#he's an openly bi cis man which is more than most shows will do

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

other half of the last metaphorical kitkat

absolutely avalil could probably teach a dancing class for dancing around issues

Feel like avalil defo also have a tendency of bringing in distractions when beatrice tries to talk to em about issues as well

it’s not at all on purpose, they don’t even realize they’re doing it, but obviously that doesn’t change they’re doing it

as a matter of fact, that’s actually what i was thinking is the main or one of the main reasons for beatrice’s running away and then getting mcdonalds n stuff, but then lilith found her and sat down and communicated with her and while avalil still have heavy avoidance habit and are unaware, it gave beatrice hope

oh yeah defo on mary & shannon’s concern regardless of whether or not they’ve had past bad experience with vincent. it’s defo also just a basic stranger danger thing, even without all the supernatural stuff & reputations, because your friend going through a major traumatic event & upheaval to their life, and then suddenly shacking up with a couple of people who not only are strangers to you, but are/were complete strangers to your friend before they shacked up? not just red flags galore right there, they’re bathing and swimming in a pool of red paint

i’m 👀👀👀👀 at the concept of ava having unwittingly stolen what was gonna be reya’s method of becoming immortal. ooo wait hold on up, what if she’s an even shadier parallel to jillian, but instead of all her shady and morally dubious being for someone else, it’s all for her (reya’s) own sake

probably took ava in under her wing and became a mentor and/or motherish figure to her, but unknown to ava until too late, it was just to boost reya’s pr image so she wouldn’t have as much scrutiny on her and her shady actions

Also q q, would you say lucifer’s a good and/or least a fun show, or?

Yeah, it's not intentional, it's just the habit they've formed over millennia. Neither of them like to talk about their problems, so they changed to adapt to each other's coping mechanisms. Lilith participates in whatever zany antics Ava needs to distract herself, and Ava makes herself a reliable but quiet safe zone for Lilith to hide in. It's all done with the utmost love but it's soooo unhelpful in the long-run. And it all comes to a head when Beatrice, young, lonely, modern (She's a modern woman, Lilith, modern women talk about their feelings, isn't that horrifying?) gets involved. Bea has spent her entire life feeling ignored and like she has to repress herself, and it's not great when she thinks Ava and Lilith are doing what her family did: ignoring her needs and fears. So things come to a head when she runs away, and Lilith goes to get her, and after the mushroom-fueled binge they have their talk and Lilith actually makes an effort to be open with Bea and let Bea be open with her.

Ava is a tougher nut to crack because she'll let them open up to her, but she won't reciprocate, not until things really boil over and she can't distract herself anymore and just breaks down one day (maybe when Jillian asks Bea to turn Michael into a werewolf and all of Ava's Diego-based trauma comes back in full-force). I really think Ava has had to deny herself the chance to heal from things as a means of survival. Sure, she's immortal, but time can kill where normal means won't work, and when you experience the kind of things she has, alone and surrounded by danger on all sides, time can drive you mad if you let it. Of course, spending literal thousands of years with these untreated psychological wounds will also drive you mad, you just won't realize it.

When Beatrice decides to live with Ava and Lilith full-time, Shannon and Mary both show up to give the Shovel Talk of the century. We're talking claws and fangs out, eyes yellow, every word comes out as a growl, the works. Ava and Lilith are not really impressed, but they do swear an oath to take care of Bea and treat her well. Shanmary are still wary of them, and they take measures to ensure that Beatrice gets plenty of non-girlfriend time to keep her balanced.

I have so many ideas for Reya's whole deal, generally. Since we never got the chance to really know anything about her, the field is wide open for any interpretation. Maybe she's an amoral sociopath who manipulated Ava to get the philosopher's stone. Maybe she's a morally dubious pragmatist who thought her becoming immortal (through whatever means necessary) would be the best thing for everyone, including Ava. Or maybe Ava swallowing the stone wasn't an accident but exactly what Reya wanted. Maybe Ava was a test subject, or (if Reya is Worse JillianTM) she's like Michael and Reya was trying to save her. Who knows? Certainly not us. And probably not Ava either, because I can't imagine Reya was very forthcoming with answers regardless of the truth, and she also may not remember everything after so much temporal separation.

The real question, then, is whether Reya managed to find another way to become immortal or otherwise persist into the modern day. And if so, where is she and what the fuck is she up to now?

And I would recommend Lucifer, it's very fun! I love the characters and the take on biblical lore. It is a police procedural too, so if that's not your jam, then don't feel like you have to watch it. But Lucifer as a snarky, bisexual menace in LA is very fun.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for being condescending towards an asexual kid in GSA?

🙃🏳️‍🌈 to find later

Long post so buckle up.

I (17, they/it/he) am one of three co-leaders of my school’s GSA, along with R (18, she/her) and N (17, he/him). All three of us are openly bi, and I’m also openly trans and (most importantly) very loudly aromantic. We’re all in 12th grade now but we were leaders last year (in 11th grade) too. The school/GSA is small enough that all four grades (9–12, so around 13–18 years old) are in the same GSA, there’s no separate upper grade and lower grade groups. We also have two advisors, both cis queer teachers; and some younger queer faculty members also join sometimes for formal events. We take turns running events during club time, such as fun crafts or watching music videos. Sometimes we also do educational stuff or documentaries, including having teachers come in to facilitate discussions.

I’ve been planning (since early December) to run a two part series of discussions about asexuality and aromanticism (separate discussions of each). I really just wanted to do one day about aromanticism, but R said that if I did that, people would derail it and just talk about asexuality anyways, which both N and our advisors also agreed made sense. So, it’s two days, and the asexuality one is first so that the aromanticism one can be closer to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW).

There’s a girl in GSA, let’s call her A (16, she/her), who’s in 11th grade. She’s very socially awkward and if someone points out that she’s accidentally said something rude or offensive she’ll make a big deal out of not knowing and generally derail the conversation. Also, two years ago A made a ton of “jokes” about me and my little sibling (16MtF) being “secretly dating.” When I asked her (politely at first) to stop, she said she was just joking around, and kept doing it. I asked her again and also asked the theatre teacher and school counselor for help, and eventually she did stop. But A kept following me around and trying to be friends with me, and I was super uncomfortable to the point that I asked the school counselor to facilitate a conversation between A and I so that I could ask her to fucking stop. It somewhat worked. Now she still keeps trying to start conversations with me in the hallways and such, but I just brush her off or ignore her.

The one place I can’t do that is during GSA. Since I’m a leader, I have to be civil to everyone and actually talk to people (R, N, and I set norms at the start of the year during our planning meetings). A is asexual but not aromantic, and today she showed up like 5 minutes into lunch (cafeteria lines are annoying) and loudly asked if she was late. We weren’t doing anything in GSA today, just chilling. At some point during the meeting I announced casually that next week we’d be discussing asexuality, and then the week after that we’d talk about aromanticism, which leads nicely into ASAW during February break. When I said this, A immediately said that she would be extra ace that week [during ASAW]. I was like, “during aromantic spectrum awareness week?!?!” in the same tone of that “during pride month?!?!” meme. She looked like someone had just given her an F on the most important test of the year and said she hadn’t known.

I also made a comment about how there’s way more openly aspec people at our school than at most schools, and N said that maybe the presence of role models is part of that (clear subtext: he was referring to me). I said pretty loudly (more people could hear) that it was kinda funny that I’m the “ace role model” when I’m literally not asexual. A looked super lost and confused at this, and I think she might’ve thought I was ace, even though I’m super open about not being ace, and have told her directly more than once.

Here’s where the potential assholery comes into play. There’s an ad for PrEP that was fairly common on the back covers of theatre playbills in the past year. The ad shows a Black man dressed in ripped leggings with fishnets, shiny knee-length heeled leather boots, and some sort of white leather harness, doing a bridge pose with one leg extended upwards so that the “r” in PrEP is resting on the sole of the boot. The ad has a bright red background and text that says “you cast of PrEP options is changing” along with a small QR code and website link. The pose is somewhat provocative, but not out of place on a playbill for an all-ages show.

During GSA, A was saying that she thought the ad was bad, because of the leather being “fetish gear” and “weird” (basically the same arguments people use to say that gay people shouldn’t be allowed in public). I told A that there’s nothing wrong with someone wearing leather, and she said that “it’s fetish gear and that’s disgusting and degenerate and just bad advertising!”

I explained calmly, like I would to a child (although I probably wouldn’t talk about this topic with a child), that PrEP is a medicine that people take if they anticipate having sex with someone who’s HIV-positive, so it’s okay that the ad is somewhat suggestive. She seemed to accept that, but still said that the leather was weird, and the ad should’ve shown “a diverse group of people getting pills at a pharmacy” instead, because “fetish gear” was too much.

I asked if she thought that all leather clothing was inherently fetishistic, to which A said yes, and then I asked, “do you know that people can’t just choose fetishes?”

She hadn’t known that, but she still said the ad was too sexual. I pointed out that it was a fairly well-targeted advertisement, using theatre references, but maybe A was not part of the target demographic. I also said that sometimes outfits are just hot without there needing to be any fetishes involved, which she didn’t refute, and that even if it was a fetish, that wouldn’t make it inherently “bad” or “degenerate” at all.

A said that she still didn’t like it, and I told her that she was entitled to have whatever feelings she wanted to have, but that doesn’t mean the advertisement itself is a problem.

Another person (17, he/him) called out “[OP], what do you think about kink at pride?” in a sort of nonchalant way, so I walked over while saying “i’m pro–kink at pride.” The conversation eventually moved in other directions, and then club ended and we had to go to our next classes.

TL;DR: given my position of power and responsibility as a GSA leader, AITA for being kinda condescending towards an ace person who’s 2 years younger than me because she was being very sex-negative about an ad for PrEP?

What are these acronyms?

[joculatrixster]

same anon. my guess is that it has something to do with ships and the treatment of male/masc-presenting cookies and female/fem-presenting cookies. i have more but i couldn't think of anything else atm lol

DING DING DING we have a winner :D

ppl in this fandom hate lesbains so much its not even funny! why is espressoline obvs canon to everyone but seamoon(which is so heavy-handed that at this point if devs made a seamoon sex tape I doubt ppl would admit after watching they r lesbians) has such a vocal antifanbase?? the idea that u cant ship that ONE fem w/ men is apparently against their constitutional rights or something idek yall just need all women to love a man and hate wlw lesbian representation ig. ofc ships like espressolien have anti-fans but its not as near controversial and its the most POPULAR CR SHIP???

actually, name a fandom that ain't mostly fem characters that the most popular ship is wlw or nblw cause that's fucking rare everyone loves their gay men but hate the gay women. god forbid a woman is bi/pan because ppl will either declare shes a lesbian(ignoring her attraction to men which is fucked) or hate her to high heavens and cr is NOT exempt from this but I'm glad its not as common to just straight hate women openly here so good job fandom u did SOMETHING right

ALSO barely anyone talks about characters like rye/rose/skating queen outside of shipping. the most popular characters and the ones devsisters seem to like the best r masc! thousands of espresso, almond, rougefort(ik they r nonbinary but they r MASC nb most ppl in this fandom treat them like a gay man dont @ me) fan pages yet the fems r left dry. Actually, the most popular fems r cutesy children or characters like Latte who ppl only treat as A SEX OBJECT and barely explore her past shipping or uwu creampuff mommy or espressos sister!!!! if the character is fem and popular u best believe ppl find their schtick hot or they just got an update like cocoa dw cocoa once ur 10 minutes of fam is up ppl will forget about u like they did before this. it happened w/ moon rabbit it'll happen with her too actually I kinda hope it does cause yall only like cocoa when shes mint's little wifey otherwise she has nothing in yalls eyes. ofc that's a sweeping statement but the wider fandom treats her like this because DEVS treat her like this. shes nothing w/out mint and THAT'S FUCKED UP. why is this woman defined by her heavily implied partner. why cant she have a story outside of mint loves her. good for her now give me something more than that, give her friends and adventures that has nothing to do w/ him. he has it why not her?? tbh I haven't watched the update vids so hey maybe I'm wrong and he's barely in this story but I have no hope in devsisters

don't get me started on the butch/stud to nb, trans women or trans MAN(wtf?!?!!?!?) pipeline this fandom has!!! god forbid a she/her wear a suit must not be a cis woman cause why would a cis woman ever want to explore their gender. yall rlly showing how u think trans men r just women in suits with that one. the trans women one is actually better but not all trans women will be masculine and if u only hc the masculine/gnc cookies like aloe or sour belt r trans women ur fucked up. trans women can be feminine cookies like cheesecake or rose too but why r those hcs never as popular??? rhetorical question its because the wider fandom has got issues seeing trans women as regular women well sucks to suck because trans woemn r just women they come in all shapes and sizes like all women do and they r not all just masculine gnc ppl like yall seem to want them to be

[cvastals]

ok heres my 8th char * starts crying cuz im getting ahead of myself bt idc ig *

* brenton thwaites, cis man + he/him  | you know abel romanov, right? they’re twenty-seven, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, their whole life on and off? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to the system only dreams in total darkness by the national like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole ordering coffee with an ice cube because you’re too impatient to wait for it to cool, unhealthy obsession with everything being perfect, forcing on a smile so often it aches thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is december 3rd, so they’re a sagittarius, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

background.

second child 2 senator vaughn and philanthropist adelaide who’s currently running for irving’s mayor, younger brother of cain!! the romanov’s r quite well known fr their All American n Lavish lifestyle

growing up abel worshiped cain he was the cool older sibling who cld do it all n still maintain the lifestyle he wanted/their parents expected n abel wanted nothing more than to follow in their footsteps

he tried his best to keep up, did everything cain did, but his grades were always just a bit lower, or his form was always just a bit off, he always felt second fiddle, like it was his role in life as the second child

abel ignored it the best he could for most of his life but he started to notice a different side of cain that he didn’t show their family and a side that :/ abel didn’t like or know at all that was quite vile and this was when some resentment started to form bc their parents thought of cain as their Golden Child n didnt see what was going on behind the scenes whereas abel tried his best to be genuinely good if he could help it

by his senior year of high school things were starting to look up a bit, his already rly good grades were managing to improve, he was on a bunch of social teams, and the coach was saying it was looking good for him to become captain of the soccer team by his second semester, which would look good for scholarships

bt bc i hate my muses obviously this was not going to happen?

abel was still subconsciously trying to impress his family, his siblings, the people around him, wearing himself out until he was stretched far too thin, and he paid for it with one wrong move during a soccer game that had his knee popping out of place and shattering

it was really really really bad, he was in a cast for a few months bc it needed several surgeries, obviously sports were permanently out of his future, he still walks with a limp in his right and is in need of a cane to this day

this sent abel into a really bad depressive spiral sighs that he didn’t really talk to anyone about cause he’d trained himself at that point to just keep things to himself and never reveal his emotions so that no one could catch him vulnerable or have an upper hand on him

however this was the final nudge he needed to really become his Own Person after realizing it’d gone too far and he’d gotten too bad (on medication now to regulate when he gets out of control/starts to get bad again bc it does happen from time to time)

told his parents fk ur money! n moved out of home, had a rly lovely letter of recommendation from airi’s dad that got him into medical school, started joining different teams tht he thought wld b more fun (radio, chess, etc.), starting to distance himself from his siblings a bit too (mostly out of shame)

personality.

rly started to loosen up, threw a lot of parties at the romanov summer beach house without telling his parents n would purposely act out/make more friends than he ever had trying to uphold the family image

is still . quite stiff around the edges to this day tho, thinks everything through and has like daily planners he writes down his entire days in to the Second old habits die hard its jst how he functions at this point

had another rly rly bad depressive episode when cain went missing bt like everything he does? he internalized it baybee!

is like overly nice tho he just rly struggles expressing himself/being openly emotional and vulnerable with ppl he thinks they’ll view it as weakness tho he’s a bit desperate to properly let someone in

when cain came back (will b explained in james’ bio) their parents encouraged abel to keep an eye on them n it made abel :/ another reason fr resentment in his eyes (he still loves his brother bt bc hes so bad at expressing himself he thinks hes gna make cain worse if anything)

has been with several ppl bc hes kinda desperate fr approval/fr ppl to need him so hes been quite a good bf in the past bt his incapability to properly open up has put a real Damper on things

likes to think hes in perfect control of his emotions bt explodes a lot bc hes bottled things up fr years

is in no way a Bros Bro but will blush over his shirtless guy friends sometimes then b like . awww so endearing of me i must love my friends sm<3 like jst doesn’t realize he’s Bi LKSHDGKLHSDKLG he wldnt even freak out if he found out he’s just clueless.

thts all . i can think of now ok bye<3

connections.

exes???? he wld have a Few methinks

fwb’s/past hookups/ur regular old Spice

obvs he’s never been w a guy before but i am So Desperate fr a funny/cute plot where a friend or even jst a random hits on him/Opens His Eyes and he goes wow this is all starting to make sense.

ppl he has a crush on…………. bt wld never say anything abt it . in his current Frivolously Unemotionally Emotional state

family friends/ppl he grew up with?? or ppl who knew him before he separated himself from his family a bit n knew him as a diff guy n is like ‘omg wtf lol’ now

obvs . some friends Bleathe

enemies?? ppl who he got annoyed with n jst lost it on bc it was a wrong place wrong time Situation.

thts all i can think of rn very basic bt teehee

[chaptersofnow]

Triplets of Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder

Bio’s under the cut

Name: Cloudburst Showers Nickname(s): Drippy

Age: 25

Pronouns: They/Them/He/Him

Identity: Nonbinary gay man

crush/relationship: 

Parents: Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder

Sibling: Cyclone Whirl, Monsoon Gale (triplets)

Special Talent: Vocal Mimicking, acting 

Occupation:  Voice actor

Location: Las Pegasus

Likes: Anime, cool weapons, comics, salty snacks Dislikes: getting babied, being called cute (its embarrassing!)

Bio: One of the three triplets born from Lightning Dust and Rolling thunder Often mistaken for the oldest sibling being much taller, deep voice, and full time job (not to mention act the most mature). Drippy has always tend to stay away from spending time with their siblings finding their competitive natures very annoying. He wants nothing to do with their flying challenges, only wanting to be alone and watch his shows. He is very quite, and very drab in nature. However when he does speak up he has a deep smooth voice and a sharp tongue, he can scare the living hell out of Cyclone and Monsoon. None the less his mothers love him loving giving him many nicknames, and teasing him relentlessness when they show up basically uninvited to his house to eat dinners together.  Drippy know's their mother's show up to eat at him place the most as the is the only with a steady and well paying income. To top it off he hates being babied and tends to get in fights with them about their an adult and that they shouldn't treat him like some kid, which always get dismissed by some jokes and comments from the two mares. Drippy, despite most of what can be gleamed from them, they love anime. They enjoy loud action packed animes with cool fighting, and can be found spending their free days at home binging TV and eating a ton of snack like a highschooler.

🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️🌦️

Name: Cyclone Whirl Nickname(s): Wally

Age: 25

Pronouns: She/Her

Identity: Straight Cis Girl

crush/relationship: 

Parents: Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder

Sibling: Cloudburst Showers, Monsoon Gale (triplets)

Special Talent: Flying 

Occupation:  Professional stunt flyer

Location: Califoalnia 

Likes: Stunts, action movies, explosions Dislikes: money problems, birds

Bio: Cyclone whirl, one of Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder's triplets While Wally and her siblings are triplets they grew up feeling more like they were twins with Monsoon while Cloudburst was their older brother, who often isolated from them and called them annoying. Cyclone thinks Cloudburst is pretentious as hell and hates it, but its ok because she knows their mom's like her and her brother Monsoon more anyways because they got cutiemarks for being really good fliers just like their mother's wanted. Cyclone Whirl learned all she knows from Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder and joining them in their line or work with Monsoon when old enough. They love the crazy stunts they get to do. When word got around that Ex-Wonderbolt leader Rainbow dash was bringing back the Wonderbolts after they disbanded and was looking to train fliers for the new generation, Cyclone and Monsoon were quick to sign up. They may have learned to hate rainbow dash with every fiber in their body but, the chance to be a wonderbolt like their mother's themselves once dream was a once in a life time opportunity. They trained hard for the Cloudsdale audtions, with on a moon's time before the wonderbolt's crew would arrive left Cyclone came in contact with the worst luck. Breaking her wing during one of their stunts, rendering her incapable of even audition to be a wonderbolt. Her brother Monsoon, however did make it in and she has never hated her own brother more. she's incredibly jealous and wishes she could have had the chance to compete. Not to mention their mother's keep dragging them to any training's their allowed to watch (as long as the behave, in the words of rainbow dash)

🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀

Name: Monsoon Gale Nickname(s): Moon

Age: 25

Pronouns: He/Him

Identity: Cis bi man

crush/relationship: 

Parents: Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder

Sibling: Cyclone Whirl, Cloudburst Showers (triplets)

Special Talent: Flying 

Occupation:  Wonderbolt in training

Location: Califoalnia

Likes: Magazines, scrapbooking, storm flying Dislikes: getting yelled at, being a dissapointment

Bio: One of the three triplets of Lightning Dust and Rolling thunder Monsoon Gale grew up feeling more like a twin to only his sister Cyclone Whirl than their other sibling Cloudburst who often snapped at them when he wanted to be alone. Monsoon and Cylcone were taught all their flying tricks by their moms growing up, developing a passion for it. He likes how it feels to be so far above it all, feeling the clouds and wind and weather through his mane. While taking on a bit of a mean side from his family, he is one of the nicest ones of them. He tends to be mean for no reason with comments he makes, sometimes not really understanding the thing he is saying are rude having just picked them up from those around him. He is does have a sense of good nature with helping out others and even being a genuine fan of the EX-wonderbolt member, Rainbow dash. Which he would NEVER tell his family. His sister would never let him know a moment of peace ever again and his mothers might go ahead and disown him. So when THE Rainbow dash began recruiting young pegasus to begin training them to become a new generation of wonderbolt he was ecstatic. Even his sister could look past the rainbow dash part of it and be excited by the potential to become one of the biggest things known to flyers. When the auditions to cloudsdale rolled into town, well Monsoon feels a little guilty feeling this way, but he was secretly happy that his sister ended up unable to join. He knows her accident is terrible and she's lucky to only break the wing, but she did only break the wing and she's fine now. Now he could openly work along side his hero and openly admire her skills without his sister causing them trouble. Though his family still shows up to as many training as their allowed to and he gets very awkward, often giving rainbow dash the cold shoulder out of no where when they watch him.

[nomattertheoceans]

I feel like I picked up on most of the racist tropes in Maas’ books but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the homophobia in them

Hi Non!! Thanks for the ask :) 

Just an fyi if people didn’t see it, Anon is referring to my tags on this post about death of the author and the importance of criticizing media without taking into account the creator’s intent.

So yeah, regarding Maas. There’s a lot of ways in which I find her writing homophobic, I’ll divide them in different categories to try and make it clearer because my mind works in twisted ways x)

You should also know that I haven’t read Crescent City past the first few chapters so I can’t talk about this book (what I heard isn’t great regarding this issue but I haven’t read it so I won’t comment on it)

(this got long so I’m gonna use a read more)

worldbuilding

I think her worldbuilding tends to reflect a homophobia that she might not be aware of. Her entire world is built on heteronormative ... norms (lmao sorry I don’t have a better word I haven’t slept in more than 20 hours) that don’t leave any space for queer people to thrive in.

Throne of Glass actually got the less awful bit on this one, we’re shown that Hasar’s girlfriend Renia would become Empress if Hasar was crowned, and Aelin’s uncle was openly gay, so I guess compared to ACOTAR it’s better.

ACOTAR gets the worst of this: The fae society is painfully mysoginistic and by extend, homophobic. Mor is basically sold into marriage at sixteen, to a man, without regards of how she feels about it, because women are considered a breeding stock. The Illyrian women are viewed in the same light. Even Feyre is expected to be making heirs when she’s about to marry Tamlin. Yes, all these examples are painted as bad things in the books, but it doesn’t take away the fact that there are also considered normal within the society we are presented with. When the entire world is built around cishet dynamics (whether good or bad), it shows us that queer relationships are not the norm here, they’re outsiders from their own society (btw considering women as ‘baby makers’ is also transphobic but I’m not gonna open that can of worms).

The mating bond in itself is the biggest heteronormative concept in her books. As Rhys explains it in ACOMAF, it is literally intended for couples to make the strongest babies. It doesn’t care about love between partners, its primary goal is to perpetuate the species. It’s a natural instinct that we’re shown is basically impossible (or at least very difficult) to fight against. We’re shown that the woman has to make the man a meal to “seal the deal”, we’re shown that men become extremely violent towards other men they consider a threat when they’re influenced by the bond (by the way that’s toxic masculinity but it’s not what this post is about).

I believe that Maas didn’t intend for the mating bond to be a possibility between mlm or wlw couples, but that she retconned it in ACOWAR. Which in a sense is good, I’m all for queer soulmates! But the concept she invented here doesn’t have much room for non heteronormative relationships, and it becomes painfully obvious when you try to apply the mating bond logic to wlw/mlm couples. It brings many questions to mind: if it’s intended to make babies, does it mean that the mated mlm couple has one of the men be a trans man? If that’s the case, why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she spend more time on telling us their story? If they’re both cis men, then why would they have a mating bond, something specifically designed to help with species continuity by making babies? To me, it’s proof that she didn’t think it through, she thought it was cute to have two men be mates just like our main couple was, and didn’t stop to consider how the mating bond didn’t allow for this to happen organically because it exists in a vaccum of cishet privilege where she didn’t think about the consequences of including it in her books without elaborating on it. 

We can also see that queer people aren’t expected to be the norm in that society. Feyre is genuinely surprised when Mor tells her that she likes women, as if it was this groundbreaking thing she never even considered. I’m not going to get into details as to why I hate Mor’s coming out (I love Mor being a wlw but really, really, hate that scene), but the fact that she hasn’t felt comfortable enough to come out in five centuries is very telling of how unaccepting the fae society is of queer people. So yeah, there’s a queer bar where she hangs out but like... that doesn’t mean it’s accepted. One of the main reasons why queer bars started existing in the first place was to become a safe space for people to be themselves, so you know, I kinda take it as another proof of how unopen-minded the fae society actually is.

lack of queer characters

Overall, we don’t have a lot of confirmed queer characters. Off the top of my head, I can think about (of course I might forget some so that might not be 100% accurate, I haven’t read the books in a long while):

TOG: Hasar and Renia, Aedion, Orlon and Darrow

ACOTAR: Mor, Helion, Thesan, Andromache, Nephelle

Note that I’m not counting unnamed characters. I don’t consider “x’s lover” as a developped enough character to count as representation, come on.

Out of all these characters, only two of them are in the main cast of their respective series (Aedion and Mor). The others go from “mentioned” to “secondary character” at best. I’m not saying that all of her characters have to be queer, but out of such a big cast of mains, one in each series seems very little.

construction of these characters

On top of not having many characters that aren’t cishet, the characters we do have aren’t very well handled by the story.

Hasar is repeatedly described as being ugly, despite most of the other characters being described over and over as breathtakingly beautiful.

Aedion compares bisexuality to forced prostitution.

Helion is basically shown as sleeping around with everybody.

Mor’s sexuality is kept so ambiguous that there’s debate as to whether she’s actually bi, or rather a closeted lesbian.

Renia barely talks, Darrow is a jerk. Orlon, Andromache and Nephelle are figures of the past that we never meet

This is a problem mainly because of how small in numbers the queer characters are. The more diverse cast you create, the easiest it gets to avoid hurtful tropes. I wouldn’t mind Helion being a bi man sleeping around all the time if he wasn’t the only bi man in ACOTAR. Nor would I mind Mor’s tragic backstory if we had other wlw characters. By reducing her cast to such little numbers, she’s creating problems in her writing. She’s telling us that bi men sleep around and never settle down, she’s telling us that sapphic women will only get tragic stories and never find love again.

In the end, the combination of a heteronormative worldbuilding and the lack of work put into the queer characters we are given makes it impossible for me to not consider her books homophobic.

To be clear,

I don’t think Maas does this out of malice. I don’t think she’s a homophobe who hates queer people or anything. I also don’t dislike her books. They’re a fun read, and there’s a reason why ACOMAF is one of only two audiobooks I always have on my phone! Hell, I even write fanfic with her characters. But I think it’s important to be critical of her books, particularly in regards to issues such as racism, mysoginy, or homophobia.

To go back to the original post from yesterday, this is why ‘death of the author’ is an important point here. I’m not saying that Maas intended to be homophobic or that she built her world expressedly to exclude queer people. But in the end, that’s what happened, and we can’t brush off the critics of queer people and people of color just by saying “well, the author didn’t mean it that way.”

I do think that she includes queer representation only as an afterthought in her books, and it shows. Mor’s coming out was poorly handled because she didn’t consider the ramifications of it, just like the mating bond suddenly applying to queer relationships. Her societies are based on cishet white upper class America and that leaves little to no place for queer people (and people of color) to thrive in her stories. From what I see, she doesn’t seem interested in consulting with sensitivity readers over these issues, and as long as she doesn’t swallow her pride and listen to the people that are affected by it, she’s not going to get better on these points.

[nerdygaymormon]

Sorry, this is a super long ask, but I had some thoughts I wanted to articulate at a person, not just in a post 😅 I had this thought about the article from Elder & Sister Renlund. It was then reinforced when my mom (who I'm not out to) sent me some quotes about God loving his children after she had talked to a family friend who's teen daughter is bi and very angry at the church (And I will admit, the quotes my mom sent we're a lot more loving than anything from the Renlunds). 1

I'm tired of the only reference queer members get about God loving them is that he loves them inspite of their queerness. It's not presented that straight forward always. It's usually presented as "God loves all his children, whether they're following his commandments or not" which isn't a bad sentiment within itself (And maybe that's helpful for some queer people sometimes, idk). 2

I also understand how it can seem a helpful message to share with queer members as a cis straight member. But one of the biggest things that has held me back from exploring my sexuality and gender identity is this idea. By identifying and living openly queer, sentiments like these tell me I am actively rebelling against God. 3

And if I'm actively rebelling just simply by being myself, then why should I keep any other commandments? Sure, maybe if it's just that one commandment I don't follow and I follow everything else perfectly I can still be saved, but I'm still human! The rest of those commandments are still often hard to follow! And if I spend all this time figuring out my queer identity, only to reach heaven and have that taken away... then I don't wanna go to heaven anyway. 4

So maybe our fellow members, when talking to queer members, can stop with the "God still loves you, despite your queerness!" & can instead say "God loves you, queerness very much included!" (Any higher up leadership doesn't get to say this until they get their lives in order & stop being homophobic/transphobic. You can't tell me God loves me if you're out here telling me he doesn't through your policies.) Anyway, this has been bubbling for a little bit and I wanted to get it out of my head 5

————————————————————

My sense of it is that our top church leaders talk to the members about us. For many years there’s been at least one, often more than one, talk at General Conference that mentions queer people, with gay people getting the most attention. 

The leaders tell the members what they believe the Lord thinks and lament that the world is becoming more welcoming. It can sound harsh. They soften it by saying that God still loves us, we’re still God’s children, but it does feel like an after thought. 

————————— 

It’s very rare to hear a message directly aimed at LGBTQIA+ people. Because of my calling, I’ve gotten to meet several General Authorities, which means I’ve had the unique opportunity to hear how they speak directly to a queer person. 

The first one I met is Elder Joaquin Costa, I told him that I’m gay and he was extra caring and kind to me. He hugged me and told me he loves me. It surprised me. 

The blog post I wrote went viral and someone asked he and his wife about it, and they wept and he said everyone is deserving of Jesus’ love.  

I met Elder Costa again last summer and brought a friend with me. He stayed after hours at the office in order to see us. He hugged me and he’s smiling so big and he keeps mentioning one thing or another from when we met, and my friend leans over and says, “he likes you, like for real, he likes you.” The conversation didn’t go as I’d hoped, but I give Elder Costa credit for listening to us, and it seemed he learned and adjusted. And he kept reaching over and patting my arm, and we’d lean towards each other and bump shoulders, you know, like friends do when you’re telling a joke or something to show you feel friendly towards each other. 

—————————

The second General Authority, we got off to a rough start as he spoke for two hours about the importance of marriage between a man and woman and how necessary that is. The next day he went out of his way to befriend me, even asking that we drop titles and just call each other by our first names. He calls me David and I call him Claudio. By the time he left, it felt like we were friends, although I didn’t know if that’s just how he makes everyone feel.

I took him up on his offer for lunch when I visited Utah in 2018. When we got to his office, he was so excited to tell me that he and my dad have the same birthday, but 2 year apart. Had he been snooping on me, how did he know that? Well, he wondered how many people in the Church had his birthday and he did a search on the churchwide membership list. None had the exact birthday, so he dropped the year, and there was my dad’s name. He knew my last name, so he clicked on my dad to see if we’re related. He had waited eagerly several days for me to arrive so he could tell me. Anyway, he and I had a very real conversation, you know, we got beyond just the niceties. He never contradicted the Church teachings, but did admit there’s a lot we don’t know, there’s many questions for people like me for which we have no answers. He listened and understood where I was coming from and that we have significant gaps in our teachings and our church needs to do better in showing love to LGBTQ people. We ended with a lot of laughs and hugs and I left with a good feeling. 

I met Claudio again last year and brought a friend with me. I didn’t share this in the blog post I wrote, but Claudio was so eager to see me because he wanted to share how knowing me had helped him respond to a father who was worried his daughter had come out as a lesbian. He shared the advice he gave the father and wanted my reaction. It was very good and focused on accepting the situation, loving his daughter as he always had, and she’s got to make some big decisions but to stand by her and always include her no matter what path she chooses. Those are her decisions, his responsibility is to be her loving dad that she can count on. I was stunned that he shared knowing me had caused him to think about the situation of queer members and the choices we face. My friend that I brought is also gay and Claudio pronounced a beautiful blessing on him. And he invited me to his home next time I come to Utah (which due to the pandemic, has been postponed). As we drove away, my friend remarked, “you don’t just invite acquaintances to your home, you guys are officially friends.”

—————————

I also met an apostle. Upon telling him I’m gay his very first comment was that same sex attraction isn’t a sin but bullying people over it is. We were sitting at a table of 8, so our conversation on this subject was brief. My feeling is he tried to give me a sense of hope, although it was all about what wonderful things await me when I’m dead. I wanted to reply that I needed hope in this life, but the whole table had started listening in on our conversation at that point and we moved on and discovered that his wife and I are related. 

—————————

I wish every queer member had these sorts of opportunities to feel love and concern from church leadership. I also wish the Seventy & apostles had more encounters with queer members, I think it’s good for them to process we’re real people with concerns & feelings that aren’t being satisfied and we need to feel the Savior’s love as much as anyone else. 

In the meantime, I will be meeting another general authority at the end of the month and will share how it goes.

[heeres-suffering]

Be More Alluring: a Personality Swap AU

[pic description and source will be at the bottom of this post, under the read more]

Start of summary:

“You need to be more alluring.”

"... don’t you mean attractive?”

“I do not. Your attractiveness is adequate, Brooke; if you want to mask your apparently latent queerness, you have to make them want you straight. Isn’t that why your step-father defended you?” 

Brooke Lohst is a loser.

But you know what? That was okay.

She always knew she was a weird one. The intensity of her affection for puppies, picture books, and near-constant daydreaming has lasted well-past a normalcy she can’t seem to grasp; when coupled with her inability to befriend anyone (besides the similarly self-identified loser Michael Mell), it’s not a surprise the rest of her peers have left her behind.

However, there were... ah, worse things in her life to worry about then some mild bullying. She liked her passion well enough, and all of her true insecurities went largely unnoticed, so any insults or weird looks rarely lingered in her mind. It’s not like she was a constant target either, which helped a lot. All in all, she just planned to hunker down, wait out the awkwardness of High School like everyone else, and move on to the rest of her life... 

Except.

When Brooke develops a crush on a girl she’s never talked to, after years of avoiding fairy tale romance and trying not to think about the inevitability of marriage (or how finicky her attraction to boys is in the first place), it feels like her whole world is about to cave in. She’d do anything to make sure her parents, especially daddy, never find out... including buying an edible super computer from the loudest, tiniest guy in school.

End of summary.

Alright!

Hi, hello, it’s Mod Seb, and here’s an AU I’ve been rolling around for a few days! You are free to do with this concept whatever you want, but I wanted to introduce it with a good chunk of the info I’ve already worked out in my head.

So. As the CWs are... too numerous, I’m going to go with a blanket “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” label and encourage you not to read the rest of this if you have any big darkfic triggers that could be upset by mere mention; this isn’t a fic tho, so descriptions of anything awful won’t last long. 

Although, I will mention upfront that Brooke isn’t a binary lesbian. I know the description might read like I’m setting her up to be 100% homosexual; she’s bi with a strong preference for girls, and anyone who presents soft enough in gender or appearance. If it wasn’t for the end-game pairings, her unfamiliarity with smaller details/history of the LGBTQ+ community, and general “gay newb” status, she’d likely ID as a bi lesbian!

(ships and everything else under the Read More)

Okay. That out of the way, there’s quite a number of pairings; I’m pretty sure it’s a super polyamorous and sexual AU, though you’re free to change this list as much as you’d like:

[bolded are end-game ships. italics physically hook up at least once. strike-through means they were in a relationship but break-up in some way before the ending. (H) stands for healthy, while (T) is toxic and/or noncon. underlined characters are pining for the other and may never confess their true feelings]

Brooke/Christine (H), Brooke/Rich (H), Brooke/Jenna (H), Brooke/Michael (H), Brooke/Chloe (T), Brooke/her Daddy (T), Brooke/Squip (H), Brooke/Jeremy (soft T at first bc of mirrored canon-compliant manipulation, H later on), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy (H), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy/Rich (H), Rich/Moses (H), [insert every form of Rich/Mo/Squip/Jeremy here] (H), Jeremy/Chloe (T), Jeremy/Michael (H), Michael/Christine (H), Michael/Christine/Mr. Heere (H; no, seriously), Madeline/Brooke (H)

This is, of course, a role swap AU where Brooke and Jeremy trade places based on my personal lore for their home lives. I always have some pretty fucked ideas as I don’t imagine MB is a great place with great adults, and I pick and choose which parts of canons I use and which I don’t. 

There is no definite ending planned in mind as this isn’t an outline; it’s meta (or an imagine or w/e) for an AU that you’re free to do whatever with. 

So,

The big difference is that Brooke was picked by Michael, while Jeremy was picked by Chloe. Jeremy is trans and hadn’t come out yet; if Chloe had known he was a boy, she wouldn’t have grabbed him. In contrast, Michael’s never gave a shit about potential friends genders.

Jer and B’s personalities... are altered some. Not ALL the way, but kiiinda fusing into their roles, kinda tweaked (I'll get back to that).

The main point of this for me was Brooke/Squip/Jeremy, with B/Jer having a MUCH stronger focus than in canon, and a really bad Chloe acting as one of the major villains.

Michael gets roped into Chloe’s shit, even tho he's still generally a good guy here, bc he's worried about B and thinks she can't properly take care of herself.

While B DOES have a strong crush on Christine, she’s the opposite of the Squip’s “goal”; that’s (obvs) masking, or making passably digestible, her queerness.

Her Mom and step-’Daddy’ have reacted to her friendship w/ ‘openly gay moms, also very flamboyant and GNC’ Michael... poorly.

Michael thinks the solution has to be “act as aggressively yourself as you can, and if they reject you, you know me and the mom’s have a space for you”. This works for him bc he’s permanently hyper-visible, what with all of his own marginalized identities. But, not only has she flied under the radar in comparison to him for years, he doesn’t know everything about her life.

In fact, he doesn’t know most of it. She’s very good at hiding things.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, one of the more popular ‘boy... ish’ (we’ll get to this, too) people in school, is mid-psychosis and self-destruction. He actually has schizo-affective disorder--as is the case with all of my versions of Jeremy--which he needs medication for. Combined that with so many bad influences and trauma, he can no longer fully control himself or his life.

The way he handles this (badly) is to ‘whore around’--which, besides being Chloe’s pet, is kinda why he’s so popular. Nobody respects him, but he’s viewed some form of favorably.

Jeremy is in a relationship with Rich, but he won't let him get as close/protective as Rich wants; Mo and Rich were doing their own man-whoring (but healthy, just droppin’ panties and making dudes and chicks swoon--yeah, Rich is out as bisexual, this is a very ‘the Squips are a good thing’ AU) to gain their standard reputation, but in the course of that, they got together with Jeremy and it became... complicated. Both of them are very "nnn" about how bad his life is for Jer.

The way that their personalities are altered is... okay. To explain this, I have to talk about my characterization of canon-Brooke and Jeremy in relation to this, starting with Brooke:

I imagine B as just a liiittle below the line of "all the way there" for sorta-similar reasons to Jeremy here: trauma, and Chloe (which is why that’s what Jeremy gets in this, it’s just WAY worse when compounded by everything else). She’s also--like me, and like almost every character I write as a result--autistic, in a near-permanent state of “not enough accommodations” and over-stimulation. This leads to a lot of dissociation and a very wandering mind, as well as being perceived as a bimbo or dumb blonde or w/e misogynistic bullshit is projected onto her by the boys she dates (she’s also much more down the middle bi outside this AU).

So, going back to how she is for this AU: she's actually not super nerdy, despite the close connection she and Michael have. Honestly, it’s their general neurodivergent weirdness that bring them together, and so she’s mostly adopted her nerdy interests through him, whether directly a thing he likes, or finding a whimsical variant that fits her tastes.

Obviously, unlike Jeremy, she doesn’t mind being called a loser. She does any insinuation she might be queer. This including anyone who calls her gay or a dyke.

She has too much Cis Male Trauma (unlike canon, where it comes from both cis angles) to really entertain the idea of a Traditionally Male Partner. This means she skews HEAVILY towards hard GNC guys at the very least, and generally finds herself most interested in the idea of enbies and women. she's also not super into butches tho, bc her trauma mixing with her sexuality has latched on to Strong Masc People Are A Threat. 

An expansion on her interests, in canon and otherwise: animals, ASMR/sensual service work (including massages and stuff), spending hours just sorta sitting by herself and letting her imagination wander, fairy tales, and YA-and-under fantasy books.

(Here, she tries to avoid het or f/f romance... except that, this past year or two, she’s started really like m/m stuff--esp after getting REALLY into drag shows, which she could enjoy safely since girls like Chloe have gotten into them too; in canon, she’s a romance fanatic)

Now... this is one of the really darkfic element; she's fucking her step-dad. 

She does this so that he doesn't walk out on her, her mom, and her little sister*. Her mom has a good-enough job as a standard office woman, but he makes enough to pay the rent on their nice townhouse and all the bills she can’t. So, after he expressed interest in Brooke and then casually mentioned he could always just leave if she wasn’t comfortable, she reluctantly entered a relationship with him

(* = her sister is currently know as her brother; he’s like 12 or 13, and started showing signs of trans/queerness which have been Heavily Discouraged. Brooke worries about him a lot)

((I didn’t use she/her pronouns bc I’m not entirely sure he would change them? This is an OC Oli created at the beginning of our interest in BMC, and we haven’t worked on him at all since, so how his characterization will be is up in the air))

Canonically, Brooke's "in love" with her daddy, which is a self-imposed delusion; if she actually addressed it, she’d says she’s well aware that’s not true, but it's so much easier to pretend when you’re cornered like that. Brooke’s life blows.

She’s a lot more honest to herself about hating him here; still, she tries to be as polite and generally-friendly as she can, doing what he says whenever he wants.

OKAY, THAT’S BROOKE. If any of that is badly described or potentially-offensive, it’s just bc I glossed over SO MUCH DETAIL, even in that amount of it!

So. Jeremy.

I don’t have to go over him much and we’re all mostly aware of how I feel about him and also I don’t have the energy to do this again--

(just... read my fics The Devil at your Door or hello yesterday or something... eyyy actually do that, my ao3 username is Sedusa, blah blah blah ANYWAY)

--but basically: He's still very nerdy, like, he’s super into film as well as video games (which is another constant for me), but after being largely ignored in elementary, he's been trailing behind Chloe at her orders since they were in 6th grade. As a result he isn't very open about... any of his interests.

In 7th grade, he came out as trans to everyone. Chloe was furious, but at the same time, intrigued; this was around the time Chloe gets her own... ah shit I gotta go into that too--

--yet another hc of mine is that Chloe gets a Squip on accident around this time at a party (there was one in a “”candy bowl””), and from there, she claws her way up the ladder. I... will not go into that much, but her Squip was crippled by the drugs and alcohol in her system, and therefore largely at her mercy. She’s used his power to manipulate certain things about herself and to sharpen her focus on popularity to the point she’s full-blown Alpha Bitch.

Man, I’ve had to go on so many tangents, I apologize.

Anyway, she drags Jeremy around as a punching bag. She constantly mocks Jeremy's transness, even though she usually calls him by his correct name and pronouns.

This has made the rest of the school follow her lead, hence why I said “boy-ish”; he’s popular, he’s technically ‘well liked’, but nobody really takes him seriously. This is compounded by Chloe’s refusal to let him dress in 'dorky' casual clothes, and, as he’s both too poor to afford designer clothes and also generally hates popular guy fashion, he has to wear the hyper femme clothing Chloe specifically tells him too/

As such, people call him a boy but largely see him as either an idiot, a slut, an attention seeker, or all of the above.

So of course, in Brooke's place, his neurodivergence is more prominent than ever; every day he slips further into this psychosis and self-infantilization haze, as his his mom leaving, his dad severely depressed, Chloe's sexual violence, and other repressed trauma (see: my fic hello yesterday on ao3) all weighing on him. This makes him INCREDIBLY regressed, like, all the time by Junior year.

And then Brooke's Squip (IE: canon Squip) falls in love with Jeremy extremely fucking hard. He pushes her to date him as a way to compromise on her queer desires, since Jeremy is technically a boy, and certainly a few other straight-ish girls have hooked up with him in the past.

WHEW. That is a fucking lot. To wrap this up, lemme go over the interpersonal relationships not already mentioned, and what directions I think it takes.

First off, Madeline has a more prominent role, as I quite like her tbh; she’s a sex worker, she has her own Squip, she’s one of Chloe’s most hated enemies, and she gravitates towards both Brooke and Jeremy. She’s also Actually French, Chloe’s just weird.

(Anyway she prolly sees through Brooke’s straight act and asks her why she’s pretending to be a good little cishet. It rattles Brooke.)

Chloe is scum. This bears repeating. She DEFINITELY rapes Brooke at the Halloween party, and becomes obsessed with her, along with already being obsessed with Jeremy and Jake. 

Jake, by the way, has a lot of regressive behavior and impulsiveness bc he’s been in an abusive relationship off and on with Chloe for years now.

Speaking of Jake, moving on to his best bro: Rich doesn’t set himself on fire. He’s having a good time with his Squip.

But.

He IS set on fire at the Halloween party.

Instead of the Smartphone Hour being about Rich's instability, it's actually about the mystery of Someone Did It To Him But No One Saw Who It Was, They Were Disguised.

The answer relates to the fact that Rich and Brooke are ALSO hooking up, after she’s already with Jeremy, bc he Properly introduces her to him and the three of them hit it off really well.

(She initially wasn’t interested, but while Rich is loud and still kinda abrasive, his Squip doesn’t drive him to act like a bully--and in private, his nerdiness is really obvious and he’s extremely gentle with her and Jeremy. Add to that that he’s bi and trans*, when Brooke connects best w/ queer men over cishet one, and it off-sets his masc-ness enough to make him an Exception.

* = I always imagine him as trans. See: all of Vanceypants fics.)

Sooo... the culprit is actually Brooke's daddy, who sees her with this obvious heartthrob and Cannot let that be.

Chloe convinces Michael that the Squips are Very Very Bad and has him team up with her to force Brooke into drinking Red, with the intention to convince him to kill himself after to get him out of the way, bc she’s really going nuts at this point.

Eventually, he snaps out of it when he and Christine get together (he’s thought he was Full Homo all of his life, but Christine’s prolly genderqueer-ness makes him realize “oh shit, I’m bisexual”) and she starts to question why he’s acting the way he is towards Christine.

He also definitely has a crush on Jeremy and during his time with Chloe he kinda tried to flirt a little but couldn’t really... he’s not up for dating someone as sexually active and a push-over as Jeremy is in this.

However, when he snaps out of Chloe’s manipulation, he and Christine approach Mr. Heere to convince him to straighten up and help Jeremy and also bc they really need an adult to successfully fight Chloe.

This requires a month+ of Christine getting him to see her psychiatrist (the one who prescribes her ADHD meds). Jeremy spends the majority of his time staying with Chloe, and very rarely comes home to gather things or to make sure his dad is eating/still alive, as much as he can remember to in his own haze of mental illness. Anyway, point is, he doesn’t know Christine and Michael are there often... not that, in the course of growing close to Mr. H, they both fall for him hard and it becomes one of my stranger OT3s.

(God, Jeremy goes through a lot of shit in this, tho.)

Pre-Squip, Jenna was kinda-sorta Brooke’s friend--or, well, friendly. However, she’s actually full blown “oh my God she’s wonderful” in love with Brooke.

Brooke isn't aware of that, esp since Jenna tries her not to be around her a lot. She's also trying to hide her own queerness, bc she’s a trans woman and she knows Chloe finding that out would be extremely dangerous.

Eventually, Chloe succeeds in making Brooke take the Red months after canon usually ends, w/o Michael’s help. If you’re curious, Red doesn’t affect her normal Squip bc she’s had him too long and a lot of his receptors and stuff are damaged, so it’s the second one she gets in canon that turns off.

This plan backfires, however, as Brooke’s Squip comes back with a physical body w/ help from Rich and also-bodied-now Moses.

With a body, and shenanigans, Mo and Squip take out Brooke’s daddy too. His life insurance more than makes up for the loss of his income, as it’s a sizable amount. Now that Brooke feels more empowered and strong, she overrides her mother’s neglectfulness and takes control of the household w/ her boyfriends*, comes out as queer, helps her sister transition, and begin to heal from all of this trauma.

(* = Rich and Mo move in, as does Jeremy eventually, after graduation; Jeremy gets a psychiatrist and a therapist and prolly has to go through some intense outpatient care and possibly a stay in the hospital, before finally making major breakthroughs and looking like himself again. The five of them are now happy and in love.)

Chloe, after her arm gets twisted by the Squip’s protective presence so thoroughly, gives up on Jeremy and Brooke to focus on Jake. This too gets abandoned when Rich and Mo help him cut her off, and so she stays in her own popularity bubble, bitter, until graduating and going to a community college in a different state.

All in all, things work out well in the end, but getting there is a long, difficult process. This AU fascinates me immensely and feels like a great way to examine some of my really dark headcanons about MB, as I think it’s a town similar to Derry in Stephen King’s IT--as in, just chronically The Worst Place Ever, with this, like, miasma of low-key despair around it. People adjust and don’t question it, which is why so much of BMC is this flippant dark humor in the face of some highly questionable shit.

I’m so sorry this post is so long (I’ll be uploading it to AU under my usual Sedusa account, as metas like this are more than allowed), but I really adore these characters and the way they can be twisted around, so I had a lot to say!

Thank you for reading <3

-mod Seb

image description: virtual-like stairs pointed forward and bathed in neon yellow and blue to represent Brook and Jeremy, which I’ve modified from the original blue-only design.

source: x (link description: a free Wallpaper Flare image that I found off Google Image’s “filtered by ‘labeled and reuse with modification” feature) 

[dalek-in-heels]

Hi hello, I have Feelings about some (not all!) of the ways I’ve seen bisexuality and polyamory discussed in Magicians fandom recently, mainly in the context of how queerness is represented in the show / speculating about what’s next. Queerness and polyam are two things that are near and dear to my own lived experiences, so I want to put my voice out there. This turned into a 2k word jumble, but as always I am open to discussion around any of it! My opinions/experiences, not law, I like hearing other viewpoints, etc etc. <3

tl;dr 1) I think it makes narrative sense why Quentin hasn’t explicitly confessed his love for Eliot to his friends yet.

2) I think it’s canon that Quentin and Eliot are each unique representations of people whose bisexuality/queerness/no-label-sexual-fluidity manifests in different ways.

3) I think it’s canon that there is polyamory in A Life in the Day.

—

First, I want to make clear that, after literally decades in fandoms that queerbait (or not even that), I feel passionately about the writers finally giving us more explicit queer love stories. Like, viscerally anxiously needing some emotional resolution for Queliot. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this invested in a ship before tbh.

That said, I won’t be mad about how Quentin & Eliot’s arc has been represented so far, as long as it does continue to develop going forward. Like, if it’s not explicitly addressed at all the rest of this season? That’s an issue. But if it’s only addressed again, like, tonight or even just in the finale, and leaves open the potential for more development in season five while Eliot is actually not possessed? I can see narrative reasons for why that works better.

In large part because of Quentin’s motivations this season. This is key: They are telling a story about a man who has been suppressing his feelings for the man he loves, who he thinks doesn’t love him back, and who is currently possessed by a monster. Quentin’s cautious. He’s depressed. He’s not going around making declarations, precisely because this is a very different love story than the ones we’ve seen between any of the other couples. Not only because they’re two men, but in large part because one of those men is possessed.

Don’t get me wrong (ha)—I am 100% in the camp of people who want Quentin to make some sort of confession despite all of this, and I definitely daydream about there being some sort of extra footage from their 50 years that we’ve never seen. But also? Story-wise? I get why it hasn’t happened yet: The more things that are out there in the open for the Monster to use against Quentin—and against Eliot’s body—the more damage can be done.

I think that’s one of the things that’s so powerful about that scene in 4x06, when the Monster asks, Why do you care about him so much? and Quentin simply says, Because I do. Yes, we know from Eliot’s memory that it’s because Quentin loves him, but like can you imagine Quentin admitting that to the Monster? What shit the Monster would pull with that knowledge?? It’d be horrible. Quentin knows better. He’s keeping details as close to the chest as possible for a damn reason.

—

Which brings me to Quentin’s bisexuality: I don’t think him not talking openly about his feelings for Eliot erases his bisexuality. Yes, arguably he could have a conversation with Julia or Alice or whomever about it, but what purpose would that serve? Him just feeling even worse admitting out loud that he’s trying to save the person he loves who doesn’t even love him back? Much easier to contain if you don’t say it out loud.

One of the things I’ve really loved about Quentin actually is that his bisexuality is a version that’s relatable to me on a personal level. Quentin is a queer man who has mostly dated women (as far as we can tell in canon). I’m a cis woman who has, largely due to circumstance, mostly dated men, despite coming out as bi 17 years ago. There were also long stretches of time where I didn’t date anyone. None of this has made me less queer/bisexual. My sexuality is an undeniable aspect of me, but also, I pass as straight. A lot. Which is frustrating because I never want to pass as straight in straight spaces or queer spaces, but it’s a super common experience for a lot of us. I’ve known so many women who pass, many of us because we date men, and therefore people don’t see our sexuality as valid since it’s ~ not in practice. It is a part of us; it doesn’t matter what we practice or not.

Quentin is bisexual—or whatever label we as fans want to put on it, but he is not straight. He has had queer experiences and expressed queer feelings. That is canon. Honestly, one of the reasons why I’m drawn to him as a queer character is because he hasn’t put a label on it in canon. They are telling the story of a character whose sexuality is not heterosexual, and it is not the most important thing about him. That is valid. That is the underrepresented experience of many of us, and it is satisfying to see someone represented on television who has experiences with people of different and similar genders, and that is not the core of the relationship conflict. He knows who he is. As Jason has put it before, it’s the one thing Quentin isn’t anxious about. I feel that.

But okay, back to trusting if the writers will represent Queliot or not going forward? I think it’s important to remember that this show has always been pretty fluid sexually, so the writers driving down this route with two of their male leads is, while new ground, not an absurd expectation. On a less queer show, I’d be less trusting of how they’ll handle it, but I feel like out of any writers I’ve loved, these might be the ones who get it on some level? Yes, there are still majority heteronormative things going on, but this is not the first queer relationship we’ve seen on the show: We’ve seen Eliot with randos, we’ve seen Eliot with Mike, with Idri—and with Quentin.

Which, while we’re on that—Eliot’s queerness? Should also not be erased. He is not gay. He is somewhere on a fluid queer spectrum. That’s literally canon, so any hand-waving away of that is erasing it. Sexuality is just so much more complex than that, and I think it’s simplistic to say otherwise. There are people who see themselves in Eliot’s version of queerness (mostly men, sometimes women), just the same way so many people see themselves in Quentin’s version of queerness (mostly women, sometimes men). We deserve more explicit text of their past relationship and Quentin’s current feelings, eventually, but tbh I still think how it’s being portrayed is valid and has made sense within the larger narrative so far.

—

Okay, now I really need to talk about how polyamory is portrayed on the show.

I’m not sure how many people active in this fandom are polyamorous or not (please feel free to give me a shout if you are? I’d love to make more polyam friends here), so extremely bare bones crash course here, since it is an often misunderstood, underrepresented, and stigmatized relationship model:

Polyamory is a relationship model that can take many forms (not necessarily marriage, not necessarily hierarchical), and is always rooted in consent, open communication, and building trust between all partners and metamours (your partner’s partners) in a polycule. All polyamorous arrangements and other versions of non-monogamy are consensual—if they’re not, then quite frankly it’s not polyamory; it’s cheating or, at the very least, pretty dang toxic.

For many of us, polyamory tends to be an alternative to the monogamous “relationship escalator”—instead of every relationship we form having the expectation that it’ll lead to marriage (and/or moving in together, having kids, etc), we choose to explore all the different types of relationships that can form organically in our lives: maybe a long-term partner or two, more partners who are casual but no less cared for and respected, etc. Or there’s solo polyamory, where your primary commitment is to yourself, but you have open consensual relationships with multiple other people, short-term or long-term. There are literally endless other possibilities.

As for how this relates to Quentin & Eliot’s time at the Mosaic: I’ve seen the argument that it couldn’t have been a happy polyamorous thing if only Quentin had two partners. I don’t buy that. Sure, it’s common for there to be relationships where two people each have another partner or multiple partners, but that is not the one right way that polyamory is done or that people who practice it can be happy with.

I personally have been practicing polyamory for several years, and there have been long stretches of time where I simply haven’t wanted to be with anyone else besides my primary partner, even when he has had other partners, and vice versa, and I have still lived my damn life with love. Yes there has been jealousy and insecurity to varying degrees, but there is a lot of support to identify their roots and actively work through them, and face fears. “Love isn’t zero sum” is a phrase thrown around a lot in polyamory literature, but it’s true: The partner who’s only with one person isn’t somehow getting less love. They have their partnership, they have a rich, full life outside of any romantic/sexual relationships, and they have the freedom to be open to other relationships should the opportunities come along.

So, anyway, back to the Magicians: Do I care if the writers intended to show a version of polyamory on the screen in 3x05? Not really. Because what happened anyway, is they did.

I don’t think the writers would or even could get away with representing an explicitly polyamorous relationship, mainly because that is still pretty damn stigmatized and rarely out in mainstream culture. But I do think that they did what they could to make Quentin and Eliot be able to build a family together, which I think was a key part of their narrative. How else would they have shown Quentin and Eliot having a kid in that context? In the space of a highlights montage? I’m not saying Arielle was a fully formed character either, or that she wasn’t a pawn of some sort, but I don’t think she was a pawn to somehow prove Quentin and Eliot had any less real of a relationship. I think if she was a pawn, it was so that they could raise a kid together and have a family. (Which isn’t great, but that’s a whole other issue, not a queer erasure issue.)

My personal headcanon for the 3x05 timeline is that Quentin, Eliot, and Arielle had a polycule that was basically Quentin/Arielle and Quentin/Eliot, with Eliot and Arielle as metamours, who also have some level of romance and maybe the occasional sexual relationship. In my headcanon, they were all happy together, raising a kid together, growing up and out of the insecurities and fears that Quentin & Eliot had back in the present-day timeline. Like, I can’t picture a 25 year old having the exact same hang-ups as a 35 to 75 year old, you know? People grow up. They settle into themselves.

I think that kind of happiness is inherent in how Quentin and Eliot talk about it when they come back: it was sort of beautiful, we worked, who gets that kind of proof of concept. So why would Eliot turn down Quentin when they get back, if that life was so good? I think it’s because wow that is a lot to live up to, when he knows they are not the same people now as who they’d turned into in that timeline. They have those memories and some of that wisdom, sure, but also they are the same people they were back in the future. Eliot doesn’t trust Quentin would choose him in this context, so he runs from things he’s afraid of fucking up or not living up to.

Whatever they are or will become now, I really think that the polyamory in that other timeline was real though. Even though nobody was boning or making out, there was a family of people raising a child together. There were people spending their lives together. It’s not as much representation as we (queer people, polyamorous people) deserve, but it’s not erased either. We focus a lot on the fact that Eliot, upon return, brought up You had a wife. But quickly following that was And we had a family. That’s not nothing.

I think I’ll just end on that note. This is already so long. Let’s see what happens tonight!! [screams into the void]

[homosociallyyours]

a friend just posted a pic on fb of the coffee shop we used to hang out at, taken way back in the day. it’s just a shot of the place taken from inside, looking out the big glass windows and onto the street of downtown chattanooga. but one friend pointed out that she could see another friend’s van parked across the street, and one of the baristas came on and said he’d taken the photo and then proceeded to post a bunch more. 

anyway i’m feeling nostalgic so i’m posting about it. memories behind the cut. 

i started going there when i was maybe 15 years old. i don’t remember why, but it’s likely that the artsy nerd club i was a part of (we stayed after school to watch amadeus and monty python and we’d sometimes go to the local art museum) went there after a meeting one day. or maybe someone told me about it. anyway, it was my favorite place to go. i would drink pots of tea, always trying new things. 

on my 16th birthday my parents got me a teapot from there and a gift certificate to buy tea with. i had that teapot til it broke a year ago. 20+ years! it moved with me to and from college, to nyc, california, texas, and back to california. damn. 

anyway after i’d been going for a while i started talking with the owner. his name was ian, and he was pretty young. he loved tea and coffee and he had a roaster where they’d make their own coffee. it was loud and lovely, and for a long time it lived up front, right by a little elevated area with couches. when it was running you couldn’t hear anything and had no choice but to either shout or be quiet. 

ian encouraged my love of tea, and offered to keep track of everything i’d tried in a little notebook that was kept behind the counter. i got to make notes on every pot i drank, and i remember writing “terrible! grass!” after my first pot of green tea (it was oversteeped--my fault--and probably made with water that was too hot--their fault). i had my first pu-er there, and fell in love with its damp leaf flavor and that turned earth scent that it has. i drank multiple pots of jasmine pearls and wrote a caffeine fueled poem about it with a friend. i loved that little coffee shop. 

i don’t remember when i went from hanging out inside to hanging out outside, but i feel like i was 18 or so. the older people (they were probably barely 21-25, fucking babies) sat out there smoking and drinking coffee. i developed a crush one summer on a guy who made me think of arthur dent for some reason (don’t ask because i don’t know) and we went on one awkward date and didn’t kiss, and now i wonder what’s happened to him and if he, too, wasn’t straight. who knows? someone, i’m sure, but i can’t remember his last name anymore so is it even relevant? 

i’d never felt cool til i went off to college. it was like leveling up without trying, like when you’re playing a game and do one action and suddenly all your stats are refilled and you’re like...this is unexpected? but i’ll take it? i think that’s why i decided i could really sit with the outside tables. that and my bff, who was dating someone who was friends with a lot of those people, would show up sometimes and sit out there. 

(if you’ve actually been reading along so far, here’s where i’m gonna introduce you to a bunch of people i’ve never talked about before and will likely never mention again. just so you have fair warning.) 

the cast of characters shifted a lot, but there were always the constants. scott, the barista, who was much older than most of the people hanging out but looked young and seemed young. i look back with adult eyes and question the relationship we had, but at the time i just thought it was cool that someone so much older thought i was worth hanging out with. but he was 30 when i was 19, and man that’s a lotta years. he had a summer where he hit on my friend and i constantly, after his wife left him and he was kinda floundering a bit. but it never went past flirting and it never bothered me, though like i said it kinda does now. we were still hanging out when i was 21 and we’d go get beers after the coffee shop closed at ten or midnight. he’d turn up obnoxious music really loud and i’d sometimes help close. 

there was gabe and george, brother and sister in a family of people with names starting with the letter g. george was tiny and cute and either very drunk or very hyper from coffee at all times. gabe was a nerd who was usually quiet but loved to play scrabble, and we’d take the board inside sometimes and battle one another. he was much better than me, i won’t lie. liz and ever were both writers who would play with us sometimes. ever had changed her name at some point (to ever; any name she had before is irrelevant) and when we met she explained the meaning of her new name, which i won’t give because damn it’s very google-able. 

she was a so fascinating to me, always talking about some feminist theory or philosopher, and i always felt so smart when we’d hang out. like a Serious Thoughtful Adult and not a kid. and liz was less serious but no less smart. she played scrabble a lot more and for a while we got pretty close. she took me out after coffee sometimes to a shitty bar with pool tables and tried to teach me how to play pool. she had her own cue and even though she was like 5′2″ she could break like nobody’s business. i never figured out how to do that part. 

alex would come with us sometimes. he was tall and handsome and rode a motorcycle, and was the first openly bi guy i ever met. one time he invited me over to his house and we laid around listening to the smiths and talking. he burned me a copy of their greatest hits that i still have, all scratched up so it probably doesn’t play anymore. he crashed his bike more than once driving drunk. dumb fuckin kid. now he repairs coffee machines and sails, i think. life is funny. 

a few other people ran in groups. meg and waide and the aforementioned jason and ardyce. some people called meg “big megan” and another megan (her family was really wealthy, rich southern politicians who knew the clintons and have a mention in sweet home alabama--the song, not the movie) was “little megan” because she was still in high school. i joked that i was medium megan, but the whole thing was awkward because big megan was fat and i was small fat and little megan was skinny. i’m gonna blame it on thoughtless dudes, but who the fuck knows? we all pretended not to mind it anyway. 

waide ended up being a connection with other people who i met later. my hometown is weird in that it’s actually a pretty big part of the southern punk scene, so a lot of punks i meet have spent time there, and anyone over a certain age probably spent time at the bar waide worked at (the stone lion, and then maybe also the pickle barrel) so he’s one of those people who i’ll end up mentioning even though we haven’t spoken in years. 

at some point a kid named ory showed up. i think he was 16 when he started coming around, and i used to call him puppy because he was excitable and silly, full of energy one minute and then mopey crashing the next. like a lot of people there he drank a lot and would be fucked up sometimes and make dumb choices. i always wanted to protect him. when i was 22 (and he was 19, i think) we ended up sitting together at the second lotr movie and having some kind of weird chemistry. that summer i drove him home one night and we had a super heavy make out with lots of clothed grinding. honestly the furthest i’ve ever gone with a cis straight(ish, he hooked up with a couple dudes but idk if he’d say he’s bi) dude and it was awkward in that we never talked about it? and then he came to visit me a couple years later in new york because he was in the navy, and he got super drunk and passed out on my couch and was a mess because he literally never stopped being a puppy. 

he’s fucked up now, fully cancelled bc he said shit about girls rock camp (really dude?) and also probably cheated on his wife on their honeymoon? idk, it was fb rumors and then he deleted. but i’d believe it, honestly. 

and then there were all these absolutely random downtown characters: dirty mark (a crusty punk who was drunk or high most of the time) and shirtless dave (yeah he really didn’t wear a shirt that much) usually came as a pair. sometimes dave hung out with a guy my friends and i called blue hair. he once hit on my friend and she panicked and gave him my number instead of hers because her brain didn’t make up a fake number fast enough. 

there was sandy the flower man, who just passed away a couple weeks ago. he’d get flowers from local florists and go around on his bike, stopping into the coffee shop or to bars with roses and carnations and daisies. people gave him money usually, but sometimes he’d just hand you a flower because he wanted to. i saw a picture from a memorial and there was a portrait of him that was sat on top of his bicycle, all of it surrounded with flowers on flowers. so pretty. it’s what he deserved. 

things changed around 2005 or so, i think. by that time, all the old baristas had left and the kids who came in were all weirdly religious and went to the christian college on the mountain. they made shitty coffee and sometimes played xtian rock and most of the old regulars couldn’t take it anymore. ian got sick around that time, too, and ended up selling the place. they stopped carrying much tea, if any. 

but they finally sold the space and moved in like 2015. i remember the first time i drove by and didn’t see the lights on inside. it felt like seeing a friend from grade school all grown up, maybe the kid you had a crush on but they have a family now and you don’t think they’d recognize you at all so you just have to walk away. gone. 

fuck this post is long as shit, i’m sorry for anyone on mobile. but damn it was good to get my memories out. 

[eisforeidolon]

There are generally two main things that annoy me about the vast majority of bi!Dean meta I've seen:

1.  The insistence that it's somehow canon.  This is bafflingly regardless of the part where it relies on cherry picking minutiae to “interpret” and insists those interpretations are equally valid just because someone could come up with them (… words fail me).  As well as being fundamentally reliant upon those micro moment “interpretations” magically counting more than Dean's entire overt sexual history and everything he has directly said about his own orientation, consistently, across thirteen years of show.  Not even to mention the part where a not-insignificant-proportion of it is based on Jensen making intense eye contact (you know, like innumerable people who have been to cons say he does with everyone) and licking his lips (again, which Jensen clearly does all the time as a personal tic apropos of nothing). Which is when it's not literally based on random set dressing. And that's even before you get to the bullshit insistence that Jensen, who has made unambiguous statements about how he plays his character's sexuality, just doesn't get acting or his character or how plots work – that final nail in the coffin of insultingly smug stupidity.  

2.  The conflation of masculinity with both sexuality and undesirability.  Which is where the whole “performing Dean” theory usually comes in.  Declaring someone emotional as Dean must not be openly into dudes because stern macho John was obviously a homophobe and beat it out of him. That Dean disdaining the ostentatiousness of cucumber-flavored water must inherently be about appearing sufficiently masculine and therefore liking it when he tries it is a direct but super sneakret signal Dean constantly lies to himself and will soon accept his REAL sexuality.  How Dean continuing to fulfill the urge for sex with random hookups and being dissatisfied can't possibly have anything to do with their impermanence, lack of emotional intimacy, and his increased age – he obviously only keeps doing it to try and show everyone he doesn't secretly want dick because of course he actually does!  Along with plenty of other bizarre clusterfucks of blinkered projection and straight up wackadoo, it's more than just an obtuse lack of understanding of what impression management really is, that everyone does it to some degree, and why/when/how someone with a life like Dean's would particularly rely on it.  It's an uncomfortable combination of tumblr-flavored eww, white heterosexual cis dude cooties and accidentally proving they'd struggle to pick genuine toxic masculinity out of a lineup. Canon!Dean is a character who often defies toxic stereotypes of what a heterosexual man is allowed to be by being a realistic mixture of attributes - good, bad, and neutral as well as traditionally and not traditionally masculine.  FanonBi!Dean? According to the “meta”, every bit of Dean that's good, vulnerable, or willing to bend is proof every bit of him that's macho or unpleasant is automatically a lie artificially manufactured to cover for his inner bisexual.  Actually heterosexual dudes can't be vulnerable or concerned about appearing “sufficiently” masculine and non-hetero dudes that have come out are automagically over being macho, performatively or otherwise – they're soft, smol, and totes shippable!  Something something toxic masculinity is bad, yo! 

Obviously fanfic is something entirely separate and I don't really care about people’s individual headcanons, even if I find them baffling.  Pretending it’s realistically plausible canonically or that it doesn’t most often originate from people who fundamentally don’t like the complicated character Dean actually is and want to make him “better” by turning him into a not-so-incidentally more shippable faux progressive cliché fanfic caricature?  Nopity nope nope.

[starsbythepocketful12]

ok like this has lowkey been stirring in my mind since yesterday morning and just I need to babble rant idk just let it all out

I’ve been a bts fan for less than four months. I really got into them in late September. Now it’s mid December. So like three ish months. Idk how they’ve grown to mean so much to me in such little time but now they mean the world to me. It breaks my heart knowing all the pressure they’re under. All the struggles they’ve faced. How they were so close to breaking up. How we were so close to losing them. It really makes me so sad.

I want nothing more than for everyone in BTS to be happy, healthy, safe, fulfilled and loved. I want them to feel proud of themselves. I want them to feel loved and appreciated and important because they are. I want them to know how much they mean to so many people. I want them to love themselves. It’s so easy to preach a message, and you know do as I say, not as I do, and easier said than done and all that. But they’ve spent the majority of their careers (even before they started releasing the love yourself albums) promoting the message of self love. And I really hope they’ve been able to achieve that for themselves. Or they remember to love themselves as well, instead of just focusing on helping their fans love themselves.

No artist talks about self love as much as they do. They’ve grown into some of the biggest, most successful mainstream artists in the world with one of the most devoted and loving fanbases ever. Why? Is it their looks? Their talent? Their skills?

It’s their message. It’s how they genuinely love and care for their fans and you can really hear it in their music. In their lyrics. It’s how they break the norm of writing all these romantic songs (not that they haven’t written romantic songs, because they have) and have gone to writing love letters to their fans and themselves! Songs like epiphany and answer love myself-literally a love letter to themselves! And pied piper, magic shop-love letters to the fans!

Not to mention they defy expectations and stereotypes in so many others ways. And they’re not afraid to be fluid with gender presentation, which for successful cis men in the public eye is a rarity in this world. And at least one of them has openly spoken about not being straight.

(Suga, real name Yoongi has said things like “I have no preference for gender” “I focus on atmosphere and personality, I am not limited to the opposite sex” interviewer asks what they look for in a girl, Suga responds “I want a PERSON who is likeminded and compassionate like me” saying person very adamantly, there’s a lyric in their song Cypher 3- “whether it’s a guy or a girl, my tongue will make you come” 👀 this bitch really out here rapping about how he’s so good at oral sex regardless the gender of the person he is guaranteed to make them orgasm alright a bi king we see you)

And while that might not be as big of a deal in western cultures cause plenty of other artists are openly not straight, right? In South Korea (or just Asia in general) lgbt stuff is still very taboo and their society is nowhere near as accepting. I think homosexuality is still illegal-i know for sure there’s still a ban on same sex marriage in South Korea. There are barely any people in the industry who are openly not straight so it is incredibly incredibly brave for Suga to say things like that-and as a not straight person myself constantly thirsting for representation, it means a lot.

And gosh don’t get me started on RM/Namjoon, how he released a song with the lyrics “know you love me boy so that I love you” the day after South Korea announced their ban on same sex marriage, how he once said in an interview “when we don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend” how he purposefully made the lyrics of the song Serendipity gender neutral because the emotions the song represents transcend genders, cultures, and barriers between people, how he said the love represented on their love yourself: answer album isn’t just about love between a man or a woman-or all genders, in his UN speech in September when he said “no matter your skin color or gender identity-I want you to speak yourself”

Ok lemme stop myself right there I said don’t get me started and here I am getting myself started oof okay back on track

It just means the world to me as a nonbinary lesbian (especially in a fandom that often feels as if it’s made up of just cishet girls) seeing them say things like that and do things so openly recognizing the LGBT community like I feel so seen and validated and ugh anyway what was I saying before going on my gay tangent

The reason BTS is so well known and successful is because they’re not like anyone else. They touch people and reach them in a way no one else has before and they’re truly something special-I really think they will be remembered as legends up there with the Beatles. I’m just so grateful for them and they make me so happy. As someone who has spent the last year working really hard on myself mentally and emotionally, who has been trying really hard to love myself, BTS has been a huge help and motivator and I can’t put into words how much I appreciate it.

I’ve learned so much from them. I adore them beyond words. I’m so grateful they exist, that they use their platform in the way they do, that they’re such wonderful human beings, and most of all-I’m really grateful to them for staying. They revealed in an acceptance speech at an awards show yesterday that they were considering disbanding at the start of this year. I’m so, so, so, so, so, so, SO grateful to them for staying. Thank you so much for staying, BTS. We don’t deserve you. Thank you. I purple you. I’ll try to be a fan you deserve to make up for all the hard stuff you’ve had to endure that made you want to quit, okay?

A part of me doesn’t know why I’m writing this to them as if they’ll read it-they’ll never see this and only one of them would be able to understand it, as Namjoon’s the only one fluent in English-but I just really hope they know we feel this way. We don’t deserve you. Thank you.

There’s so much more to say but I really want to get breakfast so imma go now. Just-I love you. Thank you. A million times over, thank you. I’m so proud of you. You deserve all the success you’re getting. 💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

[bluerobokitty]

Okay, so I was one of the interviewees for the #LanceIsBi article that just released recently, known as “Shardy”. Given how much the article is being discussed now, I’ve decided to post my entire interview in full to show just how in depth the discussion actually became. 

The article barely scratches the surface of the issue of the bisexual treatment in fandom, this is true. However, as someone who has been screaming into the void about this for a solid year and a half now, it was nice to finally have a platform on which to speak.

This whole thing started because the #LanceIsBi movement gained so much traction to the point of trending on Twitter. The editors of Den of Geek grew curious and wanted to look at why such a thing happened. Remember, not nearly as many people are involved with VLD discourse. Our fandom’s discourse so multi-layered and so complicated, people on the outside can’t really see it unless they become involved themselves. As far as DoG was concerned, this was just a fandom thirsty for bi representation. 

My quotes about it being mostly for a shipwar are not used within the article, but that would be an entire article on its own. However, this article did focus on how fans do queerbait themselves and others, the importance of separating fanon from canon, and real bisexual representation comes from the characters, not background colors and jokes by voice actors. I’m not gonna toss the baby out with the bathwater here - that’s a pretty good start. 

So without further ado, here is my interview. It was conducted via Twitter DMs back in October, but for ease of reading, I formatted the interview to post here. It’s a very long post, so if your “read more” function doesn’t work on your phone, I apologize. 

What’s your name? (You don’t have to give me your full name if you aren’t comfortable.) You also don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but if you’re willing to say so, how do you identify?

My name is Shardy and I identify as a bisexual female.

How long have you been a Voltron fan?

I’ve been a Voltron fan since Legendary defender first aired. I never had the chance to watch the original as a child, but I had friends who were super into it so when the reboot happened, I decided to check it out.

How do you interact with the Voltron fandom? Do you write fic? Post fanart? Discuss the series online? Whatever!

I interact as much as I can through fanfic, artwork and zines, I’m trying my hand at making merch, and I’m always discussing the series on Twitter or Discord from meta and worldbuilding to theories and ships.

Why do you see Lance as bisexual when the show hasn’t expressly said that he is?

So when I started headcanoning Lance as bisexual, I saw bisexual Lance headcanons making their way around fandom since day one. By then, fandom was pretty small and it was obvious that he was mostly headcanoned as bisexual for shipping purposes. Which, I really don’t mind, so long as people are respectful about it. I hadn’t entirely embraced my own bisexual label yet, I was still confused about a lot of things. But then I see this guy in this show who clearly prefers the opposite gender, but if he were bisexual, maybe it would be because he’s nervous around his own gender? Maybe he doesn’t know how to approach dudes like that? Maybe he doesn’t want to risk humiliating and outing himself by hitting on a straight guy? And I realized that was MY experience. That’s exactly how I felt around other women. Nervous, scared, maybe I should just stick to guys since it’s safer, makes me less vulnerable.

Lance is my favorite character because he’s closest to me in personality, so I projected a lot of experiences onto him. Of course, I relate to all the other characters in lots of different ways, too, but Lance is a bit special to me when it comes to my sexuality. I really used him in my fanfic to explore my own sexuality, and that’s the case for a lot of women in fandom, really. I know that he is thus far explicitly straight in canon, but the beauty of fandom and transformative works is that we don’t always have to strictly follow canon. So long as you don’t start insisting that such things are canon, because that’s when you start to queerbait yourself and see things that aren’t there, and if you base your expectations like that, you’ll only disappoint yourself in the show if not hate it. Which I’m starting to see a lot of people in fandom do.

This is why I am so incredibly bothered by #LanceIsBi movement. Which I will get to here in a minute because this movement stems from a much bigger problem that’s been festering in fandom for over the past year.

Do you think the series will ever openly confirm Lance is bisexual? How will you feel if they do or don’t?

I don’t think Lance was ever meant to be bisexual. I think he was always meant to end up with a girl (my money’s on Allura given the events of these past two seasons lol). It would be cool, though. I would like to see a little arc dedicated to him coming to terms with his attraction for his own gender, too. Because that’s what bisexual representation is all about. Coming to terms being someone attracted to multiple genders. And accepting that it doesn’t make you confused or broken or prone to cheating or anything else people who don’t understand bisexuality try to throw at us. Embracing our label. Even if Lance were to end up with a girl in the end, that would still be good representation because it’s never about the gender of our partner but our experiences and growing with our identity.

Unfortunately, people just don’t really accept bisexuals in different gender relationships most of the time. There was this huge blowup in fandom earlier this year about that. I’m a bisexual cis woman but I married and had a child with a cis man. It doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, so I get told a lot that I don’t really count as a queer. It looks invalidating. I think it’s because a lot of people think bisexual issues and homosexual issues are the same thing, and while we overlap in some things, our needs and our issues are not the same at all. We are two unique sexualities with our unique issues. I’ve been having quite a time trying to educate people about that ever since I came out.

So I don’t really blame the producers and the crew at all for not wanting to open that particular can of worms. It would be amazing if they did anyway, and a great opportunity, but if they don’t want to deal with that blowback, then that’s completely understandable. So if Lance is explicitly straight all the way through the series, I don’t have an issue with it.

Why do fans, particularly with Voltron, read so many of the characters as LGBT when there is very little if any canonical evidence in the series itself that they are? I know it isn't just Lance being bi. I've seen people Keith as gay, Pidge as trans, etc.

I think a lot of fandom headcanons the Voltron characters as LGBT+ because with so little representation out there, of course we would take matters into our hands. The producers of Voltron also worked on Legend of Korra, which we know ends with a bisexual girl/girl couple, so I think there’s an expectation that Voltron will do the same thing. Shiro and Keith obviously have a very intimate relationship. Lots of shoulder touching. There’s a million reasons from shipping to seeing ourselves in these characters that make us headcanon them as different sexualities. Tumblr in particular has always been attractive as an LGBT+ space so that’s why such headcanons are prevalent there.

How did you first hear about the #LanceIsBi movement? What about the whole #LanceIsBi thing appeals to you?

Alrighty, here’s the thing about the #LanceIsBi movement that super bothers me as a bisexual.

It’s not really about the headcanon. People are allowed to headcanon whatever they please, for whatever reason. That I have no problem with.

The #LanceIsBi movement came about because Jeremy Shada said that Lance’s milkshakes brings everybody to the yard. This is nothing against Shada, I assume he was just joking about how handsome Lance actually is – which he is! Lance is a really pretty guy, he has a better skincare routine than I do. So of course, it’s not a stretch to say that other people than just the ladies are attracted to him, that’s just how good-looking he is. But to take that as confirmation that someone is bisexual… that’s not how bisexuality works. It’s not about who’s attracted to you. It’s about YOU being attracted to two or more genders and how YOU deal with that. And what we seen in canon is that Lance is very much only attracted to women. As of right now, there is no bisexual story there.

It just really takes away from what real bisexual representation is, like I mentioned earlier, being about Lance’s personal issues as he comes to terms with this identity of his. Or even just him saying “Hey, I’m bisexual” or “I also like dudes, but here’s why I’m not as confident around them.” It doesn’t really have to be that deep, you know, I don’t need him to rehearse a whole documentary on bisexuality in order for it to be good representation. It makes it about HIM. About his character growth. HIS story. That’s what matters.

One issue with bisexuals (and I assume it’s not so different with pansexuals and aroaces from what I’ve seen) is that it feels like our identities have to be determined by OTHER people. Are we queer enough? Are we oppressed enough? Are we not with a different gender partner? Our own voices are never enough and it’s exhausting. Lance being confirmed bisexual is because of a joke by his voice actor. The colors of the scenery behind him. Because of multiple genders being attracted to him instead of the other way around. But it’s not his own character that confirms his identity. That bothers me. It infuriates me.

Added to that, fandom tends to blow things way out of proportion. They queerbait themselves a lot because they twist things around because they want their headcanons (specifically their ships) to be canon that bad. I’ve seen people new to fandom say they got into the show because they heard about this bisexual guy being awesome is a cast member only to find out that there’s this guy being awesome who is explicitly not bisexual at all. It’s awful seeing that kind of disappointment. Had I not been in Legendary Defender fandom since day 1, I probably would have fallen for that trap, too. I love this show so, so much and fandom makes it look like the crew is delivering something that isn’t there at all, and they’re even taking the heat for it. Lance is being held up as a bisexual icon next to actual, canon bisexual characters from other fandoms and that’s just… not right. Because once again, it’s not about his character, it’s only about what fandom wants. And non-fans come into this show with these expectations of seeing something that isn’t there.

And if Lance were bi, and if he still ended up with a female character, I know for a fact fandom would not be accepting of that. A lot of people would be, for sure, and it would be great to have that kind of support, but there’s a lot of people out there who won’t and then the whole “bi-het” debate starts up again. And it’s a debate that affects a lot of bisexuals in real life.

This whole movement, taking a joke as canon confirmation of Lance being bisexual, just feels like fandom actually doesn’t care about bisexual issues and representation. They only like it because they feel canonly validated shipping Lance with another male character because there’s this really weird attitude in fandom right now that all your headcanons must be canon in order to be valid. It’s very transparent, and very upsetting. It makes light of bisexuality, turns it into a shipping tool, and completely forgets what fandom is all about in the first place.

First off I just wanted to thank you for being so open and honest with all of this. These are fantastic observations on the whole thing and you really nailed a lot of things I was interested in asking about. Do you think fans would be better off seeking out shows/other pieces of media that feature canonical bisexual characters? Or do you feel as though people want that in their favorite shows regardless? Or to put that question another way, there are other shows out there with confirmed LGBTQIA (and anyone else I missed, nonbinary etc.) characters. Why focus on a character that, so far, can only be headcanoned as bi? Is it just fans REALLY wanting an LGBTQIA character in their favorite show? Why put so much expectations on this one specific show when, admittingly, all of TV has lot of work to do when it comes to representation?

When it comes to for the specific demand that Lance be bisexual, it boils down to a ship war. I’m sure you already know, our fandom is pretty notorious now with our ship wars and how far certain shippers will go to have their ship be canon confirmed. It’s pretty messy, and there are a few factors at play here.

Like I said earlier, a lot of fandom really doesn’t care about actual bisexual representation. Those of us who ship Lance with someone else such as Shiro or Allura, we can get some pretty heated comments. So when things pop up like #LanceIsBi, it’s a little transparent. I remember before S2 came out, fandom lost its mind when an interview said that Keith and Allura were gonna have moments together (whether platonic or romantic, it wasn’t clear at the time and could be interpreted either way). A lot of Gay Pride Keith edits came out and the whole thing was pretty ugly and, dare I say, misogynistic in tone because how dare Keith have a meaningful relationship with a woman even if that relationship is not romantic. And when a lot of Kallura shippers were like “well, we think Keith is bi or pan” (asexual Keith headcanons are also pretty popular with Keith fans), we’re immediately fired back with how that doesn’t matter, we’re just using bi/pansexuality as a copout, we’re actually homophobic, etc.

So when one character is heavily headcanoned to be bisexual but other characters are not allowed to have that same headcanon, it’s pretty telling. And I think it has to do with stereotypes. Lance is flirty and flamboyant and extroverted, maybe a bit promiscuous, so of course he must be bisexual. Keith is the stereotypical emo gay, skinny with some muscle, tight pants, weird hair. And once these headcanons are popularized, the rest of fandom is bombarded with them with no room for argument. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone admit to headcanoning Lance as something other than bi, and anyone who says they don’t headcanon Keith as gay (I am one of them) is met with hostility.

It’s not something I’ve ever seen in fandom before, at least not to this extent and I’ve been involved in online fandom for the past fifteen or so years now. Sure, there’s always been ship wars, there’s always been people being nasty to each other over fictional characters, but it feels different these days. It’s a different type of fandom wank. There’s a different attitude here.

I’m wondering if it has to do with the line between creator and consumer thinning so much now thanks to social media and cons becoming so frequent and mainstream. Fifteen years ago, there was no way we would ever dream of being in contact with showrunners, crew, and voice actors on our favorite shows. We never even sought out such contact, not unless you were really gutsy. And cons were very few and far between, so the only way you could interact with any of these people is if you had enough money and could travel to them. Now with things like Twitter especially, you can just tweet your questions and tag creators in your work, and chances are good that you will actually be seen and acknowledged.

And with this exposure, this really thinned line, I think a lot of fandom fully believes that they can actually influence a show. It’s been done in other shows, or at least enough that the creators give this illusion that fandom influences a show. So they think it’s the same with Voltron, but it’s not. Voltron is not a TV show, it’s a Netflix series meant to be binged in one sitting. But fandom has this belief that if they push and push and push enough, then all their fanon dreams will become canon. And they push back on the rest of us who don’t really go with the flow because they feel threatened.

Sheith, followed closely by Kallura, is the biggest threat to Klance, like I’m just gonna be brutally honest here with the whole ship war thing, we all know what it’s about. Like I said, fandom pushes for a bisexual male character, completely ignoring two things: 1) Lance explicitly flirts with women and ONLY women in canon and 2) Shiro and Keith are very intimate and touchy for a pair of guys (lol I’ve known a lot of guys and they don’t shoulder touch to this extent like Keith and Shiro are so TOUCHY). You would think fandom, determined to have mlm representation, would be all over Sheith because they are already established to have a personal, intimate connection that definitely goes beyond just a pair of dudes being bros. Instead we get all this age discourse, accusations of pedophilia and abusive power imbalances, etc.

And on the other side of this, Keith can’t be bi/pansexual because that makes him still available for Allura. Kallura is a threat because they’ve been the ship of Voltron since the beginning. They were heavily teased in DotU, they get together in the sequel comics and every reboot so far (except for Legendary Defender at the moment). By insisting Keith is gay, then he won’t want to be with Allura. There’s even this headcanon popular in this circle that Allura is a lesbian, yet I’ve seen very little femslash content in this fandom, and none of it reaches the popularity of the mlm ships.

So it’s pretty clear from the two issues that bisexual representation isn’t really something a good chunk and the loudest part of fandom really cares about. This section of fandom only accepts bisexuality when it’s convenient for their favorite ship.

And they insist that the rest of fandom kowtows to these headcanons because I guess there’s this belief that if they get all of fandom to unite for a headcanon, then the showrunners will have no choice but make the show reflect what’s popular. Even though that’s not how fandom or media works at all.

I think it’s a generational thing. A lot of these fans tend to be younger, for some this may even be their first big fandom, and there’s this weird belief among them that they’re only allowed to ship things in hopes it’ll be canon and their headcanons must be 100% backed by canon, so they tend to read too deep into every little joke and offhand comment and fanwork responses made by cast and crew. Maybe because they’re new to this, but these kinds of fans just don’t seem to understand the transformative nature of fandom. That while we do everything out of love for the source material, the stories and art and other content we make doesn’t necessarily have to have a 1:1 reflection of canon.

That's all fantastic insight, especially on the generational gap between certain members of the fandom. Yeah, your comments about the hate for the Allura/Keith ship just reminds me how weird I always found that since in all incarnations of Voltron they've been pretty much the ONLY canon ship of the main characters.

This is all fantastic, I wish I could use it all but as it is with articles I know I'll have to really cut it down. But still, it's all super helpful. Legit.

[m-aira]

On Being a Fake Queer

trigger warnings: childhood sexual assault, q slur

I have a lot of complicated feelings about being queer, the first being that most of the time, I can’t shake the feeling that I may be faking it. For the record, I identify as a Crazy, fat, nonbinary agender individual; I was assigned female at birth, and socialized as a girl - as such, I will be using feminine pronouns when referring to my past.

Let’s back up.

I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault. Although I am still learning how to cope with this, it permeates nearly everything I do in my daily life, how my brain functions, etc. I was assaulted by another little girl, and growing up, this confused the hell out of me, and led me to believe that anything but compulsory heterosexuality was Bad. When I was 11, I started using the internet, and it was here that I met my first lesbian couple. We would all hang out on Palace, they were in a long-distance relationship. I confided in one of them that I had been abused by another girl, and that’s why I felt weird about their relationship, but that I was really trying to wrap my head around it. She understood, and didn’t make me feel like a freak. Around this time, I also started masturbating for the first time, primarily to images of women. So all in all, it was a very confusing, very queer time for young me.

From a very young age, I was considered a tomboy. I remember very clearly getting a “skater” haircut for the first day of 5th grade (something that could easily be hidden underneath a helmet, although I didn’t skate). I was shopping in the boy’s section at stores, wearing my dad’s old hand-me-downs, and generally looked like a little boy. On the first day, our teacher has us line up, separated by gender. I was in line with the girls. My teacher said to me, “I think you’re in the wrong line.” Now, as I am older and far removed from the situation, I look back on it and think, “I probably could have sued that fucker.” Regardless, it didn’t do anything but fuel my confusing feelings about gender - I wanted to look like a boy, but still do traditionally “girly” things. At the time, my parents made me feel like I couldn’t have it both ways, and I was starting puberty, so I had to make a decision; I feel like this decision was mostly forced on me, but that’s neither here nor there right now, it simply is.

Beginning in junior high, I started having crushes on my female friends, but I was never sure if it meant I wanted to be like them, or if I wanted to be with them. I stifled all of these feelings and maintained that I was a heterosexual female. I started hanging out with a group of punk girls, and wanted to emulate them so badly. It was around this time that I also started reading the manga Ranma 1/2, where, if I remember correctly, the main character was able to swap genders (and turn into a panda?) depending on what temperature of water they were in. I thought that was super cool, and wished that I could do the same. This was also around the time when kids were using “gay” and “queer” as insults, and so I was definitely thinking “Nope, I am definitely a Straight Girl, no queer feelings here, that would be Bad.”

I grew my hair out and played the part all throughout high school. I still got crushes on girls, and wanted to be a boy sometimes, but I shut these feelings out as often as I could. 

Fast forward to my third year of college, when I finally moved out of my parents’ house and onto campus at San Francisco State. It was here that I really started exploring my sexuality and gender, and by that I mean I tried to look androgynous as possible, and made out with a lot of cishet dudes. I stopped talking to a lot of my high school friends, who were still using the f slur, q slur, and “gay” as insults; I started getting into social justice, going to bars, and meeting cute girls. I wasn’t identifying as queer yet, but I remember my first “open” crush on a girl - she was a friend of a friend that I had met at a bar for my friend’s birthday. We drank together. She took me outside and we smoked a bowl together. We were with each other the whole night, and I drunkenly confided in my best friend that I thought this girl was really cute, and to ask our friend if maybe she was bi? Turns out she was, but I didn’t find out til later when I was too chickenshit and closeted to do anything about it.

During my fourth year of college, some friends and I drove up to Portland for a weekend. It was there that I met the first nonbinary person that I’d have a crush on. We started talking after I got back to San Francisco, and I found out they lived in Santa Cruz, and I thought, “how convenient?” We went on one date, and I was too afraid to cuddle with them or show any sort of affection while we watched a movie in their room. My skin felt on fire, which I hadn’t felt in some time, and I mostly tied to the abuse; this, of course, concerned me. I felt wrong and bad and needed to shake those feelings. Because I didn’t know how to pursue anyone, I waited for them to pursue me. This didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, but around the same time, I started going on dates with a really cute cishet guy. I ended up making it “official” with him, and we’ve been dating since June of 2013, so a year after I graduated.

Around December of 2013, a lot of the confused gender feelings and mentally ill feelings and queer feelings all came rushing back to me. I would take days off of work, telling my boss I was sick, and just sit in the dark and cry all day. Something was off. Femaleness didn’t resonate with me anymore, and it was hitting me hard. However, even though I was Openly Queer at this point, I was still in what appeared to be a heterosexual relationship with a cisgender man. I remember very clearly making a tumblr post that said “I don’t know what I am, but I don’t think I’m a girl,” and showing it to him as we laid on my fold out couch in the living room. I started crying. He held me until I stopped, and then held me some more. He told me things were going to be alright. A few weeks later, after ruminating on it some more, I had accepted that I did not identify within the gender binary - I was now other. I made a Facebook status proclaiming this, filtered to a select amount of people who I believed would get it; some did, some didn’t, and I felt the need to explain myself, so I did. In January of 2014, my boyfriend and I traveled to Austin, TX, where he struggled with my new pronouns as I struggled with a virus and the worst case of dysphoria I think I’ve ever had. It was my first period after I had acknowledged my identity outside of being a woman, and it hit me hard.

Eventually, my boyfriend came around on the pronouns. But people still viewed us as a straight man and a straight woman in a straight relationship, doing straight people stuff. This made me feel, and still often makes me feel, invalidated in my queer identity. I’m much more open about my pronouns and gender identity now than I was then, but I still can’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I’m faking it. I’m a fake queer. I’m not queer enough to hang with the Actually Queer folks, and I’m too queer to hang with the straight folks. I walk a weird line between not talking about my gender with my parents or at work, and being very open about it in social situations. I still just feel weird about it. I have never been in a relationship with anyone but a cishet man, I have never been in love with anyone but a cishet man, I have never kissed or had sex with anyone but a cis man. So I must be straight, right? No!

The moral of this really long-winded diatribe is to never let someone else’s view of queerness shape who you know you are. You are queer enough. You are nonbinary enough. You can move past your trauma and into somewhere open and understanding. You are not a fake queer, even if you feel like you don’t fit into a socially accepted queer narrative. And you don’t even need to identify as queer if that makes you uncomfortable. “Not-straight” is enough!

My name is Maira, and I am not a fake queer. 

[thevalicemultiverse]

Things You Need To Know About: Cuddlepile

Tag: ~V: Cuddlepile

Premise: College in a new city is hard enough without accidentally screwing up your love life on top of it – but that’s what Victor did when he didn’t realize his two regular dates, Victoria Everglot and Emily Cartwell, each thought they were exclusive with him. Fortunately, interested bystander Alice Liddell stepped in to help him straighten things out. Unfortunately, then he started falling for her as well. And then things got really weird when Victoria and Emily started seeing each other in a new light…and Alice’s friends Christopher White and Richard Hatter got pulled into the mix…

This AU is a direct result of me seeing the “Alice is asexual” headcanon on tumblr, doing some research on that and other “queer” sexualities, and deciding I wanted to make a universe exploring that and polyamory. I’d always quietly OT3ed Victor/Victoria/Emily in their own verse -- this just allowed me to take it to the next level. In this modern-day world, Victor, Victoria, and Emily are all college students in the general London area, having left their hometown of Burtonsville for the first time in pursuit of higher education. Victor and Victoria have the usual pressure on them by their parents to date, while Victor and Emily came together after Victor found her crying in the woods over her bastard ex-boyfriend Barkis. Victor’s only too happy to date both girls -- finding Victoria to be very complementary to him, and Emily an exciting opposite -- and think nothing of it. After all, it’s only been a few dates each -- and it’s all in casual fun, right?

Nope -- thanks to Victor never thinking to mention that he’s officially dating the other girl, both Emily and Victoria think they’re exclusive with him. This bit of silly miscommunication blows up in Victor’s face when Emily catches him on a date with Victoria at a local cafe, and the two let him have it before storming off. Victor’s horrified and heartbroken, and has no idea what to say or do to salvage even a friendship with either. . .

And that’s when a green-eyed young miss sits down across from him and notes, “Well -- I thought you only saw that sort of thing in bad sitcoms. Who’s writing your life?”

Said green-eyed miss introduces herself as Alice Liddell, saying that normally she wouldn’t butt in, but Victor looks pretty lost and she’s got nothing better to do but help. Victor explains the whole sorry mess to her, and she gives him a little advice on how to apologize. They end up talking about other things, and Victor decides he likes her and would like to see her again. Alice feels the same, and they make some plans.

Later on, Victor visits Victoria to apologize. To his surprise, Emily’s there too -- turns out the two girls got to talking after storming off, and discovered they actually enjoy each other’s company. Victor tells them he’s sorry and that he never meant to hurt either of them, and is relieved when they forgive him (having already come to the conclusion his bad behavior was out of thoughtlessness, not malice). They agree that Victor can keep dating both of them more casually (they’re okay with it as long as they know), and Victor immediately tells them of his plans with Alice, emphasizing she’s just a friend.

A few get-togethers later, however, Victor realizes that it’s a lot more than just friendship on his side, at least. He confesses to Emily on their next date, not wanting another “sitcom plot” to start up -- and is astonished when she admits that she and Victoria are starting to develop feelings for each other. Victor calls a meeting with Victoria and Alice to discuss the situation. Alice, who is a bit more worldly than the sheltered Burtonsvillians (the place has very poor Internet access, and while Victor’s family could afford a better line, it came with William and Nell’s parental restrictions) introduces the trio to the idea of alternate sexualities and polyamory. She even offers to get two of her friends, Christopher White and Richard Hatter, to meet with them to explain better (as Christopher is openly bisexual and Richard is openly agender AND was in a brief threesome with two of his best friends). Victor, Victoria, and Emily are only too willing, and the meeting is set up. . .

Only for Victoria to instantly click with Christopher, and Emily to form a bond with Richard. And in the midst of everything getting even more complicated, Alice comes out with a life-altering line: “Oh, for God’s sake -- maybe we should just all date each other!”

Christopher’s response: “. . .I guess that is an option. . .”

Some negotiation and discussion later, and the group comes together into the jokingly-named “cuddlepile.” Things are a bit awkward at first, especially as the Burtonsvillians come to grips with their own developing sexualities (Victor and Victoria being both bi, and Emily realizing she may be biromantic but she’s definitely lesbian sex-wise), but soon they happily settle into their new poly lives. College is graduated, and the six get a house together --

And then Victoria gets pregnant thanks to a condom failure. Everyone’s pretty surprised (and curious as to whether Victor or Christopher is the father), but the decision is quickly made to keep the baby. Nine months later, little Matilda is born (and revealed to be Victor’s biological daughter -- there’s no mistaking that pale skin).

And six years later, she starts school. Which is when the group meets Deborah Winters, from two blocks over, and realize that it wasn’t just their own parents they had to worry about disapproving of their lifestyle. . .

This verse has two distinct time periods/locations threads can be set in:

Girls Love Girls And Boys: This is the actual “college AU” portion of the AU, when the group is still settling in a bit to the cuddlepile and juggling their dating lives with studies and parental nosiness. Victor never thought he’d actually be in an official relationship with more than one person, but -- it’s really quite nice. Doing term papers and binging TV shows is a lot more fun with so many interesting people around. And he’s feeling more loved than he ever has before. Now if only he could figure out why Christopher sometimes makes him blush. . .and how to keep his parents from ever finding out about all this.

Welcome To PTA Hell: As indicated by the name, this is the “PTA AU” portion of the AU, where the six have to deal with disapproving Deborah and all the other joys and dangers of having a kid in elementary school. Victor’s only too happy to help Matilda with her homework and throw himself into making things for the bake sales. . .but if Deborah makes one more snippy comment about his kid not having a real last name, he just might shank her with a pencil.

Common NPCs:

Alice Liddell (throughout)

Victoria Everglot (throughout)

Emily Cartwell (throughout)

Christopher White (throughout)

Richard Hatter (throughout)

Shipping: Welcome to the Ultimate Poly AU -- in this, everyone's together in an OT6! Specifically, this is how everyone links up:

Victor is romantically involved with Victoria, Emily, and Alice; sexually involved with Victoria; and has a developing interest (both romantically and sexually) in Christopher

Victoria is romantically involved with Victor, Emily, Alice, and Christopher; sexually involved with Victor, Emily, and Christopher

Emily is romantically involved with Victor, Victoria, Alice, and Richard; sexually involved with Victoria

Alice is romantically involved with Victor, Victoria, and Emily; sexually involved with no one

Christopher is romantically involved with Victoria; sexually involved with Victoria; would not mind getting to know Victor or Richard better in either sense

Richard is romantically involved with Emily, sexually involved with no one at the moment but would be open to something with Christopher

NPC Ships: None -- all the NPCs are in the main ship

Important Facts:

Ages in the group -- Victor, Victoria, Emily, and Alice all start out at their canonical 19/20ish, while Christopher and Richard are mid to late 20s (I haven’t pinned down exactly what their ages are yet).

Sexualities in the group -- Victoria and Christopher are both “classic” biromantic and bisexual (meaning they have about an equal attraction to boys and girls). Victor is biromantic and bisexual too, but has a female preference -- while he can certainly find men attractive right off the bat, he needs to get to know the man in question better before wanting to do anything more than look. Emily is biromantic and lesbian (much to her own surprise, but she adapts quickly). Alice is demipanromantic and asexual -- she has no gender preference, but really needs to get to know someone before she develops an attraction, and she has no interest in sex at all. Richard is panromantic and pansexual, with no gender preference at all. He’s also agender, though he’ll accept being called “he” (he’s sometimes used “xe” as well). Everyone else is cis (barring any sudden revelations, like the one that revealed Victor is bi to me.)

Much like their Lloyd/Dodgson counterparts over in Secundus, Christopher and Richard are scientists. Christopher’s currently into the field of food science, while Richard is an engineer -- and, thanks to a car accident that cost him and his best friends most of their limbs (he’s missing both legs and his left arm), the inventor of the world’s best prostheses. The money generated from his patent has made him about equal to Victor’s family in wealth. (This is basically the main “fantastical” element in this verse, which is otherwise supposed to be roughly like reality.)

Christopher comes from a military family, and his father is still pushing him to at least join the Army Reserves. Christopher isn’t sure if that’s truly the life for him or not, but he’s leaving the option on the table.

Emily still has a history with Barkis Bittern -- here, he’s a freshman college delinquent who swept her off her feet late in high school, then stole her credit cards and attempted to kill her in a car accident. Emily pulled through, though she lost her left arm and right leg (replaced with some of Richard’s prostheses), and Barkis vanished into the night. She’s still pissed off at the bastard, and would love to bring him to justice once and for all.

Alice’s personal history still includes Bumby stalking and raping her sister, setting the fire, and running from justice while she barely managed to escape the blaze and spent the next ten years in Rutledge. Where it goes from there is still up in the air, though I’m leaving open the possibility of Bumby reappearing as a psychiatrist in disguise. Alice managed to actually get a hold of her inheritance after the asylum in this universe, though she works odd jobs at a local theater to make sure she always has money in the bank for rent, food, and her medications (she takes pills to stop her hallucinations of Wonderland from bugging her during the day).

Relatedly, Alice’s Wonderland is based a bit more on her reality in this verse -- not only are the “White Knight” and “Hatter” real people, so is Cheshire! He’s an African-American man, Chester Felaide. He works at the same theater Alice does, and regularly amuses/annoys her with riddles and puzzles.

Matilda may be joined at some point by an adopted brother -- Charlie from the games! If it happens, expect it to be a minor plot.

This verse is open to everyone!