#BUT i also acknowledge that it would b nice to have just some queer characters in films that r just 'some guy' u kno?

[dee-in-the-box]

happy pride month, y'all! have some pride headcanons!!

none of these people are straight and/or cis to me. they've all got some weird queerness going on with them

Jack: transmasc (he/him mostly, but probably wouldn't mind they/them that much), bisexual. could see him being acespec, but sex favorable or indifferent. polyamorous.

Dave: nonbinary in a "i don't understand gender and idgaf about it" way (he/him, but honestly doesn't care. probably would find out about it/its pronouns and love those), pansexual. teach this guy about xenogenders i think he'd love those too. polyamorous (i can see it).

Peter: transfem bigender (he/she), and honestly doesn't know what her sexuality would be considering his weird gender situation (look, he grew up in the 50s-60s. the most exposure to the queer community she had was through Jack, and that wasn't. A Lot). me personally? i'd say lesbian. because Fuck It, Why Not?

Dee: technically cis because she never got to grow up and figure that stuff out (she/her), but i could see her growing up and being on the spectrum of GNC or Genderqueer (the genderqueer part is Definitely not me projecting (< lie)). also aroace (repulsed on both ends)

Henry: cis man (he/him; the first entirely cis person here), bisexual. listen. i heard that thing that was like. DD originally said he was bi but then changed it to straight after getting hate for it for some reason, and i decided to make it a situation where Henry just like. Acknowledged it was a thing for him but didn't really give any fucks because he busy Committing Crimes Against Humanity. everyone thinks he's straight though, 'cause he never mentions it (again, busy with Other Things. such as Causing Problems).

Steven: cis man (he/him), gay. This Is The Shortest Fucking One. also, Steven is the shortest adult of the cast; he's 5'5".

Harry: masc nonbinary dude (he/they), bisexual, polyamorous.

Jake: cis man (he/him), graysexual panromantic, polyamorous.

Roger: probably got some genderfuckery there, but i'll just say A Dude (gender neutral) for now (he/him), gay (as in Likes Men Or Masc-Leaning People), polyamorous. didn't realize the Gay & Poly Part until Dsaf 3. You'll Never Guess How He Found Out!

Rebecca: transfem (she/they/xe), and just queer in general. not exactly poly, but she doesn't mind Harry's...other partners (Jake and Roger). it's sort of a "This is my boyfriend, and this is my boyfriend's boyfriends! ^-^" situation.

and for a few others:

Caroline: cis woman (she/her), cupioromantic (aromantic micro-label; basically means that you don't feel romantic attraction, but still desire a romantic relationship) heterosexual. she still loves Peter, her love just isn't necessarily "romantic." i'd describe it more like queerplatonic. she got married to Peter because she does genuinely care for him and love him, but also because...well, it was what was expected of her. besides, she doesn't mind being married, it's actually pretty nice. Caroline's as close as y'all are going to get to a cishet Dsaf character from these headcanons.

Matt: transmasc agender (he/him), aroace (romance indifferent/favorable (see: "I'm Matt! Everybody loves me!"), sex indifferent/repulsed (do i even need to explain it? i think we know why this was what i picked for him).

now, fun facts!!

Jack actually doesn't experience a lot of dysphoria, just upset that he doesn't have a dick. he doesn't even mind the boobs too much (except that they make people think he's a woman; that part sucks), he'd probably just like a binder. wouldn't mind top surgery, but y'know. Binders Are Easier To Get And Cheaper Than That.

Dee is romance repulsed in terms of herself for the most part (as in the idea of being romantic herself grosses her out). except for Davesport. she told Jack and Dave to "get a room" multiple times in the Flipside.

Blackjack technically has the same labels as Jack, but y'know. Ghost Dog.

Henry doesn't understand why so many queer people work at Fazbender's (Jack, Steven, Peter, etc) because he just. keeps killing them. not due to the queerness but because They Keep Getting In His Way. what is it about the Chuck E Cheese rip-offs that attracts the gays?? Is It The Bears?? Is It The Fucking BEARS??? (i had to make the joke. i had to)

Modern Day Queer Discourse would piss Jack off. he was alive in the 60s and 70s when that shit was getting more mainstream. he's effectively a queer elder, technically (even if he kinda sorta Looks perpetually twenty-two because he kinda can't age anymore). he's seen some shit. i can see him saying on someone's "He/Him Lesbians Aren't A Thing >:(" post "my bigender brother is a lesbian, though. he's got a wife" and then logging off. you can't tell me he wouldn't

I Stand By My Statement: None Of The Kennedy Siblings Have A Normal Relationship With Gender. They Just Don't.

Jack just uses a lot of slurs for himself. he's got. So Fucking Many that he can reclaim (because y'know. Gay/Bi and Trans. and he was alive during the 60s and 70s. so you can only imagine the shit he's heard or had thrown at him).

the first time in his life that Dave ever had to worry about gender stuff was when Henry was having to like. fill out paperwork and things like that to get him an ID of some kind. when they got to gender, Dave didn't really know why that was important, nor what would really fit. they just put "male" on there because technically that would "fit him best" (since he, y'know. has a dick), but Dave didn't feel like either option fit.

i feel like Jack went to a pride event/parade sometime before Dsaf 3. like, maybe he finally felt comfortable actually going there and being out safely for the first time in his life. it was nice.

Caroline helped Peter with her makeup after she came out, and with growing his hair out.

after coming home post-Dsaf 2, Peter actually tried some dresses out. they also found out a way to still put eyeliner on him. and that was using a Sharpie to draw under her phone dial to look like eyeliner. hey, it works.

Peter never got comfortable enough to wear lipstick before he died, though :( so she never got to experience that

Jack: "If I had a nickel for every time I was someone's gay awakening, I'd have three nickels. Which isn't a lot, but how does this keep happening-" (the three people in question are Dave, Jake, and Roger)

i have so many more istg, but this post is getting long. might talk about some more if anyone's interested, though!

[buddiebeginz]

you know, the way people are acting like Tommy is the second coming of gay Jesus is actually making me hate him as a character. (Which isn't fair but it's how I'm feeling.) They're acting like he's this well established character when he's had what six episodes across the run of the show. For me it just shows, despite what they've said for years, it was never about telling a good love story. It was never about getting to see a slow burn done with two queer characters where they and the relationship was treated with the same care as the hetero slow burns. It very much feels like it's exactly what M/M shippers have been accused of for years, just wanting to watch two guys kiss.

I don't personally hate Tommy but I have issues with him both from how he was in previous seasons and some stuff he's done since he's been back. The show has this problem where it thinks that if a character has been gone for a bit and they come back and everyone is cool with them then it's fine. They did it with Taylor and also kind of did it with Buck and Chim's parents to some extent. They never really hold characters accountable for their actions. Like with Taylor we should have gotten some kind of scene when she and Buck were together where she says to him or to Bobby hey I'm sorry I was so focused on getting the story that I didn't care about saving your life. But we never had that.

Similarly with Tommy I think we should have gotten a scene with him and Chim and Hen where he said look I was struggling back then I'm sorry I was a dick. And I know they basically made it seem like he made friends with them all before he left the 118 but it would just be nice if 911 would have their characters acknowledge mistreatment more.

I honestly feel like the show and fandom try and hold Buck and Eddie to higher standards than they do to everyone else. Like I can't tell you the amount of posts I saw after Chim punched Buck where people were defending Chim yet we never a scene with Chim apologizing. Also I've seen tons of posts about how wrong Buck was on the basketball court or how wrong Eddie was in the grocery store but they never go as hard at other characters when they mess up. And back to Tommy I've only seen a handful of people even call out what he did on the date. Making that joke about closets when he knew Buck was on his first date with a guy and not out and just really panicking in that moment. I just found it really crass of him on top of him just kind of ditching Buck like he should have at least made sure he got home alright.

I'm happy that we finally got Buck's bi awakening storyline and I'm okay with that being with T*mmy even if I'm not crazy about him. My biggest issue is with B/T shippers and how insufferable some of them have been. Talking about how Buddie doesn't matter and how B/T should be endgame when they've barely known one another makes me want to scream. And it's mostly coming from former Buddie shippers.

And you're right some of these people are really proving the whole fetishizing queer couples argument correct (and I'm not saying this about everyone who likes B/T) but I think for some they just like that it's two hot guys making out and it doesn't really matter who it is. Which I hate to even say that because any time I've liked any queer couple I've had people say that stuff to me when it's always been because I've been invested in the storyline. But there isn't even any storyline yet to be invested in with B/T they kissed once and went on 1 1/2 dates and some people are talking about them getting married at some point >_<

Sorry for the long rant anon. Thanks for the message btw. ❤️Message anytime.

[emblazons]

The heteronormativity is bad but it’s not even just that. I think the bigger problem in the Byler vs Melvin ship war is that since mlm fandoms have a reputation of being misogynistic and hating the female character for “getting in the way” everyone automatically assumes that Bylers fall under that category too (I’ve had sapphic friends who don’t watch the show tell me that they hate Byler because they think that the fans hate women even though most of us are queer women ourselves) and so we have to be extra nice and accommodating and apologize every time anyone even mildly criticizes El on here otherwise we’re labeled misogynistic (and even ableist even though El has no canonical disabilities). Which I think is so dumb because El is a flawed character and that’s a big part of what makes her interesting. Discussing her mistakes doesn’t mean that we hate her, in fact I would go as far as to say that people who recognize her flaws and love her for them care about El more than fake-woke Twitter feminists who try to strip her of all her less than perfect qualities. And don’t even get me started on how acceptable homophobia is in the Melvin fandom. The way that they shit on Will all the time and want to erase him and have him die in the name of “supporting women” is disgusting and idk why Bylers try so hard to cater to these people and just get along. There is no need and there shouldn’t be any desire to get along with homophobes. It’s okay to just hate things and it’s not morally wrong to dislike Melvin and want to stay far away from it.

Mmmm. Well first off I appreciate your honesty and want to (sorry for phrasing it the therapist way lmao) hold space for your irritation with how ignorant people can be in fandom spaces, because it is very real—and especially given the complicated history mlm ships carry in fandom historically, I can see how byler being pigeonholed into the same "you just want to get rid of the girl for your mlm ship" space is frustrating as hell, especially now that it's officially semi-canon.

Also, to your point about El: I agree that there are far too many people who behave as though acknowledging that characters (especially female ones) can be multi-faceted + make mistakes / be imperfect is somehow tantamount to a misogyny, even though good characters (male or female) must have internal challenges and conflicts so they aren’t one-note in the narrative. Too many people act as though their personal resonance or projection onto a character should define everyone else’s understanding and analysis of that character, and that’s something that happens a lot with El, especially in the case of the space she occupies in relationship to Byler.

Personally, I've avoided most of that discourse by not engaging with Byler "versus" Mlvn conversations for the most part, but that I still notice and react to myself when it comes into my space—particularly the "you're misogynistic or ableist" conversation, considering almost all of that is rooted in headcanons and projections, and not El's (or Mike's...or Will's) canonical characterization. You’re completely right to want to stay far away from that kind of discourse/energy—staying away from how I’ve kept myself sane and enjoying st in spite of how chronically online some of the fandom's takes can be.

I don't think there is any solution to it (people are like that in every fandom space, and I don't think they're gonna stop being willfully ignorant or heteronomative now), but...it helps that I know most of the argument surrounding "byler is trying to get rid of El" is based on either not knowing the show, unchecked emotion, or poor media comprehension, because media literate analysis makes it clear that all three characters involved are deeply complex, growing individuals whose stories all have their own purpose—El's is just moving independent, while Mike & Will's are moving toward each other.

People who don't understand or can't see that—or who want to start arguments over byler based on nothing but their understanding of other mlm ships, or their need to posture solely for the sake of being "right" on the internet—are, quite frankly, not people I'm trying to converse with if I can help it. I don't need to be an advocate for byler badly enough to put up with any of that lmao.

Thanks for the ask!

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

call me a lil bitch or whatever but i really can never get behind those posts that r like ‘enough normal queer characters i need INSANE lesbians and FUCKED UP trans people and EVIL gays’ because tho i get wanting interesting & nuanced stories of queer characters written by and for the queer community, the way that some people online frame it as ‘queer characters that r just normal/everyday people are boring’ rubs me the wrong way, ESPECIALLY given that 90% of queer characters in cinema prior to the 90s WAS evil queer characters/villain coded queer characters/etc...

like, if one of those ‘boring’ queer characters helps a young queer person figure themselves out and gives them some kind of hope in this godforsaken hellscape of a world then i don’t really see what the problem is pfft

[dotthings]

The gaslighting needs to stop. Systemic power imbalanced in the tv industry are real. Network interference is real. Erasure and unkindness towards marginalized characters is real. 

I’m more on the canon analysis end of things personally, but I assure you the fans trying to figure out WTF happened here and account for stuff that objectively, even the people more skeptical acknowledge is weird and points back towards network interference, try to debunk their own theories. They are telling you that, they are transparent about their information, if you don’t feel like playing detailed murder wall, then don’t, but to deny there is a very very real power imbalance behind the scenes that hurt marginalized characters and fans, and hurt the story, is toxic. Stop it. 

Things like the Spanish dub and people who have worked on the show coming out of the woodwork to support Destiel should be a clue. Latin America believes it’s a mutually requited love story, canon confirmed from both sides, because that is what aired on a big tv network there. And watch out for that US-centric thinking that somehow thinks this doesn’t count. (Also plot twist: the US is the restrictive market. Wake up).

My wheelhouse is more canon analysis so I’m going to say now that the gaslighting about canon, about aired canon, about confirmed canon, about implied canon, seems to me a whole lot of toxic detached-from-reality hand waving so hard to still, STILL!!--try to deny the validity of Destiel. I’m glad some of y’all think this is merely hilarious, and after not showing up and not being supportive and not sticking your neck out at all to protect Destiel shippers from bullying, you came back just to eat the popcorn because it amuses you and I’m supposed to think that’s pro-Destiel supportive or something, or it’s people who have no horse in the race who just want fandom entertainment so everything’s a joke while they reinforce the exact attitudes that let this kind of systemic oppression perpetuate and get away with erasing marginalized voices in the tv industry, in fandom, in stories. Nice work, people. Your holier-than-thou attitude is real convincing. 

Then there’s the people trying to convince everyone it’s convincing to play false equivalency cha-cha and as if people only see this as canon due to a) 1 slash joke b) they stared at each other that one time c) drapes. Because old school fans are so proud that in their day, nobody wanted their queer ships to be canon and Destiel is just like *insert whatever slash ship of the past that had about 1/10th of the loud textual material and canon development Destiel has*. You want to try to argue against the epic nature of the text on Dean and Cas, hey give it your all, but it’s not going to hold up. If I started listing off the immensity, things that are textual plot points, it would be a 3,000 word essay. Stop playing false equivalency. Stop trying to artificially yank this back into the past because you can’t handle the textual validity of Destiel.

Deal with the fact that this is not an easily classifiable situation.

Even if in the end the same old systemic crap stifled its full due, and that’s the part that is tiresome, Dean and Cas deserve better than have their actual canon content demeaned.

After the story we have seen. After 12 seasons of deep-dive development. After Cas was finally openly confirmed as queer, and in love with Dean, in the final season, 2 episodes from the end, and Misha echoed it, and from Dean’s side, because full confirmation on Dean’s side is being held down, Jensen protected a romantic reading, protected people’s right to see Dean as in love with Cas not having a chance to speak his heart. Protected the right to that reading within the ambiguity that he knows is as far as the canon was able to take it. After the ship became canon confirmed as at least unrequited love story. Whether Jensen ships it or not, he has been very loudly and openly protective of fan readings and has been very openly excited about 15.18 and the handprint, he knows this is a great story and he’s been openly excited about how excited and joyful fans were about that episode. 

But what we have seen on our screens, what the story told us, transcends the muzzles placed on it. What we have seen is a mutually requited love story. We already saw in action how Dean loves Cas. We are left with, in the end, the silencing of Dean Winchester. Gosh I wonder why the silencing of Dean Winchester. Why was it necessary. Why was he not even permitted to speak at all, to anyone, to confide about how he even felt about Cas’s love confession. Why did Jensen have to do the heavy lifting to meta it for us. Why did Cas have to be left fully out of the series finale on a show he was so key on for 12 seasons, as a 3rd lead. Why is that? Because the only thing the creative team would ever be allowed to do by corporate is friendzone it and they didn’t want to friendzone it. 

So we are cursed with ambiguity from Dean’s side. And if the series finale had done better by Dean’s story, including his death, and by Cas’s story (instead of shoving him out of sight), if it hadn’t erased Eileen and Saileen, if it hadn’t failed Sam’s story, if it hadn’t been a regressive, awkward mess, most shippers would have accepted ambiguity if Dean and Cas has been given at least the respect of a reunion, if Dean had at least been given the chance to partially speak even if it couldn’t be removed from ambiguity. But the system was too scared of it. It had to be held down and muffled hard.

It was yanked out of the story artificially in ways that don’t match Destiel’s narrative importance before the series finale and don’t match 12 seasons of storytelling. It’s artificial. It is a silencing. And it shows. 

That sudden silence was a scream.

"The writers” were for it. “The writers” wanted to tell that story even if network interference prevented it. Some of us were gaslighted and smeared and bashed just for pointing it out, and we turned out to be right.

DESTIEL IS CANON. And the parts where fans still have to rely on interpretation for have ample, AMPLE, story evidence and external evidence--that has nothing to do with deeper dive murder walls, it has to do with support shown, and confirmed information--all point to a mutually reciprocated love story.

How many more times do shippers have to be proven right before people stop this. I was bullied for several seasons just for saying Destiel was a purposefully crafted a valid textual reading, by my own lane. For asserting it was a love story designed to dodge under network radar. I was bullied for years before that by antis, who didn’t like seeing people love this ship too much, who didn’t like that I refused to get down on my knees and label myself as delusional just for seeing it, for refusing to bow down and say “it’s only about 2 brothers so I am wrong to say Destiel matters too.” 

The unkindness in this fandom over all this continues to be overwhelming. Get your shit together.  You worship your favorite actors and then they show you up every time by being kinder and more open and understanding than fans manage to be. Jensen and Misha are showing you how to roll and people are ignoring it in favor of continuing to try to silence and demean Destiel shippers.

For Destiel shippers, don’t let all this gaslighting and shaming nonsense and the systemic corporate nonsense that wants Destiel silenced knock you off from your reading of canon. It was valid. It was real. Thanks to the magic of bleedback effect, now it was always textual, the subtextual has been transformed retroactively, and it’s from both Dean and Cas’s end. If you still feel doubt on Dean’s side, because we didn’t get the same loud explicit confirmation, go back to the text itself. If you believed it already for Cas, if Cas’s confession to Dean only validated what you already knew, why can’t you see it for Dean, because it’s already there. 

[deanwasalwaysbi]

Thinking About How This Wasn't Actually a Denial

But was it self preservation?

The year was 2013 and rather than a denial, Jensen said "Don't ruin it for everybody now."

What was the fan 'ruining' for everybody? The Con? or something else? So if I was a tinhatter - and sometimes I am - I might think about other tv shows from the past that were covertly queer and how they handled the question, were TV shows 'out'?

Mainstream shows like Bewitched, you know, shows that are so clearly straight, you can tell because... well. ... they never technically used the word 'gay'. ... witches honor

SPN Film Studies is Back in Session! Join Under the Cut for more on supernatural & the story about how Bewitched! came out of the Broom Closet

Bewitched aired from 1964-72, it's so old the first season was in B&W. The show starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, the strange housewife with a stranger secret. Her husband, Darrin, unwittingly married into the whole witchy family, from the now drag icon Agnes Moorehead's Endora with her open marriage, to the unmarried and batty Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne who played the mother in Hitchcock's heavily gay coded 'Strangers on a Train'), to the extremely coded Uncle Arthur (gay actor Paul Lynde). (We can't know for sure, but it seems at least 4 members of the cast were gay themselves.) The core premise of the show involves Samantha balancing who she really is with repressing that self for the safety and comfort of her family.

Samantha and her husband keep her [ahem] 'queer' nature a secret which gets harder on Samantha when she has to tell her daughter to live the same way, “I know what fun it is to be a part of the magical life ... to have so much at your fingertips. But we’re living in a world that’s just not ready for people like us, and I’m afraid they may never be. So you’re going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can’t.”

There are plenty of generic 60s wacky hijinks but there are also whole episodes metaphorically about repression being harmful, episodes where characters asked if another was a 'thespian', episodes where Darrin was queercoded while under a spell, episodes about representation & bad stereotyping in media, and even two episodes where witches discussed whether it was time for witches to come out to the mortals, (whether mortals could accept that they were just nice normal people trying to live their lives like everybody else - or not - and would just freak out and kill them again).

When it came time to recast Dick York's Darrin with a new 2nd lead, Elizabeth and her husband, William Asher, knowingly cast the gay Dick Sergeant. (Although he wasn't out publicly at the time.) Then, when Sergeant came out in '91, Montgomery supported him and the two served together as the grand marshals of the Hollywood pride parade.

Dick Sargent expressed in the 90s what he would want in a Bewitched reunion episode: for Darrin to meet another like couple, a witch and a mortal who are married, and another, and another, and end up forming a whole community and support group, finding out that it was never so uncommon after all, that it was actually "about 10% of the population." The two would march in the first mortals and witches pride parade, saying they should have come out years ago.

In '94, Montgomery had this to say about the queer themes of the show, “Don't think that didn't enter our minds at the time. We talked about it on the set, that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause. It was a neat message to get across to people at that time in a subtle way.” (x)

Interviewer: Are you concerned that your involvement in the gay-pride parade will lead people to believe you're a lesbian?

"[Laughing] I'm really not worried about that. There are bigger things to worry about. Like the presidential election and finding a cure for AIDS. I did the parade in support of Dick. I mean, in the end, didn't we all?" (x) (Montgomery was also one of the first celebrity allies to fight for LGBTQ rights and support HIV/AIDS-related fundraisers.)

So did they talk about it at the time? No. You can bet they didn't speak about it publicly. What would have happened if a fan, publicly, had asked Elizabeth, William, or Dick about the show's queer allegory content? This was a time when being gay was a literal felony. They would have had to have lied or risked losing the show, their careers, and possibly subjecting themselves to violence.

Now. back to Jensen and the Schrodinger's long con:

This was in 2013 - The same year that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a federal ban on gay marriage. You certainly couldn't call homosexuality illegal in the US at that time. It's the same year that Dabb and Sgriccia spoke about the Aaron moment on the DVD and whether there's 'this potential for love in all places' for Dean. Of course Jensen said this about the very same scene: "But it was - you know - it was comedy. It was a comedic moment in the show and fortunately Dean gets a lot of the comedic moments in the show and it was just, you know, Ben was poking fun at the fact that - you know, how can we make this very kind of manly, heterosexual guy uncomfortable - uh -you know, or  or have him back on his heels and throw him off his game a little bit.”

I'm reminded of 2012 when Ben Edlund stepped in about a Destiel question at comic con, pretending it was some freaky thing that fans had made up even though he'd already written and directed TMWWBK, which had already aired.

Jensen: “What’s Destiel?” Ben Edlund: That’s some weird shit. Jensen: Is this something that you created, Ben? Ben: You don’t want any part of that.

Or the next year for season 9 when Jensen said “I think the whole Cas and Dean thing has gotten out of hand”  “I don’t think there’s anything secret to their relationship even though a lot of people wish there was” EVEN THOUGH- that season we got the nightstands acknowledgement and Misha (or both of them?) was told to “play him like a jilted lover”

Or Jensen's knowing bromance smile in 2015

I think recent events (cough spn gate) have made clear that the network and many viewers were still uncomfortable with CAS being gay in 2020, deleting even familial mentions of Cas from the finale episodes once he was revealed to be not only gay but also in love with Dean. (x) (x) (x) Can you imagine then what Warner Brothers would have said to an acknowledge bisexual Dean Winchester in 2013? Granted, there was no Trump election, but legitimate, could that have been the end of the show? Or the Russian and Conservative US viewership? Is it possible that Jensen would have feared so?

Is it possible that Jensen had a more personal reason for a knee jerk defensive response?

So was Jensen covering in 2013? Well. This happened 5 years later in 2018:

That hostile "? No." came even though Misha confirmed that he and Jensen had discussed Destiel by that point. Granted, discussing Destiel as a concept and accepting Dean being inherently bisexual are two very different things - Cas is GN after all - still, less than encouraging.

I may never get over the jumps back and forth that Jensen did. At this point I think there's no denying that a lot of SPN's queer content was on purpose, even as writers and actors were telling fans and network execs otherwise. Yet when each person involved was brought in? that question haunts me at night. I have gone off before about the timeline in my pursuit of whether Jensen was Ben Hur'd (x) and, if so, for how long. I'm sure many in this fandom have so much to add.

In the meantime we'll just have to cherish this moment from 2019:

Interviewer: 'So, tell us just a little bit about what you’re most excited to tackle with your character this final season.’ Jensen: “Cas. Just like a full football form tackle.”

Bewitched references in SPN:

2.05 - Dean: Well, it looks like he can't work his mojo just by twitching his nose, he's gotta use verbal commands.

2.20 - Dean says Barbara Eden was hotter than Elizabeth Montgomery - sigh - Dean.

7.05 - Dean thinks a husband has no idea his wife is a witch, and refers to him as Darrin. Dean also indicates he likes the first Darrin better. - (I guess I can't make a comment about how much TV Dean watched as a kid if I get all of his references and also haven't saved the world.)

14.03 - Jules refers to the witch as 'Brunhilde' - this is a minor character in bewitched but more so from mythology and likely referred to the cartoon witch from WB cartoons - the stereotypical witch that faced bugs bunny with the green skin and straw hair.

let me know if you have any to add. Stay Witchy ✌

[mejomonster]

some opinions cause i’ve been watching lately:

bad buddy:

1. Genuinely I am so happy with the scenes given to Ink and Pa regarding women’s sexuality. Even if nothing is to come of this ship - which I sincerely doubt, since the show played romance cue music over their ‘date’ dinner scene. Just the scenes themselves, acknowledging that women can like women (in any show, but particularly a bl). The Shipper was a show that Danced on trying to say this - but ultimately weakened the message by only exploring the concept of women liking women if its through a man’s body (which while its a fun concept in a body switch show, also meant it skirted around actually letting two women very clearly narratively have a crush that would be clear to even an oblivious straight audience member). With Ink actually asking if Pa could like girls, how she might hit on her, this is the first time I’ve heard explicit acknowledgement women can like women since the side character lesbian explicitly mentioning her sexuality on Sotus. 

And in Bad Buddy, it has the potential to do a lot more since Ink and Pa are recurring regular characters, are potentially the 2nd couple side plot of the show (which would be quite the storytelling choice if this show commits to it endgame). Its acknowledging that women can be queer regularly, not just in a few instances, and if it commits to the ship it is setting up then it would be the first bl I have seen with a) a wlw couple b) its Secondary Ship being the wlw couple. What a nice trend that could set. We’ve seen the recent trend of more bl shows being willing to have men explicitly define their sexuality, more having characters which narratively seem already aware of their sexuality at the start of the story. This could set a trend of also writing more women where their sexualities are explicitly defined, or where an audience may not be able to ‘automatically assume straight until proven otherwise’ because more may be narratively established from the start as into women. And it could set a trend of more gl relationships in general in media (we need more in general) and in particular putting them into bl shows.   

2. The kiss in episode 5 is remarkable for more than just ‘looking like a good kiss.’ From a writing and acting perspective I deeply appreciate it. There are a number of bl shows which exist, in which the kisses were a) executed in a way that was out of character b) written in a way that was out of character/narratively didn’t make sense (either a kiss between intimate lovers was written very chaste because the writers didn’t want much physical content in the show, or a kiss was written primarily to be Eyecandy/Fanservice for the Audience and again not necessarily in character or logical for that part of the story).

On the first point - I can think of a number of bl shows that gave their characters chaste kisses/shot ‘fake’ kisses, and gave them very few kisses in general despite that not making sense in the story. Similarly, scenes where characters barely touch each other even in a friendly manner, despite being long term close partners. 

I love 2gether so I apologize but this is a good modern example of comparison. In 2gether once the couple is together, there is still not a lot of physical touching and very little romantic touching outside of specific kiss/hug scenes. In Bad Buddy once the couple is together, they are physically affectionate like friends (which is nicely shown by the similar physical casualness Pran has with Wai too), they also give each other casual pecks on the cheek or hand, cuddle/hug casually, let their hands touch. Just very ordinary physical closeness (so not scripted big plot kiss/hug scenes). It does not feel like the actors or writers for whatever reason are maintaining artificial ‘distance’ between characters. Likewise, Ink and Pa’s closeness is communicated to the audience in part by how affectionately/friendly they touch each other (outside of scripted touch scenes which matter more narratively like the face cleaning scene). Bad Buddy’s actors and writers utilize casual physical touch for friends and lovers etc in a much more natural way than 2gether. Whereas 2gether I assume was a mix of people in charge causing it, perhaps inexperienced actors or bad direction, and possibly the show itself wanting to limit ‘skinship’ (I don’t know the particular reasons). But because 2gether has so little casual physical touch, most scenes where characters touch is notable (so I imagine more likely scripted as important). It creates this feel of ‘distance’ when you watch that unfortunately feels similar to older bl shows where they (writers/creators/whoever) purposely didn’t want to add much physical contact.

I imagine physical touch is in part determined by storytelling style of those in charge (plenty of thai drama straight romances with little physical casual touch - but then also 3 Will Be Free and He’s Coming to Me still manage to use simple closeness like sitting side by side, leaning on friends, touching arms, to communicate couples getting closer in a natural ‘no artificial distance’ way). I personally prefer Bad Buddy’s approach, as it feels more natural as to how real people would be acting in these situations towards friends, lovers, etc. Whereas 2gether’s approach unfortunately to me feels noticeable enough that it feels like the ‘distance’ is intentionally done to limit how much queer physical intimacy of any kind is on screen (which i hope is not the intention, but for some older shows probably was part of the reason). At best interpretation, even if the ‘distance’ isn’t intentionally created, it makes the acting look weaker since the characters feel less realistic. 

Now bringing that idea back to the kiss - unlike casual touching, big kiss scenes are planned moments in the story. So if a show put a kiss in, they planned for it to do something. In Bad Buddy, yes the kiss is good. Not just because it looks like how real people kiss (Why R U managed to do that plenty), because the actors are playing their characters very well. The conversation before the kiss is perfectly in character and emotionally driven, the moments they kiss continue to follow the emotions that were building from the conversation, and at the end of the kiss the emotional arc going on in the scene concludes logically for each person. Pat wanted Pran, Pat was kissed and feels they mutually care for each other, pat ends the kiss relieved and hopeful. Pran feels torn, is overwhelmed Pat really does like him back During The Kiss and that causes him to return it, then when they break and hold each other’s face Pran is going through the fact he’s holding what he cares about and Believes its impossible for him to keep this and so he leaves torn emotionally. Which leaves Pat uncertain, afraid that the kiss didn’t clear things up, concerned about what’s going through Pran’s mind. 

So easily, this kiss Could Have Been the following: Pat and Pran have emotional conversation about what are they to each other. Pat surges forward to kiss him. There is a peck/short mutual kiss (a la older bl style, or 2gether style), Pran is emotionally affected and pulls away still close to Pat and them both emotionally processing, Pat is relieved they kissed, then afraid as a walks off. This scene could have easily been done with a peck/short style scripted kiss. 

But then we lose a lot - we lose Pran grabbing Pat back, we lose both of them deciding to hold each other which says a lot about what they want and how MUCH they just want to be able to be together and have wanted this for years, we lose Pran being comforted for a moment by Pat (and desperately wanting to stay in that moment where he can still Have this before he remembers he’s afraid the world won’t let him realistically be with Pat). We lose the long shots of Pat’s relief and thinking he and Pran understand each other for a moment before Pran pulls away. Part of the reason that kiss has so much emotional weight is because its a held-continuation of the intense emotions of their prior conversation, both of them working through the answer to that conversation through the kiss, then separating and realizing they want the same thing but don’t see the same outcome and how much that Hurts. 

And THIS is the main thing I’d like to see emulated in future bl shows! Pacing and executing a kiss based on the characterizations and scenes emotional drive/story being told. Not basing a kiss on ‘as short as we can make it’ or ‘as sexy as we can make it’ (though the short ones annoy me more as it feels like a fear of showing queer intimacy tbh). Examples of well executed kisses before this: He’s Coming to Me has a short kiss mid-show, but it feels right because this is a ghost and human trying hard to even touch, who know they like each other and are acting in the moment - the shortness Makes Sense for the characters, motivations, the impulsiveness of it makes sense etc. In 3 Will Be Free Shin’s first kiss with Neo has very little movement (though its not super short, it is a bit awkward) and it ends with them laughing. But the kiss WORKS, not because its sexy (its not lol its awkward) but because it MAKES sense for the characters in their emotions in that particular scene. The scene is about Shin being a little shocked he can have this kiss, a moment to enjoy it, and an awkward comfortable moment where he gets to giggle a bit giddy that it happened and they had decided to try doing that. It feels like a REAL kiss people would have in that situation. That is what I want to see more of, regarding kiss scenes. Kiss scenes that are acted and executed to tell a story that feels fully realized for these characters in this moment. 

1000 Stars has little physical intimacy, like 2gether. But unlike 2gether it never feels like ‘cold unrealistic distance.’ Why? Because for the characters its very natural that the chief keeps his distance when he does - he’s trying to push Tian to leave, and Tian feels guilty about a death and so he’s perfectly happy to enjoy their touch if it happens but not do much overt flirting. And once they do get physically intimate - the scripted hug had even larger emotional impact than the forehead kiss (both were excellently executed), simply because the long hug FELT correct for their characters and conveyed their characters emotionally going through the scene realistically (as did the kiss after). Later when they’re shown as a couple living together, there’s no particular scripted kiss but they casually lean/touch each other, which makes sense since their characters no longer have a goal of ‘not hurting each other by getting involved’ and there’s casual intimacy implied by them cuddling up in bed even without any big scripted scene of them doing things. If distance makes sense for the characters and motivations? Then yes, by all means, its fine. But when they do touch, I would really prefer there’s more touch scenes driven by what is in character and emotionally being gone through during them. Because that is the key function of a kiss or big-touch scene - the emotions the characters are going through. A scripted short kiss/peck does not serve the story when it doesn’t match the emotions, and at worst it can feel like obligatory skinship for the audience while also feeling like it failed to successfully live up to its purpose and implied the show is afraid of queer intimacy. Again, I liked 2gether, but because of how it handled physical touch it overall made Tine feel like a character not very comfortable with intimacy (and I don’t think they intended to write Tine as having that particular trait, but its what the scene execution turns out feeling like - I hope it got better in Still 2gether as I haven’t seen that). In fact kiss scenes don’t even have to be long or exist in a story, its just that the physical touch that is there... should be in character and fully realize the emotional story you’re trying to tell. 

Word of Honor can’t have their lead couple kiss, but they can in-character lean against each other, walk close, mirror each other like couples do, and big physically-planned scenes like leaning close/hugging/touching the hair of are executed in a way which is in character for them and expresses the emotions the characters are going through fully in those scenes. (One of the only moments that feels like ‘intentional distance’ in WoH is a scene when Zhou Zishu confronts Wen Kexing who’s ‘alive again’ and looks into his eyes very close and smiles, and I personally felt like if it were not a censored cdrama that’s where it would have been natural for the characters to kiss - but since it is a censored cdrama, the storytelling at Least held the stare and expressions for quite a while and realized the emotions being told to the extent it could). But cdramas are another beast entirely.

My point is just - what makes Bad Buddy’s kiss, and all other physical touch, so well done. Is that this storytelling is prioritizing telling the character’s emotional arcs fully over trying to either limit physical touch artificially or give fanservice. Its a rom com so yeah there’s fanservice tropes galore, but the way they get executed remain in character above anything else. The show isn’t afraid to add small kisses either that happen casually with a couple - whereas a show like 2gether such moments felt like highlights because of the artificial distance outside of such moments. But in Bad Buddy two characters can also just lean against each other for an entire scene, Ink and Pa can just hold hands walking, even when its not specifically a Specific Important touch scene. So intimacy feels natural. And when there are specific touch scripted scenes, I feel like they’re being used to tell the characters emotional stories first and foremost - moments like where they hold hands to console, where their hands almost touch on the beach and its not even about attraction so much as the story telling us they Want to relax and be able to just touch and bump into each other but their lives with others aren’t allowing that kind of freedom. The kiss is just another one of those scenes - its primarily about the emotional story being told with it, before its about being a ‘romance highlight’ or fanservice scene. Likewise, I really appreciate that a lot of their little peck kisses afterwards are NOT given particular narrative attention - where in another show they might get full slow-motion moments and face reaction shots. In Bad Buddy, little kisses just flow through the scene without any more attention then a comforting pat on the arm or sitting next to someone, because the emotional significance of them is not Big. They’re just another moment of frequent ordinary casual moments they’re having now, and so they don’t need long extra moments of focus in the narrative because their point is just more of that ordinary closeness being established.

In summary: I really want more kisses like Bad Buddy’s, in the sense that i want more of the Scripted Plot kisses in shows to be directed/acted based primarily on Emotional Arc being told. They don’t necessarily have to be long kisses, etc, they just need to be appropriately in character and actually serve the emotional purpose they’re being used for in the story.

[itwoodbeprefect]

livewatch thoughts for sga 1x08 (or 09, because the order on my dvds seems to differ from the one on wikipedia), home:

rodney being so sure he can do a very risky but scientifically interesting thing that he doesn’t even deign to acknowledge that it is risky (because he’s the one doing it, so of course it will work, because he believes himself infallible, so basically there’s no risk at all!) is such a warning for things to come (cough-trinity-cough) and it’s not like i think they were intentionally setting up a single season 2 episode already, but it does make me appreciate that we get a whole episode exploring the consequences of this character flaw of his later on.

we can see john thinking for a second while rodney is talking and then he goes “eight hundred and four years” (how long it would take them to get rodney by puddlejumper if he breaks the gate on the fog planet) and that’s our first hint at math nerd john!! beautiful

rodney, talking about travelling 804 years by puddlejumper to come get him: “but you would do that, right?” john: “of course we would.” fjdkf.

ALSO the first time we see john with his brick of a copy of war and peace! many iconic sheppard things contained in these first six and a half minutes of the episode.

same point as the one above but i’m not done yet because he just... thinks he’s so clever for this, gosh. i feel like there’s something to be said here about how this is not at all a fun read (and he’s a very repressed man used to denying himself), and i don’t imagine john has some hidden deep interest in russian literature (i mean, possible, but unlikely), so the actual real point of it is just performance, start to finish. if he ever finishes it, that’s some weird bragging rights, but even better is when, like in this scene, someone catches him at it while he’s reading because they will ask because it’s not a very inconspicuous choice of reading material. and it makes him look smart, potentially, but it’s also a little “look at me! i’m weird and quirky! #sorandom.” (yes, i am diagnosing john with socially awkward lonely teen girl disease because he decided to bring russian classic lit when he moved to another galaxy. i am.)

anyway, here’s his face, now that i’ve spent so many words on this:

elizabeth giving john a chance to be the one to go home if rodney’s gate project works out (giving him an excuse, even, because she says he’d be the one most qualified to brief general hammond) is both kind, because obviously john entered into the mission very late and he did NOT sign on as military commander fighting wraith, and also extremely silly, for pretty much the same reasons. you found this man in antarctica, elizabeth. he was cut off from earth way before he left the planet.

rodney thinking he commands respect at the sgc and has a bunch of virtues of which “patience” is one is very sweet and very funny and i’m glad ford clearly recognizes it for that. the team bonding and found family of it all is very <3

john talking to teyla: “then there’s all those cool earth things i told you about. football, ferris wheels.” in part this is of course a function of this being a tv show and repeated mentions of the same little detail feeling like a fun callback that ties this moment to previous episodes (which it is and does!!) but in-universe it tickles me how incredibly specific and wildly misleading john’s descriptions are of what earth is like. it is going to be very disappointing when there is not, in fact, a football field full of ferris wheels at the end of every city block.

elizabeth making an argument for a continued presence in the pegasus galaxy is an interesting discussion because on the one hand she’s claiming that they have a responsibility to the people of pegasus after waking up the wraith and on the other she acts like they, the people from earth, are the only ones that could possibly do anything with the ancient technology, like they don’t have a pretty effective gene therapy and could give that to at least some of the people of pegasus, who could then operate atlantis mostly without the earthlings.

god, john getting compliments from general hammond that clearly mean a lot to him, while knowing that’s not actually happening as a viewer, that’s. that’s painful.

rodney coming home and turning on the television is great because a) he moved to another galaxy, possibly never to return, but kept on paying his cable bill? dude. and b) the tv plays something for which the audio is “we are controlling the transmission” and that’s FORESHADOWING. i love this. (of course alternately he did not continue paying for cable but he just doesn’t think about it and so the aliens make his tv work because they don’t know it shouldn’t, but my first interpretation is funnier, so i’m sticking with that.)

the way this contructed reality falls apart and the bits and pieces we as viewers see of where it’s not right is EXCELLENT and john’s undead buddies mitch and dex in particular are a whole eassay on their own, but rodney’s line about the laws of physics having gone out the window and that “it’s like looking through a microscope at a cell culture and seeing a thousand dancing hamsters” is quite possibly my favorite thing here. A THOUSAND. DACING HAMSTERS. so it’s a+ content and would make you go viral in a second on youtube, is what you’re saying, rodney.

fake hammond: “major sheppard seemed uniquely capable of manipulating his own fabricated reality.” john: “when i think about the scenarios i COULD have thought up i’d kick myself.” GOD. lots of john thoughts, lots of fic space.

john: “this isn’t life! what do you want us to do, just pretend?” fjdkfd. okay, so, in a reading of canon in which john is queer man pretending all the time, this is an interesting dialogue snippet.

the discussion at the end honestly makes so little sense (the alien’s like, every time the gate activates some of us die, and the humans are like, hm okay, but we are human and we like living so you should send us back anyway, and the alien is like, okay that’s fair), but i don’t mind in the least. this is such a nice episode and the dilemma they’re faced with feels very star trek to me (vague fog aliens that are never given shape other than fog or a human illusion and a plot that leads to moral questions and a true test of the character and the intentions of humanity? PRECISELY the sweet spot for the tos budget), and i love that.

[realisaonum]

book meme

thank you, jen @det395​ !! i feel like this meme got away from me a bit, but no shame! i love talking about books and writing so onward ~under the cut~

1- how many books are too many books in a series? 

mhmmmmm i guess it depends on the objective of the series, right? is the plan to have x number of books in the series and if so, when we finally get to the end will it be satisfying considering all the books we’ve read leading up to it? OR is the objective of the premise / characters just to exist doing whatever? both can be done well. i would say a lot rides on how much i trust the author.

2- what do you think about cliffhangers?

so this is meant for cliffhangers in a series like between books? i don’t really care if there’s a cliffhanger as long as i have the next book sitting right next to me. otherwise uh, only if the wait between books is tolerable, because at that point you need to know that the author can clear this mess up, right? there’s this other thing, like you know how if the entire series was already written, then they might release the books a month apart or a quarter apart - that could be alright too. but years in between? not especially a fan. is anyone a fan?

3- hardback or paperback?

jen, you and me are complete opposites here. paperbacks stress me out. i will go out of my way to buy a used hardcover if given the choice. of course, there are some publications i don’t mind in paperback —thinking poetry and super indie books that don’t have a hardcover release OR books where the spines are thin enough they won’t break and i won’t be holding them long enough for them to wear. hardcovers are sturdy and i don’t have to worry i’ll accidentally bend the cover in some damaging way. I am invested in keeping my books nice to the point that i create covers for my books out of kraft paper or brown grocery bags while i am reading them. this is something i started when i was in college and didn’t want these books i was hoping to probably resell get thrashed coming in and out of my bag for all these classes. My home library is probs more half and half paperback/hardcover but if given a choice usually it’s hardcover.

4- least favourite book?

i think it’s good to at least attempt to meet a book on its level. there are lots of books i didn’t like, but i wasn’t meeting them on their level and i know that so we’re ignoring those. i do however have a shelf on my goodreads dedicated to books that i have beef with so i’ll just go off on two of them.....

tana french’s the likeness for being plagiaristic shit. it is essentially poorly concealed alternate universe OC insert fic of the secret history. you’ve got french’s dublin murder squad folks and then this group they are investigating who bear a STRIKING resemblance to the greek students in tsh 🤔. this would be one thing. it is pretty well acknowledged that nothing is original and there are enough changes to The Likeness that MAYBE i could let it slide if not for this other thing: french’s book, the likeness, has lines that are just basically reworded quotes from the secret history and french positions these lines so they are said by the counterpart (essentially same!) character that gave them original life in tsh. i cannot stress this enough: you can HEAR how similar the sentences are and their core intent is always the same. it’s thinly veiled theft! it astounds me that French hasn’t been sued frankly. it is one thing to want to capture some of the genius that tartt’s debut novel holds, but it is completely lazy and disgusting theft to go about it in the way French did with this book. and YES the secret history was published before french’s book. if i could stomach how fucking goddamn boring the likeness was to read it a second time and cite every one of these offenses i would, but that’s yet a third strike against it—it’s too boring to be worth it. 

T. Kingfisher’s second book of the Clocktuar War duology : The Wonder Engine. this is a book that i feel violated the contract between writer and reader. the first book feels almost like a YA book. the stakes while described as very high are treated, as actions unfold, as very low. nothing truly irreparable happens until the climax of the second book and the fallout of that action is so off-tone of everything that came before i felt deeply betrayed. no, like, completely betrayed as in it ruined the rest of my afternoon, i am still viscerally angry eight months later, and i will never trust this author again. sure, maybe none of those actions that led to the climax were out-of-character, but there was nothing NOTHING in the proceeding action that even came close to that level of consequence. it’s a pity because right up till that point i was having a really good time. the entire vibe of the rising action to the climax of book one all the way through the rising action of book two was just a quippy fun version of roadtrip/quest - it felt like a comfort read. the abrupt tone shift had all the subtlety of dropping a graphically, brutal murder into Blue’s Clues. you don’t do that - this is a basic tenet of a writer / reader relationship. i’m not touching this bitch’s shit again.

5- Love Triangle, yes or no?

not so much. i like jen before me will scream ‘just be poly.’ love triangles that lead into poly relationships? yes, awesome will be glad i read. but i am at a stage in my life where your standard will-they-won’t-they-love-triangle is just fucking pointlessly frustrating to me. an example: i read a Nic Stone’s book Odd One Out a couple years ago and something about the synopsis or the hype made me think that it would resolve the love triangle that way, so when that did not happen i was incredibly frustrated and immediately wanted to resell the book. it’s the potential of the thing. stone’s book could have been the perfect vehicle for opening up the concept of polyamory to a ya audience but instead just really squandered that potential with weak floundering — in my opinion!

6- the most recent book you just couldn’t finish

uhhhhh i’ve got two and i’m not sure i’ve entirely given up quite yet buuuuuuuut 

fucking dune. i got really pissed off with this book. So just…setting aside the whole vaguing at a pedophilically inclined queer coded villain - it’s done so poorly, that it's almost funny? like it doesn’t (as of half way through) actually have any consequence on…anything at all and is tacked on like an afterthought to the end of his scenes. honestly it all could just be cut out entirely with no recourse to the larger story. So my actual beef with this book is the pacing is ATROCIOUS. like yo, not only do you expect me to give a shit about these Atreides cunts, when we just met them and we spend the same amount of time with them IF NOT MORE with the antagonist? but you also expect me to believe Paul was able to just convince the leader of the Arrakis people —the leader of an entire planet!!— with a single fucking sentence??? yeah, not so much. it was not set up for me to believe that Paul could do that! maybe if Kynes hadn’t died immediately after—or at least not died at that moment? baring the fact I thought he was by far the most interesting character, IF he had been convinced by Paul in that scene, it would have been great to see some actual work done around that - with a transfer or a liaise of power between Kynes and Paul and the Fremen. By not having any substantive scene that does it - it begs the question of what the fuck was the point of the character in the first place? unplumbed potential!!! over all there seem to be some key scenes missing to get the reader to where the narrative expects us to be? but the choices made of the characters we spend time with and the moments we see with them, the benefit to the larger story…is not always there. hey herbert, these words you have written aren’t doing what you want them to?? i feel like i should finish it but i reaaaaallly don’t want to :) the only thing i can say is it looks like from the trailer, villeneueve is giving space to these moments so that the viewer can foster a genuine connection with the characters? radical concept.

our lady of perpetual hunger - i started this one optimistically bc i like chef memoirs, but i am at the point where she has just given birth to her son and honestly DON’T CARE. i still haven’t officially given up on it yet since i actually fucking bought it like a dope. i certainly would not have if i knew how much NOT about working the line this was gonna be

7- book you are currently reading

Aside from the failures mentioned above, I am working on the second book in B. Catling’s Vorrh trilogy, The Erstwhile. Also very close to finally finishing Iain Sinclair’s The Last London - there’s a review of his work from the LA Times that goes “One of Sinclair’s greatest skills has always been his ability to take diverse if not chaotic source material and refashion it in a way that sometimes seems downright alchemical” which captures some of the wonder I experience when reading his work. His style and how he creates atmosphere and setting is just unique and astounding.

8- last book you recommended to someone

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Before that I told my brother to read Eat a Peach, as we both love Anthony Bourdain and David Chang talks about him a bit here, plus it’s just a fucking great book. any book that gives insight into Chang’s methodology and paradigm is worth a shot.

9- oldest book you read

I think it might have to be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (which apparently according to wiki premiered on the stage a whole four months before Hamlet so that’s what we’re going with) and if plays don’t count, I don’t care. I think they count and that’s what we’re going with.

10- the most recent book you read ?

Given the previous question, the most recently published book, right? It’s gotta be the one I just finished: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic - Revised and Expanded edt., which like just came out this summer. I watched Jessica Hopper’s promo zoom, curtesy of my local indie bookstore, and went ahead and bought it. This was a great decision! It was just what I needed to read these last couple of weeks. i love there’s lots of short pieces that made the read quick and the fact that it’s non-fiction so there was no pressure of a plot or the emotional weight of character investment when I had a lot of big stressors dragging me down irl -it was such a relief. Hopper’s criticism is fun to read and there’s some real art in her appreciation of music here.

11- favourite author?

These are the top in a kind of order but not really: Donna Tartt, Jeff VanderMeer, Megan Whalen Turner, Flannery O’Conner, Chuck Palahniuk, Anthony Bourdain

Other faves very much worth mentioning: Emily O’Neill, Richard Siken, Brandon Sanderson, Warren Ellis, Nathan Englander, Stephen King, Eddie Huang, Carl Hiaassen, Anne Carson, and Iain Sinclair.

12- buying books or borrowing books?

Depends on if my library has it, of course! I nearly always see if my library has a copy first if i have never read it or the author before. If i’ve read the book before or trust the author, I’ll buy it. Like I’ll straight out buy new stuff from Jeff VanderMeer even though with him it’s either this-hits-exactly-and-is-my-new-fave or i-really-disliked-this-but-admire-the-boundaries-you’re-pushing-my-dude - so it’s always a gamble but a worthy one.

12- a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love

a little life (just bc it's torture porn elevated to art doesn’t negate the fact that it’s torture porn. Yanagihara’s project here is repugnant and the fact that this book is lauded as moving lgbt fiction makes my skin crawl)

sharp objects (good writing, compelling story, BUT typographical scarification doesn't work like that - i am not going to get into it but i know from first hand experience how Flynn described it is not accurate)

nesbø’s the snowman (what kinda dumbass detective would think THAT when a woman finds her missing father’s corpse? absolute idiocy - so obviously reverse engineered with that end in mind)

the raven cycle (fuck ronan lynch to start and then fuck him to end as well - there’s some other stuff but mostly he’s a total CUNT and if i don’t say that once a day i have probably died)

14 - bookmarks or dogears?

Bookmarks and sticky notes. Then I can place it pointing directly to the paragraph I last stopped on.

15- The book you can always reread?

This is my question because I reread all the time. ALL THE TIME. Books I reread often: The Secret History, Medium Raw (especially chapter 17 The Fury), Crooked Kingdom, The Violent Bear It Away, and The Goldfinch. Every year like clockwork (since it came out apparently) I will reread Stephen King’s The Outsider.

Other books I feel the urge to reread: VanderMeer’s Acceptance, Englander’s Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Frazier’s Nightwoods, Fresh Off the Boat, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Peter Grant Series (which is queued up for another go here soon I think), any of the stories from A Good Man is Hard to Find, Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne Mistborn books, simon vs the homosapiens’ agenda, and there are two of Alan Morinis’ books on Mussar that I am technically always revisiting—when i need a reminder, i’ll jump around and read specific sections to get centered again.

16- can you read while listening to music?

Yes, but only ambient or near ambient (only usually one track on repeat) or a soundtrack I am extremely familiar with. No new music. I do usually need some audio stimulation or my mind will wander terribly.

17- one POV or multi POV?

Multi pov can certainly be done well (looking at the soc duaology and VanderMeer’s Acceptance) but working a multi-pov means there are more plates spinning, it’s more of a challenge, and some authors pull it off better than others.

18- do you read book in one sitting or in multiple days?

I don’t really do this anymore. that might have something to do with me picking up thicker books? but also i have a full time job now and let’s be real the book has to be hella good if i don’t want to put it down. the last book i attempted to shotgun was the final installment of my favorite series and it still took me two days so....i can get through a lot of books but none of them are ever in one sitting anymore.

19- who to tag:

@sybilius​ @mouth-rainboy​ @iwonderifthatisart​ @phereinnike​ @magnificentmoose​ @wambsgangs​ @moriarteaparty​ and anyone else if you feel so inclined!

Bonus Question: What’s on your to-read shelf? 

As for me, I am excited about one i just picked up, Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines, which i might start tomorrow and I will be taking Paul Madonna’s Come to Light on my trip to see my brother this coming weekend. 

[crowsent]

a fuckton of things i want in da4

a few words censored bc tumblr will swallow this in the void if i dont. long ass fuck list ahead

a romanceable dwarf

more romanceable elves/qunari

more elf/qunari/dwarf companions

consistent writing for once

more nb representation

good hair. please just give me good hair options. give me long hair. give me luxurious flowing locks. give me braids. give me good fucking hair options

let me shittalk the chantry

dalish elf npcs that impact the plot in unique ways

dalish elf companions that are proud of being dalish

if it is set in tevinter maybe uh. maybe address the issue of systemic oppression (and slavery) of elves???????

a return of the friendship/rivalry system in da2 but improved. maybe instead of a friendship rivalry sliding scale its friendship/rivalry/animosity sliding scale. bc rivalry is more like. two people pushing each other to be better than they were before. friendly competition. hes an idiot but hes my idiot kind of deal. animosity would be just regular disapproval. i liked the crisis cutscenes in dai so high animosity would be the same as low approval and might make the companion leave still, but theres more variety with high approval. high approval “friendship” would be the “were best friends and we share many opinions and agree on almost everything” while high approval “rivalry” being “we disagree on almost everything but goddamn it youre my friend and ill follow you into the fade if i have to” so you can have a high approval with someone instead of being a kissass

actions and choices having consequences again

multiple endings again (epilogue slideshows dont count)

dialogue wheels with descriptions that match what you actually say

characters from rivain, antiva, anderfels, etc

gifts. bring back the gifts. i want to give my companions gifts

maybe. maybe a focus of non-andrastian religion for once?

let me shittalk the chantry

i know its a stretch, but maybe. diverse skin colours. please?

nd characters that are written respectfully and treated w dignity

please bring back the talent wheel from dao and da2

more bi romance options

more wlw romance options

more mlm romance options

ace romance options

nb romance options

background romances

let me shittalk the chantry

far fetched but maybe a polycule?

i lowkey LOVED the fast-paced feel of da2s combat so maybe bring that back in some form? maybe improved to mesh with the tactics of dai to give players absolute freedom of playstyle whether they want to be like me and rush into every encounter or play more strategically

companions with unique companion abilities

would be nice to explore cities

would be nice if the open world were a little smaller so it doesnt feel empty all the gd time

more mage spells. mages felt like just another class of fighter to me in dai. they dont really have any awe-inducing wow factor like in dao or even da2. if the narrative wants me to believe that mages are powerful and dangerous and that it takes multiple templars to hunt down an apostate, maybe show that? give me strong mages

remove the jump ability. its pointless

a narrative that addresses the oppression that the chantry and templars perpetuated please

bring back the attributes

make the choices in dai matter. mages governing themselves? i wanna see that

let me shittalk the chantry

please bring back the healing magic for fucks sakes

multi-class system between rogues and warriors?

multiple specialisations that feel like specialisations and not just skill tree+

player-only skill trees

hardening

companion quests that affect their abilities and further dialogue

actual morally grey choices instead of this stupid mage freedom vs templar oppression narrative that is in no way morally grey but is presented as such and thus leaves the conflicts and narratives set up by dao and da2 to be fucking meaningless

bring back the tactics

would be nice to have an origins-esque prologue again. maybe one that would determine future events in game just to give your character better narrative cohesion with the plot

an approval/disapproval system but for companions with other companions. bringing certain companions together may bring them closer or make them pissed off with each other which affects banter maybe quests maybe combat

give me a fucking mabari bioware. give me back my fucking mabari

day/night cycle

a nightmare mode where you have to finish the main quest on a time limit. it is absurd that dai expects me to believe that i have all this time to do wartable missions that can take literal real life DAYS to finish and still thwart corypheus’ plans in time. bullshit

that said. no more wartable missions. waiting for a countdown to finish isnt very fun

let me shittalk the chantry

kal-sharok. ive been hearing about it since dao let me fucking see kal-sharok

dwarven politics

politics in general. my fav dao quest was the succession crisis plotline in orzammar/the landsmeet and wewh in dai

npcs i can talk to. even with generic dialogue like in dao. makes the world more alive

using the environment to your advantage. far fetched but i would love to be able to pull down boulders if were in the mountains or freeze water to get to places as a mage

home base customisation but the customisation choices you make actually. mean something. and do something. or at the very least give more companion dialogue/banter/approval change

laconic and ergonomic codexes. like. sorted by what kind of codex it is, etc etc but then you just get a brief summary of the codex and the option to read more about it so i dont spend eternity scrolling through cards looking for a specific codex entry. cool aesthetic dont get me wrong but real irritating to deal with. also. maybe. the pc making comments about the codex if you do read more about it? like a dalish elf saying “they got it all wrong” when reading a codex about dalish elves written by a human??? that would a) give character to the pc b) incentivise people to actually read the codex to see what was so wrong about it c) summarise the codex for people who want to learn the lore but dont want to spent the entire game reading text

maybe have the merchants in your home base close to crafting stations so you dont have to take a fucking hike if you miscounted the amount of elfroot you need?

let me shittalk the chantry

avvar companion maybe??? interesting lore right there

bring back stat requirements for weapons and remove the class restriction for most shit. obviously a dagger would be better for a rogue than a longsword and a mage would do better with a staff than a sword and shield but its not about efficiency. its about the roleplay. its about the options. give me the option to make a mage with wildly inappropriate stat distribution

bring back sustained mode abilities

traps. bring back traps. bring back the option to stealth into an area, trap the fuck out of it, and go from there

have the three available classes in kind of a rock paper scissors scenario. warriors do real well against rogues who do real well against mages who do real well against warriors. so you can plan your party depending on who/what youll face AND how much their approval will change during the quest you take them on

let me shittalk the chantry

actually resolve the plot points introduced in dai

a more threatening villain. the inquisitor thwarted every attempt made by corypheus in dai. he was not threatening at all

queer characters. background, companions, etc. queer characters

mounts were meh in dai. maybe. make them faster? or less cumbersome? or have your companions on mounts too so theres still banter?

i liked the armour tinting. let me have armour tinting from the beginning

i would really like mages to move and attack at the same time bc lowkey standing in one spot is uhhhhhhh kinda boring

let me check companions friendship/rivalry levels

would be nice if the narrative acknowledged that elves suffered greatly at the hands of the chantry and stopped victim-blaming them

more taverns. specifically like tapsters in dao where theres a dwarf just reciting something in a language i cant understand and if you look its a ballad/poet about dwarven culture and that was a real nice touch let me have that

dalish elf clan. dalish elf clan that does not get murdered please and thank you

meaningful quests. more cinematic dialogue

make found gear / quest reward gear more valuable than crafted gear

game modifiers like in dai were real nice. i want more

let me shittalk the chantry

quests that can be resolved in multiple ways. like connors fate in dao. and for those ways to impact further quests

companions with varying moral alignments

companions that are mutually exclusive (like alistair and loghain) but are both good companions so itd really make you think

a pc that IS NOT a “chosen one” vanilla da2 is my fav dragon age game for one reason and one reason only and that is because hawke is just some random refugee who escaped lothering. no chosen one magic at all. just an ordinary person who is a real good fighter. and that appealed to me more than this “you are the only one who can do it” narrative

let me meet more elvhen gods

if the setting is in tevinter, GIVE ME FUCKING ARCHITECTURE. give me the high spires, the archways, the buttresses, give me statues lining city gates and magic infused into the buildings. tevinter is a land ruled by MAGES give me magical architecture. give me floating buildings. give me fire floating as orbs above the streets like lamps. GIVE ME ARCHITECTURE

SHALE

let me shittalk the chantry

PIERCINGS GIVE ME FUCKING PIERCINGS BIOWARE

more main quests, longer main quests

if it is set in tevinter maybe. maybe address the fact that tevinter has been at war with the qunari for a while? on and off war is still war. and maybe give us the option to influence the outcome of that war?

more voice options. instead of just american voice or british voice, do the thing in dao again where there are multiple voices of different tones to further cement the pcs personality

more armour designs

biased but uh. can. can taliesen jaffe va a character?

i already said qunari companions but specifically saarebas companions

blood magic

FINISHING MOVE ANIMATIONS

please do not let it be as long as inquisition. inquisition was a SLOG in later playthroughs

body sliders. what if i want a tall but lanky qunari? what if i want a buff as shit elf? body sliders

more eye options

let me call out companions

btw bioware. if you really wanted cullen to be a good guy. maybe handle his fucking redemption arc a little better instead of retconning all the terrible and creepy shit hes done in the past k thx

can female walk/run animations not have. so much swaying hips? no one moves like that

personality dialogue that affects future dialogue like in da2 but meshed with the wider range of emotions introduced by dai

keep the race/s*x lock on romance candidates like in dai. keep the fact that some characters can only be romanced by certain races or s*xes

nb and genderqueer options for the pc

cutscenes of companions interacting

ngl i lowkey liked the random encounters of dao so maybe bring that back

my fav quest in dao is the landsmeet / orzammar succession crisis questline but you know whats my second favourite? the rescue mission if the warden gets captured and you have to play as your party members. give me that again

more creepy/dark shit. dai was too lighthearted for me esp after da2 and dao

let me shittalk the chantry

broodmothers. in hd.

red lyrium broodmothers. in hd

companions with different backgrounds. different faiths. different statuses. different families. etc

maybe make the pcs appearance make an impact on the story? like how bull says he likes redheads, but even if you are a redhead, he says nothing about it????? maybe keep track of which slider the player picks so that can affect the story?

i love my inquisitors but maybe. dont. bring the inquisitor in as anything more than an advisor/npc in this game? let me fall in love with a new pc???

if theres gonna be a homebase like skyhold where youre not in armor. maybe give us better clothing?

a kind of gear skin mechanic similar to ac:odyssey where you can change how the gear looks but keep the stats. so you can equip that higher level armour and keep the look and aesthetic of your old armour and you unlock the skins/looks of the armours you discover/make so you can be both powerful AND aesthetic

i enjoyed the nobility/underworld/arcane/etc knowledge in dai unlocking more dialogue options so maybe keep/expand on that but make it more accessible by side missions or companions or something that isnt the abysmal perk system in dai

let me shittalk the chantry

customisable walking animations. does the pc walk straightbacked? slouched? with a swagger? please

since there will undoubtedly be an obligatory fade sequence, maybe have an option for nightmare demons that ARENT spiders. thank you

slap on subtitles and conlang some languages. i want to hear elvish. i want to hear tevene. give me the languages

more dragons. esp if they look vastly different

more bard songs

i am completely biased here, but i would like to hear laura bailey as a va for a character. preferably a voice option for the pc

hey maybe have the true ending actually included in the base game and not in a dlc (tresppasser cough cough)

better val royeaux

please remove the had to do it to em idle animation tis distracting

on that note, more idle animations. maybe some unique to companions?

very trivial but. unique stair climbing/descending animation

bring back talking to companions on the road. maybe with some dialogue that can only be said on the road???

if banter is interrupted, make like rdr2 and pick up where the banter left off

more vallaslin designs please?

if theres another formal scene like dai maybe. give us. decent clothing. or better yet, decen clothing OPTIONS. i wanna decide how i look in a ball full of haughty orlesians

mage vs templar conflict resolved and addressed please. it is NOT resolved in dai. what we got was sequel bait and a slideshow. resolve it please

let me shittalk the chantry

a pro-mage anti-circle circle mage companion like anders

religious person who doesnt victim-blame elves in the codex or in game or anywhere please

characters more like leliana who question the chantry and acknowledge its corruption and greed

unapologetically sapphic companion

idc if its tevinter i dont want to fucking see queer people being disrespected

a true tal-vashoth companion, one who escaped from the qun

have quest decisions affect whether or not a companion will turn hostile to you or not

if IF solas will be redeemed, please do the redemption arc right

more horn options for qunari

an apostate mage who doesnt use me for their personal agenda whilst hiding something from me (morrigan, anders, solas) thanks

i really dig the whole “leader of an army” thing dai was trying to go for. but you didnt actually. lead. anything. would be nice to have that option. command soldiers. send them places that affect further quests. would even use the wartable for its intended purpose. planning wars. battles. like. you get sent word that there are bandits harassing villagers. you can set up an ambush with your soldiers or confront them headon, and theres a new mini-location on the map like the manor you meet vivienne in where you can go deal with the bandits and depending on your choices, there are actually soldiers with you in a field, or traps in a narrow pass, or even in a city. id rather the wartable shit dont return but if they have to, at least this way youre not just waiting real life time for a bunch of text to appear

i am real fucking excited for the possibility that da4 companions can just fucking die on you. good shit. give me that angst

missions that certain companions would refuse to go with you to. you know. so you actually have to use other members of your party instead of the same 3 (three) people all the goddamn time

disabled characters (i want a character who suffers from the same chronic bad leg disease as i do is that too much to ask)

kinda touched on by the da2 combat point but let me do close combat damage with the staff

no multiplayer. and if there is a multiplayer, dont tie it with achievements

let me fucking explore weisshaupt

(i dont think solas will be the endgame villain of da and i dont think da4 will be the last da game but still) again. for emphasis. resolve the plot points dai brought up

full-body scars and tattoo options

companions and npcs changing their opinions about things over time. eg: a pro-circle mage wanting instead for circles to be abolished after a specific side mission or a main quest decision etc

keep the multiple companion quests. and maybe change what kinds of companion quests are available further down depending on choices made in previous companion quests

please for fucks sake give us more characters of colour

let me shittalk the chantry

[trashboatdax]

King Falls AM was one of my favorite podcasts of all time. There's a lot of ways I still think it's very good! There's still a lot to enjoy about it. There's ways the show can improve.

However.

I am very uncomfortable with the way that the KFAM creators seem bent lately on doing some of the absolute worst things they could do while running a podcast.

1. Blaming WTNV and other podcasts for "copying them" (Yes I saw Cecil's post and I firmly believe he was talking tounge-in-cheek, they just seemed to think it was a) directed at them b) took it way too personally) Also, you're not the only ones allowed to do a musical episode, guys

2. Making false accusations of DEATH THREATS (like Jesus you guys come on)

3. Refusing to listen to criticism to the point of blocking/unfollowing accounts, steering clear of Tumblr entirely

4. The huge hiatuses. I mean, obviously due to the pandemic I think they're well within their rights to take a while. But even before this hit, their hiatuses last for 8 months-1 year at a time. When you're dealing with a plot that has remained unresolved since the start of the show (and involves queer characters suffering while your straight characters plot is resolved, more on that below) that's not a great time frame, especially compared to other podcasts - which you guys love to do in every way but this one.

5. The uncomfortable racism/sexism/homophobia that they just cannot seem to acknowledge or change. Skinwalkers and non-native VAs voicing native characters is offensive. Having a "Racist Witch" character feels like it's just an excuse to say racist stuff on air and have people get mad because "you can't say that!" Treating all of their female characters as either sweet and kind 100% of the time (Emily) or constantly complaining and being a pain (Lily) to show the "difference" between them. It really feels like they're trying to make one look a lot "better" than the other, and having the lesbian be the "unpleasant" one isn't a great look.

And now we get to a bunch of mishandling when it comes to queer representation. Sammy is a queer main character, but it took them literally 60+ episodes to get them to acknowledge that at all. Archie and Ron were the other queer characters, and I'll be honest here, Archie's character has always made me super uncomfortable? He's literally a complete stereotype in a way that makes me feel he was invented just for the purpose of being a gay stereotype. And while I feel Ron is a better character, he's the stereotype on the other end of the coin, the "manly gay". It feels like they really wanted to have it both ways, and both aren't a good look. Also, I have never liked Jacob Williams as a character because the "depraved bisexual" stereotype is OLD and not at all accurate. Having a hillbilly pervert isn't the source of comedy they seem to think it is.

Not to mention how this show really seems to be advancing the plot when it comes to all the straight characters and not when it comes to the gay ones? Ben and Emily's plot lasted from Episode 2 to Episode 75 with barely a gap. It took up most of the space in the show. It is literally Episode 100 and we have had to wait through 2 hiatuses without any kind of progress in reuniting Jack with Sammy and Lily. It feels like they're using Jack as their method for drama after Ben and Emily finally got their shit together, and now they're going to drag that out as long as humanly possible so they don't have to actually write what happens once he's finally been rescued. Lily's pain at losing her brother is treated as very insignificant, like she's just being a bitch for no reason. Even Sammy is allowed to be as petty as he wants, but she's treated terribly for doing the same thing. Like a lot of other people have said, I'm really scared that it's literally not going to be until the finale or it's going to wind up with one of the gay characters dead. I'm going to be very upset and angry if that happens.

Also in the vein of Sammy, it seems like they give all the credit to Ben for making it so they can all be a family and know what it is to love, like Sammy and Lily's past with Jack just never existed?? Families who have a falling out don't just forget what that kind of thing meant, guys, and they don’t need a straight person who really didn't do much of anything to get the credit for that!

Last thing because it's something that bothers me personally and I know others have disagreed on this: as a non-binary person, it's nice that they tried to include the "and non-binary pals" line, but it would be really nice if they could, y'know, actually have a NB character on the show? It feels like they're trying to get points for something they're not actually doing.

So that's most of everything that's been bothering me. The creator's actions when it comes to all of this make me worried for the future of the show, and how they're actually going to continue once they get around to it. I'm worried it's going to be a lot of excuses and taking potshots at the fans and basically sidestepping everything in the name of "being positive" and I'll be really upset if that happens. Your fans are why the show got big, and while creators really don't owe the fans anything, if you're trying to use the backs of queer fans to advance your show, you at least owe it to them to listen if they say you're stepping on them too hard.

[carriagelamp]

~ Queer Lit 30 Day Book Challenge ~

I decided to do this challenge I came across for June! Originally it was designed as a “day-by-day” thing, but my June was way too hectic to do a write up every single day… so I decided to make a nice compilation for the end of the month instead!

This is perhaps not the “purest” form of the challenge but I wanted it to be personal for me. Growing up when I did and where I did, I had very little exposure to queer books, especially age-appropriate queer books. That being said, there’s some books on this list that are really only “queer” by technically, or through a secondary character rather than the main character. I debated whether to include these but finally decided that, yes, I would. I owe it to myself. Even though some of these books that aren’t “as queer” as other, they were (or are) really important to me as a queer person and my journey is understanding that, so I wanted to acknowledge them!

More info about the books and the challenge under the cut!

Day One: First Queer Book You Remember Reading

Color by Taishi Zaou and Eiki Eiki

Remember how I mentioned a lack of available, age-appropriate queer books? I was one of those kids who was definitely exposed (probably too young) to queer manga/yaoi. It wasn’t necessarily what I wanted, especially as a wee ace teen, but it was the best I had at the time and it meant the world to me at the time, to see same-sex relationships even if looking back on them is very “YIKES”.

I’m sure I read others before this, but Color is one of the first that I really remember and which I a) actually owned and which b) wasn’t completely repellent in hindsight! I haven’t reread it in probably over a decade so I have no idea how it stands up, but at the time it read like a much more “realistic” account of two teenagers developing a crush and starting a relationship and as a questioning teenager it really helped me realize that this was a real, viable option.

Day Two: Queer Book That Reminds You Of Home

The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag

I hummed and hawed about this one for a long time because honestly I tend to read books that make me feel far from home. I decided to go with The Witch Boy though because it’s a story that challenges gender norms and stars a large family out in the woods, running wild and exploring magic, and honestly it gives me vibes that remind me of vacationing with my extended family. We’re also partially ginger and inclined to run wild in the woods. If we knew magic we’d have used it for sure.

This book is about 13 year old Aster, who lives in a family where the women all become witches and the men all become shifters. Aster, however, has no interest in shapeshifting and instead finds ways to study magic and learn the arts of witchcraft while constantly being pushed out by his female relatives… though everything might change when a new danger, that may or may not be connected to Aster studying magic, begins to appear.

Day Three: Queer Book That Has Been On Your TBR Too Long

Beneath The Citadel by Destiny Soria

That was an easy choice, this has been sitting on my bookshelf for months, staring at me accusingly every time I enter my room. I’m really excited to read it (Magical heist? Rebellion? With an asexual protagonist? Yes please) but for some reason I have not gotten around to it. Some day, baby, some day.

Day Four: Queer Book With A Name Or Number In The Title

George by Alex Gino

George is an absolutely charming middle grade novel about a child named George who the world perceives as male… but who knows she’s definitely a girl. The novel begins when her class decided to put on a play about the novel they had just read: Charlotte’s Web. George is desperate to play Charlotte, her favourite character, but isn’t even allowed to try out because it’s a “girl’s role”. George and her best friend struggle with how to handle this problem and manage George’s secret amid elementary school and home drama.

This book is really adorable – it was a nice, easy, cozy read for an adult, and would also make a great read aloud to elementary-age children if you want to introduce them to transgender characters.

Day Five: Queer Book Where The Protag Has A Fun Job

The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris

Not actually a queer protagnoist, but a queer side character who plays a major role in the series. Mister Vernon, one of Leila’s fathers, has arguable the coolest job: he’s a retired stage magician turn magic shop owner, which is complete with large rabbit, hidden room, and tons of fascinating gadgets to help a young practical magician learn their trade. He is hands down one of the neatest character in the series and is a major catalyst throughout the series.

The first book follows Carter, a runaway orphan who practices street magic to get by, as he runs away from his horrible uncle and winds up meeting a gang of magic-loving friends in a small town. Hiding from his uncle is only the beginning though, and the mysteries surrounding the town and Mister Vernon become thicker and thicker as the series goes on.

Day Six: Favourite Queer Graphic Novel

Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

There’s lots of fantastic queer graphic novels out there, but I have to name Check, Please! as my favourite (and not just because I’m Canadian and am legally obligated to at least show interest in a hockey story). Check, Please! is the friggin cutest story about Eric “Bitty” Bittle, former figure skater and avid baker, who joins the Samwell University hockey team. The story is told in the form of Bitty’s vlog as he recounts the bizarre quirks of the Samwell hockey team, his struggle to overcome his fear of checking, and his growing crush on the team captain, Jack. Seriously guys, this is cavity-inducing sweetness and you can read it all online for free, here on tumblr @omgcheckplease or at its own website, checkpleasecomic.

Day Seven: Queer Book You Often Reread

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Another book I haven’t reread in years, but this was the first queer novel I ever read (and owned!) so I read it obsessively, first the copy from the high school library and then my own copy (which is, let us say, well-thumbed by this point). It was pure fluff, in an aggressively diverse, relentlessly accepting, rainbow-coloured high school and it was exactly what I wanted in high school, and it still makes me happy whenever I remember it. It’s a straight-up high school romance, pretty traditional to the genre, but it has the most delightful supporting cast you could ever ask for. Maybe I should reread it again this summer…

Day Eight: Queer Book With A Happy Ending

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

This was a bit more of a “yeah it was fine” book for me, but honestly… queer people deserve some average, run-of-the-mill YA fantasies. As far as my normal reading preferences go, run-of-the-mill YA fantasies are my bread and butter. And this one has a cute sapphic romance to go with it. It’s about Denna, a princess with a dangerous secret: she has a magical Affinity for fire, despite being betrothed to the prince of a kingdom that aggressively prosecutes and fears magic-users. So now Denna is in a strange land, trying to hide her increasingly volatile magic, solve an assassination that rocked the kingdom, and deal with the growing connection between her and the prince’s wild sister, Mare. It has court intrigue, a murder mystery, horses, and lots of confused sapphic pining so it’s totally worth picking up if you want a light summer fantasy adventure.

Day Nine: Queer Book With (Over) 100 Pages

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

I decided to try to get as close to 100 pages as possible! River of Teeth is a 114-page novella that I haven’t quite finished (work and covid stress happened) but which I am fucking losing my mind for. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s peak alternative history, about queer hippopotamus-riding cowboys in Louisiana during the early 20th (late 19th?) century. Like… I don’t know how to emphasize how unbelievably cool this book is. Genderqueer demolition expert with a giant crush and a penance for making things blow up and attempting to poison guests when they’re bored?? Check. Gay gunslinging hippo-riding cowboy with an angsty backstory (and also a giant crush)? Check. Sexy, fat, badass lady con artist with an albino hippo that she spoils? Check. Like damn guys. I’m not done the book and I’ve already bought the sequel because I know the second I pick it back up I’m not gonna stop until I’ve ploughed through it all. This book is the epitome of “refuge in audacity” and “rule of cool”. Is it over the fucking top? Absolutely but that’s the point.

Day Ten: Favourite Queer Genre Novel

The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare

I’ll be honest, I’m a little shaky on what counts as a genre novel (isn’t… everything… a genre??) so I decided to interpret it as “slightly trashy YA supernatural fantasy” because that sure is a hella specific genre I’m weak for.

I really thought I was done with the Shadowhunter novels, I thought they were a goofy series I left behind in teenagerhood that I could look back on with amused indulgence. And then I found out that there was a novel specifically about Alec and Magnus and! Oh no! Ding dong I was wrong. I fell back in hard because listen… I love them. They were one of the first canonical same-sex relationships I ever read about in an actual novel, they meant a lot to me then and still mean a lot to me now. I have nothing to say to defend myself here except that this book wrecked me and I can’t wait for the sequel.

Day Eleven: Queer Book You Love In A Genre You Don’t Read

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connel

I am very rarely a slice-of-life / romance genre sort of person. I like my stories cut with a heavy dose of fantasy, scifi, action-adventure… something. So a graphic novel that’s not only a romance, but one about an unhealthy relationship and infidelity is like… super outside my usual range of reading material. But it was very much worth the read! The art was stunning, and the complicated emotions it tapped into really touched me. I’m very happy to have read it, and was so damn satisfied by the end.

Day Twelve: Queer Book With A Strong Sense Of Place

Belle Révolte by Linsey Miller

Linsey Miller is one author I very actively follow, I love her works and they always have very distinct, complicated worlds with unique societies and magic systems. Belle Révolte was her latest book and followed a prince-and-the-pauper type of story, in which wealthy Emilie des Marais is determined to learn noonday (magical) arts in order to become a physician, someone who can actually work to make her home a better place… but this is not something a proper lady would ever be allowed to do. So she flees her finishing school and meets poor, but magically gifted, Annette Boucher and offers her the chance to switch places. Annette goes back to school as “Emilie” and gets to hone her skills at the midnight arts while Emilie will use her name to sneak into medical school and fight her way up the ranks to physician. This is a challenging enough task, with rebellion roiling just beneath the surface and the country about to slip into a arrogant war that threatens the lives of hundreds…

Day Thirteen: Queer Book That Really Made You Think

Our Dreams At Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

This is a four book manga series that is completely breath-taking. It’s touched by magical-realism and completely drowned in visually stunning metaphors and symbolism. Seriously, I’ve reread these books multiples times trying to digest how the wide variety of symbols overlap and contradict and compliment and challenge each other. I still haven’t really gotten a solid handle on it, it’s very fluid, so yeah… definitely makes me think.

The story starts with Tasuku Kaname who believes he may have just been outed as gay by a high school friend, and feels like he’s watching his entire world crumble around him. He is seriously considering taking his own life, when he runs into the mysterious woman “Someone-san” and winds up leading him to a drop-in center that’s run by a local non-profit, and is also a hub for a number of queer people in the community. The books follow Tasuku as he grows, learns, makes mistakes, and confronts his feelings, along with a number of other members at the drop-in center. It is completely beautiful, optimistic, but also quite stark and harsh at its look at homophobia and transphobia in modern Japanese society and how it can effect people in different ways. I just bought book four and can’t wait to read it and see how everything ends.

Day Fourteen: Queer Book That Made You Cry

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Holy shit guys. Listen. Listen. If you don’t read any other book on this list, please consider reading The Marrow Thieves. It is hands down the best book I’ve read so far this year. Another book that doesn’t have a queer character as the protag, but as one of the main supporting characters and listen, his story fucking destroyed me as a person. That romance just… aaaaaaah. AAAAAAAAH.

Anyway. The Marrow Thieves is a Canadian dystopian novel. It takes place in a post-climate change world in which society has been ravaged – partially due to the wildly different and extreme weather patterns, but also through a strange disease that has spread through the population that has left people completely incapable of dreaming. Now unable to rest, process their lives, and dream of a future, people are being driven insane and only one group appears to be immune: North America’s First Nations people appear to be unaffected. And so they begin to be harvested, rounded up and collected in “school” in order for people to suck the marrow out of them to give to white people afflicted by this disease. The Marrow Thieves follows a First Nations boy named Frenchie as he flees the recruiters and tries his best to survive in this post-apocalyptic like wilderness, banding together with other First Nations people who are heading north, where they hope to find communities of their own people with whom they can shelter and start to rebuild their lives.

It’s a YA level novel, not very long, and such an insanely good read. I cannot emphasize enough PLEASE GO READ THIS BOOK. 

Day Fifteen: Queer Book That Made You LOL

Mostly Void, Partially Stars by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Welcome to Nightvale always makes me laugh and it was a lot of fun to get to read the transcripts of the episodes. I’m a sucker for novelizations/transcripts of shows. It was a nice nostalgia trip and gave me an excuse to go back and relisten to some of my favourite episodes too! If you’ve never gotten into Nightvale… hey, it’s a classic! Podcast is fucking stunning if you’re into podcasts, and if you’re not but would enjoy a weird, queer, eldritch horror comedy then try the book! It’s the first “season” compiled in text form, exactly how it’s heard in the show.

Day Sixteen: Queer Book That Is Really Personal To You

Jughead volume 1 by Chip Zdarsky et al

Including this one because gee golly it sure did make me want to fight a lot of people for quite a while. It was one of the first stories I ever found/read that had an explicitly asexual main character… (and a character I already really loved! Which I now got to feel an even stronger connection to! It was so fun and validating!) so it was super awesome how like half of tumblr decided for a year there that this was apparently a cardinal sin. Imagine… one single version of old, long standing comic series deciding to retcon a character to represent a heavily under-represented community… imagine being so fucking angry about that that you decide to start a hate campaign on the internet. So much fun to live through that as an ace person. Anyway, these comics were nothing amazing but I sure do love them aggressively out of pure spite, even now that the aphobia on tumblr has died back down I will hold this to my chest and adore it.

Day Seventeen: Favourite Queer Book Sequel or Spin Off

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

Honestly do I even need to say anything here? Is there any queer person who hasn’t read Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue series? If you are someone who hasn’t read it yet… go do that?? Absolutely stunning, one of my all-time favourite book series. It’s the perfect combination of hilarious and goofy, intense action, heartfelt character development, and a dash of “wait was that supernatural or??” This sequel was fantastic, this time focusing on Felicity, Monty’s sister, and her quest to become a physician despite being a woman in the 18th century. Awesome look at femininity, feminism, asexuality, and race. (Also… OT3? OT3.)

Day Eighteen: Favourite Queer Book By A Favourite Author

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

One of those “ehh is this technically queer? Not really but close enough, it is in my heart” books. It was one of the books I read as a teenager when I was still beginning to seek out and try to explore queer lit in so much as I could.

Terry Pratchett is, hands down, my favourite author, and though he doesn’t tend to write explicitly queer literature, his exploration of gender through allegory is top fucking tier. Everything to do with the dwarves in his series is fascinating, and a really great challenge/critique/exploration of gender, and this is the book that takes it to the next level (and brings in at least implicitly queer characters). It’s about Polly Perks, who lives in a small, war torn nation, choosing to join the army in order to find out what happened to her brother. However, as tradition dictates, she can’t join as a girl… so she disguises herself as Ozzer, a young man. There’s a lot of twists and turns, and as always Pratchett delivers fantastic humour and just absolutely delicious satire.

Day Nineteen: Queer Book That Changed Your Life

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson

This was the book that made me realize that I, as a queer teacher, could have queer kid lit in my future classroom. Maybe a comparatively small revelation, but a really important one to me. It made me realize that this didn’t need to be something I kept a secret in my professional life and which could really positively influence children, especially queer children. It was the first queer children’s book I ever bought.

Day Twenty: Favourite Queer Book Series

Candy Color Paradox by Isaku Natsume

Alright… I’ll admit it, this isn’t actually my favourite series, but I’ve used my favourites in other spots. And this is a good one! Definitely more of an actual “yaoi” than the other manga I’ve included (here there be sex) but it has a very different vibe that what I’m used to from that type of manga. The main pair are actually both capable, mature adults, with careers they actively care about, and who get together in the first volume! 

The rest of the series is less about them angst-ily toeing around their relationship, and much more about them learning to grow as a couple and balance their work and relationship and society. It’s funny and sweet, and I really enjoy these two losers. It’s a very low-stakes enemy-to-friends-to-lovers story, in which Onoe (a reporter) and Kaburagi (a photographer) are paired up on a news story they’re supposed to dig into together. What starts as a bickering rivalry gradually becomes respect, friendship, and love~ Onoe is a gremlin of a protag, so he’s a treat to follow.

Day Twenty-One: Queer Book That You Recommend A Lot

Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

To repeat myself: Linsey Miller is awesome! This is my favourite book of hers, the first of a duology. It’s kind of like an intense, edgy Tamora Pierce novel with murder. In this world, the Queen has a team of assassins known as the Left Hand. They’re an elite group that keeps the Queen safe and does the dirty work that needs to be done to protect the kingdom and keep the encroaching nations at bay. When the assassin Opal is killed, a contest is announced to find the new Opal. People from all over come to complete for the honour of being one of the Queen’s royal assassins, including gender-fluid thief Sallot Leon. Sal has some deep motivations to become Opal that go beyond a loyalty to their kingdom, but they’re going to have to survive their competitors if they even wants a chance at it… (Sal generally goes by either she or he in the books, but I’m using they in this instance since it’s in a more general sense.)

Day Twenty-Two: Queer Book That Made You Take Action

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Uhh, I don’t really have any books that made me take action per se, but this one sure gave me a lot to think about. It’s about deep sea mermaids who originated from the pregnant slave women tossed into the ocean to drown during passage to North America. From those dying women, this race was born and were taken in by whales, raised and protected until they could descend into the deep ocean waters, to form their own safe society. Their collective past is so painful though that as a species they’ve developed a very short term memory. But a people can’t live without any ties to their roots and so one of them, the Historian, holds all the memories for their entire species and shares it with everyone once a year so that the community can be connected to their ancestors before once again returning the memories to the Historian for safe keeping. Yetu, the current Historian, is so overwhelmed by these memories, that she can no longer take it – she flees her people, her responsibilities, and her pain and escapes to the surface instead...

Day Twenty-Three: Queer Book By An Author Who I Killed Is Dead

Cybersix by Carlos Trillo

I cannot emphasize enough, this is not actually a queer comic, it is in fact a very homophobic, transphobic and sexist comic written by a horrible person.

That being said, he’s dead and I own it now the TV series was essentially about a genderqueer superhero and a very confused bi biology professor who has a crush on both personas. I had a passionate crush on both personas as a child, and I will cherrypick this comic until I die in order to enjoy the only kickass genderqueer/genderfluid noir antihero I’ve come across. I am valid and I am not open to debate or discussion. Do not read this comic it’s horrible (but consider watching the show).

Day Twenty-Four: Queer Book You Wish You’d Read When Younger

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

This is such an incredibly soft story with the nicest art. There’s so much understanding and compassion in it and its exploration of gender and self-confidence and being true to yourself would have been very reassuring to me as a child, especially by late elementary/middle school. 

Day Twenty-Five: Queer Book In A Historical Setting

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

A retelling of Achilles’ and Patroclus’ relationship from childhood to the Trojan war. So yeah, you can imagine that this was also a candidate for Day 14 :’) I haven’t read this one in years but god it was lovely and emotionally destroyed me as a person.

Day Twenty-Six: Queer Superhero Book or Comic

Overwatch: Reflections by Michael Chu and Miki Montillo

I don’t really read superhero stories very often (the comics have always driven me a little bonkers, trying to find a way to enter the totally unapproachable Marvel/DC canons, and the MCU burnt me out years ago for every other sort of superhero story) so this is the closest I can get. Tracer’s a superhero yeah? Anyway, I, like every other queer person in the Overwatch fandom, lost my fucking mind when this dropped for Christmas a few years back and officially declared Lena Oxton not only the face of the entire franchise but also a lesbian. It’s an adorable little comic and Tracer’s girlfriend is a sweetheart.

Day Twenty-Seven: Favourite Queer Children’s Picture Book

Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack

There’s a number of sweet queer children’s books that are popping up these days, but this is my favourite just because it’s less about “explaining the gays to children” (though those books also have their place) and more of a cute little fantasy adventure in which the actual protagonist is gay. It’s about a prince who sets out to find himself a bride who can help rule by his side, but it quickly becomes clear that he isn’t interested in any of the girls. Instead, when a fire breathing dragon threatens his kingdom, he meets a brave knight who fights along side him. It’s very supportive and the art is lovely.

Day Twenty-Eight: Queer Book That Made You Feel Uncomfortable

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

This is a book with an asexual protagonist that I was originally really excited for. I know there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy this book and connected with it, but it didn’t do it for me. Maybe because my expectations were too high, but the protagonist’s experience with asexuality was vastly different than my own and the narrative voice ended up rubbing me wrong (and let’s be honest, slice-of-life romance is NOT my usual genre at all). So it’s not “made me uncomfortable because it’s Bad And Wrong” more just… totally vibed wrong with me. Maybe the perfect book for other people but definitely not for me, I had to return this one unfinished because it’s portrayal of asexuality just made me so deeply uncomfortable.

Day Twenty-Nine: Queer Book That Made You Want To Fall In Love

The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice And Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

This book had to make it on here somewhere, and honestly it could have gone in a lot of different spots, but I chose to put it here because the relationship between Monty and Percy is so incredibly sweet and authentic it really does make you want something like that. TGGTVAV (for anyone who has somehow not heard of it) takes place in the 18th century, and is about Monty, his best friend (and crush) Percy, and his sister Felicity going on a final “hurrah” tour of Europe before Monty's father finally tries to pin him down in England and force every part of Monty that’s deemed “unacceptable” out of him. So Monty intends to live this summer up… until everything goes off the rail and the three of them are suddenly fleeing across the continent with assassins at their heels and a strange, stolen artifact in their possession.

Monty has a lot of growing to do in this novel, and that’s one of my favourite things about it. For his and Percy’s relationship to ever have a chance, Monty needs to learn and change and actually communicate with other people, and it makes the relationship feel strong. Not a fluffy, surface level romance that often happens in YA but something built from the ground up by two friends who really want to make it work. Ahh, it’s lovely. One of my favourite novels.

Day Thirty: Queer Book With Your Favourite Ending

My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame

A two-book manga series that was completely stunning. It deals with queer relationships and homophobia in a very stark, real-world manner that you don’t often get in manga, while still being incredibly loving and sympathetic. The book is about Yaichi, a single father whose estranged brother (Ryoji) recently died. One day, a Canadian named Mike arrives, introducing himself as Ryoji’s widower. Mike had come hoping to visit his late husband’s homeland to try to get some closure, and Yaichi ends up inviting Mike to stay. The whole story looks Japan’s societal biases, through Mike’s experiences, Yaichi’s thoughts, feelings and prejudices, and those of his daughter who adores Mike. 

Seriously, this is one of the kindest, most earnest looks I’ve ever seen to internal prejudices that critiques them without demonizing the person who feels them. Instead it lovingly embraces grief, growth, and love. This series made me cry multiple times, was good enough that even my straight brother practically ordered me to go out and buy the second book when he finished the first, and the ending was just *chef’s kiss*

Honourable Mentions

A few books I really wanted to fit on my list somehow but couldn’t quite manage it, so here: All Out an anthology of historical fiction short stories about queer teens. The Tea Dragon Society series and Princess Princess Ever After, graphic novels by the amazingly talented Katie O’Neill. Heartstopper a webcomic turn graphic novel by Alice Oseman about a pair of rugby players. The Different Dragon a cute picture book in which the boy has two moms and which is about accepting different ways of being. And Lady Knight a part of Tamora Pierce’s Protector of the Small series because because Kel is word-of-god aro(and/or ace) and I’ve adored that series and Kel since I was about thirteen so by god I’ll take it.

- 

Now for those that wanted to do their own challenge, I found it on @gailcarriger’s blog.

[malefiquinn]

My Cyberpunk 2077 review

I finished the game last night and I have Feelings™ about it, so here goes my review. While the heavy spoilers (ending related) will be hidden under Keep Reading, I might mention some minor ones here and there, so read at your own risk.

Let’s get the Big Thing out of the way first: yes, the game is buggy af. The good news is most of them are visual bugs, so while annoying, they don’t really matter gameplay wise. But I did have to reload an earlier save file two times to get rid of gamebreaking bugs, both messing with main story quests. It was frustrating. And nevermind the times my car got destroyed because the game suddenly realized there were two cars occupying the same space. However I did manage to finish the game and make the choices I wanted, so it wasn’t that bad either.

My biggest complain is the blantant transphobia shown in the character creator. I know Claire exists and she’s awesome and I love her, but the cc options are just not inclusive enough. What’s the point of having them if you can’t use them anyway? Linking V’s pronouns to voice types makes absolutely no sense. And not being able to remove breasts from the female body type (or put them in the male body type) rubs me the wrong way as well, though I understand that it would involve a lot more animation work. Lastly, having body type-dependant hair styles is just plain inexcusable when the devs took the time to design genitals that are just not shown past the character creator (unless V walks around naked, I suppose). So, why bother having all these ✨choices✨ when the player can’t get a good, accurate customization anyway?

And it gets worse if we talk about romances. Real people have specific tastes and that’s completely understandable, but real life has a lot more than 4 choices in total. More importantly, bisexual people are a thing? There should have been at least one female and one male bisexual romance options in game. So to make it al worse, the constraint in gay romance options is... awful. Why have 3 types of gender-related customization if you can’t use them if you want to romance someone? I’m a cishet female who plays as a cishet female first if given the option, but I’m still bothered for the queer community (which I’m still part of btw, since I’m in the ace spectrum). It feels like being trans is more of a fetish in Night City than a real trait.

Speaking of romances, I played River’s and I found it... bit of a lackluster. I don’t find him physically attractive (shaved head and no beard are not my thing) but his voice was pretty nice and I liked his personality despite being a cop. But the main downside was the way the game treats his romance. I knew I wasn’t going to get a BioWare-style romance, but V’s relationship with River was like a sidenote and once he’s romanced, there’s just no way to interact with him again. That perhaps is the same for the other romances but there’s no replayability, in a sense that there’s no way to talk to/kiss him again or replay the sex scene, for instance. It bothered me that the game forces V to say that “she’s too busy” and apologize to her boyfriend all the time, because *I* would’ve made time to visit if there was ingame acknowledgement of it. The worst bit is that I feel like River’s romance is the least polished of them all, because Panam and Judy play important roles in main quests and Kerry is pivotal to Johnny’s sidequests, while River is... just there (also more further on, regarding the ending). So the fact that he’s like the forgotten child in the romance section while being the only cishet female option is heartbreaking.

The silverlining is that, at least, the mistreated community was het females instead of gay females. Although, this is just another example of game devs thinking about male players first.

Now the good part: what I liked

The cars. I’m not a car enthusiast, I don’t enjoy driving in real life and I’m a terrible driver in games, but I fucking loved the cars in CP2077. The Caliburn was like my game baby, I had so much fun driving around and hearing the different engines for each car, and the differences in driving... it was awesome. I got and bought *all* the available cars for the sake of it, just because I liked them so much.

The story. I love games that get me invested and this one was definitely one of those. Falling for Jackie when I knew he was not gonna be around for long was an expected, but still perfectly excecuted punch to the gut. And Johnny’s guidance and company was something I was hyped about, but still played out even better than I though it would. So to my next point, Keanu Reeves. I was thrilled to play a game with Keanu in it and it blew my mind. Those reviews that pinpoint Keanu’s acting as the weak link in the game are fucking wrong, how else you expect to see (and hear) an angry, resentful man permanently stuck in time? Even worse, when he knows the people he hated the most managed to kill him? I wasn’t happy when I learned Johnny was not a romance option but after meeting him, I’m glad that’s the case. He’s the perfect antihero-turned-best-friend for V, if you can stand him.

Stealth and hacking. Most of the time I choose the option to play stealthy and this time it wasn’t just that, it was the option to use futuristic technology at the same time. I LOVED it. Quickhacking enemies instead of shooting them is so much fun. Enemy detection is a bit wonky at times but still, I enjoyed it much better than if it had been a plain shooter. And those guns with homing shots are so cool that I wanted to play them over sniper rifles, my usual go tos.

The characters. I got invested in V’s relationships, even if the romantic aspect wasn’t as great as it could’ve been. Friendship with Kerry and Panam, clousure for Judy and Rogue, mourning Jackie, being part of River’s family, so many the fixers in existance... and Johnny, my bff Johnny. Even Alt, with her somewhat little role, was great. I was promised a compelling story and deep characters, and I did get both.

The soundtrack. Overall it’s pretty great, but my favorite songs are those related to Samurai. And it’s not even because of my love for Johnny, I really do enjoy them for their musical content. Unironically my all time favorite is Johnny’s as well, Never Fade Away. I won’t exit a car or open the menu when that song is playing.

The easter eggs. From GlaDOS and Silence of the Lambs in the Delamain quests to the Matix-esque pills of the main storyline, to Hideo Kojima and the BB in a lab, “Harvest like a Reaper” and the many “You’re breathtaking!” references (Kerry’s take was my favorite), the game presents A LOT of pop culture nods and I’m here for it. Having real life content creators around for several levels of cameos was a nice touch as well.

So without mentioning the heavy spoilers (aka ending), in my opinion, Cyberpunk 2077 deserves a 9/10. Bugs are fixable and the story and characters carry the game on it’s own because they’re just too good. The main story is kinda short and I believe Johnny’s sidequests should be part of the main story, but I get why they are not mandatory if you want to roleplay a full on dislike towards the rockerboy. But still, there are some things related to gender and romance that are complete misfires. I hope that some of those will be fixed via patches (the character creator bits), but the lack of more romance options or at least bisexual NPCs obviously won’t be fixed and that’s what keeps CP2077 away from a perfect score in my book.

Now, regarding the endings:

The one thing that truly bothered me was that the Rogue one had no real goodbyes for V. She goes into a suicide mission in space and everyone’s post-credit messages complain she just disappeared without a trace? I get she’s dying and all, but, for fuck’s sake leave a message explaining it if you cared so much about them. The game *makes* you care about the characters but doesn’t give you an option to honor that love at the end.

Also, again, romances. I played both Rogue and Panam’s endings so I know there’s no way to have a happy ending with River, which is bittersweet and probably for the best that it happens with him since his romance seems to be the least engaging, but again that makes me feel cheated. Not that they parted ways in the Nomad ending (that was sad, but sad endings are not bad), but that there is no happy-ish ending romance wise for a cishet female. People who romanced Panam obviously stay together with her and those who romanced Judy do too from what I’ve read (and no idea about Kerry’s romance), but not getting that option if you choose to be female and go for a het romance takes away from the game. Sadly. Also my last interaction with River in Rogue’s ending was fucking terrible, I liked how poetic that ending was for Rogue and Johnny until I got to the rest of my V’s life.

(But I still headcanon that River eventually joined V with the Aldecaldos in my canon ending, aka the Nomads’, despite what he said. Since his post-credit message implies he might visit her and stuff.)

As for the rest of the ending... CP2077 clearly states that life isn’t happy and that there’re no happy endings for people who live in NC, so I like that no ending is completely happy since you are bound to die anyway, but. But. It’s somewhat disheartening that the overall arc can be resumed to “all that you did served for nothing, you’re still dying so your efforts were absolutely useless.” I really don’t see how to improve it without defaulting to a happy, sunshine-esque ending that fixes everything, so I don’t know. It still wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear at the end, so... I liked it but didn’t, at the same time. Ha.

And lastly, I hoped for endgame playability and there is none, you have to revert to an earlier save to keep playing. I get why it wasn’t done, to give a definitive end to V’s story in NC, but anyway. What I really liked about this choice was that no matter the ending, V becomes no one again. They will be forgotten by most people after a while either because they leave with the nomads or because they ‘disappear’, aka die in a blaze of glory in that casino in space. Or well, sell their soul to Arasaka or commit suicide on the rooftop.

So overall, I loved this game and critics are somewhat too harsh. But I agree there are some terrible design choices and a long way of bugfixing to get to the specific masterpiece that we were hoping for.

[gureishi]

Otome Questionnaire: The Arcana

Next up: my favorite OELVN! I normally don’t enjoy OELVN because a) the stories often lack depth, b) they’re usually pay-to-play mobage which drive me crazy, and c) if they have English voice acting I’m literally out.

BUT. This game was one of my first VNs, and I still can’t get enough. The queerness! The plots! The steaminess! I’ve re-played this one...a lot. So...

Game: The Arcana

Platform you played it on: Mobile ofc Rating of game (1= I hated it, 5=It’s my favorite): Like...4.5 (only loses points bc of the issues with the devs not acknowledging the fucked of price structure. But controversy aside...the plot and characters are all A+ for me.) Favorite aspect of game (the LIs, the plot, the MC, etc): The ~queerness~ Least favorite aspect of game (the plot, the format, the endings, etc): The devs bein shady. The price structure. The pay-to-play. All of it drives me crazy. (But then I think about how much I payed for CxM and CxM Unlimited for the Switch and I’m like...at least I’ve spent less than that on this one. So.) Rating of MC (1=not for me, 5=my hero!): 5. Literally my favorite. I LOVE that this game allows you to fully self-insert and you can design your own MC, of whatever gender, sexuality, race, appearance, etc that you want. Aside from that, the apprentice is always strong, always stands up for themselves, is always the one to save the LI. I’m about it. Your #1 LI (who you ship with...yourself): Asra...and Julian. My ideal world would be a triad with them both tbh. I assumed Julian would be my guy but, after finally unlocking most of Asra’s paid scenes, I was swayed. I truly cannot choose. Is your #1 LI your usual type? Yes...and no. Asra is my regular type in the real world, but not in otoge. Julian is more my regular type in otoge...except he’s nice to me. This game doesn’t have a true tsundere (cause it’s an OELVN lol), but some mixture of the sexy deprecating bottom and the emoji-using sparkly possessive nonbinary switch is definitely it for me. Best LI for the MC (who you ship with MC, if it’s not a total self-insert): Definitely Asra. Having played all the routes, I can’t help but see Asra and the apprentice’s love story as the greatest one of all. I know that’s kinda controversial and that some fans despise Asra for his obsession and manipulation and the way he sacrifices everything for the apprentice... but I’m about it. Most attractive LI: Sexiest? Julian (hands down). Most ~attractive?~ Portia. The Devoraks are beautiful I just... Best route for plot: Hmm. Asra’s route feels like the ~True Plot~ to me, but again, I’ve unlocked the most paid choices in that one, so maybe that’s why. Muriel’s plot is probably the most dramatic and victorious imo. Nadia’s plot made me feel ~warm.~ Idk if I really answered that question. I genuinely love the plot of every route except Portia’s (more on that later). LI you wish was your friend: Everyone but Lucio ahaha. If I had to pick ONE friend it’d definitely be Portia. I think we’d really vibe. Favorite non-LI character: Obviously Mazelinka. I mean. She’s a straight-up badass Jewish grandmother. As a Jewish otome player that’s like...not something I see every day? LI/route you didn’t enjoy: Portia. But ok. Hear me out. I ADORE Portia. I was so so looking forward to her route, and I expected it to be one of my favorites. I really lusted after her while playing the other routes tbh. And her route just fell flat to me. No shade to the writers, but I thought her route (so far) didn’t make a lot of sense, seriously lacked romance and sexual tension, and was generally all over the place. I was disappointed! I had just high hopes. LI who surprised you (you thought you wouldn’t like them but you did or vice versa): Again, Portia. I wanted to like her route so much more. Also, on the flip side, Lucio. I dreaded his route and ended up really enjoying it (still not attracted to HIM tho). LIs you ship with each other: Julian and Asra OBVIOUSLY. The subject of all my fantasies. And, of course, Portia and Nadia, who I truly believe are endgame. Best romantic moment: Oh oh ahh. Asra’s paid scene where you dance in the palace ballroom and he tells you about your past. And how he always loved you. Oh man. Saddest/most heartbreaking moment: So many but Asra sobbing at the Lazereth as he tells you how you died has gotta be #1 for me Sexiest moment: The Julian paid scene in the Hanged Man’s realm where he gets all tied up in the vines ohhhhh. It’s all about a tall imposing submissive redhead for me man Favorite ending (can be a good OR a bad end!): Wellllll obviously only 1/2 of the routes are actually done at this point so. Gonna have to go with Asra’s sweet sweet good end, waking up after sleeping under the stars on your travels with him~ Least favorite ending (can also be a good OR a bad end): Well hmm. Nadia’s bad end is ~hot~. Julian’s bad end is just Howl’s Moving Castle. I guess I have to go with Asra’s bad end cause it stresses me the fuck out. A scene/moment you want to see (ex. something you didn’t get to see fleshed-out but wish you could): MORE ROMANCE WITH PORTIA. I haven’t played a lot of her paid scenes cause her route disappointed me so much SOMEONE TELL ME IF THEY’RE GOOD AND IF THEY MAKE IT BETTER. T_T

[miraculoussage]

Breaking Out

Sorry for the lack of formatting regarding this section. My laptop charger broke so I’m currently stuck with mobile, and I am not great at mobile text organization. Also sorry for the lack of a read-more. Once again, mobile :(  fixed bc i have a laptop again B)

Rating: General

Characters: Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir main character; lots of other characters making an appearance, lots of Plagg, Marinette/Ladybug, and Gabriel

Relationships: Light love-square (pre-relationship)

Other tags: Trans boy Adrien, mostly closeted trans Adrien, transphobia (no transphobic violence), mentions of a dead name but no actual use of the dead name, misgendering, mentions of Dysphoria; supportive friends, Gabriel Agreste is a soggy tissue, minor mentions of diet control, minor redesigns of LB and CN costumes, major redesigns of civilian Adrien bc closet trans. Use of the word queer as an identifier and not a slur.

Part 2

♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

The worst thing about being a popular fashion model, Adrien thought, was his image pasted all over the city. He had to see himself in the mirror enough as it was; seeing himself dressed up in the most feminine clothes his father could design, his long blond hair professionally styled into curls and braids and up-dos, and with enough makeup for three circus clowns made his skin itch. All of Paris, all of the world saw him as he was on the billboards and posters, in heavily edited magazine photos, set on backgrounds of flowers and butterflies. Everyone saw Adrien as a girl, Gabriel Agreste’s beautiful model daughter. Everyone except himself.

He had thought about coming out to his mother and father before, but while he was trying to find the nerve or the right moment, he overheard his father firing one of his models for coming out as trans. After that, his anxiety grew. He could never tell his parents, especially his father, not until he was living on his own and not relying on his modelling career and his father for survival.

Even when he went to school for the first time, he had to introduce himself as his dead name and endure the misgendering. He had considered coming out to Chloe, too, but while she didn’t seem to be transphobic, he didn’t trust her enough to keep it a secret. She thrived on gossip, sometimes even at the expense of her friends. Whether or not it was on purpose didn’t exactly matter to Adrien in this situation.

Plagg was the first person he ever came out to, not entirely on purpose. When he transformed into Chat Noir the first time, he actually cried for a few minutes. He felt different and he felt right and when he caught his reflection in a mirror he saw exactly who he wanted to be. Aside from his inhuman eyes and the strangeness of the costume, of course. His hair was short and messy and the makeup his father insisted he wear every day was entirely gone.

His costume was thick black leather, covering his whole body up to his neck where a bell sat at his collar. There was soft padding on his shoulders, elbows, and knees, barely visible under the leather. He had black combat boots with green soles that reached half way up his calf, laced with bright green laces, and lined with soft material if the same colour. His gloves, too, were black leather with soft green lining, claws on the fingers. Over the black bodysuit, he had a sleeveless hoodie; the fabric was looser and lighter than the leather, it almost seemed like cotton except it was sleek and waterproof. The pouch pocket was bright green with a single black paw print in the middle. All of the lining was the same bright green, visible in the hood and extending to the hems of the shirt. The hood itself had spaces cut out for the leather cat ears on his head, and fit loose and comfortable without falling over his eyes. Most importantly to Adrien, his chest was entirely flat without pressure.

After the first Akuma was stopped and Adrien transformed back, Plagg was suddenly gentle where he wasn’t before. “So what was that, then? What are your pronouns? Got a different name than the one I know?” After answering the questions and having another emotional moment, Plagg was back to being aloof and snarky, seemingly only concerned with cheese.

Adrien warmed up to the little cat-god fast. It felt more than amazing to be called the right thing for once, and Plagg at the least acknowledged his angry and frustrated rants about anything related to his gender that he’d never been able to share with anyone before. “As long as you keep giving me cheese,” Plagg had said, but somewhere along the way the meaning of the sentence changed to “always”, unspoken but genuine.

At school, things started out nice despite the rough start from being Chloe’s friend. The misgendering and dead name weighed down on him, though, and soon his new friends shared their concern about him. No one had any idea what it was about. It could be anything from his father to his mother to his modelling to just not getting enough sleep, but he’d hidden himself enough that no one would ever guess what it truly was about.

Nino was good about (sort of) silent comfort, offering to talk about it but relenting easily and moving to sharing music, food, memes, stories, and just a comforting presence. Alya always tried to figure out what was wrong and when she came to her own conclusions she would give him advice, though it was never the advice he needed. And Marinette...

Though Marinette was shy and got flustered easily, when her friends were in pain, she would stop at nothing to help them feel better. When he sighed about going home at the end of the day, she would invite him over to do homework, which usually ended up actually being video games. It became almost a routine by the spring, the two of them (and sometimes their friends) hanging out in the Dupain-Cheng apartment, snacking on yesterday’s left-over pastries while they played games, watched movies, talked, or rarely actually doing homework. Marinette’s parents were incredibly kind to Adrien, he was even envious that Marinette had such a supportive family. She was open about her biromantic identity, and never suffered for it at home.

As a result of their time spent together and Marinette’s own tendencies to not back down from helping her friends, she was the second person he came out to. It was a mess of tears between them, and Marinette apologized profusely for the misgendering, despite having no idea she was doing it. It made Adrien laugh, which made Marinette laugh, and then they were both laughing and crying at the same time. When Sabine came up to check on them, Adrien found he didn’t care that she was seeing him like this, and didn’t try to hide his identity from her anymore. Then, Sabine was crying with them, hugging Adrien close and giving him all the affirmations he never got from another human. (It was then that he decided he was now Adrien Dupain-Cheng, and she and Tom were his new parents.)

They all understood how important it was to keep this new information a secret, from everyone. If it got to his father or, gods forbid, the media, everything would go to hell in a hand basket. Marinette helped him fix his makeup before he left, apologizing even more about him needing to wear it. As usual, Sabine snuck some fresh pastries into his bag while he pretended not to notice when she hugged him goodbye. On the way out, Tom stopped him. The bakery was empty, just closed for the evening minutes before. “Adrien,” the news had reached him earlier via Sabine, “if you ever ever need a place to go for any reason, you’re always welcome here. No questions asked, any time day or night.” He had to hand a napkin to Adrien, tears gathering in his eyes again. As Adrien’s car pulled up to the front of the bakery, they said goodbye for the night, and Adrien was on his way back to the mansion. It wasn’t home, not anymore.

He came out to Ladybug third, but he didn’t know if it counted as third when he was Chat Noir. It was a rather casual interaction, against all expectations. The two of them were jogging across rooftops, keeping their eyes out for any sort of problem, just a regular Saturday patrol. They were talking about TV shows, sharing their theories for the next episode and the rest of the season; Ladybug theorized that one of the characters was a trans man, and Chat Noir seized the opportunity without a second thought. “Oh, like me,” he said, and Ladybug didn’t even blink. She just smiled at him, and he smiled back. Before they parted for the night, she thanked him for trusting her with his secret and promised it was safe with her. “I know, my Lady, I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you wouldn’t.” Nothing even changed between them after that, though Ladybug did seem to talk more openly about queer subjects when they came up.

He came out to other classmates and friends on a case by case basis, with Marinette there for support every time. Nathaniel, Alix, Nino, Rose and Juleka, Kagami. People he could trust entirely to keep it a secret and that he knew weren’t queerphobic from their time knowing each other. He always had some anxiety about it anyways, but with constant unspoken support from Marinette and her parents, it didn’t seem as daunting as before. Nathaniel drew pictures of him with different styles of short hair and more masculine outfits, “for when you’re able to choose your appearance”. Marinette had helped Nathaniel design the outfits, and she had plenty more in her own sketchbook designed just for Adrien. Alix and Nino casually called him “dude” and “bro”, a way to affirm him without actually outing him, since the terms were so casual and usually neutral.

As his support outside of the mansion grew, Adrien realized day after day just how terribly he was treated by his father, and Natalie and the other staff by proxy. Aside from his father’s thinly veiled queerphobia, he also controlled Adrien’s diet, his schedule, his social life, his career, his finances, and almost every aspect of his life. Before going to school, he thought most families were like that. It wasn’t until Alya complained about being saddled with babysitting again and the others lamented with her that three evenings that week was a bit excessive that Adrien realized most of his classmates actually got to decided what they did in their spare time without having to beg for permission. They got to choose what to eat for lunch, some even got to make their own food, and they didn’t have to follow a strict diet. They weren’t constantly afraid of their parents punishing them at the slightest mistake.

He spent more and more time at the Dupain-Cheng’s, at home, they even gave him his own key. More than once they’d woken up early to open the bakery, just to find him curled up on the couch in his clothes from the day before, the throw blanket wrapped tightly around him. Marinette made plenty of casual clothes and loungewear for him, until half of her closet was his. They almost always had a plate of leftovers from dinner with his name on it in the fridge. One afternoon, they surprised Adrien; the room that was formerly the office was converted into a full bedroom with his clothes moved into the closet already. The room was even decorated, soft green and light grey, paintings on the walls, a desk with a silver cat paperweight next to a lamp. Plagg seemed even more excited about it than Adrien was, which was saying a lot because Adrien was over the moon. They really were serious about the “anytime, no questions asked”.

After three years of school and crime fighting, Adrien made the biggest decision in his life. He talked to the bank and a lawyer. He had his rightful savings moved from the account under his father’s surveillance to a brand new private account. He had his friends and real family at his back. And then, he came out to his father. It went about as well as he expected; Gabriel threw a fit, accused Adrien of acting out for attention, and ultimately ended up locking Adrien in his room and forbidding him from going to school. Fortunately for Adrien, he had an escape plan in the form of a magical ring.

He was across the city in a matter of minutes, detransformed, and contacting his lawyer. His emancipation was officially in process. He texted the Dupain-Cheng family chat letting them know he told his father and it didn’t go well, but he was not in the house and he was safe. They were the only ones who knew about his plan, given they were part of it all. Though the idea of living full time with Marinette gave him butterflies, he could ignore his crush for everyone’s comfort.

Before his father or Natalie had a chance to suspend his access to his accounts, he made an Instagram post. A photo of himself, no makeup and his hair pulled back into a bun so it wasn’t so visible, wearing one of the more formal outfits Marinette made for him (a blue suit with a white undershirt and a pink bow tie). It had been taken a few days earlier, in front of a nondescript grey wall in his bedroom, unable to be linked to any location. As the caption, he wrote “Adrien Agreste, he/him, proudly trans! Stay strong, and know you are loved.” He posted it in as many transgender and fashion tags as he could, and was happy to see screenshots of it spreading almost immediately before it was taken down from his own account and his access was cut off. He texted Marinette one last time to tell her he would be unable to contact her over the phone, then turned the phone off, left it on a nearby cafe table, and disappeared down an alley. Thirty seconds later, Chat Noir was vaulting between buildings, headed nowhere in particular.

Stick around for part 2! ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

[love-takes-work]

Some people are being weird about Stevonnie's intersex designation.

Hopefully I can write a post that sums up and addresses a few confusions and criticisms I've been seeing!

Intersex: This is a term for anyone who has one of the dozens of biological sex variations outside of "male" and "female." Knowing someone is intersex does not tell you anything about their genitals, their hormones, their surgeries, their gender identity, whether they identify as trans or nonbinary, their secondary sex characteristics, or their chromosomes.

Some intersex variations are hormonal. Some are about genitals. Some are chromosomal. Some are a mixture.

Intersex is a designation that is exactly as "sexual" as calling someone "male" or calling someone "female." It isn't explicit in a way that makes it racy, sexualized, or inappropriate for children to see. And in fact, it answers zero questions about what is in Stevonnie's pants (or the pants of any intersex person).

Preoccupation with nonbinary, intersex, and trans people's genitals is what's inappropriate.

And unless the person in question wants you to know, it isn't your business.

Please also acknowledge that while we're talking about a cartoon character here, the way we treat and talk about them shouldn't be different from the way we treat and talk about real people. It's not about whether we're concerned about "hurting" an imaginary person. You all know that how people react to conceptual people is often how we learn to react to real people. Trans people and intersex people and people with hormone variations have historically been (and continue in the present to be) mocked and paraded as weirdos, from "man in a dress" pitched as a joke to "bearded lady in a sideshow" tropes.

Note: Say intersex, not "intersexed." Because people aren't intersexed any more than they're maled or femaled.

I personally have a couple intersex friends who are open about their designation. It's way more common than you might think and the shame and stigma surrounding intersex is part of why many people have been saying it's bizarre or gross to talk about associated with Stevonnie. Intersex isn’t rare, bizarre, or gross. It's just what happens when physical sex isn't a binary, which it's not.

Some people don't find out they're intersex until they have genetic testing for some reason and see a chromosome anomaly. Some people don't find out they're intersex until they don't experience typical puberty. Some people find out they had unnecessary surgery when they were infants to "normalize" their external genitalia, which is something some intersex activists are trying to stop from happening (especially since a. unnecessary surgeries can be painful and dangerous; b. they cannot consent at that age; c. they may have preferred an intersex body; and d. the sex determined by doctors or parents to be the right one might be the wrong one if the intersex person grows up and identifies differently gender-wise, and the parts they were born with are forever taken from them).

Stevonnie being intersex is a positive thing overall, mostly because intersex is not talked about for no good reason, and because of that we'll continue to have generations of parents who want unnecessary surgery on intersex infants, intersex people feeling ashamed or weird about their bodies, and people in general believing untrue things about the physical sex of bodies. A character just casually identifying as intersex is a really nice change for once.

The only issue I have with it, honestly, is the same issue I have with non-binary representation on the show. So far, we've only seen it explicitly acknowledged in Fusions.

Fusion is a magical concept on a SF/fantasy show, and I do worry that the value of intersex rep on the show is somewhat diluted by the fact that it's attached to a character who is LITERALLY a mixture of male and female characters. Being "a mix of male and female" isn't really the best way to see intersex people--the parts in question have names and what determines their maleness or femaleness or non-binary-ness is who owns the parts--and I worry that if some people are introduced to intersex for the first time as if it only exists as a result of an impossible science fiction concept, they might also get the idea that it doesn't happen in the real world.

It does happen in the real world! Just like nonbinary people and same-sex couples!

I would love to see some explicit nonbinary and intersex rep among human cartoon characters, and more same-sex human relationships too. SU is the perfect show to do this because it's got sensitive, informed, diverse, cool people behind it who know how important this is. There are still people watching this show who are "excusing" its queerness because it's mixed with literal aliens, but the intention of the show is the opposite: to give its audience characters that are relatable to historically marginalized groups who are not from outer space. So far it's still GREAT that we got a Gem wedding, a few casual references to humans who are probably gay or queer, a polyamorous Gem Fusion, and a nice little gaggle of nonbinary Fusions, including an intersex Fusion. The only reservation I have with it is that introducing these concepts attached to characters whose non-binary and/or intersex identities and designations are consequences of being literal mixtures of more than one person does make it less readily incorporated into a less savvy viewer's real-life understanding. What's still fantastic about it is that people can see Stevonnie supporting Intersex Awareness Day and look it up and find out why it exists. It's absolutely a stepping stone if nothing else, and they're not wrong for doing it.

And please do stop claiming that talking about intersex is sexually explicit or disgusting because you think it refers to the genitals of minors. That isn't true AND it is misleading when it comes to what intersex is. If you wouldn't consider it inappropriate to ask a new parent about the gender of their baby knowing they can't ask the baby and are therefore explicitly disclosing what genitals the child has, you shouldn't consider it inappropriate to have a children's show character identify as intersex.

Hope that helps.