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My Spotify wrapped!

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Random Thoughts

As this side blog is my place to rant I am going to just rant. My Rants will consist of fandom things as well as just things I feel I want o vent about. so if you're here for it great if not well..... just move on.

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queer is a slur, grow up

‘Queer’ was reclaimed as an umbrella term for people identifying as not-heterosexual and/or not-cisgender in the early 1980s, but being queer is more than just being non-straight/non-cis; it’s a political and ideological statement, a label asserting an identity distinct from gay and/or traditional gender identities.People identifying as queer are typically not cis gays or cis lesbians, but bi, pan, ace, trans, nonbinary, intersex, etc.: we’re the silent/ced letters. We’re the marginalised majority within the LGBTQIA+ community, and‘queer’ is our rallying cry.

And that’s equally pissing off and terrifying terfs and cis LGs.

There’s absolutely no historical or sociolinguistic reason why ‘queer’ should be a worse slur than ‘gay.’ Remember how we had all those campaigns to make people stop using ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘bad’?

Yet nobody is suggesting we should abolish ‘gay’ as a label. We accept that even though ‘gay’ sometimes is and historically frequently was used in a derogatory manner, mlm individuals have the right to use that word. We have ad campaigns, twitter hashtags, and viral Facebook posts defending ‘gay’ as an identity label and asking people to stop using it as a slur.

Whereas ‘queer’ is treated exactly opposite: a small but vocal group of people within feminist and LGBTQIA+ circles insists that it’s a slur and demands that others to stop using it as a personal, self-chosen identity label.

Why?

Because “queer is a slur” was invented by terfs specifically to exclude trans, nonbinary, and intersex people from feminist and non-heterosexual discourse, and was subsequently adopted by cis gays and cis lesbians to exclude bi/pan and ace people.

It’s classic divide-and-conquer tactics: when our umbrella term is redefined as a slur and we’re harassed into silence for using it, we no longer have a word for what we are allowing us to organise for social/political/economic support; we are denied the opportunity to influence or shape the spaces we inhabit; we can’t challenge existing community power structures; we’re erased from our own history.

I’m not kidding. Cis LGs have literally taken historical evidence of queer people’s involvement in the LGBT rights struggle and photoshopped it to erase us:

Pro tip: when you alter historical evidence to deny a marginalised group empowerment, you’re one of the bad guys.

“Queer is a slur” is used by terfs and cis gays/lesbians to silence the voices of trans/nonbinary/intersex/bi/pan/ace people in society and even within our own communities, to isolate us and shame us for existing.

“Queer is a slur” is saying “I am offended by people who do not conform to traditional gender or sexual identities because they are not sexually available to me or validate my personal identity.”

“Queer is a slur” is defending heteronormativity.

“Queer is a slur” is frankly embarrassing. It’s an admission of ignorance and prejudice. It’s an insidious discriminatory discourse parroted uncritically in support of a divisive us-vs-them mentality targeting the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQIA+ community for lack of courage to confront the white cis straight men who pose an actual danger to us as individuals and as a community.

Tl;dr:

I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m too old for this shit.

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EVIL DEAD II (1987) dir. Sam Raimi / EVIL DEAD (2013) dir. Fede Alvarez

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For the record, if I don’t make it out of here, don’t put me down for mummification. THE MUMMY (1999)

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I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have been in the queer movement for 20+ years, to have studied queer theory, to have contributed to you potentially enjoying the rights you have today because I was part of a groundswell of lobbying and direct action in the 1990s….

…to have a 15 year old who’s spent maybe 8 months being political and has never inquired about queer history anonymously message me, “EXCUSE ME QU**R IS A SLUR LMAO OMG EMBARRASSSING AN aCTUAL ADULT WHO THINKS IT’S OKAY TO USE QU**R!~!!!!”

Dude, we are a slur. Queer folks are a slur to conservative straight people. Everything we are will be used as a slur by everyone who hates us. Gay is a slur. Lesbian is a slur. People will try to use all of our words against us. Don’t fucking let them get into your head to the point at which you’re telling actual queer people not to use the words we’ve used to unite ourselves and empower ourselves for decades. 

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What if I show you something worse? “If I see something that you don’t like, you’re gonna be all, “Bruno makes bad things happen. Oh, he’s creepy and his vision killed my goldfish.”

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hey asking for a friend but uh. what’s it gonna take for fandom to relearn the difference between “canon” and “word of god”?

★ canon = the text itself; the show/movie/book/comic; the actual up-on-Netflix content; anything a casual fan would reasonably interact with ★ word of god = anything else, i.e. interviews with cast/crew/showrunners; DVD commentaries; comments from the crew on social media or at cons; literally any written or verbal remarks about the text made by writers or showrunners or actors

word of god does not equal canon, and yet i increasingly see fandoms conflating the two and acting like word of god comments from The Powers That Be count as canon and are equivalent to canon footnotes to the text and i’m. NO. listen. it’s not. that’s not what canon means, and word of god comments should not be treated as part of the canon text. this isn’t just me being a pedantic text purist, this has actual negative consequences for shows and fandoms and people’s experience of the stories, i mean:

it privileges the creator’s interpretation of the text as the only “correct” one. death of the author? no one’s heard of her. writers and showrunners get to tell fans how to interpret the text, and a solid 80% of fandom is going “okay, if you say so!”

it stifles fandom debate and analysis, because fan analysis of the text at hand is rejected outright by other fans on the basis that “well the showrunners said it’s like this”

it contributes to fandom bullying, in which word of god comments are used to harass people who have the audacity to want to interpret the work differently, or who disagree with the powers that be, or just don’t want to consider those comments at all in their understanding of the story

word of god comments may be confusing; they may change over time or contradict earlier statements; they may even contradict the text itself. all of which leads to fans frantically trying to reconcile word of god comments with actual canon, rather than going “okay fuck this, it doesn’t make sense so i’m disregarding it”

again: this only creates more arguments in fandom; if creators say x at one point, and y at another, you end up with more fandom slap-fights over which comment was the ‘correct’ one and which interpretation ‘wins’

it encourages lazy and unsatisfying storytelling. if fanon will accept word of god comments as canon, showrunners develop an attitude of “it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, we can just handwave it in an interview”

this results in poor writing, or important plot points being explained in word of god comments rather than in actual canon

this in turn makes the story confusing and incomprehensible to anyone who’s not knee-deep in fandom. casual fans, kids, someone bingeing the series 5 years from now on crunchyroll… they’re not reading the interviews or tweets or watching the comicon panels. those viewers still need to be able to understand the story, and we are slip-sliding towards a creator-fandom model in which they won’t be able to, because word of god comments run the risk of becoming required reading for understanding the story

this has serious implications for how stories handle representation: if fans start accepting word of god as equivalent to canon, it means shows can keep canon rep (particularly queer rep) vague and ambiguous, and prop it up with word of god comments that “confirm the representation”. there’s no incentive to actually commit to unambiguous, clear canon rep if stories can lean on word of god to compensate for the utter lack of actual diversity in the canon text itself

the canon text has to stand alone. word of god should serve as a trove of fun trivia or behind-the-scenes tidbits about the writing process; it is not supposed to be a substitute for clear, concise, and comprehensive storytelling. a story that doesn’t make sense unless you’ve read 8 different explanatory interviews by the writers is badly written. showrunners who treat interviews as a place to offload all the character development or plot explanations they didn’t bother to include in the actual text are lazy hacks who are bad at their jobs.

word of god can be handy and fun and informative, and for people who are interested in creator comments or interviews there’s no harm in paying attention to that stuff. but it’s not canon. the canon is the text itself. anything else is supplementary to that, and fans are absolutely allowed to disregard anything not in canon if they choose.

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Keep on banning words Tumblr… ya’ll just encouraging this hellsite to continue to develop its own language, (we already got hieroglyphic memes, emoticons, hellsite specific phrases, inside jokes, etc.) further solidifying its status as a sub-culture. For as you anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, etc. know, language is at the core of culture.

Go forth Tumblr users. Make this site a hell! (affectionate)

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He is a Daddy!

SPNCREATORSDAILY GRATITUDE CELEBRATION:     🍁 DAY 4: “SWEATER” WEATHER 

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So it’s a show? It’s a lifestyle. It’s a religion. 

GILMORE GIRLS’ 20th anniversary week / favorite lines of dialogue

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GILMORE GIRLS | 4.06 “An Affair to Remember”

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Moon Squad

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