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rainrot4me · 21 hours ago

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Hey, just wondering which of the creeps you headcanon as lgbtq+?

These are just my headcannons for the characters themselves! This excludes them in my other x reader writings.

── .✦

✦ . jeff the killer

Bisexual, heavy masc-leaning.

Jeff gives “Am I gonna kill you or am I gonna kiss you? Guess we’ll find out,” energy no matter who you are. He thrives on chaotic spurts of emotion, feeding off of adrenaline and discourse.

He definitely flirts with anyone who keeps up with his teasing. His relationships are based more on vibe than gender, he couldn’t care less what’s in your pants as long as you’re able to keep up with him mentally and physically.

Would hate labels but also lowkey love how “bi” pisses off the homophobes. “What, you think just cause I stabbed a guy I didn’t wanna kiss him first? Don’t flatter yourself.”

✦ . ticci toby

Pansexual & demiromantic.

Toby is emotionally guarded, but when he loves? He loves deep. He doesn’t care about gender, connection and intensity are what draw him in.

He struggles to name his feelings, but once he trusts someone, he falls hard. “I didn’t plan on liking anyone. But then there you were.” And it’s not about what you are—it’s who you are.

✦ . eyeless jack

Gay (but emotionally repressed).

Jack has a masculine preference and a complicated past. He feels more than he admits. Likely had a closeted relationship in school before his transformation.

Now? He buries his attraction deep beneath logic, science, and distance—but you’ll see it in the way he lingers when he stitches you up. “My condition changed a lot of things. But not who I… admire.”

✦ . masky (tim wright)

Bisexual with a lot of internalized shame.

Tim struggles to define himself, including his sexuality. Had experiences with men he never talked about, but found himself in a constant back and forth of hating and liking people in general.

May have suppressed feelings for male friends before things went dark. He hates feeling vulnerable, so any attraction outside the norm makes him skittish. “It’s not about labels. I liked who I liked. But that was then.” Not very big on making emotional connections anymore.

✦ . hoodie (brain thomas)

Queer/questioning, very fluid.

Brian is subtle and observant—and quietly queer. He likely never got a chance to explore before becoming a proxy, but you get the sense he was always “a little different.”

He doesn’t define his sexuality, but he knows what pulls him in—and it’s often not about gender. “People are too obsessed with definitions. I just want connection. Peace. A spark.” Could give two shits what anyone has to say either.

✦ . kate the chaser

Bisexual, maybe slightly femme-leaning.

Kate has a strong femme presence but definitely isn’t picky. She likes power, confidence, vulnerability—no matter the package.

She might’ve been with girls before and just never mentioned it. Doesn’t talk about her sexuality but wouldn’t deny it if asked. “Yeah, I’ve kissed girls. Slept with a few too. You jealous?”

✦ . ben drowned

Pansexual + Gender Nonconforming.

Ben gives big pan energy but in a “I have no idea what gender this thing is, but I’m turned on by it,” way. Prefers people who treat him like a real person, regardless of identity.

Dresses and acts however he wants—gender norms mean nothing to him. He’s literally pixels. Probably jokes about being your “digital boyfriend/girlfriend/enbyfriend.” “Sorry, sweetheart, the only binary I care about is the coding kind.”

✦ . clockwork

Lesbian.

Yes she dated Toby, yes don’t bring it up. Natalie reads super lesbian-coded, and in the most flannel wearing, car-shop working way ever. Has strong emotional + romantic leanings toward women.

Probably had a very intense first love with a girl she lost. Doesn’t label herself out loud, but she lights up around strong, soft, female energy. “I’ve only ever felt safe with women. Everything else… always felt like pretending.”

✦ . laughing jack

Pansexual, flamboyantly queer.

Jack is a walking queer-coded fever dream. He flirts with everyone for fun but has a real soft spot for eccentric, gender-bending partners. A part of him doesn’t even understand why people care about gender.

His vibe? “Gender is a costume, darling.” “Oh please—I’ve seduced demons, clowns, angels, and corpses. You think your pronouns scare me?”

✦ . slenderman

Asexual, Aromantic-coded but curious.

Slender doesn’t need romantic or sexual intimacy—but he’s not unfeeling. He connects on a deeply spiritual level. Gender and orientation are below his plane of existence.

But with the right person? He explores… softly, curiously, almost reverently. “You intrigue me not for what you are, but how you exist. So human. So fragile. So luminous.”

꩜ .ᐟ

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thirstkanaphan · 3 months ago

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A Shipper's Perspective on SanSang

The San/Yeosang relationship receives positive and negative attention from the fandom. The majority of us find their bond really sweet! We coo when San clings to Yeosang and declares his love; we chuckle when Yeosang nods his head in shy acceptance.

On the extreme ends of the fandom spectrum, you encounter discourse that generally falls into two camps:

Yeosang is a hostage to San's overly-demonstrative affections

Yeosang is a homewrecker who broke up WooSan

These arguments are not new, but they increased in volume within the last year or two. I felt compelled to explore these arguments and put into words some of my complicated thoughts and feelings about this particular relationship. I also believe I'm in a unique position to comment on these arguments because...

I am a shipper. I've been in fandom spaces since I was a preteen (nearly 20 years!) and I am primarily drawn to a fandom when there is great potential for shipping. I was in the Hockey RPF fandom from 2012-2015 and wrote/consumed stories where NHL players kissed each other and sometimes got each other pregnant. These are my bona fides.

Everyone in the Hockey RPF fandom knew the rules. Don't break the fourth wall. Don't make it weird. Don't get delulu. We all understood that Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were not secretly lovers pretending to be good friends and teammates (👀). We were there to have a good time and, more importantly, we all enjoyed hockey! I seriously got into hockey through fandom and attended many games. I still feel a huge swell of fondness when I catch the Pittsburgh Penguins on TV. THOSE ARE MY BOYS!

Before I found Ateez and joined this fandom, I was heavily into the BL genre and specifically Thai BL. The thing about Thai BL is that many of the most popular shows have nothing to do with their writing or directing or acting; they are popular because they star a "branded pair" of good-looking young men who perform fan service outside of their shows. While there are actual queer actors in the Thai BL genre, very few have the same level of global popularity as branded pairs.

ZeeNuNew, the hottest branded pair of the moment

Branded pairs are deliberately modeled on the kpop idol industry, which similarly encourages its young female audience to project m/m fantasies onto their faves. There's actually a whole Korean BL called Bump Up Business about two struggling idols (OnelyOneOf's Mill and Nine) who are paired together in a new group with instructions to appeal to fans through BGP: Business Gay Performance.

The key to a successful branded pair is to emulate as closely as possible m/m archetypes rooted in early '00s Japanese yaoi, which is the primogenitor for modern BL and remains a dominant influence in kpop fan-service.

Here are the main archetypes, as defined by the expert on the subject, AbsoluteBL:

seme: the active pursuer in the narrative (from the original attacker meaning of the word)

uke: the passive resistor in the narrative (defender)

AbsoluteBL clarifies: seme/uke is about who is in CONTROL of the relationship's story, as opposed to top/bottom, terms which come from the gay/queer community and pertain to sexual preference and (should) have nothing to do with narrative power dynamics.

Traditionally, the seme is physically larger and conventionally more masculine in appearance, while the uke is smaller and more feminine in appearance. The uke is often considered "pure" (yes, I know, problematic), which makes them all the more desirable. Female consumers project themselves onto the uke to enjoy a romantic fantasy without having to fully engage with the patriarchal bullshit baked into traditional m/f romance (AbsoluteBL calls this "heterosexual dysmorphia").

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Out of all the pairs in Ateez, SanSang are the most seme/uke-coded.

San is the pursuer. He wants to protect Yeosang because Yeosang is "cute" and "pure." San uses his size to put Yeosang into physical situations he must tolerate/endure for San's pleasure. San preens whenever Yeosang acknowledges him, compliments him, or initiates contact. San wants to take Yeosang to "Paradise" (Single's Inferno) and feed him steak in bed. Only San can kiss Yeosang, which he repeatedly tells atiny. We cannot have Yeosang, he belongs to San.

On paper (or on tumblr), this description would make anyone raise an eyebrow. For the anti-fans of this relationship, San is a bully who routinely takes advantage of Yeosang's gentle nature. I've even heard an argument that San's physical transformation prompted KQ to "reassign" him Yeosang as a fan-service partner in order to maximize their seme/uke appeal to fans. As evidence, fans point to Yeosang's tendency to flinch whenever San gets too close and his hesitancy to reciprocate when San boldly declares his love in front of the cameras.

I have a few responses to this characterization of their relationship.

Quick note: fan service is a feature, not a bug, of kpop. The HYBE internal docs that leaked last summer explicitly mentioned different ships among various Big4 groups and cited strategies for promoting certain ships among their own groups.

Ateez excels at fan service, and this is partially to do with their natural chemistry with and genuine affection for each other. But also, as a smaller company, KQ did not have the means or resources to provide media-training to Ateez in their early years AND they gave almost unfettered access to the members via the vlive app, which is how many kpop fans got to know smaller and newer groups.

The sale of vlive to HYBE, who proceeded to shut down the app and replace it with their own company-managed app, terminated that kind of easy and unrestricted access to idols.

From what I gather, Ateez's growing popularity can be attributed in part to how much the members charmed fans by being unscripted and candid in their live videos, often about their relationships with each other. Sometimes we saw too much, i.e., the Woo-San-Sang intervention during their Christmas live.

I think fans got used to a certain kind of fan service from Ateez, a kind of fan service that seemed to tease fans with a genuine "what if?" about their relationships. This was helped by the built-in narratives surrounding the members: Yunho and Mingi meeting in ninth grade; Wooyoung and Yeosang being trainees together; Seonghwa being inspired by Hongjoong to pursue his idol dream.

And of course, WooSan, but I'll get to them later.

Going to back to SanSang: if you watch their early content, you'll see that San was drawn to Yeosang and the feeling was reciprocated. You can find multiple examples of them cuddling, hugging, and being affectionate with each other going back to 2019. It's been going on since San's "twink" era!

However, while fan service comes naturally to San, it is not the same for Yeosang. In fact, while he excels at all other aspects of being an idol (such as vocals, performance, dance, visuals) he arguably lacks the instincts for fan service. He is different from someone like Jongho, who abstains from fan service unless he's in the mood, or Hongjoong, whose tsundere persona (another Japanese romance archetype) is part of the Matz appeal.

My fellow ateez meta writers have offered their thoughts about Yeosang and how he often suffers for lack of "killer instincts" within the group (they clearly adore each other, but they also fight each other for our love and attention). What is the cause of Yeosang's passivity? Is it lingering trauma from his trainee years? Is it his general tendency to be forgetful or oblivious about events happening around him? Yes, Yeosang is smart, clever, and has a dry sense of humor, but he's also the child that Hongjoong said was hardest to parent.

Then there's a Yeosang that we almost never see and we once glimpsed in a cute exchange between him and Mingi. It's implied that Mingi and Yeosang forgot they were being filmed and Yeosang spoke differently than he normally does on camera, which San observes in surprise. I am not a Korean speaker, but he sounds extra sweet and soft. If that's how he is at home, no wonder he inspires so much cuteness aggression in the members.

I'll also note that Yeosang's "flinch" response to fan service is similar no matter who handles him, whether it's Mingi, Wooyoung, or Jongho. Yet, San is his most persistent suitor and his actions draw the most attention, positive and negative.

Let's Talk About San

San's shiftable personality is something the members observed in an early vlive with Hongjoong, Mingi, Seonghwa, and Yunho.

Mingi: "which member has the most behavioral gap with and without a camera?"

Hongjoong suggests that Yeosang and Seonghwa are pretty much the same with or without a camera. But San behaves differently.

Hongjoong: "Seriously. In the absence of a camera...how should I put this...I'm having trouble putting it in a nice way...he has a pretty extreme character...his mood changes a lot...whenever we all gather for a conversation, he's like...it's fascinating! How does someone think like that? He acts like a normal person with a camera...he's very abnormal with us."

While Hongjoong is talking, the other three see San approaching and they all visibly get nervous.

San: "I heard you dissing me!"

I recap this live because I think it strengthens my interpretation of the SanSang relationship as informed more by San's personality than company mandates. I think San's extreme personality and his ability to shift into "character" in front of the camera enables him to similarly adapt to certain dynamics. He is very perceptive about what his members need out of fan service with him. He's Yunho's sweet boy; he's Seonghwa's pesky little brother; he's Jongho's favorite hyung; he's Mingi's goofball bro. We'll get to Wooyoung.

Thus, one theory is that San becomes the "seme" for Yeosang because he recognizes a need in Yeosang that isn't being met.

Let's revisit the 2024 Off The Record interview between San and Yeosang:

San: There's something I want to ask you. Did anything I did upset you?

Yeosang: Actually, for me, instead of being upset, I feel more like I owe you an apology. Because for example, when you say things like "I love you", you show your love and affection, for me it's not easy to reciprocate, so I feel like I owe you an apology. Sometimes, when you try to kiss me... how can I say it... my body's reaction to avoid it is automatic.

And when San replies that Yeosang has done nothing to upset him, Yeosang continues, unprompted:

Yeosang: Nothing upsets you... Thinking about it another way, this feeling of being upset, I don't think it's entirely negative. I feel like the closer the person is, It's easier to get upset about something. I often wonder if I'm not doing enough (also about taking care of San). It's a bit of a stretch to say something like "I'm going to do something to upset you," but I'm going to do my best to do it.

Let's go back a year earlier to Yeosang's message to San during San's 2023 birthday live:

Sometimes when san shows affection to me, I...hahah...because i’m a little shy, yes...so i really, i really like, i brush it away/discard it but still...to me who cannot express (affection well), Sanie approaching me like this first is (something) i’m always grateful for, and because i feel like i won’t ever be able to express that gratefulness well, so i’m sorry too, but still, i am always thinking very thankfully to Sanie who approaches me first like this.

After listening to this, San smiles softly and says, "You're mine."

I think a more cynical person could read these exchanges as Yeosang apologizing for not giving back enough to their fan service, but I think Yeosang is really saying that he wants to be an active participant in his relationship with San. He wants to be able to genuinely upset San, which he sees as a marker of close friendship. While there is still a part of him that remains uneasy with San's excessive physical affection, he wants to be more to San than just a pretty doll to play with. (Interestingly, this is how Jongho described his relationship with Wooyoung earlier in the ep: “am I an accessory to you?”) I don't think for one second that San feels anything less for Yeosang than intense care and adoration.

Given all of this, SanSang "should" work as a major ship!!

Fans should be falling all over themselves to romanticize the gentle, dominant seme coaxing the timid, traumatized uke into accepting his care and affection!

Yet instead, many in the fandom have a hard time accepting or appreciating the fan-service SanSang provide. It comes off as particularly inauthentic for them. Almost too much like a manhwa/yaoi manga.

The primary reason? WooSan.

Many folks have already written about the WooSan ship and why they find it so exciting and compelling. A lot of the reasons boil down to this: it could actually be real.

My non-shipper kpop friend, who listens to everything but doesn't participate in the fandom, told me at their concert that there was a time when she genuinely thought WooSan were in love.

The image above sums up fandom's perception of WooSan: Wooyoung leads, San follows. Wooyoung pushes, teases, pressures, initiates, while San watches him with the fondest look in his eyes. Wooyoung demands, San gives: his attention, his praise, his own flesh. For narrative purposes, Wooyoung is the seme, San is the uke.

This is an exciting dynamic for shippers, refreshing for its lack of traditional yaoi archetypes. Big, strong San getting pushed around by bratty Wooyoung and loving it. San wrote tragic fanfiction for their characters in Bouncy. San is so confident in Wooyoung's love for him that he jokes Wooyoung will "always come back" even if he strays to another members. San is Wooyoung's home.

The biggest Yeosang antis claim that SanSang is an insult to WooSan. They claim San only acts like he's close to Yeosang because the company separated WooSan after they got too close for comfort during Bouncy era. Fans point to fewer WooSan appearances and promotional activities; no more shippy moments during the logbooks; they rarely filmed tiktoks or tagged each other in instagram photos; there was less "soulmate" talk on lives and during interviews. To add insult to injury, they didn't even get a unit song: It's You is a three-man performance with Yeosang.

Another theory shared by a not-insignificant faction within the fandom is that Wooyoung would not permit himself to be put into the role of the passive, submissive uke, so KQ made the call that San should be more attentive to Yeosang.

I am sure there are multiple factors for why WooSan distanced themselves/were distanced after Bouncy-era (cue Oprah voice "were you silent? or were you silenced?"), and I do think some of that has to do with the meteoric rise of Ateez after Bouncy. I think all of them were savvy enough to realize that they could promote the group on more than just being yaoiteez, and San's skyrocketing fame contributed to that shift too, along with Wooyoung's own self-described internal character arc away from being the "sexy" member towards someone with more mystery and maturity.

I would argue that their "distance" had the result of redirecting our attention to how affectionate San already was with all the members. Suddenly we're noticing how clingy he is with Yunho, Seonghwa, and Jongho. Same goes for Yeosang. Their dynamics are nothing new, but I would argue the fandom's attention and scrutiny made it seem new.

While this cannot be an accurate measurement of anything really, compare how many fics are written about each pair:

San/Wooyoung: 7,525 works on Archive Of Our Own

San/Yeosang: 1,345 works on Archive Of Our Own

As a shipper, there are really interesting observations to make about why the SanSang ship does not work compared to the WooSan ship.

My main theory takes us back to those classic seme/uke dynamics that the SanSang dynamic reproduces through their fan service. When compared with WooSan, SanSang comes off as inauthentic because it's too obvious, too easy, too much like shipper bait. It's traditional yaoi-coded appeal is actually the turn-off!

Here's my other theory: many are uncomfortable with SanSang because it forces them to reckon with the very real Business Gay Performance scaffolding all idol fan service. Because if SanSang is obviously manufactured for attention, are other unit pairs the same?

A Final Few Words About Yeosang

Yeosang is the unfair recipient of a lot of hate by the fandom, for shipping and non-shipping reasons. It's awful and it needs to stop.

I also see a worrying trend among his staunchest defenders of infantilizing Yeosang, stripping him of agency in their battles on his behalf, whether it's for better line distribution, more solo promotions, and fashion week schedules. There was even talk of organizing protest trucks outside of KQ, which I personally find mortifying.

I sincerely hope that in the future Yeosang has more opportunities to shine as a singer, dancer, and performer. I also hope that he comes to a place of comfort and confidence in his abilities to give and receive affection from the people who love him the most, a struggle he's voiced publicly. I truly wish him the best!

A Final Few Words About Me!

As someone who was introduced to Ateez via shipping my initial understanding of these relationships was refracted through the lens of the fandom. It's rare for me to move from "fanon" to "canon" like I am with Ateez, where I'm catching up on all their content, vlogs, and interviews and trying to understand them as "real" people, to the extent that anyone can ever know an idol. I am now streaming and voting in addition to reading fic! I'm no longer lurking but actively participating as a fan! This is a whole new phase for me in my 15+ years of being in fandom.

The interesting thing about my journey is that while I entered the fandom through the side door, I've actually become more interested in their IRL relationships and dynamics. I still read fic of course, but like my Hockey RPF fandom days I am able to compartmentalize the part of my brain that goes "oh these pretty boys are in love and should kiss!" and the other part that goes "these enormously talented artists deserve my support and attention."

That being said, I still enjoy shipping and I enjoying talking about how RPF ships work in the context of the idol industry. SanSang is a great case study to think about these topics, and I hope others will respond and with their own meta.

Thank you for your time!

#ateez #ateez meta #choi san #kang yeosang #jung wooyoung #sansang #woosan

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thatbuddie · 1 year ago

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"eddie isn't queer/gay," you say. "he is straight in canon, so him being gay is just a head canon. it's ok for others to think of him as straight because that's what he is."

let's ignore for a second the fact that eddie has never ever ever ever not even once, said in canon that he is a heterosexual very straight guy. seriously!!! he has never once said it!!! if i am "assuming" he's gay then you are also "assuming" he is straight even though he has never once said it!!

how do you think we got bi buck as canon? like i am serious right now, answer the question. how do you think we go bi buck canon? evan buckley was never conceived to be a bisexual man at the beginning of 911. the reason we have evan buckley as a canonically bisexual character today is because us, queer fans of 911, interpreted him and headcanoned him as bisexual. i would go even further and say that it was us, BUDDIE FANS, who interpreted him and headcanoned him as bi. even before the writers were explicitly writing him as bisexual. we read his actions and his story and his identity and said: "this is a bi character!" and the writers looked back and realized that it made sense! and so they started writing him explicitly and canonically as bi.

was it wrong of us to headcanon a character as bisexual then? like for all intents and purposes we were reading a "straight" character as bi. were we doing something wrong? how come you are not complaining/chastising us/shaming us for how we took evan buckley, an otherwise straight character, and saw him as bi? is it because it now serves a purpose to you that he is bi?

also, taking characters that aren't confirmed queer and reading them as queer is what the queer community, and specifically the queer fandom community, has been doing for DECADES. look up the history of queer coding, i am begging you. it has been through the means of queer coding and the perseverance of people that are engaged in it that actual queer representation in media has increased. and let me tell you right now, eddie diaz is, undoubtedly and undeniably, one of the most queer coded characters there is. whether you think this queer coding is conscious by the writers or not. eddie diaz is queer coded.

and i want everyone who says things like "eddie diaz is not a queer character. he is straight in canon. it's wrong to assume a character is queer without the character saying so" to know that this is exactly what straight and homophobic people say. you are using the SAME rhetoric that has been used to shame queer fans for decades for seeing themselves and their experiences in fictional characters of all types. in fact, us, queer fans (and again BUDDIE FANS), were told so many times by straight fans that we were wrong for reading buck as bisexual. and where are we now? where did reading buck as bi take us? oh yeah, to having bi buck in canon.

so please just stop with the "eddie isn't queer in canon" comments. if you don't want to interpret eddie as queer then that is your prerogative. i will be judging why that is, for sure, but it is your right. but be honest about it. it has nothing to do with whether or not he is straight (which hasn't been said) or queer coded (which he so obviously is seeing as so many of us can very easily read him as queer). it's a personal preference and you're not engaging with canon better because of it.

#like i am sooooo serious when i say that people who use this argument are able to enjoy canon bi buck thanks to us the fans who have been #here for years reading buck and eddie as queer. so i would appreciate the respect from them of how we have been reading the source material #in such ways that the writers have actually followed our path and footsteps.#i KNOW why the number of people who don't want to interpret eddie as queer has grown. i KNOW why the number of people who don't want canon #to confirm that eddie is queer has grown. but i just want them to be honest about it. i don't want them to use the canon excuse.#because for all intents and purposes buck was “straight” until 7x04 but i have seen NO ONE say that we were wrong for thinking he wasn't fo #years. we read buck as bisexual which lead the show to confirm buck as bisexual. we read eddie as queer which is very obviously leading the #show to set eddie up as being confirmed queer. like there is no difference. and yet some people are treating it as very different.#eddie diaz #911 #buddie

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phannie-elvis · 7 days ago

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Phannie Census Update #2 (Preliminary Results!)

Phwoah dads, this is another very long one, so summary at the bottom. I'm gonna hand it over to the mod again now *sexy end screen dance*

Hello everyone! (I'm not gonna change color again because of how long this is). I know everyone is excited for results. Unfortunately, for some of the more complicated questions I have, google forms can't do the kind of math I want, so I need to export the data and write a whole bunch of code and stuff. That being said, for a lot of simpler questions, google forms has a little summary with some graphs and stuff, so I thought I would share that now so we can have some results a lot sooner! I'm gonna go through each question on the survey and say what percent each response got (from highest to lowest, followed by write-ins), as well as the response rate for each question and any noteworthy comments I have.

Disclaimer: I'm going to leave the survey open until I export the data for the final analysis, so it's possible that the results of this will change from I state in this post. However, given that the response rate has been slowing down pretty significantly the past couple days I think that nearly all the responses I'm going to get are already in, so this is probably a pretty good reflection of the data.

These are the results as of 6/14 at 7 PM ET. Total responses so far: 1,577!

Do you currently identify as a lesbian? (99.7 % response rate)

71.3% No, 28.7% Yes

Obviously, we're not 100% lesbians, but I still think 28.7% is pretty high! According to a recent Gallup poll, 1.4% of US adults identify as lesbian (I couldn't find any specifically lesbian stats for the whole world), so 28.7% is wayyyyy higher. Even among LGBTQ+ US adults in general, 14.6% identified as lesbian, so we have a greater "density" of lesbians even given that the Dan and Phil audience is largely queer.

2. Have you ever identified as a lesbian? (99.7% response rate)

54.5% Yes, 45.5% No

I was surprised to see this! I think it's really funny, given the stereotype, that the majority of respondents have identified as lesbian at one point in their lives. I guess Dan and Phil really do know us lol.

3. What's your sexual/romantic orientation? (99.6% response rate)

42.2% Bi/Pan/Omni, 40.9% Queer, 34.8% Gay/Lesbian, 29.3% Ace/Aro, 9.6% Demi, 5.5% Straight, 3.04% write-ins

I was expecting this, but I think it's still funny that the smallest percent other than write-ins was straight lol. I do think the fact that this is tumblr, the Gay People Website, might have something to do with that, but I think it still reflects that the Dan and Phil fan base is pretty solidly queer. (Side note: I can't determine what percent of respondents were LGBTQ+ from the google form, since I can't combine the sexuality and gender data, but I can do that for my final results).

4. What's your gender? (98.5% response rate)

50.8% Woman, 16.7% A different kind of nonbinary (specify in other), 15.5% Genderfluid, 15.3% Man, 13.8% Agender, 5% Demigirl, 3.2% Demiboy, 2.5% Bigender/Polygender, 2.4% Genderqueer (write-in), 0.8% Intersex, ?% other write-ins

I can't do the math for the rest of the write-ins because the google form is being weird, but they were mostly some form of "just nonbinary", not sure/questioning, or transmasc. I think it's funny we have more nonbinary and genderfluid respondents than men respondets. In addition to being a very queer phandom, we're also very genderqueer and I love that for us.

5. What's your gender identity? (98.5% response rate)

48.3% Cisgender, 41.1% Nonbinary, 27.4% Transgender, 0.6% Intersex, 3.6% write-ins

Most of the write-ins were people who were still questioning their gender or didn't feel a connection to gender at all. Again, I think it's funny less than half of respondents are cis. We're really such a queer and trans phandom.

6. What was your assigned gender at birth? (98.9% response rate)

96.1% Female, 2.4% Prefer not to say, 0.4% Actually my doctor was super cool and didn't assign me a gender against my will, 0.4% Male, 0.7% write-ins

I was expecting a pretty high majority female, but 96.1% still surprised me lol. I guess the stereotype that ten years ago all dan and Phil fans were "obsessed teenage girls" (or at least teenage girls) does hold some weight. The write-ins were mostly people saying that they weren't a phannie 10 years ago or they weren't a phannie until after they transitioned.

7. What's your race/ethnicity? (99.6% response rate)

85.2% White, 10.3% Hispanic, 7.3% Asian/South Asian, 2.5% Black, 1.7% Middle Eastern, 1.1% Native American, American Indian, or Alaska Native, 0.5% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 2.6% write-ins

I was expecting a pretty high percent white and wasn't too surprised by this, but I was hoping for a little more diversity. The write-ins were all pretty different, although some form of Jewish and different versions of mixed did appear somewhat often.

8. What's your age? (95.2% response rate)

Unfortunately after about a third of the results came in, google stopped showing me the frequency of each response and just listed the responses. Some people gave a range instead, so I don't have precise numbers to do math with, but the range for people who provided a precise number is 12 to 50 years old. When I could see the frequency, 23 and 25 were in a tight race for the most popular response, but that might've changed. I'll be able to find the average once I do my complicated analysis. (Also, I had multiple responses for each decade between 12 and 50 so we have a pretty decent spread in ages, even if most people are likely in their twenties/thirties!)

9. Which continent are you from? (99.1% response rate)

56% North America, 29.9% Europe, 5.9% Australia, 3.3% Asia, 3.1% South America, 1.5% Oceania/Zealandia, 0.3% Africa, 0.1% Antarctica

Unfortunately the Oceania/Zealandia was not there for the first several hundred respondents, so sorry to anyone who wanted to pick that option but couldn't! (The US education system failed me). These results are pretty much what I was expecting. One person said they were from Antarctica. I don't know if they were kidding or if maybe they're a researcher who lives in Antarctica (in which case, cool!)

10. Which country are you from? (96.0% response rate)

49.9% United States, 13.7% United Kingdom, 5.5% Australia, 5.3% Canada, 4.2% Germany (These are the top 5, I can't list every country because there are simply too many). Here is a graph to try to show you how many responses I got, even though the key doesn't fit in frame lol.

Although about half the pie graph is the U.S., there are so so many responses, which I love. There are phannies all over the world! I can't reliably see all the countries listed right now (I have to hover my mouse over each 0.1% of the pie chart to try to read it), but when I can see some, I've seen countries all over the world (which makes sense given the previous question). Sincere apologies to anyone whose country was not listed. I couldn't offer a write-in option in the drop-down and it was hard to find a list of countries that included everything, given how politically contentious the recognition of countries can be. (This list came from Encyclopedia Brittanica in case anyone was curious).

Fun fact: That top 5 list is very similar to the top 5 countries viewers are from on the AmazingPhil Video Trivia page in tabinof (which is U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany). His page lists the top 10, but I can't read that pie chart well enough to compare past Germany lol.

11. Which of the 4 Gs of the Dan and Phil demographic are you? (99.8% response rate)

87.4% Gays, 84.6% Geeks, 64.1% Girlies, 37.9% Goths, 0.7% None actually, 2.6% write-ins

Hilarious to me that only 0.7% selected "none”. Dan really clocked us with that one. Most of the write-ins are people who are not sure if emo/punk counts as goth (I feel like yes in this case, since Dan and Phil fans are more stereotypically emo but Dan wanted something that started with a G), people who said they were formerly a category (usually girlie), or people who weren't sure if they qualified for a category or not.

Fun fact: These results are pretty close to the results @a-human-beann got when they conducted a poll about the 4 Gs in May. Although the way the question was programmed led to different interpretations of the percentages, the most popular response was still Gays, followed closely by Geeks, then Girlies, then Goths, just like here.

12. Did Dan make you trans/question your gender? (99.4% response rate)

34.7% No, I questioned my gender all on my own (or something else made me I guess), 27.5% No, I've always been sure I'm cis, 14.3% No I made myself trans (or something else did I guess), 14% Yes, he made me question my gender, 5.5% Yes, he made me trans, 4% write-ins

I was a little surprised by this one. I know realistically that Dan isn't "making" anyone trans, I just thought more people would pick it to be funny, but (based on the write-ins) people were actually interpreting the question as who inspired the start to their exploration of gender, which is actually far more interesting so that's cool. The write-ins had a lot of different answers, mostly giving some but not all credit to Dan (and/or Phil).

13. What year did you join the phandom? (99.6% response rate)

14.0% 2014, 13.5% 2015, 10.5% 2013, 10.9% 2012, 10.7% 2016 (These are the top 5, there were responses for every year since 2009). Here is the chart if you want to see about how popular a specific year was. 2009 is the dark blue slice after the white gap, then they go clockwise in order. The slice before the white gap is "I have so little memory of it, I can't even guess).

This is pretty in line with what I was expecting, peak joining around tatinof and the British vlogger boom. 10.9% of respondents joined during the hiatus (or at the very beginning of Back from the Dead, since I did 2019-2023), and 8.6% joined after the hiatus (2024-2025).

14. At this exact moment in time, are you a dannie or a phillie? (99.4% response rate)

36.2% I literally couldn't decide with a gun pointed to my head, 35% Dannie, 28.8% Phillie

This one surprised me again (I feel like I say that almost every question lol). I was really expecting Phillies to be the majority given the prevailing "Phil is a precious baby angel who must be protected" sentiment that the phandom tends to have lol. However, after reading the nuance question (coming up), I realized that people interpret the question differently which could affect responses to this one (I'll discuss that later). It's also a pretty even split between all three categories, even though there were more dannies than phillies. Early on, it switched a couple times between whether there were more dannies or phillies but it's pretty stable now given the sample size.

15. When you first joined the phandom, were you a dannie or a phillie? (99.4% response rate)

66.9% Dannie, 17.5% Phillie, 15.6% I literally couldn't decide with a gun pointed to my head

I was expecting Dan to have the majority here, but that's still quite a large majority. This makes sense given that he has more subscribers (and had more subscribers around the time most of us joined the phandom). I do love that "I literally couldn't decide with a gun pointed to my head" has gone from the least popular option for when people joined to the most popular option today. Here's the graph to compare to the last question.

16. Are you a dannie or a phillie? (with nuance) (41.9% response rate)

I don't have any stats here, since they are all long responses, but I'm planning on making a word cloud or something for the final results. While reading, I realized that there are different interpretations of what constitutes a dannie vs. phillie. Some people think the question basically means who do you like more, while some interpret it more as who do you relate to more (or some mix between them). I wonder if this could help explain the general "we must protect Phil"/"he can do no wrong" type of thing we've got going on, despite the fact that apparently more respondents are dannies. Based on the written responses I've seen (which, again, have not been scientifically analyzed at all), I think that a lot of people relate to Dan and therefore really appreciate how great Phil is. Maybe there's also still some remnants of Phil's old branding as the "innocent one" that make us want to protect him, idk. I'd be interested in asking who do you like more vs. who do you relate to more separately in the future.

17. Are you some kind of mentally ill/neurodivergent? (99.6% response rate)

59.0% Yes (and diagnosed), 28.3% Yes (but not diagnosed), 6.1% Not sure, 4.1% No (and I was never assessed), 0.4% No (but I was assessed), 1.9% write-ins

Honestly, I'm just gonna stop writing that I was surprised, because I feel like it's getting annoying. Assume I was surprised unless I state otherwise lol. (I was expecting that we would have a high percentage of yeses, but this many specifically is what surprised me). 87.3% of respondents answered some form of yes. Good thing Dan's here to cure all of us (Boom, Mr. Beast). Most write-ins were people saying yes/probably but clarifying stages of diagnosis and some people said they used to have a diagnosis like depression or anxiety, but they're better now! (Congrats!)

18. Specifically, are you autistic? (99.6% response rate)

27.1% Yes (but not diagnosed), 26.2% No (and I was never assessed), 20.7% Yes (and diagnosed), 20.5% Not sure, 2.0% No (but I was assessed), 3.5% write-ins

47.8% answered some form of yes. I realized that people who have Dan and Phil as a special interest are probably more likely to be on phannie tumblr and more likely to find this survey, but I do still think that stereotype that a lot of phannies are autistic does have some basis. It's estimated that 1% of the world population is autistic (from the World Health Organization), so 47.8% is definitely way higher (which would suggest phannies are more likely to be autistic than the general population, but again this was not a perfect sample collection so I can't say for sure) (I think if we could say that, a likely explanation would just be that the phandom is pretty accepting of neurodivergence, especially autism, which could attract autistic fans or encourage phannies to explore their own neurodivergence more). Write-ins were mostly people who were basically self-diagnosed but felt the need to present their case because they weren't sure (which I think is hilarious because that seems like a pretty autistic thing to do lol (I would do the exact same thing lol)). Here's the chart so you can see how close to 50% the yeses are and also so you can see how many people gave write-ins clarifying lol (I blocked out the write-ins it showed in the key).

19. If you identify as transmasc, do you consider Dan or Phil to be gender goals? (97.7% response rate)

61.8% I'm not transmasc, 14.3% Dan, 12.3% Both, 6.2% Neither, 1.4% Phil, 4% write-ins

This one wasn't surprising (I've just heard a lot of people say Dan which is why I asked the question). A lot of write-ins specified that they weren't transmasc but still considered one/both of them to be gender goals (which makes me realize I could've worded that question better). A lot of write-ins also specified a specific era that they considered gender goals.

20. What's your political orientation? (98.2% response rate)

72.3% Strongly left, 20.3% Moderately left, 3.7% I don't really think about politics, 1.4% Center, 0.3% Strongly right, 0.2% Moderately right, 1.8% write-ins

This one didn't really surprise me. I was expecting a strong majority strongly left, given how much they speak up about political issues (particularly Dan). Although I was a little surprised to see any right-leaning at all, especially strongly right, but that's literally 7 people out of the whole 1,577 responses so far. Also, a lot of people in the write-ins couldn't remember which was left and which was right or said it worked differently in their country (they usually then explained their politics and ended up meaning some form of "left") (there's a chance the people who picked right got them mixed up as well, but it's so little that maybe there really are some strong right-leaning Dan and Phil fans somehow). A lot of write-ins also said anarchy/fuck politics/they don't believe in politics.

21. Which is better, phyuri or phaoi? (98.3% response rate)

36.6% How dare you ask me to pick one?, 31.4% Phaoi, 21.2% Phyuri, 8.6% I don't know what we're talking about, 2.2% write-ins

I didn't have any expectations for this one, although personally I am a phyuri lover myself. Most write-ins were either saying they were neutral about it or didn't like either because they don't like shipping real people.

22. Are you a furry? (99.3% response rate)

75.4% No, 18.1% I dabble, but wouldn't call myself a full furry, 4.6% Yes, 1.9% write-ins

I wasn't surprised by this one at first because I had no frame of reference for what percent of the general population are furries, and I was just expecting most people to say no (but quite a few to be somewhere in between which is why I added the I dabble option). However, I just googled it and according to a survey from 2011 furries estimated that roughly between 0.02% and 0.04% of the population are furries, so 4.6% yeses (not even including write-ins or the I dabble option) is wayyy higher. This being on tumblr probably has something to do with that, but I also think all of Dan's furry references have probably helped people find the furry community more easily.

23. Do you think Sister Daniel is hot? (99.0% response rate)

80.3% Yes, 8.1% No, 6.3% I'm too confused to tell, 6.3% write-ins

This is pretty much what I was expecting (a resounding yes). Most of the write-ins were people clarifying that while they personally were not attracted to her (usually because they were ace), they acknowledged that she was still objectively hot.

Summary:

While not every phannie identifies as a lesbian, around 28% of respondents do and around 54% have at one point in their lives, which is way higher than the percent of lesbians in the U.S. population. The respondents were overwhelmingly queer (only 5.5% identified as straight) and way more likely to be some sort of genderqueer compared to the general population (more nonbinary and genderfluid respondents than men respondents, only around 48% of respondents identified as cis). 96% of respondents were assigned female at birth, so there is some truth to the stereotypical view of phannies 10 years ago. The large majority of respondents were white or mixed race including white (around 85%). Google Forms hates me, so I couldn't get good stats on the ages yet, but 20s and 30s appear to be the most common ages (23 and 25 were the most common responses before it stopped letting me see the frequency of each response), and the ages ranged from 12 to 50. About half of respondents were from the U.S. followed by around 14% from the U.K., but there were responses from literally too many countries for me to count on the pie chart and responses from every continent (which is super cool!). Out of the 4 Gs, the most popular was the Gays (87%) followed by the Geeks (85%), then Girlies (64%), then Goths (38%), and only 0.7% of respondents selected "None, actually", so Dan really clocked us with that one. Most people actually say Dan didn't make them trans/question their gender (even most trans people said no), which I was a little surprised by, but it is just a joke, so that makes sense. The most common years to join the phandom were around tatinof and the Great British vlogger boom (2012-2016), but there were responses every year since 2009 to 2025. Right now, people are pretty evenly split between whether they're dannies, phillies, or can't decide (with can't decide being in the lead, followed by dannie, then phillie). However, about 2/3 of respondents said they were dannies when they first joined the phandom. For the long response nuance question, I discovered there's lots of way of interpreting what makes someone a dannie vs. a phillie. A large majority of respondents were some kind of mentally ill/neurodivergent (87% combining diagnosed and undiagnosed), with 48% being autistic (combining diagnosed and undiagnosed). Most respondents were not transmasc, but for those who were, most consider Dan to be gender goals (14% of respondents), followed by Both (12%), Neither (6%), and then Phil (1%). Respondents were overwhelmingly likely to identify as being politically left (72% strongly left and 20% moderately left), but a small percentage identified with the right (0.5%). Most people couldn't pick between phyuri and phaoi, but phaoi did get more votes than phyuri (31% vs. 21%). Most respondets (75%) were not furries, but 18% dabble and 5% said yes, which is much higher than estimates for the general population. Finally, 80% of respondents agree that Sister Daniel is hot (with only 8% saying No).

Again, HUGE thank you to everyone who took the survey!!! I can’t believe the response rates are so high for every question!! Over half of the questions had above a 99% and every question (other than the long response nuance question which people didn’t answer if they didn’t have nuance lol) had above a 95%! This has been so much fun to analyze, and I can't wait to get started on my full analysis. Also, thank you so so much to the people who have said nice things about how the survey was well-made/fun to take, it really makes me so happy to see!

Next week: I'm planning on sharing my favorite write-in responses for each question! Dan and Phil are right, we really are funnier than them, so I want to share some of the responses that made me laugh. They'll all still be kept anonymous (I don't even have a way of finding who wrote them), and I'm not going to share anything that I think could be personal, just things that made me laugh. (If you have a response that was funny but you don't want shared for whatever reason, DM me or send an anonymous ask with what it was and I'll make sure not to include it!)

Athankyouverymuch everyone!

#phannie elvis #phelvis #phannie census 2025 #phan #dan and phil #dnp #dip and pip #daniel howell #phil lester #dan howell #phandom

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wisteria-lodge · 8 months ago

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And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them.

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy.

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance.

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief.

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain.

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke:

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —”

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end.

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn.)

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy… gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.)

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance.

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit.

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures.

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.)

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact.

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius.

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

#hp #hp meta #hp close reading #queer coding in hp #femme coding in hp #jkr critical #anti jkr #draco malfoy #severus snape #lucius malfoy #percy weasley #gilderoy lockhart #horace slughorn #remus lupin #nymphadora tonks #albus dumbledore #aids #literary analysis

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genderkoolaid · 2 years ago

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the funny thing about being called an MRA is that long before i had thoughts about anti-transmasculinity i had thoughts about butches & how other leftists/feminists/queer women would talk about us. i would see people talking about butches having male privilege, about how butches are chauvinistic and act oppressively towards femmes, all with idea that feminine women are the ultimate oppressed women and butches are, like, above that. and it made me want to fucking bite someone. i wanted to shout at these people, have you ever fucking spoken to a butch? do you know what its like to be seen as a pathetic imitation of masculinity? despite what hollywood would have you believe, we aren't all conventionally attractive, sexy, consumably-androgynous Ruby Roses- we're ugly dykes, the embodiment of female failure because we have completely and utterly failed to be even remotely fuckable. we're unnatural predators of the good, natural feminine women. we're womanhoods trash! frankly there's a good reason why a lot of assigned-female butches relate to trans women, because masculinity on a female body- whether that's "feminine presentation" female or "vulva" female, "penis" masculine" or "no makeup and hairy" masculine- is seen as horrific, disgusting, a broken promise to cishet men!! but butches also relate to trans men because there's also the experience of being completely erased from history & society, told over and over again through cultural silence that you are an isolated mistake and should not exist and that there is no place or community for you, and having seemingly every goddamn person have their own Hot Take on how misogynists actually love that you exist and would prefer every woman be like you and you know that feminine people have it worse, right????????????

its like. people can understand the idea that a male-coded trait, like assertiveness, will be seen as a negative when a woman does it, even if its praised on a man*. yet for some reason people love leaping to the assumption that masculine presentation is always seen as valuable and good, and that women & people seen as women who are masculine are seen as Doing A Good Thing. like i don't know how to tell y'all this but if you are placed in the "woman" box literally nothing you do will ever be good enough!!!!!!! women & "women" are only praised when and if it will benefit the patriarchy, and when it doesn't they are mocked and degraded!!!!!!!!!

#m.

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hms-no-fun · 3 months ago

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you were on cohost? i guess too late now, how was it for you?

cohost had its fair share of problems and i could often find the community there a bit too tumblr-core fingerwaggy if you know what i mean. but the site's dead now so it's kind of a moot point. what i find myself reflecting on most these days are the positives.

first, no numbers. i think their no numbers policy was probably a bit over-aggressive, but it quelled some of the rat race popularity contest aspect of social media that often makes it so tedious. i liked their tag tracking system, their robust content warning options, and the absence of infinite scroll. what i miss most about cohost is that their text editor supported CSS, which led to people programming elaborate text effects and puzzles and games in-site that harkened back to the days of flash animations. there was something in this combination of elements that drew out a rebellious creativity in users.

cohost came at a time when social media was across the board feeling terrible (and it's only gotten worse hahaha), particularly as someone who makes shit that relies on you clicking links that take you away from the website or app. algorithms hate this and punish it. users also just seem kind of lazy and disinterested in using the internet so much as letting the internet happen to them passively. but when a post of mine went viral on cohost, people engaged with it. it wasn't just likes and shares, it was comments and additions. it felt like a place that (at its best) encouraged actual conversation and the development of new ideas among like-minded peers. when my posts did well and i included a donation link, people gave me money. it felt genuinely like a website that COULD support professional blog work in a way that was more customizable even than substack yet still RSS friendly, and the Following tab which let you easily see posts of specific users was a REVELATION, like a mini RSS reader within the website itself.

but the enterprise was unsustainable for various reasons (not all of them outside the dev crew's control) and the haters got what they wanted. now our big social media alternative is bluesky, a website that dares to ask the question "what if there was another twitter?" the answer is that it fucking sucks. i hate microblogs so much dude, why on EARTH are we still acting like these disambiguited 300-character-limit posts are the most preferable means of social communication online??? why would you set out to make a better twitter and then deliberately choose to replicate literally every aspect of the user experience that encouraged low-information high-drama conflict fabrication? WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A VERSION OF TWITTER WHERE YOU CAN EASILY LOOK UP THE ACCOUNT OF EVERYONE WHO HAS YOU BLOCKED AND IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A FEATURE NOT A BUG???????? i just don't get it. i don't even get the optimism of the early adopters. i've seen people decry the post-election decay of the platform like "of course the cishets come in to ruin a community that was defined by trans & queer people" i'm sorry HELLO???????? from literally day zero bluesky was aiming to be a hands-off centrist IPO-friendly tech startup, there was never anything structurally embedded within the platform itself to keep this kind of decay from happening, you just happened to be on there when there were dramatically fewer users most of whom were curious tech enthusiasts. seriously, how have we not learned this lesson yet? you can't define a digital culture by the vibes of random user behavior! unless you have LAWS and GUIDELINES whereby you fucking BAN people for being shitheads, unless you enforce an actual code of conduct and punish bigoted speech and design a system that encourages constructive conversation, you are always always ALWAYS going to wind up at unhinged facebook boomer slop!

the death of cohost and the utterly predictable decay of bluesky are a big part of the reason why i've been posting so much more on tumblr. this is like the last bastion of anything even remotely resembling the old web, with its support of longposts and tagging and how easy it is to find random hobbyists doing cool shit you never knew existed before. like, yeah, you have to search that shit out and tailor your feed to not drive you crazy, but that's what i like about it!!! i am an adult with agency who understands that life is complicated and as such i expect to have to put some work into making my experience with a website positive! but in the hellworld of the iphone everything is walled garden apps for aggregating content where the content and its creators are structurally established as infinitely replaceable and uniquely worthless punching bags to be used and cast aside. everyone's given up on moderation and real jobs don't exist anymore especially if you happen to work in the "creative economy" IE are a writer or critic or artist or hobbyist of literally any kind. we've given up on expecting anything from the rich moneyboys who own and profit immensely off of the platforms whose value we literally create!!! especially now with the rise of "AI" grifters, whose work has ratcheted good old fashioned casual sexism and racism and homophobia up to levels not seen in such mainstream spaces since the early 2000s.

i like tumblr because i don't have to use a third party app to get & answer asks at length, and because it is a visual artist friendly platform where i won't be looked at funny for reblogging furry postmodernism or transgender homestuck OCs. it is a site that utterly lacks respectability and that's what makes it even remotely usuable. unfortunately it also sucks! partly it sucks because this place was ground zero for the rise of puritanical feminist-passing conservatism in leftist spaces, so it's like a hyperbolic time chamber for brain-melting life or death discourse about the most inconsequential bullshit you could ever imagine. but it also sucks because it's owned by a profit-motivated moneyboy who has consistently encouraged a culture of virulent transphobia and frequently bans trans women who call this out. so like, yeah, this place is cool compared to everywhere else, but it is exactly like everywhere else in that is also on a ticking clock to its own inevitable demise. the owners of this website will destroy everything that makes it interesting and will EAGERLY delete the nearly twenty years (!!!!!!) of posts it's accumulated the instant it will profit them to do so. this will be immensely unpopular and everyone will agree it's a tragedy and it won't matter. the culture and content of a social media platform is epiphenomenal to its rote economic valuation. i mean, obviously it isn't, zero of these massive tech companies would be what they are if so many people weren't so eager to give their time and labor away for free (and yes, writing a dumb dick joke on tumblr IS a form of labor in the same way that doing a captcha is labor, just because it's a miniscule contribution in an economy of scale doesn't mean you didn't contribute!), but once a tech company reaches a certain threshold its valuation ceases to be tethered to anything that actually exists in reality.

all of which is why i remember cohost with a heavy heart. yeah, it was imperfect. it was also independently owned, made with the explicit goal of creating a form of social media that actually tries not to give you a lifelong anxiety disorder so it can sell you homeopathic anti-anxiety sawdust suppositories. for the brief window of time when it was extant, i was genuinely hopeful for the future of being a creative on the internet. part of why i spend so much time on godfeels, a fucking homestuck fanfiction with no hope of turning a profit or establishing mainstream legitimacy, is that my readers actually ENGAGE with the material. what brought me back to using this website consistently was precisely the glut of godfeels-related questions i got, and the exciting conversations that resulted from my answers. meanwhile i put so many hours into my videos and even when they do well numerically, i barely see any actual engagement with the material. and that is a deliberate design choice on the part of youtube! that is the platform functioning as intended!! it sucks!!!

what the memory of cohost has instilled in me is a neverending distaste for the lazy unambitious also-rans that define the modern internet. i remember the possibility space of the early web and long for the expressiveness that even the most minor of utilities offered. we sacrificed that freedom for a convenience which was always the pretense for eventually charging us rent. i am thinking a lot these days about what a publicly funded government administrated social media utility would look like. what federal open source standards could look in an environment where the kinds of activities a digital ecosystem can encourage are strictly regulated against exploitation, bigotry, scams, and literal gambling. what if there was a unionized federal workforce devoted to the administration of internet moderation, which every website above a certain user threshold must legally take advantage of? i like to imagine a world where youtube isn't just nationalized but balkanized, where you have nested networks of youtubes administrated for different purposes by different agencies and organizations that operate on different paradigms of privacy and algorithmic interaction. imagine that your state, county, and/or city has its own branch of youtube meant to specifically highlight local work, while also remaining connected to a broader national network (oops i just reinvented federation lmao). imagine a world where server capacity is a publicly owned utility apportioned according to need and developed in collaboration with the communities of their construction rather than as a deliberate exploitation of them. our horizons for these kinds of things are just so, so small, our ability to imagine completely captured by capitalist realism, our willingness to demand services from our government simply obliterated by decades of cynical pro-austerity propaganda. i imagine proposing some of this stuff and people reacting like "well that's unrealistic" "that'll never happen" "they'd just use it for evil" and i am just SO! FUCKING! TIRED!!!!

like wow you're soooooo cool for being effectively two steps left of reagan, i bet you think prison abolition and free public housing are an impossible pipedream too huh? and exactly what has that attitude gotten you? what've you gained by being such a down to earth realist whose demands are limited by the scope of what seems immediately possible? has anything gotten better? have any of the things you thought were good stayed good? is your career more stable, your political position more safe, your desire to live and thrive greatly expanded? or do you spend every day in a cascading panopticon of stress and collapse, overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the sheer magnitude of what it's cost us to abandon the future? you HAVE to dream. you HAVE to make unrealistic demands. the fucking conservatives have been making unrealistic demands forever and look, they're getting everything they want even though EVERYONE hates them for it! please i'm begging you to see and understand that what's feasible, what's reasonable, what's realistic, are literally irrelevant. these things only feel impossible because we choose to believe The Adults (and if you're younger than like 45, trust me, to the ruling class you are a child) whose bank accounts reflect just how profitable it is to convince us that they're impossible. all those billions of dollars these fuckers have didn't come from nowhere, it was stolen from all of us. there is no reason that money can't and shouldn't be seized and recirculated back into the economy, no reason it can't be used to fund a society that is actually social, where technological development is driven not by what's most likely to drive up profits next quarter but by what people need from technology in their daily lives.

uh so yeah basically that's my opinion of cohost lmao

#sarahposts #cohost #social media #politics #long post #political diatribe #i miss cohost #this is what happens when my ritalin kicks in mid-stream #i promise i didn't MEAN to make this a whole Thing #but i've been thinking a lot about this stuff and cohost is a big part of why

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aoelustious · 10 days ago

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(A lil rambling on queer discourse outside and inside the fandom from a genderfluid bisexual)

One of the most enduring tensions within queer communities — especially as queerness becomes more visible in media, fandom, and state-sanctioned institutions — is the question of assimilation vs radicalism. And no, this isn’t new. We’ve been circling this debate since at least the post-Stonewall era, and arguably since before the term “homosexual” was even coined.

I. “Normalization” as Strategy

The move to normalize queerness — to make queer relationships legible to heteronormative society through things like marriage, monogamy, parenthood, or even just public respectability — has roots in practical survival.

Think: the Human Rights Campaign’s messaging, “Love is love,” marriage equality, queer representation in sitcoms and yogurt commercials.

This direction can be read as a bourgeois political strategy (Duggan, 2002), often referred to as “homonormativity.” It prioritizes “acceptable” queer subjects (cis, middle-class, often white, often masc) who resemble their straight counterparts as closely as possible — except for the gender of their partner.

And it’s true: this has tangible benefits. Legal protections. Cultural legitimacy. Safety.

But this approach also comes with costs. It sidelines queer people who don’t fit the norm — trans people, poly folks, kinky folks, poor people, disabled people, racialized people. It risks transforming queerness from a challenge to dominant systems… into a rebranding of them.

II. “Preserve Queerness” as Resistance

On the flip side, there are those who argue that queerness should remain fundamentally oppositional. That queerness is not just about who we love — it’s about how we live, what we disrupt, how we imagine new futures.

Think: José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, in which queerness is positioned as something not yet here, something utopian, always pointing beyond what is.

Here, the critique is not just of heteronormativity, but of the institutions that structure all our lives — the nuclear family, capitalism, the state, colonial timelines of success. “Queer” is a method, not just an identity. A verb, not just a noun.

But this view can also become rigid. When queerness is defined only by its capacity to reject, it risks becoming inaccessible to those who do want things like marriage or kids — especially if those things weren’t always accessible to them before. We shouldn’t turn queerness into a test people must pass to be “valid.”

III. And Yes, This Applies to Your Fanfic Discourse

This debate resurfaces constantly in fan spaces:

– Is shipping fixed top/bottom roles inherently heteronormative?

– Is using seme/uke language a form of internalized oppression?

– Is “switch hate” in fandom actually just queerphobia in disguise?

And the answer is… it depends. But more importantly, intention and context matter.

Queer codes like top/bottom, bear/twink, fem/butch emerged from the queer community as tools of navigation, identity, intimacy, and play. That they’re sometimes messy, stereotyped, or commodified doesn’t erase their history or usefulness. And yes — these codes have always intersected with fandom culture. Sometimes clumsily. Sometimes joyfully.

Fandom is not a political campaign. It’s a liminal space where fiction, fantasy, and projection collide — and trying to impose rigid moral frameworks onto it flattens the complex emotional and cultural labor happening there.

If you critique top/bottom dynamics in fic because you believe they replicate heteropatriarchal logic — fine. That’s a discussion worth having. But if your critique shames people for their preferences, you’re reproducing the same moral purity logic you claim to oppose.

IV. The Problem of the Queer Police

The worst-case scenario here is that we start using queerness not as liberation, but as a tool of internal policing. When queerness becomes something that must be performed correctly to be respected, it loses its radical potential.

If your queerness is only valid when it aligns with a particular brand of politics or aesthetics, we’re not breaking binaries — we’re just building new ones.

Queerness contains multitudes. It can be domestic or deviant. Normie or revolutionary. Tender or obscene. Apolitical or hyper-political. And it is still queerness.

To quote Eve Sedgwick:

“People are different from each other.”

And that includes how they ship, write, love, protest, fuck, and self-identify.

We don’t have to collapse queerness into one monolithic definition to protect it. We just have to trust that its range is part of what gives it power.

#queer narratives #queer community #queer theory #happy pride 🌈#pride month #fandom discourse #fandom discussion #lgbtq #lgbt pride #lgbtqia #lgbtq community #queer

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