investing and Sourcie and Cumming’s chemstiry really makes it pop. Sourcie really is what makes the character, giving her energy, sedcutivness when called for and a really sympathetic quality that makes her face turn, sudden as it is, believable. It’s why I really like the character. And I get why some don’t: Her romance with darkwing is sudden,  her face turn is even more sudden, and she gets in the way of Drakepad shippers. The first two are valid criticisms, while the last one is understandable.. depending on motive. If your just bummed this relationship you don’t like is forced into the show and gets in the way of the one you actually enjoy.. trust me...
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BEEN THERE. And far far worse.. I didn’t start up an entire retrospective on the guy who DIDN’T get the girl here for nothing. But if you say “oh well it’s homophobic or you hate gays” if you don’t ship drakepad, which I have actually heard for both this ship and delpad.. kindly go fuck yourself and stay away from my posts. It’s NOT homophobic to ship a character who is CANOCIALLY into women, with a woman. Launchpad had a girl of the week or two in ducktales, Drake’s attraction to morgana is canon and he also had some ship tease with Neptunia. They both like women.. but there’s nothing saying they DON’T like men, don’t want to date men, or aren’t attracted to them.
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Been waiting to reference Schitt’s Creek at some point here now i’ve started watching it. It’s biphobic to say this sort of harmful shit, and it doesn’t’t help there are plenty of gay people who genuinely believe bi and pan aren’t sexualities and harm their own community by doing so. Saying this kind of shit just fuels their fire and bi people like me and pan people like my firend have a hard enough time with straight people being dicks about this. You should know and be better. Don’t bring that shit into this fandom. We’ve already ridden incest out on a rail we don’t need this. I already put up with enough bullshit being a loud house fan and having to deal with ACTUAL homophobic ships like Sam/Lincoln, aka setting up a character you don’t know to be anything but gay, versus her girlfriend whose canocially been shown to be bi if preferring women, whose the proment and well like love interest of a woman, and pair her with her younger brother to clearly troll people. Now that’s a homophobic ship and that you shoudl be angry about, not “oh no the person who likes women in canon.. LIKES A WOMAN IN FANON”. It’s part of what made shiping delpad hard at times because people got really dumb about it to the point someone drew some very horrible fanart just to clog up the tag. Knock. it off.
And if your curious for my actual thoughts on Drakepad: in the classic series.. i’m not a fan, but I get it, and I do think they could work... it’s just. that Drake treats Launchpad really bad, including throwing him out of the house for a year without telling him why over something that really wasn’t his fault, not feeding him, not treating him as an equal after a while. This would have to change for them to work but I could see it happening, as the comics and one of the peisodes make a point that Drake can be a pretty shitty partner to Morgana too.
And just to show i’m equal opprtunity, despite shipping Delpad in the past, i’ve moved on to Penpad and Drakepad , ironcially enough, i’m not as big a fan anymore. LIke the above, Della just dosen’t respect launchpad as a human being. She was willing to keep the Halloween thing up JUST to scare children, looks down on him, and whie is his friend, is not all that close. I could see them happening, and do still think it’d be cute, it’d just take a ton of work and there are better ships for both. And yes I do ship Drakepad in the reboot, but there the two aren’t employer and employee, but equals who genuinely love and respect one another, listen to one another, and value each other. In the Reboot they have genuine chemistry and I could see them together, while in the original Launchpad and Morgana both really deserve better.
Now that’s settled, we get a fun scene of the two primping for each other. then flirting a bit, though Morgana, in AWFUL looking black lipstick wins with the move above and has her spider web launchpad, who hates morgana.. which is one part common sense given how darkwing gets around her and one part ho yay. But yeah this is pretty much Launchpad for both these episodes.
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And darkwing dick is calling the shots so fair enough. But Morgana is once again nto wokring alone and is working with a creepy, well designed gremlin, named Nodoff... eh i’ve heard worse, whose giving her sleeping dust to knock out her targets and hits on her constnatly. Naturally he plans to betray her as soon as he can, and is likely only tolerating her because he wants to hit that.  There dynamic boils down to this.
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There’s also tons of fun dream sequences including one at the top with darkwing being confronted by his enitre Rogue’s gallery before seeing morgana, NOdoff using baseball on Morg’s next target and some great ones at the climax. It’s part of hwy I like this episode better: While someone using dreams for stuff has been done a lot, it’s given a creative spin here as instead of killing them, Morgana’s simply using them to steal. Good stuff.
Darkwing foils their first attempt, though gets blamed for it because St. Canard is about as grateful as New York when it comes to superheroes. Morgana knocks darkwing out with some dust via Eeka and Squeak and admits Nodoff is working for her, though fobids him to harm Darkwing. This.. dosen’t last and we get another great setpiece, of sarkwing on a high dive. Thankfully, Launchpad finds him, and they find Morgana, who gives off the student loans comment. But in the struggle to stop her, Darkwing accidently puts her and the city to sleep.. and Nodoff is now super powerful and imprisons morgana. Darkwing i s back at her house, wondering what to do, but the bats give him a clue.. by flying him thorugh the door to fight Nodoff. It goes about as well as you’d expect with him freeing Morgana.. then trying to murder them both. Darkwing however pulls an Elm Streett 3 and says to think happy thoughts and take control of the dream.. which ends up at Darkwing’s Wedding to Morgana to his horror..... remind me whose the hero again. The woman who, while doing crimes is trying to pay off unfair debts, or the guy who finds the idea of commitment horrifying.  
Anyways we get some more great bits, I brush over them so I don’t ahve to talk about them conantly, including darkwing getting a cake on him, before Darkwing turns the tables by finding the hourglass full of the dust.. and in a clever finale, loading it into his gun and firing it on nodoff. This puts him to sleep.. which puts him in the real world, while Launchpad uses a giant alarm clock to wake everyone. They throw NOdoff back into the dream world.. for some reason.. and the episode ends iwth morgana kissing darkwing and the episode possibly having been all a dream.
This one, while I was again breif, is a classic, with a much more interesting dynamic. Instead of a morgana who goes from willing to kill we get one whose conflicted over things, who clearly wants to be a crook but may like darkwing more than that, as evidenced when he talks her out of taking Nodoff’s offer of riches. It’s good stuff and the gags are back to the show’s usual top notch level. It’s a creative, fun episode that really helps Morgana come into her own and I look forward to more of her. Overall i’d recommend skipping fungus amongus, but DEFINTELY check out ghoul of my dreams, as it’s throughly fantastic. I’ll be back in a bit for one last Halloween review and as always you can find my backlog on my blog. i recently covered Tiff of the Titans and there’s regular ducktales coverage every monday. Until then make sure to vote, wear a mask and check your house for gary busey till we meet again! Play us out Gerard Way!
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natsunoomoi · 3 years
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Holy crap. So like with the previous post I was thinking about Fushigi Yuugi again and kind of checking up on what was up with Byakko Senki cuz I haven’t checked on it in awhile and it looks like it’s on hiatus right now and she’s working more on Arata Kangatari, which is cool cuz I thought she finished that, but I guess not and she just took a break to like finish Genbu and do Byakko or something.
But also I was scrolling through her Twitter to find that she is really into this Chinese movie “Legend of Luo Xiaohei” and so I was checking that out cuz so ironic that Japanese mangaka that got her big break writing manga about an ancient China setting is interested in a Chinese movie. So just looking through her Twitter thread and apparently she found out about Luo Xiaohei from watching a CM while watching Modao Zushi. LMAO It’s amazing, but this situation just feels like an ouroboros eating itself because I have a high suspicion that her work on Fushigi Yuugi imported into China back in the 90s was probably a huge influence on Chinese creators and artists to write their own stories about their culture and helped to popularize the xianxia and wuxia novel movements in more modern times. On top of that MXTX said she was inspired by a D. Gray-man fanfic and while she mentioned that title specifically, I think in the periphery Fushigi Yuugi itself and more recently Arata were probably an influence too. Growing up a number of my Chinese friends also said they got into anime overall because of Fushigi Yuugi because it was an anime and work from Japan about their culture and arguably done pretty damn well. 
In terms of the danmei movement as well, I’m pretty sure Fushigi Yuugi was included in what started the movement as the movement was influenced by Japanese BL that came in via Taiwan, and the beginning of Fushigi Yuugi had the whole thing between Nuriko and Hotohori even though that kind of went nowhere, Nuriko dies to everyone’s depression (I have several friends who refuse to watch the rest of the series after Nuriko dies because it’s not the same), and that whole ship goes off a weird deep end with Hotohori marrying a woman that looks like Nuriko. Also, the exact reasons for Nuriko being in the harem and all that. There was a whole lot of shipping in the 90s from Fushigi Yuugi and it was one of the first series that had a male cast that was almost entirely ikemen and I think the actual first reverse harem. A number of shows probably simultaneously popularized the female gaze in mainstream anime, but Fushigi Yuugi was definitely one of them. Like literally one or two years before there was a lot of manly men and guy’s guys kind of anime characters, but beautiful ikemen, no, not really. In 2021, there are some things about the series that are a bit problematic, but it’s influence on the world is pretty significant. It was one of the first shows I’d seen that had any kind of reference to homosexuality or transgender in it and although it’s not necessarily portrayed well, the fact that it was there and that Nuriko was such a beloved character it started a conversation and helped us to get to a time where the topics she represents can be more discussed. I’m actually not even sure what pronouns would be appropriate for Nuriko because of her reasons for what she did and in Japanese the pronoun problem is actually really easy to get around because you just don’t have a subject or speaking in 3rd person is totally normal. But still, without her the minds of thousands or even millions of fans around the world would not have been opened as early to LGBT topics. Her existence, even problematic as it might be, allowed people to consider and love a character of a different sexual orientation or gender identity than their own and just open their minds to just not being a homophobic, biphobic (cuz relationship with Miaka?), or transphobic piece of shit.
Then also Genbu Kaiden and Uruki’s powers. Yeah.... I mean, also kind of with the earlier discussion, the idea of dual cultivation I don’t recall even being brought up much before in most media, but such ideas were also banned and repressed in China at a certain point. Documentation shows it was more of an ancient practice that suddenly became known about again. The book I was talking about that has it more explicitly written is banned in China has its only original surviving copy in the Japanese National Library as it was one of the books brought to Japan by scholars escaping persecution in China and bringing with them books to escape one of the many episodes of mass book burning. According to my Chinese lit professor who had us read an English translation of that book as a part of our curriculum anyway. Supposedly the translator of said book had to go to Japan to read the original in order to write the translation. There’s apparently a number of ancient Chinese texts like that because book burnings were a thing at different points in Chinese history, so if you are a scholar of Chinese lit if you want a complete picture of your field for some texts you do actually have to come to Japan to do your research. But yeah, that power mentioned in that very book Watase-sensei gave to Soi, and also the story of Fushigi Yuugi takes place in that very library that contains that ancient copy of a banned and would have been lost to the world book. If you’re asking why a “dirty” book would be something a scholar would grab to save, ancient lit scholars do regard it as a rather well-written piece of literature even though the content of it is basically taboo.
But also the Fushigi Yuugi Suzaku Ibun game is a hot mess when it comes to this same issue because if you romance Nuriko you can save her from death and my friend Hikari said she wasn’t sure if she was happy about fucking with the universe like that. (I’m not either.) Nuriko’s death was such a huge impact on the story and everything. Also, notably, most of the Suzaku Shichiseishi died, but Nuriko had the LONGEST tribute. Like Chiriko and Mitsukake’s was like a tag on of a few minutes. Hotohori’s was too even, but it was addressed more in the later manga chapters the publisher pressured her to write and in the OVA series afterward.
Also, like Fushigi Yuugi other than the Neverending Story was one of the original sucked into a book holy shit how do I survive stories. Idk if SVSSS is influenced by it in that way, but it’s fair to draw the parallels because of the similar theme. It’s just canonically Taiitsu Shinjin is not behind the the system in the book and in a number of ways Shen Yuan is more competent than Miaka. Miaka gets a lot of shit though and when I re-watched FY a second time I actually found the gripes people generally have about it make up only a small part of the series. People just talk it up so much that it seems like a huge thing when it’s not. Plus the technical canon is only the original TV series because that’s where Watase wanted to end the story and that is an emotional rollercoaster that makes you cry so good. But like there’s some other kinds of parallels as well like how toward the end and like the last two episodes you hate Nakago up until the exact moment you find out why he’s an absolute asshole, and characters straight up criticizing him about how he’s an asshole the whole damn series just gives the same kind of feels that SY gave criticizing the original throughout SVSSS. Can’t say for sure, but Fushigi Yuugi has a lot of clout in a general sense.
But yeah, Watase-sensei said that she was really surprised by the animation quality of Chinese animation these days and she thought Japanese anime was going down in comparison. Same, yo. Same. But still, her work was probably a huge contributor to the movement that allowed MDZS to exist because her art is damn beautiful, Chinese influenced, and she had one of the first works in Asia to like bring the subject of LGBT issues into the mainstream after years of oppression from mostly Western influence because in pre-modern Asia no one gave a shit before and there’s a significant amount of classical novels that address some form of LGBT issues at least in Japanese lit and like even academic documentation that notes Confucius saying that doing it with a guy was better than with a woman. And the author of the work that probably was very influential to BL back in the 90s watches MDZS. She noted that there wasn’t any in the actual anime, which is true, but I think she helped that series to exist and she watches the anime so it’s kind of exciting.
I hope it influences her to go finish Byakko, but OMG I want her to finish Arata too because I like Arata. I should try to find time to read more of it because the anime is too short and the wiki descriptions of what’s happening are so damn confusing and incomplete.
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cavehags · 4 years
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1) do you think liam is supposed to be as unlikable as he is in s1? they definitely try to push for sympathy in later seasons but i couldn't really figure out if he's insufferable to be ~relatable~ or if he's just designed to make me hate him. 2) rate lauren's love interests from terrible to even more terrible. 3) which plotline(s) would you most like to scrap if given a chance to rework the show?
All great questions! Thanks!
1) This question has mystified me since the show first aired. Despite Liam’s completely unsympathetic behavior, we get numerous key shots from his POV early in season 1. For instance, when he is trying to have sex with Karma in the car during Homecoming in 1x01, and Karma decides she’s no longer into it and leaves, we cut to Liam checking his breath. This is meant to humanize him. It’s odd, because moments ago he said he’s wanted to have sex with a lesbian for as long as he can remember--a transparently rape-culture-y statement that is never fully interrogated. It’s supposed to be a somewhat relatable joke when we see that Liam thought his breath was to blame and not the creepiness of the sentiment he just expressed. The best I can say is that this was the gay male writers’ best attempt to craft a believable teenage boy, and they simply could not conceive of one who was not creepily misogynistic from the start. Though Liam’s worldview should horrify any women watching, I guess we’re supposed to believe that the writers did not understand just how damaging his behavior really is, and downplayed it accordingly. 
Interestingly, Liam is told off for his actions a few times throughout the show, but never for his fetishization of Karma. For instance, in 2x02, Liam throws a bit of a temper tantrum when he learns that Shane knew Amy and Karma were faking and never spoke up. Shane scolds Liam for this overreaction and points out that he’s being myopic and can’t really understand what it’s like for a gay kid who’s just coming out. This is fair game: like every other character on the show, Liam should be learning from his mistakes. So if the writers really wanted to create a sympathetic character arc for a young man like this, they really needed to have someone--probably Lauren, as a girl removed from the situation--explain to him how violent and degrading it is that he’s so hung up on the fantasy of “converting” a woman to desiring him. But they never do, so I guess they just never meant for him to be that bad.  
2) God, this is so hard because Liam’s love interests are all so bad. Tommy is an idiot and ignorant about intersex people, but at least he’s Erick Lopez and he’s cute. Liam is a piece of shit, but at least while dating Lauren he’s subjected to the kind of bullying he fully deserves. Theo/Anthony is a cop, and specifically a narc, and worst of all he’s a 20-year-old dating a high school sophomore. So I’m gonna have to go (best to worst) Tommy-->Liam-->Theo/Anthony. Wish I could include Amy in this love interest ranking but the show wasn’t galaxy brain enough :( 
3) Oh this is really fun and I wrote a horrifying amount omfg.
First things first, we have to go through the show with a fine-toothed comb and clean up the nastiness toward bi people. Shane makes a lot of biphobic comments that we can just throw away. And Karma’s mom, who currently we learn is bisexual at the end of season two, instead can describe herself as bisexual in season one in a cringey moment when she’s trying to bond with Karma. In a touch of realism, everyone assumes Amy and Karma are “queer” rather than “lesbians” (gotta update this with the times) which explains no one sees any issue with Karma, a queer girl, having a thing for Liam, a guy. I don’t see a way to rehabilitate Liam this way, though, so Liam still fetishizes Karma as a “lesbian,” even though she never uses that word and intentionally keeps it vague.
The character of Reagan is thrown out. Instead, Amy’s first girlfriend is more like that girl Jasmine, whom she met on the dating app Syzzr in season one. Jasmine is a girl from another high school in Austin who also just got over a crush on a best friend. She’s charismatic and mature and does a lot of the initiating in the relationship with Amy, prodding her to assert herself with her mom and embrace feminism more in “Zen and the Art of Pageantry” (we’ll keep that storyline mostly unchanged). Notably absent from her arc is a nastiness toward bi girls. Instead, she’s generous and goal-oriented. She helps Amy establish an identity outside of Karma, but bristles at times when Amy regresses. However, it’s crucial that she’s not jealous of Amy’s bond with Karma; she just wants Amy to be older and wiser than she really is. This highlights the flaw in their relationship: that Amy is still struggling with her self-identity (not her sexual identity!!) and feels like she is always letting her girlfriend down. Amy is the one who decides to break up and she does it because she doesn’t want to feel like a disappointment. They stay in touch, though, and Jasmine/Reagan remains a mentor for Amy throughout the show. 
For instance, when Amy finds herself unattracted to Felix (more on him later), Amy goes to Jasmine/Reagan about it, as well as Shane. She can’t figure out why she sometimes feels drawn toward guys even though she knows she doesn’t really like them. Shane thinks Amy is probably bi or pan. Jasmine/Reagan introduces some split attraction model that gives Amy an instant headache. Amy doesn’t think either of those are right. It’s actually a conversation with Lauren and Farrah that helps clarify things for her. Through chatting with her mom and Lauren, Amy is reminded that girls are pretty much trained from birth that their job is to impress and appeal to boys. She realizes there’s a good chance she’s been acting on inertia (this is the way the show simplifies comp het). She settles it once and for all when she goes out and meets a group of other lesbians -- maybe a support group or like an organized social club meetup kind of thing. In the company of these cool and inspiring other women, she realizes that she feels really comfortable with the label “lesbian” after all. Maybe MTV even lets her say the word dyke :) 
The episode where the kids have to label themselves, however, is thrown firmly in the trash. 
Also in the trash: Amy and Liam sleeping together. Garbage. I think they get angry-drunk together instead and talk about Karma and maybe the tension for season 2a is that they did something more external to hurt her that night, like out her as straight to her parents. 
Theo/Anthony is not a cop and there is no mystery surrounding his character. Instead, he’s like a pick-up artist type and plays intentional mind games like negging that Lauren sees through after a while. She dumps him and Shane and Amy help her get revenge on him. At that point, he is fully gone and does not come back. 
Duke is also a respectable age. Not much else to do there. 
And then the Karmy of it all! We need to see more signs from Karma’s perspective starting in season 2b (after the arrest) that Karma has a real crush on Amy that she’s ignoring. The character of Felix helps with this. He and Amy still go to prom together but Amy concludes that it doesn’t feel right and nothing more happens between them. However, on prom night, Karma finds herself feeling more than just empathy for Felix’s situation - she feels jealous of someone on that date. With Amy’s reluctant blessing, Karma asks Felix out and they start to date, but she finds herself annoyed by his quirks and has no interest in having sex with him. Felix winds up asking Amy what the deal is with Karma and sex. In the meantime, Karma catches herself having the occasional dream about Amy. Amy, who is with Sabrina at this point (I haven’t decided yet if I want to rewrite the Sabrina stuff since I haven’t rewatched s3 yet so let’s go with no for now), is mostly happy to see Karma and Felix together... but when she hears that Karma isn’t sleeping with him, she can’t help but feel hope that whatever motivated Karma to kiss her in the pool that night in 2b might be the reason she doesn’t want to commit to Felix. Karma doesn’t want to admit her confusion to Amy or Shane so has no one to talk to about her feelings except Liam, and miracle of miracles, he is the one who actually nudges her to consider that maybe she’s had a thing for Amy for a while now. She denies that that could be possible, but she’s just not happy with Felix, and at the end of season 3, she tearfully breaks up with him. When Amy comes over to comfort her, we see Amy through Karma’s eyes in a new way. Karma finally has her moment of clarity. End s3. 
In season 4, Karma sort of awkwardly tries to court Amy without being obvious about what she’s doing, which has the odd impact of making Amy feel hurt -- is Karma trying to bait her into having feelings again? This results in a fight, and during the fight Karma admits the truth -- that she’s having feelings for Amy and didn’t know how to express them without potentially hurting Amy because of their past. Amy is taken aback, and she’s still with Sabrina, so she does the old “I have to go” routine. But then she talks to either Lauren or Shane or both about what just happened and they prompt her to do a romantic about-face. She races back to Karma and they have a really cinematic first real kiss. The rest of the season that follows is the two of them as girlfriends, trying to navigate being their real selves and also their romantic selves at the same time. They do a lot of cliche romantic things and annoy the crap out of all their friends. They’re also really really happy. In the series finale, Amy and Karma and Lauren and Shane and Shane’s boyfriend all go to Pride or Queer Liberation March or whatever they call it in Austin. Also Liam leaves town for military school :)
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zayadriancas · 5 years
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This is random and I don’t know if it will make sense but if you had to rank the next class plots in order from favorite to least favorite per episode (like each next class episode and then say for each episode out of the 3 plots like which plot you like the most then the one you like the second most then the one you like the least) Just curious how you would rank each plot per episode sorry if this doesn’t make sense
Don’t worry it makes sense! :)
BootyCall: (I didn’t really care for any of the plots in this episode tbh but)
1: Shay’s plot (it set up Shiny and no characters in this plot were either acting out of character or straight up petty/mean, plus it was Shays first actual plot and it could have been better but it wasn’t terrible)
2: Maya’s plot (I love Maya finally focusing on her dream of music again, but I hated the way they wrote Zig in this plot to suddenly be this clingy, sex obsessed, & apparently not talented enough to play guitar instead of supportive & just made him look bad for the sake of trying to shoehorn Jonah into the plot and basically set up Zig to be the bad guy for the rest of the season & even worse never truly delve into why he’s being so clingy, insecure, etc)
3: Tristan’s plot (I hated Tristan’s biphobic comments but at the same time I hate how Miles was made to look completely innocent, it was made to seem like he hadn’t treated Tristan like shit in their first relationship and led him to believe he was using him, which is why Tristan was so upset in this episode when he saw Miles flirting with that girl a day after they made out/hooked up. That doesn’t excuse his terrible comments at the debate but still. Miles wasn’t a saint and Tristan had a right to be mad, he just didn’t handle it properly. Basically Tristan wasn’t the only wrong one in this plot but they tried to make it seem like he was)
NoFilter:
1: Grace/Zoe’s plot: (my only complaint is that it wasn’t from Grace’s POV since not only are we just finding out she has a serious illness but before this she still hadn’t had a plot yet, but other than that the majority of this plot was great)
2: Miles’s plot
3: Frankie’s plot (I did like it, but I hate how after this episode they made her depression about boy drama instead of actually delving deeper into her mental health like they did with both of her siblings)
YesMeansYes:
1: Zig’s plot
2: Miles’s plot
3: Hunter’s plot
NotOkay:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Tristan’s plot (I didn’t like him and Vijay together at all but it was nice to see him realize he couldn’t lead Vijay on when he still had feelings for someone else because he knew how that felt, and honestly the plot itself was just amusing tbh)
3: Shay’s plot (mainly because it’s obvious they only had Shay turn Tiny down because they wanted to do the Shay/Tiny/Lola triangle, even though they tried to make it seem like it was about her parents not allowing her to date. But they said they’d reconsider if they met Tiny, and obviously when Shiny does end up dating they love Tiny even though we don’t see their official meeting on screen so, it was obviously just an excuse to make Tola happen)
ButThatsNoneOfMyBusiness:
1: Lola’s plot
2: Maya’s plot
3: Miles’s plot (I did like it a lot though this episode had 3 great plots)
NotAllMen:
1: Zoe’s plot (I didn’t care that much for it because it was kind of random/felt unrealistic with the whole David thing and then there’s no follow up of trying to find her actual real dad but it was better than the other two plots)
2: I guess Frankie’s plot even though this was the start of making her depression becoming about boy drama and I hate the way Jonah treated her in this episode, it at least featured a likable character (Frankie I mean) who did nothing wrong and the whole boy drama was the writers fault and not hers and it’s not her fault Jonah decided to be an ass for no real reason when he barely knew her and made her feel guilty when she did want to be there helping, but couldn’t find a way to get a hold of him to tell him she’d be late/not coming whatever)
3: Hunter’s plot
ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin:
1: Miles’s plot
2: Maya’s plot
3: Zig/Zoe’s plot
TeamFollowBack:
1: Maya’s plot (it was heartbreaking but the most intense/captivating of the 3)
2: Frankie’s plot (even though yes it was about boy drama which I didn’t like, it was tolerable and the only thing that made no sense was the Fronah kiss at the end, and I just honestly am mostly putting it 2nd because I didn’t like Tristan’s plot)
3: Tristan’s plot (everything about it was written so poorly and Tristan suddenly hooking up with tons of guys came out of nowhere, not saying that’s a bad thing but this was just a poorly written way IMO for Tristan to blame Miles for giving him chlamydia when he didn’t even know for sure if he had it cuz he hadn’t been to a real doctor and to our knowledge they only kissed at the pool party (they may have done more but it really didn’t seem like it, I feel like Tristan just blamed Miles cuz he thought that Miles was promiscuous so it “had to have been him” even though Tristan himself had hooked up with like 5 guys in that semester and if Tristan did have chlamydia why didn’t he think it could have been one of the other guys? Anyway this whole plot was just a mess).
SinceWeBeinHonest:
1: Miles’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Zig’s plot
SorryNotSorry: (another episode I didn’t care for tbh)
1: I guess Frankie’s plot. I know I keep saying I hate her boy drama plots but really this is the only plot that didn’t piss me off in some way
2: Maya’s plot (I hated it because of how they had Zig lie to Maya and try to downplay what happened but at least Maya herself did nothing wrong)
3: Hunters plot (it was intense and Spencer’s acting was great, but Hunter is a piece of shit so I couldn’t feel sorry for him one bit and honestly it’s a bit scary to watch in a way that wasn’t something I could enjoy if that makes sense, like not scary in a captivating way but scary in a I honestly have a hard time watching this kind of way.)
SquadGoals:
1: Miles’s plot
2: Maya’s plot
3: Frankie’s plot
TurntUp:
1: Hunter’s plot (this is the one plot of his I actually liked and it had potential after this and they wasted it)
2: Shay’s plot
3: Zig’s plot (I love him but god he was embarrassingly awful throughout half this episode, I know he meant well but still. He fucked up).
CheckYourPrivilege:
1: Yael’s plot
2: Tristan’s plot
3: Frankie’s plot (again like Zig, meant well but embarrassingly fucked up)
BuyMePizza:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Lola’s plot
3: Grace’s plot
ThrowbackThursday: (aside from seeing the alumni I really didn’t like this episode tbh)
1: I guess Lola’s plot but it really should have been from Tiny’s POV, or even Shay’s. Yes Lola was trying to stand up for Tiny which was great but like this should have been about Frankie getting in no trouble for the banner as opposed to maybe like Kara/Northern Tech getting in trouble for their prank or something to show how racism affects things. Or like, have Tiny have gotten in the fight with a white guy from their school and have the white guy get less punishment than Tiny) I appreciated their efforts to bring attention to the BLM movement but it was written poorly and not from the POV of an actual black person which made it worse.
2: Tristan’s plot (I guess. Like I said I really didn’t care for any of the plots in this episode).
3: Frankie’s plot
ToMyFutureSelf: (another episode I didn’t care much for)
1: Shay’s plot
2: Zoe’s plot
3: Maya’s plot (not cuz of her but Zig and Grace acting the way they did. The only highlight was Sav and Spinner).
ThatAwkwardMomentWhen:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Shay/Tiny’s plot (I loved the Shiny moments but like I feel like this plot existed just to break up Tola and create more drama in the Shiny/Tola triangle. Tiny literally having his appendix removed is never mentioned again and was only like half from his POV but barely. He literally never had a plot from his own POV and the one time he kind of does his literal health condition is treated as secondary compared to relationship drama.)
RiseAndGrind:
1: Zig’s plot
2: Miles’s plot
3: Maya’s plot
TheseAreMyConfessions:
1: Shay’s plot
2: Yael’s plot
3: Grace’s plot (what could have been a good plot about her CF was turned into her having a forced crush on Zig, yelling at Maya for no good reason, and yeah it was just awful)
OMFG:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Hunter’s plot (I didn’t so much like it but I’ll explain my reasoning in a second)
3: Shay’s plot (I love her and I can understand why she felt like she had to give up everything and was upset and she did have a right to be, but I don’t like her passive aggressive behavior in this episode and low key guilting Lola into giving her her blessing to date Tiny after Lola said no. When Lola asked permission it was different because Shay and Tiny hadn’t even dated yet, but Lola and Tiny just broke up and Lola had to deal with finding out the guy she loved had stronger feelings for her best friend. And this is after she’d recently opened up to him about her abandoning issues. I know you can’t help who you fall for but let’s face it, Lola was Tiny’s second choice from the beginning, I do believe he genuinely liked and cared for her but not as much as Shay. So anyway Lola wasn’t even mean when she denied Shay from dating Tiny and she had every right to not be comfortable with them dating, at least not right away. But after Shay started acting out and admitted it was partially because having to give up Tiny, Lola felt bad enough to give Shay her blessing and I just feel like that was low key guilt trippy and just wrong).
BreakTheInternet:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Lola’s plot (even though she was acting petty part of me didn’t blame her(read commentary on my thing for Shays plot in OMFG) like it wasn’t the right way to handle it and I love Shay and Shiny but still. Plus I really loved and related to her quote about not being able to talk about her pain because it makes people uncomfortable
3: Miles’s plot
IWokeUpLikeThis:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Yael’s plot
3: Zig’s plot (just because the Zig/Esme stuff aside from their scene at the end made me cringe)
WorstGiftEver:
1: Shay’s plot
2: Goldi’s plot
3: Miles’s plot
PicsOrItDidn’tHappen:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Rasha’s plot (I liked it but Miles bugged me so much in this plot and it didn’t get as much screen time as the others)
HugeIfTrue:
1: Lola’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Hunter’s plot
ThatFeelingWhen:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Miles’s plot
Unsubscribe:
1: Grace’s plot
2: Zoe/Rasha’s plot
3: Hunter’s plot
IRegretNothing:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Lola’s plot (I loved it almost equally to Maya’s but I can relate to Maya’s more so)
3: Miles’s plot
Woke:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Zoe’s plot (again I love it pretty much equally to Maya’s but Maya’s was more relatable to me)
3: Frankie’s plot
ImSleep:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Zoe/Goldi/Rasha’s plot (I really couldn’t tell whose POV it was supposed to be from lol)
3: Miles’s plot
BackToReality:
1: Yael’s plot
2: Grace’s plot
3: Esme’s plot
GetMoney:
1: Saad’s plot
2: Frankie’s plot
3: Shay’s plot
ILookLikeA:
1: Goldi’s plot
2: Miles’s plot
3: Hunter’s plot
RollUpToTheClubLike:
1: Grace’s plot
2: Goldi’s plot
3: Maya’s plot (I liked it but the involvement of gamer club, who literally harassed and sent death threats to her, bugged me so much)
Preach:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Saad’s plot
3: Frankie’s plot
FactsOnly:
1: Yael’s plot
2: Maya’s plot (I loved it equally to Yael’s tbh it was hard to choose)
3: Zig’s plot (it could have been great if not for making it about a threesome instead of him actually focusing on not only his insecurities about not being good enough to get into school but planning his future or at least getting a general sense of what he wanted to do)
Fire:
1: Maya’s plot
2: Shay’s plot
3: Esmes plot (I could relate to it and I didn’t hate the plot itself but I just did not like her actions)
GetYouAManWhoCanDoBoth:
1: Lola’s plot
2: Shay’s plot
3: Tristan’s plot (the fact that it was mainly made about his relationship with Miles bothered me so much)
Obsessed:
1: Zig’s plot
2: Miles’s plot
3: Hunter’s plot
KThxBye:
1: Zoe’s plot
2: Maya’s plot
3: Esmes plot (I liked all 3 plots equally in this episode tbh but again with Esme, I could relate to her and my heart broke for her but still her actions weren’t okay)
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kornrosen · 5 years
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Hey there I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but about a week ago I was listening to this livestream on Instagram, where they were talking about sexualities etc. And they stated that being bi was as a stepping stone to being either gay or straight. I was a bit disheartened to heat this, but they were like even though sexuality is fluid, bisexuality is a fairly new label and before (in the 70s and 80s) people would often say they were bi in order to hide the fact that they were gay 1/?
BecUse it meant they could hang onto one gender etc. but what i disagreed with was how she was like she worked somewhere, where there were a lot of older lgbt people, and no one identified as bi, her reasoning was that it’s more used as. Stepping stone rather than an actual thing. I don’t really know much about bi history, but it worries me that people are like that, I think it’s quite different from pansexuality and all these other labels because idk it just feels authentic? The world isn’t 1/?          
I’m putting this under a cut, because it got really long and personal oops 
Black and white, and sure people may think they’re bi first than they realise they’re actually gay/straight but there are still people who will probably be like that forever (bi) -essentially they were saying how it’s kind of a trend now to label yourself all these labels eg pan etc - this person was gay, and has worked with lgbt community but as above doesn’t agree on the label of bi. Im not sure what I want to say but I just wanted to share, because even though I don’t identify as bi 3/?  
I’ve been attracted to both genders. I struggle with that, and I’ve become more confident, but knowing that people say those sorts of stuff kind of makes me doubt myself. I’m kind of sick of all these labels and stuff as well at the same time? I’m a bit confused, when did the word bisexuality come about to describe people? Or when was the first person to say themselves they were bi? Also what is straight passing? Does that mean you ‘look’ straight even though you might be bi/gay? 4/4         
Okay, so I am suuuper sorry to hear that you had to listen to such dumb shit anon, because Bisexuality is a Thing and has always been a thing. I’m not a historian for these kind of things, but there’s a lot of misinformation by those people to unpack here.
So yes the word bisexual for being attracted to two or more genders only came up during the 20th century and before was used for plants that had both sexual markings and stuff (it still is). I can’t pinpoint the point, where it was first used, but I think 70s isn’t a bad guess. But because the word wasn’t used in that way before doesn’t mean bisexuality doesn’t exist.
There’s studies and think pieces and people trying to prove or disprove our attraction and you should never listen to those, because when non-bi people say stuff like “they don’t believe in it” that’s the same thing as when homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, it’s prejudice against something you don’t understand, because you don’t experience it and there’s no way to really measure it, so you say it doesn’t exist. It’s dumb, it’s biphobic and I just don’t listen to those people.
I’ve seen even progressive gay people (one time on buzzfeed which was weird) say similar things, like they think you will “choose a side”, like I said it comes down to the fact that they do not see the world through the eyes of someone who genuinely is attracted to both genders. I’ve questioned myself a lot and I struggled a lot with my bisexuality too, but in the end I feel what I feel and that is not debatable. Once you’ve been genuinely in love with men and women, to me there’s no discussion, not even internally. I know how it feels to love someone and I’ve felt it for men and women and if people don’t want to believe, fine, they’re assholes.
Maybe when I’m really settled down with someone, my bisexuality won’t really be a topic anymore and I’ll basically live as a lesbian or a hetero and I won’t need the label bisexual more than every few years, but that doesn’t change what I’ve once felt. The term phase is also thrown around a lot when talking about bisexuality. People who barely knew me said it was only a phase when I came to terms with my bisexuality. And that’s fine. I was 16, when I discovered, that’s a weird age, but just because for some people it may be a phase just to try and then they actually do choose a side, doesn’t mean they weren’t truly living as bisexual at the time and that none of them are technically attracted to both genders.
Like you said it’s a bit about this label politics, which I am really not into? Like fine I could say I’m demisexual, because I hate the idea of ONS, I could invent a new word for the exact ratio of attraction I feel for men and women, but that wouldn’t make me personally feel better about my attraction (it does for some people and I’m not here to judge them, really not, I just don’t like the idea that everyone needs the perfect label). I didn’t fall in love with the label bisexual and i don’t feel like it can truly describe all facets of attraction I feel. But for me it doesn’t have to. For me it’s about lived reality. A label is sort of short-hand to explain to people who I am into and not much more. If someone’s interested about anything else, it’s easier to explain than to use a word they don’t know anyway. So I feel I can get with men and women. So I feel bisexual. That’s just not that hard to get.
Then there’s even more biphobic rhethorics about “straight-passing”, because bisexuals in hetero relationships are almost indistinguishable from straight peole (and apparently we only are oppressed when someone mistakes us for a gay person). But a lot of single gay people are too. It’s again just a smaller group of people with other sexualities that don’t understand us, and want to other us. They think we aren’t oppressed enough to be part of the LGBT+ community. And to that I can just say: so what? I don’t care for their opinions. I know what I feel and I know damn well, that I’ve gotten shit for being bisexual not just for being mistaken for a lesbian. Weirdly enough it’s just the bisexual experience to be oppressed by homophobia, biphobia and sometimes still be mistaken for a straight.
The only thing I can actually advise you is, don’t get lost in all the discourse online. Talk to people in real life: bi people, straight people and gay people and you will see, most of them will understand you, even if you choose not to use a specific label, but you totally can too. Go into this life with confidence that no one knows better about this than you, because of course they don’t.
Sending you lots of love ♥
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tenitchyfingers · 6 years
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brief list of truths
drawings are not and cannot be considered pedophilia either going by the law or the dictionary definition, your arguments about how “but they might give pedophiles ideas and they’re used to groom kids” or whatever the fuck are all bullshit and a talking point directly stolen from conservatives from every decade, literally. So if you say shit like that you’re no different from conservatives who accused metal music and metal fans of being murderous criminals for just listening to a genre of music. Also you’re literally doing the same thing as the homophobes who’ve been accusing gay ppl of homophobia since literally the dawn of time, so at least don’t go “don’t compare me to theeeem” when your talking points are exactly the same. All your arguments were also debunked dozens of times because we’ve been over this shit for decades, it’s been studied and everyone with competences in the field said that fiction doesn’t impact reality in the way you say it does so kindly shut up and read a book
If you say your priority is protecting children but then stay silent when real life child predators are outed, then you’re full of shit and you never gave a fuck about the safety of REAL children in the REAL world going through REAL trauma. Just say you don’t like someone’s ship and move on
if similarly you say your priority is protecting children but then push an 8 year old to discuss sexual assault and send minors sexual harassment... like, pal, you might actually be the main problem here
if you have triggers, just avoid the thing that triggers you, it’s literally that simple
ace exclusionists, TERFs and biphobes are all the same brand of radfem Lite™ bullshit and by the way, trans TERFs exist because i have literally argued against them 
aces and aros are oppressed under a system that values sex and romance as the only things that make you human, a system that will absolutely force you to conform to amatonormativity and heterocissexism, a system that sees us as fundamentally broken, a system that forces us into conversion therapy, a system that justifies raping us as a form of “fixing” us even though there’s nothing broken with us, a system that pushes us into depression more than straight and gay people (and almost as much as bi people)
go suck on dick cheese if u still think we aren’t oppressed, and also maybe have a conversation with someone from Indian Aces and hear about their stories. Could be good for your utterly cringeworthy America-centrism
LGBTPN was made up by exclusionists like last year specifically to exclude aros and aces aka it’s invalid and if you use it you should be ashamed of yourself and also fuck you
queer is not a slut anymore and even if it was then gay and lesbian would be unusable slurs anymore because guess what? Pretty much every term associated with LGBT+ people was a slur at one point or another, get over it and stop using radfem arguments
ace exclusionism is literally the last of the things you should be worried about given how there are real issues in this community and real issues in the world we live in. “But you can care about 2 things at the same time”? Hmmm, and yet you never do. 
being an asshole and then deflecting criticism with “but you/they aren’t oppressed” doesn’t make you any less of an asshole and being an asshole is bad and you should stop being a piece of shit. Also, you don’t know anything about people’s experiences and what they had to go through. You either listen to them one by one and realize oppression doesn’t work the way you think it does, or you shut the fuck up because oppression is not simple and you cannot simplify any discussion about it
if you go around harassing people (and even worse if you send them death threats and get them fired over an opinion) you’re the bad guy, not them. By default. So you have no moral ground whatsoever. You either argue in a civilized matter, or step aside and let the adults handle things since you clearly fucking cant
nobody owes you dick. Nobody owes you pride designs, or attention, or gifts, or whatever. So instead than yelling at someone for not having time or spoons to do something, just fucking ask politely and be fucking nice. your mom must’ve taught you manners, so fucking use them
pineapple doesn’t go on pizza and if you eat pineapple on it then call it something else. like “ketchup turd” or whatever
i’m gonna swear however the fuck i want and i don’t give a flying goddamn dick with wings if you have a problem with that. Suck me
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perpetuallyfive · 6 years
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I was a biphobic piece of shit when I was a teenager. Like, really. I was a jerk who didn’t get it and I know for sure that I said some fucking awful things. Things that now make me embarrassed and disgusted with the person I was. A lot of it came from being isolated in my small town, feeling like literally the only dyke I knew while a handful of girls were open about being bisexual, and yet they never appeared to face the disgust I felt was being directed at me just for the implication or mere suggestion I might be gay. I was envious and angry, and honestly scared shitless. Their experience felt so alien to mine, and unfairly blessed by comparison.
Instead of directing any of my frustration at the people actually causing the problems, I resented the people who were most like me because of the ways that I felt they got off easy. It was petty, stupid, counter productive, and terrifyingly human, I guess, and thank god frankly that my verbose and sometimes slightly persuasive ass didn’t have access to a platform where I could talk my bullshit to impressionable people who might actually (even eagerly) agree and further reinforce my prejudices through our commiseration and shared misery. A community with its foundations in anger.
Instead I eventually (slowly) learned what a dickhead I had been and became a much better person. I learned that a huge percentage of my all time favorite people are bi, ace, demi, trans, agender, et al. They don’t necessarily fit into the neat boxes that have been set aside to ostracize, so maybe they don’t always get the same kind of shit talking, but ignored (for now) isn’t the same as lucky. I get that now too.
I also know people hate this shit, when people talk about what they’ve learned and how that might someday make you better. I know.
But I still want to believe this impulse to categorize and separate I still see sometimes is the same as the one I went through. That it’s just the fear and resentment that comes from suffocating your way through the homophobia that runs rampant in society, and just like with air at higher altitudes all the bullshit gradually thins out as you ascend through life.
 I want to think it goes away for everyone when you finally leave your small town and no longer have to settle for a community that consists entirely of an angry echo chamber. When your friends who don’t have the same label as you are standing right in front of you, lending you clothing, bringing the hand warmers for the march, holding your hair back when you puke, and all those areas in between. The in between is some of the best stuff, just like in between holds some of the best people.
I used to be a real piece of shit. If there’s hope for me, I really think there’s hope for anyone. And I kind of have to believe it, because sometimes the future seems fucking bleak.
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gen-is-gone · 7 years
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Hey so, I hate to be the person to drag drama into a small and mostly pretty decent fandom with very little of it, but you know what would be fucking fantastic? If people in tumblr WicDiv fandom could stop fucking calling Amaterasu straight. Please, do a rando on the internet a favor and just fucking stop.
Before folks start getting righteously indignant and come to me with eighty different reasons why bi erasure is okay if it’s Ammy, hear me out:
IT’S STILL BI ERASURE. Amaterasu, you might say, has called herself straight, and only kissed/slept with girls while drunk. To which I reply, no, Amaterasu called herself “boring” and later explicitly pointed out “prefer guys” =/= “only attracted to guys”. She called herself “the boring one. I’m sooo boring” while the magical equivalent of high on E, and here’s something for you, has only ever shown on-page attraction to women. Pretty weird that such a large portion of fandom would’ve decided that an ambiguous, out of context statement a character said once outweighs multiple instances of textual sapphic attraction, huh?
Another argument then, perhaps? Amaterasu was unwilling to go down on Sakhmet, therefore she’s obviously only faking attraction for attention/”experimenting”/not-really-bi. Here’s a thought: attempting to rationalize policing of a character’s (or worse, actual person’s!) sexual/romantic orientation via what sexual experience they have or what sex acts they are comfortable with, is a really fucking ugly, biphobic thing to do. No better, in fact, than declaring that a man who is uninterested in anal sex must not really be bi, because everyone knows that’s what mlm attraction is all about. Cunnilingus, and any given woman’s interest in/comfort level with it, is but one small facet of a world of wonderful ways in which to be a sapphic woman.
And for the last, and I suspect, most salient of arguments in favor of calling a queer woman straight, Amaterasu is a piece of shit.
This is 100% true. Hazel Greenaway is an over-privileged, spoiled, cruel, self-obsessed, thoughtless, unrepentant racist. Her behavior particularly in Imperial Phase is almost calculated to hit just about everyone’s buttons in some way at some point, and make us all boil over with rage and cringe in resigned disgust at every new word that comes out of her mouth. She wore out her welcome at the end of IP1, and by this last issue I don’t think there’s a single reader who doesn’t at least briefly harbor the thought that she got what she deserved.
But here’s the thing: there is no moral litmus test for queerness. My fondness for Ammy had like most people’s, diminished down to nearly nothing by the time she died. I don’t particularly identify with her, and yeah, in WicDiv, if not most media, we’re not exactly hurting for mga rep. But within the past month or so, I’ve seen a flurry of snide comments and derisive not-quite-jokes about how much of a straight girl Amaterasu is, how predictably like “that kind of straight girl”, how she’s “curious” in comparison to out queer characters. And every single fucking comment feels like a slap in the face from an otherwise friendly fandom.
Guess what? Orientation and attraction are not inherently moral. There is obvious merit to calling attention to queer virtue, to the beauty and power and strength of our people, in response to centuries of being told we’re all degenerate and sick, disgusting and unholy. But just as straightness is no sign of either good or evil, so too is a woman-loving-woman inherently a good person. Amaterasu isn’t exactly an aberration among wealthy white queers either, as the many blatant and highly public instances of racism and antisemitism on display at Pride this year can attest.
Positive representation is diverse. If she were the only character to express same gender attraction in WicDiv, I’d have a whole different set of beefs, and with the text, rather than the interpreters. But she’s not, and she has a specific place and role within the larger narrative. Saying out loud that Amaterasu is bi does not, in fact, erase or ignore or forgive her cultural appropriation or her passive aggressive cruelty. It is, in fact, possible for her to be attracted to women, uncomfortable with performing specific sex acts, semi-closeted or nervous about coming out of the closet, and still be a hideously bad person. These qualities are not mutually exclusive. Her having human moments of sympathetic interaction adds human complexity to her character, but it doesn’t actually dismiss her many, many flaws. Acting as though queer characters are only ever good, and characters who are not good can thus not possibly be queer, strips huge layers of nuance out of analysis of a highly nuanced text. Plus, you know, it’s pretty fucking textbook bi erasure, and (unintentionally I’m sure) viciously biphobic. 
*Sigh* And before everyone chimes in to tell me how they’re bi and they don’t think Ammy is and they’re perfectly comfortable calling her straight, please. Don’t. Don’t bother pointing at “Curiosity” as the interstitial in 28, don’t bother to give me whatever you think Gillen meant by that or your own personal experiences of straight girls breaking your heart while pretending to be bi. I am pointing out a Thing, and honestly no, I can’t actually stop you from doing or saying whatever the hell you want. But it is a Thing, and worth pointing out. And having seen three separate posts in two days make that kind of snide comment, and having had one day honestly kind of ruined by that (yes, I do blow things epically out proportion and fixate on the negative, why do you ask?) and my heart start fucking racing over it, I’d just. Like to get this off my chest, you know?
My apologies; this is barely coherent and deeply uncharitable, and I know I’m breaking my own rules of assuming good faith as often as possible, but I’ve had my blood pressure skyrocket over a casual comment in a tumblr post one too many times in an already ridiculous and aggravating week, so here you all go.
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afternoonblushes · 4 years
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(Pt1)wow thank u so so much for ur in depth response I rly appreciate it!! I thought I was straight for most of my life until I met a girl who I had a major crush on and realized I was bi, (I mean I was also lying to myself about sexual attraction to women all my life but bc I never had romantic feelings for women it was easier to deny... until that happened) and even then I didnt question my attraction to men until I learnt about comphet and then like, got really anxious that i was lying to
myself about my attraction to men? I think my biggest issue is that i grew up with a biphobic mother, who had made comments all her life that bi ppl were selfish and/or confused... she seemed to have no problem with gay ppl but she seemed to think bi ppl were morally corrupt and sex obsessed... so even tho I dont consciously believe that it's totally possible that could be ingrained in me which is why I'm constantly analyzing myself bc subconsciously I believe I have to be one or the other? Society also having that general outlook on bi ppl doesnt help too I guess lol.. so idk I cant tell if I'm actually bi and my anxiety is trying to force me into a box or if I'm dealing with comphet and ahhh :( also sorry this turned into 3 parts lsskdjd... I wrote it all out and then broke it into pieces but it was longer than I thought 😭
Don't apologise!! I love a fellow bitch with Things To Say! Once again take everything with a pinch of salt bc i am a clown and also don't know the nuance of your situation but here are my thoughts:
my sister is bi and tells me about how when she was a teen (back in the wild west of the 00's) she actually thought she was homophobic, bc it was offensive to imply a person could "choose" to be gay but she really felt she COULD choose to live a life with a man or a woman! So i completely understand and sympathise how 1) biphobia and 2) black and white thinking in general, can make it impossible to healthily process bisexuality/any kind of fluid sexuality.
I've heard other people say similar things to your mum (sorry you had to deal with that, it's A Lot).. the older generation learnt to be tolerant with sayings like 'nobody would choose this, i was born like this' bc of course no one would choose to be born gay in a violently homophobic society lol. And they can understand being gay as long as it remains 1) on the fringes of society 2) inferior 3) pitiable 4) straight relationships ARE a marriage, a family, a love story etc and gay people are just.. gay. Poor them!
And that kinda gets flipped entirely when bi people are open and honest because.. if being gay is so miserable and shit and they COULD be happy in straight relationships, why not? Because gay relationships are good and fun, you bastards! 😈😈😈
Also something to consider- if i remember right i believe comphet originally was meant to apply to every woman? We're basically forced to perform for men our whole lives, and until recently it was kinda impossible for most women to be financially stable without a husband. So basically we DO live in a society, and it's normal to find attraction to men complicated! But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of men as individuals who you could be happy with ❤
(Also your mum's biphobia/raising you with that perspective might explain why you mentioned sex being an anxiety inducing prospect for you? Cuz like enjoying sex means proving that stereotype right? I shall take the freud hat off now but something to consider! Princess Cyd is a cute film all about sex positivity and fluid sexuality, you may enjoy it?)
The tone of these messages does imply to me that bisexual is currently your best fitting label? Just bc that's the word you repeat and it's weird how we do that! I would call myself gay, not straight, or nothing at all! Once, memorably, biromantic homosexual (yes men you may buy me dinner and take a romantic stroll on the beach.. but NO COOCHIE 😠😤😤)
However that doesn't mean you're not a lesbian ofc, i'm just trying to hear what you're saying! If you do feel the lesbian label fits better at some point, that's wonderful! Also- being bi doesn't mean you NEED to date men and women. Labels can be scary bc it feels like a dictation for your life, but they're tools to help you describe your experiences and feelings. So if you prefer women at this point, there would be nothing  wrong with focusing on women? And then if you're like 😔👀 oh men? Vice versa is totally valid too. It's a myth that bi people are all 50/50 and their partners go man-woman-man-woman lol, there is literally every type of bisexual, and your preferences will be well at home there!
(Actually i've always really admired this about the bi community! Lesbians AND straight women would kinda side eye me and be like well you don't look/seem gay.. whereas bi people are always like yah checks out. Idk very sexy and cool of them)
Anyway this was longgg again so i do hope you found some bits helpful! Feel free to send any follow ups 💕💕 the world is full of endless possibilities for relationships and you will find what works for you when you're ready for it!
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