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canichangemyblogname · 4 months ago

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Highlighting my tags:

#this all feels like a result of cis het ppl not knowing what ‘sexual attraction’ or ‘sexuality’ mean #IK they’ll take this out of context #& try to turn it into some sort of ‘so they have less love between each other because we don’t see porn on TV?’ (or something similar) #but that is actually the opposite of what I am arguing #I am saying that you’ve created a mlm relationship (the ‘buddie’ ship) devoid of queerness #(and this is completely unrelated to whether they get down and nasty with each other) #take RW&RB (‘cause y’all are comparing Buck & Tommy to that movie)… #[that story] was like two Ken dolls being smashed together while some kid plays ‘house’ (but after she lost all her Barbies, leaving just the guys) #the two characters seemed to lack a sexuality despite getting down & nasty w/ each other #similar to couples in cis het rom cons (like hallmark movies) #& it’s because there’s this ‘inevitability’ to the relationship due to ‘circumstances beyond their control’ (or a lack of options) #it really seems like Buck & Eddie happens in y’all’s fantasies b/c Eddie is simply just there 🧍‍♂️#It’s the whole: ‘once their girl friends have been fridged and are gone then it’s BOUND to happen!’ #Buck has *chosen* Tommy. not out of inevitability. not b/c there are no more girls in the pic. not even b/c of arbitrary [relation]ship milestones #simply because he likes him. because he likes men. because he likes Tommy

I want it to be clear that the supposed “inevitability” of a ship is what often strips m/m fanfiction ships of queerness. (Things like, it’s “bound” to happen, it’s “end game,” it’s “gonna” happen, [but after, of course, the women are out of the way; this can only happen if there are no women])

In the minds of many straight people, especially heteropessimists, and a heterosexist society, there is an inevitability to relationships. Men and women “inevitably” end up together unless circumstances prevent or compel otherwise. This is considered “natural,” “self-evident,” and the “norm” (this is also a feature of compulsory heterosexuality).

For many in the 911 fandom, Buck and Eddie seem to get together because they’ve run out of girlfriends, as they’ve all been fridged, or because their friendship would “naturally” lead to this “end-stage.”

(I want to note: Men who are into men don’t choose to date a man because there are no women available [like fridging the girlfriends]; they date men because they like men and there are men they like available. I know there’s this weird hetero trope that men aren’t picky & they’ll date whomever, so I need to correct the record: men don’t date just anyone they come across. A man’s not going to be into someone b/c that person’s simply there or convenient. Men do choose to date the people they do because they are attracted to them in some way.)

It is not “inevitable” that Buck will “take it slow” (“do it right,” in his mind) and eventually marry a long-term, serious, monogamous girlfriend. It is also no more “inevitable” that he will start fucking his best friend. And it was certainly not narratively inevitable that he would date Tommy and develop an on-again-off-again exes situationship with him. It’s also certainly not inevitable that Tommy is Buck’s “forever.”

Queer people make the active decision to live as their authentic selves. They will themselves to reject heteronormative tropes and live in a way that says, “No, your norms are not inevitable or natural or self-evident; I will live differently and love differently in a way you will never see as socially valid.” This is part of why queerness is political.

Part of what’s important about Buck & Tommy’s relationship *is* that they’re queer for each other. They’re attracted to each other for who the other is, and that includes them both being men. And they actively pursue each other—romantically and sexually—because they really like each other. They’re not choosing each other because there are no more women available. And they’re not choosing each other as a last resort (no one is settling). They get together because they like each other, they want to, and they can. They’re not going with the “choice” that everyone wants (“As much as everyone wants me to be pining for my straight best friend, that’s just not how it is”); they’re going with each other. When they pursue the feelings they have for one another, they’re deciding to live their life, be themselves, and pursue what feels right for them, and in the process reject the norms and expectations forced upon them, including norms like “you need to be alone before you can be happy in a relationship” and expectations like “queer guy pines for straight best friend.”

(I said to a mutual recently: “there’s still this idea that queer lives are *supposed to be* full of misery, pining, aloneness, and an absence of happiness; that we’re forever supposed to be ‘resisting temptation’ or hopelessly in love with something [someone] intangible that we shouldn’t and can’t have.” And both “try being alone again” and “hopelessly and tragically in love with unattainable best friend” play into this alone, hopeless life of temptation stereotype. And it’s because of these pervasive ideas about queer aloneness and lives of half-love that 911 fans care more about pining and a theoretical relationship than the actualized representation on their screens.)

And that’s not insignificant.

[The original version of this ending was posted on the 9th and 11th of May, 2024. This reblog on the 23rd of March, 2025, combines two posts in this thread into one for an overall shorter number of posts in the thread]

Hot take? A show with queer people in it from the beginning was never queerbaiting and— very literally and technically— never could. In the first episode, a gay man comes out to his family. And he doesn’t stop being gay after that; it’s a major plot point and part of his character going forward. You’ve had a married lesbian couple from the jump who are proud and unapologetic about their love for each other. The story has also portrayed several queer couples and stories in episodic plots, including featuring queer weddings.

Buck didn’t suddenly “become” bi. Queerness is not when straight people “turn” queer. He has been attracted to men the entire time; he has always been bi. Understanding yourself and your sexuality as a queer person is often so difficult under heteronormativity. Sometimes, it takes time.

Hell— Buck checking a guy out some time in season 3 or getting flustered by the idea he might like a guy, etc, etc, are not even examples “queerbaiting,” nevermind how the show already features queer stories.

I genuinely think some of y’all are just mad that he’s not sucking face with the man you want him to, and are being weirdly homophobic about it. “Buck kissing this man is kinda off-putting, lmao.” “Buck and his bf’s relationship is awkward. IDK, but it weirds me out.” “There’s something so cringe about Buck’s relationship—” “Who dates someone they haven’t been friends with for years first? It’s kinda creepy…” “I think their relationship is a weird mess. It’s not as meaningful as a slow burn.”

Life isn’t fanfiction and fanfiction tropes don’t make good writing. Most relationships start out with a “hey, I’m interested in you, let’s get to know each other.” You’re just transparently uncomfortable with two men expressing that interest in each other outside the arbitrary rules you’ve established to make a mlm relationship “legitimate” or “meaningful.”

[Fanfiction] tropes— from “there’s only one bed” to “we’re forced together, but fall in love anyway”— are responses to the sex-negativity and purity culture norms forced upon gender and sexual minorities. They provide a workaround for these norms but never a direct challenge. It’s like the Family Guy episode “Prick Up Your Ears,” where conservative Christian abstinence-only sex education leads to kids having ear sex. Ear sex is the workaround to the abstinence and purity rules they’d been taught, not the challenge. We still have stringent rules around who can touch whom and under what circumstances. Tropes reflect this. So, a trope like “there’s only one bed” provides the characters with a justification for their intimacy without directly challenging why it is taboo.

You’ve convinced yourself that shipping— and thus the tropes it employs— is more subversive than actual representation, and the people caught in the crossfire are actual queer people.

Also— for the love of fuck— stop comparing every mlm relationship to RW&RB.

#reblogging with an updated end post #fucking discourse #911 abc

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ardenttheories · 5 years ago

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I feel horrible for forgetting about it: the Jade scandal isn't only Rose cheating on Kanaya, it's Jade cheating on Dave too (I think they were married when it happened?). It fucking sucks since she forced him into a relationship. Slightly unrelated, but, is it a coincidence that Rosemary and JadeDave got crapped on in Candy and Meat, but the Davekat ship is rather intact in Meat at least (not much either)? Bit shady for the lesbian/hetero ships to have shit luck, but not the gay boys ship...

Dave and Jade were at least together when it happened, if not explicitly married. It’s a little hard to tell with the jumps in time, and I’m not 100% sure where they are in it, but it’s definitely at least while they’re together; in Candy, Jade explicitly talks about wanting to have a child with Dave, who is absolutely her boyfriend at the time.

So, yeah. Not only does she make Rose go behind Kanaya’s back - she actively goes behind Dave’s back to sleep with his sister. It’s. Not the greatest thing, actually. Especially, since you said, that she forced him into it despite him mostly complying because of an inability on his behalf to say no.

And I wouldn’t specifically say that. DaveKat in Candy is absolutely obliterated. They’re not allowed to be together at all, despite the two of them desperately wanting to, and it forces Jade into the position of that really disgusting yaoi fanfic trope - “woman who gets in the way of the gays”. It reads like every other piece of media where they tease you with the idea that the guys are going to get together, but then come up with every reason under the sun for why they can’t.

There’s also the fact that even in the Epilogues, their entire relationship was retconned. Dave and Karkat were much closer and more likely to be in a romantic relationship pre-epilogues (on the retconned meteor) than they were at the start of either Epilogue. For some reason, the writers made them do that stupid “will they won’t they” dance, even though it was pretty fucking obvious by the Credits that the answer was, yes, they WILL.

And even though they’re questionably together in Meat, note that... we actually see relatively little of them. Either together or in explicitly romantic situations - and then compare that to how often we hear Jade talk about Dave, or see Rose and Kanaya obviously together. They absolutely have no idea how to write a MLM relationship, so they’re not even trying. Honestly, that’s the only thing that saved DaveKat in Meat; they didn’t want to bother writing it, so they didn’t.

(Especially since, of course, the person who DID write DirkJake actually left the writing team - a person, mind you, who was MLM. So they lost their MLM writer and now don’t care to try and figure out how to write MLM romance. Which. Yeah. Has its own swath of issues, honestly.)

It isn’t much better. Yeah, it’s nowhere near the levels of disgusting that Jade forcing Dave into a relationship only to cheat on him with his married lesbian sister is, or of ruining the sanctity of RoseMary as one of the only healthy ships in the entirety of Homestuck canon - but “ignore your gays” isn’t much of an improvement on “ruin your gays”. DaveKat being relatively unharmed just because they pretty much ignore it is bittersweet, to say the least.

And, of course, there’s the whole... everything with DirkJake in Meat. Emotionally and mentally manipulating your ex because you’re still fucked up with your breakup, forcing him to be so madly in love with you that you leaving causes him severe trauma which you specifically wanted to burden him with? Yeah, it’s. Hm.

The writers are absolutely determined to ruin any sort of ship they can get their hands on. Het, MLM, WLW - it doesn’t matter, apparently. It’s gotta be ruined for the ~*~drama~*~ - or just ignored as much as possible.

#ardenttheories #long post//#homestuck^2 critical #Anonymous

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bisluthq · 4 years ago

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Not trying to defend him at all, but Shawn said he used to feel the need to prove he wasn't gay. He doesn't feel it anymore . The fact that he acknowledged that what he was thinking was wrong proves that he isn't a homophobe. The only reason he brings up the gay thing was because of the way people were saying it . There's a huge difference between people saying "Hey are you comfortable with sharing your sexuality?/Do you think shawn is gay?" And saying things like "Omg shawn is such a bottom and he NEEDS to come out because it's 2020 and we all know he's gay . He's literally in a glass closet./ stop hiding shawn ,just come already / ew he's so weird he should come out already " and then using homophobic slurs .(it's also mostly straight women saying this) Additionally his manager used to see most of these tweets and he only publicly came out last year . I think he upset because people treated being gay like a bad thing . He even said multiple times that he doesn't care how he comes off to people, it's just that he *happens to be het* . There's no right or wrong way to address these things is there ? Because of he ignored it , people would accuse him of queerbaiting . I don't care what his sexuality is, but I genuinely think he was only trying to look out for the people in his life . If I missed out or misinterpreted something, please educate me on it .

So I agree with you that saying shit like “lmao what a bottom” and “get out the glass closet” is very fucked and especially fucked when straight women say it (and I have spoken about the role of straight women in slash shipping before and how much they erase of like actual queer culture).

According to actual gay men, though, the shit he has said isn’t okay.

Tbh this is their baby. If they feel like the 2020 piece was a course correction, fair enough.

If they feel like it’s problematic, I’m gonna let them handle it. I have enough of a problem dealing with the wlw and rumored wlw. I can’t also start devoting time to mlm especially when THEIR community can fucking sort it out if need be.

Like my personal issue is he KEEPS DENYING and talking about it. I compared him to Lou for a reason because batshit Larries have like caused MASSES of damage to him. They ruined a very close friendship and they constantly fuck with Eleanor starting with when they tried to kick her out of uni and continuing to this day. But he denied like properly ONCE and he let it go although I’m sure it continues to frustrate him.

I understand it’s fucking annoying. But it’s not an insult. So why constantly talk about it? Especially when you have a lovely hot girlfriend you claim to be happy with? Idk.

I’m just not a fan of how he has dealt with it idk.

#nat talks shawn Mendes

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evesbeve · 5 years ago

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Even though I'm not exactly the biggest advocate of the Ben/Jill Ship, I was wondering why it seems to be disliked already? 🤔 Maybe I'd have liked it more if we'd gotten to know more about Jill.

Okay, I can't speak for the entire fandom, but I can share my personal thoughts on it.

For starters, there's nothing wrong with Ben having a crush!! It was very cute. But I don't think the show put that in with the intention of giving him a partner.

I'm gonna get this one out of the way first: lots of people were angry about the way Ben took control of Klaus' body. Now, I have a lot of thoughts about this, and I won't get into details here because it's an entirely different topic, but that whole plotline left a bad impression on the Jill/Ben one. (Personally, I understand both Ben and Klaus, but yeah.)

Anyway, then there's Jill herself. As you mentioned, we didn't see much of her, but I liked that they at least gave her some backstory! Like, there was this whole thing about her turning down a scholarship, so there was some thought put into her character. Of course she wasn't the main focus of the story so she didn't get much development, but yeah. I really liked Jill!

But the show wasn't trying to force her and Ben together. It was treated as a crush Ben had. The relationship was never going to work, considering Ben is dead with no body of his own (unless Klaus is right next to him) and Jill's obsession with Klaus. (And we even learn that she'd been intimate with him before.)

The point was, in my understanding, to show us that, just like the other siblings, Ben can do and feel human things, even after death.

The thing that bugged me here is that they used a love interest to do that? Like... At this point EVERY sibling has a love interest, so it would have been nice to see one of them not involved with romance, maybe even get some aro/ace rep.

Before S2 came out, there were a lot of hints about how Ben was gonna get his own storyline, and seeing that it was a love interest made me kinda... eh. Cause they could have used his family or something as a motivator (which they did!! but it was later on in the season. At first it seemed like the love interest was going to be the only thing in his storyline, and many people who haven't finished s2 yet are a bit disappointed, I think, and have misinterpreted that.)

Finally, and this is something that doesn't apply to me but needs to be addressed, I think the fact that it was a het relationship (and both people involved were poc) really affected the fandom's views on it. I made a post about this issue specifically, so I won't get into details here, but you know how fandoms are with het relationships. (Especially when they've been headcanoning Ben as lgbt which is not a very valid point since bi/pan/ace/aro people exist but I'm just putting it out there.)

That's not to say that supporting lgbt rep is bad, btw!! (I mean, we certainly don't have enough of that, lmao.) It's just a reason the ship didn't get as much attention, and I'm saying this as an lgbt person. If Jill had been a man, the fandom would have deliberately went out of its way to justify all the things I mentioned above, to make it work. (Fandoms tend to fetishize mlm relationships and turn a blind eye to all its flaws.) Acknowledging that doesn't invalidate us lgbt people.

Also, the fact that she's a woman. S2 has been out for more than 24 hours now, and while I've seen hundreds of posts screaming about other ships, Vanya and Sissy (a wlw whip, no men involved) is getting the less attention, and it's making me really sad. So before you argue that gender isn't a factor and it's simply a sexuality thing... take a look at how little attention Vanya and Sissy are getting.

And then there's also the fact that Jill and Ben are people of color, but I won't get into many details, since I'm white, and I don't want to talk over poc. But it's definitely a factor. Racism, internalised or not, is real and it's definitely affecting fandoms. (Again: look at how little attention Allison got in S1 compared to the other siblings. And also how everyone is sleeping on Raymond in S2.)

Anyway, the last three points got really heavy for a second, but I couldn't not bring them up. I obviously can't cover everything, but... I tried.

It's also important to remember that S2 came out yesterday! So people still haven't had the time to form their own headcanons and to share them with others.

On a more positive note? The scene where Jill and Ben are playing in the dirt together was ADORABLE and it gave me lots of serotonin <3

tl;dr: it's a very complicated question and there are many factors that the fandom dislikes the relationship. however, tua was never setting them up to end up together, and only wanted to show us ben getting a crush and overall having a life. if they wanted them to get together, they would have done it differently.

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sinnhelmingr · 4 years ago

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Discourse: Leah is the better romantic choice by far because she and Jon have so much common ground, and has nothing to do with being a seemingly het ship compared to the canonical mlm relationship Jon entered. Alternatively, she is a terrible person and her dynamic with Jon is predatory and manipulative. The chemistry is bad writing because how dare a bad person be capable of love and friendship? // anonymous

this one was like getting kicked in the nose owie. this also got long so under the cut with it!

on one side you have people reducing what could be an interesting dynamic down to simple het tropes and reaffirming their bond is so much stronger than any alternative, especially if that alternative is blartin mackwood. i can already see all of leah’s truly villainous and selfish moments being erased entirely, downplayed, or pinned on that damn roommate of hers driving her out of her head. because who needs the complicated parallel of ‘leah is what jon could (possibly) become if he was less in touch with his humanity and his bonds with others,’ a sentiment leah both recognizes and calls out, when a ship can simply be a 15k goth/dark academia slow burn skinny love but with sexy monsters. it’s about the most boring iteration of what people take for a het relationship, in that it’s a queer relationship as filtered by people who don’t like, hate the gays, but why is fiction so saturated with it where it doesn’t make sense?

as for the alternative, that’s just how fandom treats moral ambiguity in female characters in general. i have played enough of them at this point to know that road leads to madness. that leah is both the villain of statements and the victim of another obsessed old man is beyond most people’s understanding, even in an ambiguous series like the one in question. people don’t want to claim her moments of agency as girlboss power because like... this woman has canonically killed so many people on her quest for self-actualization and definition. whether she sacrificed them herself on her quest or just fed them to michael in a misguided attempt to build a rapport with a potential ally, people are dead because of this woman for reasons beyond her not knowing how to control her shitty end powers. but admitting that she is in any way influenced by her nightmarish upbringing and the scars it left behind is interpreted as trying to ‘absolve’ or ‘excuse’ her behavior and her opening up about it to jon when compelled is not taken as a literal compulsion on his part but her somehow manipulating him? that side of fandom would be convinced she’s on the level of our primary antagonist, if not worse than him, when it comes to pulling jon’s strings despite all evidence saying he’s one person she truly, sincerely does not want to hurt with what she is to the point of almost worshiping him. ‘at least weed man didn’t claim to LOVE jon,’ they cry, the point sailing well over their head that leah’s love for jon instead causes her to examine her own behavior and how far she’s fallen after all.

#anonymous #discoursememe;#it is knowing it is knowing [V: TMA]#THIS WAS A FULL ON KICK IN THE THROAT ANON WHAT THE FUCK #ask

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bigskydreaming · 6 years ago

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Hey, odd question, coming from that post you made about the lack of even basic normal Dick Grayson smut.. Would you read anything at all if it's not gross and written well? Like oc or het or even self insert het? That's something I expected to see considering how much fans cry over his sexiness n romance potential but there are barely any? It's shocking, every fandom has a buttload of self insert het fics.. Btw, have you ever went into the birdflash ao3?

LOL, I mean, ‘anything else’ is a bit broader than I should have stated given that once you take out all the noncon, incest or pedophilia fics, I still have my share of kinks that just aren’t sexy to me and so I wouldn’t really be into a fic tagged with them, just as a matter of personal taste rather than having any issue with them overall.

But I mean, I’m bi, so I definitely don’t have a problem reading m/f sex, but I’ve never been the target audience for self insert or reader fics. I’m glad they exist for people who like them, but with fanfics I tend to be there for the takes on existing characters and dynamics. There’s the occasional OC love interest or sex partner that I end up reading and enjoying, but tbh those tend to be fics I only click on when I can’t find anything else I haven’t read before and really want something to read so I go hey, why not.

I wish I could tell you why he’s so upheld as one of the most romantically and sexually appealing characters in DC’s entire lineup, and yet has so relatively few fics centered around that content for him, comparatively speaking. Not to mention so relatively few ships. I know you can find one or two fics for him with just about anybody, but that’s true of all major characters....in terms of big or semi-big ships, IMO he actually has a pretty surprisingly few ship ‘trends’ (once you ignore the incest of course).

But I mean, there’s Kory, Babs, Wally, Roy and then Slade and the occasional Rob/Raven fic from the Teen Titans animated universe. But that’s not exactly that many ships. Especially considering we’re talking about the guy joked about being the cape community’s bicycle. He said, sourly.

As far as Birdflash - I mean, I don’t really go looking for it specifically on Ao3 or ff.net, but I read them when I come across them when going through the Dick Grayson tag. I don’t have anything against them as a ship, either in YJ ‘verse or comics canon, though the majority of what I’ve read is from YJ and I’m pretty sure is the preferred take on them...*shrugs* Idk. Like I’ve actually read more than a few birdflash that I liked quite a bit, they complement each other well in practically any dynamic....idk what it is, but my default setting seems to be that except for when reading already existing fic, I tend to just view them as BFFs. Platonic soulmates, the way Dick is with Donna, but not really having a ton of romantic chemistry.

Like, it can work, absolutely, there’s just so many other partners I see more immediately as having potential, and their friendship already satisfies me in terms of how that dynamic usually works. So I’ll more than happily read birdflash if its there, but generally I’m more inclined towards Dick/Roy and my other big mlm ships for Dick are Dick/Joey and Dick/Kyle.

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spiftynifty · 7 years ago

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Hey there! I’m the same anon that sent that confusion ask to jojo. I saw your reply and Read your post about LGBT in kids shows and how (at the time) it seemed probable for a m|m canon. I wanted to ask what your thoughts are now? I personally think it seems most likely that Keith will end in a het. Relationship (despite it seeming a little rushed and lm and jds saying they wouldn’t) Keith ending with no one when such a strong relationship with shiro was built up just doesn’t seem likely either..

To be honest, I was worried about Kacxa at first too. Many, many other hetero romances have started with less than that and seeing underdeveloped relationships just happen because “he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious” is something we are extremely accustomed to. Heck the show kind of plays right into this with Hunk/Shay.

But Keith is different, he is a far more developed and story-focused character than Hunk is, and thus if he’s to be given a romantic partner then it needs to match that flow and level of development. One of the “rules” that we often get in media is that “romance is a higher level on the relationship chart than friendship”. And at this point, and even after 13 more episodes, there’s just no context this show could offer me where I could honestly believe that Keith could regard Acxa with a similar level of affection to how he regards Shiro, let alone higher. This was the biggest reason I stopped worrying; to be blunt, Kacxa doesn’t make sense on a narrative or character level. Keith aside, Acxa deserves to have a story told that doesn’t involve her following dudes around.

Also, revisiting the show I’m quite convinced that Keith is canonically in love with Shiro, that his feelings for him were intended to be read as so many of us do. There’s a reason so many people in and outside the fandom have written about their relationship with optimism and curiosity about where the show is taking it. It’s there, even for those who have never been looking for it. I know a lot of straight guys who have picked up on it despite never realizing Korrasami was a thing.

But we definitely do a lot of speculating here in the Sheith fandom and I’ve seen some pretty elaborate meta for scenes that didn’t particularly resonate as shippy for me. So stepping back, shipping goggles off, speaking as a viewer and as someone who works in animation, there are really… 3.5 sequences that give me pause, that are so heavily coded and so… interestingly storyboarded and animated that I find it increasingly impossible to believe the showrunners and directors never intended for their relationship to be read romantically. They are:

Because there is something inherently romantic about the slow zoom on their smiles before the slow drift of them towards each other, the castle forgotten

Because this is blatantly highlighting how beautiful Shiro is and Keith staring at him in awe before he closes his eyes for the last time, resigned to their joint fate

Because I have run all the permutations and scenarios in my mind and there is literally no reason for Keith to stop mid lean, with his eye direction shifting lower than Shiro’s eyeline. It would have been faster and way less work to show him just hugging him without the pause.

And then this is the 0.5:

Because while the canon tempers this moment with “you’re my brother”, I am beyond convinced that that line was added because the scene was too romantically coded without it. And if you don’t believe me, check out this edit someone made of what the scene sounds like without the brother line. It’s incredible.

But will we SEE canon Sheith? that’s… a little more complicated.

My post ages ago about LGBT in cartoons was pretty optimistic but where I failed was considering the differences in studios. Some companies are a lot more chill about LGBT content in their shows. But they also aren’t the Big Two: Disney and Dreamworks, whose records of LGBT characters are utterly abysmal. Here are the two they had prior to July 2018: LeFou from live action Beauty and the Beast, and Gobber from HTTYD2 in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line that was ad-libbed by the actor and left in. Arguments could also be made for the Sheriffs in Gravity Falls (that had to be Dumbledore’d after the fact by the show creator who alluded to there being a fight over it).

NOT great, especially when you consider Disney is not just Disney: none, NONE of the 19 Marvel movies feature an LGBT character, nor do ANY of the Star Wars movies. It’s utterly inexcusable. Shareholders in these companies make things more complicated because they help dictate the direction a company will take and if a large portion of their major shareholders are say, more conservative, we’re going to notice that there is one area on the diversity checklist that is repeatedly getting passed over. The bigger the company, the more complicated the relationship is with shareholders. That’s why it’s difficult to compare Korra’s achievement, through Nickelodeon, to the potential of an LGBT relationship on Dreamworks. We should absolutely hold them to the same standards regardless of company size but we can’t expect to get an endgame LGBT relationship just because Korra did, or because of the giant 20-gayteen celebration going on for two wlw ships at Cartoon Network.

But we also got THIS on Voltron.

And it’s a start. I think it outlines pretty clearly where the limits are for Dreamworks at this time, especially since many casual viewers seemed to miss the romantic implications of Zethrid/Ezor, and a more alarming number somehow walked away from Adam/Shiro’s fight completely unaware they were a couple. Which honestly, was certainly Dreamworks’ goal. Keep it vague enough to fool the shareholders, but implicative enough to pat themselves on the back for their achievement. Even though it only exists because JDS and LM fought tooth and nail for it. But at the end of the day, we still have Shiro, Shiro our canonically gay rep, and that’s so huge. I don’t think people realize how huge that is, and I wish his coming out party hadn’t been so marred by toxic antis and even non-antis who decided to take a really big moment in cartoon history and make it all about themselves and their own pain over the “more” that they didn’t get.

It’s incredible that we are getting LGBT in cartoons finally, properly. 2018 celebrated three massive historical achievement in kid’s animation: A strong, muscular, leader hero was revealed to be gay and have had a boyfriends, and two wlw couples kissed–one of them got married, onscreen.

This is HUGE. Prior to 2018 the biggest LGBT cartoon moment we had was Korra and Asami four years ago.

It was like for four years everyone fought and fought and fought and 2018 was the breaking point and we got this glorious explosion of LGBT romance as a result. Audience reception to these couples has been immensely supportive, which is something the companies are definitely noting if it’s translating into dollar signs. It’s something that makes me much more optimistic for the future of cartoons in years to come.

But I’m just going to come out and say it: the road to mlm is just a little bit harder. There are a ton of reasons for this but I’d say the biggest two boil down to: classic, gendered homophobia (the white conservative straight dudes with money supporting the studios have an easier time with the idea of two women making out, cuz that’s “hot” than two men, cuz that’s “weird”), and also because it is easier for people to accept that two overly-touchy women are “just good friends” than it is for them to accept that two male characters doing the same thing are. Guys Don’t Get Affectionate With Each Other, after all, because that’s not the Masculine Way. Or something. Tons of people watched the end of Korra and assumed they were just friends. Replace those characters with Shiro and Keith and it raises eyebrows.

So where does that leave Shiro and Keith? It’s really hard to say and at this point it’s anyone’s guess. I truly believe Sheith was intentionally coded as romantic, but getting the green light is another matter entirely. In addition to the DW shareholders, JDS/LM have to deal with the Voltron ones and since that would include conservative-minded folk along with some Japanese shareholders and Japan has complicated rules about LGBT content… it’s a hot mess. Realistically speaking if you were hoping to see Shiro and Keith kiss onscreen, it’s time to come to terms with the fact that there is a 0.0002% likelihood of it happening. I think the best outcome we can expect at this point is that they both end up single, with bonus points if they’re still alive and on the same planet by the series’ end. I firmly believe that this IS something the showrunners are and have fought for and will continue to fight for until the last retakes are done and the show has been approved and shipped off to Netflix for distribution.

My tinhat theory is that there is one, single scene/shot, that is blatantly canon, that JDS/LM and KR animated on the sly, and have at the ready that they are totally prepared to replace another more platonic scene with– should DW give the go ahead. But I doubt that go-ahead will ever come. At the end of the day the shareholders are the rulemakers and unless they’re convinced it’s worth the financial gain, Sheith is forever bound to be the “will they won’t they” friends we have seen for the last 7 seasons. And I don’t think that potential financial gain of the kids’ animation world’s first mlm couple is big enough to convince them. But god do I ever hope I’m wrong.

#sheith #voltron #meta #long post #my current mood: optimistic for something half a notch above ambiguous #0p0

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desperate-entwives · 6 years ago

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As a Tall Girl™️ I have a lot of Thoughts about the glorification of heteronormative height difference in shipping culture.

And before anyone misunderstands me, I do not think that enjoying boy-is-taller height difference indicates that you're sexist or bad. I ship two ships that have a huge height difference like that (hellstrop and garcy) and one that has a milder variation (memori).

This is mainly in reaction to

A.) Acting culture, where you are told to embrace your "type", and being too tall as a woman or too short as a man means you can almost never play the pretty/handsome character. That height difference between actors in [insert almost any het ship here] partially stems from the fact that different actors (especially women) were passed over or not even considered because of their height. So while there's nothing wrong with enjoying how tall an actor is compared to the actress in a ship, I try to also be aware of those factors and how they impact the industry at the same time.

B.) A post about the 100 I saw a while back (I forgot who posted it but if you're reading this no hard feelings, I'm sure your intentions weren't harmful) arguing that Bellamy should be with my girl Emori instead of Echo partly because Echo is just as tall as he is and Emori is nice and smol.

I once saw a list of the heights of all the actresses in the 100, and Echo was one of the only women who wasn't exactly 5'5". Do you know how rare it is that women who are significantly taller than that get to be romantic leads?

Growing up, I internalized this idea that women have to be small and delicate and... just less than their male counterparts. It's something I've tried to dismantle, but I still feel like I'm less worthy of love then smaller and shorter women. It's even worse for women who are taller than I am, especially (again) if they're also involved in theatre or acting in general.

So I think it's important to, while you're praising how tiny the woman is and how tol the man is (which is okay and I do it too!), also praise ships where the characters are around the same height or that rare ship where (gasp!) the woman is taller. Make gifsets about that height difference! Establish it as just as cute as the reverse!

(This whole issue, of course, doesn't apply to height difference praise in mlm or wlw ships.)

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thedogsled · 7 years ago

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Hi guys. I’m going to cautiously title this ‘About Zimbio, Destiel, my personal struggle with the idea of wlw vs. mlm, and why what we achieved in the vote today says a lot about our magnificent fandom’.

This is a reminder in advance that I make generalizations but I don’t mean any harm by them. I’m happy to discuss this topic and capitulate on some things, because my experience of shows is extremely limited right now (unless I want to watch them in French). Just like Dean I say ‘we’ a lot but please assume sometimes I mean ‘I’, I by no means make any claim to speak for all of the following groups at any point: bisexuals, mlm shippers, wlw shippers, television executives, social media marketers, the mainstream audience, destiel shippers--etc, etc, you get the drift.) If any of the following upsets you, please let me know, it’s not my intent to cause any harm, only reassure my friends that they did a good job.

I promised I was going to write a post on this, because I’ve seen just a little mumbling and unhappiness that Destiel didn’t make it through in the semis. I get it, it’s only natural that it’s going to lead to some hurt feelings, but I wanted to really put across to you all why I say I was proud of us for our semi-final performance, rather than you just take it for granted.

We are an old fandom. Thirteen years is a long time; it makes Supernatural the longest single run fantasy/sci fi series on American TV (and I mean I think it’s unfair to compare it to non American shows like Doctor Who anyway just on pure numbers, especially since Who has gone through thirteen fourteen? fifteen? are we counting radio drama? actors in the lead role; it’s like a different show every time.) So. It’s had a superb run. Fantasy/sci fi shows are typically considered to be niche, not massive hits (comparatively speaking; SPN isn’t Grey’s Anatomy or NCIS I’ll grant). But what networks are finally waking up to is the power of the fandom of those ‘niche’ shows, dedicated viewing power which can grow a network’s brand, particularly online, and networks are eager to wrangle that.

This modern era of television is fandom’s era of television. Netflix are promoting gamification of television watching (even for kids) as well as choose your own adventure style TV. Binging and rewatching box sets is a whole thing now, not just the domain of the “geek”, and shows which can convince people to stick around and watch something instead of moving on when they run out of material--they’re the ones gaining success, while traditional shows slip further and further as they fail to capture new demographics. We’re making strong social media contracts with the creators and actors of our shows, and making it clear to them - in a way that is increasingly being recognized for the opportunity it represents - that there must be give and take with modern audiences, especially if you seek gratification through social media. (I read a great article I reblogged that called it the ‘Brandom’ effect.)

It’s wonderful, and it’s terrifying, because both fans and creators don’t know what to do with it. They can give fans too much power and the show goes off the rails, or deny it to them entirely, and earn only vitriol. Some shows rub their power right in the face of their fans and increasingly they pay for it. Some showrunners are outright incapable of talking to their fans at all without being respectful (I’m looking at you The 100), and some fans are ghastly, aggressive and outright disrespectful in pursuing what they want (it is a different thing showing joy over your ship as it is to dox actors and send their wives hate mail). Some showrunners, instead, are more embracing of their fans, like the Earpers, and if you want an idea of how actors should be engaging with fans, check out David Haydn Jones’ twitter. That man is a saint. It’s a delicate game of mutual respect, and occasional drama, and intent is the name of the game: do you have good intent, is it honest? People crave honesty on the internet where everything and everyone is fake--and that honestly is a tough thing to achieve when studios are too heavily concentrating on their bottom line.

So, this is a changing landscape, like I said, and people are struggling with new marketing techniques, trying to find their place in the world, running into walls when they realize that in fact they don’t understand their queer audience members. When something works, shows are very quick to jump right into it, almost relieved to have evidence that if they do X thing, their fans won’t all jump ship in horror, but here’s the thing, networks are in a lot of ways far slower to respond than shows. If you want to do something, you have to prove to the person holding the purse strings that it’s a profitable endeavor. Producers are set in their ways, especially old school producers, not realizing how quickly the landscape is changing, and writers are fighting against that all the time, because they’re often a lot more in touch with the creative fandoms they’re trying to inspire. Many have come from fandoms themselves. Queer writers should mean more queer storylines, right? But it means fighting money men to make it happen. Oftentimes that leads to the whole ‘one queer ship is enough’ standpoint, and when it comes down to it, those money men are more likely to put stock in safe investments, in proven investments. Consequently, wlw is flourishing because it draws in audiences without losing them. It’s arguably less risky to make Alex Danvers gay than Castiel. It’s more PC, accepted by wider audiences, groundwork laid by Dark Angel and Buffy in my own recent memory. When good results come from featuring those kinds of ships, they appear increasingly on TV, and it’s AWESOME. There were 16 wlw ships in Zimbio March Madness, and 11 of them got through all the way to 8vs8. There were only 2 mlm ships in 8vs8, and 3 het ships. Internet fandom, passionate and social and dedicated? It speaks, and it says ‘More LGBT rep please’.

We’re in a transitional period. Changes are coming, but when you look at the big mlm ships of the last few years, you can see the uphill climb that’s still ahead of us. I spoke with our Hannigram and Johnlock friends last year about what their experience with this was like. (I haven’t spoken to Sterek folks, but I know there’s disappointment from that front too). Johnlock shippers are largely furious about how explicitly the finale no-homoed their ship when there was absolutely no reason to. Having watched the finale myself, I feel like they really went hard against shippers explicitly. Hannigram suffered too. I haven’t finished S3 even now, but what I recall of the conversation went like this: they’re together, but there was a kiss that didn’t make it to air, and then the show was cancelled. In any case, what I’m saying right here is that this is part of a pattern, a theme I’m struggling with, where mlm fans are dispirited and disappointed and feeling disrespected by the very mainstream shows they’re watching.

(Which isn’t, I’ll quickly note, that I’m saying the same isn’t true of wlw audiences. The last two ships in Zimbio this year are non canon ships, and the fans of both have been hurt by the shows they watch, but they still keep coming back and watching the show. Swanqueen is ending, but the pair have been consistently mirrored - dark and light - with the emotional journey of the show largely being made over the shared custody? I don’t know, they changed it every week while I was watching it of Emma’s son. Supercorp is clearly full of eye sex thanks to the actress’ chemistry (and McGrath is so gorgeous she’d have chemistry with a brick wall) and yet has been outright mocked by the show’s cast. If that sounds familiar to Destiel fans, I almost want to say that Supercorp have it worse; just as with Swanqueen, they’re often told simply to shut up because there's already wlw rep on the show.)

But where shows are willing to go there now, diminished risk is the key, especially as resale value of shows reflects multiple, competitive platforms constantly needing to purchase content to fill their airspace. Naked women, women kissing and women having sex - bisexual women who are explicitly still available to men - that sells, but as far as I can tell networks are struggling to sell the same narrative about mlm. Maybe that’s my perspective only, maybe that’s me watching the wrong shows (and not at all because I don’t enjoy looking at women’s bodies, I do, but variety is the spice of life) Look at the outright surprise last year when GOT gave us a beautiful, pus covered, full screen dick. GOT, of course, which is insulated because it is a Number One performer. I present to you, in terms of dicks on screen, American Gods, then. Neil Gaiman is my hero, selling the network on the premise that they could have his great stories if only they were willing to gleefully integrate peen on every episode. Or so I’m told. There’s a lot on my ‘to watch’ list that I haven’t got around to yet. I will tell you, of course, that mlm is out there, Evak were voted out against Supercorp in the quarter finals) but on a big show like Supernatural that risk is exceptional. That’s why when we talk about Destiel ‘going canon’, we make the shockingly ambitious request of them HOLDING HANDS, or mutually saying ‘I love you’, and sometimes feel like expecting anything more, like a kiss, or god forbid a sex scene, is too much to ask. Why? When lesbians and bisexual women are presented on TV, kisses and sex scenes are a matter of course. In Alex’ coming out, in Thirteen’s coming out in House, Angela’s coming out in Bones - huge ensemble shows where main characters, all women, have come out and kissed (and returned to male partners in the case of the later two). (I should point out I am talking about genre “mainstream” shows in general, not for example Queer as Folk, where the primary aim is to explore sexuality, not fight dragons or solve crimes)

Now in addition to this problem, an issue that I’ve seen for years is that from inside the fandom world we are made to feel as though we are somehow obscene or inferior for shipping mlm ships, a projection that comes from the way mainstream folks will react to you if they happen to discover you drawing dudes together. Sometimes we hide our online selves from the real world out of shame that has only built over the years, where it’s considered that supporting mlm ships instead of wlw ships makes you fetishistic, or objectifying of gay men. I’ve seen it in fanfiction spaces and in rp spaces on dw and lj that shipping wlw has been raised to a point of being considered ‘more pure’. If you ‘claim’, they say, to be a queer woman, you should wholly be supporting wlw ships. When I started hearing this dialogue I was THIRTEEN. This was before Willow/Tara. There were just less wlw ships on tv, and there were less female characters whose autonomy didn’t depend on men, or portray them as being fragile, the weakness of their gender or whatever. There were standout female characters in my youth, absolutely, but they were all independent (mostly) straight women: Kathyrn Janeway, Sam Carter, Clarice Starling, Dana Scully. They kicked out against the system, the world they lived in, intelligent and defiant ladies I still idolize. Nowadays, though those wlw ships are available, and populated by so many beautiful, powerful, progressive female characters - and yes miraculously even strong female characters who still embrace their own womanhood. In contrast mlm ships are not keeping up because, in some way, I think that the ‘impurity’ of shipping mlm has stuck. I struggle to think of even straight non toxic male role models, nevermind male role models who are in engaging, romantic relationships with the same sex. This stagnation of masculinity (apart from the rise of the geek hero which often, as in the case of TBBT, doesn’t break away from inbuilt misogyny) troubles me immensely. (I’m not saying all male characters are awful, incidentally, but it’s not a positive message to outright expose the flaws of toxic masculinity without offering understanding, lessons, and growth. But that’s another essay.)

Trust me, I’m not saying everyone feels that TV is being stacked against mlm, but as a bisexual I really feel fractured by the whole thing. I feel like I’m supposed to loathe myself for shipping mlm, particularly when that mlm ship is ‘two white guys’. The fact that I as a woman enjoy male and female bodies is irrelevant, because one desire is pure, and one desire is fetishism. There is no balance. I’m allowed to be titilated by members of my own gender kissing each other and only that and heterosexuality. As a bisexual who is currently leaning toward wlw myself (sexuality existing on a sliding scale imo), it is the power imbalance in heterosexual couples which puts me off. It’s painfully true to life. I have a particular loathing for Booth and Brennan from Bones, for example, where his toxic masculinity is unilaterally forgiven because it’s true love, while Bones, once independent and stubborn herself, is increasingly nudged further out of character in order to forgive him his trespasses. But when I ship mlm, or write fanfic of my favorite couples, any power I give them is not based on their gender. The same I imagine is true of wlw. (An unfortunate consequence of this is people project it onto real life, where power inequality and abuse can exist regardless of make believe ‘purity’, and consequently people end up believing that something is wrong with them rather than their relationship, similar issues as people face when they imagine marriage is the goal, and everything else is happily ever after, because Disney told them so. In which case I advise you to rewatch Mary Poppins.)

During voting, I was reticent to address why voting for Destiel over the other ships was important to me. It was personal. (Of course anyone could have sent me an ask if they were curious). But why I was voting didn’t matter. It was enough that I was voting for the couple I love, whose relationship my blog is devoted to, and whose love story I hope is resolved. But there is more to it than that. What’s important, I guess, is how I feel about Dean. My reading of him is of a bisexual, still in the closet - perhaps even to himself - in his thirties. He made it out of high school, but that’s it, because he dropped out of higher education for family commitments. He likes rock music and classic cars. He loves pie, and dumb medical TV dramas, and cowboy hats, and riding rodeo bulls and chatting to strangers. He struggles with voicing his true self with people who know him, and might judge him in a way he will never come back from. Dean is basically me. I am all those things. And in this case, he’s in love with a genderfluid (has been both male and female) guardian angel whose love for Dean explicitly and singularly, has been described as a profound bond, and the greatest love story ever told. Castiel’s love for Dean, his willingness to do anything for him, is all I think any of us want from a romantic partner. And yes, we all find different things in our ships, and presumably other people connect with Destiel for reasons that aren’t the same as my own, but that’s okay. My reasons are my reasons.

And yet I am still thrown into that emotional disconnect: that because this couple is an mlm couple I’m wrong to ship it, that I would be better putting my energy into watching shows I don’t necessarily enjoy as much so I can find my representation in more respectable (or potentially less queerbaity) fandoms. That Supernatural isn’t good enough because I’ve been repeatedly told by people inside and outside the fandom that it isn’t good enough. I’ve got to tell you I agree that it struggles with being progressive. While season 3 of Grey’s Anatomy was showing the struggles of a pre-op mtf woman and her wife in an ep that made me actually cry for the dysphoria represented, on the other channel SPN had just got done killing a token ‘woman with an off screen girlfriend’ character. By season 11, we’ve had two gay male couples, both holding hands and leaning into each other to express their relationship. SPN is slow. Nobody in the world would deny that.

But to be quite honest, also, finding representation doesn’t have to mean ‘a ship’, it can just be a well written bisexual woman with a badge, and you aren’t restrained to just one rep either! In fact, the more the better. I find myself particularly starved for that rep, especially since - having been fetishized for my bisexuality irl before - I see painful reflections of that on television. That’s obviously going to be related to bad writing and TV’s particular way of objectifying women in general, too, but when a woman (say Angela Montenegro from Bones) has a two episodes storyline where she makes out with another insanely attractive actress, the music rising, lit with soft shades, the camera focused in on their mouth--before the plot is forgotten entirely, it is incredibly difficult not to see that as objectification and not bisexual solidarity. I want more mlm on TV because I want more bisexuals of both genders on TV, and because of the harmful insinuation in mainstream thought that a guy who comes out as bi late has somehow been lying to himself and was gay all along, while women who are bi are just exploring their sexuality and somehow more up for it. Those views need to be constantly, constantly challenged, because, honestly, people believe them. (Probably not me or you, but it’s out there).

(As an aside: mainstream is also harsh toward female writers who write mlm stories. There have understandably, as a result, been female writers who chose male pseudonyms to pen their gay romance novels. I first experienced this to a lesser extent back in Gundam Wing fandom, because if you were a ‘male’ author it legitimized you and people would read your stories in preference to those penned by girls. Back then it was a numbers game. The prejudice does remain. Audiences are sometimes outright cold to female authors who pen mlm stories! You need only look at the conversation about boycotting Love, Simon because it was written by a straight woman to appreciate just how deeply we’ve built this disconnect, as though to write something the author must always write from personal experience. If that’s the case, I feel terrible for Thomas Harris and Jeff Lindsay, and JK Rowling (who speaks about choosing her moniker because it was genderless) must certainly have had an exciting childhood, what with all the magic and dragons.

As a result I think we (or at least I) have internalized some harmful things about who has the right to interpret themselves in stories told about men, or male protagonists. And in lashing back at girls who for years have been doing just that, considering it to be lesser if I find a role model in Dean instead of Angela, we have harmed the integrity of mlm fans themselves, who increasingly struggle under a burden of self imposed guilt. It is reflecting back poorly on mlm performances, even as wlw stories flourish. In this raising the pedestal of wlw purity, the ‘ethical’ alternative, we dismiss what people can learn about themselves from male role models too, something that we instead encourage if it’s a teenage boy finding a role model in Elsa. My closeted bi self loving Dean Winchester harms nobody, but I am still made to feel lesser for doing so, even if sometimes that feeling is ridiculously self imposed. Hell, maybe I’m alone in this feeling and the rest of this is bullshit, but that’s why I said ‘I vs we’ was definitely a part of this commentary.

In any case, this is what I think this means to the Zimbio vote: As wlw rep has been increasing, mlm has been facing a disappointing deficit. Those once big fandom movers ‘Superwholock’, the Hannigrams, the Sterek shippers--have fractured and splintered off. Destiel has come in waves but it’s still somehow here, without its original opponents from back in the day. It’s here, even with setbacks after season 8 and 10 that had fans breaking away from Supernatural entirely. Optimism now reflects optimism felt before, but let’s face it Castiel was killed permanently at one point, and Bob Singer said outright, even just a few years ago, that Destiel and social media stuff just didn’t come up in the writing room (pr is not showrunning, etc). People are hugely entitled to struggle with optimism for non canon mlm ships because history repeats itself. Add into that feelings like I described above, and the struggle is real. It can sometimes feel like you’re fandom’s three legged, one eyed donkey.

Add to that how old Destiel is. Every fandom coming into existence now, every ship built around, comes into contact with Destiel at some point. If you type ‘queerbaiting’ into Wikipedia, our ship is cited. In Google, we come up first. Thanks to antis (and some genuinely bad behavior from bad apple shippers over the years) we’ve earned a reputation, and it moves before us into every ship interaction we have. Because of that, we can appear both intimidating and as something to be avoided, because ‘what if you meet a crazy one’? You’d think seniority would be a good thing, but few people see us as a ship that’s been there and done that, as they do Swanqueen. We aren’t the ship that can perhaps offer advice on things going on in whippersnapper fandoms based on our experiences, as it would be in an ideal world. We’re not a ship to be aligned with, and because of this odd perception of wlw vs. mlm, there was simply never any potential that support for Supercorp wasn’t going to skyrocket. It was a fight against ‘That monolithic mlm ship that just won’t stop’, as it were, because here we still are hanging onto threads hoping our ship will go canon, and based on past evidence, the fall of other mlm ships, and only looking in from the outside, that seems like wishful thinking.

So we were unlikely to gain allies from heartbroken mlm fandoms. We were unlikely to find allies in wlw fandoms. It’s sad, of course, because for all the talk of representation in media, the desire to express a balance and cheerlead for mlm, imo an obvious representation underdog, simply doesn’t ever come up. Our friends and relatives roll our eyes at us if we talk about Destiel because we get that ridiculous light in our eyes when we do. Ultimately, that meant that Destiel was on its own. It had to unify. It had to pour its passion into voting and be a family again. It’s been knocked out in previous years - honestly based on what I’ve heard it’s been a disaster - but THIS YEAR we pulled out all the stops. That was all us. Despite antivoting, Destiel shippers - and only Destiel shippers - fought and fought - thousands of votes after thousands of votes, as we made small leads only to slip three times further. We didn’t stop. We were there and fighting right up until the end. And it may just have been a silly online poll, but I think it really goes to show what we can do when we put our hearts into it. We more than doubled the amount of votes cast in the previous round, over the exact same time scale, even though Supercorp fought back with everything they had, all the vibrancy of being a fresh, shunned ship determined to prove themselves, using social media strategy and unity to bring in votes from wherever they could get them. They fought well. They were wiley and smart, and so passionate; passionate like I thought I’d forgotten how to be.

And we kept fighting. We were in the semis, with twice as many votes more than Swanqueen, and we fought tooth and nail and almost got there, slipping just in the last half hour.

I have to believe that that’s because some people in the Destiel family have hope. I know we’ve drawn in a lot of new and returning shippers recently, I’ve seen you following me and starting out in meta writing yourselves, joining Destiel exchanges for the first time, sharing your first codas. The DCBB and Pinefest have had ENORMOUS turnouts. We are, despite all odds, growing as a ship again.

I really hope that we can overcome the shame that has somehow been drummed into us for shipping mlm. I hope that we can all, whether we ship wlw, mlm, het or poly or whatever peeps are doing these days, make sure not to raise one as an ideal over the others, because it’s not in the spirit of family, of fandom. It is never ‘us against them’, it’s never a case of moral or ethical superiority, definitely not even in everyday parlance and least of all in a shipping popularity contest.

And maybe despite the risk, we’ll get an ‘I love you’, some hand holding. Hell, maybe even a kiss (Supernatural never even gave us a kiss between Jesse and Cesar, though, so I have my doubts.) But God if that wouldn’t pave the way for better deconstruction of toxic masculinity on genre TV, more presence of bisexual men and gay men on genre TV, and more men kissing and open expression of sexuality on genre TV.

So here’s my final word. Maybe the bunnies will kiss. Maybe they’ll even do what bunnies do, who knows? And maybe next year we’ll win it.

I hope I didn’t step on any toes with this post. I felt like these words needed to come out of me, though, so here they are. Thank God there’s no more Zimbio until next year, right? Please refer back to my first paragraph for disclaimers. Thanks, though, if you read this far.

#zimbio #destiel #bisexuality #as i was writing this i was like wow i have issues #it felt good to talk about them #please feel free to disregard #shipping #multishipping #woes #personal #my bed is calling me #looooong post #dean is bisexual #what that means to me

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