#big fan of m/f couples that are so queer about it

[marzipanandminutiae]

i mean. claudia died because she died in the books. it’s an important part of the story. i like tragic stories. but i see your point.

No, yes, I am aware. I first read the book in high school, and many times since then.

My point was that “hey look the All Men All The Time Show has sapphists!” rings kind of hollow when they almost immediately die and it goes back to being. Well. All Men All The Time.

(Yes, that’s because the books are like that. I know. What frustrates me is the degree to which- WITHIN queer fandom, and within the subset “queer media that gets made at all” -shows almost exclusively about M/M couples tend to be prioritized above anything F/F.)

(There’s no easy answer for this- you can’t MAKE people fan out over something, obviously. I suspect it’s just a reflection of broader societal misogyny, honestly.)

(And all of this stemmed from a post where I said that I might actually be watching IWTV or GO or, retroactively, OFMD if they were about women. Because so little that gets a big fandom following ever is.)

[secretsofthewilde]

There's something particularly frustrating about how academic fandom studies tend to talk about fandom spaces as being a place for inclusiveness and queer representation when there's still a very prominent misogyny problem throughout them. Even when these studies address issues of racism within fandom shipping dynamics, they still tend to perpetuate the idea that fandom is the rare place where queer ships tend to be more popular than straight ones, without really addressing the fact that this tends to only true when it comes to cis, white, m/m ships. If you want some kind of numerical evidence of this, you just need to look at the statistics on ao3 to see that f/f ships are the least popular kind of pairing on that site. And when you think of the stereotypical big name fandoms, most of them are well known for their m/m ships, with the f/f ships often being dismissed or treated as a joke.

I'm not of the opinion, nor trying to make an argument in support of the idea, that this is due to the stereotype of fangirls fetishising queer men. Instead, I think it's largely due to misogyny* - shocker, I know. I really do think that the stereotypical fangirl gravitates towards slash pairings due to both internalised misogyny and the general prominence of male oriented media over female oriented media (which will therefore have more male characters that are fleshed out with more engaging writing as opposed to their female supporting cast).

However, it's one thing for the abundance of male driven stories to generate more fan works exploring said characters, and another entirely for those same fans to then ignore when we do have media that gives us well written and enjoyable female characters. I think it's in part due to our internalised misogyny that fangirls have a tendency to gravitate towards their familiar male orientated shows and then fixate on the same familiar character types, rather than exploring and celebrating the breadth of female-centric media we have finally been getting produced in recent years. And this inability to allow ourselves to enjoy female characters the same way we do with male ones is what leads to an abundance of slash pairings being celebrated in fandom spaces, while femslash ones struggle to get recognition**. The fact that there's a common joke in fandom spaces about popular pairings developing between two characters who never interacted (or for only a brief scene) is all very well and good fun, but this is almost always referring to a m/m pairing.

As fans we should really reflect on why we might celebrate a male character for doing morally grey things, but then hate a female character for exhibiting those exact same traits. It's fine to genuinely not enjoy the writing of a female character (especially when sexist writing is often to blame), but we should consider how much more willing we seem to be to forgive poor writing when it comes to male characters than we are with female characters. If we can make a million headcanons and claim to love a poorly written male character, who is now viewed as something so far removed from the canon of the media he appears in its practically a different character entirely, why do so many of us seem unwilling to do the same for female characters?

We should be doing the same with our female characters - we should be putting more female characters into our favourite dynamics and tropes. I want to see more enemies to lovers headcanons with femslash pairings; I want nbc hannibal levels of art and meta posts about toxic femslash couples; I want johnlock levels of delusion posts about a femslash couple the story writers are claiming they didn't write the subtext for. I would just really love to log into tumblr and see a femslash pairings tag is trending more than once in a blue moon.

*note: obviously misogny is not the only contributing factor, and this initial argument I'm raising doesn't address the issues surrounding racial, gender-queer identities, and other inequalities within fandom. Please do not think I'm ignoring or downplaying them.

**Theres also an argument to be made here about fangirls projecting themselves onto male characters in order to explore queer relationships, without having to challenge their own internalised misogyny/homophobia, but I'll come back to that later (and this in general) and expand on it some other time I think.

[alpaca-clouds]

Heteronormativity and (Fan)Fiction

Let me talk about something, that I am thinking a lot about right now. And that is heteronormativity and how fiction interacts with it - especially romantic fiction. Mostly, because I think there are a few parts that do not get spoken about quite as much as other things.

While reading some fanfictions - and some indie published smut - I did realize one thing: A lot of femdom straight romance actually feels a lot more queer than some fiction featuring gay romances. Doubly so when it comes to m/m fiction. Triply so m/m fiction written by women.

There has been a lot of talk within the queer community about heteronormativity and how it impacts us. Because, yes, a lot of us are drawn into comphet at some point, being pressured to get into a straight relationship to be "normal".

But it is of course something else, too.

See, while I was in the hospital earlier this year, I shared a room with an older gay man. An old, gay, white man, who was married to his partner. And obviously in his eyes, the queer rights movement had already reached everything that was to reach, because he could marry his partner - and was allowed to fuck around. And he did not quite see that the experience of him a cis, white man working in a business field that is fairly high regarded and somewhat well paid, was maybe not representative for everyone else.

And that is obviously the big thing here: White homosexual couples, who are at least middle class, and at least pass as having a monogamous relationship will be a lot easier accepted. This goes doubly so, when in their relationship they at least appear to pass for the "heterosexual roles". That is: A more male partner, and a more femine one. Be it the butch and femme lesbian couple, or the bear and twink gay couple.

This does reflect in fiction, too. And it leads to a lot of gay fiction kinda mirroring this.

Look, folks. I don't think there is a big issue in general with women writing m/m slash stuff. But I do think there is some issue when those m/m slash stories get written basically as a straight story with very clear straight roles. With one man being the clear "woman", who will more likely end up as the damsel in distress, who will more likely be the caring one, the one who might in a fantasy setting take up the healer role, and if there is sex will be the bottom. And mind you, will always be the bottom, because switches often do not exist in those stories.

Ironically this is a bit less common with femslash, which does feature a lot less butch/femme ships than one would assume. While yes, those do exist, there is way more femme/femme stuff around, though butch4butch exists as well.

Though this might also be based on the fact that femslash more often than not gets written by women as well - who might just project the kind of female character they identify with into their fiction.

Ironically - and here is where we loop back to the femdom - it even loops back into straight romantic fiction. Because yes, normally femdom romance fiction is very, very rare and often only get published indie.

It shows even stronger in fanfictions, though. Because in fanfiction we will see those rare examples were a male character might be a lot softer, feminine and submissive, will actually be once more pushed into the strong male role of the kinda toxic protector.

I noticed this a lot in terms of how Hector/Lenore is written in the fandom. Sure, there are some other femdom stories with them. But most of the time, Lenore just loops back to being the damsel, while Hector steps up to be the protector. Even though that is kinda the opposite of what we see in canon.

It also is the reason why I dislike seeing Astarion with female Tavs/Durges so much. Because Astarion is very much a twink and a bottom. He wants to be the one who gets protected by someone else and such things. But in a lot of m/f stuff I see with him, he just takes up once more just the classical male love interest role. Which I find boring.

And sure. Like, everyone can write what they can. I am not saying you can't. I will not read it, but it is totally fine for people to write it.

I just want to note that it is definitely rooted in patriarchal gender roles - and heteronormativity. And I find that really, really, really icky.

There is also the fact, again, that I am really not a big fan of the whome "Top and Bottom in male gay stories are permanently assigned roles, that do not only assign a sex position, but also a sort of pseudo-genderole". And yes, there are more than enough gays (especially those who self-identify as tops), who still want to cling to that idea. Because it is more in line with the rest of society. And because in their heads, too, there is this idea that the penetrated partner in sex should be more submissive.

It still gets to me that so much fiction and fanfiction keeps this kinda stuff up. I mean, queer stuff is the place to let go of patriarchal norms and genderroles and still, people... somehow don't?

The two ships where this irks me the most right now is Trevorcard (Trevor/Alucard) and Mizrox (Mizrak/Olrox) in Castlevania. Where most people just go: Trevor and Mizrak are the tops - and Alucards and Olrox are respectively the bottom.

And, let's face it. This originates that to a western eye Alucard and Olrox read more feminine due to their long hair.

Now, wihen it comes to Alucard I find it mostly annoying. But when it comes to Olrox? Well, I cannot help but think: "It's a bit racist, right?"

Because the fact is, that reading Olrox as "more feminine" because of his long hair is just pushing western ideas onto an indigenous character. But to him, of course, that long hair is a very masculine trait. So, yeah... I just cannot help but feel that folks really project a lot of shitty stuff onto a shipping.

In the end... I really just wished that fiction - original and fanfiction alike - would go more an explore genderoles and relationship dynamics outside of heteronormativity. Because this kinda stuff it shitty, and does a lot more harm than good.

[olderthannetfic]

Escapade Dance Party 2023 Writeup 1/3

Seeing as Escapade Online is coming up this weekend, I suppose I should finally write up some stuff about last in-person con that I never got around to.

I don't usually bother with a full con report, but I do like writing up the dance party. Instead of just playing music, I do a playlist of vids that we project on the wall. It's a small con, somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and thirty, generally, so I don't bother to ask permission. (This is also why we don't broadcast or redistribute the dance party in any way or do one for the online con.)

Escapade is a venerable con. In fact, it's the oldest still-running slash con. Back in the 90s, people would come here to find out what was going on in fandom that year, get pimped into the latest fandoms, find out about new zines. Fandom moves a lot faster now: between when we decide on panels and when the con happens, a whole movie fandom could have risen and fallen. Still, it's as easy as ever to feel out of touch, just for different reasons than in the 90s.

I want people to come away from the dance party feeling like they've heard of some of the Next Hot Things. It's also a great opportunity to cover some of attendees' own fandoms that may not end up in the main vidshow. As a vidder, I despise cons that try to make the main vidshow purely audience-focused and just about whatever ships are big. A con like that sees vidders as providers of entertainment, not fellow fans and attendees. But a con that honors vidders' actual current interests is a con with a vidshow full of weird fandoms of one and glaring gaps in what older fandoms are included. So having another curated show, like this dance party, is a nice way to bridge that gap.

The party is essentially like an enormous mixtape. It's a chance for me to make thematic links between vids and to inflict music I actually want to dance to onto a captive audience. Each discrete vidding community tends to have extremely boring taste in music. Sorry, not sorry. And for dance music, this is even worse. I often can't find what I'm looking for, but I can try.

Every year, I begin by looking at attendees' profiles on the Escapade site, filtering the m/m tag on AO3 for what's been active in the past year, and browsing around until I come up with a list of fandoms of interest. Fandoms that people suggested Escapade panels for also go on the list. These may be the big ones, but there are usually a lot of idiosyncratic options since it's a small con. It doesn't matter if Steve/Bucky is big if nobody at this con is going to care.

I set up my spreadsheet for my epic vid search: This involves not only sheets for my fandom list but vocabulary lists for searching: Слэш, 燃, etc.

After that, I go through the past year of the AO3 'fanvids' tag and maybe the 'amv' one, looking for interesting vids. They need to be at least somewhat danceable and 2-5 minutes without a ton of show audio. That's easier to find on AO3 than Youtube at large, but it still knocks out most vids I open everything, put the playhead to the middle of the vid, and test the sound. If I hear something viable, I go back and watch the vid. But if too many people I know have kudosed, I take it off the list since people have seen it already. For this step, I don't care about fandom, just about the vid being interesting and preferably slashy. (Yes, this is how I fell into Beyond Evil.)

After that, I start looking on Youtube and Bilibili, fandom by fandom, ship by ship. Some fandoms I never do find. They're just too unpopular with vidders. Some I find, but only a ship I have banned. I have a lifetime ban on Klance, for example. Anything too redolent of antis goes on the banned list. Anything with surprise tentacles is a shoo-in.

I also have some other rules for myself that I've developed over the years. I want at least a couple of vids with women, preferably f/f. Escapade is more m/m-focused, but a lot of attendees are queer and/or ship f/f as well. The show must have at least a vid or two that focuses on somebody other than white or East Asian characters. I mostly avoid vidders who are well known to people who attend the US slash/Media Fandom/vidding type cons unless I really cannot fill a particular fandom need elsewhere. I especially try to avoid vids that have already shown at other cons recently, though depending on how they're labeled, I may screw that one up. I've been more and more strict about this over time. I find a lot of vidding communities pretty incestuous, so this is a chance to shake things up.

A big one that surprises some people is that I try to avoid most multifandom vids and many ensemble vids. This one is negotiable depending on the vid, but I find that there's a distasteful pattern where a juggernaut will be deemed worthy of taking up a whole slot for itself with just a focus on the one ship while other things are relegated to an Awesome Ladies compilation. Those vids are fantastic in isolation, but if you play a lot of them together in a vidshow, let alone a vidshow that's a dark, noisy dance party, they all blend together into mush. A great ship vid or single character study, on the other hand, still manages to grab people. If you aren't willing to say "This ship gets the Star Wars/MCU/etc. slot, not that ship", what are you actually saying?

I try to find a fresh choice for any fandom that has been directly requested (so pretty much just Sentinel) and any where I know some attendees are mostly or only in that one fandom (The Professionals).

Of course, I can only play what people have already made, and this is a dance party, so sometimes, there just aren't any choices. I do shoehorn in a couple of not-very danceable vids most years, but they can only go right before or after the intermission or right at the end, so the number has to be limited.

One thing I don't always care about is the strictest standards of "quality" in a snobby vidder sense. Not only do different communities have different standards for what counts, but I'm more interested in novelty or great music. I won't play anything I think is terrible, but I'll take a B+ vid by a rando to an A+ song over an A+ vid that everyone's already seen.

For 2023's con, I decided the party should have a theme of vampires since I had guessed—incorrectly— that the new Interview with the Vampire show would be the latest hot thing everyone was talking about. In retrospect, I should have picked mafia for Kinnporsche and Gonchraov. At least vampires gave me good decorating ideas for cheesy fake candles and black spiderweb-draped tables.

It also sent me looking for goth club music, which I did find to some extent, but between who didn't attend this year and how awesome the cocktail party outside was, we got much less action on the dance floor than usual. (Excuse you! That music is totally danceable! "Drunken tai chi" as we used to say!)

At least my themed cocktail list was a hit. As an annoying cocktail nerd, it infuriates me when people just take a famous drink and slap a fannish name on it, so I insist on making a fannish cocktail list I find respectable.

Playlist in a moment.

[thrilling-oneway]

You are so right with m/f stuff! I’m not familiar with a lot of VBS shipping discourse, but it’s annoying to see how people can’t write an analysis on how important Tsukasa is to Rui without others dog piling them and saying they’re delusional and ignoring canon for their yaoi “with no content”. (At least on twitter, tumblr is much better with this) And as someone whose also bisexual, it’s so annoying seeing people use bisexuality as a gotcha to ship m/f and act as if its progressive and that it gives them the okay to hate on f/f and m/m pairings.

YES YES EXACTLY. God I hate when people keep saying that ruikasa has no content and their dynamic is underdeveloped whenever anyone talks about them. Like as biased as I am because I like the ship, they do have a very developed dynamic regardless of if you like the ship or not. Literally there's three events about it (potato and pandemonium + it was a pretty big background element in curtain call), one of which is the third event in the game. like if you don't like ritk that's perfectly fine, but when people are dogpilling ritk shippers for talking about their dynamic/pandemonium chapter 8/wtv and saying they're reaching, especially if the person doing this is an account dedicated to another rui ship/are a rui fan, it's a bad look because you're literally ignoring a very significant part of his arc. Ignoring massively important aspects of a character you claim to like just because of a ship is low. This fandom is way too set on everything being about shipping like bruh no one is telling you that you had to view pandemonium as romantic you can view it as platonic perfectly fine and not need to erase parts of rui's character to justify your rui/female character ship.

it's an especially weird situation with VBS as well. as much as I hold the earlier EN fandom to a higher standard there was a lot of discourse around VBS and the fact that they're implied gay. like it used to be a situation where if you admitted you shipped m/f vbs you would get jumped. as a comeback people would accuse biphobia but i never saw huge amounts of people being actually biphobic. saying "an and kohane are quite heavily implied to be lesbians (and it makes some people uncomfortable to see them shipped with men)" is a true statement but people didn't need to attack others over it. not liking a bi headcanon isn't biphobic unless you're actually being biphobic about it yknow? luckily it calmed down after a while but now you get jumped for not shipping m/f which leads us straight back to the statement about an and kohane. gbr the situation with vbs shipping nowadays is much worse than the situation when i first joined, obviously partially bc of the massive increase in fandom size but mainly because people are spewing actual homophobic rhetoric over akty ankh (someone literally tried to claim heterophobia was real bc of people not liking m/f vbs a couple months ago. actually this has happened multiple times).

AND YES GOD THIS FANDOM'S APPROACH TO BI HEADCANONS IS SO FUCKING ANNOYING. Like people only use it as a way to make m/f ships more queer and try to 1 up people with it because oh yes male/female couple are not the norm at all and they're so cool and different and if you add a bi/pan hc on top of that it makes you more progressive (/s). HCing a character as bi does not give you cool points and the fact that so many people only do it for m/f ships pisses me off to no end because people treat it like Straight 2 when bi people can be in m/m and f/f relationships. People can hc whatever they want ofc but it's so obvious sometimes that people are only using bi hcs as a way to quickly round off their hcs for every character so they can multiship or justify their m/f ships as queer and at that point I'd rather they just hc'd them as straight because I don't like seeing my identity used solely for the purpose of making a ship more queer because someone doesn't want their m/f to be a hetship.

[leikeliscomet]

Let's Talk About Thasmin

Chapter 1 - Not Something I Usually Do

Mentions of sexual assault in this chapter

It’s known and widely accepted by most queer fans that the Doctor is an undeniably queer character - but how they’re queer comes with Ts and Cs. Thirteen’s queerness or alleged lack thereof, has been a fairly big talking point in the Thasmin discourse. Some joke about her being the only straight one in the lineup. Others consider her the only actual asexual doctor, as in not having any real sexuality at all. Some even claim Thirteen is the most oblivious about sex completely due to her childish personality. With Fifteen’s explicit attraction to men in the newest episodes, some even consider this as a one-up of Thirteen’s queerness, claiming Fifteen’s the first incarnation to have a same-sex romance instead. Chibnall’s calmer approach to the Doctor’s sexuality compared to the ‘Moffatisms’ of previous doctors comes into play here. Many interesting words are used to describe this; sexless, prudish, frigid and of course, asexual (used incorrectly that is). Critiques made about Thirteen’s alleged prudishness are tied to her womanhood, in the sense that Thirteen’s lack of sexual interest was a mistake or part of Chibnall/The BBC’s misogynistic agenda to silence a woman’s sexuality. There is a slight truth in this as a now woman-Doctor going around lipsing men throughout the stars wouldn’t have been supported like her male predecessors. Women are often shamed and degraded for showing any form of explicit sexuality whether it’s through revealing clothing or having many sexual relationships. A common patriarchal myth is that women are less interested in sex than men due to biology. Men can’t help having the hunger but women, ladies, don’t do that. Thirteen being as flirtatious as Ten would've been dragged for sure. This bleeds into the desexualisation of lesbian and bisexual women too. It’s not uncommon for most adult shows to show heterosexuality in the most blatant of ways but conveniently skip out the desires of their sapphic characters. Now Doctor Who’s a 12 at the highest, but this still plays a key role in talking Thasmin. To have a long list of m/f couples, with bold declarations of love and kiss scenes to go around then show the first f/f doctor couple leaving unlipsed seems like a massive red flag. In a long list of doctor couples, why is Thasmin now the no-go? Especially as the first canon m/m doctor couple, FifteenRogue got their smooch? If previous doctors can be flirty then why can’t Thirteen? Most discussions about Thirteen’s sexuality involve the concept of a removal or repression of her identity and I understand the concerns but I wanna raise an alternative interpretation; what if Thirteen isn’t repressing her sexual attraction, she just has little to none of it?

Compulsory sexuality is the idea that sex is intrinsic to the human experience. Everyone wants to, has and will have sex. If you say you don’t you’re a liar. To lack sexual relationships and sexual attraction is unhuman, abnormal, poor physical health, poor mental health and immature. I want to specify compulsory sexuality here instead of compulsory heterosexuality or acephobia because apart from how I’ll get into comphet in Chapter 2, compulsory sexuality specifically describes the pressure of sexual participation, the erasure of consent and the removal of bodily autonomy. Plus compulsory sexuality is a force that harms everyone, regardless of sexuality and/or gender identity and we would all benefit from learning about it and fighting it. Thirteen’s not human and neither is any incarnation of this Time Lord but they all look like one, so this expectation is constantly made of them regardless (which could be a whole other essay in itself). A large chunk of the queerbaiting allegations aimed at Thirteen specifically are due to her little sexual attraction towards Yaz, which not only is seen as proof that she only doesn't share her feelings but that this means Thirteen isn’t even queer. In Eve of the Daleks, it’s confirmed Dan knows Thirteen likes Yaz but she denies it. In Legend of the Sea Devils, Thirteen confirms she likes Yaz but can’t promise a long-term relationship with her because of her unstable time-travelling life. How Thirteen’s feelings were handled is up for debate in terms of writing quality but regardless, it is confirmed she shares Yaz’s romantic feelings in return. So why doesn’t the Doctor Who fandom believe her? Some fans have been bold in claiming Thirteen is sexless and frigid but is this even true? Well no actually. She makes a few sex jokes in the era such as the ‘You’re not filling me!’ comment to the Morax in The Witchfinders. There’s Hyph3n with a 3 assuming what she pulled out of Ryan was recreational in Orphan 55. That episode also starts with Thirteen apologising for not knowing the octopus-style aliens were in their mating season. She even flirts with Yaz directly in LOTSD, even if it’s late in her era. She’s aware but doesn’t care. The ‘unofficially asexual’ approach to Thirteen isn’t exclusive to her either. Nine’s simple ‘No’ to Jackie and Twelve’s confusion as to why Dr Chang would wanna see nudity in a swimming pool show this isn’t the first time the Doctor’s been disinterested in sex and sexual things. Plus throughout Classic Who, many OG Doctors seemed uninterested or unaware of the advances made towards them. They were surrounded by beautiful women probably! So why is Thirteen uniquely weird for doing this? Why are the men in the lineup asexual but this woman is frigid?

Not only is Thirteen fake queer but she’s also fake woman. In a society of desexualisation that shuns women for expressing sexuality, a woman as the lead with no obvious sexual desire seems like a threat or reinforcement of that standard to non-asexual women. If patriarchy wants women to be non-sexual, then the non-sexual woman looks like she’s a product of that, despite the various reasons why she might be that way through choice, nature or both. And also despite the fact women are expected to be sexual in specific contexts like sexual reproduction and the sexual pleasure of cis heterosexual men. The patriarchy doesn’t reward non-sexual women regardless. Even if Thirteen was fully sexless with no sex jokes in sight that would be a morally neutral thing, but to fandom, it’s inherently bad. A frigid woman in a society that believes in the sexual entitlement to women’s bodies is inherently bad. The fandom can only imagine the Doctor’s little to no sexual attraction because they are repressed, sanitised or restricted but never asexual. The days of ‘no hanky panky in the TARDIS’ have been left behind, but it’s still blamed for the frigidity of this modern doctor. The only way Thirteen could have little to no sexual attraction is due to a barrier instead of her having a fully autonomous asexuality. This isn’t just a Doctor Who fan issue. It’s a human issue, to be honest.

[SA mentioned in this paragraph] Compulsory sexuality additionally blurs the lines of consent. In this rhetoric, any and all sexual interaction is seen as better than having none at all because the quota of human sexuality has been met. Thirteen and the Chibnall era as a whole have been joked about for failing to live up to the hornier days of RTD1 and the Moffat era. With FifteenRogue on the scene, there’s been praise for ‘ending the drought’ of the lacking kiss scenes and touching of Chibnall Who. A return to the ‘better’, ‘healthier and more ‘progressive’ sexuality in a way. But it needs to be said that these celebrations are in vain. Many kisses and sexual moments involving men as the Doctor weren’t consensual. They were sexual assault and fall under the banner of sexual violence. Missy forcibly kissing Twelve, Eleven forcibly kissing Jenny (a whole lesbian mind you), Cassandra possessing and feeling up Rose then forcibly kissing Ten and Amy’s forced kissing and rubbing on Eleven are all examples of sexual violence in the show. And the list is way longer than it ever should’ve been. Abolishing the need for sexual violence in the show will do more for women’s representation and sexual lib than just having a woman doing it instead. Trust me. Even if we look at the consensual kiss scenes of these eras, many of them weren’t inherently romantic either. Rose and Nine’s kiss was to save her life, Ten and Martha’s was a ‘genetic transfer’ and Twelve and Missy’s actual consensual kiss was affection between friends for example. After many users were exposed for sexual and domestic abuse in the fandom and the exposing of Noel Clarke and John Barrowman, glorifying sexual violence also makes the fandom unsafer victims and survivors than it already is. You’d think in light of this, the link between compulsory sexuality, consent and asexuality would be made and yet… crickets. Well, I’m volunteering to make that link. Even apart from all this I still have to ask why and ask queer fans to start asking why. Thirteen’s main criticisms are that she has inconsistent morals, lack of authority and not being challenged enough by the main narrative. Making Thirteen hornier seems irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because increasing her sex drive wouldn’t fix these fundamental issues of her character or of Chibnall Who as a whole. So why does it matter that bad?

Under compulsory sexuality, Thirteen does lack value in fans’ eyes because she ‘fails’ to live up to her sexual purpose as a woman, a lesbian/sapphic, a lover and a human. If she had sexual attraction she would ‘really’ be those things. But she didn’t, so to fandom, she’s not. Even if we did entertain the compulsory sexuality of these arguments, that Thirteen is just a lesbian with internalised homophobia, or afraid of dating Yaz because of hidden sexual trauma, or Thirteen’s not ace but just has some ‘abnormality’ that stops her from having ‘normal’ sexuality and ‘normal’ romance, what is the fandom’s conclusion of this? It’s not to push for a storyline that explores the pain of internalised lesbophobia. It’s not to discuss the ways the Doctor’s trauma shapes the character and their relationships. It’s not to give her any grace or empathy for dealing with an experience many queer people struggle with. It’s to ridicule and blame her for the trauma she’s accused of having. It’s to exclude her from queerness completely.

Fans will shun Thirteen for her lack of sexual interest in Yaz, joking about the missed chance of a good ol’ lesbian sex scene, but stick a ‘but I’m aware aces exist!’ at the end for good measure. There’s a weird cognitive dissonance in the Doctor Who fandom regarding asexuality. It’s generally accepted amongst fans in theory but not in practice. It’s generally accepted asexuality is queer, but the Doctor being ace isn’t enough to qualify them as queer. They’re only queer now as the Fifteenth Doctor, expressing sexual attraction (?) towards another man and in a relationship, but not any previous incarnations before. It’s understood having little to no sexual and/or romantic attraction and disinterest in romance and sex are big parts of many asexuals’ and aromantics’ lives but when these traits are present in Thirteen, she’s flagged as having internalised homophobia, being sanitised or non-queer instead of asexual or even aromantic. This is a common experience for many asexuals, specifically asexual lesbians, bi asexuals and pan asexuals. A feeling of attraction to women that’s incomplete and being viewed as incomplete. Similarly, this happens to aromantic sapphics. How can you love a woman but not want to have sex with her? How can you have sex with a woman but not love her? It’s common for many asexual sapphics to feel like their romantic attraction and asexuality are opposites or that only one identity can exist at a time. Lesbian, bi and pan asexuality are usually reduced to just being a sapphic with a low sex drive, a person that can date but can’t fuck or the instant classic, a cishet that just wants to be special. Because of this, it’s common for the asexual sapphic to feel isolated in both sapphic and asexual communities. I argue the Thasmin discourse has reinforced this isolation because Thirteen is flagged as asexual or lesbian/sapphic, but never both and that many non-asexual critics, both non-sapphic and sapphic, view Thirteen’s asexuality as the barrier preventing her from reaching her true queer potential. There are also aspec critics that treat her lesbianism/sapphism as the barrier from reaching her true aspec potential. Thirteen can be flagged as ace, but it’s because she’s seen as sanitised. Thirteen can be flagged as lesbian/sapphic, but it’s because she’s doing it ‘wrong’. When non-asexual sapphic fans want to push back on desexualised sapphic representation whilst aspec fans want a doctor that decenters romance and sex, the idea of a doctor that does both seems impossible for an identity that people already think is impossible. There is no ‘wrong side’ in this binary, so where can an asexual sapphic Thirteenth Doctor then feel right?

In reverse, Thirteen’s sexual attraction is flagged, but only in the context of puritanism and lesbophobia. Conservatives discuss and ‘support’ an asexual doctor but not ace as in ace spec, ‘asexual’ as in actual sanitisation. They want the doctor to be sex and romance free not as a way to fight compulsory sexuality and not to centre the aromantic asexual experience, but to restrict desire, especially queer desire. They don’t want the Doctor to be without sexual and romantic attraction, they want them to have those things so they can be restrained for a heterosexual moral ‘good’. Suddenly, Thirteen beats the frigid allegations because she’s now a predatory lesbian and inappropriate for her audience. This is where the other side of the coin shows its face; the sexualisation of lesbian and bisexual women. Romantic and sexual attraction between women is seen as immoral and perversion in Christian puritan contexts. Conservatives believe Thirteen’s lesbianism corrupts the ‘innocence’ of Doctor Who and sexualises it, calling it an adult issue not ‘right’ for children. Without any sexual behaviour, she’s seen as sexually predatory solely due to her identity. The reactions to Thirteen’s sexuality, or lack thereof, match the contradictions many asexuals, especially sapphic asexuals, deal with in real life. To right-wing fans, Thirteen’s romantic attraction to Yaz is inherently sexual, and that makes it perverted and a disgrace to their preferred pure ‘asexual’ male doctor. To non-asexual pro-queer leftist sides of fandom, her attraction doesn’t even exist and she is a sanitised, straight cosplayer, failing to copy the queer experience she doesn’t deserve to be a part of. The Thirteenth Doctor is shunned for her lack of sexual attraction whilst being denied the right to have any attraction in the first place.

Legend of the Sea Devils, in my opinion, is the closest the Chibnall era ever got to exploring this paradox. It should also be noted a queer woman, Ella Road, wrote this episode, which to me explains a little why I think this episode’s Thasmin moments worked. In the thassie favourite beach scene, Thirteen’s clearly referring to the short-lived nature of Time Lord-Human relationships, how she’ll eventually lose Yaz to something inevitable or outlive her. Because of this, the relationship between the two can’t work out, or at least not in the way they both want.  But watching this episode, I saw this slightly differently. I saw that subtext but also the asexual lesbian subtext. Her confession to Yaz is awkward. She doesn’t have Bill or Vastra’s charm or pull a big romantic gesture flowers and all. She just… gets it out. She doesn’t describe River Song as a Sappho-type lover or a leng babe but as a big inspiration in her life. She doesn’t call Yaz hot or beautiful but one of the greatest people she’s ever known, not in the sense she’s lesser, but that she’s more. Her attraction to women doesn’t fit traditional romantic and sexual tropes. Thirteen knows she can’t give Yaz the conventional sapphic relationship she wants because she knows it won’t last. Thirteen and Yaz can’t help either of their circumstances but Thirteen blames herself regardless. In terms of a sapphic relationship, she thinks she’s the problem. A feeling many asexual lesbians and sapphics sadly know too well.

That being said, we can’t know for sure what Chibnall’s approach to Thirteen’s asexuality was or if he even had a plan. RTD went for a sometimes-flirty sometimes-indifferent Nine, a heartthrob Ten and currently has a very flirtatious Fifteen, so it’s safe to assume writing the doctor as ace wasn’t on his mind (however I still support any ace headcanons of these incarnations as sex-favorability doesn’t automatically rule asexuality out). Moffat’s multiple anti-asexual takes confirm that an ace doctor wasn’t in this vision and was in fact against it, despite the glaring irony in how many ace fans would resonate with his characters regardless, how Matt Smith would see Eleven as ace anyway and how his work would end up working as a commentary on compulsory sexuality itself. Chibnall however had written a very ace-coded doctor but didn’t actively use the words ‘ace’ or ‘asexual’ to describe her. So I’m conflicted. Whilst yes, Thirteen’s lack of interest can easily be interpreted as an ace character and I see this myself and do accept it, asexuality isn’t a ‘lack’ or ‘absence’ of anything. To paraphrase the Asexual Manifesto (1972), asexuality is its own self-contained sexuality. Looking at other media with asexual leads, especially ace women as leads such as Koisenu Futari or The Imperfects, asexuality isn’t just hinted at or suggested. It’s explicitly stated. To many non-asexual queer fans, the idea of an explicitly asexual queer character might seem like a contradiction because how can you explicitly be asexual? But it’s not. Having a character explicitly state their little no to sexual attraction is a clear declaration of their asexuality and from the shows I’ve stated before, alongside other media such as Selah and The Spades, Bojack Horseman and even Heartstopper, this has done wonders for asexual representation. Chibnall having Thirteen assert this boldly could've meant listing his era alongside these shows, but I can’t. Thirteen’s asexuality ends up becoming another victim of Chibnall’s subtle approach to representation, which I’ve written about before. You can’t have a first marginalised person fulfilling a major role in the show, then treat it like another day at the office. It needs to be addressed, protected and celebrated. To give him credit for this just wouldn’t feel right. 

What I would’ve liked to see is an approach similar to how other shows were actually brave enough to tackle gay asexual characters. As stated before, The Imperfects has an asexual lesbian lead, Abbi Singh and her asexuality is addressed from the jump. Abbi’s insecurities in herself, her attractions and the sexual POVs people have of her make the show a great watch and Abbi an interesting character. There’s also Heartbreak High and their representation of Darren Rivers and Ca$h Piggott. How Ca$h’s asexuality affects his relationship with Darren is the backbone of their storylines. The joys, the heartbreaks and the solutions are all explored between these two. I honestly feel like the emotion and tragedy of Da$h is something Thasmin would've heavily benefited from and if Thasmin had it I’d probably join the thassies tomorrow! Take the groundwork and do something with it. Have Yaz wonder if Thirteen’s lack of sexual attraction means she won’t like her back. Have Thirteen doubt herself, her queerness, her humanity and her capacity for love because of her little to no sexual attraction. Make the doubts and concerns she has about herself and what the fandom and essentially society has of her as an ace sapphic part of that plot. Just do something! Asexual-sapphic-Thirteen had so much potential and I’m honestly sad we’ll never her develop in show. That being said, I’ll always support this interpretation of her so at the very least, she’ll always be somewhere here.

<-Intro Chapter 2 ->

[absolutebl]

Ok a non singing BL ask, it’s about the latest episode of Not Me so spoilers if you haven’t seen it. ********************** so GramBlack seems officially sank and it’s caused discussion about queer erasure. I wanted to get your thoughts/perspective on it. I did think the narrative was indicting Gram and Black had a close relationship and then after Black woke up it seemed like the plot was working overtime to keep them separate. And now Gram was in love with Eugene the whole time. Some people are saying Gram could still be queer even if he’s in a m/f relationship which I of course know is true but I think it’s moving the goal post wrt queer erasure. The narrative gave us a lot of scenes supporting GramBlack imo, because as far as I recall no one has called Eugene “Gene” so the GB dolls referring to her and not Gram seems like a big misdirection or just clumsy execution. Yes, there are plenty of other queer ships and plots in Not Me but it does seem that this one thread, GramBlack, was changed midway or poorly set up. Your thoughts?

You're really sucking me into this? Are you sure you want me in this space?

The GramBlack Debacle

Were we teased by the narrative into thinking it might happen? Sure

Is it queer erasure? Nope*

Bad story writing? Maybe

An inability to understand the fandom? Probubly

On the other hand, did they think maybe fans would be mad if Gun was depicted with a different partner? Likely

Some reasons not to be mad:

1. GMMTV rarely (if ever) gives us 3 BL couples in one series. So there is no real president from them to do this.

2. They are vested in OffGun as their last standing OG pair. (TayNew seem basically retired at this point.)

3. Good representations of non-sexualized masculine queer friendships on screen, especially when one or both are queer? VERY VERY IMPORTANT. As important as good representations of male/female straight friendships. And as rare, if not rarer.

It's pretty darn vital that being gay not be conflated with being attracted to or pursued by every other dude in the show. It's real important to portray humans being friends with the gender (or genders) that they are attracted to. Otherwise this can tie into predatory gay (or predatory queer) or bisexual = slut stereotypes.

It could be argued that GramBlack NOT being Gram Black is actually more important to queerness. So let's put the queer erasure bullpucky to bed shall we? I'm sorry if someones out there are but-hurt (pun intended) that their ship didn't sail but no one was attacking anyone's identity with this. At worse it was careless storytelling.

This is why AO3 exists. Seek ye some fanfic.

Pat pat pat.

Also, even if Gram and Black are both straight, two men unafraid of physical contact with each other in this age where toxic masculinity probubly in part is the fault of culture (and international) touch shaming and touch starvation? SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT. (You want more of this, it's in my skinship post.)

Gram’s queerness:

Okay so here’s what the narrative told us: he has an ex who is third gender. In our language (in most non-Thai translations) she would be a she/her and as a trans woman if Gram dated her in modern queer parlance then he was dating a woman. That makes him straight by outside observation.

Gram then has a crush on a cis girl.

What’s actually been decided for his character with this dating history is technically straightness. However, he says he signs the petition and something about the way he talks with his ex implies that he enjoyed dating her in part for her identity which means he probably does identify as queer. Also, boy can do and call himself what he likes regardless of his dating history.

Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to sleep with or date boys, tho. Perhaps he's into the feminine in general.

Final thoughts on GramBlack?

Clearly the fandom wanted it a lot more than the director or GMMTV did. That's pretty much all we can say.

However, what this probubly did was tell GMMTV something interesting, if they were paying attention to it (and they usually are):

Viewers are willing to see Gun with other pairings. And THAT could get interesting in the future.

Personally I've always wanted him to do a BL with Tay that pulls on their existing personalities: puppy/puppy, sunshine/sunshine is a pairing we never get in BL.

(Incidentally, Gun has been partnered with others pre GMMTV. You'll need to track down: The Blue Hour, Love Love You, and there's another one set in a cafe I can't remember the name of pre 2016.)

Oy, I don't think I'm ready for the comments on this one. @parralex0889 what have you wrought?

* Note I backtrack on the erasure thing in the comments when I learned that GramBlack WERE A COUPLE IN THE ORIGINAL Y-NOVEL!!! 

But it’s interesting to note that as someone who knew nothing about the source material, my original stance was just... messed up story and GMMTV politics. 

[bougiebutchbitch]

I love kakagai, I think it's the ship that makes sense the most but what I dislike is how kakagai shippers saying it's canon, kakaobi shippers saying it's canon, kakairu shippers saying it's canon, hell even kakasaku and kakanaru shippers are claiming it's canon too just because Kakashi cared about them ಠ益ಠ Does canon mean that I like it so everyone else has to like it too now? It's infuriating to me that everyone likes to sexualize every beautiful relationship in Naruto then claim it's canon

okayyyyy I think you might need to take a step back, nonnie.

Is this really such a big issue? Are people attacking you personally, or are they just stating their personal interpretations of canon, and because they don't align with your own, you're getting upset and coming into people's inboxes to try and make it an argument?

Basic rule of Tumblr: if people say what you don't like... block them. Don't react. Don't come into people's inboxes, don't post hate in the tags where fans will see it.

By all means, share your negative opinions! Your tumblr blog is your own. But you need to take measures to ensure the fans won't see it, otherwise you're not venting. You're trying to start a fight.

And come off anon so I can block you properly lmao

Look, people have different interpretations of 'canon'. Just because, for all we know, Kishimoto intended every single character except the creepy pedo-coded villain to be read as cishet, it doesn't mean there isn't canon subtext, however unintentional, that people can pick up on and adore.

Sure, the canon content can be read completely as platonic. But honestly, I'm a little weirded out at how you seem to think that seeing hints of a romantic relationship in canon between men in a children's show is ‘sexualisation’.

Where might that train of thought be coming from??? HMMMM I WONDER. :stares at the Don’t Say Gay bill, and every other argument that queer content is somehow inherently sexual:

Obviously, I'm not a fan of teacher/student ships. At the end of the day, I'm a firm believer in 'everyone can write what they want so long as they tag it properly so I can avoid it'. But seeing an adult and a child who are very close, and perceiving them as 'romantically involved', is a WHOLE lot different from seeing two adult male characters and thinking 'oh I can see a canon subtextual romantic relationship here'.

I don't really think they should be compared like this. I'm sure this wasn't your intention, but it kinda makes it sound like you're putting them on a moral playing field, which... no. :/

Of course, I may be being uncharitable. I admit that this whole issue might just be a muddle of terms. I and a lot of people use 'canon' to mean 'content in the source material'. This is different from 'Word of God', which means 'word of the author'. The two do not always align. However, if you see 'canon' as meaning 'both the source material and Word of God in combination', I can see that you might be upset that people are going against Kishimoto's personal views. I still don't think this is an excuse for actually bothering shippers about this, but I can understand it.

But the point remains: I haven't seen anyone say 'this is a canon ship and therefore you have to ship it'. Why would they? Everyone knows that shipping doesn't 'have' to follow canon anyway. A canon ship is of no greater or lesser worth than a non-canon one.

If people are implying otherwise, they're asses - but in that case, why come for the entire kakagai fandom, rather than just blocking those Schrodinger's Assholes who I've never had the misfortune to meet?

I just. I cannot see how people interpreting a romantic element in a canonically close relationship that is only assumed to be platonic because the couple is m/m rather than m/f is hurting you, anon. And it definitely doesn’t justify harrassment, which is what my original post was about.

[ebp-brain]

the wolfstar fandom and the problem of gender policing

To begin with: some gay men are femme, and that’s okay. Some are not, and that’s also okay. When someone is telling you that only a certain gender presentation is allowed from a fictional character, that’s not activism or advocacy; that’s gender policing. Even if you’re a woman or nonbinary person writing about cis gay men, it’s still gender policing—you are allowed to explore the full range of gender and sexuality in your own life and art. It’s easy to be taken in by statements on Tumblr about How To Write Good Queer Representation, because we want to be good people, and we understand that the language we use and the stories we tell are important. But our desire to be good people can be manipulated until we don’t recognize that we are participating in harmful behavior, or that we are being impacted by bullying.

If you’re in the Wolfstar fandom and you’re feeling alienated, lonely, confused, hurt, or angry because of things you’ve been hearing about what Sirius’ gender presentation “should” look like: you are not alone. There has been a longstanding problem in this fandom (for at least two years as of early 2021) with some vocal, active, popular fan writers telling other people how they should depict Sirius’ and Remus’—especially Sirius’—relationship to gender and sexuality. Generally, they suggest that depicting gay men as femme or feminine is homophobic. In particular, they say that writing/drawing Sirius as femme, feminine, flamboyant, short, “whiny,” or a sub or bottom is Bad. The logic is that because there’s a stereotype about gay men being feminine, all depictions of feminine gay men are homophobic. Because these voices are so loud and have such intense, aggressive support, it is easy to feel that you are Bad if you disagree with them, or to think that you’re alone in your disagreement. You’re not.

It’s important to recognize that this group of people is engaging in bullying. Not “wank,” not “discourse,” not “drama”—bullying. When you see them targeting other people’s work, it may seem like a petty personal dispute, or on the other hand like a legitimate conversation about gender and sexuality; it is neither. These folks are friendly, welcoming, and supportive right up until the moment someone disagrees with them—and then they attack that person and demand an apology. Because they use the language of social justice, and because they’re only antagonistic to people who question them openly, it’s easy to think they’re courageously protecting vulnerable people and standing up for what’s Right. But they aren’t. They are using their own identities and feelings to dictate how everyone else should behave while disregarding other people’s identities and feelings.

They claim that Sirius shouldn’t be written as “stereotypically gay” (i.e. feminine) because it hurts gay men; they claim that they are fighting homophobia. What they are really doing is gender policing. Awhile back, they started off by saying “Sirius shouldn’t always be feminine or always bottom in all fic.” Sure, true enough. But then it became “Sirius should never be feminine and never bottom.” And then it became “Sirius should never be short and whiny” (because those are apparently feminine traits). And now it seems to be “no one should ever depict cis gay men as feminine.” Allegedly because that’s “stereotyping,” but in practice this idea shames femme gay men, nonbinary femme folks, and any trans men who can’t or don’t want to present as masculine. It is gender policing disguised with social justice language.

Here are some red flags to look out for in the Wolfstar fandom—phrases that signal that you might be reading something that’s participating in gender policing, even if it doesn’t seem like it on the surface. They include:

“short, whiny Sirius”;

“let Sirius top”

“stereotypical gay man” (in the context of men being written as femme, not in the context of like…shitty mass media representation from the 90s)

“let men be men”

“women writing m/m” used in a derogatory way

and a couple that seem totally innocuous, even good, but mean something different in this context, like:

“being gay shouldn’t be your whole personality”

“topping or bottoming shouldn’t be your whole personality”

I’ve heard quite a few people talk about their feelings of isolation, confusion, self-doubt, frustration, and shame as a result of the bullying that’s been happening over the past few years in this fandom. Lots of people have left Wolfstar or Tumblr because of it. The good news is that a lot of Wolfstar folks are still out there: much of the fandom is flourishing on Discord, on Ao3, and in private messages. You can find your people! They’re the ones who actually listen respectfully to what you say, don’t shame you for mistakes or disagreements, and practice kindness and care.

And please look out for yourself. Try to recognize when your feelings of shame or guilt are a result of coming into contact with bullying and manipulation. Try not to accidentally spread transphobic and effeminophobic (anti-feminine) ideas and language; really think through what a post is saying before liking or reblogging it. And if you’re feeling hurt by what’s been said about gender expression within this fandom, know that you have lots of support and solidarity. We’re still around—we’re still around, and we love all your gender-related headcanons: we love a burly bearded biker Sirius; we love a five-feet-in-socks Sirius with a tendency towards dramatic temper tantrums; we love Sirius in lipstick and Sirius in crop tops and Sirius in ripped jeans. We love power bottom Sirius and ace Sirius and dom Sirius in high heels and Sirius who doesn’t care about how he has sex as long as it’s with Remus. We love Sirius who thinks being a trans man is the most important part of who he is and Sirius who thinks being a trans man is simply a basic fact of life. We love your fics and art and posts that explore your own weird complicated messy queer relationship to gender and sexuality. Of course we do. <3

(Also: I’ve got Big Anxiety and may or may not respond to comments on this post. I definitely will not respond to comments purposely misrepresenting my argument. I feel no particular need to defend myself; everyone can decide for themselves whether they think what I say is valid, and if I’m silent in response to criticism it’s not because I can’t think of a solid response—it’s because I don’t think responding is going to help myself or anyone else have a better experience on Tumblr and in this fandom. I’ll try to answer genuine, in-good-faith questions if I have the wherewithal to do so, and if you want to just message me and chat or say hi or share headcanons, I’d love that!)

[asleepinawell]

Book Recs

I was gonna do one of these at the end of the year, but I’ve somehow managed to read 26 books this year already (12 novellas, 14 novels), almost all featuring queer authors and/or characters so this is already a long list.

Note: There’s a few on here I was kind of meh about, but in most of those cases it was a ‘book might be good but it’s not for me so i’ll mention it to put it on people’s radar anyway’ type of thing. Insert the usual necessary tumblr disclaimer about all of this being only my opinion and your opinions are valid too etc etc.

In order of when I read them:

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir - Fantasy novella from the author of gideon the ninth that’s a twist on the classic princess trapped in a tower waiting for a prince story. Quite fun. (novella)

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht - Dark fantasy about revenge and magic. m/m couple but like I said it’s pretty dark and twisted all around so definitely not a happy queer romantic story. My opinion was interesting premise that could have been executed better and probably should have been a full novel to embellish on the world building potential. (novella)

A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace - Arkady Martine - Probably tied with murderbot as the best things I read this year. Scifi, f/f couple, wonderfully done exploration of what it means to fall in love with a culture that is destroying your own. More of the many queer anti-imperialist books that have come out recently and certainly some of the best. The second one is a direct continuation of the first. (2 novels)

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson - This is the third in the Baru Cormorant series (The Masquerade) and was my favorite so far. The second and third book were originally one book that got split I believe and the second book didn’t stand alone as well (though was still great), but the third book really made up for that. Dark fantasy world starring a queer woc whose country and culture is destroyed by the imperial forces of that world colonizing and assimilating them. She vows revenge and decides to work her way up within her enemy’s ranks to enact it from within and bring an empire to ruins. Really really fascinating study of so many different aspects of our own world and the systems which enable and allow bigotry and how bigoted and violent narratives are used to control minorities. This is definitely a darker series and I was particularly impressed with some of the commentary on the racism prevalent in non-intersectional feminism as depicted through a fantasy world. Can’t wait for the last one to come out! (3 novels, 1 forthcoming)

The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells - There’s six of them--5 novella and a novel--and the first is All Systems Red. Told from the point of view of a self-aware droid/android that is rented out by a corporation to provide protection in a dystopian capitalist hellhole future that isn’t that unlike our current capitalist dystopia but is in space. Muderbot hacked the chip that controlled it and instead of going rogue just wants to be left alone to watch its favorite tv shows. Murderbot is painfully relatable and the books are both funny and poignant. Highly recommended. (5 novellas and a novel).

Winter’s Orbit - Everina Maxwell - This was a m/m romance novel with a scifi backdrop of royal intrigue. Generally I’m more into scifi with a queer relationship in the background than vice versa, so it wasn’t my favorite, BUT I think it was still well written and someone looking for more of the romance angle would enjoy it. Has all your favorite romance tropes in it, especially the yearning. (novel)

The Divine Cities - Robert Jackson Bennett - Three book series. I’m very conflicted about this one. Set in a fantasy world where an enslaved nation overthrew the country enslaving them and now rules over them. It’s a story of what happens after the triumphant victory and within that it’s also a murder mystery tied into the dying magic of the conquered nation. It also has a six foot something naked oily viking man fist fight a cthulhu in a frozen river. The second book was by far my favorite, mostly due to the main character being brilliant. My conflict comes from the fact I don’t feel like the story treated its women and queer characters well. Like it had really great characters but it didn’t do great by them overall. That and the third book didn’t live up to the first two. But still definitely worth a read, can’t stress enough how cool some of the world building was. (3 novels)

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant - This might be the only one on here I disliked. It’s got a doomed boat voyage and creepy underwater terror and monsters and a super diverse cast of characters, but I just didn’t enjoy the writing style. While having a diverse cast is great, there were a lot of moments where it felt like characters were pausing to explain things about themselves that felt like a tumblr post rather than a normal conversation you might have while actively being hunted by monsters. I also bounced off all the characters. But a lot of people seem to have liked it so if you’re into horror and want a book with a f/f main couple then maybe you’ll enjoy it. (novel)

Dead Djinn Universe - P. Djèlí Clark - Around the early 1900′s, a man in Egypt discovers a way to access another world and bring Djinn and mysterious clockwork beings called Angels through. As a result, Egypt tells the British to get fucked and Cairo becomes one of the most powerful cities in the world. So Egypt, magic, djinn, a steampunk-ish vibe, oh and the main character is a butch queer woman who enjoys wearing dapper suits and looking fabulous while she investigates supernatural events. Her girlfriend is also mysterious and badass. And she has a cat. There’s three novella (one of which technically might be considered a short story) and then the first novel. You should absolutely read the novellas first (A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili, The Haunting of Tram Car 015). Super fun and imaginative series. (3 novellas and a novel, more forthcoming)

River of Teeth & Taste of Marrow - Sarah Gailey - From the book description

“In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true. Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two. This was a terrible plan.”

Queer hippo riders!!!! Very much a western but with hippos. Main couple included a non-binary character. Loved the first one. The second one I was more meh about due to one of the characters I was supposed to like having obnoxious man pain that a woman had to take the brunt of the whole time. Also there were less hippos. But queer hippo riders! Definitely read the first one, and they’re both novellas so no reason not to read the second as well. (2 novellas)

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers - I may be the only person who hasn’t read the long way to a small angry planet at this point, but I did grab her new novella and I loved it. It made me want to go sit out in the woods and feel peaceful. The world it’s set in feels like a peaceful post-apocalypse...or diverted apocalypse maybe. Humans built robots and robots gained sentience, but instead of rebelling they just up and left and went into the wilderness with a promise that the humans wouldn’t follow them.The remaining human society reshaped itself into something new and peaceful. It’s the story of a monk who leaves their habitual monking duties to go be a tea monk and then later wanders into the wilderness and becomes the first human in ages to meet a robot. Very sad there’s no fan art yet. (novella, more forthcoming)

The March North - Graydon Saunders - This was such a weird book that I’m not sure how to explain it. The prose style is hard to get used to and I suspect a lot of people will bounce off it in the first chapter. There’s no third person pronouns used at all and important events get mentioned once in passing and if you blink you’ll miss them. Set on a world where magic is extremely common to the point that rivers sometimes run with blood or fire and the local weeds are something out of a horror movie and most of the world is run by powerful sorcerer dictators, one country banded together (with the help of a few powerful sorcerers who were tired of all the bullshit) to form a free country where powerful sorcerers wouldn’t rule and the small magics of every day folks could be combined to work together. The story revolves around a Captain of the military force on the border who one day has three very powerful sorcerers sent to them by the main government with the hint that just maybe there’s about to be a big invasion (there is) with the implication of take these guys and go deal with this. The world building is extremely complex and very cool...when you can actually understand what the fuck is going on. There is also a murder sheep named Eustace who breathes fire and eats just about everything and is a Very Good Boy and belongs to the most terrifying sorcerer in the world who appears as a little old grandma with knitting. It had one of the most epic badass and wonderfully grotesque battles I’ve ever read. But yeah, it is not what I would call easy reading. Opinions may vary wildly. I did also read the second one (A Succession of Bad Days) in the series which was easier to follow and had a lot more details about the world, but overall I was more meh about it despite some cool aspects. The chapters and chapters of the extreme details of building a house that made up half the novel just weren’t my thing. (novels).

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson - In this world parallels universes exist and we’ve discovered how to travel between them, but the catch is you can only go to worlds where the ‘you’ there is already dead. This turns into an uncomfortable look at who would be the people most likely to have died on many worlds and how things like class and race would fit into that and what we would actually use this ability for (if you guessed stealing resources and the stock market you’d be correct). The main character is a queer woc who travels between worlds with the assistance of her handler (another queer woc) who she has the hots for. She accidentally stumbles on a whole lot of mess and conspiracy and gets swept up in that. Really enjoyed it. (novel)

Witchmark - C.L. Polk - Fantasy world reminiscent of Victorian England (I think?) where a young man with magical gifts runs away from his powerful family to avoid being exploited by them. He joins the army and fights in a war and comes home to try and live a quiet life as a doctor, but a murder pulls him into a larger mystery that upturns his life. Also he’s extremely gay and there’s a prevalent m/m romance. This one was a fun-but-not-mind-blowing one for me. (novel, 2 more in the series I haven’t read)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon - This was one of those that everyone loved but I couldn’t get into for some reason. I tried twice and only got about halfway through the second time. It’s got dragons and queer ladies and fantasy world and all the things I like, but I wasn’t that invested in the main story (which included the f/f couple) and was more interested in the smaller story about a woman trying to become a dragon rider. There are few things that beat out a lady and her dragon friend story for me and that was the storyline that felt neglected and took a different turn right when we got to the part I’d been waiting for. But, I know a lot of people whose reading opinions I respect who loved it, and if you like epic fantasy with dragons and queens and treachery and pirates and queer characters then I’d say you should definitely give it a try. (novel)

Bonus: I didn’t read these series this year, but if you haven’t read them yet, you should.

Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice) - Ann Leckie - Spaceship AI stuck in a human body out for revenge for their former captain, but that summary does not come close to doing it justice. Another one examining imperialism and also gender and race.(3 novels)

Kushiel's Legacy Series - Jacqueline Carey - This is two series, six books total, and starts with Kushiel's Dart. Alternate universe Renaissance-y Europe in a fantastical world where sex isn't shameful and sex workers are respected and prized. Lots of political intrigue and mystery. A lot of BDSM and kinky stuff too (the main character is a sexual masochist, oh and also bi!). I first read this series when I was fifteen or sixteen and it definitely made a big impression on me. Same author also wrote the Santa Olivia series which I’d also recommend. (6 novels)

The Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir - I mean, if you follow me, you know. If you don’t follow me you still probably know. I’d have felt remiss to have left them off though. Lesbian Necormancers in Space. Memes! Skeletons! Biceps! Go read them. (2 novels, 2 forthcoming, 1 short story)

Books On My To Read List:

Fireheart Tiger - Aliette de Bodard

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho

Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse

This Is How You Lose the TIme War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Ninefox Gambit - Yoon Ha Lee

Also, if anyone has any recs for scifi/fantasy books starring queer men (not necessarily having to do with a queer relationship) and written by queer men I’d love them. There’s a lot written by women, and some of them are great, but I’d love to read a story about queer men from their own perspective.

[raviposting]

Okay so I’ve seen a lot of conflicting responses to Buddie this episode, from it being clear to people that they’re getting together, to thinking the writers have unintentionally messed things up to thinking it’s purely queerbait.

And I get the different responses, I do - tbh I’m somehow in two camps, where I simultaneously believe it’s a slowburn but I also think it’s bait. And those are two very different opinions to have and it got me thinking about why we have these different responses as fans to the possibility of a queer ship (namely two men who would presumably be bi/pan) being canon. 

While people talk about how it’s just people wanting two characters to kiss or entitled fans - sure, that’s existent in every fandom, but I think there’s also a very real fear from queer fans who don’t want to get their hopes up and I d on’t love how the conversation has shifted to calling queer fans stupid for having hope, so I kind of wanted to break it down into 3 aspects that I’ve noticed: 

How writers portray bi characters and why that makes fans hesitant to have hope

What queerbait actually means as a concept

How much “slowburn” has changed in procedurals

1. How writers portray bi characters

Something I’ve thought about a lot are the bi characters I’ve seen on TV - Darryl (CEG), Sara Lance (Arrow), Lucifer (Lucifer), just to name a few. These are great characters imo and I think you’d have a fun time watching but a thing to note is that all these characters were established as bi within the first season of their respective shows and they all fairly quickly fell into a clear romantic ship as well (with the exception of Sara as she spanned multiple shows). It may have taken time for them to say the word bisexual, but it was still clear these characters were queer fairly quickly on. You could maybe argue that Lucifer was a slowburn, but then (while it does not take away from him being bi/pan so do not use this as an excuse to be shitty about him) it’s a m/f ship which is still not the point of my post, to find a m/m or f/f ship that has that same treatment.

Some writers have done it - like for Valencia in CEG, or Petra in JTV - when they saw that fans read them this way, but trying to find those characters were few and far between, and when I looked at popular queerbait ships (whether or not they actually are queerbait) it’s usually ships where the characters are largely viewed as bisexual. A lot of times this also comes with pushback from both straight and to be frank, other queer fans as well. Straight fans don’t always see the signs that queer fans do, so to them a queer character who hasn’t been explicitly clear from the start comes out of nowhere. And what I’ve seen from certain queer fans are concerns that people aren’t appreciating the canon queer characters in a show - and I think there is a conversation to be had about that, but I don’t think the response should also be about then demanding less representation for people either. 

If we go back to 911, people talk a lot about how it has canon queer characters, which it definitely does - Michael, Hen, Josh, Karen, and David are all canonically gay/lesbian and that’s awesome, and we absolutely should talk about fans (white fans in particular) ignoring these characters. It also does not change the fact that none of these characters are bisexual and that is the representation people are looking for. Both of these things are true - these characters are often under appreciated in canon AND people deserve bisexual representation. They don’t contradict each other and to act like one negates the other does a huge disservice.

And even if a character was made bisexual in the canon text we don’t get that slowburn. This may be true for things like Leverage, or LOK, but there’s also a real fact of censorship that affected these shows and the fact that general audiences may not understand the queer text tjat the writers intended. It doesn’t make the writing any less wonderful or the ships any less poignant or beautiful or important, and there’s ofc shows like She Ra that made this more obvious (or the.....mess that was Supernatural that made it. Half true?) but these are still real things that should be acknowledged on why people are so hesitant to call it slowburn - because it’s something most queer fans haven’t SEEN DONE, because m/f ships will get that care for slowburn when it’s done but it’s not done for m/m or f/f ships in that same capacity.

2. What queerbait is

This one’s fun because I don’t think many people understand what it is, but queerbait is very dependent on the intentions of the writers/creators/etc. - which tbh can be hard to gauge, because a genuine intention that ended up not happening or someone baiting fans or someone trying to support all ships and not be rude all have very different intentions but to a fan who only sees bits and pieces of this person on social media, it can be hard to gauge.

Honestly with how much the 4th wall gets broken because of social media now I’d personally say we’ve probably moved into a different definition of queerbait - unintentional vs intentional - because we’re at a point where a show knows what ships are popular and at what level of excitement fans are for it - but that being said, there’s still a clear spectrum of intent. And imo? I don’t think 911 has that intent of queerbait - whether it’s a slowburn or they have a different vision for buddie that I (probably) won’t agree with remains to be seen, but this show usually treats its storylines with care. Are they perfect at it? No, definitely not, I definitely think that they’ve dropped the ball a few times (especially with just how many characters they have lmao), but they also clearly do their storylines with earnest and with genuine care for these characters.

Is 911 getting them together? I want to say yes. I don’t think this was always the plan, just something that they decided along the way, but I also don’t think that changes anything about the ship. A lot of people point to Tim Minear being vague about the ship, or the actors and their interpretations, but 1. We have no idea what they’ve been told about Buddie moving forward and 2. No show runner is going to spoil their show that much. 911 may be keeping quiet because they have a different plan for buddie, sure, but also maybe because they’re still figuring out how exactly they want to do this and/or they want to make this slowburn and don’t want to give it away.

3. Slowburn in procedurals

I feel like this is something that procedurals have started shying away from, but slowburns used to be very common - Bones, Castle, their ships didn’t get together for literal years, but that’s just not something that many shows do nowadays, even for m/f ships. Even things like Deckerstar will have the characters get together after ~3 seasons and explore the relationship onwards, whereas a few years ago, y ou’d pr obably be watching a sh ow and it’d take them 7 seasons to get together. My assumption for this is that shows are afraid  of getting canceled, but there’s been a pretty big shift in getting a couple together after say, 6 seasons to now getting them together about halfway through the show. I don’t think either one is bad or good - in good writers’ hands, either can be amazing - but that shift has made it so that a lot of younger fans in particular, I think, don’t fully recognize slowburn when they see it.

911 as a show tends to run pretty fast - it kind of has to with its depth of characters they have - but when they do have slower running storylines they really do make use of that as well. Bobby’s addiction is something that’s always going to be present in his character, May’s suicide attempt was brought up again front and center after 3 seasons, even Chim’s dynamic with the Lees was brought up again and it was reinforced again that they’re his family. There are certain storylines that have to be continuous and aren’t a one and done type of thing, and that includes Buck and Eddie, especially if you want to establish them as queer to a general audience who doesn’t think about these things.

And honestly, despite my fears, I think they are laying groundwork there. We have Buck learning to be more confident in his relationships, we have Eddie ready to date and learning to follow his own heart, we have Buck and Eddie both establishing that Buck is family and will always be there for Christopher. These are pretty big steps to do for a ship and we’ll obviously have to see how the show goes forward but they’ve already insinuated Eddie and Ana are breaking up, I’m sure Taylor and Buck may last a season and be over, but we do have to see what this next season brings. Do I think they’d say this? No, definitely not.

tl;dr: 

911 is a show with good viewership, but there’s always a possibility they can’t continue with their season and then their promises would feel like a lie. Or they may still be hammering out the details as this season hasn’t been written. Or they may just simply not want to spoil their show,  or they don’t want people criticizing a story before it’s finished, all of these could be reasons. The showrunners, writers, actors, ultimately they owe nothing to us as a fandom to potentially spoil their series, or do something, change it or their schedule for it, and get accused of bait. 

But it also doesn’t change why fans are wary of this storyline either, and I wish people would have more nuance and compassion for fans who are worried about queerbait (whether they think it’s not queerbait and dislike people worrying about it or if they do and are calling people idiots for believing it). There’s a lot of reasons why fans are wary and don’t want to have hope, and it’s not necessarily about 911 specifically as it is a pattern of writing seen in other pieces that have fans worried. These things can all coexist and I wish we as fandom in general could acknowledge that, because pretending that they don’t and criticizing each other/people’s intentions or knowledge when they have certain expectations also doesn’t do much to help.

[galactichoneybee92]

Thoughts on BakuDeku

I’ve been lurking in the MHA fandom for a while now, just kind of silently watching, and I have a few observations that I would like to make. Just perspectives that I would like to put out into the universe. I am on the older side of this website, much less this fandom and so I am no stranger to fandom culture. And when I say old? I mean like I was an active participant on ff.net circa 2005 so like, I’m sure some of you are older but I’m getting up there. My point? I’ve seen things.

As far as fandoms go in general, the MHA is far from the most toxic that I’ve seen but there does seem to be a few points of contention and per usual it comes back to shipping. This is nothing new but lets speak a little on BakuDeku as a ship. I warn you now, it’s not always going to be things you want to hear, but I encourage you to read to the end anyway. 

Horikoshi has fully admitted to having been a huge Naruto fan and it’s pretty easy to see the influence in his work. On that note, it’s pretty safe to say that the Midoriya/Bakugo relationship can be compared to the Naruto/Sasuke relationship. You can see other parallels (All Might = Iruka, Aizawa =  Kakashi, etc...) but for the sake of argument let’s focus solely on Midoriya/Bakugo. Personally, I tend to prefer MHA to Naruto overall, as I just like the characters better and as such I like Bakugo a lot more than Sasuke. Horikoshi has taken more time to humanize Bakugo, and while he started off being a total dick, he’s also a dumb fuck teenage boy and he’s had a lot of character growth over the last 29 volumes. 

In the Naruto fandom, much like in the MHA fandom, there were loads of fans who shipped Naruto and Sasuke romantically. If we are judging the probability of Midoriya and Bakugo becoming a cannon couple, it stands to reason that we can examine the author’s influences and infer that, no, they probably won’t. For one thing, homosexuality is still considered a controversial topic in Japan like in America, and even if the author wanted to make it romantic he would probably receive a good amount of push-back from publishers. 

Now I don’t want you to read this and think that I am at all against it. I’m not. And forever ago when I was reading Naruto I occasionally wondered what would happen if an author published a Shounen manga, got millions invested, and then SURPRISE it was a M/M romance all along. I think it would be fun but I can’t say that I am realistically convinced that it will happen. But that isn’t really the point of this post.

My point, is that this fandom, like many others (And this website in general???) needs to learn the difference between actual queer baiting and a ship that just...doesn’t happen? And I’ve seen all the arguments, about how they clearly love each other and how their bond is so deep and how if either of the characters had this kind of relationship with a female character it would ABSOLUTELY be romantic. And I hear your points, but if I may provide a few of my own: 

1. There are many different ways to love in the world and they don’t all have to involve romance and kissing and sex. Do you love your family? Do you have friends that you would die for? These are relationships that people have and their just as valid in fiction as in real life.

2. Yes, if they were opposite genders than it probably would be the central romance of the mange, but that isn’t proof of queer baiting so much as a general failure to accurately represent opposite gender friendships in media. There should be male and female friendships that are just as strong while remaining platonic so this is a failure but not the failure you thing it is.  (If anyone likes Kdramas, Suspicious Partner is an excellent one that has not only a great romantic subplot but also some WONDERFUL platonic M/F friendships and it’s just beautiful) (That being said I also recommend the Taiwanese drama HIStory 3: Trapped for a wonderful M/M romance since if you’re reading this post that’s probably something you’re into) 

I think that a lot of the problems come from the fact that good romantic relationships do build similarly to friendships. You get a lot of bonding moments, the characters getting to know each other better and coming to care for one another and since media tends to focus predominantly on romantic relationships it’s easy to just get into the mindset that like, all bonding moments are leading somewhere. And in a way they are: to friendship. And then sometimes that friendship leads to romance and sometimes it doesn’t but what I’m saying is that the two look very similar. You SHOULD be friends with your romantic partner, and I think that that is why it’s so easy to ship these sort of couples. Especially when they do have an especially deep bond like these two have.

As far as BakuDeku as a couple in general, yeah, I ship it. I’ve read my fair share of fanfiction and if it did happen I would be psyched. I didn’t always like Bakugo (He’s just doing THE MOST at all times) but I grew to love him and if he continues to grow in the direction that he has been I wouldn’t personally have any problems with it. They have an interesting dynamic that incorporates some of my favorite tropes and I think it would be cool if the manga went there. But if they don’t? That’s also fine. 

There have been several ACTUAL examples of queer baiting in media that I can point to such as the Japanese ads for Sherlock (I didn’t necessarily find the show itself to be queerbaiting but the Japanese ads for the new seasons hardcore did) and while I tried hard to defend Supernatural (WAY too much of the fandom shipped actual brothers together for me to believe that they understood the value of any sort of platonic relationship) they kind of blew that out of the water with whatever the fuck happened in that last season. 

I don’t see that happening here and while I know a lot of you are set for your ship to become cannon I just want you to maybe manage your expectations. Because in my experience, when it gets built up this big, if it DOESN’T happen the next thing fans do is start ranting about queer-baiting and insulting the series and the team and I don’t want to see that because it isn’t fair to any of them. I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms and it gets real ugly real fast. 

Alternatively, if anyone has watched the reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power you will know that the creators played their cards super close to their chest, doing their best to properly develop the homosexual relationships they wanted while keeping it subtle enough that they could prevent themselves from being cancelled before the last season aired. Then they went all in and made their homosexual ships cannon in the final season because at that point the whole show was out wtf was going to happen? They’d get cancelled? It was already over. So if you would like a serving of hope to cling to, that is a thing that happened. I just wouldn’t necessarily bet on it. 

That being said, I fully support your right to ship anything you want. And if by some chance it does become cannon? More power to you. I’d be psyched. Horikoshis assistants ship the hell out of it and he clearly doesn’t mind so there is a point in your favor. But if it doesn’t? A lack of romance doesn’t invalidate the depth of their feelings for one another. Platonic love is still love and it’s still a powerful driving force in the story. Their relationship is still compelling even if there isn’t ever a kiss, or a confession. And hey, that’s what fanfiction is for. 

Remember kids: Please ship responsibly. 

[stfuhets]

i said i dont wanna make more posts abt the loki show but i just have to share this, cuz it's legit making me dead lmao

so like on the loki show 1ep release day my christian parents were like "uhh not sure abt watching this show cuz i heard rumors he'll be gay" (well, they been both big mcu & loki fans for long time but as u can tell they dont know much abt his queerness in mitology but whatever)

now they actually watched all episodes of it meanwhile i decided to boycott it for obv reasons and they are like "oh thank god he has a girlfriend after all, he isn't gay 😊"

it is not only biphobic but it also made me think, how the writers most likely dgaf about what bisexuals or queer viewers in general want (kate herron might be an exception though). they just want to please the butthurt straights. disney didn't make sylki canon to "represent their bisexuality" cuz u know they also said "he will have both female and male love interest" which would be the PERFECT way to represent his attraction to more then one gender, but then again, where tf is that alleged male-love-interest ? 🤨

cuz pretty sure the cast were telling us not to ship him w/ mobius since theyr plAtOnic so did i miss something...?

so my point is that homophobes or just uneducated hets do not see them as a bi couple, most of them can't even acknowledge their gender fluid identity, they see them as any other str8 f/m hero couple because it was made for their gaze basically.

so uh yeah just gonna leave this here, it is my opinion so y'all can agree or disagree idrc anymore.

[olderthannetfic]

I appreciate your perspective on queerbaiting and the fact that most Hollywood types don't know or care about what queer fandom wants. It's not something I've really considered before, but it makes sense.

I'm wondering whether cartoons are becoming the exception to this rule—specifically all-ages, family-friendly cartoons. A good handful of these shows from the last decade or so have had a strong queer bent (and I do mean queer, not tepid gay assimilationism). Not to mention some of them outright referencing fan culture, with e.g. protagonists who write fic or have other fannish interests. Rebecca Sugar wrote Invader Zim slash as a teen; ND Stevenson published fic on AO3 about their own cartoon; Matt Braly recently went on record saying that the size of your fandom is a good way to judge the success of your show.

Granted, I'm more likely to watch stuff that's made by queer fandomy types, which is probably skewing my perception of how widespread this trend is. But it's a small enough industry (relative to live action + stuff for other age demographics) that I suspect there's something interesting going on.

Possibly also relevant is that a lot of these shows lean f/f rather than m/m.

(Also to be clear, I don't think that queerbaiting is a useful term even when talking about cartoons. I've never seen an accusation that didn't boil down to "you're homophobic for not canonizing my ship even though I had no reason to believe that you would" or blaming the creators for studio censorship.)

--

You've identified a key factor there: Creators like Rebecca Sugar are quite open about their tastes and aims. Whether the fandom sees subtext or text exactly like these creators in every case or not, we at least know we come from similar mindsets. We know this from things the creators themselves have said, not just from analyzing their art when it's half way through airing and we don't even know the ending yet.

These people still have to answer to higher ups of various types. It is 0% surprising that f/f is easier to force past them than m/m is. Kudos to all these creators for sticking to their guns in a hostile industry. We're inching forward, slowly.

I'm not sure why cartoons are different. At a guess, I'd say a big part of it is that once one such show managed to get anything at all on screen, it was a lot easier to sell this as a trend that makes money to the execs controlling the next one. Another factor is that these shows are not prime time network tv or tentpole movies.

It's not like live action tv has no queerness either. The CW, for everything else wrong with it, has put a fair amount of queerness on screen. It doesn't always have the endings fandom wants or the specific ships people yell loudest about, but there's still more canon queerness than other networks put out and more than you'd have seen a couple of decades ago.

Media of all types has a strong copycat trend where anything that makes enough money tends to make more of the same type of thing acceptable. Summer action blockbuster-makers only occasionally learn that women or people of color sell tickets though because these are controlled by much smaller sets of much stodgier people than even other big, expensive media.

[sapphicscholar]

Queerbaiting Thoughts

OK I’m really not a, like, post my thoughts on the internet kinda person (like to keep it thirsty on main and judgy in the DMs only), but every day I wake up to some new post about queerbaiting, and it’s starting to feel too Groundhog Day for my liking, so a few thoughts to throw out into the ether from someone who studies words and concepts and how they circulate (and specifically works in the fields of queer and fan studies). This is far more an explainer and some history/grounding than any kind of argument, to be clear upfront. 

As a term, queerbaiting has absolutely soared in popularity within the past several years (check Ngrams, and you can see it start to rise in mid-2014, but really gain traction in 2016). In part, that’s because it’s actually a fairly recent coinage, and terms take a little while to catch on, especially when they first have to migrate out of scholarship or niche circles. 

But more than that, the term “queerbaiting” gave us a nice, pithy way to encapsulate the feelings a lot of us as viewers were having when consuming popular media. It was a single word to capture all the nuance of watching some show or movie, seeing (typically) a m/m or f/f pair that had great chemistry who the producers and writers and marketers hyped up in part through that romantic and/or sexual chemistry (those Rizzoli & Isles handcuffed together billboard ads, anyone?), and then having the idea of that ship’s ever being acknowledged as romantic/sexual or made canon dismissed, its very possibility laughed at by the exact same people who profited off of dangling it in front of us week after week. (AKA: the term’s original usage!) But wow, look at how much got packed into a single term! No wonder it got popular!

Only guess what? Within the same time period that this term caught on and took platforms like Tumblr and Twitter by storm, we started to see (comparatively) a lot more LGBTQ representation! (Of course, we can’t say that without acknowledging that this representation was incredibly unequal across identity categories--most often we got a wealthy white gay couple or single side character.) Did this shift to representation include every couple we thought had chemistry? Every character we read as gay or bi or trans or ace, etc.? Absolutely not! But suddenly showrunners could “honestly” (insofar as any marketing is honest) say that they weren’t laughing off the possibility of inclusion or representation--after all, they had an LGBTQ character, they gave us a same-sex ship, even though they almost always didn’t get the same long arcs or nuanced portrayals we craved. 

With the upsurge in the quantity of representation, though, the focus shifted to the quality of this representation. And that’s where we started getting stuck. Because we don’t actually have a robust conceptual vocabulary for talking about our disappointment, especially nothing as easily portable as a single, catchy term. 

By that point, queerbaiting had become part of our vocabulary. And like all conceptual terms that “make it big” on the Internet, its meaning became diluted from its original usage; it expanded out to fill in these gaps. It became the word for representation that disappointed us, for lazy writing that fell back on tired tropes, for hasty break-ups and deaths that made no sense. It broadened its horizons to include our frustration at shows that insisted again and again that we should be grateful for the smallest crumbs of representation. 

And these shifts don’t have to be a bad thing! At least not on their own.

Problems arise when we allow a catch-all term to muddle important nuance, when we get as lazy as those show writers we complain about and let a single word bear the brunt of the analysis we don’t want to do about why exactly a show has disappointed us yet again. After all, there are important differences between a show that kills off an LGBTQ character and one that decides to write another “cheats on her wife/gf with a man” arc, or between a show that genuinely refuses to give any representation and one that thinks having more than one or two out characters is “unrealistic.” And sure, yeah, maybe my personal need for precision and exactitude in analysis is a product of my job and my professional training, but it matters in a larger sense if we’re still trying to use a term as part of our advocacy for better representation. That doesn’t mean a word’s meanings can’t or don’t or won’t shift over time--the elasticity of language is one of my very favorite things!--but maybe this long ass post helps to give a bit of context on why people are so invested on both sides of the debate. After all, the word has been so successful because it does resonate, and the desire to claim that feeling about some new show and tag it with a terms others might recognize and commiserate with is real and deep! But for those wanting to keep it “clean” with a really clear purpose for media advocacy, the diluted meaning and unclear trajectories of its uptake are startling and even worrisome! 

So yeah, I’m both/and-ing it, but here’s to a little bit more clarity - go forth, and define your key terms (XOXO, English teachers everywhere) 

[voxofthevoid]

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.