#but i'm still very gay about this

[mythandral]

Day 12: Sun

‘Brightsun’ is a fitting monkier.

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[knifearo]

ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story

[somecunttookmyurl]

my boyfriend is not any flavour of queer. he says he "wishes he was" because queer people "just seem to understand the world so much" by which i assume he means we by default actually consider society wrt sex and gender, but he is unfortunately both cis and het. he's checked.

he carries around a copy of "the little book of lgbtq" in his backpack at all times in case he needs to look something up.

a good chunk of his youtube history is queer history / queer media / 'what it's like to be x' videos. he thinks all of you with the less famous identities (ie not the L G B or T) are very cool and funky and hopes you have a good day.

he knows he's straight because he has kissed men on several occasions and was not into it sexually. one of those times was a gay dude who promised to buy him drinks all night in exchange for a kiss and my boyfriend is nothing if not a wee whore. one of the others was kissing his gay friend who was depressed about not being able to hook up with anyone, because he is a very sweet wee whore.

he would do it again because he is very neutral on the kiss itself (not into it, but not grossed out by it. it's just a kiss, innit) and because he doesn't want people to be so lonely and sad that they cry in the smoking area of the club.

[icantdothistodaybruh]

yea sooooo I may have or may have not watched and instantly rewatched all kuro musicals in existence in a spawn of one week and now have roughly 40 screenshots to redraw from

I think I might be insane or something

[uncanny-tranny]

Something I realized (which was obvious to me subconsciously) is that... The family that vehemently didn't accept me when I first came out but now do accept me are still the same family that I am most unwilling to be open about things I feel protective over.

I remember that my dad reacted so poorly, not to my coming out, but to my transition specifically that my therapist was the one to ask if I wanted to put it on my file that I wanted nothing to ever be shared with him about my health after I broke down multiple times due to my anxiety that I would never transition. While there are and were protections for me, I was incredibly fearful at the time because I was a minor, and I was so worried that he would have prevented my transition that I couldn't have said for certain what (if any) lengths he would have gone to to prevent that.

He's grown a lot as a person, and made some commendable strides. But he didn't find out from me when I medically transitioned the second I turned eighteen, and I think that's among the things that truly made him realize the scope of the issue.

I'm not here to guilt trip parents, guardians, or other members responsible for the care of the children or teens or young adults in their care.... but this is a cautionary tale. You aren't saving the people in your care when you do this, you simply reinforce an idea that you will never care for them, never want them as they are, would rather them be shoved away.

When you give people reasons to be secretive, they will behave secretively. When you give people reasons to doubt their safety around you, they will become sneaky, defensive, and withdrawn. When you give people reasons to doubt that you value their life, they will believe that you don't care if they live or not.

[irregularbillcipher]

DO YOU KNOW WHAT SPAWNED YOUR EXISTENCE?

[ID: Two lineless, digital paintings, both with warm, dark gray backgrounds. Both canvases are shaped like exact squares.

Painting one shows an adult Bill Cipher, a bright yellow triangle with a top hat, bow tie, cane, singular eye, and long lashes, reaching out to shake hands with the Axolotl, a pink axolotl with an electric blue tail. Bill is looking at the Axolotl casually, and his outstretched hand is engulfed in blue flames, while the Axolotl is smiling at Bill gently, reaching out to take his hand. There are stylized stars, similar to sparkles, in the top right and bottom lefthand corners of the painting. The painting is textured so that you can see the gray of the canvas very faintly through the brush strokes.

Painting two consists mostly of a short passage from Edwin Abbott Abbot's Flatland, written in light gray over the dark background. The passage is the beginning of chapter 7, and reads as follows:

"7. Concerning Irregular Figures

I for my part have never known and Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be-- a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power, a perpetrator of all manner of mischief..."

Below the quote, near the very bottom of the page, is a tiny illustration of a very young Bill Cipher. He is drawn completely in grayscale, and is looking down at the ground angrily, fists clenched. He is wearing a pauper's cap and has bandages wrapped around his rightmost angle, which is noticeably longer and more acute than his other angles.

End ID]

[daisychainsandbowties]

Chapters: 1/1 Rating: T

Summary:

what if Ava and Beatrice were in love and there were also pokémon?

///

There was a ghost in the walls.

The first night it happened, Ava was half-asleep, staring down at the red and grey walkie-talkie stowed in the palm of her tired hand. She’d been doing physiotherapy all day – trying to make fists, to stretch her palm wide and scrunch it tight – and the bones themselves ached where they rested against sweat-slicked plastic.

It was just a scratching, at first, like something sharp against the plaster on the inside of the walls, almost smothered under the shifting of bodies in the rooms on either side of Ava’s. Lost, almost, to the slow tap, tap, tap of saline droplets slithering through her IV, the crinkle of the canula tape as her hand shifted very slightly, sending starbursts of nerve pain up into her shoulder.

Her breath, which wisped lonesomely up into the corner of the room she shared with a vase of drooping flowers, a creaky wheelchair, and a dozen posters tacked into the walls, bearing images of pokémon frozen, captured in the only way Ava would ever be able to have them.

(this isn’t true, but it is a fear she carries in her chest at night especially when she can forget about the doctors telling her that soon, soon, soon they’ll fly that surgeon over from the Kanto region. soon she’ll be shuffling stiffly through the hallways on her crutches and in possession of more than her hands)

(these things are easy to forget in the dark)

That first night, the scraping kept on for ten minutes before fading, and the walkie talkie never erupted with sound, so Ava slept. When she woke, it seemed like something she might have made up.

But then, two days later, when the moon sat low and bright in the sky and Ava sat up watching it leak across the floorboards, the sound came again. More concerted this time, unmistakable.

It seemed to come from one specific part of the wall, buttressed between a poster of a Dragonite and a faded photograph of a girl with a Rockruff fighting to escape from her arms. Ava smiled at it, despite the stab of fear that accompanied the sound of something in the wall.

(it’s easy to be afraid at night. that doesn’t make her a coward)

Ava stared at that spot and almost, almost ventured to say something before it faded, very suddenly. As though started away by her hesitation.

She came to visit the next morning – her, a word that seemed to linger in perpetual italics whenever she stood in the room, in the doorway with her mussed-up hair and her face noticeably marked with a fresh cut, a fresh bruise, a fresh sign of the fool’s errand Ava had sent her on.

“Hey stranger,” Ava had said, watching her drop her backpack by the door, festooned in rainbow pins, a trans badge she’d bought herself and affixed onto one of the flea-bitten straps with a look of feverish concentration.

“I don’t really know,” she’d admitted, when Ava asked what it meant.

“Okay,” Ava had said, and then flexed her fingers in a rhythm that meant she wanted to reach out, to hold.

Beatrice, as she let her bag thunk onto the ground, swinging the door shut behind her, raised an eyebrow in mock-offence, “I’ve only been gone a week!”

It was hard to be angry at her, to begrudge her the calluses on her hands, the way her shoulders had filled out even more in the past year, but still.

read on ao3

[softpine]

i’m a lover fresh out of luck

[transcript]

[buckttommy]

Edy Ganem stop being queerphobic challenge level: IMPOSSIBLE.

[frootbyethefoot]

persona 4 COULD have been a groundbreaking game in late 2000's early 2010's. it could have been a " mainstream " (mainstream in moderately sized quotes!) game that showed complex, flawed queer people as the main characters. but it doesn't. it heavily implies its characters are queer, changes its mind, and then produces some of the most homophobic and transphobic writing you've seen in a long time. persona 4 wants to make something beautiful so bad but it feels like its too afraid to actually do anything and ends up going back to its old homophobic/transphobic tropes.

[sysig]

Went absolutely feral on WOY again recently (Patreon)

[theinfinitedivides]

the real star of Jhoome Jo Pathaan is the silver earcuff and dangle earring that they have given SRK along with his various necklaces, rings, arm taweez and glorious hair, taking no further statements at this time

[facetsofthecloset]

i'm sure it's been said but i feel like both Raxtus and Ronodin can be argued as "the only gay kid in the family and consequently shunned/rejected" and it's like. so weird bc Mull is so Mormon he'd probably rather eat his shorts than even acknowledge the possible existence of gays but

i mean. Raxtus literally has a fairy form. he's a fairy dragon.

Ronodin was just emo lol

and they both get so thoroughly rejected and sidelined by their families their whole lives and it turns Raxtus into an awkward but basically decent guy who runs back to the approval of his family once he's performed masculinity/violence enough to be accepted, only to then realize that he's basically just being used and still not fully trusted/accepted and having to betray them to save his real friends

(who sadly are probably actually homophobic but that's ok bc they're not dragon-phobic so that works out for him)

while Ronodin's like "fuck it. chaos and murder then!" and can you really blame him? he spent his entire life trying to conform to the "right" (in this case, Light) way of life, started spending time with the outgroup and learned to question things, then was told he was "too corrupt" to remain in his home

like. the symbolism is right there.

it's so funny, because sure Raxtus isn't a bad guy, but Ronodin definitely is and he pretty much gets sent to a type of hell at the end of Dragonwatch

and while Raxtus gets kind of a happy ending, like, him becoming an effective killer in a war and being accepted by his dad for being Good At Murder in the first Fablehaven series is presented as a happy ending. if Celebrant didn't wind up being the main villain for Dragonwatch, that probably would've been the end of it! gay kid learns how to soldier and is finally accepted by his homophobic family bc he's finally aggressive enough for them to love him

(i mean i have MANY issues with Celebrant being the main villain later and the reasons he's framed as bad but like. that's a separate rant lol)

the queer reading is right there. but also it's very bad and you can tell completely unintentional. or at the very least highly repressed. idk man i don't look into Mull as a personal individual bc i doubt i'll like what i see and i don't care that much but Dragonwatch was SO MUCH MORE MORMON than Fablehaven already was and it's so weird, seeing the fingerprints of it all over.

i feel like he either has a new editor or he's been doing this for long enough and sold enough books that he has the clout to veto changes made by editors or SOMETHING, bc i feel like? he's gotten worse?? and more unfiltered?? that or something happened and he's like. even more religious than before or something idk

like fablehaven was just kinda generic/bland fantasy with some fun ideas for magic items/powers/one sentence character premises, with just a hint of sus Mormon ideology, and then Dragonwatch just went. Full Mormon.

but then there's somehow even more weirdly queer shit. like. he's repressing so hard he's approaching queer from the other side??

idk man i wish this deeply mediocre man's writing wasn't a formative piece of middle school reading, leading to me still giving more of a shit than i really should over questionable children's literature now

[torrtimandi]

I'm back with a new story!!

After months of constantly rehearsing the new show, and just before the real kick-off of their tour, Gaspard and Xavier spend some carefree time on the beach.

My loose take on Hyperdrama and the new era tied it into a very gay plot.

[asynca]

Anyone who’s interested in ‘Australia’s Stonewall Moment’ will be interested in reading about the ‘78ers: the first marchers in what they coined the ‘Mardi Gras’ which turned violent after police blocked them off and began to violently arrest people. 

Tonight, 45 years later, Sydney hosts World Pride 2023 and the 45th Mardi Gras parade and it’s a huge celebrated event. 

We’ve got a long way to go - but we also need to celebrate our tenacity, our survival and how far we’ve come.