#y'all are gonna turn me into a queer elder sooner rather than later i swear

[raayllum]

but, doesnt hc'ing amaya or janai as bi or pan somehow invalidates the fact that they are lesbian and dont feel attraction to men?

there’s a few things to unpack here

1) not all bi or pan women (or femme aligned people) even feel attraction to men. each just mean attraction to more than one gender, and there’s loads of genders out there

2) up until the 1970s, a hard distinction between bi and lesbian as sexualities didn’t exist. women with an attraction to women were all cloistered under a similar umbrella term until the late 1880s, earliest. a lot of ace, aro, bi, and pan people also fell under the term of lesbian by extension during those periods bc they were living their lives in a non cis-heterosexual manner. it’s because a lot of those experiences have a lot in common. bi, pan, and lesbian, ace, and aro spec women can all know what it’s like to like women. but to act like only lesbians know what it’s like to live being “unavailable” to men with zero attraction to them... is incorrect (hi ace and aro people and bi/pan women in committed relationships with other women).  

it is also not surprising that an emphasis on lesbian identity as separate from these other experiences / identities arose during the 1970s as well during the lesbian sex wars up through the 1990s that also led to a rise of lesbian sanctioned transphobia (hi terfs). 

3) janai and amaya are only lesbians if you follow the twitter account of tdp’s head writer who’s name is only in the credits of the show and if you happened to see that tweet and if you choose to accept a word of god twitter statement (not even in an interview) as canon fact. i’ve seen word of god statements be the most disingenuous shit on occasion, so as a general rule i don’t really take them into account. someone else can, of course - but you can’t force anyone else to.

4) the tumblr obsession with exact labelled identities to project on characters or to have confirmed contributes to “you have one (1) identity and cannot change it” which is a very toxic mindset to have. people’s identities change all the time as we grow to understand ourselves better.

like every popularly HC’d fanon bi could also be HC’d as pan and could not have a queer identity read onto them by fans often for the express purpose of shipping them with a same sex only / as their Best Possible endgame bc bi characters in m/f relationships aren’t “as good,” obviously (sarcasm), and yet... 

someone could headcanon amaya as thinking she’s bi and later realizing she’s a lesbian or vice versa. someone could headcanon gren as being a trans woman later in life who still uses he/him pronouns. fandom is an inherently transformative space. 

5) lesbians are the most represented queer group after gay men. biphobia and bi erasure is one of the most prevalent experiences in fandom and in real life based on visibility politics. 

6) speaking of visibility: there are four ‘mainstream’ ace characters in fiction right now. raphael from shadowhunters tv show, todd chavez from bojack horseman, a girl from sex education, and jughead jones from the archie comics who’s also aromantic. jughead’s asexuality was erased in the riverdale tv show in the mainstream content people consume. and even then, i’m not shitting all over the writers, people who like riverdale, people who ship jughead with characters, or the canon ships with him in the show. 

if someone watches TDP, all they’re gonna see that is janai and amaya like women and are with each other. i cannot understate how few people actually read fanfiction. 90% of tdp’s audience are not going to see the what, 20 fics of people like gren/amaya or gren/amaya/janai. unless a person doesn’t ship what you ship specifically because it’s gay, it’s not homophobic - get over yourself.

7) making shipping or a ship an identity piece related to your sexuality is the fastest way to fuck yourself over. don’t do it. 

8) shipping is still never a reason to harass people. ever. i don’t care what you think a ship invalidates or perpetuates. block and move on. that’s what the block button is there for. 

more on varying levels of canonicity here and how sexual orientations are ascribed to characters that reinforce gold star gay hierarchy here

#thanks for asking #anonymous #dragons gets salty #y'all are gonna turn me into a queer elder sooner rather than later i swear