#and a lot of times the isolation is ALSO because we’re lgbt

[c0rpseductor]

kind of sick of other lgbt people acting like Go Out Clubbing Or You’re Basically Straight is at all a mindset that’s not deranged. Sorry would love to meet your arbitrary standards for being gay enough but i can barely walk 👍 don’t think ill be dragging my cane to the club but you guys have fun

[fite-club]

I’ll be real, I was being a bit of a dick to you earlier. I genuinely know where you’re coming from because I just saw some rancid anti-feminism stuff today on here that left a bad taste in my mouth. Still, it just sucks when I’m at a point of being terrified of transition for a variety of reasons and also wanting it. I do agree with you that a lot of people have kinda lost the plot on what feminism is lately and it’s a bit maddening. I just wish I was having an easier time with being a trans man right now is all, and I do think I took that out on you a bit. I kinda saw the error of my ways and apologize for it because I did see some ugly stuff today that confirms some of the things you’re saying and it was pretty disheartening to run into honestly… I’m just kinda lost and it sorta feels like the internet is no help lol

take my hand brother…. it’s ok i forgive you and appreciate the apology. the thing about transandrophobia discourse is that it kind of comes from/preys on the insecurities of trans guys. that we’ll never pass and always be seen as women, that we’re “becoming the enemy” and are gender traitors, that we’re ignored and forgotten… it’s validating in a way to rant about those things! the issue is just that being in those circles will only make you more afraid. when there is a focus on the horrible things transphobes and terfs say, every single day, it’s going to start to feel like the entire world thinks that way. but it’s not true! not everyone in the lgbt community is respectful towards trans people but other trans people will never be the ones actually hurting us. the general public is becoming more aware of trans people and it’s not as bleak and dangerous out there as it used to be. it’s still hard, my god, is it hard!! but words truly cannot express how much better you feel when the person you see in the mirror feels like who you actually are.

if you have close friends who are lgbt or who would understand and validate your feelings, you should vent to them instead of making generalized tumblr posts. transandrobros will validate your feelings but with the undertone of “no one takes us seriously and everyone hates us (even other trans people)”. dysphoria is frustrating and it can feel really lonely and isolating as a trans guy sometimes but we are out here, surviving and even thriving

[cartoonbabbles]

Cartoon babbles about Little Witch Academia incoming.

In the absence of content from TOH, I’ve gotten back into anime. Specifically Studio Trigger stuff. I saw Kill la Kill thinking it wouldn’t have any lgbt stuff aside from the ending and then I realized the entire show is queer coded (and the animation on a technical level kicked ass). And while I ended up covering half the screen for most of it and mainly getting the story by listening, I thought it was pretty cool. But holy crap did I realize I completely slept on Little Witch Academia

Like. It’s if TOH was like. Lower stakes? Like they two shows read super similarly, outcast girl makes a group of misfit friends and changes things for the better yes yes we’ve all been there. I’d seen fanart of Diana and Akko and seen parallels drawn between them and Lumity and hell yes we love to see it.

And oh my god the animators and artists are so talented how did they make this show look so good and move so much like the colors designs the everything.

Also one thing about shipping in the fandom. I went in expecting a to see a lot more from Diana (and maybe I’ve been spoiled by Amity’s development) but honestly I wish we’d gotten to see more of her character development? Like she had her standard “we will put Akko and (x) in a boat and give them character development) but if I’m honest like. Come on. Diana’s motivations for going to Luna Nova are cool but could you be maybe a little less like. Idk. Gah it’s bugging me her entire family tradition, like one of her biggest factors in her character is kindness and for the entirety of the series leading up to that point she’s like. Just. Doesn’t really show that? Like I’m sorry maybe I’m reading into things too much but even among her own friends she seems isolated????????

Which brings me to the thing that surprised me the most about the show in that I really ended up liking the side characters. I wish Jasminka got more screen time and lines, but she makes a statement on her own and that’s really cool. Constanze is amazing, Sucy is my mood all the time and Lotte is really cool too. But like. I’m still not over Amanda because even between Diana and Akko, Amanda gets probably the most amount of time with Akko aside from her roommates. Like Akko and Amanda hang out together, and clearly Amanda trusts Akko enough to share her feelings about wanting to leave since Akko mentions this isn’t the first time Amanda had floated the idea. And their brains operate on the same frequency of chaos and crime (Akko steals food, Amanda tried stealing treasure. Apparently she’s from a well off family so I don’t get the motivation entirely but it was really freaking funny)

Like come on. Diana “I am going to actively put you down for most of the series and at most act aloof until we’re forced to interact” Cavendish and Amanda “well we got detention together that one time so I guess we’re besties and btw I’ll duel someone for you with a fucking sword” O’Neil just. Ackskdkwkdnsb

I’m really tired and not thinking straight (since when do I ever think straight hah) but man oh man

I haven’t even mentioned the mecha episode

My biggest complaint, if I had one, is that I wish the music matched the range of characters and emotions cuz a lot of the time they end up playing this one track. Like the music is super good but I wish there were more variety

[snufkinofficial]

i’m having a lot of thoughts about the lighthouse in our flag means death functioning as a symbol of masculinity and before any of you say anything yes i DO see the obvious connection here and i swear this isn’t just an elaborate dick joke. anyway.

stede is expected to be a lighthouse in his marriage. he’s expected to be strong, to be a guide, to be stable. and in fulfilling all those things he’s also, then, expected to be.. lonely. in trying to fill that role he is incredibly incredibly lonely. because like the thing about lighthouses is they’re so solitary. when you think of a lighthouse there’s an implication of sacrifice. isolating yourself for the sake of protecting everyone else. like if you look at this scene where they’re having a family portrait painted and stedes wife and kids are sitting in front wearing yellow and stede is standing behind them in dark blue.

or all the shots of them at the dinner table where mary and the kids are gathered at one side while stede is all the way on the other side of the table. stede is expected to fulfill this typical role of cishet masculinity by being a protector for his family, at the detriment of his own desires. and he fails to do so. he’s not able to fill this social role of cishet men and the guilt of that literally follows him for the whole show. the lighthouse painting is a constant reminder of his failure. stede’s softness and his vulnerability, and by extension, his gayness make him the target of cruelty from other men. multiple times in the show other men insult him by calling him a woman. as a kid he was mocked for crying, for picking flowers, for failing to perform heterosexual masculinity before he was even old enough to truly understand what that meant. the social norms of masculinity tell us men can’t be soft, they can’t be vulnerable, they can’t need protection from others. and they certainly cannot be in love with each other

like. david jenkins tweeted this picture of stede and ed right after the kiss, pressed together with ed’s hand cradling stedes face, with the caption “a lot of what we’re taught about being a man is wrong”.

and i feel like so much of the general discourse about manhood and toxic masculinity and how it affects men is like. it’s truly never anything meaningful it’s just used as a means of derailing conversations about misogyny. conversations about defining manhood are always led by cishet white men who generally speaking are just looking for an excuse to be dismissive to women. but the discussions of masculinity and manhood in our flag means death are centered around gay men and men of color and transmasculine people and how all their experiences fit in to manhood and deconstruct our idea of what manhood can be. and to go back to the lighthouse symbolism for a second. like…in episode 4 stede and ed say we need to become a lighthouse. not i, not you. we. this is the first relationship stede has had that hasn’t been defined by his loneliness. so much of the lgbt experience is being told repeatedly, whether by people in your life or by the media you consume, that you are destined for loneliness. your life and your identity are defined by your suffering. and our flag means death says the opposite. the first thing mary says about love is that it feels easy. and… it has never been easy for stede. it’s never felt easy to him because he was trying to make himself play this role and he couldn’t do it. but his relationship with ed just happens so naturally. loving him is the easiest thing in the world. it’s like breathing. in loving and being loved by a man stede finds salvation. he finds joy. and it is so incredibly healing to see that kind of message on television. our flag means death is about gay people carving out a space for themselves in a world that actively refuses them a space. it’s a celebration of tenderness and softness and vulnerability as intrinsic parts of manhood. this show means literally everything to me thank you david jenkins

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

On the last day of Queer Pride Month,🌈 and the Eve of Disabled Pride Month ♿🐉

Here’s a post I originally made on r/lgbt, back in May, with slight edits:

Being Disabled in the [Gender, Sexual, and Relationship Minority] (LGBTQIA+) Community

This is a tricky thing to talk about. On the one hand, the GSRM community has fought long and hard against any link between our identities and orientations and physical or psychiatric illnesses, and so many folk in the community are leery of any association with Disability.

And on the other hand, heteronormativity itself demands that you not only desire the "right kind of people" in the "right kind of way," but that you be the "right kind of person" to be desired. Your intimate relationships could be as straight as a flagpole and as vanilla as soft serve from the mall's food court, but if your body and/or mind falls too far outside the bounds of normativity, your sex and your gender will be seen as "kinky" by the mainstream.

And so, many Straight Disabled people (but certainly not all) are also leery of any association with Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities. Outside the small corner of Disability Studies in Academia, there's little discussion of gender, orientation, or relationships in those places where disabled people go for support and services.

Yet Disabled GSRM people exist. It's kind of like  Schrödinger's identity: Disability and GSRM identities exist independently of each other (Nothing about being GSRM is pathological, and nothing about being Disabled 'causes' someone to be GSRM). But they're also deeply linked; how we understand who we are and how we relate to other people is  shaped by how others treat us.

For example, I'm not Aroace, Panalterous, and (aspirationally) Polyamorous because I'm disabled. But, because of how people have acted around me as a disabled person, I spent the first 52 years of my life convinced I was the Token Straight Ally™ in nearly every one of my friend groups. 🙄

Also, in general, Disabled people share a lot of common experiences with GSRM folk:

 We're likely to be minorities within our own families

 We're apt to face the same prejudices at home as we do in the "outside world"

There's often a sense of shame around disabilities, and families are often reluctant to admit they have a disabled family member

There's often gaslighting of the Disabled family member, especially if they're a minor ("You're just lazy," "You're just complaining about how hard it is, because you want attention," "There's nothing wrong with you, it's just growing pains," "You're faking," "You wouldn't be bullied in school, if you tried harder to fit in," etc.).

And there's often pressure to "cure" the disability, even when there is no cure, so that if you're a kid, any free time you might otherwise have is taken up with therapies (Did you know that Applied Behavior Analysis -- a "treatment" for autism -- uses the same techniques as Conversion Therapy?)

Disabled people are often reliant on those ableist family members to get access to the outside world (needing parents to drive the wheelchair van, cancel the therapy appointment so there can be time for something else). And social events designed to be accessible to different disabled people are often run by church groups, or other organizations who have a homophobic (and transphobic) bent.

So even though I understand (and empathize with) the GSRM Community's reluctance to associate itself with the Disability Community, I wish it weren't so. Because it makes Pride Month all the more ironically isolating when the events and venues aren't accessible.

---

That’s where I’d ended the original post. But I’ve since had a “post-script thought” that’s less generous to the Normate Queer community:

Historically (at least from what I’ve witnessed) a lot of Queer Culture is celebrating the ✨Absolute Fabulousness✨ of the human body, and human sexuality. I know this is in response to, and a repudiation of, the cultural attitude that we are “Filthy” and “Shameful.”

But it also means that the presence of Disability, in the middle of all that celebration, is an awkward challenge to that -- with bodies that drool, and slump, spasm and get fatigued, with voices that stutter, or go silent, with minds that turn foggy.

And that makes it so much easier to “forget” that disabled queer people exist.

But a slogan popped into my head that might become an art piece for next year’s Pride Month(s):

Disabled Queers: Queering Queerness.

[cardentist]

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to word this, specifically because I don’t know how to get at the idea that’s specifically bothering me without opening a conversation about a dozen other interweaving issues. so please bare in mind that what I’m saying is in the context of a broader set of issues that I’m not specifically going to get into here (or at least I’m gonna try not to).

to rip the band aid off, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that trans men have been so minimized in discussions about transphobia and specifically pitted against trans women (as if recognizing their own oppression somehow takes oppression away from trans women) to the point that trans men can’t talk about their oppression in their own spaces without having to minimize themselves.

this isn’t unique to trans men nor is it one-sided, but the normalization of it not just in lgbt+ spaces but on tumblr in General is just mind-boggling.

like even taking the common justifications and logic behind this at face value it’s Blatantly clear that there’s a specific bias in play against trans men. like, it’s insisted that trans men don’t experience misogyny because they are men and therefor they are less oppressed. gay men are men and therefore don’t face misogyny, so it stands to reason that they are less oppressed than lesbians

how many posts about the generalized hatred of non-heterosexuality is specifically referred to as lesbophobia and nothing else. how many posts calling out lesbophobia reminds people that what’s being described could never happen to gay men. how often has a gay man had to derail a post talking about his experiences to clarify that he Knows lesbians are more oppressed than he is or else face the possibility of people getting angry at him for trying to insist that he’s more oppressed than them Because he’s speaking up at all.

recognizing the existence of gay men and their oppression is not treated like a threat to lesbians and their oppression. we all know that it’s important to recognize the differences in experiences between gay men and lesbians but we don’t use those differences as an excuse to speak over or silence gay men. (or rather, it’s called as being wrong when it Does happen.)

the constant minimization here isn’t being used to remind people of where we need to allocate our funds in non-profits or to remind people be Mindful of groups of people who face multiple axis’ of oppression, it’s being used to silence people and push them out of their spaces.

trans men are put in boxes and shaken Far More than their cis counterparts are in the wider community, and I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that it’s terf logic being applied to trans people with the caveat of believing the trans person is correct about their gender. I think that’s also why people jump to the opposite so quickly. people who’ve internalized Men Bad Horrible Invaders and cope with that by pointing it at another target would feel threatened by that target insisting that they’re wrong specifically Because they were already afraid of it being used against them. it’s understandable but it isn’t actually appropriate.

the fact that rowling’s terf manifesto explicitly targeted trans men (and specifically trans men’s reproductive health) while she’s Only been called out for transmisogyny is a problem. the fact that trans men have to grovel and minimize their experiences to be allowed to talk without incident is a problem. the fact that people are allowed to just Announce that specific experiences Exclude trans men without being challenged is a problem (and the fact that people who Do challenge it are painted as the ones doing the silencing is just fucking gross).

none of this is me saying that trans men are inherently more oppressed than trans women, but that at this point I think just asking the question is harmful to the conversation we’re trying to have. it isn’t useful when talking about individual experiences because individual people are going to have their experiences whether it’s more or less likely to happen to them or not. an individual trans woman isn’t “inherently” more or less oppressed than an individual trans man because their identities don’t dictate their lived experiences on their own.

all we’ve done is hurt and isolate people in our bid to “prove” that they’re the loser here. it is, for instance, A Lot More Difficult to have a nuanced discussion about trans men’s experiences with misogyny and how those experiences evolve over time and affect our relationship with our gender and ourselves when half of the live studio audience is angry that we’ve suggested that trans men have experiences with misogyny at all

[gayfrenchtoast]

Okay fine we're doing this. I havent read the books and I'm probably not going to I've only seen the movies so I'm sorry if anything I say is contradictory or has already been stated.

So! Descendants 3 was kinda shit and I dont like it but especially because of the ending because everybody was like "oh yeah island is open and we're all happy with no worries or implications about free villains or people being spiteful about being imprisoned for years!" In fact if anything they joked about those things.

The island is basically its own culture, I can't say how long it's been around, long enough for some almost adult kids to be about and to develop a kind of community.

The Isle is a place of poverty, people are dirty and on the street, eveyone steals from each other and most people don't put much effort into appearance upkeep (personal or of the sourounding area) not because of laziness or being "evil" but because they clearly don't have time or luxury to do such things or possibly even the clean water. Does the Isle have clean water?? How to they get electricity??? Someone tell me!

Another thing that I've noticed is easy to see but is not much explicitly said is the unique style of those on the Isle. As previously stated they don't have much but those who have the most "power" and such on the Isle are the best example of this As they have the most colourful outfits. However these outfits are often made out of patches and ripped things put together, even salvaged things like nets and chains as we can see on thing like Uma and Harry's outfits in D3 they make the best of what they've got and they do fantastic because their outfits are intricate and detailed and just tell you everything you need to know about them. Which is why it's a damn s h a m e when the original VK's ajust their style to be more like Auradon's. That's not an improvement! Be proud of where you came from!! It's like they forgot what it was like being on the Isle in D3!

Moving on, here's something that was touched on in D2 but not enough. Equality. On the Isle there is basically equal opportunity as in saying everything is shit and nome cares what gender and presumably what sexuality you are as long as you can work. Sexism is shown to be almost casual in aurodon from the looks of it, Chad makes sexist comments and litterally none else says anything or seems to see anything wrong with it except Jay who caves to pressure from peers and expectations. He does redeem himself because he's from the isle and he knows you shouldn't give a shit about anyone's gender or anything. If they can do something and ask to be included you give them that opportunity. The sexism is also implied in the way that the rule book has men written specifically in the first place and that it has taken until then for anyone but boys to be allowed on any kind of sports team. We never see it! It seems to be the hetronormative veiw where the boys do sport and girls do cheerleeding and other genders? What other genders? Never heard of that? BAD AURADON!! I bet there's so many trans folk on the island just living their lives, thinking Aurodon is the better place and not knowing that it's a cis het filled nightmare.

Okay no I'm headcannoning now, if their are now a bunch of Isle kids at auradon prep they find it fucking aweful the way all these preppy royals are treating them and make the first LGBT club in Auradon. There is lots of pushback and they get bullied a fuck ton for making themselves the most prominent queer folk in the school until a fight breaks out and the club demand that they should be treated better, taking all the evidence to fairy godmother who is very hesitant because COME ON she's never been that great she is biased to Auradon kids and if putting away those in the Isle is brought up she is all on it, she is jelly spined about doing anything against the royal kids. So the kids are like "Fine, if you won't help us we'll take this to the King himself!" Well mainly the queer mom's of the group (you know the ones I'm talking about) who lead the others and protect the anxious queers as they storm to Ben at his fucking locker and demand an audience because they are being harassed and bullied and none is doing anything. Ben had no idea there was even a LGBT club (too busy ig) and is gassed there is one for a moment before he's like "wait people are harassing you?" So Bisexual King Ben gets his lovely Bi wife and they start coming to club meetings and investing in the pins and stuff the club makes. Most club members are pleased but the queer mom's are apprehensive that this will help until some assholes come to the club to do their usual bullying only to find King and Queen Beast themselves siting there with rainbow bracelets and bi pins and all trying to have a nice old time eating their fucking cupcakes what the fuck are yall doing? The bullying dies down quick once they realise it ain't gonna fly, the other OG VK's that hear about this become members and very protective over their queer children. Did I mention Dizzy and Ceila are a part of the club? They're girlfriend's. Celia is one of the queer moms. Harry becomes one of the biggest protectors over the group as the pan dad. He's been going around snogging everyone and anyone wholl snog him everyone already knew he was queer they just didn't have the balls to try and bully him over it as much as they bullied the lil club members. But now Harry can often be seen in jackets and shit with pan and general queer patches and pins and running around with his gay children yelling "MOVE WE'RE GAY!!" He totally calls them his queer crew. Anyway as a result lots of queer royals start coming out of the woodwork, obvs Lonnie is one of them, and the club eventually serves to bring members of Auradon and the Isle close together.

Where was I? Yada yada auradon expects girls to be pretty princesses and boys to be brave knights or dashing princes. It's shit and should stop being portrayed as good. Moving on!

Food! One of the things we'll established in all movies is that the food of the Isle is shit compared to food of Auradon. The Isle has no fresh fruit which likely means its almost impossible for things to grow there which is fair because again there doesn't seem to be much fresh water and there are always clouds overhead so no sun. Maybe there is some people trying really hard to grow stuff but the general attitude of the Isle seems to be "there is no time for that" and fruits are forgotten so much that the VK's litterally don't knownwhat they are when they come across them. That and anything containing sugar. Actually it's mention by Dizzy and Celia that they enjoy the fact that the cake dosent have dirt or flies so basically food there is terrible. We don't see much food on the Isle but what we do see seems to be beans, eggs, chips and shellfish. Basically protine and carbs that can be easily stored and produced. To be fair beans are kidna good for you but they're likely a sign that if they get any imports from the mainland it is canned stuff. Prison food. There's probably some chef villain that is trying their best to make good food out of the shit but honestly the Isle dwellers should be angry that they've been deprived of good food for so long not happy they're finally been given decency.

Moving on, music! Auradon dosent have nearly as many musical numbers it seems, the Isle songs have a distinct style, to them, the villains that basically "founded" the place were masters of the dramatic songs (with backup or solo) so banging music is basically ingrained in the music's culture, even for battle as we see with the fight between Mal and Uma in D3. Meanwhile Auradon seems to have mainly romance and "I want" songs. Even Audrey's villain song is basically an I want song.

Okay let's talk about the Villains. We've established that the VK's are not inherently bad. However not all of them can be totally good and there are legit OG Villains just kinda chillin on the Isle. They've obviously lost quite a bit of their power, motivation and sanity (isolation will do that to ya as they lost everything and the VKs know no different) but deadass? They were bad guys. You can try to rehabilitate them sure but you've basically just let them free roam, they could make a runner and you wouldn't get the chance. They were also shitty patents which is brushed over/joked about in the interaction between Carlos and...man I feel bad I forgot her name deadass their relationship seemed to come out of nowhere in the second film she didn't seem interested in them at all and friendzoned them multiple times I'm pretty sure Disney did that becaue queer kids were relating to Carlos and headcanoning them as queer (which they deffinatly are) but deadass their mom is an attempted animal murderer and has hurt her child as we can see from how they're afraid of her and her rhetoric and yet it's "haha I'm afraid to meet your ma!" "Me too cus im a dog! Lol!" Fuuuuck offfffff

I think I'm running out of thoughts so here's a last one for now; with the magical barrier down a bunch of magical Villains kids should be coming out for the woodwork. We know Mal has magic basically stored in her so it's is possible, she technically doesn't need the spellbook to do magic it is just inherent to her. So with the diverse range of people from the isle there are deffinatly magic folk in there. Actually if we're following Disney movie law I saw something mentioning Jay being half Genie and yeah! He should be half Genie! Jafar got turned into a Genie he's probably only human because of the barrier! Oh also Ben should be able to go beast on command as long as he had a better beast form than he did in the movies. And give him back the beard and fangs like fuck you he looked so much better

Okay I'm done for now

[zukosgay]

I see you posting about horror and I would love some recs if you have some to share 🙏

i just accidentally deleted a whole list fjahsjdasd i hate my life. anyways, i’m just gonna go ahead and assume you know the classics that get recommended all the time (the babadook, the ring, the exorcist, the vvitch, the conjuring, hereditary, the thing, insidious, etc.). here’s some underrated/indie horror movies i rarely see talked about (favs are in italics):

The not-actually-that-scary-but-still-good horror movies:

Let The Right One In (2008) – I mean, it’s literally my favorite movie/book and I have a tattoo of it, we been knew

Possum (2018) – I cannot even begin to tell you how much I adore this movie. Horror movies about CSA that explore it without once showing the actual rape, but still being terrifying/disturbing nonetheless?? Just an irish guy chilling with the puppet personification of his csa trauma????? Hells yeah (huge TW for spiders tho, i mean. I’m not scared of spiders but that fucking puppet is stil terrifying no matter how much I look at it)

Hard Candy has a soft spot in my heart. That’s my emotional support „ellen page tortures pedophiles“ movie

Thirst (2009)

Ravenous (1999) THE INHERENT ROMANTICISM OF BEING GAY AND CANNIBALS ON A MOUNTAIN. Brokeback mountain for cannibals

We Are What We Are (2010)

Marrowbone (2017)

The transfiguration (2016) – there’s so little vampire stories with black people, and i really loved how this wasn’t outright fantasy horror but had more of a ‚vampirism as an actual mental illness‘ approach

Nightbreed (1990) this movie IS lgbt cinema history

Gerald’s Game (2017) – we get it elena you love horror movies about the trauma of CSA

The autopsy of jane doe (2017) - i feel like this movie is perfect for horror fans who are tentative about seeing any big grotesque/gorey jumpscares 

As Above, So Below (2014) (the first and so far only movie that got permission to film in the paris catacombs) (also good for starters)

The Actually-Scary (at least to me) movies:

Lake Mungo (2008) ((think of TMA’s The End)) (i deadass think about this movie so often, the story is so devastating and really stays in my head. also the bg ghosts)

The [REC] franchise!!! any of those movies fuck me up and are TERRIFYING (again ff) 

I watched 30 Days of Night (2007) when it came out, when i was way too young, and it still to this day holds the spot for coolest vampire design (they modelled them after the jaws of white sharks!!! They’re supposed to be slavic strigoi) and also one of the only one times where i was actually scared by vampires

Livid (2011) (french horror movie!) (v gorey)

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014) (found footage of a demonic mom – you’ll see a lot of FF on this list cuz i think it’s criminally underrated and terrifying if done well)

NOROI: The Curse (2005) ((ff))

Open water (2003) (this is scary to me because it’s based on a true story about a couple who went cave diving in the ocean with a guide who got LEFT BEHIND in the middle of the motherfucking ocean – with literally nothing to hold onto and no one even reporting them missing. Also, after i watched this i did a lil research and turns out there’s quite a lot of people ‚going missing‘ while taking swimming lessons where the guides will just drive to shore without them YEARLY. Fucked up if true) ((this has tma the vast vibes))

Clown (2014) (I recommend this to people who aren’t scared to like Eli Roth movies and think It Chap. 1 was boring)

Martyrs (2008) – a classic, this movie is bound to disturb you. It’s about child abuse and the survivors of child abuse enacting revenge, though it’s not the typical csa/anything similiar. HUGE tw for uhhhh, torture, self harm, mutilation etc..

Mama (2008) – the goth tattooed rocker chic jessica chastain movie

The bay (2012) (ff)

The last exorcism (2010) (ff)

The wailing (2016)

If you put on any V/H/S movie for me I’m guaranteed to shit my pants, so there’s that

May (2002) – i turned lesbophobic after watching this movie. About a lesbian obsessed with dolls i’ll say nothing more

The not-as-scary-but-still-scary-so-i-dont-wanna-put-them-in-the-first-list-in-case-i-traumatize-anyone movies:

Creep 1 & 2

The Strangers

The void (2016) ((tma the spiral))

The Hallow (2015)

The loved ones (2009) – a classic

Excision (2012) (if you liked raw)

Devil’s pass (2013)

Afflicted (2013) ((ff))

The cell (2000)

Session 9 (2001)

They Look Like People (2015)

The children (2008) – fuck them KIDS

The blackcoat’s daughter (2015)

I really liked Armie Hammer’s netflix original Wounds (2019)? IDK why. I found the story (albeit better suited as a short story) fascinating

Night Eats The World (2018) – another french movie! This time it’s about the inherent isolation and loneliness in locking yourself in a parisian apartment all alone with a bunch of zombies eating the rest of the world

Pontypool (2008)

The lure (2015) – yes, we’re polish, yes, we’re mermaids, yes, we eat men, yes, we also perform in a pop girl group WE EXIST!

I am not a serial killer (2016)

Green room (2015)

That’s it, pretty much. 

[soupthatistohot]

Why do I write primarily mlm fanfic?

This was something I asked myself the other day. I am a girl, I think I'm queer (but I am attracted to men, whatever I am), so why do I fixate on mlm relationships? Why do I never feel compelled to write wlw or even just some good 'ol straight stuff? I brought this up to a few friends of mine who also watch anime. One of them said that it’s because lots of popular media only really focuses on developing their male characters well, and I think this to be a very suitable explanation (as well as the fact that I’m queer and thus gravitate towards queer stories).

Take Sk8 the Infinity for example. I could count the number of female characters in this anime on one hand, and one of them is a robot. The others are supporting roles who only serve to support the male main characters. I love Sk8 very much, and with the possibility of a 2nd season I’d love to see a prominent, well-developed female character (but if they make her Reki’s love interest I will literally stab someone). But as the anime stands right now, there are no female characters that aren't just basically plot devices.

Another show I love dearly, Yuri!!! on Ice, is much the same. While there can be more of an argument made here because 1) competitive figure skating is split up between men and women, and 2) I believe that the story Yuuri and Victor is absolutely meant to be a romance, so having the two men as the focus is somewhat necessary, there's an overwhelming lack of fleshed-out women in the story. All the female characters are supporting members that only exist for the benefit of male characters. Yuuko and Minako support Yuuri, Lilia exists so Yuri P. can improve, Mila is just... kind of there, and Sara's whole character is centered around her brother being overprotective of her.

Okay, so let's look at something a little less... fruity. Horimiya. I've only watched the anime, so if there's stuff I miss from not having read the manga (yet), please forgive me. I still think this is a valid perspective, though, because if there's female development that the creators decided was so unimportant that it could be cut, that still supports my point here. In my opinion, Miyamura is a lot more developed than Hori. He has his tragic backstory of being a loner, and having his secret piercings and tattoos and all that. A lot of the story ends up focusing on his side of things... despite the fact that Hori is the protagonist. The story follows her perspective for the most part, we learn things about Miyamura as she does, yet I feel like she's a bit dull. She has a uncommon home life and has to take care of her younger brother, that's her big bad secret? I get that it's kind of unexpected since she's the pretty, perfect, popular girl, but I still feel like it's a tad anticlimactic. It's hardly ever addressed beyond the first few episodes, too, and it just kind of exists as a fact within the story. Even beyond our main couple, it seems like the other female characters development and stories are all focused on the boy they're interested in (except for Sawada, but she's there for like a couple of episodes and then doesn't really show up all that much again... and her crush on Hori is handled really weird, I didn't exactly love it). Remi's entire character is pretty much centered around her boyfriend, and Sakura and Yuki are basically competing for Toru. Meanwhile, the guys have story beats themed around the girls they're interested in, but I feel like it's not as obsessive or dramatic as how the girls are depicted.

So, we're given these female characters, who are really watered-down and honestly kind of boring, and we're not super compelled to write about them. When we are given flat female characters, there's nothing to work with. It's more fun to use the characters who have had development and play around with the "what ifs" and our own personal headcannons. The characters who get this special treatment are primarily male. And while I commend a lot of shows for developing their male characters in such a way that doesn't exactly fit with society's idea of masculinity (ex: Reki's insecurities and depression, Yuuri's anxiety and femininity, Miyamura's isolation and depression), in the end these characters are still boys, men, males.

I also think mlm is so prominent because of both straight girls and queer people. For straight girls, it can often be fetishization (forgive my generalizing, I'm sure not all straight girls are like that, but an overwhelming amount definitely are). I think one of the best examples I can give for this is Phan. This is a bit different since it's not anime, but instead real people, but if anything that really drives home the point even more. The way Dan and Phil were (and probably still are) treated in the fandom internet space is disturbing, to say the least. Their audience, while much of it was queer, was also made up of an overwhelming amount of heterosexual girls who not only shipped them intensely, but also often sexualized them. And look, there's nothing inherently wrong with being a straight girl and writing smut, but it gets to a point where it can be kind of weird if its excessive. Like, if that's all the relationship is really about, and if the people you're writing about are real human beings, that's definitely overstepping. I will admit that I had a Wattpad and that I wrote Phanfic way back when, and this is something I'm not exactly proud of. Granted, I did not write anything explicit, it was still super weird, whether or not I was queer. And I'm not saying all the problematic aspects of the Phandom were because of straight girls, because what I contributed was arguably problematic, and I did not identify as straight at the time. At the same time, though, there were straight girls who wrote exclusively smut (or "lemons" as they might've been referred to at the time). There were those who analyzed every post, every bit of information they could find about these men on the internet. They obsessed over the fact that they occasionally shared clothes (which is fairly common for roomates of similar sizes to do), and gathered evidence to support the theory that they shared a bed. It was bad. It was invasive, and it got to the point where it wasn't about the people, it was about the fetishized fantasy these girls made up in their heads about these real, actual men.

Dan and Phil's online presence kind of disappeared for a few years... and I don't blame them.

Getting back on track, mlm is prominent for queer people because it's the LGBT representation they so desperately want to see actualized in media. If a show doesn't make their favorite queer ship canon (and they often don't), they'll do it themselves! That's what fanfic is for! I also know that queer people project onto these characters a lot, and that writing about them is almost like a form of therapy. They see these characters as queer, and they see themselves in these characters, so they write about these characters experiencing similar emotions to them. The thing is, the most compelling characters are male, so those are the characters they end up focusing on, even if the person in question is strictly sapphic. My best example is how I project onto Reki. Personally, I end up thinking of him as (and thus end up writing him as) having some internalized homophobia around being bisexual. That's literally what I am currently going through. I can't project this onto any of the female characters in Sk8, because I couldn't see them going through this experience because they're not developed enough to.

Despite all of this, I still enjoy all of the shows I mention a lot. I think it's just an interesting topic that I was thinking about. I'm not trying to bash anything that I used as an example, these were just my personal observations based off of what I know about these shows and their fandoms. I do, though, believe shipping real people isn't super cool, and I stand by that as someone who used to do it. I'm not going to stop you... I just think it's intrusive and inappropriate to pretend like you know enough about influencers to dictate who they should be involved with romantically. Their love life is, frankly, none of your damn business.

So, long story short, we should make anime (and popular media in general) less misogynistic.

(Also, please leave Dan and Phil alone, they deserve privacy)

[andsmile]

i think it's funny how the bugheads are suffering. it's been one episode 😭

i wish i didn’t agree but i think it’s sweet and a little bit funny too. that’s not me hating on bughead, but imagine being a varchie!

we’re part of the core four, so we’re supposed to be a main ship too, with main characters, but veronica is treated like whatever most of the time. 

varchie broke up every season since they started dating. we’ve had to go through veronica not saying i love you back, to b*rchie kissing, to hiram interfering, to people absolutely hating every second of our screentime and storylines because it took away from bughead (or any other ship), to them being apart for basically an entire season while dating other people, to them being back together only spend a row of six entire episodes without any meaningful scenes in season four, to have the only episode of season four a little more focused on them also shared with choni/bughead (as it’s meant to be but ok, no one complained but the others), to the cheating storyline where the whole thing was pinned on archie for a moment, and then the pandemic nine months without knowing his point of view.

then in season five it’s been six episodes and bughead has had big significant moments in the first three and even though they broke up in a sad way and have a lot to unpack, people are acting like it’s been so hard and i’m like---guys, c’mon. i know it’s always hard to see your ship not interact because they’re at odds and most of all, i know it’s hard to see your ship not getting screentime while focusing in other stuff, but it’s been one episode of bughead not interacting and two episodes of them broken up.

i know everyone is eager for a resolution but people need to be more patient and to be less eager, to be honest. it’s the first time in SEASONS that varchie has any focus, and still, we’re sharing it with archie and betty “paralleling” some of our scenes and it’s like... half the crying. i follow a lot of buggies because a) i ship them too and b) i love these people, but i see them complaining about varchie or archie getting focus and screentime and it makes me just sad, to see people talking about it like we’re stealing the screentime and resolution that was meant to be theirs or something. i don’t say this to start a war, but, 

archie and veronica are also part of the core four.

veronica is imporatn and should be as important as betty, whether people want it or not.

archie is imporant and should be as important as jughead, whether people want it or not (the discourse about him ‘turning into jughead’ is something else and kind of hilarious to me and i will not go there)

varchie is also a core couple that needs fixing, whether people ship them or not.

it’s going to be OKAY for bughead if their shippers have PATIENCE and WAIT. i know everyone is pissed at archie because he’s with betty right now (”with”) or becaus they’re isolating jughead, but it’s what they did to veronica in season three, they only ever allowed her to talk to reggie and her father. it’s what they did to archie in that dreaded episode of season four where he could interact with betty and his father’s grave, while betty got advice from her mom, cheryl, and scenes with jughead.

so i like bughead, i LOVE my bughead friends, and i want them back together too, but i think people need to be patient and try to let this storyline breathe for a second. jughead and betty spent at least seven years thinking the other was over the other, so they just think they don’t care, right now. it’s gonna come with time and everything will be okay, but you guys haven’t had episodes without interaction since 1.02 and now it looks like the end of the world and i’m like---please, try to be considerate of other shippers for a minute?

(that’s not even to mention the lgbt couples or the other couples that were paid dust through the seasons because of both bughead and varchie, but anyway)

[unholyhymns]

Hi! I've been getting into theistic satanism/ demonolatry and as a black lgbt agnostic person I'm having a hard time settling into the idea. I'm seeing a lot of mainly white Americans/Europeans practicing these theistic left hand religions and claiming to work with gods and deities from Africa (Egypt) and being insensitive/dismissive towards cultural appropriation (tattoos depicting symbols of closed practices etc.) There are racists and bad people in every religion and belief system known to man so I'm not TOO surprised but do you have any reading recommendations for me or thoughts/experiences on theistic satanism as a whole that you'd wanna share (good or bad!) from a black POV? What makes it feel like home? I'm desperate to hear another voice like mine lmao..

hi! i’ll start off with personal experiences, tho i do have some book recs i can give you. i’ve been in online pagan/’lhp’ spaces for a while now (around like 14 years dskjsdf, tho not all of that was spent on tumblr) and unfortunately, the racism and cultural appropriation is rife no matter which pagan deities are being worshiped. and bc of that, poc get pushed out or our voices get drowned out. that said, i have had… a lot of beef with the kemetic community over the years because at least the norse pagans bother to try and take out their trash. i think the community has gotten better but i honestly have backed out of online spaces for the most part because it has felt very hostile, so who knows. idk if there’s a cohesive lhp community on tumblr bc i avoid the tags like the plague now. but i have yet to find a lhp focused discord server that didnt very quickly dissolve into racism lmao. for the most part, the spaces have been very lgbt friendly tho.

that said, i have had some good experiences online. even some great ones. ive made some amazing friends. there are nonblack/white doing their best to get rid of racism in the communities and i see them and appreciate it. ive had the best luck joining broad pagan servers and lurking the satanism channels there, but honestly. ive kind of just stepped away from online communities. ive found its not really my thing. im not the greatest at online communication and people get on my nerves too much skdfjhsdjf also im a godspouse so if all of the above doesnt cause issues, that fact alone causes contention. so. i just kinda vibe on tumblr with my silly little sideblogs. i have seen some other black satanists in passing on here so we’re def out here, tho i dont know if theres a space for us somewhere. maybe someone’s made a discord? (like i said, i dont go in the tags anymore lol)

as for my experience with theistic satanism, i love it. i am so happy in my faith. personally, my practice has thrived the most when i keep it solitary (tho i know not everyone enjoys that). he’s always encouraged me to forge my own way and my number one method of doing things is to fuck around and find out so the lack of an online community hasn’t really impacted me spiritually. im not sure how encouraging this is skdjfhsdh it feels like home for me because i love my god very very much. ive made a space for him within my own home.

that said, i know it can feel isolating and disheartening; and it definitely has (and still does sometimes), especially when i was at the beginning of my journey. the best thing i can recommend is to find any spiritual space that is welcoming to satanists and staunchly anti-racist/lgbt friendly and sticks to that, and then make friends. even if they arent of your faith, sometimes just having someone spiritual to talk to is really nice.

but also! my DMs/asks are always open if you have questions or just wanna talk.

as for books, here are my usual recommendations for starting out. if you want more, i can definitely go through my collection. i have…….. a lot of books lol:

-The Devil: A New Biography by Phillip Almond

-Satanic Feminism by Per Faxneld

-Satan: A Biography by Henry Ansgar Kelly

-The Devil’s Dozen by Gemma Gary (this is more just… rituals instead of info but ik sometimes ppl want those)

-Poetics of Iblis by Whitney Bodman

-Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption by Peter Awn

i hope this helped! like i said, feel free to send more asks/DMs abt anything or with more questions :)

[melto]

ive said it multiple times before but the thing that is really getting me about cherry magic is how well from the start they are depicting the gay experiences of othering, of fear, of loneliness, of not knowing yourself. they've always been REALLY strong with adachi but in ep 3 it's just way more intense because imo it's the first time that there has been such a heavy focus on kurosawa's gay experiences that we're solely revolving around his crush on adachi. it was still adachi centric as well. it is a show about them but it does truly highlight some intense fear that he holds close to himself due to him being gay, and in ep 3 it's not just an internal thing, it's external and with adachi so while he doesn't come out and say i'm say i'm gay or anything, he is still putting himself in such a vulnerable position by even allowing the topic to be spoken about. he didn't have to push to try and confirm that adachi is grossed out by the idea of kissing another, but his thoughts show that he already feels so extremely guilty for even thinking about putting adachi in such an uncomfortable position and even worse that he was happy to be that close and intimate with him. he's setting himself up to have his heartbroken not only in a sense of by adachi in a romantic sense but also by the othering and rejection of a peer outright for his true self. adachi doesn't respond which is answer enough, and it would probably hurt too much to hear him say something bad out loud so he immediately tries to run away but then adachi does once again reach out to him by starting to speak to keep him there and they both look so scared for different reasons 

adachi has an extremely hard time allowing himself to want thing and putting himself out there. and i think on top of that he's really been a stranger to himself because there is such a big piece of him just unknown due to him being gay and his issues with self worth which i think is in part do this his gayness, because he is very aware of the distance he keeps between himself and others and he doesn't full understand what it stems from. and growing up gay even if you arent aware of it does cause this inherent isolation a lot of the time especially in a culture and time where lgbt things arent something that are fully accepted or really ever spoken about. i am not going to go off on a tangent of the nuances of gay loneliness in relation to adachi because honestly even at just ep 3 i think i could write a whole ass academic paper on it. but anyways he does push himself out of that comfort zone for kurosawa, who he does feel more comfortable around between knowing that kurosawa isn't internally mocking him but also because the glass barrier that has been between adachi and other people in his life due to his gayness isnt present with kurosawa, because it doesnt need to be there because they are both on the same side of it. 

and in the scene as adachi struggles to say what he wants to kurosawa and also admit it internally there is such distance between them. which physically since the series started they really haven't interacted that far away from one another and at this point, even adachi is aware that the distance in his head that he has with everyone isnt as vast with kurosawa. but here there is that physical distance and adachi cant just hear what kurosawa is thinking as like any sort of validation that he's saying the right thing. it might take him a moment but he does get it out, both to kurosawa and himself. and that's a big step for him and also comes with it's own sense of relief. because he admits that he doesn't fully understand what he's feeling, but he does know that he wants to be around kurosawa. he wants to get to know him, and wants to make him smile like kurosawa does him (as he before said that he cant handle seeing the scared and heartbroken look on his face again). he's once again actively choosing to do something about it rather than shy away because he's scared. he acknowledges that he still is, but he not letting it hinder him any longer (and at this point adachi knows that if there is any place he is safe to take those types of risks, it's with kurosawa). 

and then with kurosawa...god. well he was simply fucked me up so bad with his gay fear and guilt. the look on his face as adachi is struggling to get out everything is just so much. he's holding on the to fear he was before, but there's something lighter about it, almost hopeful but obviously struggling with allowing himself to feel any hope with the situation. the way he immediately tries to still shut everything down by making a joke about how it's still a good thing that he didn't steal adachi's first kiss and he's so confused and caught off guard just like earlier in the day when adachi stopped the elevator and for just a moment he looks scared again, but he doesn't want to be away from adachi, and he knows sometimes it takes him a bit to get things out so he stays still trying his best to not be hopeful even after adachi said he didn't dislike his kiss. he's trying to confirm again with adachi like he did originally by trying to get him to say he thinks two men kissing is gross but didn't get that. 

but he's still scared and cant bring himself to directly say it, so he's just staring and asking him if he has any idea what he's saying. to confirm that they are on the same page, and he's just staring so hard looking for any true sign of it going south but when adachi doesn't offer him any again, he chooses to go back to him rather than turn away to leave again. it's so slow and careful and there's still no protest from adachi and you know kurosawa is just searching for it. all he gets is adachi's usually nervousness and a call of his name and the whole time you can still see that struggle of his own hope and fear fighting one another from his face and the way he's breathing. he looks for it again before pulling him closer and looks for it once more once his hand is completely placed behind adachi's neck before pulling him in to kiss (god. please just give them something) because adachi's expression is what keep kurosawa from just going for it during the game so surely, without that scared look it was okay but he just can't let himself feel that relief, both of them are holding onto that uncertainty about what they are doing because coming to terms with being gay and also acting on your own gay feelings are terrifying in their own rights. 

and i really just. Yeah. i just think cherry magic is doing an amazing job with expressing these nuanced parts of the gay experience, especially for two like proper adult characters where a lot of the time the struggle with such for them is erased. i like how both of them are struggling with the same thing at their core but are at different places with it all and how it affects them and their life. adachi with being a stranger to himself and others so long and coming to terms with his identity and kurosawa being aware of his but struggling with the fear of rejection and being predatory inherently for his feelings. 

sorry if this is simply not coherent hjdkhfjlkvd im just really loving cherry magic so much and as a gay person both of them are really resonating with me and hitting really hard. 

[sebastianshaw]

Welcome to Munday! For new followers, on Munday sometimes I just post a bunch of personal things about myself and my life on Mun Monday like this, since it’s an appropriate day for it. I tag it “munday” and “mun monday” if you want to skip it! - I am honestly so in love with D’artagnan, I’m so glad I got him. He’s in my lap cuddling while I write this. -  People are always talking about how everything in Australia wants to kill you because all they know is the spiders and snakes and sharks and saltwater crocs but there is also a TON of cute small animals no one talks about! Pademelons don’t want to kill you! Bilbys don’t want to kill you! Potoroos don’t want to kill you! Numbats don’t want to kill you! Bettongs don’t want to kill you! The abundant species of possums don’t want to kill you! Quolls would probably want to kill you but they’re not big enough so they don’t. - I saw someone post that there’s a big difference in how LGBT fans thirst for Lady Dimitrescu vs how straight fans do, how straight fans are all “mmm big tiddy mommy milkers step on me” and LGBT fans are all “I will love and cherish this woman and help raise her daughters”. . . . bruh, bullshit. I’m a full-ass homosexual woman and I want her to fucking sit on me with her massive dumper and choke me out like any pervy dude. And a lot of people in the notes, I am satisfied to say, was saying the same. Seriously, I get that LGBT people were misrepresented purely as perverts for so long, and often still are, but that doesn’t mean we’re all these wholesome pure angels devoid of carnality, sheesh. Whether or not you’re a nasty little sub like me thirsty for a mommy dom has nothing to do with orientation, and when you say “LGBT people aren’t like THAT” it’s honestly kinda damaging to those of us who ARE. Like, I’m not about to take it all personal-like, but there’s a lot of younger people already struggling with accepting their sexuality, now they’re hearing it’s wrong for an LGBT person to have kinks or overtly sexual feelings, come on. I don’t think this ONE POST is going to damage anyone on it’s own, but it’s part of this overall culture on Tumblr I see that says that “only gross dirty nasty cishets care about SEX ew not like the pure uwu queers who love on a deep ethereal level beyond the mere flesh” and like. . . yeah way to make teens struggling with sexual feelings feel even more isolated and weird and bad there. Let people be shamelessly thirsty for giant vampire mommy dommes, sheesh. - I’m watching this Turkish drama and I mentioned it to my mom, and she started talking about how there was a movie made “about a contemporary of mine” a young man from New York who went to Turkey and stole something from a mosque and got imprisoned with a life sentence and he met a Swedish boy in the jail and they become lovers and he escaped and I was just like WAIT WHOA WHOA YOU KNEW THIS GUY and she was like “well no but I felt like I knew him” when she watched the movie and they apparently like. . . .lived or went to school in the same area once. Mom. Mom that is NOT what a “contemporary” means, omfg.  - The reason I’m watching a domestic drama, which is usually not my speed at all, is that I’m really into learning about different cultures, and for the past few years my focus has been Central Asia, Turkey, and Iran. I’ve always done this via academic-style research, articles and videos as well as reading firsthand accounts, such as Reddit AMAs, of people who live in those countries. But I read about this one, “Ethos”And while I’m sure a Turkish drama is no more realistic than an American one, I do think “Ethos” was a good one to pick because it focuses on people from MULTIPLE parts of Turkish society, from urban educated professionals to traditional rural poor people, a holy man and a woman vehemently opposed to headscarfs, a very rich playboy and a family struggling to get by, a woman dealing with severe mental illness, and apparently we’re going to get a closeted lesbian and a Kurdish family later too. So there’s a lot of diversity, not necessarily in the ethnic sense like you might look for in a US series but in terms of getting multiple perspectives of very different people in very different social strata that’s nonetheless all in or around Istanbul. -Also, I had been meaning to look up Azerbaijan for awhile, since like I said I’m focusing on that area of the world right now, and I finally got around to it yesterday. I learned about mud volcanoes, and that women got the right to vote there before they did in the United States! - I ran across this CLIP FROM FAMILY GUY and I was like “ha ha me” and then was like. . ..wait, that actually was me. I had to have a parapro with me at all times when I was in middle and high school due to my mental issues, and there was a period where my self-harming was so bad they had to go to the bathroom with me. And like. . ..holy shit, I’m doing so much better now. Took like 15 years but damn. I generally DON’T remember most of my pre-college life and I TRY NOT TO for obvious reasons, but in a weird way it was kind of HEARTENING to remember this to be like, wow, it did get better, I did get better. I really hope anyone reading this who is struggling with severe mental issues like I did, knows it can. And I know you don’t believe it right now because I didn’t, I know it’s impossible to convince you, I still kind of can’t believe it, but it CAN. 

[starkey]

[Spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor!]

I know everyone is super loving Bly Manor cause ~80′s gays~!!! but some stuff about it sat really bad for me so I’m gonna try to verbalise it. Obviously if you loved it and aren't vibing with a critical analysis I'm not offended if you don't read lol. Also I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with liking it! I just...didn’t, and I want to think about why, for a sec. (Sorry this got a bit long)

I think part of my problem is that I count Hill House as one of my favourite shows ever and I had ridiculously high hopes for Bly Manor, which probably couldn't ever have been fully realised. And there was actually a lot about it that I liked, especially at the begining. I thought the kids were great, and I loved the core group of Mrs Grose, Owen, Dani and Jamie. I liked the fact that the Henry Wingrave element was expanded upon, and I liked the complexity of Rebecca and Peter, and the room it gave them to be fully realised human beings. I quite enjoyed that they kept to the Hill House ghost mythology - that ghosts are lost in time but fixed in place, and that they jump from memory to memory, and haunt the people that they care about without knowing. But there were lots of things I wasn't so keen on...

Until the last episode my issues were mainly that it felt a bit...lazy? I can't stress it enough but the british accents were really really bad. Old!Jamie’s accent was deeply unbelievable and jarring, as was Henry Wingrave's, and although Peter’s accent was passable (I assume because the actor is English and not American like the others) it still didn’t match his mothers, or his ‘background’ - i.e. it sounded like a private school Edinburgh accent, not a Glasgow kid dragged up through poverty in the scheme - and yes there is a significant difference in those accents. I appreciate there’s a degree of privilege at play here - I’m used to the BBC producing high quality television where these details aren’t messed about with, and the production of Bly Manor was thoroughly American, but to put it in perspective, it would be like... if a character had a deep south dirt-poor Louisiana upbringing and spoke like somebody from a private school in Virginia. Other details also felt off - Rebecca’s costumes all seemed weirdly 2020-adjacent, none of the fashion or ancillary details seemed to match the UK in the 80s (which has a distinct feel), and the house that Peter returned to on his ‘memory bumps’ looked much more like an LA condo than a Scottish council house. Really, they should have just set it in America, because it felt more American than British, and they clearly didn't have any British people involved in the production.

I really didn't enjoy the narrative framing device of 'someone telling a story to a group of people at a party'. It makes sense in the Turn of the Screw, because the narrator is reading from a document written at the time of the events, so the narration becomes a first person one where the degree of detail is logically accounted for. In this take, the story alternated from being one which made sense - us just watching the characters move around normally - to one in which 'Jamie' (who’d apparently had a complete personality transplant that had turned her from a feisty northern lesbian into a coy, mysterious victorian englishwoman with a severe accent problem) adopted a falsely old-fashioned manner and told the wedding guests a ten hour long story about a haunted house.  And somehow neither Flora nor Miles recognised any part of this story in the least, in spite of what must have been overwhelming similarities? It was very jarring.  

I also kept waiting for a twist on a level with Hill House, but never got one. The big twist about Mrs Grose was, I thought, obvious from almost the first episode. I mean the woman didn’t eat or drink anything and spent most of her time confused about where she was, I thought it was fairly clear that she was a ghost. And yeah, I suppose because I’ve read the book I was never in any doubt that Peter was already dead. The ghosts in the background were much less spooky than in Hill House. They stood around in broad daylight while the characters talked and joked and it kind of felt like the ghosts had wandered in by accident and felt too awkward to leave. I really liked how spooky Hill House was - even apart from the jump scares I thought the psychological elements and the open discussion of death and grief was really affecting. I didn’t feel that at all in Bly Manor, and by the time we found out the details of Mrs Grose’s death, I’d already come to terms with it.  But all of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the last episode.

I really really didn’t enjoy the bury your gays ending. And I’m not even usually against this in principle! I think in a dark/horror context, where there’s implied to be an ever-present threat of character death, it’s unreasonable to expect that no characters will die or experience tragedy - and in cases where there’s abundant LGBT rep some of those characters will by necessity not be cis/straight. So I don’t have a problem with gay characters meeting tragic or dark ends, as a general rule, particularly when it serves a narrative purpose and isn’t gratuitous. My problem here was in the manner and necessity of that death.

There were ways in which Dani could have died in this story that I would have felt were narratively meaningful and cathartic, but the manner in which she did die failed to hit those beats for me. This is a story in which two women in the 80's fall in love and are doomed by the world around them (we're already in Meryl Streep 'groundbreaking' territory here, in terms of metaphor). They know death is coming for them, that it will likely destroy them both, that they won't have an opportunity to grow old together, that eventually one day it will catch them and everything will be over - they're on borrowed time, and they spend a lot of that time looking over their shoulders waiting for shit to break bad. In the end, they're destroyed by a force in Dani's body/mind that she can't fight, that she can't win against, and the spectre of which haunts her through the years. Like... the obvious parallel here is mental health, and suicide - they even go out of their way to feature that classic heartsink moment with the overflowing bath. And to me, any story that has a message of 'no matter how strong you are, no matter how much love you have and give, or how beautiful the life you've built is, eventually the dark forces in your mind will Get You and it'll probably be before you make it to middle age' is... really shitty. The other echo that struck me was the HIV/AIDS crisis - obviously wlw were relatively spared from this, in comparison to mlm, but it still carries a cultural legacy of pain and trauma, and I really didn't need this show to grind down on that for me.

And the thing is... in the original story, the governess doesn't even die! Miles does, so maybe there's an argument here that Dani sacrificed herself in exchange for Miles's life in this retelling, but I'm still struck by this element of, like... they added this in! They chose to do this! Only one character dies in the course of this show (with Mrs Grose dying before the show starts) and it's the gay woman?? Why?? What did it show?? Why was it necessary?

Not to mention, the 'epilogue' scene paints Jamie as being very lonely and isolated. I'm not sure why the children didn't recognise ANY elements of this story from their past - even assuming they forgot the ghostly elements of their childhood, they should be able to see the similarities in the characters, but the scene also seems to imply that Jamie really isn't very close to Miles and Flora, and that she doesn't even really get to have a relationship with them as adults, in spite of losing everything to protect them, and not having any family of her own.

Almost everybody else gets a happy ending, but Jamie ends the night of the epilogue standing alone at a table, with the love of her life dead in a cursed lake, doomed to spend eternity watching over a crumbling house, and idk to me? that kind of sucked.

[mariaaxescallop]

how black lightning is treating its wlw romance

(just for context's sake, i'm currently watching 3x04 of black lightning)

(SPOILERS FROM SEASON 2)

i love black lightning. it is a series about a black family of superheroes and that is the main reason why i started to watch it. the black representation is amazing, just like the way they address the struggles of black people in the usa. i also love seeing black girls (with dark skin!) on screen with different hairstyles. one of the things i love the most about black lightning is the main family. i'm so here for the family issues, not only metahuman related, but also the day to day stuff. the series addresses parental control, coming of age, leadership, the subversion of gender roles (lynn stewart? yes ma'am), dialogue, responsibility, respect, boundaries and, on top of that, the love the pierces have for each other.

besides, i can see myself on anissa and jennifer, not only because of their relationship with their parents but also in the way they interact with each other. every time they get to talk about anything, like school, race, gender, periods (!!!!), sex, clothes, their parents and, sure, even superpowers, i can't help but smile because it's so goddamn beautiful. their sisterhood is definitely one of the things that attached me to black lightning from the start. but i'm getting distracted here.

that said, i have to share one thing i do not like about the series. the way it handles its lgbt characters aka anissa and grace (mostly grace) (and i'm not even mentioning the other 3). just to point out, i didn't start watching the show because of them, if i did i probably would have already abandoned it by now. yeah, i'm mad about grace's almost nonexistent screen time. sis shows up one episode for one scene and a half and then vanishes for another three episodes. the majority of the interactions between her and anissa happen off-screen. how do i know that? i had to ASSUME that in order to make sense of their relationship. the first few times we get to see grace it seems like she and anissa are good friends. next season, when she comes back after a very long time, it looks like anissa ghosted her and is cheating on her???? and i didn't even know they were together or something??? every time i see them on screen it feels like they are on a completely different page comparing with how they were last time i saw them. at first, i thought i was missing something... until i realized it was the show that was LACKING content.

just to make it clear, i never expected the show to be about them. it is supposed to be focused on, well, black lightning. i was ok with that. i even ignored this feeling that something was wrong... and then i noticed how much screen time khalil has. i can't help but compare him with grace because both of them are romantically involved with our pierce girls and both of them have powers. even though they have those characteristics in common, it is pretty obvious that grace doesn't get as much attention as khalil does. and it pisses me off. there's also the fact that i'm not very fond of teen romance, but that's just a personal taste and i'm not going to elaborate on that while it seems like the writers keep forgetting about grace's existence, they do not forget about khalil. even after his death.

i like khalil. he is a well written, charismatic character. i find his interactions with jennifer very tender and it is very cute to see how much they care about each other. we get to know khalil's dreams, his pain, his confusion, his anger, his guilt and, finally, his redemption. his arc was so carefully done. i don't like the resurrection thing, though, but that's another story...

and then we have grace, whose life we barely know until she disappears without telling anissa a thing. while she is missing, the audience receives a lot of important information like: she was a foster kid, she was kidnapped by a prostitution ring at the age of 16 (???), grace choi is an alias and she is, in fact, a metahuman. a shapeshifter, to be more specific. and all that during her absence! i mean, she wasn’t given the opportunity to tell it by herself!!!! meanwhile, khalil manages to come back from dead before grace's return!!! and he has a lot of very long, graphic scenes!!! i mean, c'mon. i couldn't care less about the 23 martial arts he knows, and i definitely don't give a f*ck about his punch-on-the-heart thing.

not only grace is belittled as a character, her relationship with anissa has been almost insignificant to the story. jennifer and khalil had it all: cute scenes on the roof, khalil asking jennifer to be his girlfriend, sex talk, supportive moments, the drama, reconciliation, they run away together and then jen has a lot of scenes showing her coping with his loss. all we have from thunder grace is a few cute dialogues and other few kinda-arguments (which sound out of place if you watch them isolated because you have no clue regarding what happened off-screen), then we’re shown grace is hiding something, she leaves, anissa talks to gambi and jennifer about her and that’s it. WHERE IS MY DRAMA???? i don’t wanna see khalil’s muscles for the 8464th time, i just want anissa and grace to talk properly!

i love the representation in black lightning. i love watching a black family full of strong women being cute with each other and at the same time changing their community for the better. but then we have this asian bisexual woman who doesn't even have room to grow as a character, being constantly put aside. and this is not me saying that she should appear more just because she is a queer woman of color. my point is that she is a very interesting character, with a troubled past and a possibly nice personality. AND SHE IS A METAHUMAN, AN EFFING LEOPARD, what could be more related to the plot than that??? the way i see it, the story that is being told in the show would make more sense if she had more space, if she was actually part of it and not only an afterthought. she could add so much more to the plot. but it takes the writers being interested enough to put some effort on it, which they clearly don't have. by the time grace didn't even show up on season 2's finale, i felt disrespected by this lack of interest, as a bisexual woc myself and as a huge shipper of thundergrace. jennifer and khalil's teen heterosexual romance was at the center of the last episodes, meanwhile grace was mentioned a couple of times and that was it. why can't she get the same attention the other side characters do? some of them are so useless to the plot and yet there they are. am i talking about lala? idk.

grace could be so much more, she deserved more dialogues, an entire arc, actually being part of the plot. she deserved more complexity. i know grace has the potential. it is a shame that the show slept on her like that. i don’t want lgbt representation for representation’s sake, i want it for real.

[2ndblogg]

Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)  

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...