#THEY'RE MAKING GAY PEOPLE REAL

[fallershipping]

I'm Ace-spec (Demi for romantic and intimate) and I'm honestly baffled whenever someone says "I headcanon [insert young character here] as Aroace" most of the time because their mannerisms remind them of when they were a young baby ace

and the weirdest thing for me. the weirdest thing, is that I always see or get a comment of "AREN'T THEY A CHILD?? WHY ARE YOU PUSHING THIS ONTO THEM"

f.. for headcanoning them as Aroace? I always just think "Oh! They remind me of when I was young and growing up wondering why relationships just weren't in my mind but everyone else made it such a big deal, and why it was forced in every media ever, etc etc"

Of course, people who say "I think they might be gay/lesbian" get the same flack too.

It's so odd to me. And upsetting. Do any of you feel this way?

Edit: And this is in a world where young characters have their crushes and love interests in media, but it's all hetero. It boggles my mind that the moment someone says "oh that sounds like growing up aroace or MLM/WLW" raises hackles but then we get shit like COUGH MIRACULOUS LADYBUG'S REALLY CREEPY AND BADLY WRITTEN CRUSH THAT MARINETTE HAS COUGH HACK COUGH what did you say? i didnt say anything.

[tubbytarchia]

I'm sorry. people are calling you homophobic for not having a positive flower husbands interpretation??? like actually???

Yeah in case you didn't know I'm lesbian and homophobic but I like men kissing 💯💯💯/homophobic

[https-kiipxyz]

I find it very upsetting how marvel has given loki a person(MOBIUS.) To love and trust and to help him learn what itslike to be loved and then they were just like "wouldnt it be funny if we made that very important person forget loki, TWICE." it may not seem like a big deal but loki has literally changed DRASTICALLY in the span of ,maybe a week? 2 weeks? He went from a cautious, mischievous, kind of villain to a vulnerable, confused god???(i suck at explaining things) what in trying to say is marvel has given loki a taste of love and trust and respect and has ripped it away TWICE, and when mobius was pruned then later sphagettified?!?!?!?!??! So you know, i think we should get lokius in the next episode because marvel KNOWS what their doing and i dont appreciate being toyed with and watching loki suffer over a sweet old man who enjoys jet skis >:(

[welcometoteyvat]

jing yuan and yanqing are giving zhongli and xiao if the latter’s canon relationship was Actually fanon’s made up father figure/adopted child dynamic

[forcebookish]

if arkarm were really both supposed to be gay for you then why was arm made admin of a Hot Boy facebook page in the first place? shouldn't he just be gay from the start? sus writing choice tbh

[magdaclaire]

my parents being fucking weird has ruined so many of the activities queers typically salivate over

[fvckw4d]

The concept of queerbaiting annoys me. I was told that it refers to a work of fiction pretending to cater to a queer audience but then pulling back from it to avoid alienating homophobes, which is an incredibly specific thing. But a lot of people seem to think that it instead means "any time there's any gay subtex, metaphor, or ambiguity" or "whenever something from 1995-2012 was being a normal amount of homophobic for the era."

[magentagalaxies]

i really want to start making a table collecting statistics on the audience demographics i'll perform my aubrey material for (like what generation most of the audience is, whether i'm performing in a predominantly queer space, etc.) and how well the jokes land bc like. i need to collect more data points before i can properly present my findings but the results so far have been fascinating

[leatherbookmark]

oh god okay i understand that maybe not everyone is as indecisive/comfortable with saying "it depends!" as me, but like, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, but i just can't take people who call izzy a villain seriously

[firendgold]

If you're still doing the choose violence ask game: 2 (👀), 9, 10, 22 ?

I got such a rush from finally answering the first ask that I'm doing this for as long as people send me questions. So here we go again!

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

anon, I'm at work. I'm seeing this at work. :'D

Okay, serious face. Albus Dumbledore is probably my fave if I have to choose between him and Harry on this blog. I just have to figure out why he would never...

Bottom. Albus would never, I'm sorry. He won't. He can't. Like, maybe when he was having his whirlwind summer romance with Gellert, he bottomed every single time they fucked because he was so in love and this was his equal and his partner and so what if he was a little rough and distant sometimes in the bedroom, and always wanted to top and tug his hair and hiss out orders? This was The Man The Universe Had Crafted For Him, and he would absolutely bottom for him every time... and then the summer of 1899 ends. And Ariana dies. And Aberforth breaks Albus' nose. And Gellert fucks off to go be a fascist.

And Albus, alone and heartbroken, resolves to never trust someone that completely again, never love someone that same way, and never let anyone get into a position of power over him where they might be able to use his knowledge and talents for ill. That means physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically... carnally. So he has sex with plenty of other people, and even falls in love with a few of them, but he is in control at all times. He never bottoms again.

That's all I've got for that one.

9. worst part of canon

So the first answer that came to mind is posted here, but for fairness' sake I'll try to come up with another worst thing. (That's not related to ships, because I'm trying really hard not to be THAT violent on the violence ask game.)

I think... that if That Woman was going to introduce international schools, students and characters in the middle book of the series, she should have done more with them than having them vanish after Goblet of Fire, only to come back for either fake romantic tension and one line of exposition about the Hitler allegory Dark Lord of the Before-Times (Krum, Deathly Hallows) or to be married off to a Weasley for an aesop of It's Not About His Looks Now That They're Jacked Up (Fleur, Half-Blood Prince). I'm not saying Fleur and Viktor HAD to be best buddies forever with Harry, but it is weird that they have this unique bond that no other young students have had with each other in hundreds of years, they even lost one of their fellow champions, Dumbledore gives this very moving speech about remaining connected and not letting darkness and prejudice sever new ties, and then... nothing. No side adventures in France or wherever Durmstrang is, no communication from either side, nothing.

Feels like a huge letdown in hindsight.

10. worst part of fanon

Oh, no. That's not fair. There's just so many.

If I had to consolidate what I currently don't like about the HP fandom/fanon into a few lines, I think I would say that I hate the pureblood/Dark side apologism. I do believe in nuance in characters. I do believe redemption and/or walking different paths is an important theme in Harry Potter, and I think it's fascinating to explore that with any and every character you can think of, even characters I may not personally like. But I really, really hate the way the fandom has taken that and twisted it into this idea that we were sold a lie at the start: that the British magical government was fine the way it was, and so was the society around it; that Dark magic Isn't All That Bad, Really, and there are actually Good and non-prejudiced things about a few rich bitches passing down their knowledge and secrets and slurs for generations within the Family, and keeping the Family "Pure" is cool actually, and none of this has any relation to real life ideas about miscegenation and classism and racism and eugenics, what are you talking about?

It's just so worrying. As a minority, when I see people on tumblr/twitter/AO3 gleefully agreeing that we need to eat the rich and fix society and eradicate all the horrid -isms and -archys ruining all our lives, then watch them turn around and write a 200k epic where Dumbledore was the evil one for locking the Horcrux books away and championing marginalized members of society, Hermione is just uppity for wanting to make necessary changes to the darker parts of magical society that That Woman was literally pointing out for a reason, and Tom Riddle is only bad because he took the good segregationist pureblood ideas and added murder to them... and when that fic gets thousands of comments agreeing with them full stop with no examination of any of that... it makes me anxious, at a minimum. The same thing is happening now with Grindelwald now that he's actually a figure on the screen and not just some dude mentioned a few times in the book series: same apologism, same justification of atrocities, same good-guy-blame-games, same blorbofication even.

On the one hand... fiction doesn't always directly reflect or affect reality. On the other... this unironic pro-pureblood meta is a pervasive concept that has popped up in thousands of fics written by thousands of fanfic writers. It's happened for years, and it keeps happening, and I see very few fans speaking out against it or even acknowledging it as a problem. So that makes me ask myself, who actually is willing and able to examine the injustices of our society and build a better imaginary society through the lens of HP fanfiction, and who's okay with the prejudice in the HP world as long as it's coming from the faves they're attracted to?

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Happily, this is a harder question to answer because I've been finding so many like minds in the past 5 years who go feral over the same 20 HP scenes as I do. ^^ But give me a sec, I'll think of something.

...

Okay. Got it.

In order to answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I, young teenager, avid reader, recent reader of the HP series once book 5 was out, realized that Harry and Dumbledore had a much deeper relationship than just headmaster and student. The thing that made me latch on to them and project like crazy, basically.

It's the scene in Goblet of Fire chapter 36 where Harry has been rescued from Fake Moody and he's in Dumbledore's office with Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to relay everything that happened to him once he touched the Portkey in the maze—and immediately Sirius tries to protect Harry from having to relive it now, so soon after it's happened. And then this scene happens.

Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, behind his desk. He was looking at Harry, who avoided his eyes. Dumbledore was going to question him. He was going to make Harry relive everything. “I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let him have a sleep. Let him rest.” Harry felt a rush of gratitude toward Sirius, but Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes. “If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.” The phoenix let out one soft, quavering note. It shivered in the air, and Harry felt as though a drop of hot liquid had slipped down his throat into his stomach, warming him, and strengthening him. He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, visions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup. Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous were being extracted from him. It was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.

This is one of the best scenes in the entire book, the entire series. It completely refutes the fanon Dumbledore who is often cold, cruel, inflexible and unrelenting in his quest for whatever the author wants him to be inflexible and cruel about at the time. It shows that Dumbledore, the real Albus Dumbledore, is one of the few people who understands what Harry needs and is able to provide it to him, even when others who also care for Harry would rather protect him or shield him from what he needs.

Kid me was particularly taken by how gentle Dumbledore is with Harry here. It made me look back and see how in some ways this scene, this closeness, is the culmination of all the times they've met and spoken before.

(You can imagine how painful it was reading Order of the Phoenix right after this.)

But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite scenes that other people ignore or haven't talked about/drawn/written about much. Which is ironic, because the scene right after that where Harry talks about Voldemort taking his blood and Dumbledore's eyes do the triumphant "lol Voldemort just fucked up" gleam is probably one of THE most talked-about scenes in the fandom (even though to this fucking day in 2023 people still don't realize what the gleam meant, when even That Woman has clarified what it meant in INTERVIEWS).

...And for me, safely at the end of the questions, that's all she wrote.

[maddy-ferguson]

byler tumblr in june: will doesn't have internalized homophobia, that's mike.

byler tumblr on july 1st: oh, will does have internalized homophobia after all. this is terrible.

byler tumblr in august: oh, will really does have internalized homophobia after all. this is terrible.

byler tumblr after scriptgate: will doesn't have internalized homophobia, that's mike.

[knxfesck]

I've been seeing this huge disconnect between how a specific genre of white queer people vs queer people of color are responding to the current political situation, especially on apps like tiktok. You'll see a vaguely androgynous white person making videos about how theyre scared to go out in public now and then right after a black trans woman at a protest.

I'm not saying it's injust or not okay to be concerned about the current political climate and how it regards LGBTQ+ people. But I am saying it's interesting how easily certain people will fearmonger and doomerpost in response to the concept of oppression directly affecting them compared to people who are maybe used to dealing with systematic oppression 24/7. Because a lot of people have to keep going and can't just... not go outside because of the threat of being attacked or discriminated against or targeted by police.

Obviously there's nuance and intersectionality to this but if you're a white queer person and you know you're somewhat priveleged on the graph of racism to misogyny to homophobia to transphobia, think about your other gay and trans peers- especially your black, brown, and indigenous peers- and how they're responding to this before making another post about how you're going to die instantly upon stepping foot in a majority republican state.

Obviously the takeaway here isn't that white people are less justified in worrying, but that as queer people we are stronger together. Solidarity forever etc etc. And building solidarity does not happen when you avoid thinking about how anyone different than you in your community is affected and choose to wallow in your own perspective instead of working together with them.

[emeryleewho]

Sometimes I see the people who get really mad that some people want non-trauma-oriented marginalized media and think "if you let yourself have nice things, you probably wouldn't be this bitter".

[fdrsamericanflagduckfloaty]

HOWS GOMENS

I have two tests right after the other so i will in fact be tired as shit for the next 2 days but so far:

i like it. i can see myself continuing it. sure its not a president/ben franklin documentary or the alienist but yknow what? I'll give it a go.

i can only wait till i get to season 2. if I'm actually into it by then, then the, yknow, 'scene' everyone freaked out over will also make me freak out. ...probably

[treesbian]

yelled at for posting abt free palestine on facebook lol. unprompted also. ok no i've stopped considering that i have npd or something bc now i know without a doubt that i am indeed a better person than all of them ^_^

[faggotri]

when emma falls in love is proof that taylor swift is straight. she could have easily made that song queer and chose not to because it doesn't occur to her that gay people actually fall in love with people of the same gender. she sees straightness as the only possibility