#give me media for teenage girls about lesbian sex. is what I’m saying

[thursdayg1rl]

why did they have to make the summer I turned pretty into a show. it’s ruined my life and I have no plans of even watching

[hamliet]

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

[novelconcepts]

(1/4)In one of your tags from the gifsets when Jamie walks into the kitchen and Dani first saw her! I just realized how oblivious until now with that narrative “how the au pair felt when she first saw the young woman” I was even oblivious with the way they look at each other. This is a romantic set up! To be honest, at first I thought they would not get along at first, and will come to parts where they’d start a fight one way or another.

(2/4)And then the part where Jamie asks Owen if he thinks Dani is pretty, the way Owen blushes I swear I thought that Owen and Dani were gonna be a couple!! Thanks goodness Owen answers he’s only got eyes for Hannah!! I mean, I started this show with a blank page without knowing if there’s any lgbtq character (I was hoping since we got Theo from HH)

(3/4)This says so much how we often, in media, being disappointed, being called too much as we read between the chemistry of any interaction of two same sex characters! And here’s in Bly, they set us up with that romantic first not-encounter encounter and we had to step back to see if this is intentional or we’re being reading too much again!

(4/4)And then nine episodes later, we got the most heart wrenching true love story of two women! Masterchef kisses!!! Thank you show! I was starting to root for Dani x Jamie interaction after their 1:1 with Jamie tries to calm Dani. What about you, what moment from the show that got you root for them?

So, here's the thing about me: I will always, always ship the ladies together in a show. And, like you said, I’m very accustomed to being let down when showrunners decide that in order for character to be queer, it has to be saying something. Like, they have an allotment of queerness they have to dole out. And to have a story coming in on the heels of a really successful show where we did have a queer character--and a really well fleshed-out one who never felt like she was gay for gay’s sake, but still, a character in the ensemble rather than The Lead--I felt like...in most other shows, that would have qualified as the “allotment”, as it were. “We already gave you Theo, what more could you ask for?”

So Dani turns up in this show and I think, “Okay, she’s a delightful Midwestern 80s girl with some real trials on her shoulders, she clearly lost someone, let’s see where this goes.” And I honestly didn’t think she was going to be anything onscreen, in terms of romantic story. I sort of assumed that if she had lost someone, the crux of her story was going to be about coping with that loss and moving on. Even when they introduced Owen, I didn’t think, “Oh, okay, here’s the romantic co-lead of the story”; they did a really excellent job of having both parties perform that car ride with platonic care. Like, we have the potential to get along really well, we’re likely going to bond, but there were no long camera shots of one watching the other, no sense that he was going to have interest in her or vice versa. They felt like instant friends. So, I thought, “Okay, cool, she could use some friends, she’s probably still going to just have this arc of coming to terms with losing this person.”

And I didn’t know who she’d lost yet, so I did think it could have been anyone. Brother. Father. Friend. I wasn't sure it would matter, I just figured that was going to be the focus.

And then Jamie walks in. And in retrospect, you’re right: this setup for romance was instant. The introduction, the narrator’s line, the way Dani looks up, the quick glance Jamie gives her before promptly pretending not to notice, all of these are textbook filmmaking tricks to Introduce The Love Interest. And Jamie, naturally, is styled like a classic lesbian in every way, so I thought, “Huh. That’s interesting. But they already gave us Theo last time, so...”

Which is deeply unfair. It’s unfair to the creative team, it’s unfair to the story, it’s unfair to me as a viewer, to have that knee-jerk assumption on my shoulders. And I like to think that Bly surprising me as it did will help me not make that I’ve been burned assumption in the future, because...we really have come a long way. But even so, on this first watch, I thought, “That’s interesting. I could ship it. But I don’t think that's the story they’re going to tell”, because I didn’t yet trust the creative team to prioritize queer relationships on the same level as straight ones. 

Things continue, and we get all the little clues that, in retrospect, are huge: Jamie thinks Dani is “too pretty” and quite frankly can’t shut up about her. Dani physically brightens when Jamie’s in the room. Jamie reassures Dani that she’s doing well, and does so with the gentlest nudge at flirtation, and Dani swivels her whole body to follow Jamie as she leaves, making sure to catch every last glimpse she can before Jamie disappears into the house. And we’re getting these clues from other characters, too, in the way the kids exchange that look when Jamie’s first introduced, in the way Owen constantly looks to Hannah with every indication that he’s not kidding in the least when he says he only has eyes for her. But I still wasn’t...sure I could trust it. 

Which is silly. Because there is nothing, not a single thing, that is subtle about this love story. The music cues, the camera work, the angling of the actresses toward one another in every scene they share. The way Pedretti makes certain Dani looks the easiest in her body and in her smile when it’s Jamie making her laugh. It’s so intentional all the way down, like the entire team was saying, “Here. This is important. This is valuable. And we absolutely refuse to let anyone watch this show and say, oh, we didn’t feel it. It came out of nowhere. Couldn’t they just have been friends?” 

Episode 3 went a long way to hammering it home, of course. Between the conversation on the couch about love and possession, where the silence between them stretches on with a sort of comfortable heat, and the way Dani looks at her--and the camera looks at her--when Jamie is asleep on the couch, and that final moment with the hand grab, I realized they were really going for this thing. And obviously by Episode 4, you’re supposed to know what’s up. The gloves are off, the story is fully tilted in this direction, and I think it was around this point that I started to realize who the narrator probably was. Originally, I think I thought she’d be a very grown up Flora; once I realized Jamie was in fact the Romantic Lead of the piece, I went, “Oh. Ohhhh. Oh shit.”

The moral of the story here is, I trust this team now. I trust them to prioritize queer love with just as much “this is normal, guys, get over it” care as straight relationships. And, frankly, it makes me re-evaluate my opinion of the sexuality tackled in Hill House. The first few times I watched that show, I thought, “God, it’s nice that they gave us Theo. She’s flawed, she’s human, she’s funny, and her being gay is non-negotiable.” Now? Now I watch it and think all of that while also thinking, “You know what? Luke could be queer. His response to Joey all the way through really reads more like a friend who wants to help, with nervous confusion in the event that she nudges too close.” And especially after that interview where Victoria Pedretti said she always assumed Nell was queer, and that her ending up with a man didn’t negate that, it just wasn’t really relevant to parse it all out onscreen, I thought, “You know what? She’s right. There is absolutely nothing stopping that from being true.” And that’s how I’ve approached all media since I was a teenager, fair, but the difference is it feels...like these shows agree. That this is why they didn’t announce the LGBT rep ahead of time. That it’s not gonna be “gay for gay’s sake”, that it’s not going to be for drama or to cause a ruckus, but that these stories say, “Hey. This is a real thing. Love looks like this, too. Here: watch this beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking story of two women who love each other more than anything in the world. Watch it, and understand that they are so normal, and that them being gay changes nothing about how they live out their story together.” And I love that. 

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

okay i’m going to go off about celebs again…. but like…. does anyone remember the gross asf vitriol that went around in 2011-2013 about justin bieber where the joke was “more like justINE bieber am i right??? 😂😂😅😅” from the “haters” of him. i, myself, actually joined in on this; considering that i thought that liking all the emo shit i was into made me “more mature than belibers” or some other absolutely batshit backwards bullshit that i would’ve spat out at the time to sound “edgy” and “NoT LiKe OtHeR GiRlS 👩🏻‍🎤👩🏻‍🎤”….. when in my group at catholic school, i had two girls in my group that were belibers themselves lol. i honestly made zilch sense.

but like to rest on this a bit, what the actual fuck was up with this joke???? why the fuck did the whole world just gang up on this teenage boy, who through no fault of his own, was still going through puberty…. so of course his voice was still going to be high??? and then the weird fucking speculation some fucking gross ass literal grown up adult people had back then of “when do you/we think his balls are going drop, so that we wont be call to be able to call him justine bieber anymore 😅😭??? just let us have our fun??!!” like what the FUCK??? why did everyone think that this was their business??? it wasn’t his fault in a sense that he stumbled into usher and got signed.

like….. no wonder justin’s had several breakdowns over the years. i would too. because how the fuck would you deal with this???? people just throwing out so casually this horrible fucking vitriol that they think you’re a girl OR think that you should get a sex change because it’s obviously a lie that he’s a boy/man OR think that you’re not “just a butch lesbian disguised as a 16yo boy” (these were legit other arguments at the time). like he was a KID for fucks sake. who the fuck asks to go through puberty in the fucking spotlight???? fucking N O O N E thats fucking who. like obviously he’s had a myriad of meltdowns and bad publicity over the years since. but this bullshit would’ve been so fucking horrible to take during the shitty years of puberty and high school to boot. obviously, in the years since, he’s done roast battles with jokes about this, so it’s good that he was able deal with it and joke about it, albeit eventually.

but i would’ve absolutely fucking hated to have all my pubescent behaviour and changes being fucking aired and speculated on in public view, for completely random people, famous or not, to comment on and make fun of. like i’ve talked before about the trouble i had with my period in my teens. i would’ve LOATHED to have that shit aired as it happened, on a red carpet for example. or as im accepting an award or just let alone performing at a show. just mid speech or mid performance. i would’ve bled (leaked) onto an expensive costume or provided expensive designer dress (or my own clothes/outfit) because my flow for a particular month/week was uber heavy. or god forbid, i wouldve thrown up mid-press-junket-interview on air or almost fucking passed out as well, depending on how my cycle/ovaries/hormones were feeling during a particular month/week.

like this is besides my point in a sense, but still. i would’ve had this aired and speculated on if i’d been catapulted to fame at the same time as bieber (and keep in mind, he is literally only a year older than me). but my period struggles would have been spun as “are you SURE this GIRL isn’t a BOY who knows nothing about period products??? does she know ANYTHING about pads & tampons so she WON’T bleed onto her dress or the like??? what a lazy, disgusting “girl”!” or “does she KNOW just how WEAK she is for NOT controlling her period pain??? how dare she pass out mid-show??? does she know she’s FAKING IT??? what a weak person, just GET UP and PERFORM, MONKEY because PERIODS ARENT THAT BAD!!! just think like a MAN and your period pain will go away!” or some other bizarre speculative bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else.

when unbeknownst to anyone, i would’ve had about 5 advil tablets to both deal with my utterly unbearable period pain and unfathomably blinding and mind-numbing hormonal period headache, right before the said event or interview or whatever the fuck celeb duty i was carrying out. i would’ve had heat pads on, i would have been dizzy when arriving to and leaving from sets, etc etc etc. and finally, i would’ve been incredibly tired during all of this…… because of how much my periods fucked me around as a teen, to the point that some nights i couldn’t even fucking sleep properly. or the only reprieve i would get from the pain would be the aforementioned 5 advil tablets and an all day nap. on top of all this, i probably would’ve had to BEG (all because video call interviews weren’t particularly popular back then) for some like video call interview type thing from my bedroom or home studio or whatever, just to avoid going into an actual studio & set so i could just lay in bed or sit somewhere comfortable for the whole interview. and again etc etc etc because of all the other problems i had with my periods in my teens til my early fucking 20s, that i’ve mentioned several times on/in various posts on this hellsite over the years.

and the same goes for female stars like sasha pieterse from PLL when she opened up about her struggle with PCOS, and halsey with sharing her struggle with endometriosis. i would’ve hated to go through those medical conditions in the spotlight. i feel for them. it’s also the same thing with boobs: where the most famous example in recent years is ariel winter from modern family….. with how she needed a breast reduction because her boobs were giving her back problems and stuff, because she was like an F cup or something. and she also hated the creepy ass comments she was getting from gross dudes about how nice her boobs were or whatever the fuck, even while she was still a teen on the show.

anyway. back to bieber. i only say this because literally like last year or in 2019, the bieber joke appeared in my feed again in the first time in YEARS and i ended up tagging one of my old catholic school friends like “how the fuck do people still think this is funny?? it’s so 2011. and come to think of it, it was never funny in the first place anyway”. like both the media and the public had absolutely no right to speculate this shit and invade a young teen boy’s privacy like this??? it was so fucked up. idk why i didn’t make a post about it at the time…. but it also came into my mind just now because i commented on a post about justin bieber the other night about how he’s had fans stalk him to his nyc apartment again. like when the actual fuck will people fucking learn to let celebs have their goddamned privacy lmao.

[a-room-of-my-own]

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Burns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018, American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much. It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity. I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

[deliciousmeta]

When it comes to children’s entertainment, fuck realism.

That’s right. Fuck. Realism.

Don’t get me wrong. I think kids can handle heavier topics than they’re often given credit for, especially if they’re presented in the right way. But there’s a difference between depicting or addressing things like war, abuse, and so on and indulging in cynical, nihilistic, grimdark bullshit because that’s what we’ve been taught “mature” means.

I want to focus on Avatar: The Last Airbender and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power because they’re on everybody’s mind right now, and it’s really noticeable in how often I see certain sentiments crop up.

SPOILER ALERT! You’ve been warned.

Let me start with ATLA.

I make no bones about being an Azula fangirl. She’s my fave, and I don’t apologize for it. She’s complex and compelling in a way few characters in mainstream Western animation are. Like many Azula fans, I’m ambivalent about how she ended up. It was well-executed, and it packs a helluva punch, but it plays into some iffy tropes about powerful female characters. But even with that, fine. It would’ve been nice for the show to have shown that there was still hope for her.

But what do most people think about her? That there’s nothing anyone can do or could have done to help her.

Think about what it means when people say this: that a 14-year-old girl is beyond hope.

Can you imagine a message so bleak in a show where: Iroh tells Zuko in no uncertain terms that he must not give in to despair, one episode (”The Avatar and the Fire Lord”) makes it explicit that the people of the Fire Nation are not born bad and that everyone deserves a chance, and the entire point of Zuko’s character arc is changing for the better?

“But Azula’s mean and scary!”

And Zuko was a bucket of sunshine and rainbows while he was roughing up old people on the South Pole and burning down Kyoshi Island.

Treating a child barely into her teens as if she’s an irredeemable monster is a betrayal of the themes and message of the show. That kind of cynicism belongs on Game of Thrones, not ATLA.

Then there’s that thing in the comics about Sozin outlawing same-sex relationships.

*sighs*

Y’all, I’m a Black Jewish lesbian. Every single day, I’m reminded that many places and many people have a problem with my Blackness, my queerness, my womanhood, or my Jewishness.

I don’t need to be slapped in the face with homophobia in a story about a handful of 12- to 16-year-old kids who change the world with their friendship and awesome elemental powers.

“But it’s realistic!”

I don’t give a shit. After George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and white folks calling the cops on Black folks left and right for no damn reason, I don’t give a shit. And with the fact that this is far from the last time it’ll happen, I don’t give a shit. The world already does a fine job of showing kids how ugly it can be. They don’t need adults to remind them.

Which brings me to SPOP.

Some people think that redemption and forgiveness came too easy to Catra, that she apparently didn’t suffer enough consequences for her actions to “deserve” the happy ending she got.

Let me get this straight. A teenager who’s been physically and psychologically abused her whole life hasn’t suffered enough to deserve love and friendship, that she’s too toxic to be trusted around the people who know her. A teenager should be condemned for life to be cut off from everyone she knows because she was nasty to some of the nice characters.

On a show that’s blatantly about the power of love and friendship to save the world.

Really? Really?

Wanna talk about someone who can’t be trusted around others unsupervised? Shadow Weaver is right there.

But Catra? C’mon.

As with ATLA, an ending for Catra that has her cut off from everything and everyone she knows would be a fundamental betrayal of the themes and message of the show.

Besides, what purpose would ostracizing her serve? Catra already believed she was on her own because anyone she trusted would betray or abandon her. Learning to trust others and lean on them when she needs them is a step in the right direction for her.

Look at this from the point of view of a kid who sees a lot of themselves in Catra. Would you feel empowered by that message? Would it inspire you to seek the help you need? Would it convince you to trust people with the truth of who you are and not just the facade you project to the world?

I’m going to go on a limb and guess probably not.

There’s something I think a lot of grown people participating in children’s media forget. Every character who’s not an adult or a pet is probably one a child identifies with. I don’t think it’s usually deliberate on the part of creators, but it is there, and I think grownups should keep it in mind when discussing these characters and the stories they’re in.

[pompadorkery]

What do you mean you find it hard to relate to female characters. It's a fictional universe, you can make them anyway you want. Lucy is pretty feminine and Anglo too. I realize almost all the moms of your ocs are bad or thier children hate them. I understand that you have an abusive mom but do you really have to projected on every character you have. Do you have something against women or your just not attracted to them. Probably the latter because all of your ocs are sex dolls.

Wow. Where to even start with this one.

Why do you think the majority of Hollywood action heroes or video game protagonists are cis white males?

It's because it's the easiest to relate to for the biggest demographic of their audience.

Many anime have just a boring plain normie male protag for the same reason. They're supposed to be easily relatable, and like a blank slate that you can project on.

For me, female characters are hard to relate to.

Growing up, I never cared for female protags or love interest characters. And usually actively disliked them. (Much of this is because female characters are generally poorly written in alot of media, but that's besides the point)

I have never felt "in touch" with womanhood. I could never relate to female characters because none of them were like me, or had the same thoughts or struggles I had.

The female characters I like now are generally mold breaking. They don't fit in the typical box. And they give me something I can relate to.

For example:

Mako Mankanshoku from Kill la Kill. She's an absolute idiot and a total bimbo. She eats alot, she's loud, she's kinda useless at times, and she cares alot about her friends.

Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani from Overwatch. First of all, she's on the autism spectrum. She's rigid, stubborn, and can often come across as mean- but in reality she's just very goal oriented and likes things to be orderly.

While these are very different characters, I find alot of things in them that I can relate to and identify with. Not every aspect is true at all times, and there are plenty of things in their characters that I can't relate with, but regardless, there are aspects of myself that I can see in characters like them.

I've always related better to male characters. And like I said, much of the time female characters aren't written well, while the male characters are. I just always found them cooler. I liked their designs more, and they had more interesting stories. Whereas many female characters entire plot revolves around getting with the protag.

I've struggled with gender my entire life. I never felt like a girl. Even the people around me would say that I was such a "tomboy". I would often get told to dress more feminine, or that my haircut made me look like a boy, etc. One of my happiest moments as a teenager was when I got to play a male character in my high school's spring musical and during that entire time everyone referred to me in character, as a boy. I had a great time playing this character, and it really showed through in my performance. I was comfortable for once.

I identify as non-binary now, and I still have alot of questions about my own gender, and I'm still figuring alot of things out. But what I know for sure is that I'm not a girl.

Now, getting into my OCs.

You claim that all my OCs have troubled relationships with their moms, because I have a troubled relationship with my own mother.

2 of OCs.

2 of my OCs have mommy issues.

Out of all the characters I have, only 2 have issues with their mothers. So like, are you just pulling things out of your ass, or?

Lucy was abandoned by his mom at a young age and has alot of bitterness towards her because of this. Which is perfectly reasonable given the situation.

Sanka is just a brat. He still loves and cares about his mom, their relationship is just strained due to his own insecurities and self-loathing.

All my other characters either have no mother in the picture at all, or have perfectly fine and normal relationships with their moms.

Neither Sanka nor Lucy's moms are abusive. So it's pretty yikes of you to bring up my own abusive mother in this conversation. What are you trying to prove? In your concocted narrative, I'm writing characters with abusive moms because my mom was abusive and that's the only mother figure I know. So.... I'd be writing from experience.... in what world is that a bad thing?

You also mentioned Lucy and Angelo being feminine. "Feminine male" does not equal "woman". Those are two very different things. Just as a butch woman is not the same as a man. Experiences are completely different. Equating them is extremely sexist, and could be incredibly transphobic if you also think this way about real people.

And claiming I'm not attracted to women because my OCs are 'sex dolls'. Literally what are you even trying to get at? You do realize that real women and fictional characters are different, correct? Plenty of lesbians create stories or art about mlm characters. Plenty of lesbians draw gay porn. Are they not attracted to women because they draw men getting fucked?

I am bi. I also fall somewhere in the ace spectrum, due to alot of my own dysphoria. Of course I'm attracted to women. Real women are so incredibly sexy and beautiful and interesting. What isn't there to like? Just because I like making male characters doesn't somehow mean I hate women. I just haven't been able to create a fictional woman I find as interesting and captivating as real women are.

Also. I just enjoy drawing men. So a majority of my characters are gonna be men. Sue me. Sorry for enjoying myself.

And the whole "sex doll" comment. I answer the questions people ask. Which happens to be alot about sex. What can I say? People have cumbrain.

I'm also an nsfw artist. So obviously alot of the art I create is gonna be porn.

Is that the entire story of the characters? No, of course not! Do you think me and Ren would have enough storyline for an entire book if all the characters did was fuck? There's so much more to it than that. There's so much more that people don't see.

I mean, what's more interesting to see a drawing of:

Two characters in the heated embrace of love making

Or two characters sitting on the couch doing completely different mundane activities

There's a time and a place for everything, and sometimes drawing something simple and mundane is a fun look into a characters life.... But also I just like drawing dicks and the faces of people who are thoroughly wrecked.

Tl;dr- It's not that deep, fam.

[canonicallyanxious]

hi, If you are still doing taking asks for the top 5 of whatever, I have one. Top 5 (or 10) scenes in the skamverse?

anon this is a really good ask and i’m unfortunately absolute trash for the skamverse so it’s gonna have to be my top 10 skjdnfskjdnfs in the interest of fairness though I’m going to try my best to limit myself to one scene/clip per season [also cut on this one bc it got long oops]

1. Minutt for minutt [og skam s3]

Words cannot express how much this scene still means to me four years after i first saw it. Like this is the scene that made Even and Isak’s relationship so special to me, this is probably the scene or at least one of them that tipped this show from “oh this is really good” to “i will fucking die on this hill for skam” for me. like, just the tenderness of Isak quietly watching Even as he sleeps. the soft physical affection a mentally ill character is allowed to have on screen. this beautiful yet grounded dialogue about coping with mental illness which cheesy as it might sound is also something i’ve very often taken to heart in my own struggle with coping with mental illness since. like god. truly groundbreaking, honestly.

2. David’s coming out scene in druck s3 ep 8 - “i am a boy. i just have to try a little harder” [druck s3]

this scene came very, very close to beating minutt for minutt and honestly on a different day it might have done so, just today i decided to put minutt for minutt at the top simply because it’s been with me for longer. but i think this was probably the most emotionally moving clip for me in the entire season, and i had the privilege to watch it in real time which makes it even more special to me. it was everything i could have ever wanted from david’s coming out - soft, aching, quiet, devastating writing that broke my entire heart. and “i am a boy; i just have to try a little harder” is probably a line that’s going to stick with me for a very long time. i can’t think of another trans person’s coming out scene in mainstream media that has touched me as deeply as this one.

3. Fatou and Kieu My’s museum date in druck s6 ep 6 [druck s6]

this scene has everything. EVERYTHING. space imagery! soft and tender kisses! hands brushing in the dark! yearning looks! playful banter! serious conversations about feelings that move forward both their development! like it just reminds me so viscerally of falling in love for the first time as a teenager. druck in general i think does a very good job of portraying teen romance but the fact that this teen romance is about two wlwoc [one of whom is vietnamese like bitch!!!!] means EVERYTHING to me. like this more than anything else in the entire skamverse is something I wish my teen self had gotten to see. i’ve probably seen this clip about twenty times because part of me still can’t believe it exists.

4. The Carnival scene at the end of the last episode of skam austin s1 [skam austin s1]

honestly i think the entire last clip of skam austin s1 is just pure excellence [even if they made me watch Meg and Marlon have sex in a car wash smfh]. like one of my favorite things about og skam was how it really gave their characters room to breathe and take their time with their conversations and i think this clip is probably one of the ones that come the closest to capturing that energy for me [no wonder i guess since julie andem was so involved with this season]. but i love the carnival scene in particular because i love the energy it captures in meg’s dynamics with the other characters and it’s just such a nice opportunity for them all to finally breathe after a difficult season. also i will never ever forget the pure euphoria of watching Shay become a confirmed lesbian on screen in real time [even if i still think the way it was done was kinda meh]. i think i was giddy for the rest of the fucking night after i saw that.

5. Nora breaking up with Miquel for good in skamesp s3 ep 8 [skamesp s3]

i actually think skamesp s3 is one of the best remake seasons of the skamverse. An incredible feat for skamesp to make me rank a NOORHELL season near the top, but honestly skamesp s3 is much more than a noorhell season, like i think the story it tells is hard to watch but very important to tell. i especially love this clip because it’s just such a well thought out culmination of Nora’s arc throughout the season. and it’s so devastating in how understated it is. the acting is phenomenal, the lighting is gorgeous, my breath was taken away by the way Nora said “don’t touch me” with her hair blowing gently around her face. just very good.

6. Josh and Nora’s second break-up scene at the end of druck s5 ep 9 [druck s4]

what does it say about me that this is the THIRD BREAK UP CLIP on this list skdjdnfksdnfsdkn. i genuinely did have a really hard time picking one clip for s5 [other top contenders include the last clip of ep 8 and the cuddle clip at the beginning of ep 6] but i went with this one because a. i love to suffer and b. the way josh plays with nora’s jacket and then she gently pulls away and his hands still linger bc he can’t quite bring himself to let her go just yet fucking HAUNTS ME. watching this scene genuinely made me feel like i was going through a break up myself, maybe because it reminded me so much of my own first break up in a lot of ways. kudos to the strong writing and stellar performances from the actors here.

7. Best of Islam [og skam s4]

Yousana the true og m/f relationship i was overly invested in... i miss they... anyway this clip is really good just on its own and i think it’s a good encapsulation of everything i wanted this season to be. i love that Sana got to talk about her experiences and her relationship with her religion; i love that yousef listens to her carefully and talks about his own experiences and feelings; i love their playful energy; I LOVE YOUSEF GIVING SANA THE FLOWER. truly it doesn’t get better than this.

8. Amira and Mohammed get back together at the end of druck s4 ep 7 [druck s4]

i love this scene because i think it showcases the very best of Amira and Mohammed’s dynamic. the way they listen to each other, their playful manner with each other, how utterly taken they are with each other. i love also that Mohammed finally got to talk about his experiences as a refugee and how that connects to his religion. and the whole exchange about baklava still has me so ;-; ;-; the chemistry these two have is absolutely unreal. i will never get over Amira being cheated of the last few episodes of her season. the greatest injustice to experience after a clip like this, truly.

9. Life in Italics [skam austin s2]

aside from the first ep this might be the only clip i’ve actually seen from this season but i stand by this choice sorry not sorry shay dixon performing an absolute bop in a pink wig is just too iconic

10. Crisana cuddle scene in skamesp s2 episode 6 [skamesp s2]

I think I’ve loved basically every remake version of the iconic s3 ep 5 cuddle clip i’ve seen but this one has stuck with me in particular just because it was really special to me to be able to see two girls be so soft and gentle and loving with each other. no excessive make-up, no hypersexualization, nothing glossy or glamorized about it. i honestly often have a really hard time connecting to teen wlw romance but this was one of those times it actually felt real to me. also the song choice for this clip is simply chef’s kiss

Ask me my top 5/10 anything!

[puttingherinhistory]

December 27, 2015 by Suzannah Weiss

I was young when I came to discover masturbation, and I had orgasms long before I knew what they were.

Nothing about it seemed complicated. I just rubbed “down there” for a few minutes, and it happened. But later, magazines, comedy routines, and sitcoms taught me that my body – and vaginas in general – were mysterious and complex, often too complex for those without them to figure out.

Confirming what I’d been taught, orgasms weren’t as simple with partners as they were by myself. This is to be expected to some extent. There’s a learning curve when you’re getting to know someone new. But what confused me was that not everyone seemed eager to learn.

“Sorry,” I (unnecessarily) apologized to a partner for taking what I thought was too long.

“It’s okay. I know it’s harder for girls,” he said – and then stopped.

Compounding the lack of effort I encountered from some (though not all) partners, it became harder for me to orgasm when I started SSRI antidepressants. When I told my doctor, she said, “Oh, that’s hard for a lot of women anyway.”

I knew my body long and well enough to know being a woman wasn’t to blame, but others didn’t share my view that the problem was fixable. I grew hesitant to bring it up with partners out of fear that asking them to perform the supposedly impossible feat of getting a woman off was too demanding.

Orgasm doesn’t have to be the focus of sex, but if a woman wants one, she should have as much of a right to request it as anyone else does.

When people say that women’s bodies are more difficult – and these generalizations typically refer to cis women and are accompanied by rants about how complicated vaginas are – they teach cis women that an orgasm is too tall an order.

Trans women also have a slew of sexual stigmas attached to them, which Kai Cheng Thom describes here, though they’re beyond the scope of this article. In addition, though most research on orgasm inequity has studied cis women, trans and non-binary people with vaginas may relate to the frustrations of being taught their genitals are impossible to decode, too.

The view that cis women are hard to please maintains what sociologists call the orgasm gap, in which men have three orgasms for every one a woman enjoys, and 57% of women orgasm during all or most of their sexual encounters, but 95% say their partners do.

These statistics may appear to confirm the stereotype that women’s bodies are more complicated, but there are other forces at work.

As sociologist Lisa Wade points out, the orgasm gap is conditional. Lesbians report orgasming 74.7% of the time, only 10 percentage points lower than gay men. In addition, women take under four minutes on average to masturbate to orgasm.

If these statistics don’t convince you that there’s more to the orgasm gap than biology, here are twelve cultural factors that contribute to it.

1. People Believe Women Are Less Sexual

Women, the story goes, aren’t that into sex.

They may enjoy it, but they do it partially in exchange for validation, commitment, or financial support, popular wisdom says. As long as a woman is getting one of those things, she doesn’t need much out of the sex itself.

To the contrary, a lot of research and lived experiences indicate that women are as capable of wanting and enjoying sex as men.

Until we acknowledge this, we won’t prioritize making sex as enjoyable as possible for women because we’ll believe sexual pleasure isn’t as important to them.

It may not be because women themselves may buy into myths about their gender, neglecting their desires because they’re not supposed to have them. If they do, they and their partners miss out on balanced sexual interactions, not to mention fun.

2. Pornography Privileges Male Pleasure

Most people who have watched porn videos know they typically culminate with a “money shot” in which the man comes, and then the scene ends. Most woman-focused orgasms depicted in porn are merely incidental events on the path to a man’s pleasure.

Additionally, most mainstream porn scenes feel incomplete without blow jobs, while cunnilingus is less common.

All in all, the message is clear: It’s imperative that a man gets off, and if a woman manages to in the process, props to him, but it’s just an added bonus.

3. The Myth of ‘Blue Balls’ Persists

Blue balls, according to Urban Dictionary, is “the excrutiating [sic] pain a man receives when his balls swell to the size of coconuts because of lack of sex, unfinished bjs, and just not cummin when he knows he should.”

The entitlement reflected in this description is characteristic of most uses of the term “blue balls.” While vasocongestion, the accumulation of blood flow to the genitals, can occasionally cause mild pain in people with any genitals, this is not what men are usually referring to when they complain about blue balls. And whether they’re experiencing this or just sexual frustration, it’s never anyone else’s duty to relieve it.

Even though most women know no medical condition results from an erection that doesn’t lead to an orgasm, many of us feel guilty for not providing one. So, in addition to some men’s lack of effort to pleasure women, the pressure many women feel to pleasure men maintains the orgasm gap.

4. There’s More Information in the Media About Pleasing Cis Men Than Women

As a teenager, my secret guilty pleasure was buying copies of Cosmo from the drugstore and hiding them under my pillow to read at night.

I read all their sex articles just because I found anything sex-related titillating, but along the way, I learned all about different tricks to please men – and cis men, specifically. By the time I encountered a real-life penis, I already knew all the basic tricks in the book, plus some out-there ones my dude friends urged me not to try.

I don’t know what most teenage boys’ secret reading material was, but there aren’t many mainstream men’s magazines as obsessed with pleasing women as women’s are with pleasing men. If anything, I’ve heard it’s common for boys to sneak glimpses of Playboy, which is also geared toward pleasing men.

Maybe this explains why 25% of men and 30% of women can’t locate the clitoris on a diagram.

Amid all the advice we read about different ways to hold and touch a penis, many remain in the dark about vulvas and vaginas.

5. Hookup Culture Privileges Male Pleasure

“I will do everything in my power to, like whoever I’m with, to get [him] off,” one woman said in a study by Elizabeth Armstrong on college hookups. But when it came to their own pleasure, women held different expectations.

“The guy kind of expects to get off, while the girl doesn’t expect anything,” a woman in another study by Lisa Wade said.

Accordingly, one man in Armstrong’s study boasted, “I’m all about making her orgasm,” but when asked to clarify the word “her,” he added, “Girlfriend her. In a hookup her, I don’t give a shit.” Perhaps he sensed that women don’t expect much from their hookups.

Statistics about women’s orgasms reflect these attitudes.

The ratio of men’s and women’s orgasms is 3.1:1 for first-time hookups, but only 1.25:1 for relationships.

For whatever reason, hookup culture appears to have embraced the message espoused by the media that women’s orgasms are optional, while men’s are obligatory.

6. Sex Education Doesn’t Teach Us About Pleasure, Especially Female Pleasure

Like many schools in the US, mine only had a couple of days a year dedicated to sex education in middle and high school. During the initial classes on puberty, the portion about women was on periods and the portion about men was on erections, ejaculation, and wet dreams.

Already, our bodies were associated with making babies, while boys’ were associated with sexual arousal and pleasure.

Later on, we learned how to use a condom – along with how to complete a very normative sequence of events. You put it on, we were told, and then you have intercourse, and then someone ejaculates, and then you pull out and take it off. Men’s orgasms, but not women’s, were built into our safer sex lesson.

Nobody said “then you stop whenever you feel like it” or “your partner may need you to pull out” (because, contrary to what we see in porn, not every woman is multi-orgasmic and many have a refractory period, so we can’t all comfortably keep going until our partner wants to stop).

This is one sneaky way we learn to prioritize men’s pleasure without ever really learning about pleasure at all.

7. Self-Evaluative Thoughts Can Disrupt Women’s Arousal Process

Due to the emphasis on women’s appearances in mainstream porn and throughout the media, women learn to picture themselves during sex.

“How does my stomach look from this angle,” “Does my face look sexy or silly in this expression,” and “Would it be sexier if I made more noise?” are a few thoughts that have distracted me in the bedroom.

And I don’t think I’m alone: 32% of women say that when they don’t orgasm, it’s often because they’re stuck in their heads or focused on their looks.

Orgasm itself can become a source of performance anxiety.

Because the women’s orgasms are dramatized in porn and the media, with exaggerated moans and calculated facial expressions, some women feel so much pressure that fear of not coming keeps them from coming. This pressure can also lead women to fake orgasms instead of sticking it out for a real one.

Once again, women’s magazines don’t help.

Cosmo even provides a guide on “how to look even hotter naked.” Though “even” implies the reader looks hot already, the pre-bedroom workout routine and self-tanner application tips make it clear we don’t look as hot as we could – and even if we do, the focus is still on our partner’s pleasure, not what we see or feel.

Thoughts about partners’ perceptions place women outside their bodies, looking in, rather than inside them, feeling the sensations the sexual activity is causing. It’s hard to have an orgasm when you’re not even thinking sexual thoughts.

8. Sexual Trauma Can Impede Arousal and Orgasm

It’s extremely common for women to experience sexual trauma within their lifetimes. One out of six women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape.

According to sex therapist Vanessa Marin, this trauma can have lasting effects on one’s sex life.

“Sexual assault can rob your enjoyment of sex and can make any type of intimacy feel scary,” she said. “Some survivors experience feelings of disconnect or dissociation when they’re having sex. Others can easily get triggered by being touched in certain places or in specific ways.”

Marin recommends that survivors seek out therapy or a support group so they don’t have to deal with the effects of their pasts alone.

In the short-term, Marin has written that reminding yourself you’re with your partner, not the person who assaulted you, can quell trauma-related sexual problems. “Of course your brain knows that it’s [them], but this exercise can help the more subconscious parts of your psyche start to relax,” she writes.

Other emotions women disproportionately experience around sex, such as guilt and shame, may also lead to anorgasmia.

9. More Women Than Men Are on Antidepressants

SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Zoloft, can cause anorgasmia. This side effect isn’t gender-specific, but antidepressants themselves are.

Between 2001 and 2010, 25% of American women (but only 15% of men) had been prescribed medication for mental health conditions.

This may occur because women are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, both frequently treated with SSRIs, the medication class most commonly known to cause anorgasmia. There are many theories as to why, but one possible source of this difference is societal misogyny.

As Ally Boghun writes of her anxiety, “A lot of the stressors that impact me the most are actually stressors put upon women by society to look and act in certain ways.” In addition, women are more likely to seek therapy, since toxic standards of masculinity deter men from discussing their emotions.

This is one case where the orgasm gap may be related to biological differences, but the sources of these differences are still societal.

10. Women Are Discouraged from Asking for What They Want

Women are taught to accommodate others’ wishes and put their own on the back burner, to be pleasant and polite and grateful and not ask for more, whether that’s food, payment, or sexual pleasure.

To bring back Armstrong’s research, one woman said she didn’t have the “right” to request an orgasm and “felt kind of guilty almost, like I felt like I was kind of subjecting [guys] to something they didn’t want to do and I felt bad about it.”

I can relate: I’ve said “sorry” many times for requesting or giving myself the stimulation I wanted, for taking what I thought was too much time, and for receiving pleasure without immediately returning it.

The same fear that keeps women from voicing their opinions in work meetings or negotiating salaries also keeps us from speaking up in bed.

But until we can “lean in” without bumping into hostility, women can’t singlehandedly solve this problem in any domain. It’s also up to our partners, coworkers, and others to make it clear they want to hear and accommodate our wishes.

11. The Normative Definition of Sex Isn’t Optimal for Many Women’s Orgasms

When someone says “sex,” most people think of penis-in-vagina intercourse, even though it means many different things to different people.

For example, some couples may see oral sex as sex. Some may also put oral or manual sex on the same level as penetrative sex, but this is still not the norm.

When someone talks about losing their virginity, for instance, we usually assume they’re talking about the first time they had penis-in-vagina intercourse.

This assumption can be problematic for women who get off more easily through other activities.

In one survey, 20% of women said they seldom or never had orgasms during intercourse. Only 25% said they consistently do. In another, 38% said that when they don’t orgasm, a common obstacle is “not enough clitoral stimulation.”

Since penetrative sex often doesn’t directly stimulate the clitoris, this could explain why other types of sex – or clitoral stimulation during intercourse, which women considered the most common way they got off with a partner – may be more optimal.

When we consider the activities that often help women reach orgasm as warmup or extra, we deprioritize women’s pleasure.

12. People Think the Orgasm Gap Is Biological

Orgasm inequity is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When men believe women’s bodies are an impossible puzzle, they don’t try to solve it. Neither do women who are taught their own pleasure is inaccessible.

That’s why it’s important we acknowledge all the societal factors that contribute to this discrepancy. Genetics can’t be fixed, but a lot of these problems can, which means that closing the orgasm gap is possible.

***

If you’re a woman having trouble orgasming, it’s likely not you. It may not be the result of any carelessness on your partner’s part either. You may just need to talk about it, challenge the myths you’ve learned about sexuality, and, if necessary, seek help for any psychological or medical conditions that could be contributing to the problem.

Or maybe it’s not a problem at all. Maybe orgasming isn’t important to you, and that’s your choice as well. But if it is something you would like, you have the same right to ask for it as your partner. If he expects orgasms from you, he shouldn’t mind you wanting one.

It’s not too much to ask, and your anatomy isn’t too complicated. The only thing that’s complicated is the toxic set of messages we’re taught about sexuality. But that’s not on you or your body.

[peachyteabuck]

heyo!!! I was wondering why some people find X reader fics cringey or just not as good?? I mean, they're fucking amazing, so what's the fuss? (I hope you have a great day!! say my hello to cowboy!!) -🐙

hmm that’s a good question! 

i’m by no means a fandom historian, or like, anything close. this is from my personal experience and a little extrapolation. 

short answer, misogyny manifesting in a “i’m not like other girls” complex.

fanfiction in and of itself is something a lot of people find shameful. it’s not a legitimate form of media, it’s not worth people’s time, it’s in a legal grey area, etcetc. there are a lot of reasons we see fanfiction as some sort of silly hobby for teenage girls (to which i say, fuck you, but that’s not the point) that they give up as time goes on. the majority of fanfiction writers are “younger” women, who write media based on real people or existing media, and who write about things “real” media finds...shameful. 

for example, how many professional porn videos have the women come? multiple times? from clit stimulation? from not just vaginal penetration? how many of these porns have storylines that aren’t terribly acted out? how many of them involve actual, good dirty talk? how much of this porn is made for heterosexual men? how many of it is a guy and a girl? how much of it is lesbian porn made for lesbians?

compare that to what we see in fanfiction. 

another example: how many tv shows/movies can you name that involve wlw pairings? how many of them are explicitly bisexual? how many always have sad endings? how many of them have a sex scene, in comparison to m/f pairings? 

again, compare that to what we see in fanfiction

fanfiction is, to say the least, the rubberband ball of everything “mainstream” media hates. it hates women, it hates doing things for women, it hates giving pleasure to women, it hates it when women love women, it hates hiring women. not to mention how many of these women are women of color, and i don’t think i need to tell you how much the media dislikes them. 

THEREFORE:

it starts a cycle wherein the people who write “good” fanfiction (not x reader) justify their “good” fanfiction” by creating an “other” (x reader fiction) to hate on. “oh, i’m not one of those fanfiction writers,” they tell themselves. it happens in a lot of ostracised/oppressed communities. like, everyone’s cool now with you going to therapy, but god forbid you go to sex therapy. everyone’s cool with you saying you’re doing a face mask as “self care,” but god forbid you need a day off from work to rebalance your mental health. you can be gay, but god forbid you’re trans and gay. you can be trans, but god forbid you look trans. etcetc. 

just, i think the x reader hate comes from infighting, and it representative of a much larger issue. 

there’s a lot more i can say about a lot of things, but i think that about sums it up. let me know if you have any questions!

also: 

cowboy says hello! and please let him nap in peace. being so cute and toothless is very hard work, and he must be well-rested for another day of screaming at me and playing with my hair ties.

(this is him earlier today when he was using a pillow LIKE A HUMAN!! what a legend. i love him so much))

[tenemos-que-hablar]

“Are you seriously this cool all the time?”

(Macarena Achaga interview for InStyle Magazine, October 2019)

This phrase stuck in our heads when we stalked Macarena Achaga on her social media (that is, before an interview, we read, investigate, and we even get into those forgotten corners of the internet to know about the celebrities on our cover.) And we believe that this is the one question that many ask the Argentine actress...she answers it for us.

“I’m so excited, what did you think of the photos?” asks Maca about the photoshoot we did in Barcelona, ​​with the new collection of the Spanish brand “Desigual” (we love them, by the way). Precisely, she is an example of that (desigual), of originality embodied in a person; not only transcending from being a teenage entertainer in Mis XV, to becoming the actress whose character, along with Barbara Lopez, became the first lesbian couple on Mexican television in Amar a muerte, a telenovela written by Venezuelan Leonardo Padron and produced by Lemon and W Studios.

“I don’t want to discount any of my work because each of them has taken me to where I am now and shaped me professionally; I started with Mis XV and there I learned the importance of freedom at a young age. I am very grateful to have done it with maturity and that my parents always gave me the chance to make my own decisions; I constantly say that it’s better to regret the consequences of your own choices than to regret the ones that were decided for you. From a very young age, I faced and lived many things that, without knowing, would later give me the weapons to tell other people's stories and have empathy so that girls feel recognized.”

“That was the number one factor that happened with Juliantina; we were able to raise our voice for so many people out there who don’t have the opportunity to do so and who don’t have the freedom that I had. The transition in my career has been immense, but going through different experiences gave me the strength to go out and act. I do this because it allows me to be the voice of so many who don’t have one. Following what my heart says lets me do my job with a purpose,” confesses the artist who began more than 12 years ago in middle entertainment and today is one of the coolest faces on the small screen.

The growth that the Argentine has had has been tremendous, but she has also encountered unexpected challenges and obstacles. The industry is difficult, “as humans we are made to please. I think that it is one thing to pretend to fit in and quite another to want to belong. I don’t think it’s the same to fit in by changing who you are than to be with a group of people who are moved by the same things you are; however, I don’t look to change my way of being. I’m guided by the projects that align with my way of thinking. When I am old and I look in the mirror, I want to say ‘You did everything out of love’. I look to play roles that touch someone from a different point of view, but at the same time tell a message that I believe in.” And it’s precisely that, that she’s sure is how things are flowing and has been the success of her career.

She even told us a story of one of her castings, that she realized how the camera connects you to the audience, and because of that she is transparent with her acting and she feels that is part of the movement that is taking place with Juliantina.

Without a doubt, there are many girls, regardless of their sexual orientation, who have felt moved after seeing her performance as Valentina, who is part of a same-sex couple: “She encouraged them to speak without such filters. I don’t label myself and I want to convey that message. Of course, this opens up the conversation that you can have the relationship you want in the way you think it best; I think that these stereotypes and ideas that are so deeply rooted in society have finally begun to fall. I feel proud and responsible--even blessed--because so many girls have chosen me to be a voice that gives the message of equality and put it out there with the ideals of thousands of people. I am inspired by the change I see. As for the sexuality argument, it seems to me that it shouldn’t be a topic of conversation, not because it’s bad, but because it shouldn’t remain a taboo.” Macarena celebrates individuality and is sure that being yourself is the path to happiness, although she knows how difficult it is to translate into words.

And for the Juliantina fans comes a very important project: the movie that will take the couple to the big screen. Undeniably, it will mark a before and after in the history of Mexican television in which an LGBTQ+ couple transitions from a telenovela to a movie.

“It's beautiful to listen the community of women who are making themselves heard and who want to see the story that touched them so much. I thank God I was chosen to play it; it needed to be told. It is a romantic story, but above all, real. For me, it’s a response to the audience that’s socially responsible and their hope to see so much love and camaraderie. This opens a window for the world to be part of a turning point of love stories in general,” she emphasizes.

For her, it is important to go beyond generations, to reach entire families and that the audience connects with this moment of change. “It’s inevitable, urgent, and necessary that these issues are on the table, discussing important things requires courage. Talking about sexuality is uncomfortable, but it has to be done and we are opening the conversation. Recently, I had coffee with a fan from Brazil who told me that after a time of struggling, then seeing me on TV, and then on my social media, she realized that there was a life out there that she wasn’t enjoying. I want to end the prejudices and not have to explain, when many times you yourself are still discovering what is happening with you”.

Macarena is different, rebellious and breaking the rules since she was a child because she has a conscience that allows her to identify with what she likes and what she doesn't, although she admits that she couldn’t have accomplished it without the support of her family and fans who send her gifts, even from Korea, and make her feel special. 

“I like to break the rules and it’s important to learn how to say no and be an example without shame. End the excuses, give the answers from a place that comes from confidence in who you are,” she declares.

So yes, the answer is that Macarena is this cool, all the time.

--

Interview: Karla Jáuregui

Photos: Paola Vivas

Styling: Paulina Zas

[faranae]

If you don’t mind me asking but how can the word queer be used as a positive thing to say about the LGBT community, As every time I hear it it has been used in the negative way.

First thing’s first: I’m very sorry that’s been your experience Nonny. I don’t mind you asking at all, but it’s just not an easy question to answer. 

Here’s the thing: I’m not an educator. I’m just one queer dude trying to fight for the right to identify myself as I see fit without being tackled to the floor and accused of being a “cis white neurotypical homophobe” for it. (I do wish I were exaggerating, but my inbox has been hella wild this week and I can assure you I am maybe one of those things, possibly two but I am honestly just not ready to dive into the technicalities of what qualifies as cis right now.) 

As for your question: I can give my own take on things, but I’m the first to admit it will be biased. 

Story time! Long post incoming:

I hail from a tiny village in Ontario, Canada, where I was raised by my grandparents. 

Where I grew up in the early-mid 90′s and beyond, queer was used as a slur just as much if not less frequently than gay, lesbian, dyke, butch, twink, and any number of currently acceptable(?) LGBTQ+ terminology. Consider this my point of argument, I suppose: A good portion of the stigma is absolutely based in locale/environment. In my personal history, they were all bad. Especially since baby Fara was raised in the Roman Catholic school system. 

Then came the opportunity to leave: I was accepted into a specialized arts program at a high school in the city. I moved away, and nosy neighbours and an unshakeable reputation were traded in for public transportation and being lost in the crowd. It was the best thing to happen to my baby gay life. 

Ninth grade was a wild awakening. I’d already known for years that I wasn’t exactly “normal”, but the sudden exposure to all of these divergent teenagers was really something. I was quickly adopted into this massive group of queer peers, and there was a lot of education in that short year as I learned about myself and others through them. 

We were the group of kids that took up a good third of the cafeteria every free period, playing Magic: the Gathering and euchre and singing songs and laughing amongst each other. We were the theater kids, the artsies, the techs, and the nerds. We outnumbered the jocks and other social stereotypes by a decent margin. A quick social media check on my part shows most of those kids identify as LGBT, queer, or otherwise allies in their adult lives. 

Those kids taught me that queer was a weapon for us as much as it was for “them”. Someone on the bus calls you gay? Turn on your heel and plant an innocent kiss on your best friend’s cheek. Don’t be vulgar, but absolutely fight for what you believe in. Some were… Considerably more aggressive in their acts of expression. Queer was ours. It was what we made it. What that old lady on the bus said with disgust, we held over our heads with pride. 

A lot went wrong after 9th grade. My mother pulled me from the arts program and as such I was sent to a brand new school elsewhere in the city. What happened there made it very clear that experiences are not universal. Where I’d previously had a massive group of support and strength, I found myself forced back into the closet for my own safety. 

Not only was “queer” a negative expression once again, it was violent. 

Within a week of reluctantly admitting to a counselor at this new school that I wasn’t straight, I was very publicly pulled from PhysEd and assigned an isolated changing room for the rest of the semester. Only a few days later and my new peers suspected I was “one of the gays”, all without me saying a single thing in public about it. 

Make no mistake: I was a shy, quiet kid for the most part. I tried to be brave and embrace the change as I’d learned from my peer group at the first school. I made the mistake of wearing a pride pin to school after that; my quiet little rebellion against what they’d started to say about me. I held my chin up through the glares where I could, and shot coy smiles at those who used those words against me like they were supposed to mean something unforgivable. I even called a few girls pretty out of spite. (They were actually quite pretty, but also very ugly on the inside.) 

My “cocky” and “unapologetic” refusal to be insulted was met with a group of girls beating the everloving shit out of me while I waited for the bus after school that day. All because I was “queer”. I didn’t go back. 

A lot’s happened since then: I dropped out of high school and got my GED as soon as I was legally able. I found my tribe again after that, and reconnected with a good chunk of the original crowd. I discovered there was a word and culture based around my take on how relationships should be (polyamorous). I got married. Had a kid. Bought a binder. Did a lot of living and made a lot of mistakes. Still am. 

I hunted for literal years trying to find one word, one flag, one identity that fit me. What I wanted. Where I belonged. I was especially sore about it whenever Pride Month rolled around:

(From the end of pride month in 2018)

Most terms that seemed to fit always had some exceptions or exclusions that turned me off or disqualified me from using them by saying I straight-up wasn’t welcome. It was only in the past couple years that I finally said “fuck it” and settled on “Queer”, an identity I’d had since ninth grade but always wrote off as “too vague”. I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t vague, it was intentionally inclusive of anyone who wanted to use it. 

And that, that’s the important distinction there I suppose. Are there those who don’t want to use queer or find it makes them uncomfortable? Absolutely, and that should be respected. We all have different experiences; different origins that paint our perspective of what is and is not acceptable. To some queer is power or comfort, it’s rebellion, it’s a fist in the air screaming that we exist and aren’t going anywhere. To others, it just digs at old wounds. To another group, they read that it was a bad word online and dug their heels in. 

The problem lies in that only one side of this argument seems to be respecting those distinctions. If one does or doesn’t want the Q in LGBTQ to apply to them, that’s their choice. You don’t see gay dudes up in arms saying “There shouldn’t be an L in LGBTQ since I’m not a Lesbian and I don’t appreciate people implying I am.” Or you shouldn’t see that, anyway. And yet we see that very thing happening with the Q. 

Members of our community are being pitted against each other by people who have no business instigating such fights. The same rhetoric and strategies are being used to shove queer out of the spectrum as are being used to exclude aro/ace and bi folk, and trans to a point as well. 

The culture itself is being twisted. People aren’t looking into why and how queer has come back into the spotlight as a “slur”, when we’ve been peacefully using it ourselves and reclaiming it since the late 80′s. Hell, we were “queer” before we were ever “gay,” with that use of the word originating in the 1800′s (gay popped up as an alternative to homosexual in the early to mid 1900s). 

In 2005, when same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide here, we threw parties and held each other and cried at how far our queer butts had come. 

In 2020, I look at the next generation on social media and see them screaming that my identity is now an unforgivable and homophobic slur. 

I hope you can understand where I’m a little skeptical and even bitter here. 

We’re going backwards, and it hurts. 

So yeah. Queer is seen differently by many people based on our experiences and exposures. Unfortunately that paints it in very different lights in different corners of the community. 

I am queer. At no point will I ever apply that label to another person who doesn’t want it to be. In my experience anyone who implies that “the queers are trying to force you to be queer too” is either very ignorant, very misinformed, or malicious in their intent. 

It’s no different than the “foreigners are going to take our jobs”, “gays will corrupt our children”, or “foreign religions will take away our freedoms” arguments. They are started and spread with malicious intent, and latched on to by those who don’t yet know any better. It’s why civil discussion is so, so very important. 

Thank you for asking so politely, Nonny. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do much more than give some personal anecdotes, but the use of the word queer is something that isn’t entirely black and white for anyone nowadays. I can’t just pull a bunch of citations out of my butt and say “this is why it’s a good thing”, because it really is subjective you know? 

Besides, this is my blog, not my old Comms class in college. Nobody’s convincing me to write a full APA-compliant essay on the subject unless they’re paying or professionally grading me on it. 

[mychemicalficrecs]

hey, u got any good lesbian fics? can be a genderswap or irl girls, but no Gerard/mikey pls

Hi Nonny, here's some femslash for you!

Femslash

Didn't Get To Heaven, But You Made It Close by gala_apples, Ray/Mikey, 1k, Teen And Up Audiences. Ray's new to this thing, whatever it is. But she'll do it right for her girlfriend. Mikey deserves getting it right.

Ass-Kickin' Chick Music by ladyfoxxx, Frank/Gerard, 21k, Explicit. She's not someone's girlfriend. She's not anyone's anything. She's a fucking force. Gee doesn't know if she wants to be her or fuck her.

skipping school (what the bad kids do) by inkk, Frank/Gerard, 1k, Mature. L is for Lesbians. (In which class is skipped and a staff bathroom is occupied for questionable purposes.)

Rumors by orphan_account, Frank/Gerard, 2k, Mature. Frankie likes to mess with Gee during interviews and Gee hates it.

girls like girls by etselec, Mikey/Pete, 1k, General Audiences. A little Petekey genderbent ficlet based on the music video Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

Cloud 9 by OwlHooots, Frank/Gerard, 3k, Mature. Gee realizes that she's been bit by the cheesiest love bug.

Alazarin by victoriachase (orphan_account), Frank/Gerard, 1k, Not Rated. i'm on holiday at the moment, and i was bored, and i really desperately wanted to write a girl!frerard fic and i wanted to write a fic where they met on a train, so this happened, i am sorry in advance

Freighthopping by CryptoHomoRocker, Bert/Gerard, 4k, Teen And Up Audiences. Gee should probably be afraid of Bert, but she's too busy falling in love with her.

the world's not waiting by mirrorchord, Patrick/Gerard, 1k, Teen And Up Audiences. Patrick jerks off, at some point.

the joy of rediscovering you by xofrnk, Jepha Howard/Mikey, 2k, Not Rated. She's just a beautiful, pale expanse of skin and ink and perfect. Sometimes Mikey just doesn't know what to do with her.

Alone Above A Raging Sea by something_safe, Bert/Gerard, 13k, Explicit. It's the Summer of Like and Gee Way and Roberta McCracken are still the demonic duo. Sometimes. When they've not fallen out. About nothing. Mikey fixes everything, like always.

Some Hearts Are Gallows (I'm Not Here For Hanging Around) by blindlyseeking (orphan_account), Frank/Gerard, 24k, Mature. My Chemical Romance. The name even had that vibe to it: we’re going to conquer the motherfucking universe. It was like The Beatles or Bikini Kill. It was a name that pinned you against a wall and said, “You better remember me.” And she is a part of it. Gina, Michelle, Rae, Maddy, and Frankie are just getting their new band off the ground. The girls are leaving Jersey for the first time on tour. But Frankie has been head over heels for Gina since day one and in a blur of autumn, Polaroids, house parties, whiskey sours, car rides, and cassette tapes 2002 becomes the year that change everything.

Cherry Bomb by my99centdreams, Courtney Love/Gerard, 2k, Teen And Up Audiences. Gina opens her eyes, the sudden silence in the room almost dizzying and catches sight of Courtney’s scandalized expression in the mirror. She laughs and cuts off the first piece – the tiny snip making something flip in her belly - glancing down to see it resting in the sink. She takes a deep breath; it’s cool, she’s got this. “Flip the fucking tape over, will you?”

Hand On Heart by dear_monday, Frank/Gerard, 2k, Explicit. Gee doesn't think it's at all fair of Frank to just waltz in one day with brand new candy-corn-colored ink splashed all over her fucking gorgeous guitarist hands, bouncing around like an overexcited puppy on crack and insisting on showing her new art to anyone who comes within a fifty foot radius of her. Gee hates her, she hates her, she hates her. And also wants to fuck her brains out, but mostly just hates her.

Make Me Tremble (Make Me Shake) by Mondegreen, Frank/Gerard, 3k, Explicit. It's like any other Friday night horror marathon in the basement, and then suddenly it's not. Or: the one where Frank and Gerard are high school lesbians, and then they make out.

Get to Kiss that Twisted Mouth by Nokomis, Lindsey/Gerard, 2k, Teen And Up Audiences. Lyn-Z doesn't even really realize that the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, dressed in a black suit and red tie, is a woman until halfway through their first opening set.

Raspberry Swirl by brooklinegirl, Frank/Gerard, 16k, Explicit. The time that the whole band woke up as girls was maybe the weirdest.

girls girls girls by Bexless, Frank/Gerard, 3k, Teen and Up Audiences, Explicit. “Would you still be into me if I were a guy?”.

Earth Girls Are Easy by Siobhan_Schuyler, Lindsey/Gerard, 1k, Mature. Her gaze travels around the room, over a hundred faces, and unerringly lands on Gee's, like some sort of inevitable tragedy. Something in her chest skips and squeezes, watching Gee smile, eyes on someone else, some other girl who'd rather talk about art than live it. Someone not worthy of Gee and her kind face and her expressive hands and the way she smokes too much and drinks too much and feels too much and cares about Lindsey much, much too little.

Soft by ladyfoxxx, Lindsey/Gerard, 4k, Explicit. Always-a-Girl!Gee and Lindsey - unapologetic girl on girl porn.

Songs About Hips and Hearts by sinuous_curve, Mikey/Pete, 4k, Teen And Up Audiences. So, the point is, sometimes Mikey forgets she's a girl and it's really not that big a deal because even when someone they're touring with suddenly realizes that she is female with actual functioning female parts, nothing happens. Because she is also a girl with one older brother whose scary as shit in his own particularly odd way and three additional older brothers by proxy who have no compunctions about killing to defend her honor.

Three Times a Lady by corruptedkid, Gabe/Mikey, Frank/Gerard, 2k, Teen And Up Audiences. Gee is useless when it comes to girls. Mikey is not.

Pretty Rad by rage_for_love, Frank/Gerard, 3k [WIP], Teen And Up Audiences. In which Frankie and Gee venture into the world of motherhood, which turns out to be a pretty rad experience.

the noise that keeps me awake by ashers_kiss, Party Poison/Gerard, 5k, Mature. Lady!Party Poison/Lady!Gee, five times they fought, and one time they kissed and made up.

you say cut the stem, i say let's see the flower by userl4me, Frank/Gerard, 1k, Teen And Up Audiences. When Gee's school forces her to cut off her hair as part of the dress code, Gee sees no other choice. That is, until her girlfriend comes to the rescue with black hair dye and kissing.

No. 1 Party Anthem by orphan_account, Frank/Gerard, 4k, Explicit. Gee doesn't like parties. She does, however, like a certain punk with terrible hair who doesn't know how to turn down a dare.

Missing Period by revengera, Frank/Gerard, 1k, Mature. Gee groaned when a knock sounded at her door for the thousandth time that day. She stood up from her seat where she was quite happily signing slips of papers to get sick teenagers permission to leave school. Gee opened the door, being faced by none other than Frankie, who had been complaining about period cramps all day and really, Gee was beginning to think that the period may be a super one by how many times she had shown up at Gee's office that day.

cigarettes and chocolate milk by recklessfishes (orphan_account), Frank/Gerard, Patrick/Pete, 5k [WIP], General Audiences. The media really loves playing the “Who’s in Pietra Wentz’s pants?” game, and Pete wants them all to leave her the fuck alone.

Give Them Blood, Blood, Blood by orphan_account, Frank/Gerard, 2k, Explicit. Gee's heat always syncs up with her period. Frankie's willing to help her anyway.

Life Goes On by orphan_account, Frank/Gerard, 2k, General Audiences. Frankie is an angel who is forced to guard the gates of heaven. She falls in love with a woman who passes through them. The two of them are doomed from the very start. Pete is a djinn who is punished for his sins by guarding the gates of hell and falling in love with everyone who passes through them.

Let me hear your voice by 3cheers4sweet_romance, Frank/Gerard, 6k, Teen And Up Audiences. "The encounter was brief if you measure it in minutes, but it was long enough to make a deep impression on Frankie. She wanted to hear Gee's singing voice again and she wouldn't rest until she'd make her sing again." In this fic, Gee sings random ABBA songs and Frankie tries, with various degrees of success, to convince her to audition for the position of lead singer in a newly formed band.

Record Setter by orphan_account, Frank/Gerard, 2k, Explicit. "Frankie, y-you made me cum like-" she cut herself off with a breathy moan, "Fuck, like? Five times already? It hurts."

i'll make you mine (time after time) by inkk, Frank/Gerard, 1k, Mature. S is for Stargazing. (In which Gee is cuddly, Frank is a dork and they have super romantic sex in a field.)

Barely visible stars by giraffewrites, Lindsey/Gerard, 4k, Teen And Up Audiences. Gee had preferred it when she wasn't out to her school. The days when she could just be herself and not have abuse shouted at her as she walked the halls. The days when she wasn't scared of doing such mundane tasks such as catching the bus. And then Lindsey comes along, and maybe everything isn't completely shit for once. Maybe.

[suspiriu-m]

Examining Youth Culture

Youth Culture in television in cinema is a theme we’ve all seen before. In some way or another, we’ve all probably related or even seen ourselves in something we’ve watched. A lot of experiences we see in these coming of age style pieces most of the time have something to do with at least one of three recurring themes. Sex, drugs and alcohol. Character archetypes are also an important part of these stories too. To sum it up, we’re generally confronted with Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Popular Kids, Pot Heads etc.

A major point to take into account when looking at this type of media is the perspective the story is told from, and where it’s taking place. For example, Barry Jenkins’ 2016 film Moonlight, is completely different from 2018’s Love Simon, directed by Greg Berlanti. Moonlight tells the story of a young Black man named Chiron. Through three different time periods in his life, we see him come to terms with his identity and sexuality, all while living with his drug addicted mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Miami. Throughout the film Chiron not only faces the struggles of his sexuality within himself, but how his unaccepting peers react, his mess of a mother, and maneuvering masculinity without the guidance of his missing father. In a review written for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw says that Moonlight

“is a film about masculinity, the wounds and crises of which are the same for all sexualities, but conditioned by the background weather of race and class” ((Bradshaw Moonlight review – a visually ravishing portrait of masculinity).

Love Simon however, is a completely different ballgame. The juxtaposition between the two films is extremely noticeable, even from just from looking at their promotional images. While Moonlight is more of a serious, realistic and emotionally charged movie, Love Simon has more of a young adult, coming of age, happily ever after tone to it. In the film, the main character has to find his way through growing up, high school, coming out to his friends and family, but most importantly figuring out how Blue is. Blue is the person that Simon has formed a connection with through emailing each other. The only problem? He has absolutely no idea who Blue even is. One of the more important aspects of this film when looking to compare it to others is the fact that the main character and most of the cast are all white. Not only that, but it takes place in a much more suburban setting compared to that of Moonlight. Simon’s relationship with his parents is very strong, his friends are all super close to him and the impression is given that they would obviously support him once he comes out. Surprise, they do.

In terms of which character I related to from the selection of films and shows assigned, I don’t really feel like I can truthfully say that I felt some sort of connection with them. Being gay myself, there wasn’t a crazy amount of representation in terms of queer youth in the films. Yes in Mean Girls you had Damian but he was kind of underutilized and exaggerated. In Euphoria you have Jules who is a trans woman but that also isn’t something that I’ve experienced and won’t pretend to. Could I relate to a few aspects of her character? Of course, i’m sure anybody can. But am I able to say I identify with her? Definitely not. That’s not a bad thing though, trans stories need to be represented in the media. More importantly they don’t always have to be represented in some tragic story or situation. Even though we’ve seen more queer representation today than ever before. We still have a long way to go. Rachel Bays wrote an article for The Advance-Titan stating

“Out of 109 major studio releases in 2017 researched by GLAAD, roughly 13% had LGBTQ characters. Of these films, about 64% featured gay men, 36% featured lesbians, 14% featured bisexuals and 0% featured trans-inclusive content”(Bays The complicated history of queer representation in film: The Advance).

It’s imperative that we see more queer representation mashed with Youth Culture in our media because not every single person experiences the same thing, especially queer kids. In terms of Kids, Saved By The Bell and Mid 90’s, I don’t specifically remember any particular moments in which I personally felt any sort of strong connection.

Now, if we’re gonna speak about common themes in a lot of these stories, then here is where I can say I definitely connected with some situations more than specific characters. Sex, drugs and alcohol are topics we see come up in a lot of coming of age or youth centered stories. In Kids, the main cast is basically parading around the city smoking, drinking and fornicating multiple times throughout the entire day. In Euphoria, one of the main characters Rue suffers from drug addiction. Kat comes to terms with her sexual awakening and a lot of her storyline is focused on her coming in touch with that side of her, whether or not it was the best way to portray it. And most of the other characters are all seen smoking, drinking out having sex at some point in the series.

Growing up, especially in our teen years, we’ve all had the opportunity to partake in at least one of those activities previously mentioned. I know for a fact that I have definitely been to parties, drank alcohol, smoked weed. I’ve encountered hookups and the whole nine yards. Something that really stood out to me in Euphoria was the episode in which Jules ends up meeting with an older man in a hotel room late at night. We shall not name the character for sake of spoilers but those of you who watched know exactly who i’m talking about. That entire scene was just gut wrenching for me to watch and I know it was for many other young queer people as well. Everything about that scene was purposefully uncomfortable to watch from the cinematography, music, acting and the location.

Speaking of music, the soundtrack to a film or TV show is super important and a lot of the time helps the creators in getting their point across. Euphoria specifically used a lot of modern music but also threw in some classics as well. The singer-songwriter Labrinth played a big role in adding music to the show’s soundtrack. He even collaborated with Zendaya in making All For Us, the show’s theme and closing track. It was premiered in the last episode of the series and incorporated into the storyline with a performance by Zendaya herself. This song specifically is so important aside from the rest of the show’s music because it aids in showing Rue’s downfall at the end of the season. She goes through so much in her recovery and relapsing and her relationship with Jules that when Jules finally decides to hop on that train and leave even though Rue tells her it’s not the best idea, it absolutely crushed her. In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine, Labrinth stated “When you look back to your teenage days... it feels semi-magical but semi-crazy and semi-psychotic. I wanted to make sure the music felt like those things”(Marks How Labrinth Created the Perfect Soundtrack for HBO's 'Euphoria').

To help convey how certain songs can help in telling a story, I created a short playlist with songs that I felt matched certain plot points in the show. Without going into too much detail in an attempt to avoid spoilers, I want to give you guys a short explanation of each song about how I feel it can fit into the show. In no exact order, the first song I chose was Regulars by Allie X. The song is about trying to fit in with society and the people around you when you feel out of place all the time. Personally, I feel like this is a good representation of Rue when she comes home from rehab and has to try and blend back into society knowing that everybody knows where she was. Halsey’s Beautiful Stranger is about meeting somebody after being hurt so many times, or just being in a bad headspace and finally feeling like this person could be the one. This is a good explanation for how Rue feels about Jules when she first meets her. She’s hesitant but slowly starts to fall in love with her before Jules starts acting out. Contaminated by Banks is a piece about loving somebody but having their history or the other person's actions make you feel not so good about the relationship you have with them. This is how Rue feels after her first little fallout with Jules. They kind of have an on and off relationship throughout the season and Rue subconsciously has doubts. Simmer by Hayley Williams is a song about suppression. Suppressing your emotions, especially the bad ones like anger, fear, sadness, rage. Nate in the series suffers with a lot of mental suppression. He suppresses his feelings about his relationship with his father, his questioning sexuality, his feelings for a specific character. Although he does lose his cool multiple times throughout the show, it’s not until the end of the season that he really bursts and lets everything out. Another song from Hayley Williams with her band Paramore called Fake Happy is also on the playlist. Fake Happy, to put it simply, is exactly what the title suggests. Pretending to be okay when you’re really not. In the show Rue relapses a few times whether that be big or small, and she has to hide it from her friends and family.

Maddy and Cassie are both the pretty popular girls of this show, leading me to choose Rina Sawayama’s XS as a representation of them. The title XS, otherwise interpreted as “excess” is literally about money, appearance and materialistic items. All of which Cassie and Maddy display throughout the show. The popular cheerleaders with the nice clothes and toned bodies, the pretty makeup and done up hair. It’s a perfect representation of their characters in my opinion. Even though they do have storylines going deeper into their minds, this is what they portray on the surface level.

Hallucinogenics by Matt Masson is a song about going somewhere else most likely due to drugs, and feeling like a different person. Although the song is a bit lighthearted in terms of sound, I think it fits with the scene with Jules and Rue taking drugs together and tripping in her room together. Rue was wary about doing it especially after the fact that she just got clean, and she already has this war in her mind going on but she does it anyways because she likes Jules. Attack of Panic by Aly & Aj heavily focuses on anxiety, which is something Rue deals with multiple times throughout the show. Especially the episode when she’s in school and pretty much has a mental breakdown and runs to the bathroom and hides. Even though the character Kat isn’t the primary focus of the show, her storyline has a bit of line shined upon it multiple times. For her storyline i chose Doja Cat’s Cyber Sex. Kat becomes a cam girl at one point in her sexual awakening and kind of goes full throttle into it. The song talks about having sexual relations with somebody over the internet and that’s exactly what Kat does, except she sees it more as a way to make an income.

Last but not least, I of course had to choose Labrinth and Zendaya’s song made for the show All for Us. The song represents Rue’s feelings of not wanting to let her family down, knowing the struggles and pain they have gone through and not wanting to upset or disappoint them again. Everything she’s done to get clean and sober up has been because of them. She loves her family so dearly but in the end she just broke down again, all because of Jules and the mess that she got herself involved with pertaining to many of the other characters she meets throughout the show. I hope you guys enjoy the playlist and take a good listen to the lyrics and themes in each song! They might not be perfect, but to me they have a lot of commonalities with themes and specific moments and themes from the show!

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/playlist-for-euphoria/pl.u-AGAaiylr2l

[lawrencegarte]

detroit become racist for 1. and claire for 3

when i get called out for posting about dbh i’m dragging u down with me

Favorite character: i mean... connor

Least Favorite character: answering this is making me feel like i’ve definitely answered this before LMAO anyway uh. Uh. so many of them are very easy to hate! i guess gavin because he’s got that added terrible layer of being a fandom favourite for some incomprehensible reason (actually it’s because he’s a young white man)

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): that’s SO MANY SHIPS i don’t think i even have?? one???? oh no no i lied big time actually markus/simon is canon in my heart. um. i think kara and luther are cute together. uh. uh. the tracis?? are gay?? so that’s good! so there’s 3. i don’t think. i can come up with two more lol

Character I find most attractive: north is REALLY pretty unfortunately. oh also there’s a random android model that you see around sometimes that’s like the most beautiful woman i’ve ever seen??? thinking about her... OH also just remembered that the model that ralph is is rly pretty and also just straight made up like that face wasn’t modeled after anybody which is probably why it’s nice lol

Character I would marry: none of these bitches are worthy of my hand

Character I would be best friends with: UHHHH. uh. idk uh. simon seems chill. i don’t know if i would get along with most of these characters honestly?? i’m far too much of a bitch. maybe hank actually, i think i could handle him

a random thought: i want to replay detroit again but dude all of markus’s segments literally suck so much that thinking about being forced to play them makes me die a little bit

An unpopular opinion: rk900 shows up for MAYBE 10 seconds and i don’t think gavin reed wants to suck his dick

My Canon OTP: those two very naked lesbians. can i point out that they’re sex bots and wearing literally the least sexy underwear in existence. like they’re wearing sports bras. wtf.

My Non-canon OTP: *thinking about markus and simon and the fact that if u keep simon alive the game acts like this is not the case*

Most Badass Character: everybody in this game is a fucking loser

Most Epic Villain: society....

Pairing I am not a fan of: hankcon is bad and like yes the whole game is bad but i’m gonna execute anybody who ships father-son relationships in any media

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): ALL OF THEM LOL but ESPECIALLY kara

Favourite Friendship: hank and connor :’) they’re the only part of the game that i’d actually call good bc i’m a sucker and a bitch for found family shit

Character I most identify with: the blue haired traci played by bryan dechart’s wife bc i’m also an angry lesbian who can’t act

Character I wish I could be: jerry

and now.... She

How I feel about this character: she’s GOOD!!! like all my opinions on her just come from re2make really and like... bruh... she feels like a rly realistic older teenage girl?? her dialogue is funny, i love her attitude about everything, and taking on an apocalypse daughter was SO galaxy brain of her. i love claire. genuinely my fave and really just.. such a refreshing character after playing through leon’s campaign since they’re too cowardly to give their male characters any hint of personality outside of Cool

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: none bc they won’t give her a lesbian friend :/

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: obvi her relationship with sherry is just *chef’s kiss* but honestly playing through darkside chronicles on 2-player was a lot of fun bc her and steve bounced off each other rly well. praying for a cv remake so My claire can hang with steve

My unpopular opinion about this character: her redesign is literally superior in every way and idk how unpopular that is but it’s the truth. take the nostalgia goggles off. she looked worse.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: wish she was a fuckin dyke :/

Favorite friendship for this character: oh i thought that’s what the non-romantic relationship question was. okay i’ll just use this space to say that despite the fact they get like three scenes together i like her relationship w leon and i Really Wish they got to interact more in re2make :^(

My crossover ship: HMMM......... hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... honestly have no idea but a hot lady for sure. maybe one that gets her to eat a vegetable

[apriceonemotion]

Larries Are a Problem: An Essay by a Former Larrie

I spent about seven years of my life believing in theories with vague proofs, not only referring to Larry Stylinson, but plenty of other ships of real life people. Even though I was only a child and young teenager for the majority of that time, that doesn’t excuse that me and plenty of other people, some older than me, were blindly believing and creating different theories about two men that didn’t know we existed. It’s fair to believe in whatever you believe in with the information that we are given in the public and I honestly do not have any hate for anyone in those years that fully believed in those theories that were created, however, there was a line being crossed that even I was blind to notice.

Before you start furiously typing at your keyboard to call me an “anti” or a “het” or even a “solo harrie” and that I’m the problem, read this in its completion. This is coming from someone that was once like you, but grew out of it and realized that things had gone a bit too far.

I think a line needs to be set into place when it comes to shipping real life people. There is a huge difference in believing that two people would look cute together and fetishizing them, analyzing every move they make, and turning every song lyric into a theory. You have to realize that these people have real lives and are real human beings, not characters from a television show that doesn’t exist in our world. The two of them have lives outside of the ones that they show publicly and it’s pretty obvious that they keep a lot of the information about their private lives, well, private. But when you skew that into hiding information from the public because they are being forced, that’s when things get out of hand. I have watched in the years that I had been a fan of this group: larries publicly harassing online (and even offline) the family members and friends of all those involved. Even now, as the Watermelon Sugar video had been released, larries bombarded livestreams of the models in the video asking if Louis had been on set, if Larry was real, and things of that nature. Not only questions, but telling family members and friends of the two horrible things, threatening some, and even making a few of them make their account private or just deleted all together (ahem, Xander). They even make them say “Larry” in livestreams in order to get a sliver of proof, which is a desperate attempt to be honest.

But worst of all is the girlfriends of both of them. I have watched Eleanor Calder grow from the moment she started dating Louis in the way beginning of One Direction being formed, but I have also sadly seen her every move, every facial feature, every body part being picked apart by larries on every platform she’s ever been on. To this day, she will innocently post a selfie of herself and I will see tweets and comments floating around saying that she doesn’t look like herself, she’s ugly, or she just simply doesn’t look good. Or that she’s trying too hard and everything she does is to cover something up, even if there is no proof of something going on. There was even a whole theory about her having a twin because she apparently looked too different in her pictures. The girl that Louis had a baby with, Brianna, is still shamed and made fun of daily, even if she is just simply posting pictures of the child they had together. They have no shame in telling women that they are ugly, that they are doing things for attention, all because they are linked to a man they think is in a secret gay relationship. 

The trend of larries bombarding the comments and replies of these girls must have a very bad effect on them. Eleanor Calder especially since she’s been with Louis for about ten years now (on and off but the harassment has definitely been consistent). (Some examples: here, here, here) They have picked apart the way that she smiles (or if she doesn’t), the way that she acts, what she wears, how she talks, and who she hangs out with. Not to mention she got literally jumped once. It’s almost borderline misogynistic the way that larries think that it’s okay to shame and make fun of women just to support their theories. Of course, not all larries, but a majority is too many. 

I have been called homophobic by larries online for the past few months whenever I speak up about me disagreeing with what they believe in, but why have they never turned the camera around and looked at themselves? A majority of larries are straight - I didn’t conduct an experiment to figure this out, it’s just that a lot that I see end up being straight - and use them being allies and their gay mutuals that also believe in Larry as their defense of them enjoying a gay ship. They’re just supporting gay people, right? Wrong. Louis has countlessly said that he is straight, no sense of homosexuality in his bones. It’s been argued that he has stereotypical characteristics of a gay man but that is legitimately just stereotyping to think that way. 

The only proof that I’ve ever been given is that he sits “like a gay man” or moves his body “like a gay man”, and that in itself is basically homophobic to think that a man doing anything feminine has to be gay. We live in a time that it’s becoming more acceptable to blur the lines of what is feminine and masculine and who can wear what - it doesn’t matter what a person defines themselves as, they can dress and do whatever they want without it being deemed feminine or masculine. So, when the only reasoning for placing a straight man as gay is the way that he walks, talks, and acts is forcing a sexuality just because of the stereotype that gay men are more feminine in those ways. 

There is no way that me not believing in two people being together is homophobic. Just because I say “Larry isn’t real”, that doesn’t mean I hate gay men? I don’t understand the logic. 

Let’s discuss the Watermelon Sugar video. This is the main thing that got me into making this post (and entire blog). The video is very sex positive - the themes of the 60s and 70s being implemented are very symbolic as that was a time of embracing sexuality. Harry’s video was very colorful, showed women in a non-fetishizing way, and was a huge thing for a lot of sapphics that watched the video. But, it was also a very attractive video, and people are allowed to believe that Harry is an attractive person and want to be with him (even if we know that it won’t happen). And because of that, a large amount of larries got angry that people even dared to thirst over Harry on Twitter. Not enjoying ‘thirst tweets’ is fine in retrospect, but many, and I mean many, larries were wishing death on anyone that did them, even calling them ‘sick in the head’, which can be incredibly offensive to people with any mental problems. They filled people’s replies with angry tweets, throwing TPWK at the end of them (as if that helps), and trying to make them feel disgusting for tweeting what they did.

 A tweet came out after the announcement video released joking about how even his walk is hot, and larries came in heavy accusing the OP of sexualizing everything he does.

These incidents don’t stop at just the video being released, it’s been going on for years. Think pieces saying “Harry has always been deemed as a womanizer his entire time of being in the spotlight, so don’t sexualize him every chance you get” come out whenever someone makes a joke about how sexy he is. They bring out the quote from Harry saying he doesn’t like being called a ‘sex symbol’ and use that against anyone that makes these ‘thirst tweets’ about him, claiming that he wouldn’t want to come back to social media because of people that do that. 

There is an entire series on Buzzfeed where celebrity men read ‘thirst tweets’ and laugh about the ones that are descriptive and strange. Every celebrity gets tweets about them being attractive and/or sexy, it’s a very normal thing for this to happen since no one expects the celebrity to ever see it. It’s basically word vomit that they post in no hopes for the person to see. 

Let’s turn the camera back to you guys now. The smutty fics, fan-art, and tweets about what you wish Larry would do together. Those are okay? It’s a double standard. Save the energy that is put on attacking harries for ‘thirst tweeting’ if you aren’t going to feel the same way when larries do the same thing. It’s even stranger when you go back to how I’ve said a lot of larries are straight. Finding it hot when gay men kiss and have sex when you’re a straight woman is fetishizing the idea of gay men and what they do in their personal and private sex lives. If you believe that men shouldn’t fetishize lesbians’ sex lives, then why do that to two men? 

When larries stop harassing other fans, family members and friends of both of them, and sending death threats to anyone that gives them a differing opinion, I’ll stop believing that they are one of the worst people on social media platforms. Harry and Louis could do anything, and there will be theories, comments, and arguments. Have you ever wondered why none of them even play with any of your ideas anymore? It has been ten years. Something should’ve happened by now, don’t you think? 

Their family members and friends shouldn’t be so sick of all of this that they get upset about it on lives, that they turn off their comments, that they don’t always feel comfortable being online. 

Again, I used to be one of them (I sincerely apologize), but I do not see how any of this behavior is okay. It’s been plaguing Twitter and Instagram for years now and I just want this to be a smack in the face that it isn’t okay to be this way.