#queer narrative

[heretherebedork]

I am still thinking about Old Fashion Cupcake.

Such an important part of this is that the typical coming-of-age narrative is about being young and free and discovering yourself and in those stories everyone knows who they are by the time they're graduating university. Everyone knows their own shape by the time they head into the working wold, obviously. They have partners, they know their own heart and soul, they know who and what they are and what they want and what life has for store in them and that's when life start, life starts after you discover yourself.

But not in Old Fashon Cupcake.

Instead we're being given the narrative of two adult man, one nearing 40, and the discovery of what it means to be queer and what it means to be different and what it means when the box you've always shaped yourself to fit is the wrong one. The idea that life can happen and you can live and you can still discover yourself.

Nozue has spent a lifetime fitting himself into the box he thinks he should be in, trying to fit into every nook and cranny of 'normal' without any consideration for himself. He has filled out the box and hollowed himself out in the process.

And now he's hitting a time in his life when he's expected to have figured everything out, to be living the life he knows he wants, to be an Adult and a Man and to know what the future holds... but all he sees is swathes and swathes of the same hollow life, the same false box, the same lies he's been trying to make the truth.

Togawa is younger than him but he's accepted that he doesn't fit the box everyone expects him to, he's accepted that he has to make his own shape, find his own place. That he can live life and be himself. And in finding himself, he's learned to see people who don't. And he sees Nozue.

This narrative is so deeply, inherently queer that it is beautiful because it is about the kind of self-discovery journey that comes from a world telling you one thing only to realize that what you want, what you need, who you are, doesn't fit that path. And when you're never offered an alternative that fits you... you take that path and you make the path work.

But when you finally have a chance to see the path that wasn't? To see the path you wanted and needed but were never given... you grab it with both and you run and then you panic because this in unfamiliar and new and that's terrifying.

Nozue is peeking down a path that is everything he's ever dreamt of, freedom and friendship and desserts and a partnership and a chance at more and he is both reveling and he is panicking because he's never felt this before. He's never felt this nameless hope and joy that bubbles up and fills up the hollow parts of himself that he shaped for society.

Being yourself, even in little moments, even in the tiniest things, when you haven't been for so, so long? It's exhilarating. And it's terrifying. The box is comforting when you've contorted yourself so long... stretching is painful and scary even as it relieves and reveals pain you have forgotten about.

[dianels]

On this, the first anniversary of the original airing of the Last Episode of Willow 2022, President Lili Croan presents the 24th Annual Immemorial Games. May the Tanthamore be ever in your favor!

@evodevo-geekmonkey

[catgirl-catboy]

Fandom please learn the difference between “This is a queer/neurodivergent NARRATIVE’ and ‘the character is canonically queer or neurodivergent’.   I think it would solve a lot of discourse.   

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

random ramble here about some things I've definitely said before, but it feels important to me that queerness in science fiction contains context, on narrative level and/or a meta level

that is, something could be written in a queer way that isn't narratively set in the same universe/species/culture/generally far away enough from this world and this history that language and identity and civil rights movements don't look the same, but the writer playing in that sandbox does exist in this world with this history and language and these identities and movements and the more that the writer is aware of that, the better the writing is, because those stories and themes are created using our language and philosophies

anything that doesn't acknowledge that will most likely read more like a queer theory for dummies

or something could take place in a future (or a past, or some other place) that is connected very deliberately to who we are, and I've found that very often that kind of narrative stops dead at creating those links with queerness, possibly in order to give a sense of Utopian "we're so far past that mattering" that's meant to be affirming

but in the meta sense it does matter -- it matters that a world has been created in which, perhaps, coming out is still a thing, or there are still only two queer characters for every ten cisgender heterosexual character (and that's a gracious estimate) or even that the existence of queerness is still something that needs to be confirmed, whereas cisgender heterosexuality is a default, or even that "cisgender heterosexuality" is a thing and there hasn't been any imagining done about how our words might evolve (or if the choice is made to use modern day terminology -- fair enough, but that might open up some new questions)

what happens when a writer/creator says "we're so far past that mattering" is that the actual queerness -- cultural, political queerness, is smoothed over into something palatable and conformist, and that... isn't queer

[subtle-carrot]

Well, I guess I’m poking this bear of a fandom. Here’s my video on First Kill, individualism and queer coding.

[fujikos-gun]

we need to make peace with the fact that "i am a girl and retroactively i always was even when i didn't personally think so" and "i am a girl but i used to be a boy" are both equally valid ways to be transfem and both are punk af bc they equally reject societal norms of what a person's gender experience should be

[makingqueerhistory]

I’m actually serious about this, if at all possible, right now is a very good time to request queer books from your local library. Whether they get them or not is not in your control, but it is so important to show that there is a desire for queer books. I will also say getting more queer books in libraries and supporting queer authors are pretty fantastic byproducts of any action.

This isn’t something everyone can do, but please do see if you are one of the people who has the privilege to engage in this form of activism, and if you are, leverage that privilege for all you’re worth.

For anyone who can’t think of a queer book to request, here is a little list of some queer books that I think are underrated and might not be in circulation even at larger libraries:

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco     

Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals by William Wright    

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley   

God Themselves by Jae Nichelle

IRL by Tommy Pico        

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages             

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom          

Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow              

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser

Queer Magic: Lgbt+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World by Tomás Prower            

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam   

Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon 

Hi Honey, I'm Homo! by Matt Baume      

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Homie: Poems by Danez Smith

The Secret Life of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw  

The Companion by E.E. Ottoman 

Kapaemahu by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

Sacrament of Bodies by Romeo Oriogun     

Witching Moon by Poppy Woods 

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt    

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman    

Disintegrate/Dissociate by Arielle Twist           

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi             

Peaches and Honey by Imogen Markwell-Tweed      

Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color by Christopher Soto

[gaminegay]

People go on about good healthy queer rep but I cannot express how much I want unhealthily devoted queer rep. Raise your lover from the dead no matter the cost. Kill to get them to safety. Trade your soul for theirs. Die to reunite with them. I want gothic hyper-devotion codependent lovers

[deancasforcutie]

The way Dean’s queer joy and revelation at others just being outside the stereotypical control images is also ours

Honorable mention:

[esoterictboy]

If I caught your faggot ass looking at me in the locker room ? I’d ask what the hell you want. I’d pull down my shorts, flash you my dick and say “this what you want, you just wanted to see some dick ?”, wagging it back and forth at you. “Never taken real man’s dick before huh, you want me to fuck your ass ? Get a taste for real man ?”

Now my dicks right up again your face, every time you breath it twitches, you look up into my eyes, “eat it fag.”and you take me into your mouth as far as you can’t until you choke. “I know you can do better than that,” I say pumping into your throat to push myself deeper. you look up at me and place my hands behind your head. I gently force myself down your throat. Nose up against my bush and your bottom lip nestled in my sack. “That’s it your satisfied now huh?” And you nod at me as spittle drips down your chin and spills in between your thighs. “Next time I do this to your hole.”

[lizardgoats]

On many days after arriving at school, he walked to the library, went straight to the unabridged dictionary resting on its stand, and began to turn the pages. He continued looking until he came to the word. The word he had come to the library to see over and over again. Homosexual. He stared at the word as if to make sure that it was still in the same place and on the same page where he had so often seen it. To [him], it proved that he existed.

Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution, by David Carter

[heretherebedork]

Thinking about Nozue and Togawa and how the entire focus on these first episodes was about how toxic it is to limit yourself based on non-choices and the freedom of pretending or playing as someone you aren't but also how much masculinity, taken an extreme, can limit your entire life. Nozue can't imagine having a friend to talk about love with, a friend to eat sweets with, a friend to take silly pictures with, because he is a man and he cannot do those things until Togawa invites him to pretend to be a girl, to play as a girl, to be open and excited and eat pancakes and parfait and try a smoothie and take a selfie and suddenly it's like a whole new world is open, a world of choices and freedom and he even ends up with a whole gaggle of women on a work lunch and he gets recommendations from them because he wants freedom.

It's such a gorgeously queer narrative, honestly. The idea that you put yourself into a box and limit yourself because you don't want to, can't see yourself as anything but the inside of that box and then someone comes along and shows you that the box can open, that you can see a whole world and suddenly you realize why the box was never enough because what you wanted, what you needed, isn't in the box. You don't fit in the box. You are so much more than the box.

Nozue has spent nearly 40 years fitting himself into the box he saw himself in, a quiet straight corporate worker who did what he was good at, ate, slept, worked and nothing else. He never dared step outside the box because you don't do that. And then Togawa peeked into the top of the box, bought him pancakes, took a photo, smiled and told him not to be scared.

And the world lit up because there's so much more than a box.

(@absolutebl man, Japanese BL brings out the metaphor in me...)

[zaffiri-saffici]

Two generations of queers in an apocalyptic world.

First love:

We can just be all poetic and shit and lose our minds together. - Riley

Last love:

I do not support this. I should be furious. But from an objective point of view… it’s incredibly romantic. - Frank

Love all the same.

[tiredyke]

every time queer discourse surges on this site everyone is so quick to jump to “it was actually the evil lesbians who divided us” because y’all heard the term “political lesbian” and never bothered to figure out what that meant

[coyoteworks]

IN CASE YOU MISSED THE MEMO: HERE'S THE THING ABOUT DRAGONS

[djarin]

one of the main reasons i love ofmd is the unapologetic queer joy they show us. there's not a single moment where the drama revolves around a character's "coming out" moment. there's no need to accept or reject anyone for what they identify as. like, for fuck's sake, there have been so many moments in the show where they explicitly tell us, "hey, this is us, take it or leave it." no explanations, no justifications—just pure, unfiltered representation. it truly drives in the point that at the end of the day, queer people are also just simply people.

as much as i appreciate the abundance of queer representation we're getting now, i cannot emphasize how much a show like ofmd means to me. i am begging more companies to do what ofmd is doing and just show queer people living as boring old fucking people instead of as victims. take us beyond existing as an educational tool or a plot device. show queer people being people, and we'll stop being victims.

"kill me. kill us all. our spirit will last throughout your entire fսckin' empire because... we're good." you know what this show teaches us? that queer people are resilient as fuck, and that whatever we may have been told, shown, and made to believe about our queerness is wrong. we're good. we continue to be good despite the hardships we face. despite all the shit our elders and trailblazers have gone through from the beginning. despite the political landscapes of today that continue to try to strip us of our dignity and rights. we still exist and we will continue to exist—as people first, and victims last.