#because a) they're actually good and show the context for queer history

[mundifinis]

i pray the day never comes when tiktok discovers gregg araki's films (specifically the teenage apocalypse trilogy ones) because the amount of discourse i can already picture.... oh my god

[stranger-rants]

i will never forget that st/eddie fan who said that thing about "a queer couple during the aids crisis" about st/eddie. it lives rent free in my brain as an ultimate batshit fantakes alongside that time someone told me i couldnt call myself queer because i didnt like a character who was canonically bi.

Oh, this makes my blood boil.

I hate it when people bring up the AIDS epidemic without any concern or consideration of context. Yes, realistically queer characters living during the 80s would be faced with a lot of new fears and stigma that would radically change their lives. It's not terrible to acknowledge that.

But.

This is not a story that recognizes that context in any meaningful way that you can use the AIDS epidemic as a "gotcha" for someone not caring about your queer interpretation of fictional characters. That's wildly inappropriate, and even disrespectful.

...and if we're looking at the actual context of the show, Will's struggle to come out makes total sense within this context considering all the anti queer rhetoric that would be on TV, especially from Reagan. It doesn't help that his best friend's parent is Pro-Reagan.

Furthermore, these same people are real silent about the canon homophobic abuse Billy endured from his conservative parent. Billy's ACE score and the lack of interventions in his life already point to a greater risk of contracting STDs and early death, but people joke about him being homophobic.

They're so willing to use a tragedy for points in a made up fandom war, but so unwilling to recognize the realities of queer people during that time who weren't respectable which shows in how they talk about other characters who could be queer and/or how they ignore homophobia in their faves.

And I'm not saying any of this to suggest that we should use the AIDS epidemic to talk about other characters instead. I would much rather it be left out of fandom debates. I just think that this particularly highlights the priorities of fans when they ignore the characters who did face homophobic abuse.

Reagan et al used similar rhetoric to demonize queer people, victim blaming them for their "behavior" and it's this kind of rhetoric that also saw a wave of respectability politics invade in queer, oh I'm sorry - LGBT - oh, I'm sorry - "LGB" spaces. It's ironically echoed in fandom discourse.

Like, either learn the history and take it seriously or shut up. Stop sorting characters into "good people who get to be queer as a treat" and "bad people who I say can't be queer because queer people have to be respectable." At the end of the day, the politicians don't care and they'll come for both.

...then getting mad that people don't like your queer interpretation of a character. Maybe it's not because they're homophobic, but rather because you're so goddamn annoying about it, especially when you use a fucking (ongoing) tragedy as armor against any criticism of them.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

I know this is an extreamly petty hill to die on, please read the whole post before you argue with me. OFMD is not like Hamilton at all and Ill fight anybody who says it.

Disclaimer: It is fine to not like either of these shows because of the historical figure's they are about I'm not saying that please don't take me out of context

The main difference is that Hamilton does a lot of work being historically accurate or whatever and gives the illusion of that where as OFMD doesn't give a single fuck about being historically accurate it only gives a fuck about being a romcom. Hamilton says "lets learn about the founding fathers with rap music, this is more or less what happened." OFMD says "who cares what these guys were actually like? They're dead. You wanna watch funny dilf theater gays kiss? One of them's dressed like a biker." they're opposite approaches to historical story telling.

I also do tend to think that they're different because one is about founding fathers and the other is about pirates. Pirates are criminals who didn't document their lives very thoroughly and had exaggerated stories told about them even when they were alive. That's not to say that their crimes don't matter but it is to say that the cultural figure of Blackbeard is already pretty fictionalized. Additionally the founding fathers have all of this political baggage that comes with them because the far right in the US likes to venerate them as infallible gods and the school system's history curriculum plays into that. Nobody says Caribbean pirates during the golden age of piracy were good actually. People might hold up Black Ceasar or Anne Bonny and Mary Read as historical examples of powerful black people/women/queer people but nobody relevant tries to pretend that they're good people. Pirates don't have that political baggage

Like I'm critical of the choice to tell sympathetic stories about historical slave owners, and even if I had been struck by the same inspiration that David Jenkins or Lin Manuel Miranda were I would not have made either show because of the fact that it's about that guy. But if you are going to do it there are different methods of doing it and saying they're all the same feels like bad media analysis to me.

Disclaimer: I'm not accusing anyone who doesn't want to watch ofmd or Hamilton because of it of bad media analysis. I think it's a perfectly valid reason to not want to watch something. My gripe is with people who say these two bits of media are the same.

[halemerry]

you know how the instrumental version of the show must go on plays in the background while the metatron orders his coffee right? the first thing it made me think of is the moulin rouge movie where during that song satine prepares herself to go and break christian's heart to protect him from the duke. it fits nicely with the interpretation that azi isn't completely sincere and is doing what he's doing to protect crowley. but I don't know if moulin rouge is something that would inspire neil and co?? do you think it's at all possible or am I just reaching?

Ohh this is a very fun question for so many reasons, but it’s a bit hard to answer directly. I can’t speak for where any of the folks involved in the making of Good Omen’s is coming from beyond what they’ve answered themselves, but If I had to gamble on it, I’d lean toward the assumption that it’s not a direct inspiration like that.

That being said, I’m not sure how much that actually matters because whether or not people on the team making this movie sat down and said ‘oh we can do this like Moulin Rouge does’ or not there is value in looking at commonality.

And in this context especially I actually think it says more about the lexicon of culture the two pieces of media are pulling from than anything else. Because in a lot of ways they're pulling from the same one.

Both the Red Curtain Trilogy and Good Omens had their first installments release at around the same time. Good Omen's was published in 1990 and Strictly Ballroom released in 1992. They're pulling from similar palettes and touchstones which is why you get the Queen overlap. Baz Luhrmann's films, including Moulin Rouge, all lean very heavily on camp aesthetics. (It's worth noting this is partially thanks to Catherine Martin who is his go to production designer who has a heavy hand in the way his films look and is also Luhrmann's wife.) Queen is a natural choice in Moulin Rouge because the band also operates in camp spaces and is arguably the most famous example of camp from the era (which frankly have stuck around and continued to define what camp looks like to this day) and because the movie is wanting to pull big recognizable songs into it's soundtrack. Queen is camp and yet insanely popular and well received.

The joke with Queen in Good Omens also operates as a nod to the popularity of the band. I know a lot of folks that think of Queen in the context of Crowley liking the band but originally anything being left in the Bentley turning into Queen was a joke poking fun at how everyone who has any kind of physical music likely has a Queen's Greatest Hits CD.

I won't go off on a whole tangent trying to define camp here as much as part of me wants to but camp has always been tied to queer culture and queer history. Its campiness is why films like the ones in the Red Curtain trilogy (especially Romeo + Juliet imo) have had the impact they have on queer media. And Good Omens even in its original state was always something queer people looked at and thought that's me. They're both queer adjacent at minimum, they're both pulling from similar cultural touchstones which also happen to be queer and camp.

They also both operate in spaces - as camp often does - more concerned with emotional impact more than realism. And the Show Must Go on is a very emotional song. Even outside the context of the lyrics itself. The album it is on was recorded during the last year of Freddie's life and was a struggle to record both physically and mentally. It's an intense song. It's over the top and unapologetic.

It's a song about soldiering through the tough times with a smile. Of carrying on the performance under pressure even if it's hard on you to do so because it's worth it. Which is basically Aziraphale in a nutshell. It's also what Satine does in the scene you're referencing. And I quite like the idea of it as evidence that Aziraphale is putting on some kind of a performance here, even if I suspect it's less taking inspiration from Moulin Rouge and more the song being well suited to these two stories operating in similar spaces.

[jeff-from-marketing]

The next person who says anything like "oh you and [person] would make a great couple!" or "you and [person] should totally date!" is going to get bit. And not in the friendly way that a cat might bite someone to show affection, no I'm 100% going for blood and tearing out flesh.

At the cost of breaking one of my personal rules of being on a social media platform, imma be real and go through my personal history, because there's a number of reasons I'm extra prickly whenever someone brings up anything like that and context helps.

So throughout a lot of my years in the hellscape that is highschool, I was actually very lucky to have some very close friends. Highschool was shit, but the people I got through it with weren't. Now, an important detail about me is that my preferred method of telling someone I care about them and love them is through physical affection. I suck with words like a vacuum attached to a kazoo, but I'm a god damn fucking poet writing... fancy poems, when it comes to communicating with physical affection.

Now, this isn't a problem... Unless you're Big Society. Because I, according to highschool dickhead logic, made the mistake of having friends who also just happened to have boobs. And as well all know, if you're close friends with someone that's the opposite sex to you, that obviously means you're romantically interested in them! Definitely can't be that I just actually really enjoy their company and think they're cool people that I'm glad to have in my life. God forbid I also hug them or anything...

... years I had to deal with that. I didn't know I was aromantic, I didn't even know that was a thing back then. In hindsight yeah it's fucking obvious I didn't want a romantic relationship, but I didn't know that then. All I knew was that I was fucking inundated with people trying really fucking hard to get me to date the people I hung around with. Fucking christ, I couldn't even go watch a fucking movie with some of my friends without everyone going "oOoOoOh YoU wEnT oN a DaTe!!1!!!11!" and it actually fucking ruined me for a while.

So many other people doing this shit to me, and I really enjoyed spending time with said friends and was happy around them, so maybe there's at least something to it? At least that's what idiot teenager me thought, and man do I wish I could slap them at times. Long story short: no, that's just called having really good friends who care about you and put effort into their relationship with you. But, because of just how people reacted and just were, I eventually conflated "friendship with good human" with "romantic interest" which, I shouldn't have to tell anyone is not even remotely correct or even healthy thoughts. It definitely had some very bad results mental health wise on more than one occasion.

It would take many years (and several crises) after highschool for me to actually figure out "actually, I don't do the whole romance thing." Now you'd think once I actually settled down on the fact of "no, I do not want a romantic relationship" combined with just not being in highschool anymore, that the bullshit I was describing earlier would stop.

Ha.

I mean sure, it's happened far less since then, but the number isn't zero so therefore it's too fucking high. I've had a friend try to set me up with another friend WHO HAS ALSO SAID THAT THEY DON'T WANT A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. THE FUCK EVEN?? And like, that was their main basis on why we should be in a romantic relationship???? The fuck???

And I've had one person mockingly say to me "awww, what a lovely couple!" just because I was cuddling up with them on the lounge in a fucking queer space of all places. The one fucking place where I'd expect my aromanticism to be understood and respected (and yes, the person who made the comment did already know about me being aromantic, so that's not an excuse)

Even now, I have a friend who keeps getting pushed into romantic relationships that they don't fucking want because other people in their life keep going "oh my god oh my god oh my god you should totally date them!" and doing the same shit I went through. Only they're still figuring things out, and let me tell you it's not a fucking easy journey.

Even ignoring how fucking childish the whole thing is, why the fuck is the default assumption of spending time with or having any sort of physical affection with someone just "oh they're dating/should date!" Are people not allowed to have fucking fulfilling relationships without it being romantic? Are people not allowed to just be fucking happy with their relationship as it is? Do people really have to push their fucking standards on how certain social dynamics work on everyone else?

God I'm fucking tired of it. Just let people fucking be happy. Let people be happy together the way they are.

So like I said: if you dare say that I should date anyone I spend time with or display any affection towards, I will be tearing chunks of flesh out of you with my teeth. That is a threat and a promise.

[gatalentan]

I’m feeling like some things are out of character in Abbott. I’d like to ask if you feel the same way. Barb in the upcoming episode, not having her entire teaching criteria? And her and the candle? It’s obvious she had a reason for that, but an open flame, in a school? I don’t know. I just feel like it wasn’t supposed to be for her character. Although the best opening in the series- Greg’s hat! Isn’t there a dress code? And Jacob and black history and last weeks episode with not knowing important people aka Barb’s references, assuming they were important. Lastly, do you think Tariq will try to fall back on Teddie’s relationship once again?

ok so my answer to this ask got a little away from me so i'll stick it under a read more

Ok so first off the thing about the candle is it WAS partially out of character for Barbara (rather the leaving the candle unattended was) because, like you say, she was dealing with her husband's health crisis. But candles on the table aren't totally out of character for her, we've seen them at least once:

it's a "home away from home" type deal, for her. We know how her and Melissa feel about that table. It's a whole thing. She was going through it and lit a candle to relax, like she would at home (because school is also her home), but because she was distracted by thoughts she left it lit, very literally putting one of her only safe spaces (the table, the room, the school) in jeopardy. She was very literally out of character for a narrative purpose.

As for the teaching requirements, I'm gonna wait for some context on that one. These blurbs don't really give you a particularly good overview a lot of the time. They often give things higher stakes than they truly are (the fact it's listed second means it's probably the b plot, so it might not be That Serious as often b-plots are the comic relief).

For the hat, I'd assumed he wouldn't actually be teaching in it. They're in the break room before the bell rings, and he knows it'd be distracting in a classroom. He's just a dork. He'd leave it on a hanger or something. But also, I mean, Melissa wears skin tight leather pants to work and wears blazers buttoned in such a was as to deliberately feature her Girls. I think the dress code at that school is pretty loose.

For Jacob, knowing black history and being a civil rights advocate doesn't mean he's infallible about knowing Black pop culture. I'm king faggot of dyke mountain but half of queer cultural touchstones pass me by. Like I hardly know anything about the pop girlies for example because it's not in my set of personal interests. Jacob's, like, a hipster. He's into thought-provoking podcasts and stuff. In my head he listens to sadboy music and watches foreign films. He's the token white boy with white boy interests, and he can be that but still be very passionate about civil rights issues. Though I will say, I don't believe that boy never saw Glee. I know in my heart he was in the trenches with us making it his whole personality for a while. Bust Your Windows was a cultural reset. Maybe he just didn't know original, but realised who they were talking about immediately after Googling it?

Like are all these instances a bit strange? Yeah. I'm not really excusing them so much as trying to make them work within the world of the show. This show uses a LOT of flex for a gag, sometimes dropping very weird lore for a chara that is never mentioned again, just because it would be funny or whiplash. "I don't think the moon landings are real", for example. It's just the general tone. I try not to think about it too deep for ANY show (or i'd get mad about writers mishandling my blorbos), though it is fun to do that sometimes. It also comes of these kind of scripted comedies having multiple writers and not necessarily having the same character concept in their head compared to the other writers, which is it's own beast. But yeah, I can see what you mean.

As for Tariq. Lol, yeah. There's no way they were gonna make it easy for Gregory and Janine after that kiss, especially now they've both split up from their exes. "If I can't have you, if it didn't mean anything to you, I'll go try the easy option again. Oh shit, oh no, this isn't what I wanted." Like I know Miss Brunson thinks this shit up while on her bed kicking her feet like Moesha. It's like fanfiction but on tv. It's gonna be m-e-s-s-y.

[synthmusic91]

i found the pirate poll mod's response and it's actually my 13th reason

posted it below because i self harm via the internet

pirate-battle Follow

3h ago

Okay, some thoughts on the matter.

(cw for homophobia and police brutality)

For anyone who missed the entire thing yesterday, basically what happened is that I saw a bunch of people on the Flint vs Stede poll going like "Cancel OFMD!" and I was like you want a queer show to be cancelled?

People pointed out to me that the real Stede Bonnet was a slave owner, I tried to point out that in the context of the show it doesn't matter, and it only went downhill from there.

I want to preface that I'm neither a Black Sails nor an OFMD fan. I've watched both shows, liked them both, and I think both shows have their merits and their problems. This is not me choosing a side out of fandom preference.

Now, a clarification; I'm not going to make some big uwu apology video on the matter, but I am glad I was given awareness on the matter. It is an important matter to discuss about... in queer spaces.

My main concern with the matter is not the show taking inspiration from very racist parts of history. As I said, the show is doing it efforts to be more inclusive in that matter, but I understand why some people of other races might feel that's not enough.

My problem is that it's a queer show, and when you advocate against it, your actions do not have the effect you think they're having. You're not supporting black people and their rights; you're doing the conservatives' work for them.

A conservative won't see a gay person asking for OFMD to be cancelled and think "Huh they're doing this because the show uwu-ified a real-life slave owner. Slavery is bad! Black Lives Matter!", no pal. They'll see that and think "See, even gay people don't want gay shows! Cancel all gay shows!"

Yes, OFMD is not perfect, and we absolutely should discuss its issues. In a perfect world, a world of acceptance and support for all queer people of all races, it would really really stick out as the show that is trying to put a cute sticker on an ugly part of human history.

But we don't live in that perfect world, and as much as I hate to tell you this as a white person, you cannot afford to be picky when it comes to allies right now. Because if you do not ally with us, conservatives will be picking us both apart. Divide and conquer. That's what conservatives have been doing to us for centuries. Would you rather support a conservative's fight to cancel all queer shows, or would you rather accept a problematic gay show that seemed to have honestly good intentions behind it?

I agree that the issues of OFMD should be discussed. So much would've been solved if they'd made up a fictional pirate instead of making a fictionalized version of Stede Bonnet. Though we're still talking about a very racist and very violent part of history, but I digress. It's important, but we cannot allow our issues with it to run so deep that conservatives can use that against queer representation.

I am not using the queer representation in OFMD as a shield against its issues. It has issues and I am thankful and humble they were brought into my attention. But trust me when I tell you that OFMD is not your enemy. OFMD is not the reason cops kill black people on sight. Think how those cops would seethe at the idea of OFMD and why; it won't be because they're disgusted by Stede being uwu-ified.

Yeah, maybe OFMD will go down in history as a queer show that uwu-ified a slave owner. But advocating for its cancellation will not help black people. It will hurt queer media - and there are black people who are feeling represented in such media. It will help conservatives.

This was my entire point and why I turned defensive. We may all have our differences but this is us against them, we cannot afford to make it us against each other, because that's what they want.

The real world is not tumblr; here we celebrate queerness and the destruction of stereotypes. The real world is the exact opposite, and you absolutely cannot afford acting there the way you do on tumblr. You will be picked apart.

Speak out about the problematic elements of OFMD. But don't advocate for its cancellation, because the people who would be most happy to see it cancelled don't care about your reasons. They care about your extinction. That's all I've got to say.

On the matter of the polls, they will continue normally, with Flint being promoted to the next round as planned. I was thinking of removing him because his toxic fans don't deserve that win and to show that this is what queer infighting leads to, but the main reason I won't do it is not because I care about the """integrity of the polls""" (because I got an ask about this like WHO THE FUCK CARES about a stupid tumblr poll) but because I fear that this will spite them more and they'll tank other OFMD characters in the polls (something that they're already doing). And I want you all to know that this is a reign of censorship and fear. I hate that I have to allow the toxic fans their win out of fear that they'll rig all the other polls and attack random OFMD fans. It's not like I'm giving a lollipop to a kid having a tantrum to calm it down. It's like I'm bowing down and shutting up out of fear of threats and abuse. I may have closed the inbox and direct messages, but again I'm not an OFMD fan so OFMD hate doesn't really touch me, and a lot of OFMD fans have open inboxes, and with how big this whole thing has gotten I'm afraid toxic fans will go for their throats. And I don't want that to happen nor be part of the reasons it happened, so reign of censorship and fear it is. Congratulations. /s

[placegrenette]

My fellow Jukeboxer Hannah Jocelyn wrote the best response piece I have found to date on that long New York Times essay that can be summarized as "But what if Taylor Swift really is queer?" This is less of a compliment than I want it to be; the other takes I've found so far have been shallow and awful. But Hannah is a very good writer generally and you should get on the mailing list for her upcoming music newsletter.

One of the things that distinguishes Hannah, as a serious writer, from the bad takes (I'm thinking specifically of this Slate piece) is that she does not try to handwave off the fact that the essay appeared in the Times. Hannah works from the premise that Taylor Swift, the singer-songwriter, has created a character named "Taylor Swift," and has at different times leaned into and run from all the parasocial speculation about her relationship to that character: "Nobody invites parasociality quite like her, and nobody hates it like her either." Over time a lot of people, including queer people of various stripes, have read character-Taylor as queer, and given that actual-Taylor has not worked overtime to draw a sharp line between herself and character-Taylor, when she angrily disavows character-Taylor specifically in the context of a possible queer reading, it hurts. The original essay basically assumes that actual-Taylor and character-Taylor are the same person, and, given that newspapers (at least, newspapers worth the paper they're theoretically printed on) don't usually blow past such distinctions, it feels like a sanctioning of intrusive speculation.

I will say this: no one needs my permission, but as long as you acknowledge that actual-Taylor is something different, you should be able to read character-Taylor however you want. I am middle-aged, which means that when I was being taught to think critically about popular media, the so-called death of the author was still in full swing. Since the odds of getting actual depictions of gay love (much less any other stripe of non-cisheteronormativity) were so low, queering was done sneakily, mostly privately, and sometimes with a thumb of the nose at the original creator. I'm not well versed on the history of fan fiction, so I may be overstating the case, but I'm pretty sure the women originally writing Kirk/Spock slash never believed that they were getting closer to Gene Roddenberry's truth. I want to say, so it goes now, even as audiences have a bit more comfortable with the possibility of a queer Everywoman. Your Taylor is not actual-Taylor; your Taylor is still valid.

The trade-off, though, is leaving actual-Taylor alone. Hannah compares Swift's outspoken disavowal of the "sexualizing" of her female friendships to the classic story of the queer woman whose affection for a friend goes unreciprocated: "They never cared about you like you did about them." But it's also true of any parasocial love. It doesn't matter how you write Taylor Swift, or any other celebrity, in your head; it won't match the real person. It's not fair to the real person to insist on a match.

But we seem to be in an era where the idea of matching has gone from assumed-to-be-nonexistent to incredibly important. Forgive me, for this is something I've had to work out in my own head, but: I am also old enough that the entire Harry Potter phenomenon passed me by (both my kids read the books; I enjoyed the Lego-video-game versions, and that's about it), and then also old enough (and secure enough) to be confused by the depth and breadth of emotion sparked by J. K. Rowling's anti-trans comments. Right now I have a book on loan from the library (With Love, from Cold World) where a character says it's just as well his strict parents prevented him from reading the books, because "I would've been a hardcore Potter fan, and then when the author showed her TERF colors it would've broken my heart." And I thought, not for the first time: I could see being annoyed, disappointed, disgusted, sure; but why heartbroken? If you, for whatever stripe "you" are, found something expansive in those books, J. K. Rowling being unhelpfully defensive and short-sighted doesn't make that connection go away or illegitimize it. That was between you and the books, not her. It makes more sense to me to gleefully yell, "Fuck you, J. K. Rowling," and embrace the books than to heartbrokenly reject them. And again, I'm a product of my time: back in the day there was enough to deal with, and people got more energy from the former approach than the latter.

So why does the prevailing narrative now seem to need a trans-inclusionary J. K. Rowling, or an actually-gay Taylor Swift, so much? Partly because we're all prone to black-and-white thinking, wanting our heroes good and our villains bad, and so on. (Also I like to personally speculate that 12-year-olds contribute a lot more to the prevailing narrative than most of us care to admit, and 12-year-olds are even more inclined to black-and-white thinking than their adult counterparts.) But I think there's another element now: we're all authors. We're all writing; we're all performing publicly; we're all scared of being misunderstood; we none of us want to give up control of our narratives. (Taylor Swift included.) And we're not hypocritical enough to be able to say, "I can do whatever I like with your artistic output, fuck you," and then turn around and say, "Hey! That's not what I meant!"

Aella wrote an essay a while back titled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet Hate." I've read it several times and found it unsettling each time. "I didn’t know how to handle being a symbol to people," she wrote. "Something about it felt off. I wasn’t supposed to be a symbol, and people were wrong in some deep, horrible way when they failed to see my humanity." And eventually: "I’m a microcelebrity, and this means that some people will use me in ways that hurt. Throw a ball, it falls. What the fuck else did I expect to happen? This is the dynamic like the earth beneath my feet is the ground."

I still don't want to accept the dynamic that Aella is in the process of making her peace with, frankly. I can talk a good game about separating the art from the artist, as above, but in truth I'm terrified too of losing control of my own narrative, of being a symbol rather than a person, of being seen as a sliver of myself, less than human. So are you, I suspect. We want to be seen as we see ourselves, and we're scared of failing. We hope that being able to say "I think about X's creative output and therefore understand X" implies "Other people think about my creative output and therefore understand me." The alternative -- that one can write and write and write and fail to be understood -- is hard to make peace with.

@cureforbedbugs (who pointed me to Hannah's essay in the first place; his newsletter's good too) recently wrote a series of essays on Taylor Swift, and in the last one he wonders if her ascension may simply be a side effect of her having gotten big right before the pop scene fractured utterly: once her star falls, no one else's will ever shine as bright, because the way we listen to and purchase and talk about pop music has changed. I wonder, though, if part of what makes Taylor Swift so compelling is how she's been dealing with these questions of narrative control so publicly, self-aggrandizingly, fruitlessly. She's tried encouraging the close readings, and disavowing them, and leaving them alone, and trying to redirect them, and "Anti-Hero" is about how none of those approaches have worked. "It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me," she finally sings, because the one thing she seems unable to do is relax and accept her own inevitable dehumanization. And when I hear "Anti-Hero" and sing along, I recognize something of myself in her words; which is a contribution even if I don't know her and never will.

[birdsareblooming]

Can you PLEASE for my own sanity send me valid points to make to people when they say they dislike Tom's character, or says that Sonic movie is "copaganda"? They hate his character only because he's a cop.

They're like "if he wasn't one, I'd be cool with him" like I'm so sick of this.

(Send multiple times to be sure you received this ask.)

it's... and interesting situation

I get people wanting to step away from the movie because of that, if they are highly uncomfortable or have trauma relating to it, than by all means they're fully valid to not engage. It's also valid to be a little upset seeming as it is cliche and accidentally in one of the worst years to choose that kind of character.

However, no one has approached the situation with any grace. Either they're guns ablazing or completely defending it like it's flawless, I don't want to fall into either.

Tom is a Sheriff, who is voted on by the people:

And this is partly because of cut scenes, but it is well established how small of a town Green Hills is, and how he's "more of a glorified babysitter." Him going out and becoming a big city cop is highly protested by Sonic. Was it because he'd be a "real cop"? no, is Tom still a cop despite being a Sheriff, yes. That is still there.

There is also the huge anti-military themes in the movie, showing the military as violent and idiotic. The only competent person we see is Robotnik, who is using tax money to make super-weapons and was paid by the military in the past to destroy and wipe from history an entire country. Not to mention the only other cop seen is also completely incompetent to the point of hilarity.

It is also mention-able that Tom never used a gun in the movie, the closest thing being a tranq gun that he wasn't actually planning to use.

There's also the joke people love to bring up, the "abusing power" one, I genuinly don't know how to explain that, other than looking at interviews and the rest of the movie, especially the time period, I highly doubt it was supposed to mean what everyone assumed it meant, No other jokes in the movie are THAT "edgy". Especially because he was using it to save a life (from the military)

In the end, it's complicated, WAY more complicated than people would like to believe. People love to think that anything with a cop in it is Paw Patrol, like how people like to think that anything with queer people is woke.

Personally, I believe it was a misguided mistake that wasn't meant to do any harm and is more of a plot-device than anything. Tom isn't the main character.

Is it copaganda? No. Again, the movie and Sonic himself hates the idea of Tom becoming a "real cop" in the big city, wanting him to stay where the people he loves is, and worry about protecting them. "Protecting the people you love" is a big theme in the movie, and one that Sonic decides to do at the end.

I won't defend the decision, but I fully understand the reason behind it. With everything else in the movie and full context, I can't in good faith call it "copaganda", it's propaganda for having found family and hiding illegal aliens in your attic.

[daisyachain]

hi!! i've been reading through your ao no flag liveblogs lately and they're really interesting! i enjoy seeing someone so passionate about this manga and it makes me want to reread it .... i'm really interested in hearing what you have to say about masumi's ending though!! part of me thinks it makes sense but i'm mostly conflicted on it and would love to see it from your perspective ^^

haha well thank you! ah yes, the arc that created as much controversy as you can get in an active readership of like 10 people...

Blue Flag is an imperfect story, but it also gets a lot of flack for things that a) didn't...actually...happen, b) didn't happen in the way people think they did.

Part 1: Is it actually straightwashing?

The most common criticism I see of Masumi's ending is that she was written as a lesbian character and straightwashed at the end. Marrying off a female character as a way to 'fix' her issues is a common and harmful trope, and saying that lesbian women just need to get a man is a widespread homophobic trope and talking point. So, it's not a good look. To have a character angst over interest in a woman and end up happily married to a guy reads like a '50s pulp novel that just uses f/f attraction for marketing.

But, if the intention of the ending was to show that Masumi should give up on women and force herself to date men, then it doesn't. Mitsuyuki's description of her is 'look at my bisexual wife who has dated both women and men and could also have married a woman', which is an odd choice if the intention was straightwashing. It feels more like a clumsy way to make sure that, in a series full of ambiguity, there could be no argument that Masumi was queer. That isn't to say that cisstraight people don't view bisexuality as less/better than/straighter than her being lesbian and that making a previously gay character bisexual isn't still straightwashing (increasing the appearance of straightness).

Part 2: Was it actually a retcon?

So: Masumi's ending reaffirms that she's a WLW. One question is, was she always meant to be bisexual, or was she originally written as lesbian?

Blue Flag doesn't have a lot of straight (no pun intended) answers. Taichi never expresses any explicit attraction to guys, but there is enough subtext to suggest he's attracted to Touma well before the finale. Futaba believes she is attracted to Touma at first and is shown to be attracted to him using the visual shorthand of manga (blushing, etc.), but she later says that it was just misinterpreted admiration. Mami doesn't want to date Touma or any man, but she implies that she is attracted to Touma when she says around him she was 'glad to be a woman.' Within the main romance, Futaba says that it was specifically because Taichi was a friend to her that she grew to like-like him. The lines between friendship and romance are blurred in Blue Flag, and sometimes romance can only grow out of friendship.

Masumi has a tense conversation with Taichi in the first half after she breaks up with her boyfriend that most people (me included) read as her saying that she tried guys and she just isn't and can't be attracted to them. However, it's Blue Flag, so the conversation is unfocused and doesn't paint a complete picture.

"Even if I get a boyfriend, I can never make it work"/"I don't know why [I don't like him anymore]" seem to imply that Masumi realized that she was feeling compulsory heterosexuality and that she will never like men. "[I don't know] why he like someone like me"/"You can be friends with potential sexual partners? With both guys and girls?"/"I just wanted to hear how you men feel about [a girl liking other girls]" seem to imply that Masumi is bisexual and is afraid to date because someone might find out. Maybe she's written as questioning--she knows she likes Futaba, but she's feeling out other possibilities. It's Blue Flag, so it's unclear.

Part 3: How does it work with Masumi's arc?

Diving further into Masumi's story, she acts as a foil to Touma (and Futaba, see later). Touma feels free to show his affection for Taichi as a friend as well as a love interest and almost confesses to him of his own free will, well before he's forced to. Touma tells her that he intends to try and set Taichi up with Futaba (because they would be good for each other), and also that he intends to pursue Taichi in some way. He tells her he's "not like [her]."

For Masumi's part, she tells Touma that she wants to express more affection for Futaba--not necessarily in a romantic way, just to participate more fully in that relationship--but she's afraid to, she doesn't feel confident enough to try, and that she's "the worst" because of it. We see this theme repeated, that Masumi is pessimistic, is afraid to trust people and hates herself for being afraid. Her conversations with Aki and Mami explore this; Aki tells her that it's not bad to be insecure or unready and that it's fine to keep a secret/stay closeted until she's ready, Mami tells her that she does have people she can trust, who care about her and who will do their best to understand her and help out. Why am I typing all this out? Because Masumi is a bitter, insecure wlw and that is an Established Trope, but her twist on it is that her negativity or bitterness isn't over her attraction to women/to Futaba or even over the reaction she might get from others (as Touma's is), it's over her own insecurity. Like Futaba, she's hesitant to act on her feelings, and like Futaba, she gets frustrated and hates herself for her own inaction.

All that is to say--Masumi is never shown to have a problem with her attraction to women. Her angst isn't gayngst, she's not ashamed of her feelings for Futaba bur rather her inability to express them. Her problems are with social attitudes and more with her own personal feelings--she and Touma face similar problems, but Touma is simply aware of the consequences (being roughed up and ostracised by a certain group of people) while Masumi feels a more generalized and ambiguous fear.

If Masumi were shown to have mixed feelings about her queerness/were shown to be in denial/were shown to be trying to move on from Futaba, then her ending would read more as straightwashing. As it is, there's nothing in her character and arc to say that she'd ever want to erase that part of herself or get rid of it, rather, she wishes she could embrace it but she just doesn't feel confident in doing it. Her ending shows her as an openly bisexual woman who is out to her friends and husband at the very least, which is a completion of her arc in the manga (of learning to trust other people and express her feelings honestly).

Part 4: What context clues does the rest of the series give us?

This is branching off a little from the strict text of Parts 1-3. As I've said, as we know, Blue Flag is 50% subtext and interpretation. Characters speak, but they don't say what they mean, characters think, but they're not always honest with themselves or in tune with reality. Mami is an ominous and antagonistic figure in the first half, but then it just turns out that Taichi was jumping to conclusions. Taichi is the main character and narrator, but we get radio silence from him for like 7 chapters after the climax. Taichi is bisexual, but the reader has to guess that from the way the art style shifts between PoVs, the similar panelling between Futaba and Touma's confessions, the things he does and does not think about Touma and how he feels about them. It's safe to say that there is room for speculation.

First, there is no explicit evidence that Taichi could be bisexual before ch 54. It's easy to tell that he is, but again, there's nothing specific. Some people reading Blue Flag have said that him marrying Touma was out of character, unforeshadowed, bizarre, inexplicable, etc. because their experienced is coloured by their own heterosexuality. Masumi is shown to have dated a guy and in saying she didn't like him "anymore," implied that she did like him. Her conflicted feelings over her bf could well have been foreshadowing her liking men as well, and my reading that as comphet could have just been my own experience colouring the text. Who knows! Taichi's bisexuality was intentional from the start but could be read as a last-minute twist, so why not Masumi's?

Second, Mitsuyuki is Futaba 2.0. Same colouring, same personality. This could feel like a way of saying "Masumi just needs to like guys instead," but to me it reads deeper with some of the trans subtext around Futaba. One of my issues with Blue Flag is that it doesn't go further into Futaba's admiration/envy for masculinity and her uncomfortable relationship with femininity. As a cis woman who wants to be buff and mildly masculine, I can understand why she's a cis girl throughout and I don't necessarily think that she was supposed to be a trans guy. However, her relationship with masculinity draws a parallel to Mitsuyuki. Reading Mitsuyuki as a cis man, he is the combination of Futaba's personality and looks with her 'ideal form.' So, Masumi marrying Mitsuyuki can read as Masumi marring Ascended FutabaTM.

Third, Futaba having a faceless prop husband is interesting in the context of Mitsuyuki getting a name and personality. Mitsuyuki = Futaba and Mr. Kuze is a blank space, so the reader is prompted to reduce the scenario and slot Masumi into that blank space. Given Masumi and Touma's history as foils, I'm inclined to think that Mitsuyuki exists to show the road not taken. Back at the fireworks, Touma tells Masumi that he hasn't given up on Taichi, and Masumi says she doesn't intend to pursue Futaba even though the pining is making her miserable. Given that Futaba reacts a lot better to the idea of Masumi liking her than Taichi reacts to the idea of Touma liking him, given that we see Masumi has successfully wooed male!Futaba, I think that Masumi's ending shows that she could have ended up with Futaba if she chose to pursue her. She didn't and she still got a happy ending where she is confident in her sexuality and unafraid to trust, but she could have also had a happy ending where she married Futaba. Mitsuyuki is a man because desire-for-masculinity is a key aspect of Futaba's character, and Mitsuyuki is a named character with a personality because KAITO wanted the reader to know that Masumi could have ended up with Futaba (as Touma ended up with Taichi).

Fourth, KAITO's notes on volume give us a few hints. He comments that there was remarkably little interference with his story and that he was able to tell it as he wanted, and that the ending was meant to be a "question" to the reader. The way I see it, Masumi's ending wasn't meant to say "maybe you'll be fixed if you get a man" but rather was meant to complement Taichi's ending and say "things happen in ways you might not expect, but that doesn't mean they're bad."

Fifth, Touma/Taichi ending up together shows us that the series is willing and able to show queerness as a good thing and a happy ending, so it's unlikely that Masumi was meant to come off as "actually she just needed a man" and more as "life can be unpredictable but you can always find happiness"

Summary

It's unclear whether Masumi was written as a bisexual woman or a lesbian woman or a questioning wlw

I personally read her as a lesbian and I wish that part of her character had gotten more exploration

Masumi's ending wraps up her arc (struggling to trust other people with her feelings in general and her queerness in particular) in a satisfying and logical way

Masumi being bisexual does not in any way negate or lessen her identity and experienes as a wlw, bisexual people still face external and internalized homophobia and all the associated issues

Masumi's bisexuality may well have been foreshadowed, but the execution makes it easier to read her as a lesbian, which makes her ending seem like a homophobic cop-out in the style of the Hays Code

Masumi's ending doesn't straightwash her and goes to unusual lengths to affirm her attraction to women

Masumi's ending seems to be written to contrast Touma's ending, showing that getting or not getting the love interest depends entirely on whether you choose to pursue them

It's unlikely that authorial intent was to straightwash Masumi

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I'm not that anon but regarding queerbaiting, the idea that real people can queer bait is absolute bullshit to me. I am not going to morally judge people for engaging in queer culture regardless of their sexuality. I think in most conversations about queerbaiting tend to ignore that art can have multiple interpretations and meaning. Also you can't always know the intentions of the creator. I would love to hear your thoughts.

So I think there are several layers to my belief and the more I think about it the more certain I am that 'queerbaiting' doesn't describe anything that actually happens in the world, and that I'm opposed to the ideology behind the idea that queerbaiting exists and is bad.

Like you I think the idea that individual people might be 'queerbaiting' is absurd and I want to emphasise two different aspects. The first is just the way they're imagining queer culture with this hard boundary that has 'straight people keep out' around the outside, has absolutely no relationship to any queer culture I know of. From Judy Garland down, whether you're talking at the iconic level of cultural creation, or at just people sitting round hanging, there have always been straight people who interact with queer culture.

While the point about the harm that the idea of 'queerbaiting' does to closeted people in this context is a good and necessary one. I think it concedes too much. I think it's important to entirely reject the idea that queer culture was, is or should be, queer only.

But implicit in all this is the argument that there are people (often celebrities or people with some kind of brand) who are engaging with queer culture in a cynical way. Not because it speaks to them personally, or to show solidarity, or because they want to relate their art to what has come before, but simply to build a brand to make money.

And I wonder all the time - who are people talking about? Who are people thinking about? What is the harm that they see doing? And how on earth would you know that someone else's engagement with queer culture was entirely to make money?

The starting point of discussions is 'queerbaiting is wrong', but I've never seen anyone make a solid argument that queerbaiting is real. If it was an actual phenomena, then there'd be many many examples. And I've just never seen any evidence that it's true and the idea that it is seems to handwave away the systematic homophobia in the industry.

I'm actually really curious about where this comes from and what people are anxious about. So if there's anyone who is reading this who genuinely thinks people queerbait or is worried about it - I'd be interested in what examples you have of who is doing damage and how.

I would make the same argument when it comes to pop culture. It is so recent that creators have been able to tell queer stories with any sort of freedom. In 2001, Joss Whedon (who is part of my history of popular culture, even though the stories I was telling about him were very wrong and he was a total fuckwit) had to threaten to quit to get a kiss between Willow and Tara on television. Given that level of structural homophobia, why would you assume bad intent for indirect queer stories? There are so many other explanations, particularly as you say when popular culture works have so many authors.

And again I'd like to argue - what pop culture are people actually talking about when it comes to queerbaiting? And what evidence do they have that there was some sort of trap with bait in it - rather than different interpretations of an incoherent work.

There are two key aspects of 'queerbaiting' as understood by those who think it's real and should be opposed that are heavily implied but never adequately discussed. One is that it's harmful, which I think may be true under some circumstances, but I think that it should be demonstrated not assumed. And the other is that queerness that is not resolved to the satisfaction of the viewer is there as the result of someone else 'baiting' them. It's grounded in assumptions about other people's intentions. It's always dubious to ground the legitimacy of your response on your assumptions about other people's intentions. It's particularly dubious when the assumptions about other people's intentions are so lacking in evidence.

And on top of all of this I think policing queerbaiting does harm that is far more definite than anyone has even suggested that queerbaiting does. Policing the boundaries of queerness is bad for people figuring out their sexuality, it's bad for closeted people, it's bad for most queer people, and it's also bad for queer culture. Generally the most resonant or generative or liberatory queer culture has not come from people trying to stop other people relating to queer culture.

[wild-grinders]

Hello Wild Grinders. I'm soooo glad I found a fellow fan! I also wanted to say that I'm astonished by your shipping between Jackknife and Emo Crys. I must ask, why did you decide on it? Who do you also ship? I really appreciate this and I was also thinking that you could post screenshots of them!

anon you really scared me with this ask because it's 2021 and I am the only one *alive* in the wild grinders franchise (the show has been removed from the appstore back in 2019??) It was discontinued without any notice as well; probably because Rob Dyrdek is now married and has a kid and doesn't want them to discover his unsuccessful show in the future psst rob you can give the characters to me, they will be in good hands

Anyways, to answer your question on the ship: Back in either 2013-2015, I was really into fandom culture and tried to find something for Wild Grinders. There was barely anything and lot of the content was just boring posts. There was one user in particular who shipped Jack and Emo together. (They're not active anymore). I wondered why that ship as well, so I began to search into the show a bit deeper.

This is a kids' show from 2008, so I doubt that there were any intentional hints of the ship. However, if you watch the show carefully and learn about it outside of the animation, then you can see that there was something appealing. (For better context about 2008-2011; emo/scene culture was super popular and yaoi began to become popular as well. At least, from what you can read on FictionPress. Basically, even if queer rep was never intended, the show was still living in an era where people were moving away from heteronormative media).

Okay, now that I've said the disclaimer (aka product of the time), I going to  share my findings that I discovered when getting deep into the franchise.

1. Appearances Together

Okay one of the biggest things I have noticed when watching any of the episodes is that Jack Knife and Emo Crys are frequently next to each other (one of the most important ingredients for a ship) Since Wild Grinders doesn’t have character spotlight styled episodes (they try to mash the whole group as a whole or just give Lil’ Rob the spotlight) so having to characters interact in the background is something to take note of. 1/2/3

This was not intentional for shipping purposes (again, kids show), but someone who worked on the show seemed to have slipped in these small details and Tracy or Rob rolled with it. (Something like this has actually happened in SU where someone was able to slowly build up [L]apidot). There are probably more details, but uhhhhhhh I don’t have the episodes for it.

2. Symbolism/Personification

Another thing that I have noticed is that they seem to represent certain pairings (or objects that go together).

An example would be Jack Knife’s description. He is called a ‘Bull-in-a-China-shop.”

Fine china usually refers to porcelain plates. However, if you take a step away, ‘porcelain’ is a word often used for delicate dolls. There used to a time where people would think of East Asians as ‘delicate porcelain dolls.’ (Please for the love of god, don’t call Asians this. It is NOT a compliment). Anyways, Emo Crys is a very fragile character, as well as East Asian. I would not be surprised if this was supposed to be some sort of backhanded way to ‘link’ them. (There’s plenty more ways to do that if you know your history well, but I’m not going to dive into that *scuttles off the stage*). If anything, they could have used a different description to describe Jack being clumsy/easily destroying things.

*Anyways to make it clear: Jack Knife never says anything about Emo Crys being too sensitive/fragile or compares him to a doll if that’s what anyone is thinking. 

Another example of their symbolism is probably in the Wizard of Oz episode, Jack Knife was featured as the scarecrow without brains. (Emo Crys was a wizard, but that’s not important right now). Emo is associated with ravens/crows (it is on his skateboard). Black birds and scarecrows are often tied together.

Something I used to joke about is that since Emo is a vampire, then I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s playfully going after a ‘redneck’ like Jack Knife. (When I say redneck, I do not mean fake ones who are conservative assholes). Vampires want the red blood nom nom.

3. Design

I am going to pull up some late 2000s culture for this one, this is a warning if you have anything against cringe stuff.

Anyways, one of the popular type pairs during 2011 often had a emo with black hair x brunette. (Yes I’m talking about LightxL and DanxPhil). And I just look at these two and just lose my shit because they have *that* specific look.

Pushing that item aside, they also have aesthetic design: goth character x dumb tough guy. (Sorry, I couldn’t find a better word for it).  Anyways, I’m referring ships like [A]dvenberry and [S]teakwine that have similar aesthetic/vibe to JackCrys.

4. Personality/Compatibility

They get along!! Jack Knife clearly is kind and loyal, while Emo Crys (who is reserved) also values emotions and vulnerability. They do not show any hate towards each other or any sort of hostility. The only thing that could separate them is the fact that Emo Crys is a ‘creator’ and Jack Knife is a ‘destroyer.’ But for the most part, both boys value kindness.

I would not be surprised if they had something going on *if* Wild Grinders was a more complex show + they were older.

Another thing that I also want to touch on is that the went through a personality swap during the making of the TV series. If you watch the promo videos + The Lost Skate Spot, then you’d notice that Jack Knife used to be a lot more ‘soft spoken’ and even a bit more shy. Meanwhile Emo Crys would be deadpan and have dry humor, but still having his emo personality. As time went on, Rob decided to make Jack Knife more loud and American-sounding (I understood the joke, but it really ended up being annoying). As for Emo Crys, they took away some of his snark and just entirely made him a ‘pathetic crybaby’ (most likely for the appeal towards girls).

I really like the old voices for them, but I do not mind the current voicing for them. (It’s just that it takes away a level of depth).

I can go on about this for hours, but I think that I should stop here. Anyways, I do have other ships in the franchise, but I don’t really go hard on them. (Also don’t want Dyrdek to come after me). Lil’ Rob x Goggles and Flipz x Xavier on the side.

[flying-elliska]

You said it feels cool to have a specific identity but isn't that exactly why we are seen as the special snowflake generation? Not to mention wasn't the whole point to be free from stereotypes and dress however we want, love whoever we want etc? And yet there's now so many identities, labels, flags which create an implicit pressure to define yourself so you'll be included. Idk I think your french friends are right,it still feels like we're pushing people into boxes; they're just woke boxes now.

Hey anon ! Thank you for this very interesting question. I hope you’re ok with getting a mini-essay as a response (that’s kind of my brand now lmao)

So first of all, if you don’t feel like you personally need labels, you are totally valid. And so are my friends. I think you have to find out what you’re most comfortable with. It’s true that labels can be used to exclude, esp in the LGBTQ+ communities. I think we focus our activism a little bit too much on words and online stuff and media representation nowadays, as opposed to practical political action, and that’s an issue. And we focus too much on people not having the correct, latest approved terminology and labels as a way to show you’re a good person, as opposed to what people are actually doing and their lived experiences, and who is authorized to use what label and those debates often just exasperate me to the highest point. It’s like, don’t you have anything better to do ? It becomes very clique-ish, school courtyard drama at times. There should always be a place for questioning, fluidity, no labels, a place for discovery and uncertainty, shifting identifications, multiple labels at once, words changing, and questioning what place they take in our lives.

But, on the whole, I still like my labels, and I’m going to try and explain why. 

Labels are words right ? They have the benefits and drawbacks of words. A rose under any other name would still smell as sweet, of course. But we are a fundamentally social species, and words are a way to create bridges between people, between our experiences. It signals that you are not alone ; it’s a way to make visible things that are usually invalidated, ostracized or just plain erased by the mainstream and the status quo. The development of a vocabulary for the queer community was what made their political struggle and pride possible ; before it was “the love that dare not speak it name”, all euphemisms and shame. It honors, too, the struggle of those who came before us ; it places us in the continuity of a history ; it says we have been here before, it gives us memory and context. Of course words are going to betray us, because they can never retranscribe the fullness, complexity and confusion of lived experience. But they’re a conversation starter ; they bring people together ; they create spaces of freedom. 

I’m going to give you a personal example : a few years ago I fell in love with a girl for the first time ; after that I seriously started thinking of myself as bisexual. There had always been a thing there but because I had been mostly attracted to boys before, I’d swept it under the rug. But finding the ‘bisexual’ label made me realize - no this is a thing, this is valid, and it made me look back at all those instances in the past of having weirdly intense feelings for some of my girl friends, of being obsessed with certain actresses, etc…that back then I didn’t understand, I just thought I was weird…and I always thought that bisexuality was something that something Hollywood starlets did for attention. But finding a community behind that word that was seeking to reclaim it from the stereotypes and being proud about what it meant, it was so healing.

 After that I immersed myself more in my local LGBTQ+ community ; and in particular I volunteered for the European Bisexual Convention - that one in particular was incredible because it felt so…liberating. In the general LGBTQ community, people expect you to be gay until you say otherwise. In the student association I was in, it was cool, but it was also…very normative in a way. Lots of stereotypes about how we were expected to be, what we were expected to like, behave like. So for Eurobicon, to have all of that lifted, it was amazing. And it was also so much more inclusive - of disabled, neuroatypical, transgender ppl, different body types and ethnicities, like you could feel that they had made an effort. I also met several nonbinary ppl for the first time of my life and I was like…oh wow there’s something here that feels very important and real. We shared experiences that we did not have a space before, that were specifically bisexual and that tend to go unheard in general queer spaces because they’re not part of the dominant narrative : the daily hesitations, the lack of visibility, the much higher rates of staying closeted, feeling like you are not really part of the community, but also the really cool aspects too - there was this incredible energy of fluidity too of thinking, here is a space where everyone can potentially be into everyone, there aren’t as many barriers as we usually have to think about. And there was this one party and we were all dancing and flirting in a very sweet kind of way, people of different ages and body types, gender presentations and configurations I hadn’t thought about before, a girl in a wheelchair swirling around and being treated like a queen, guys in corsets and cool butches and just some beautiful people - and there was this euphoria in the room, of recognition and kinship, and it felt so…normal, not freakish like I had been led to believe it would be. Nobody was putting on airs or trying hard or whatever, they were just being themselves. And I was like, wow, this is something I need more of in my life. And this freedom was made possible by people coming together under a certain label, recognizing that certain people have specific needs and experiences. Especially after growing up in environments that never tell you that those things are possible, finding the right label can be like coming home. 

I have other labels for myself I am less public about because I don’t want to deal with the social aspect of it, or I’m like this is none of anybody’s business, or I want to give myself the time to figure it out on my own. But they’re tools for self-knowledge, they allow me to think about things, to conceptualize, to research (and lol I’m a nerd so…). And to be less hard on myself sometimes, and to stand up for myself in a ‘I know who I am and it’s okay’ kind of way. Because society tends to pathologize, ostracize or demonize the things it doesn’t understand, and labels can protect you against that. 

In an ideal society maybe we wouldn’t need labels - to have a right to exist or survive, and that’s definitely a goal, but I think we would still make some, because that’s who we are as a species, we need to classify certain things in order to think about them. The problem is when those boxes become cages instead of like, beautiful pots to grow seeds in, like art or poetry. And of course deconstructing the boxes we don’t want remain important. But I don’t think we can ever be box-less, it just to me doesn’t compute. 

I just wanna come back to the ‘special snowflake generation’ thing. If you don’t want labels, like I said, that’s fine. But I hate hate hate that term, and I don’t want to define myself in reaction to it. To me it’s used by a) bigots who just hate the fact that natural human diversity is becoming more recognized and discussed, and want to put us back in the artificial, stifling boxes that dynamics of power, patriarchy and imperialism have made us believe were normal when they really weren’t. And b) older people who are uncomfortable with increased levels of emotional intelligence and lability among younger generations. It’s a thing I’ve noticed over and over again ; people used to talk so much less. When they had feelings in general, or experiences out of the norm, they were taught that stuffing them down and sitting on them and repressing the shit out of them, was the noble/normal/grown up thing to do. So they did and they suffered in silence. And maybe some of them now feel bitter, or at least bewildered, by younger generations refusing to do so and inventing and or reclaiming all those new ways of talking about their experiences out in the open. And so they’re like ‘it’s too much ! you’re spoiled !’ because they want to believe that their sacrifices had a point. They don’t want to realize they could have done things differently all along. It’s very sad. But I don’t think it should be a barrier to us using them like…just as we shouldn’t refrain from using washing machines because our grandmothers suffered to wash everything in a bucket…There’s nothing entitled about wanting a better life than previous generations… And to me, having more words and more space to express myself will never be a bad thing. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

you ever think about how they hired twins to play the triplets that dean and crowley have sex with. I feel like that right there is proof that they're not queerbaiting, because no one could possibly be baited by that because 99 percent of everyone didn't even notice it. They just put it in there cause dean's bi and they write him as bi.

It’s funny, for whatever reason I was thinking last night about how my own personal definition of the way the show may or may not queerbait has changed over the seasons, and it’s not just to do with personal growth but the way the show is written and the way they are handling things. 

My impression of how it all felt in the start of season 10 was utter disbelief that they were so on the nose about Dean and Crowley, and I know not everyone wants to/does think that they hooked up, but there’s some stuff the show pushed there that in some ways it would have no other excuse to do and I went cold on Drowley several times after feeling like the handling was sweeping it under the rug, writing it off as villainous queerness or other ways to distance Dean from it like suggesting he wasn’t in control or roofied by being a demon, that thankfully at least was not how Crowley died on the show, with 12x15 giving us the last example of how that dynamic had matured, and it WAS matured, and at least in terms of respecting that Dean n Crowley had once eloped, was about as good as it could get. And I think owning that the dynamic wasn’t a sense of that time being abusive was important given how much Dean and Crowley interacted and behaved towards each other AFTER, as well as exactly how we were supposed to read whether Dean should feel violated or smug or nostalgic about it all (and he did flash between them depending on the season or episode in the time after). But at the start of season 10 this whole journey was really only just beginning. 

Obviously people had written about the queercoding and Crowley’s seduction before then, but in very careful metaphorical terms, and as much as it was suggestive in season 9, the fact is that without season 10 it could easily remain a metaphorical ~seduction to evil~ where this was written in terms of romantic seduction - except for where it was fatherly or brotherly - but 10x01 smashed that and made it really really clear that you could read that Dean and Crowley had been hooking up, even independent of the twins/triplets subtext. Specifically when Crowley is annoyed Dean and Ann-Marie hooked up in his bed, and Ann-Marie tells him and Dean to get a room, and he’s like, we had one. Of course you can pretend that not everything Crowley says is innuendo (and room = specifically the bed), but that exchange had a lot of jealousy and a lot about his and Dean’s *personal* relationship, as much as the other stuff was about the more wild stuff they shared with others while howling at the moon. Which was part of the longer term emotional game Crowley was playing about their business relationship and Dean being his scary consort and them sort of going exclusive >.> 

And in that context, Crowley mentions they’d done some memorable stuff to triplets together, and on rewatching you catch they’re hanging out with twins in the bar before that, but the wider context was this absolute explosion of queer subtext and borderline text and a dynamic that needed concentrated work to not come to the conclusion they’d been fucking all summer, with and without buddies of whatever gender with them. Focusing on the male twins in the background as a hint that Dean had had sex with men is ignoring where Crowley directly implies they’d been hooking up and now he wanted to go exclusive with Dean as the hugest neon sign that, yes, Dean has been having sex with at least one man, regardless of the gender of the triplets. Like, I know people were like hurr blurr the triplets could have been women, #no homo, sometimes men sleep with triplets together like bros. Which traps us into hyperfocusing on what the triplets were and using them as the definitive proof, when in fact the reason triplets were being banged in the first place was because Dean and Crowley were banging all the time everywhere up and down seedy bars in America, and Dean didn’t want the good times to end, while Crowley wanted the d all for himself now pls. 

And considering that’s the thing under the paper thin surface that you can remotely pretend that Dean only slept with women and he and Crowley were just hanging out the entire time, regardless of no matter how much more subtext the show piled on later, less close to the surface but with more confidence that everyone knew Dean had banged Crowley and the only way any of this worked any more was that that had happened, even just when we only had 10x01 to work with, the whole Dean n Crowley thing was so enormous that you can’t just speculate on what the twins were to approach to what degree was this queerbaiting or not. The twins are a detail that you can pick up on and speculate on if you look deeper, as they know we sometimes do. I’m not saying they’re NOT an aspect of this, but they’re a relatively buried easter egg of subtext compared to, say, Crowley sobbing over his flickr albums in the next episode :P

To what degree Drowley was queerbaiting is the real question, and since Crowley is now consigned to the show’s history books, we have the full story in a way. In the context of what we have now, I don’t think overall, all comments included, the show ever pretended, even when distancing Dean from it, even when painting it as abusive or Dean having diminished responsibility, that Dean and Crowley did *not* bang. I think there are multiple comments which as long as you are permissive that Dean would have could have probably did, that in seasons 11 and 12 pretty clearly indicate a memory of having slept together one point or another, especially 11x23 and 12x15 with overt references to sexual things from Crowley to Dean, or 11x07 and the implication that over a year later Dean still has Crowley’s answerphone messages from howling at the moon, and knows and remembers details of his personal life fondly. (I don’t think that’s the only time Bobo wrote them like that but that’s the one that springs to mind :P)

Buuut they never showed them on screen in such a way that could be seen from the moon as them together, like actually showing them IN a sexual relationship while Dean was a demon, or having Dean confirm Crowley’s innuendo with more than the usual reactions where he gets plausible deniability to any gay stuff going on. And SOME of that I think MAY be to do with the problems with the villainous queerness slant, and the way it was at times framed as abusive/Dean lacking control. Because they would not commit to exploring the aftermath of that relationship SERIOUSLY, i.e. making it clear they had slept together when Dean was a demon, and him on-screen dealing with how that made him feel and how he felt about Crowley, and even, god forbid, his own sexuality, the best they could do to resolve it was to establish eventually a sort of civil exes dynamic, both aware of their history, but not harping on it, even if Crowley remained somewhat to entirely besotted by Dean for the rest of his time on the show. The lack of handling it seriously means it stays as a somewhat jokey subtext later on, and they can play it off as no harm no foul by the end of season 11 and through season 12. 

I think in that vein it also eventually contributed to Crowley being sidelined and eventual downfall, because he was trapped in the subtext of being Dean’s ex and all the enormous complications that made between them and for his personal life, again without being able to explore it or leave a lasting, openly discussed impact on him. He no longer directly antagonised them, but he couldn’t cross any lines which made him human or part of the team for more than passing moments because the longer he was around Dean the more awkward it got and the more it would beg them to explore what, exactly, were Dean and Crowley now, and the obvious issues that would have/could have arisen if we discussed this like adults and we were allowed to just textually state in a frank and open way that Dean had been seduced by Crowley that one time. 

And I think in terms of where that puts us, it means that Drowley was very much a stifled relationship, officially over and no chance of getting it back, which in some ways is as large as or larger then Destiel in the weight it puts on the show when it comes to answering queerbaiting charges, because it could never be addressed openly while Crowley was alive, still ISN’T acknowledged, and Dean is as closeted as he was before, despite in his actual living human memory, knowing what it’s like to bang Crowley on the side for 3 months of his life with no direct personal growth (that is: now banging Cas, happily, or even banging other random guys, no angst, just for fun hook ups, equivalent to the textual times he picks up women) to show for this wild college experimentation metaphor phase of his life. 

At this point you really can only change the final judgement on it by making Dean canonically bi and then giving him the character growth, acknowledging the role Crowley had played in it, and allowing him to live what had just been subtext as a textual part of his character. In all other respects, I think the fact that Dean subtextually has hooked up with Crowley, and presumably other men probably other than the male implied triplets we saw on screen as well, but it’s relegated to this one particular part of his story and locked up in the subtext box, is going to look absolutely like one of the show’s worst sins of queerbaiting if we get to the end and that box is never opened again. And not to say it all looks rosy while we wait until the hypothetical what if of textualising Dean’s bisexuality and trying to live a positive life of hoping that will happen. As it stands, the handling in the text is depressing, and speaks of how far the show will currently allow any queer relationship for Dean to go. Meaning a worst case scenario is that his borderline subtextual marriage to Cas may never move beyond a similar point if this remains the high water mark of the show’s willingness to show Dean in a genuine, sexual relationship with a man. And that’s something you have to at least think about, in terms of how it looks now, and how it might look one day, no matter how positive you are about the endgame of the show, when it comes to being realistic about the show’s queerbaiting, or at least perceived queerbaiting if you don’t believe they are. That’s what other people are seeing, both with Drowley and Destiel. 

I mean, that deleted scene in 10x14 says it best: Cas and Crowley trapped together, frustrated and living in angry despair in their competition over Dean, where he is busy not picking either of them, while they vie for his attention and consider each other his boyfriend in all but name, and yet he will not commit to either of them in the way they desire. And this is the same frustrated wall that Cas is still stuck bouncing up against, even when his romantic rival is *utterly* vanquished and removed from the narrative, and hadn’t even really been competing for Dean for like 2 seasons before that.