#fwiw i think a lot of ppl can relate!!!

[tea-and-secrets]

I'm 28 and i've never been in a real relationship. i don't think i'm ugly, i have friends, i have a steady cool job, a nice flat, i'm pretty satisfied with my life.

i have this very romantic burried part of me who dreams of finding love but i just can't make the step. i'm on tinder, i try to be open at social events but it's like... i don't know, like i'm blocking myself from men, like i know when i find the one it will all make sense but until then no one can approach me as more than a friend.

i know if i wanted to, really wanted to, i could get a boyfriend, but i want the big relationship, the real thing, not just something i chose to do with someone. i don't know. it really is the only part of my life i still feel lost about. I'm scared of growing old alone but I'm also scared of a tasteless relationship. i know my soulmate is out there, i don't want anyone else. does anyone relate?

.

[kae-karo]

hi! me again! i understand that bi/pan people with a preference would never be considered lesbians but i had it presented to me as being like bisexual homoromantic which would be as valid as being ace and homoromantic right? and i don't understand how A's id could affect or imply anything about B's id? like the acknowledgment of demigirls doesn't affects girls being fully girls? as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered, otherwise we would all just be they/them? (1/2)

non queer people very much understand pronouns to indicate gender. so why is language malleable when it comes to redefining gender and pronouns but not when it comes to using orientation labels differently? also i read that carrd and want to clarify i would never make the argument that trans people aren't "really" the gender they id as. also, i'm sorry for asking so much but i'm just trying to understand.

--

hi dear! for context (x) and please don’t apologize for asking questions! there are so many people who would rather shut down and not try to understand, i will always greatly appreciate people who are actively trying to learn

also sorry this got wAY too long lmao i have a lot of thoughts, apparently...

as for the way the term bi/pan lesbian was presented to you, that’s totally understandable! and again, per my lil caveat, the idea of expressing a difference in romantic and sexual attraction with a single term (like being bi/pansexual but lesbian in terms of romantic attraction) is totally chill but i think the part that starts to come into question is the large movement of people who were using bi/pan lesbian in the way i described in my other post (ie as a way to express that they are “lesbian but with some attraction to men, still”)

in terms of how person A identifies and how that affects person B, the point is less about an individual interaction - no, how a stranger chooses to identify themself does not directly affect my identity. to your notion of demigirls and the fact that they don’t negate the identity of women, that’s totally true! it’s not so much that a person’s identity negates another’s, more that the words a person uses to identify themself can affect others, because we tie certain terms with certain experiences. by a group of people commandeering terminology that already has an experience tied to it, the people who already use that terminology (because they have that experience) can start to feel as though their experience and identity are being called into question

okay, so if bi/pan lesbians become a standard terminology to describe ppl who would id as lesbians if not for some attraction to men, that could start to bring into question whether all or any lesbians could be attracted to men (as the person in the tweet mentioned). now (certain) men may start to believe that any person who ids as a lesbian might still be attracted to men, so these certain men may think that they have a chance with that lesbian even though the man ids as a man! this could lead to harassment, or the lesbian in question may already be prone to some internalized homophobia. now they’re starting to wonder if their attraction should include men because they id as a lesbian (and apparently, lesbian could include attraction to men), or if they’ve just been ‘confused’, as people may have told them before, and they start to doubt their own identity and whether ‘lesbian’ is the right reflection of their experiences (which it is, except that the term has been hijacked and presented as including experiences that actually belong in the bi/pan community)

and, once again, the way the terminology is structured (a ‘bi/pan lesbian’) seems to imply that the person in question doesn’t want to be attracted to men. if they did, why not use an umbrella term like bi or pan as their identity? the only distinguishing feature here is that one is inclusive while the other says ‘i’m attracted to women primarily and would like to identify as a lesbian, except for that pesky bit of me that’s attracted to men too...’ again, this is a harmful ideology to let grow, not only for those already identifying as bi/pan but for baby queers who may not fully understand their own identities yet! or for people outside the community who are trying to understand to the best of their abilities as allies!

to that end, it also propagates that harmful rhetoric of ‘oof, doesn’t it suck to be attracted to men lmao’ like MAN that’s really hurtful to guys??? and that rhetoric already exists. notions like this (where a wonderful umbrella term is turned into something that seeks to minimize attraction to men/male-aligned genders) can be so harmful not only to cis men and transmasc/trans men who are a part of the community but men outside the community as well

okay with regards to pronouns: i think this is where we start to get into the deconstruction of gender as a social construct. i feel like the most apt analogy here is the one i provided in the other post: names. names have, throughout history, been gendered (for the most part). sally was a girl, timmy was a boy. but we’ve started to deconstruct that as we’ve started to recognize that there are more than 2 genders (as a societal whole, i’m aware that this hasn’t been news in a while for people in the queer community). you have names like alex, sam, riley, names that you can’t look at and go ‘ah, they are [certain] gender!’ which is awesome for everyone! esp for people who are sensitive about their gender identity and for whom it is bothersome, upsetting, or even triggering to be misgendered!

pronouns are grammatically just a substitute for a noun, they take the place of the noun for the sake of ease of speech/writing. so the first question here is why, if we’ve extrapolated and separated the idea of someone’s name from their gender and acknowledged that the thing that we refer to them by is just...a noise they like, then why is it necessary for pronouns (another thing that is just a noise the person likes) to be inherently tied to a gender? a gender is a representation of an experience, but people who use the same pronouns may have nothing in common in terms of their gender experience!

now, you could argue that people who use they/them pronouns may be able to rally around a shared experience/frustration with getting others to use and accept those pronouns, but they likely aren’t all going to share a gender - maybe some are fem-aligned, or masc-aligned, or genderfluid or agender or any other gender on the massive spectrum of possible gender identities. but the way that they ask others to refer to themselves purely as an individual does not help give any insight into their experiences or community! 

you stated that ‘as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered?’, so my question here is what purpose do pronouns actually serve? they allow you to refer to a person without using their name, right? so if we’re talking outside the world of grammar, i would argue that a person’s pronouns are an extension of their name: the purpose of a name and/or pronouns is to ensure that they make the user of said name/pronouns comfortable in their identity when being referred to. they are whatever gender they are (if any at all) - they may choose a name and pronouns to help them feel more comfortable in who they are. in fact, they may choose a name and pronouns that they didn’t use from birth simply because they do not feel comfortable with them for non-gender-related reasons, too!

and i can hear you thinking ‘okay, so why can’t we do that with labels like sexuality and just let people use whatever feels okay?’ and this is sort of the way i think about it: there are certain words we have defined with clarity in order to help us as a community understand ourselves and each other. we all agree that cis = you are the gender you were assigned at birth, trans = you are not the gender you were assigned at birth. lesbian means attraction to women/fem-aligned genders, ace means feeling no sexual attraction, bi and pan are siblings of each other that define attraction to all genders (which may or may not include preferences). male and female as genders have clear enough meanings that we use them in our other definitions, and nonbinary is a lovely catch-all umbrella that can encompass anything outside ‘male’ and ‘female’, even though there are also more specific identities that fall under that umbrella

(quick aside - fwiw i don’t think gender definitions are necessarily malleable in the same way pronoun ‘definitions’ are, i think there are gender experiences that we have not yet given formal terms to and that people may switch around between existing gender identifying terms as they look for ones that get close to their own and i think there’s still a question of what it even means to be a certain gender without reference to other genders, but as it stands, people who identify with certain gender terms do so because of a set of shared experiences that fall underneath that gender term)

what we have not done is defined an individual’s right to their experiences. if someone feels attraction to all genders with a preference for men, there’s a word to express that! if a person feels like they might shift between a variety of genders on a regular basis, there’s a word for that! if a person does not feel romantic attraction, there’s a word for that! and the reason we use these words with pre-defined definitions is so that we can identify people who share our experiences - if someone identifies as a lesbian, they can seek out other lesbians and know that they are among a group that understands what they have been through or are going through. if someone experiences attraction to all genders with a female/fem-aligned preference, they are likely not going to find a community that understands their experiences if they look for people who identify as lesbian

but if a person decides that hey, i feel most myself when people call me ‘emma’ even though that wasn’t my assigned birth name, that is when we step back and say ‘yes, that’s awesome! you do you!’ because there is no pre-defined definition of that name - yes, there’s a societal gender often associated with it, but it doesn’t provide anyone any benefit to assign a definition of an experience to that name. nobody is out there going ‘where are all the ‘emmas’, the ‘emmas’ understand my experience and i want to find them so that i can feel as though i’m part of the ‘emma’ community’

now, idk about you, but if i hear that someone uses she/her pronouns, that means....almost nothing to me, except that i know that they prefer those pronouns! in the same way that someone saying ‘oh, my name is emma’ means nothing to me except that their name is emma! whereas if someone says to me, ‘i’m asexual’, i know from their choice of identifier that they fall under the ace umbrella and awesome, this person might understand how i feel about certain subjects! (obviously ace is a huge spectrum in itself, but you get the idea)

in summary:

an orientation or a gender relates to an individual’s experiences, and the general definitions we have assigned to certain orientations and genders should remain somewhat clearly-defined in order to provide a sense of community for those that fall under the orientation/gender in question. that is not to say that new orientations/gender terms can’t arise to describe new experiences that do not already have a definition. the irritation with the ‘bi/pan lesbian’ discourse is that the experience described (attraction to all genders with fem-aligned preference) already has a defined term (bi or pan) that is contradictory to the term ‘lesbian’

the reason pronouns don’t need to fall under a clear definition is that they are not a signal to indicate a uniting experience - their purpose and function is equivalent to that of a name: it’s a way to refer to a person that makes that person feel comfortable, and it’s perfectly fine not to have a rigid definition for pronouns in the same way that you wouldn’t assign a name to have a rigid experience or definition associated with it

i know it’s a long read, but i hope that helps clarify my thoughts on the matter!

[jan-uinely]

h-o-t t-a-k-e-s

merp merp we’re back : - )

AS5. blah blah. the villain edit. blah blah. 

it’s kind of funny that there are more weak links on this season than there were on season 12 but we won't talk about that. 

everyone has a lot of opinions on the villain edit. and fwiw i am against the premise. that being said, if people say not so nice things they say not so nice things. that being said, it’s harder to compare reactions to an AS villain edit with a regular season villain edit. bc of course the whole point of all stars was that you know the people who are competing as they have competed prior. that being said there is still a dangerous trend of QOC getting a more extreme and frequent villain edit and that is a problem. and that “statement” drag race put out?? like what took u so long?? and u dont take actions to avoid it either. 

here’s the thing. i understand the cracker arc. u r either doubting and not confident or u r difficult. bc that is me. i will either raise my hand in a social setting or play a hard devil’s advocate on shit that doesn't really matter. in work, i know i can be difficult. when I disagree with what is going on in a group project or in school i can be difficult. i dont make friends easily. it takes time. and ppl sometimes get the wrong first impression bc i dont really know how to make conversation. and even still there are only a handful of ppl irl that know a lot about me bc i cycle thru ppl bc i cycle thru places. I haven’t lived in the same city for more than a year since college. and when cracker was like this is how yesterday should have gone, that whole thing is something that i can also relate to. speaking up at inappropriate moments, derailing conversations with irrelevant information. so when i say i dont think i have changed since college it’s these executive functioning decisions that i mean. 

that being said, i dont think the producers had intended for it to go this way. i think they expected derrick to stay longer and the derrick india thing be the main point of tension. but alas. the thing is derrick got a lot of second chances in s8, and you don’t really get those in all stars. but derrick makes really really good television. based on how it’s going, if there is a returning queen i would not be surprised if it were derrick. 

but like we are at top 8 now and i can still see a very clear top 3-4, which is something that i could not see at this point in season 12. 

they are also making snatch game very small this season, which i appreciate. i thought it was put together horribly in s12 w like 10 girls. [the fact that jan and jaida had like one line each was rude] so there will be a max of 7 for snatch game. 

tbh i also think that the 9 person number was a mistake. they could have done 3 groups of 3 or 1 of 4 and 1 of 5. but they spent more time singing the prerecorded chorus than the verses, which are the main point. i also did not like the girly girl theme. 

idk i thought the first episode was more entertaining. 

oh but shea coulee. drag excellence. when i heard the rap in the rehearsal i knew she would be in the top if not the winner. and so congenial as well. just all around perfection. 

[bthump]

this is random af and really doesn't have anything to do with this blog but idk who else to ask sorry. is it weird that i'm a bi girl who's decidely attracted to men but i dislike/am different to every m/f ship? like they all annoy/bore me even the ones who are relatively well-written. and when it comes to charas with no canon sexualities i'd rather hc them as gay/lesbian than bi (like guts and griffith). maybe it's just that i'm sick of m/f romance and struggle with my sexuality a lot idk

no worries about asking random questions, i’ll do my best to give a decent answer even if it’s not about berserk lol :)

first of all, sorry to hear that you struggle with your sexuality a lot, i’ve been there (tbh i’m still there in plenty of ways lol) and it sucks, and trying to figure out how your fiction preferences do or don’t fit in can definitely make it harder.

but i absolutely don’t think it’s weird to be bi but dislike m/f. there are so many possible reasons to have ship preferences that aren’t identical to your sexuality, and honestly i find a lot of ppl’s insistence that ship preferences are always related to sexuality (or personal attraction or rl relationship preferences in general) to be weird.

and personally i can relate bc i’m also bi, and i’m the same wrt headcanoning characters w/out canon sexualities as gay/les as much as possible, on top of shipping almost solely m/m and f/f. like i’ve disliked most het romances in media since i was a kid lol, and I can think of a ton of potential reasons, including stuff like fatigue with how everpresent it is and annoying tropes associated with het romance, etc, but at the end of the day the only thing worth worrying about imo is making sure you have enough good gay fic and/or indie gay romance novels to read lol.

(plus fwiw I know a lot of people who are also bi but prefer gay ships to het ships, so idt it’s even that unusual, though ofc it probably depends on your fandom circle.)

so idk, basically your ask is relatable but I don’t think you should have to worry about it being weird. whatever your reasons are, your romance preferences both fictional and irl are #valid

[godsfavouredprincess]

Lucifer in fiction post #32890432894032

(FWIW, I distinguish fictional Lucifer from fictional Satan/the Devil/whatever manifestation of evil ppl wanna put a name to. I’m talking about the fallen archangel here, a figure who in fiction is similar to Prometheus.)

As per the previous quote post I reblogged, I ended up not finishing I, LUCIFER years ago because the way most men handle Lucifer as a character is so... dull, I guess? He just doesn’t have any nuance or charm, as per my own standards of what makes a character likable.

I think a lot of that has to do with the limited perspective of what (male) authors assume Lucifer has to be like, which often amounts to shitty behavior by a guy who is occasionally witty but mostly pouts around, feeling sorry for himself, saying edgy shit about the world without channeling any of that emotion into a larger structure of challenging oppressive, backwards, damaging, denigrating, dehumanizing, and all around everyday “evil” elements of human society. Basically, if your idea of Lucifer is a guy who laughs up his sleeve at hairless apes and gives a half-assed eyeroll to any hardworking effort anyone makes--if your idea of Lucifer is someone who indulges in “rebellious” behavior (drugs, constant sex--i.e., an immature idea of what “rebellion” is) instead of any larger, actually... meaningful rebellion--or if you write a Lucifer who would not be out of place on some shit show like South Park, then you are writing a bad Lucifer.

If we compare Lucifer’s archetype to that of Prometheus--someone who steals/challenges a higher power they believe is unjust/said power doing something that is unseemly and damaging to those with no means to defend themselves--then a Lucifer whose rebellion is just mindless self-indulgence (hah) feels a bit cheap, doesn’t it? It feels like a wasted effort, and most definitely is wasted potential. You could do something with the idea of the ultimate cosmic rebel that would have more emotional and thematic significance besides “I wanna do lines off a stripper’s ass and laugh gleefully at the horrible things humans do to themselves”, but I don’t often see (male) writers doing this.

There are times when people can go the middle road with this--have their Lucifer be someone who clearly dislikes the everyday, human-made/spread evil inflicted on ourselves, and has his own character flaws (say, y’know, pride) result in dramatic tension and story progression--but I can’t think of many that handle it well.

One of the reasons SPN!Lucifer is mostly majorly appealing to me in theory is because the show did what the show always has to do with its side characters, and it’s make the major emotional core of the plot, no matter which character it involves, always tie in to the brothers. This is more egregious with other characters than it was (is?) with SPN!L, because, y’know, the whole vessel plotline. But as far as his motivations go (I’m talking pre-crisis SPN!Lucifer--like, y’know, before he did what is basically a sexual assault and I honestly hope every writer responsible for that loses a tooth), his emotions and perspective and motivations had to be framed in a way for the viewer to be like, “OH HEY THAT’S JUST HOW SAM FEELS.” Which, look, I get it--you have to find a way to make this nigh inconceivable-by-humanity character have relatable/understandable motivations. And what easier way to do that than to make it similar to one of the main characters on the show? I’m not saying it was a bad decision, just that it was a decision with limited scope, since SPN!L basically exists to be a reflection/accompaniment to Sam’s pre-existing problems, and the drama already in the show (which was... five seasons old at this point, like a tennis match of ‘which brother will fuck up this season, and why?’).

SPN!L’s strengths, and thus his appeal for me, came in when we looked at his feelings towards God and his family in a larger framework of a dysfunctional family/power structure that, no matter how much they love each other, still do harm to one another either because they don’t listen/learn, or the authority figure is completely inept at compassion/caretaking. With SPN!L we even go on to learn that his Fall wasn’t even his own damn fault, so that only increases the potential (and thus the wasted potential) of utilizing the righteous rebel figure that’s part and parcel of the Lucifer archetype.

I find myself seeking comfort by leaning more and more on this idea of a righteous rebel, and a masculine one at that, because the state America’s in is so horrifying and monstrous and absolutely triggering for me as an assault survivor. I take comfort in imagining the penultimate rebel--the first and greatest “sinner,” the Adversary--taking a look at this shit, cracking his knuckles, and stepping in to do something about it, or at least that anger being similar to the fury I feel within me each time I look away from this goddamn website. I find that--that rage, that fury, that righteous rebellion against corrupt/foul/dishonest authority--a lot more comforting and safe and satisfying than hoping that some beacon of goodness will prevail, or that a miracle will happen, and I can’t properly figure out why (though I imagine it’s a mixture of things--personal feelings, spirituality issues, my own tastes regarding fiction, self-indulgent comfort, etc.). And I just wish that more fiction writers felt the same, and did something about it with this archetype.

[shipping-isnt-morality]

So there's this post all over my dash lately. It's with a picture of Thor, and text "when u have siblings and like fictional sibling relationships but ppl are gross about it" and i just.... i get it and i respect it and I've unfollowed those ppl. But as someone who has incest ships such as, say, Thorki, but who ALSO happens to have four siblings... it feels like that post is claiming I can't differ between fiction and reality and that i'll do awful things to my siblings. Which I would never do.1

(thor pic anon)2 and I just. I don't dare to bring it up on my blog because ppl would totally take it the wrong way. Like I would never do such things- BECAUSE I know the difference between fiction and reality. but it's just driving me up the wall seeing that post everywhere... and I guess I wanted to rant at someone who would listen and not, y'know, be able to send hate mail back at me for this opinion that u can ship incest AND have siblings you love in a purely platonic, family way.—OH mood, anon. I’ve seen that post too, and like..... As a discourse blog: the post is fine, you’re totally entitled to think thorki is gross and make gentle fun of it, the reaction image is kind of funny.As a regular person: uuuughghggh Leave us alone we know you think it’s gross we’re just doing dumb shit with fictional gods it’s not a big deal FWIW, I did talk to a couple mutuals who reblogged the post, and we had really enlightening conversations about how they see a lot of their sibling relationships in these ships, so seeing them as romantic is uncomfortable and gross, while I don’t see Thor & Loki as actual siblings any more than I see them as actual gods and don’t relate them to my own family much at all, so it doesn’t really bother me. (We agreed that I’d tag and they’d blacklist and we’d stay mutuals, because some people are reasonable human beings about finding fictional things gross, as it turns out.)anyways yeah the post isn’t Awful or anything but I totally get the annoyance