#not to invalidate anyone

[elrondsscribe]

I’m new to this fandom so I may be speaking out of turn, but the concept of ship wars here of all fandoms is baffling to me

Like are all these vampires canonically not part of maybe a handful of big messy drama-filled polycules worldwide?? Like 5 tops?

(Except Lestat at some point at least tried to fuck basically everyone, so really one massive polycule lol)

[sapphic-boy]

"How many genders are there" legitimately I think there are as many genders as there are people on earth, you can be a boy but is your version of boy 100% identical to any other boy?

[oro-junestar]

trans people are some of the strongest, bravest people on this earth.

so much could go wrong. surgeries could be botched. your body could have bad reactions to treatment. your identity could be shrugged off as a joke. people could try to stop you from doing the things you love. they could relentlessly harass you. they could commit hate crimes against you and no one would bat an eye. people who you thought had loved you could turn against you. your government could try to write you out of existence. your entire community could despise you.

and you take that risk with a smile, all while looking absolutely gorgeous.

cause there is NO ONE more beautiful than someone who loves themself, is kind to the world, and freely expresses what truly makes them happy regardless of what others think.

i will fight to the death for your rights. i will not rest in peace until all trans and other queer people can live peacefully and happily without risk of being hurt for who they are.

i love you. trans rights are human rights.

[jamesunderwater]

Hi hello good evening, friendly reminder that identifying as asexual and/or aromantic does not mean the individual: has no sex drive; is never interested in romance; never desires romantic relationships; has never had and/or does not ever want to have sex; does not have fantasies nor masturbate; and so on..... but perhaps the most important reminder is: just because someone's relationship to sex and romance differs from societal expectations does not mean it is something to fix

thank you, carry on (:

[nosfagratu]

if kim only cares about people's worth if they're in the RCM then why in the fuck was he about to give his jacket to some random ass kid

yeah sure the guy who only cares about other RCM officers if they're good was about to part with the only item of clothing keeping him somewhat warm in a place where there's ice thick enough to support two grown men and a bunch of other shit absolutely

(edit: i'd appreciate it if you take a look at this version instead x it contains way more nuance and some amazing additions)

(edit 2: here's a version with IDs as well x )

[bucksboobs]

I do think at some point in the not too distant future, the 911 fandom, at least on Tumblr, is going to have to reckon with the fact that despite M!slash being the main driving force of the fandom, gay men like myself are in the vast minority (I think a recent poll put us at something like 6% but it didn’t separate bisexuals by gender so it’s hard to say how many mlm are actually in the fandom) and in the same way being a gay man doesn’t exempt him from being incidentally or purposefully misogynistic, being some other flavor of the rainbow doesn’t prevent someone from perpetuating homophobia against men who love men.

At some point the jokes about how Tommy is just here for dick or should just get dick and move on (when he’s already made it very clear that he wants a relationship with Buck) are going to start to sound like hypersexual stereotypes of gay men. At some point the constant push to get them to break up as soon as possible and for Tommy to die or get shipped off to Arizona or wherever is going to seem less like regular ship hate and more like wanting a gay male character to be punished for daring to seek a relationship with a man in the first place. We obviously aren’t there yet but I do think we should be aware that it is fast approaching.

[kristalijah]

HE'S CHECKING OUT GARY!!!! I REPEAT, HE'S CHECKING OUT GARY!!!!

[project-sekai-facts]

idk if this has its own comprehensive post on here or not but can you explain in depth how rui is gay coded

yeah okay

i think what you'll see people bring up most often is the fact that he has his right ear pierced (see above). incredibly brief queer history lesson for anyone who is unaware: back in the 70s & 80s when it was still illegal or otherwise heavily looked down on to be gay, wearing a single earring in your right ear became a non-verbal identifier amongst gay men in America. As far as I'm aware, identifiers did actually vary between areas, but it became far more publicly known that the right ear was the gay ear and the left ear was the straight ear. Even today when the stigma has worn away a decent amount, you still hear people bring up the term "gay ear" and the fact that the right ear is the gay ear is fairly common knowledge. This is also a known thing outside america, i'm not sure how far the spread is outside america and other english-speaking countries but it is definitely known in a fair amount of places, including Japan (also it should be noted that a right ear piercing can have different meanings in different cultures that predate this meaning, and nowadays people are more likely to get whatever ear pierced they want regardless of sexuality).

obviously anyone can have any ear pierced that they want but things work a bit differently with character design. the only other MCs who regularly wear earrings are An (left ear) and Akito (both). For both of them, this is definitely done to make them seem more cool, which makes sense given they're in the street music scene and following the fashions. As for NPCs there's Nagi (left), Arata, Ken, Tatsuya, Iori, Saku, and Yuuka (all both), which again is probably just to fit the fashion of those characters. Okay, Yuuka just has regular old earrings but as for the others you've got street and punk rock styles which both incorporate piercings as a big part of the style (especially with Saku's punk look).

so all that considered, Rui's earring just sticks out, I guess? it's not really a fashion thing, it's pretty plain and just kinda there, and very conveniently happens to exactly match up with an old way of signaling in the gay community instead of being in his left ear which is the far more common ear for guys to get pierced if they only have one earring. also he almost always only has the one piercing in his right ear in trained cards, the only exceptions being his cheer squad (earrings in both ears) and his canary card (three piercings but still in his right ear).

like i said though, it doesn't have to mean anything but talking from the perspective of character design, sometimes if you want to communicate something about a character then you put it in there.

building off of that, very stereotype-y but his choreo is notably quite.. flamboyant, should I say, compared to the other characters, even shizuku and haruka's more elegant styles. honestly just watch the clip this is so hard to explain. anyway in the process of writing this i found out that his mocap artist lists in his professional profile that one of his specialities is dancing for both masculine and feminine roles, so I get the feeling that there was a reason they cast this person specifically instead of one of the other male artists at the company, and then there was the decision to even have him dance like that in the first place. this doesn't have to mean anything at all and as i said leans very far on stereotypes which is something that i'm not a huge fan of but you do still have to consider things like this even when talking about modern media since it’s still a common way to imply characters as queer.

this one again is more of a matter of perspective. Rui has a few interactions with Tsukasa that could very definitely be read as flirting. it's kinda ambiguous though, which does make sense given the type of game this is; idol-adjacent games like this very rarely make anything concrete so that people who are fans of a pairing can enjoy the teasing and people who don't like it can simply move on. first thing that comes to mind would be the part where he invites Tsukasa to his house in wonder halloween (above), mainly because his L2D uses his smile expression that has a blush with it and that was a choice that someone on the L2D team had to make but didn't have to - they could've easily just kept his usual teasing expression he had at the start of the interaction there was no need to change it.

There's a couple other interactions but this is probably the most obvious outside of the incredibly shameless shiptease of Rui volunteering himself to play Juliet so Tsukasa could rehearse the proposal scene of his R&J adaptation despite the fact that Nene was in the room in Kamikou Festival!. Also, these scenes I mentioned would have been written long before the pairing between the two characters gained popularity in the fandom, so they were written just because the writers wanted to rather than because they were intentionally targeting a certain group.

(TL by pjsekai eng)

there's also that 1koma that I posted about a while ago. you know, the one where he asks for people to call him the "modern day Hiraga Gennai"? Hiraga Gennai as in the 18th century Japanese inventor who was also gay and wrote multiple works about it. The whole joke of the 1koma is that Rui wants to be known as the modern equivalent of a gay scientist and Tsukasa questions if he really wants to be called that.

The 1komas are played for jokes though, and especially the original ones are quite hard to call canon due to some of the scenarios and character interactions not making sense. But then again, someone on the writing team decided to write a gay joke around Rui for whatever reason that may be and it got passed by higher ups and put in the game (or, 3 versions of the game. the joke didn't make it to EN due to Gennai not being very known amongst the audience).

the only other thing i can think of (and arguably like, the biggest bit of evidence for this theory (? Idk if I should call it that)) is that he doesn't really show any interest in women.

First off, the Valentine's Day 2021 vlive. Quick note that in Japan, Valentine's is traditionally a holiday for girls to give chocolates to boys (while white day is the reverse). You can give platonic valentines too, which is what happens in-game... for the most part.

Those chocolates Rui got could easily just be platonic chocolates from other students, but then you have a few factors to filter in. 1) this is very early into the game, back when his only friends were WxS and Mizuki and 2) Those chocolates aren't from WxS, since Emu and Nene give the boys sweets offscreen after the vlive, and Tsukasa is on the receiving end for this holiday. Of course, one box could be friend chocolates from Mizuki, but that leaves more chocolate boxes than friends to give him chocolates.

Immediately after this, Tsukasa gets jealous that Rui got chocolates and tries to brag that he got some too, before saying too much and revealing he got friendzoned by multiple girls, basically confirming that Rui's chocolates were given with romantic intent. I guess you could say that these were chocolates given out to everyone in 2-B, but then why would they leave it anonymously in his locker? Tsukasa's classmates just gave them out to everyone in-person. The only reason I could think of is that people don't want to associate with him, which is canon, but if that's the case then why even bother. I dunno. This is almost word-for-word from that post I made about the in-universe attractiveness of every character so sorry I made you sit through that again.

Getting back on track, Rui seems very neutral about the fact he got given multiple boxes of what was likely confession chocolate. He just briefly mentions that he forgot the holiday was even happening until he found chocolates and then never brings this up again. I think it's worth comparing his reactions to Tsukasa, who seems to care very much about his abilities (or, lack thereof) to attract women. Obviously Tsukasa is the big reactions/brag about a lot of things guy, but Rui does not really seem to care about the fact that multiple women find him attractive, or just the holiday where he’s supposed to get chocolate from girls in general. But this whole interaction is just for jokes anyway so you don’t have to think too much of it if you don’t want to.

Second sub-point: Shizuku. Shizuku can be considered as the most attractive character in-universe given the sheer amount of characters that have been shown to be attracted to her or at least comment on her looks (currently at least 8 MCs if not more and a few named side characters). Admittedly none of those MCs are male, but it isn't like it's impossible for people to be attracted to the opposite gender in this game, like we just established that Tsukasa says he's interested in women, so the point still stands.

(TL from Tsukasa's #3 fan on YT)

Specifically I would like to point out a scene in A Once-In-A-Lifetime Pandemonium, when the 2-B trio first meet the Miyajo 2nd years. The three of them immediately recognise Shizuku and Airi and then Ibuki describes Mafuyu as "a beauty". Shizuku gives them her idol smile which in their POV has the same sparkles that often (not always, but definitely in this context) show up when characters are attracted to another character (like how Haruka has this effect on Minori and Kohane, and An has this effect on Kohane). Like it's very, very obvious that Rui's friends are attracted to Shizuku and the other girls and they're pretty surprised that he's hanging around with them.

But Rui never acts like this around Shizuku at all, nor does he ever even address the fact that she's good looking. He doesn't even bring it up in their earlier interactions back in the Picnic event or any events after, when a lot of other characters (e.g: Emu, Ena, and Mizuki) commented on her looks almost immediately after meeting her (they did first meet in a pretty stressful situation if you want to argue that, but it still stands that he's never been attracted to her). Similarly in The Tomorrow we Hope for, he does not have any reaction to meeting Haruka for the first time, unlike how we see other characters who are attracted to women (Kohane/Minori/debatably Nene it’s up to interpretation) act around her at first.

at the end of the day i think you could definitely make a case for it. like it's harder to make a solid argument in comparison to say, Kohane, An, or Minori who are outright attracted to other girls and say as such on-screen, but there's definitely some more subtle hints and stuff to work with still and it was actually quite fun to compile them (i took the in-depth part to heart as always sorry anon).

[lilisette]

Late Night Introspection | Zayne/Reader

About: A drabble on Zayne's reasons for becoming a doctor. Was it for himself? Or was it.... for you?

Pairing: Zayne/Reader

Notes: Might be invalidated as the story goes on though haha... But I like the idea of Zayne deciding to be a doctor in order to protect you in ways you cannot.

“By helping her, Zayne… You help yourself.”

The words Grandma Josephine uttered on that fateful day still lingered in his mind, even hours after you’ve left the hospital. She made him promise to take care of you on her behalf, to be with you every step of the way as you lived your life. 

Like a parent giving their blessing to a potential spouse. 

Zayne ran his fingers through his tousled hair, mentally waving that stray thought away. Perhaps in a perfect world where tragedies such as these didn’t happen, she would’ve given him her blessing but… That was not the case now. And in a twisted way, if the disaster 14 years ago didn’t happen, he wouldn’t have met you.

14 years ago he made a decision, a decision that was made because of you. 

He still remembered the day when you proclaimed to everyone that you will become strong and become a hunter so you won’t have to rely on someone and be afraid when another disaster strikes, that you will be someone who would protect everyone around them. 

“I will be your protector one day! Just you guys watch!”

And in that moment, a thought appeared in the forefront of his mind–

“Then who protects the protector?”

He wasn’t the only one who had the same thought however. Caleb immediately interjected, snorting at your antics.

“Then who will protect you, dummy? What if you get injured?”

“I won’t! Because you two will have my back, right?”

“That’s not how it works–”

Indeed, that was not how the world worked. Even the mightiest hunter will fall, despite all the challenges they faced and overcame. And so when you turned to Zayne and asked him what he would be in the future, he simply said– 

“A doctor.” 

“Why?”

“Someone has to take care of you when you’re hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt!”

“Sure.”

So he did. The decision was made. He began his journey into the field of medicine and worked tirelessly to get here. Even though contact between you and him lessened over the years, he had never forgotten his decision, his promise to be by your side when you needed him the most.

As Zayne gained renown and respect within the field over the years, many research facilities and academic institutions had tried to lure him to have him work for them. He refused them all, however. He joined the field not for money, nor for fame and respect. 

But for you.

“You’re good at not giving into temptation.” You jokingly said then. He had no intentions from straying from his path, especially not when you became a hunter despite all the heart conditions you had. He had specifically chosen to study cardiology because he was aware of the problems you had since the disaster. And while there are many capable doctors in said field, he just couldn’t rest easy. 

The thought of you being transferred to someone else’s care made him apprehensive. Why should you rely on another’s care when he could do it instead? 

When he knows you and your heart better than the others ever will?

The sudden ‘ping!’ resounded throughout his office, bringing him out of the recess of his thoughts. He picked up his phone and the corners of his mouth lifted when he saw who it was, contacting him this late at night. 

“Sorry for calling so late earlier. I just needed to know the truth… I’m still reading through them.”

“Go to sleep, it’s late. The documents will still be there when you wake up.”

Just like he will when you wake up. 

He will always be here, as long as you need him.

[summerroseart]

When your hyperfixation's fandom dies down because it's been months since the last bit of content was released

I'm not used to small fandoms someone help me

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

Hot take but the aggressive hardline separation of asexual and aromantic is actually EXTREMELY harmful to a lot of ace/aro people.

Angry rant under the cut

It's one to thing to go: "okay yes sometimes they go together but it's important to remember that for some people they can be different things and you can be one and not the other"

And go: "These are TOTALLY DIFFERENT 100 always separate there is no intersection EVER and if you DARE to be both then you have to piecemeal your identity to not uwu invalidate others(we do not care that we are invalidating you though lol) Don't you DARE ever experience them together you are CONFLATING"

It's like yall just want asexual to = alloromantic only and aromantic to = allosexual only.

You don't give a shit about aroaces, aces who aren't alloromantic but don't ID as aromantic or aros who aren't allosexual but don't ID as asexual.

The aspec community despises us. We get talked down to demanded to split our identities apart for your comfort. We can't exist in certain spaces because our presence there is a personal affront to allo-aspecs. Shout out to the alloaros that bitch about those disgusting aroaces just clogging up the aromantic tag ☺. Shout out to the alloaces who can still love and aren't totally heartless monsters 🥺.

Don't talk about ace shit in the aro tags, Don't talk about aro shit in the ace tags...what's that you're both? And can't neatly separate them and it brings you comfort to be able to discuss your whole orientation? SHUT THE FVCK UP YOU CONFLATING IGNORANT SHIT HEAD.

If you want to be in the aromantic community you have to leave your ace-ness at the door same for asexual community and disregarding your aromantism.

A personal example was an Aspec discord server I was in that had two media recs channels one for sex repulsed people and the other for romance repulsed. Now the issue came is that they didn't acknowledge someone could be both i.e both sex & romance repulsed/just looking for media that had neither sexual nor romantic content, what this lead too is that the romance free media channel was filled with graphic hookup erotica or sexually explicit songs and the sex free channel was just fade to black romance books 🙃...wonderful.

Or when polls/forms will ask you to pick your orientation but only things listed are het,gay,bi/pan yes even the ones made by aspecs, and what they actually mean is use the one that correlates to your romantic/sexual attraction...so fvck aroaces and non sam aces & aros?

And don't get me started on how you treat non sam aces & aros. You at least tolerate the self IDing aroaces, because they have the "curtesy" of separating themselves from the real proper aces & aros.(let's not question how many aroaces would prefer to just ID as just asexual or just aromantic but are forced into aroace identity because that would be "conflating" and they don't want to deal with the harassment).

"UwU don't say asexual when you actually mean aromantic" Some bitches don't use to SAM fvck off with allo-splaining my own sexuality to me.

It would be so much easier and save a lot of pain if yall just went : "asexual for some means no sexual attraction and it says nothing of your romantic attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally". And "aromantic for some means no romantic attraction and it says nothing of your sexual attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally" and "for some they are separated but others not so much as there isn't always a strict separation. Just be chill about it don't accuse people of being ignorant or conflating they know their identities better than you". But no ya chose violent aphobia instead.

But ultimately nobody cares because this shit is only harming the undesirable aces/aros the ones who are harmful stereotypes the ones that make you "look bad".

I know deep in my heart there are a lot of alloaces & alloaros that who would be happy if aroaces & non sam aces/aros didn't exist, there I said it. How can I not come to that conclusion when at every turn they shit on us. They talk about how the worst thing in the world is to be mistaken for one of us. That our representation is actively harmful.

A last parting spicy take it's either "asexulity and aromantism are full identities on their own and aren't modifiers" OR "actually neither asexual nor aromantic can stand on their own they need to be paired with another orientation and they actually are just modifiers" you can't have it both ways. 🤭

[the-power-of-stuff]

I just wanna put it out there that this is a Netflix Live Action ATLA safe space.

Does this mean that I like or agree with every choice the live action made? Definitely not. But it does mean that overall I find the live action interesting to talk about, even when it comes to the stuff I took issue with. It means I'm interested in hearing and sharing critical opinions as well as praise, and I'm interested in interpretations that are different from mine. And I will always try to approach things inquisitively and to judge the show for what it is (which, let's be honest, is basically someone's canon divergent fanfiction put to screen).

But what I'm not interested in is being right, or tearing the show down. So if you're looking for a place to read or share opinions about the live action that skew positive, or that are critical without being angry, or that are relatively neutral with maybe a dab of scientific curiosity, I hope you can find that here.

[redheadbigshoes]

It’s disgusting the way so many of you invalidate lesbians who previously identified as bisexual.

[anomalousmancunt]

this is going on anon thru someone else bc every time i post about this i get goofball ass comments im honestly just not feeling like dealing with

but the tme/tma dichotomy doesn’t really make sense to me. like, every trans person can be a victim of transmisogyny regardless of gender. that’s just cis/trans 2

also like. idk why people complain abt transandrophobia or whatevs we’ve decided we’re calling it. if transmisogyny is hatred of transfemininity how would transandrophobia not be hatred of transmasculinity?

maybe i have it a lil backward but like. im a butch trans woman and im pretty comfortable with that. not on hormones (would like to be) and i don’t pass or really want to and i don’t care abt dressing feminine. when transmeds do the bit where they say im not really trans because of that, they’re challenging my ability to remain masculine while being transfem. is that not transandrophobia???

im confused and im scared to ask bc everyone i ever see talking about it is kind of an asshole abt it

yeah, this idea that oppression is somehow only aimed at the True, Intended Victims is... very nonsensical.

ive had transmisogyny aimed at me since before publicly ID'ing as trans because i dared to be visibly genderweird and that made me Close Enough to a freak-in-the-transfemme-way for some people. ive seen transfemme people have transandrophobia aimed at them because they dared to be masc in a way that clashes with "fem" characteristics, and that made them Close Enough to freaks-in-the-transmasc-way for some people. it's so unnecessary and counterproductive to pretend these experiences somehow are not real, or it's actually Another kind of oppression (a more "general" one, perhaps), and not the one it clearly is.

im sorry people are assholes, because i fully agree with you here.

[slavonicrhapsody]

in my heart ranni x tarnished is just the two of them chilling in a moon palace or some shit each sleeping in their own bed with a shared nightstand between them that just has a reading light. people who think ranni is horny are wholly incomprehensible to me. she doesnt show any indication of missing ANY aspect of her physical body, including sensations like eating and touch? shes clearly living her BEST life as an animate doll

ok literally like Ranni chose to leave behind all earthly sensations when she slew her empyrean flesh and she describes her and her order’s separation from the Lands Between as having “the certainties of sight, emotion, faith, and touch... all become impossibilities” so I feel like she’s prepared to just vibe with her Tarnished out in the void of space as like incorporeal entities. and that’s love babey good for them

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

ASOIAF stans can be very annoying because a common characteristic in any discussion about leadership in this series always delves into readers zeroing in on failures while they completely write off any successes. This happens with just about any person thrust into a position of power, but I see these bizarre standards most applied to Jon Snow and Daenerys (especially Dany). You’d think that after years and years of analyzing the text to death, we’d come up with more compelling arguments than “Jon Snow bad Lord Commander” and “Dany bad (she’s just bad)”. Fans have decided to define these two by the mistakes they make while completely writing off all the good they do. And then the most baffling thing is when they say that Dany and Jon are failures so someone else should be the endgame ruler….and then they name Young Griff as their chosen champion.

Setting aside the obvious role Aegon plays as a narrative foil to Jon and Dany, how can anyone say he would do a better job? He has done literally nothing. His skills are a blank slate. Where is the evidence that he would have better reforms for the Watch than Jon did? That he would know how to better handle the different factions at the Wall than Jon did? That he would know how to prepare for the upcoming food shortage than Jon did? Where is the evidence that he would know how to better handle Meereen than Dany did? That he would know how to better deal with the obviously gargantuan task of abolishing slavery?

The point is that ruling is hard. There’s no such thing as a perfect ruler in this series and if anyone thinks that there is, they obviously have not been paying attention. All who have been put in a position of leadership in this story fail in some way. That’s the nature of the job. Even good-hearted, well-intentioned people like Jon and Daenerys struggle with the weight of leadership. So even as they do such incredible good, they still have blind spots. That’s because they’re human and human beings are not perfect. And let’s be real, people would complain if they were suddenly so good at ruling despite their young age and inexperience. So it’s insane to me that fans will read these books and come to the conclusion that all that is needed, instead of Jon and Dany, is a perfect leader who will make everything ok - even more baffling when they name Aegon/Young Griff or some other person who has zero experience with administration so far. Please, let us be serious for once.