#queer people rock

[carg0-toad]

fight club book moments i think about a lot

these are not the only ones but these are the ones that stick out the most to me...

[silas-writes13]

The Ethics of Creation

Every mad scientist needs that perfect dark and stormy night. They can see it so clearly: thick black clouds choking out the light of the stars, rain threatening to crash through rickety ceilings, thunder that shakes the frame and lightning that’s dramatic and well-timed enough to illuminate the true madness of creation. 

This wasn’t one of those nights. And, for that matter, Axel wasn’t a mad scientist. They weren’t “mad” (unless you were talking about anger - Axel was as bitter as anything), and they were only a “scientist” by the thinnest gossamer stretch of a particularly optimistic imagination. 

Axel fancied themself a folklorist, but there wasn’t much respect for that field in The Academy. The Academy generally frowned upon anyone who wasn’t hunkering down in some dingy lab somewhere - sketchy science was very much en vogue - and that person simply had to have a PhD. They didn’t give doctorates for anything less than remaking yourself (and others) in the light of divinity, so Axel had done their due diligence. They’d sat through Brains (The Science of and Power Within), Things to Do With Blood Vessels, and the one scant ethics class where the professor had spent most of his time shrieking. Axel had gotten the feeling that “playing god” was something that professor did on Sundays, after a hearty bout of laughing maniacally and spreading general academic mischief. 

Anyways, to get to the point, Axel was, shall we say, frazzled. They’d DONE the work. They’d put in the time. And now tonight it was all going to come to fruition…probably.

At this very moment, they are standing in front of a large circle drawn in orange chalk on the floor of The Academy’s Dingy Lab #13302 (“please leave the space clean when you’re done, others have blasphemy to get done here too, be considerate” reads the plaque next to the door). They have no table, no volts, no open skylight, no hallmarks of The Night of Invention. What little they do possess amounts to some candles, a knife, two colors of chalk, a jacket stained with what might be paint and is probably also grass, dirt-encrusted fingernails, and a book. Axel had reserved this 6ft x 6ft room by sheer miracle, as The Academy frowned HEAVILY upon their chosen field. To figure out what it is exactly that Axel does, you really should know that the title of the book (solid black hardcover with gold lettering and a couple water stains) is “Fae, Fairfolk, Sidhe and Mysterious Beings: How To Summon”. 

Axel sighs loudly with the smallest tinge of dramatic inclination and wipes their thick brown hair off of their sweaty forehead. They try desperately not to cringe while they hold their bleeding palm over each of the five candles, and the center of the circle. When there is a sufficient amount spread across the floor, they wrap up their palm with dirty gray bandages and fall to their knees. Grunting quietly, they mix the blood with the chalk and draw the required sigils. Ten sigils, twenty sigils, thirty. They know the markings have to be drawn before the blood dries if they are to have any effect, and they’re running out of time. Their fingers shake as they finish the last swoop, and all the dizziness catches up to them in a rush. They curse their frail mortal body under their breath, and gulp down some water wildly, being careful not to spill any of it on the fresh glyphs. 

Then, it’s time. They take a deep breath and clear their throat, wrapping cloth around their eyes for good measure. For a moment the complete darkness terrifies them, but they’re a professional. They choke down their fear and store any lingering feelings of danger deep in the marrow of their bones, far away from their conscious mind. It thrums through them, becoming background noise, becoming irrelevant. 

They run their hands over the book once, twice, three times for reassurance. They know this has no place in the coming ritual but fuck it, intentionality matters as much as the rest of it. Finally, they put their hands on their legs and sit up straight on the outer edge of the circle. They know they can’t move. They are afraid they won’t be able to help it. 

They say the words, old worlds, ancient words - it doesn’t particularly matter which ones. They say the words they found in the book, then some they had found scratched onto a plank of wood by the train track, then some they thought they had heard a large black crow say to them weeks ago. They whisper and the air they displace with their intoned speech becomes song, becomes divine, becomes magic. They feel a stirring in the room, not a physical shift necessarily but something just under the surface - something writhing on some other adjacent plane.  

They don’t feel the moment of genesis when it happens and they’re struck with pangs of disappointment, but they can see it - oh gods, they can see it. The light shines through the black cloth of their makeshift blindfold and burns through their closed eyelids. For seconds that feel like hours it’s almost as if they have been staring directly into the sun, and then all at once it dims. Axel hears the soft rustling sound of the candles going out, and an even softer sound of someone…or something…breathing. Slowly, they remove their blindfold and open their eyes. 

The candles are nothing more than puddles of wax on the floor. The sigils that took so much blood have sizzled to nothing more than gray ash, and in the center of the circle sits the most beautiful thing (person?) Axel has ever seen.  

She has long, curly red hair that tumbles down her shoulders and rests against her back. She’s wearing a green long-sleeved shirt and long pants, both made out of leaves, but even the full coverage couldn’t dim the light of the sigils that are glowing on the surface of her arms, torso, and legs. They glow orange and seem to be shifting slightly under her clothes, and Axel doesn’t know what to make of her. They try to remember the rules of fae interaction, remembering distantly that if you’re not careful the fae will take you for all you’re worth, but that is so far gone from them now. 

The fae looks up at them with a start, and her eyes are a piercing silver color, run through with a snake-like vertical slit instead of a human pupil. Her face is round and covered in constellations of freckles, and when she speaks it resounds through the air like every molecule was holding its breath, waiting for her words. 

“Where am I?”, she asks, leaning towards Axel. Her voice is truth. She doesn’t blink. 

Axel tries to gulp and finds their throat dry. They clear it instead, and gesture to the room around them. 

“You’re in my lab, well, not my lab, technically a rented space - I really have to clean all this up - holy hell, you’re everything I’ve been trying to prove for years!” Axel remembers themself and jumps to their feet. “You’re real! Faefolk, shifters, they’re real! And they TOLD me I was crazy!” They’re practically shouting now, smiling maniacally.

The fae looks down at herself, at the room, and at Axel. “I don’t want to be here.” She looks at the floor. “You - you’d bind me here?” 

Axel’s joy fades, a little bit. “I, I’m sorry about that,” they say, “It was just a precaution. I’ll break the circle if you swear not to run away.” They slowly lower themselves to the floor, putting their hands where the fae can see them. The fae nods and Axel runs a finger across the chalk line, smudging it in one spot. The fae smiles then, a tinge of malice spreading across her face, and laughs. 

“A gesture is not a contract, youngling. Thank you for setting me loose.” She stands, and walks briskly past Axel. As she passes, Axel smells The End on her. They smell the lingering scent of a forest, burnt entirely to the ground. 

Their heart stops for an instant and they can feel thick, curling gray smoke in their lungs. They cough, loudly and dangerously, and feel their eyes tear up, and then start to burn. 

“No - wait - please!”, they choke out, but the fae is already leaving. She turns back to look at Axel, sprawled on the ground as they are, clawing at the air in utter desperation. She cocks her head to the side and closes her eyes. She takes a deep, lingering breath as Axel’s vision starts to blur, and then everything stops. Suddenly there is no air in the room anymore but Axel finds that they don’t need to breathe. The pain is gone, just as quickly as it had consumed them. 

“What do you want from me?”, they ask, when their vocal chords remember their purpose. The fae looks beyond them, and then looks through them, searching for something in the hollow of Axel’s chest. She walks back to Axel and sits down before them languidly, her movements as fluid as water, as natural as the wind. 

She reaches out to cup Axel’s cheek in her hand and Axel finds themself heating up. Her hand is the extreme, the burning heat of cold and the numbing chill of being burned alive, but to Axel it just feels like a campfire. 

“Follow me,” she whispers, and the sharp silver knife of her words pauses just before Axel’s jugular, and that, at least, they can sense. They find, after all that, that they don’t care much. Screw The Academy. They were right, and now they’re going to do something few people in academia ever have. They’re going to change the world. 

Axel gets up and follows her, a lovely moth to a violent flame, out of the laboratory and into the night. As they walk they change - they become more wispy, less tangible. They find they can move through space like they’re just an amalgamation of parts instead of a whole. They can feel all of these parts, and feel how they’re all connected to something gently beating beneath the ground. As Axel and the fae walk, the beating becomes drum beats, the faint whisper of wind through Autumn leaves becomes raucous noises of merriment. The fae leads them down, down, and then Axel’s gone. 

They’re something else now. If you put your feet in the dirt and tilt your head towards a starlit sky, you’ll feel them. Just listen. Just listen. 

[harbingerofsoup]

some of y’all (teenagers) are espousing some puritan “think of the children” bullshit when y’all talk about media you deem problematic and, just by the way, the rest of us see that shit for what it is and make fun of y’all for it

[apollos-boyfriend]

so my younger cousin is flying in to visit from brazil on sunday, and will be staying here for like, the entirety of july. which, don't get me wrong, is super cool! i love the kid! but it felt like a super weird move, considering his parents are the SUPER strict and borderline helicopter parents. even the smallest prank/roughousing with him/his little sister would lead to a strict talking to from his parents, he couldn't ever do anything without their clear permission, that sort of stuff. so letting him fly at alone at 16 to a whole different country and stay there for a whole month seemed WILDLY out of character. additionally, it just felt like a super last-minute trip. it's not like we have any plans to do when he gets here, and the flight itself and stuff only got booked like, midway through june.

and i was talking to my mom about it, kind of trying to nudge some answers out of her, and after a while she went, "yeah, i think they're sending him over here to get away for his boyfriend. see if the distance breaks them off." which, first of all, surprised me because last i checked, they didn't KNOW he had a boyfriend. literally everyone in the family did EXCEPT for them because while that entire side of the family being semi-conservative, his parents (mostly his dad) are EXTREMELY old-fashioned. so clearly something already went wrong. and considering the only reason the rest of the family knew is because one person found out and it spread like wildfire, i have a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the one to tell them, either.

and second of all. they're sending him HERE. to try to make him forget his homosexuality. i couldn't do anything but just wordlessly gesture to the multiple pride flags scattered around my room, then to myself, because really? he has like two other cousins in the us and they're sending him to me? honey i am about to introduce this kid to queer scenes you have never even heard of. he'll be returning home with labels only shrimp can perceive

[pokimoko]

Hello!! I came across a couple of your animals with pride flags series (idk what you're actually calling it lol) and I wanted to request an intersex blue-ringed octopus (I'm not intersex myself tho lol, just thought it might look neat)

Oooh, this was a fun one! Thank you for the request! 🐙

[lgbtqtext]

[project-sekai-facts]

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.

[juney-blues]

i think at this point it's beyond clear to anyone with eyes that trans women are an underclass in queer and trans spaces. If you're denying that at this point i don't think you're genuinely ignorant, you're actively malicious.

[thesunoficarus1]

I saw the TV glow is so horrific to me because I fear that's my future. you find out who you really are. not who you're told you are, who you really are meant to be. you have someone who accepts you for who you are. maybe even multiple people. and yet, you bury it deep in your chest out of fear. lock it up and throw away the key. but eventually, you are crushed under the weight of what could've been. you're drowning. you were born to be someone else. you ARE someone else. you yell I'm dying! can't you see! but other people were born who they were always supposed to be. you're weren't. it's killing you. nobody can see you. there's still time. until there isn't.

[loupgaroualejardin]

Love being queer.

It's honestly even better as a queer system, I feel like.

We practice relationship anarchy, and polyamory, and all the likes rather casually. It comes second nature to a bunch of queer and (predominantly) ambiamorous folks.

A lot of us identify as bi, queer, or aroace. Though, we have gays, and lesbians, bigays, pans, sapphics, heteroflexibles, homoflexibles, demis, etc.

A lot of us identify as men/male/masc-aligned. Though, we have a bunch of women, and non-binary people, demiboys, agenders, pangenders, xenogenders, etc.

Polycules and open relationships are really common in our system too. Like, I know of This throuple made up of a hunter, a merc, and a streamer, one of them (or all of them) in a qpr with a shapeshifting demi-god who's dating a mercenary king who's also dating a mage and in a qpr with a soldier, a general, and another demi-god(Which, said demi-god is in a qpr with the shape-shifter). (It sounds like a hot mess to me too /lh)

Our system is, just, gay, and living our best lives inside it.

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

Look! A good trans/gnc character representation!

[stxr-bxy]

there are three types of girls who wear doc martens. (i might add to this list)

1. hole, courtney love, lana del rey, tyler the creator, mazzy star, coquette, downtown girl, model off duty, 2014 grunge, margo guryan, fiona apple, femcel girl

2. nirvana, alice in chains, edgy, 90s grunge, indie sleaze, smokes like a chimney, greasy hair, kurt cobain lover, bad brains, liliput/kleenex, ramones, sex pistols girl

3. bikini kill, bratmobile, riot grrrl, kinderwhore, dyed hair, crust punk, diy, babes in toyland, mary janes, teased hair, messy eyeliner, dazey and the scouts, kat bjelland girl

[newblvotg]

[neonfretra]

fruity is the new metrosexual and my honest to god belief is if you want to call a stranger kind of zesty for wearing too tight pants just replace the new buzzword of the day with the f slur and reconsider your statement

[fatherdmitri]

“queer science” “queer ecology” “queer geology” okay chill lmfao

[m-ilkiee]

I think jjk fans should stop doing analysis. Like please stop, you all have terrible opinions and you're mixing it with your internalized misogyny. Stop talking. Please.