#so. representation ig

[whenthewindhasblown]

joly gets really cold really easily and half the time he's like oh fuck i'm going to get hypothermia but the other half of the time he just leans into bossuet and bossuet pulls him into an awkward side hug and they just get closer and essentially merge into one person and can you tell these two are my emotional support bisexuals

[forgettable-au]

PROLOGUE

FORGETTABLE-AU (Page 1-9)

AND SO IT BEGINS!

[CONTINUE] [MASTERPOST]

[doodles-bi-tea]

claim your “I was a Lewis Pullman fan before Thunderbolts*” ticket here! (in case he blows up in popularity any more than he might have after things like TGM and Lessons in Chemistry…)

update: Thunderbolts* is out now — you can still claim your general “I am a Lewis Pullman fan” ticket, though! /lh

[saywhatyouwillbut]

what’s so hilarious about min ho and kitty is that he convinces himself she’s obsessed with him, meanwhile she literally could not give less of a fuck until he confesses his love for her on a plane

[saturnniidae]

Thinking about the themes of disability in httyd that are present even before Hiccup becomes an amputee; existing in a world that hates and doesn't welcome you but refusing to change yourself for the convenience of others, instead stubbornly making accommodations for yourself where you can

[purplecelestial-buddy]

At this point I'm wondering how Harusono did it

How did Harusono went that hard with Hirano's aroace coded? Who did she interviewed? Who did she talked with? How did she got acces to my highschool memories and my worries, trials and tribulations when it comes to social relationships???!?! Like HOW???

Who let her in our (the aspec community) secrets?!

[welcometogrouchland]

I love Steph's origin as told in the Secret Origins 80 page giant- I just overall think it strengthens her character by giving her a lot of pathos and adding to her heroism (which isn't something writers were focused on in her actual intro in detective comics #647 since she was just meant to act as a plot device back then) BUT there is one tiny detail in it i will begrudge, and that is the portrayal of her having a minor love at first sight moment for tim

Secret origins 80 page giant, ID in alt

(or well, technically this was their second meeting in that story (the brick was the first) so...love at second sight?)

Mostly because Stephanie showed no interest in her introduction and only showed romantic feelings towards Tim AFTER this moment here:

Robin (1993) #4, ID in alt

Straight up the progression here goes:

The adventure in 'tec where they first meet -> Tim investigating the same crime scene as Steph -> she beats him up not knowing it's him at first, apologizes but says he shouldn't have scared her -> he remembers her/the moniker she goes by -> they talk about plot for a few pages -> Stephanie starts flirting

Robin (1993) #4, ID in alt

Which...is so fascinating to me and says so much about Stephanie. She highlights the fact that Tim "remembered" her. Like. Steph. Girl. This is our bar? It's sweet but kind of speaks to how much Stephanie is ignored at home/how little and sporadically she's shown interacting with her peers (and rarely ever the same kids twice). Her idea of peak romance is just...being on someone's mind even when you're not there.

Kind of also adds layers to Steph's proclivity towards jealousy later on, a manifestation of her insecurity and loneliness (though don't get it twisted, she's not written this way bc Dixon and co think it's an interesting character flaw, they wrote it bc they think it's an inherent character flaw of (particularly young) women/girls, which is very apparent in how he approaches Ariana's character as well from what I've read)

Also the fact that Steph becomes so smitten for Tim almost immediately after this is (a few issues later she aggressively flirts with him during AN ACTIVE HOSTAGE SITUATION. WHERE SHE'S THE HOSTAGE) again is kind of a mixture of kind of funny and sad. One boy is nice to her once and she's fully ready to wife him. Girl you are deranged (affectionate) (concerned)

[your-unfriendlyghost]

it feels so…… weird… seeing a cishet dude be so chill with queer themes lmao your soda-in-drag moment, the stevepop of it all, even guys with queers in their friend circles can’t bring themselves to partake sometimes lmao 😭 but it’s cool !! refreshing even sjksksndks this is a /pos statement I promise

Thanks lol! I think it’s cos I’m fairly secure. Sorta. (I’m still prone to compensating for things and being a stupid teen boy, but like, I’m aware of it, at least when I stop to think. Yk I’ll still join in on dick measuring contests, but deep down I’ll know it’s dumb and performative.)

I guess I feel a kinship to queerness. I go to art school where I’m sometimes the only guy in a class of girls, and I’ve been the token straight guy in every friend group I’ve been in since freshman year of high school. Beyond that, growing up I was frequently mistook for a girl- I had long-ish hair (post bowl-cut era 😭) and I’m part Asian, I was pretty androgynous lol. People irl have thought I’m gay, or a trans man on testosterone (I mean fine, I guess I am pretty short and hang with a lot of trans guys.) Hell, I did drag on a dare once, back when I was even more secure. (And I was hot asf in drag lemme tell ya. It felt lousy and it’s definitely not my thing, but man if I had a clone who was a girl-) All this to say, I say I’m straight, but honestly I don’t really know. I like girls a lot, but I have seen a buddy of mine in drag, and lemme tell ya I felt something but I’m not gonna examine that rn lol. Straight just feels comfortable, safe, and it’s good for interacting with folks who ain’t so progressive, so it’s what I’m sticking with…but I’ll admit there’s a gray area.

I relate a lot to the guys in the Outsiders, and irl I like to present myself as a tough, cool, Very Masculine guy. Hell, sometimes I play dumb about stuff because it’s “feminine” and a guy like me shouldn’t know about it. I act a lot like how I write Steve Randle, he’s my guy I like to project on lol. Honestly, I’ve got a fair amount of internalized toxic masculinity. But I think because I know how silly it all is deep down, I can interact with queer themes in art without feeling like I’m not “man enough”. Idk, I suppose it’s an outlet in some ways. Who knows maybe in 2027 I’ll come out as bi or something, but don’t wait up.

idk, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like exploring queer themes, not because they’re queer necessarily, but because they’re human and I relate to them. And that’s hard not to partake in, y’know?

[campgender]

grrrr

hey does anybody simply Like People Who Don't Want To Be Touched or are we all trying to build to some fucking climax of contact. can you seriously only imagine a love built from restraining oneself rather than actual acceptance & affirmation of their boundaries.

[hazellvsq]

frank and piper are interesting counterpoint narratives to me. both of them have relatively mundane problems compared to the rest of the cast yet their parent's domains represent the heights of human passion as defined by the series, despite piper and frank both being (outwardly) dispassionate and (inwardly) mopey. the good end of these domains is love and protection (selfless), the bad end is heartbreak and bloodlust (selfish), which both of them try to resist. they both get claimed last out of their trios and had beforehand assumed that they were the children of someone else. both also experience perceived rejection from their mortal family directly before the series begins - both express anger and hurt at being "sent away". their rejection and unexpected claiming, back-to-back, results in discombobulation for them both, and feelings of humiliation brought on by both sets of parents.

they also both go through forced physical transformations by their parents to fit an ideal they don't want. all of the characters experience issues of identity and self-esteem but i think its the most pronounced with these two in the series. neither of them really knows who they are, and are pessimistic about their own capabilities. they are also counterpoints in that they feel disconnected from their own looks - both are very self-conscious people, but, based on how they're described by other characters, piper is probably the most beautiful member of the 7 and frank is probably the least. piper is frequently harassed and objectified, whereas frank is teased constantly about his looks. he neither feels as childish as his face is nor as grown as his body is, and he doesn't understand how to move through the world. both of which are common experiences throughout puberty - suddenly being treated differently on the basis of a body that's changing faster than you want or understand.

(discourse alert) i don't have a lot to add to the piper transformation discourse except that i do think its interesting that her blessing was temporary within the book and her love interest actually self-reflected on his reaction to it and realized that he should not have told her that she looked hot in that instance. rick did reverse frank's transformation five years later and i'm curious about his thought process about both writing it in the first place and in reversing it, and what feedback he received, if any. piper's transformation was a makeover whereas frank's was a puberty, which later rick walked back with "actually frank is still going through puberty". piper's was cheesy, sure, but frank's falls so flat bc that's just not how it works. its too much of a stretch. i don't even think it was in rick's og plan for frank, maybe he just watched captain america and was like "hell yeah i should do that" and flipped a coin between frank and leo, bc again frank was already initially described as physically grown in his debut book. and i can't even talk about hazel's reaction to to it bc its not real to me and i can't read suddenly. idk frank's plotline in general was too rushed in that book and he should have gotten another pov chapter set at least bc rick was trying to do too much too fast and relied on idiocy like the transformation to support it in the place of real character work when it wasn't even necessary for anything he accomplished in the book. he could've just walked around with better posture and achieved the same effect.

[triple-pupil]

"Lowpoly whitewashed Esmeralda isn't real, she can't hurt you"

Lowpoly whitewashed Esmeralda:

Ironic since the Game actually has the character and it seems they did her skin tone right, if not a bit darker.

[skitskatdacat63]

This is a special genre of f1 picture(to ME.)

[gayanimebitches]

watching a video essay on citrus (great vid btw u should watch) and one of the critiques is that they never actually label the characters as lesbians or anything like that in the text, like its never stated explicitly. i heard somewhere i really wish i could remember where (prob another video essay) the idea that labels being explicitly assigned to characters is something you see less of in anime and manga because in that kind of homogenized culture that japan has, its much easier to just "happen to be a girl who happens to like girls sometimes" rather than assign yourself the label of lesbian, because then that's a political statement. when you do that, you make the statement of being different from the rest of society and then thats a problem, as opposed to being more reserved about it and "keeping it to yourself" or "not making it a big deal". i think thats somewhat similar to how it is here in the us and probably many other places, and something that a lot of people can understand and relate to.

my thing personally is that i dont really get like disappointed by media that doesnt use explicit labels like that? like i dont think queer media has to give its characters labels in order to be quality media or in order for me to enjoy it and find value in it, its not something that i see as some kind of shortcoming of any series. obviously the video isnt implying that these types of media arent valuable, and im definitely not trying to say that wanting explicit labels in your queer media is a bad thing or an unreasonable demand or anything like that, like thats completely understandable to want the queer media u enjoy to be making those kinds of important political statements (especially with the general stigma that is tied up with lesbian as a label specifically). my feelings personally is that if the series is well done and its queerness is expressed through the rest of its actions and story, i dont feel that it needs to include labels to solidify the series' queer identity or anything like that. i think a lot of this discussion ties into the idea of "yuri bait" as well (though i wont get into that aspect right now), but im just curious how other people feel about this kind of thing in media, like whether it makes u disappointed or think less of a series if it doesnt label its characters in the text

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

honestly schell games were so fucking real for showing a genuine full color image of roxana before the game even dropped. they made sure it was full clear she was a black woman before anyone else could have interpreted her as white. in the evil dimension they didn’t elaborate in time. in the evil dimension she’s scary.

[moonilit]

sometimes reading Kory’s talk about love and how her culture normalizes poly relationships and love is separate from marriage as in yeah sometimes you marry for politics but doesn’t mean you ‘love’ that other person or they you and thats OK is so weird because, you don’t even need to go to space for that?? Its already somewhere on earth??

[pocketramblr]

I always found it slightly awkward how media makes siblings or people who see each other as siblings call each other brother/sister all the time as in real life you almost never see people do that with their own siblings (maybe someone out there like that)

In the case of Arkham Shadows I see why they did though because Bruce quite literally tells Harvey he loves him and Harvey says it back. Can't have the audience think Batman is in love with the DA.

They had Bruce pay for his college, pay for his campaign, pay for his surgery, pay for his therapy and had Harvey have him as his best man at his wedding. Wow..... Sugar baby Harvey is real.....

The calling sibling title thing is less common in English than in some other languages for sure- me and a couple of my siblings do it on occasion, but it's for a bit then. More common is when I call one of my close family friends "my sister" or "my nephew" when talking about them to someone else because it's faster and easier to say that than to say "my friend who I've known since she was born and lived with for a few years and consider a little sister" or "child of a close family friend who considers me an aunt" to someone who doesn't know them. Which is a lot of words to say that if they wanted to fully sell me on the brothers thing they should have either had a different bit or should have referred to the other as "my brother" when talking to an unrelated character instead.

But "oh no we have to make Bruce not look gay" has been a problem DC has struggled with more than once for many decades and it basically never works so I guess at least they didn't try to solve it this time by having Bruce pick a lady love over Harvey or cutting the holding hands thing

Because I saw that scrapbook! I know Harvey has been Bruce's sugar baby since he was ten years old! But we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him the love of his life because ok technically that's Gotham but also because gay. And we can't have Bruce take Harvey's hand and call him his best friend because they're not ten anymore and somehow that seems gay also. So brothers it is, I guess. Even if I think my brothers would bite my finger if I ever tried to pay for everything for them on that scale, guess it's different at billionaire levels