#threats that don’t work on lesbians

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I’m going to make you insanely horny for a (male) Batman villain

(Specifically male because they’re all weird critters while the female Batman villains are all oversexualized to hell)

[residentinsomniacartist]

wait wait wait guys have you ever thought about how the Mighty Nein are everything they shouldn’t be upon first glance

no no guys guys listen to me they’re all the antithesis of what they’re meant to be and that’s why they’re such amazing and heartfelt characters

like, Caleb is a wizard who’s afraid of his own fire magic. his own power causes him to falter in battle. his strongest spells are his most dangerous to himself. wizards are supposed to be prideful of their magic, but Caleb’s is the reason he hates himself

Beau is a monk who never wanted to be. her job is one that people normally associate with being calm and collected and Beau was a wild rebellious kid who got dragged into this line of work against her will. she never wanted to be this!! but now she is and she’s gotta deal with it!!

Fjord is a warlock who never wanted power from his pact, which is why you’d think a warlock would make their pact at all. but no. Fjord made his pact because he wanted to live, not because he wanted power. he was a scared orphan who hated his tusks, not a buff, muscled, angry half-orc like people assumed

Nott is NOT, that’s the whole crux of her narrative! she wasn’t pretty, like a halfling girl was supposed to be. she wasn’t a goblin, she was just transformed into one. and not only that, but despite being a three-foot-tall alcoholic kleptomaniac, she’s the mom of the group!

Jester is a Cleric whose god isn’t actually a god and who would much rather bash bad guys over the head with her lollipop than have to stop and heal her friends!! she’s a bubbly, optimistic ray-of-sunshine, but you know when she says she’s gonna change the world with friendship she means it as a threat

Mollymauk is an amnesiac, but he doesn’t want to remember who he was. if you ask him, that wasn’t him! he might be a flirtatious hedonistic carnie, but he’s also single-mindedly devoted to making the world a better and more loved place than it was when he found it. he’s a liar, but he means well. he’s an arrogant fool, yes, but he’s right! he did it! he left it better!

Caduceus seems like he’d be creepy and grim from growing up in a graveyard, but he’s actually the most chill out of the entire Nein by far. he’s calm, he’s sweet, and he’s comforting, more than anything else. you’d think he’d be amazed by seeing the outside world for the first time, but he spends the whole time knowing that one day he’ll return home, that he wasn’t supposed to be the one to leave

Yasha is a barbarian with skeletal wings and a dramatic, monochromatic look, but she’s a complete sweetheart. she’s Molly’s best friend, she was a carnival bouncer, she’s a lesbian disaster who collects pressed flowers in a book out of love for the wife she lost. those black wings were actually hiding soft white feathers

Essek was born straight into the den of politics, he was a spymaster, he literally started a war for his own gain, and yet. he’s sounds irredeemable on paper, but. he’s not!! sure, the Nein kind of have to drag his alignment kicking and screaming into neutral, but they manage it. Essek learns and grows and he overcomes his nature. he becomes good, against all odds

guys guys guys don’t you see it!! look at them!!they’re such compelling characters!! they’re everything they’re not supposed to be!! dude y’all how didn’t I realize this earlier!! they subvert their narratives in the most interesting ways ever and I justhshsbhshshsjnsmshsnhsfn!!

[girlrotterr]

But I'm a Lesbian! pt.4

ellie x abby x dina x fem!reader a/n: Hellooo angels!! so sorry for the wait!! writers' block has been hitting me wayy too hard. I might break everything into smaller parts to release chapters more frequently, so expect shorter chapters!

→ Part one! → Part two! → Part three! → Part five! → Part six!

"Got your cigs!” 

With a swift motion, Dina tossed the pack across the room, aiming for Ellie’s bed but missing. The box made contact with Ellie's face with a resounding thud, prompting a groan of pain from her.

"Ow!! What the fuck?" Ellie gtoaned, rubbing her sore cheek.

Dina rolled her eyes, settling herself on your bed with a snack in hand. The room was now dimly lit, the only illumination coming from a small desk lamp in the corner.

You laid on your bed, staring up at the ceiling.  Meanwhile, Ellie was reclined on her stomach with an ice pack on her ass. Abby sat perched on the edge of Ellie's bed, eyeing the cigarettes.

"Pass me one," Abby requested, gesturing towards Ellie.

Ellie, cigarette already between her lips, shook her head. "No."

"Aw, come onn," Abby urged, throwing her head back in frustration.

Ellie remained firm, clutching the box. "Get your own."

Abby reached for a cigarette, but Ellie swiftly slapped her hand away. "Dude!"

"One won't hurt!" Abby argued, her tone becoming more insistent.

Ellie's grip tightened on the cigarette box. "fuck off."

Growing impatient, Abby's hand hovered menacingly over Ellie's bruised ass. "I swear, Ellie, I'll do it."

Ellie shot a warning glance over her shoulder, her eyes narrowing at the threat.  She began to squirm, trying to avoid Abby's hand. "I fucking said no!"

Dina couldn't help but snicker. "Come onn,  just give her one."

"Your last chance el’s." Abby persisted, her hand slowly lowering towards ellie’s ass. 

"Seriously, Abby," Ellie cautioned, “Don’t fucking do it."

Suddenly, Abby's hand descended forcefully, delivering a sharp and stinging slap. Ellie couldn't help but let out a yelp of pain, her body tensing at the sudden impact.

With a smirk playing on her lips, Abby swiftly grabbed Ellie's legs and pulled them towards her, snatching the cigarette box from her grasp. With a satisfied grin, she retrieved one and lit it up, enjoying her victory.

"Damnn," dina remarked with a grin

Ellie shot Abby a glare, rubbing her stinging ass cheek, while Abby leaned back with a satisfied expression, puffing on her cigarette.

Suddenly, you were starting to feel overwhelmed. Panic began to bubble up inside you, and you couldn't shake the feeling that this place was too chaotic, too unpredictable.

"I-I..need to get out of here," you muttered, your voice trembling with anxiety. "This place is fucking crazy! Everyone's just...a bunch of horny, depraved lesbians!"

Abby snapped her fingers in front of you, "woah, woah, woah! I am NOT depraved," 

“Me neither!” Dina chimed in with a smirk. “I fingered a girl on Ellie’s bed last month!”

Ellie's expression shifted to one of disbelief. "Dude, what the hell!?" she exclaimed.

With a cheeky smile, Dina shrugged. “You didn’t even notice the squirt stain,” she teased.

Ellie let out a disgusted groan, burying her face in her hands.

"Come on, give me a break," Dina snickered. "It was the most action your bed had seen in months."

As You continued to pace, your mind raced with thoughts of escape and confusion. "This is insane," you muttered, running your hand through your hair. “It’s only my first night here! How the actual fuck has so much shit happened?!” 

Dina walked towards you, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder. "Hey, hey, calm down," she said soothingly, trying to steady your frantic pacing. "It's not that bad here."

You gestured to your nose, which was still sore from the earlier. " how the fuck am I supposed to eat someone out with a broken nose?!" you exclaimed, “I can’t even have a little action out here!” 

Abby let out a chuckle "I'm sure we can find a way to work around it," she said smirkingly. 

You scoffed walking towards her, swiftly taking the cigarette from her grasp and inhaling deeply. Taking a long drag, you felt a bit calmer as the smoke filled your lungs. Sitting down, your leg bounced anxiously as you tried to calm your nerves. 

Ellie, still recovering from the slap on her ass, sat up with a wince of pain. She placed a comforting hand on your back, offering a soothing gesture. "Hey, if…”  she suggested. "If you help us steal our stuff back...we'll help you escape." 

Her words sparked a glimmer of hope in your mind, a potential solution to your growing unease. You nodded slowly, considering the offer. 

Ellie leaned forward, her eyes gleaming “We'll wait until late at night when everyone's asleep. Then, we'll sneak into the director's office, find our confiscated items, and make a run for it. Simplee"

Abby let out a scoff, shaking her head in disbelief. "That's your plan? Sneak into the director's office like a bunch of amateurs and hope for the best? No way."

Ellie's brows furrowed. "What's your fucking plan, then?"

Abby flashed a confident grin. "We need to create a distraction. Something big enough to draw everyone's attention away from us"

You perked up, intrigued by Abby's suggestion. "But what kind of distraction?"

Abby's smirk widened. "How about a fire? We start a small one in the courtyard, nothing too serious, just enough to set off the alarms and send everyone into a panic. While they're busy dealing with that, we slip away unnoticed."

Ellie raised an eyebrow. "Too damn risky. What if it gets out of control?"

Abby waved off her concerns. "We'll make sure it's under control. Trust me, it'll work.”

"Okay, that solves the sneaking issue," you said, contemplating the plan. "But what about my escape?"

Dina's eyes lit up with excitement. "You can steal the director's car!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "That way, she won't be able to chase after you."

You raised an eyebrow at Dina's suggestion. "Steal the director's car? Are you serious?"

Dina nodded. "duhh!"

"But how do I even get the keys?" you asked.

Abby smirked, her eyes gleaming mischievously. "Leave that to me."

[smeddiemunson]

No Upside Down AU + a platonic Stobin sleepover + buckingham and steddie referenced.

“So?” Robin asked. 

Steve sucked his teeth. “Robin, we’ve only just started the sleepover, I’m not telling you yet!” 

“I’m in my pyjamas! We have a movie on, we have popcorn! We built a blanket fort!” Robin pointed to each thing in turn as if to remind Steve that he knew exactly how long she had been waiting already. “If you make me wait any longer, I’ll kill you.” 

Steve snorted. It was the most empty threat he’d ever heard in his life. If he died, by Robin’s hand or otherwise, she would follow him soon after. They were soul bonded at this point; one couldn’t exist without the other.

“Alright.” Robin slapped at his arm excitedly. “Alright! Stop hitting me!” 

Robin stopped hitting him but left her hands on his arm, fingers pressing, urging against his skin. 

“It was good.”

“Steve!” Robin moaned, throwing herself back against the pillows in truly dramatic fashion. “You can’t just give me that! I want all the details!”

“I don’t know, Rob!” Steve cried back. “I had fun. He’s really funny and sweet, and...” Steve bit his lip as a blush spread across his cheeks. 

Robin picked up on it like a bloodhound. “At least tell me what film you watched?” 

Steve turned his face away from her, focusing too intently on the movie. “I don’t really remember,” he mumbled. 

Robin squealed. “Steven Harrington, you sly dog! I knew there were details!” 

Steve rolled his eyes. “He had all these blankets and pillows in the back of his van, and he put fairly lights up, and we kinda couldn’t see the screen because we had to park further away for obvious reasons. But-“ Steve took a deep breath, then rushed out, “It might have been the best first date I’ve ever been on.”

“Eddie Munson, a romantic. Who would’ve thought? Certainly not me!”

Steve shoved at her.

“Well don’t stop there! I want the details!”

Steve groaned. “Do you really want the details?” 

“Of course I do! If I can’t have my gay romance, then I want to live through yours!” 

Steve lifted his arm to tuck Robin underneath it and pull her into his chest. He ignored the way she tried to struggle away. “You could still have your gay romance, Birdie. You just have to tell her.” 

“You don’t know that!” Robin replied as she was finally able to get her arms free enough to push away from Steve. 

“She’s friends with Eddie,” Steve reminded her. That should be all Robin needed to know to explain anything about former Queen of Hawkins High, Chrissy Cunningham. 

Robin slapped at him. “Just because she’s friends with a gay person doesn’t mean she is gay, dingus. That’s not how it works!” 

Steve easily batted her hands away with a chuckle. “That’s how it worked with me!” 

Robin groaned. 

“I’m just saying, I would never have thought about being bi if you hadn’t said anything about being a lesbian. Maybe Chrissy is the same!” 

Robin buried her face into her hands. “Okay,” She said, though it was muffled by her hands so much that Steve pulled them away from her face and kept her wrists in his hands.

“Okay. Say, by some miracle, she likes girls, what’s to say that she would like me?”

Steve made a noise of disagreement. “First of all, she would be crazy to not like you because you are amazing and beautiful and the bravest person I’ve ever met—” 

Robin rolled her eyes but Steve merely rolled his back, shook her hands a little and carried on. They’d had this exact conversation before and Steve didn’t feel like retracing it because there were more important things to get to.

“But I am almost certain she does like you back. She definitely flirts with you all the time.”

“No she does not.”

“I think I know more about girls flirting that you do, Robin.”

“Why? Because you turn into a little school girl around Eddie and do the same thing?” 

“No,” Steve said, though he did so through a blush that did nothing to defend him from the accusation. “I know because girls always flirt with me.” 

“Oh shut up.” 

“They do!” Steve finally let go of Robin’s wrists so he could push a frustrated hand through his hair— already floppy from his shower and lack of product. “They do and I know Chrissy is doing it to you.”

“Prove it.”

Steve grinned and began listing off his points on his fingers. “She always laughs at your jokes. She twirls her hair whenever she talks to you. She asked you to explain that fucking French movie you forced us to watch the other week and she listened.”

Robin whacked him again. “You told me you liked that film!”

“I fell asleep! Of course I liked it.” Steve huffed. “Do you need me to keep going about Chrissy?”

“Maybe not,” Robin muttered. Then she squarked as Steve scrambled over her and out of their blanket fort to where the phone was hooked into the wall. “What are you doing?” 

Steve just grinned as he quickly clicked some numbers on the keypad. 

Robin watched in confusion from her spot on the floor.

“Hello, this is Steven Harrington. I was wondering if I could speak to Chrissy?” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Thank you, Ma’am.” 

Robin’s face turned white in a second. She scrambled to her feet, losing them under herself a couple of times, but she couldn’t reach Steve to slam the phone down for him before he started speaking again. 

“Hi Chrissy, I have Robin here.” He thrust the phone at her chest, not giving Chrissy time to answer and mouthed, ask her. 

Robin glared, hoping that Steve would let it go. But he was as stubborn as she was and Chrissy’s confused call of Robin meant she wouldn’t be able to hold out longer than him this time. She would get her revenge, he was sure of it.

“Chrissy. Hi. How’s things?” Robin stumbled when she finally put the phone up to her ear. She didn’t stop glaring at Steve though. 

Steve only smiled in triumph.

“Yeah, I’m good. It’s good. Yeah.” 

Steve jabbed Robin in the side to stop her from talking herself in circles. He gestured with his hands for her to get on with it. 

“So, my reason for calling, and just, you know, stop me if this is at all weird and you don’t wanna hear it or if i’ve got the wrong idea. it’s Steve’s fault really--” He jabbed her again and pouted when she managed to land a meaty smack against his ribs. But it did get her to blurt out, “Do you wanna go to Benny’s with me? On Friday? As, like, a date?” 

Steve pumped his fist in the air. It may not have been the way he would have asked a girl out, but Robin had done it!

“Awesome. Yeah. Great. I’ll see you Friday then. I’ll pick you up. No, I won’t I can’t drive. Steve will drive us. But I’ll see you Friday? Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Bye Chrissy.” 

Robin handed him the phone in a daze, eyes following his hand as he hooked it back on the wall. 

“What the fuck?” She breathed. 

“I think you just got yourself a date with a hot girl, Robin.” 

[canaidliafail]

roommates

Abby x f!reader x ellie 🌿 2.1k words

listen idk what demon possessed me but I had to write about a threeway relationship with ellabs in a college AU. Its just random scenes of what it would be like and theres filth so MDI

CW: voyerism I think, jealousy and abby and ellie being unhinged over reader [ like srsl ] , established relationship, mentions of alcohol & dealer ellie. not proof read, will never be. Say a prayer and go ahead and read idk

“In a moment you're getting the shivers

'Cause I know the way you feel

My body gives you chills”

•••

In college, rumors went around fast. Everyone knew that Cindy from chem had relapsed for the third time that year, that Alexander had hooked up with every exchange student, that Abby was probably that richest kid in the entire campus and that Ellie was the hottest lesbian dealer that lived in dormitory B5.

That along with the fact that Abby, Ellie and you were roommates. Manny and Dina had, on different occasions tried to get a hold of you and fill you in on how hot the gossip on the three of you were but it just failed to entertain you enough to listen.

You didn’t give a fuck actually. You were so blissfully content with your reality that you weren’t interested in knowing what everyone else's half assed version sounded like. Your girlfriends though were different. Abby and Ellie had the inseparable dynamic of oil and water. They just did not get along but they did find common sense when it came to you and they had to know what was going on. Blind and deep in love they forgot how they themselves were a prize and considered most people who approached you a threat.

Abby vaguely remembered a rumor when you three first started going out after Jesse's birthday. Ellie was the supplier that night and the girl that came by your dorm to pick up the stuff caught you two making out in the hallway. Ellie was a bit more flustered to be caught like that while you just rolled your eyes as if she was the problem invading your public space and walked inside your room, though back then, the girl assumed you were staying over at Ellie’s place. In the span of a week,the whole art department knew that Ellie allegedly had a girlfriend. That was until someone interrupted the conversation

“Wait, is Ellie's girl the one in sculpture ?You know she has a lot of tattoos and talks with Nora a lot?”

“Yeah her!”

“Well than she has to be cheating on her cause I saw her In Anderson's car the other night and they were like,going at it”

So other than “that girl with tattoos in sculpture major” you were also “The one two timing Ellie and Abby”

Abby didn’t know how much of a hot topic she was. She knew people talked but not about her. She was cooking and ellie was smoking weed on the kitchen counter keeping her company when you barged in your dorm room.

“You have to hear this” You said excitedly and tossed your bag on the couch and your shoes all over the hallway which Abby being a clean freak knew would have to organize by herself later that evening. You run up to them in the kitchen and Ellie out of habit spread her legs to let you in her space for a kiss. Which you didn’t really give but instead you took her blunt and took one long good puff.

“So I was talking with my friends and apparently there’s this rumor going around that I am cheating on Ellie williams with Abby anderson”

Abby stilled her hand while working with the pan and the stir fry food and she turned to look at Ellie the same moment that she did. They came to a silent agreement to solve this issue which you found quite embarrassing to think over in the first place. You couldn’t take problems like these seriously and hell, who doesn’t have people talking shit behind their back ?

“Oh c'mon don’t tell me you are mad” You whined and abby turned around to cup your cheek,gently caressing you

“Doesn’t it bother you? That they are doing this?”

“It would but thats so much effort and like…oh my fucking god who caresssss” You drew out and left to go rest on the couch.

“Can’t you two just… make out the next time you are on campus or something ? That will solve things or whatever”

And they did. Not because you told them to, but at some point abby had to help Ellie’s scrawny ass carry some fresh wood planks to her working space in class to build a new canvas and before they parted ways she did kiss her on the lips, hard and long and then she left to attend her own lectures. The rumors didn’t die but people had a rough idea of what was going on now.

________

Abby loved eating you out continuously and tirelessly. She would come to a pussydrunk state where she would lazily lap up at your pussy like she was starving and despite wanting to take the reins and be more commanding,her skill rendered you weak and helpless and a moaning mess, and when you were voiceless from the pleasure your soft sighs did the job for her. And that's when usually Ellie would come strapped up and take you right after Abby was finished devouring your puffy cunt.

Abby unbuckled her belt with a heavy clank once the metal clasp snapped open that signified it was your turn to please which had you licking your lips eager to taste her. Ellie pushed you on all fours and slapped your thighs as indication to spread them apart and got into position behind you admiring your ass for a good few seconds while Abby sat in front of you, legs spread and a cigarette in hand taunting you to go ahead.

You usually took your time,biting her freckled thighs and leaving a path of bruising bitemarks which had her groan in fake protest most of the time. You pressed your palms flat against her legs and moved your head closer to her cunt,your nose buried in the trimmed blonde hair as you licked a flat thick stripe that had Abby flinch in pleasure. Ellie took her moment to slowly slide in her new thick strap toy in you

“Abby prepared you so well for my cock, fuck look at it just sliding in”

Abby was loud, Ellie was vocal, and you loved the combination of the two in bed.

Abby would hold your hair up,a string of praises falling from her lips and ellie would lean in leaving kisses on your back as she thrusted her hips in a pace that fastened every minute enjoying how well you took her every time.

__________

You rarely left the apartment alone since your schedules matched with one of your girlfriends. However on the sparse occasion that you did, you always found yourself in trouble.

You stepped out of the room and were busy locking the door when you heard a girl behind you scoff. You turned to look at the unpleasant figure who hoarded the space and you smirked

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah how about you keep it down at night?”

She snapped, aiming to shame you. She wasn’t wrong. Last night was something else. When you and Abby dominated Ellie at the same time it usually ended up in the rest of the dormitory having a poor night. It was a bit homophobic in your opinion to only target you when there was Manny, one floor above you being just as rowdy with his girlfriend.

You smiled and leaned against the wall effectively walking into her personal space. She froze on the spot and looked up at you. You weren’t tall but you were tall enough to use it to your advantage at times like these

“Aren’t you the girl who tried to get into Ellies pants on Jesse's birthday?”

She frowned and quirked her mouth in disgust

“You are so delusional”

You looked into her eyes,down to her lips and then slowly fixed a crooked fold on her shoulder pads from her shirt

“Am I though? You pathetic cunt, if you came for a fight at least follow through” She tensed,lost and unsure on how to handle this situation when Abby walked out of the door and yanked you away from the girl like a wet cat, holding your arm in a way that it made it look like she only tried to get a hold of your backpack to slide it on her own shoulders. To you, it was a warning, to the stranger it seemed like a gesture of affection.

“Wait for me in my car. I'll drive you” she said and passed you her keys. You left, unbothered and entertained enough for the rest of the day. Abby however glared at the girl and stalked over, towering over her like a hawk in a much more aggressive manner than you did and she seemed to shrink in on herself

“If you talk to her again I'll make sure you end up on the streets. If you insult her, you might even have to retake the exams for a different college” she barked and left.

You were in Abby’s car and had turned the heater on and were already looking at what song to put on from the speakers. She sat on the driver's seat and grabbed your phone

“Hey!”

“What the fuck was that” she growled and you rolled your eyes and leaned your head against the window

“I don’t get why you take everything so personally” You whispered and she carefully put a hand on your shoulder to get your attention. You turned your head and she pulled you in for a kiss, her hand on the nape of your neck. She lingered there to keep you close and rubbed her thumb in a straight line against your spine,the soft gesture contradicting her stern tone

“You need to learn to apologize. That attitude was completely unprovoked”

“Didn’t you hear what she said?”

“I did and I expected you to handle it better than that”

You looked at each other and eventually you agreed and let out a small and curt sorry to show remorse which she half accepted as a first step to changing your actions. Abby, no matter how in the wrong you were, would always have your back in public and would only scold you when she knew you had privacy and were alone and that was something you loved about her.

You smiled and wrapped your arms around her neck and went to kiss her before moving down to her neck to leave new bitemarks near Ellie’s

“You are insatiable”

“You are hot when you are mad at me babygirl '' You teased and watched as Abby's cheeks took a new shade of pink.

__________

Abby and Ellie weren’t exactly opposite forces but they did not blend either, So when you had walked in on them making out on the couch with Abby on top of Ellie you had to take a photo silently stalking in from the corridor. You loved watching them please each other. There weren’t many times that you caught them in the midst of it but when you did you did everything within your power to stay silent and just enjoy the view. That was until your phone betrayed you with the shallow “click” that hinted at a photo being taken.

Abby pulled away first,lips a new hue of red trying to steady herself on the armrest while ellie took a moment to fix her tousled short hair.She looked at you and you never thought doe eyes could look so menacing and mischievous .

“Enjoying the show?”

You walked in and stood in front of the couch, arms crossed as you leaned against the wall

“Absolutely. Go on”

Ellie pulled abby back in for another kiss clearly to horny to entertain this conversation and sucked on her lower lip in need. She followed Ellie’s lead and pushed her lower on the cushions of the sofa moaning into the kiss. Ellie was a good kisser and she knew it, and just imagining how good abby felt had you sitting on the sofa across the couch and spreading your legs to make yourself comfortable knowing you would soon have to slide your hand in your pants to release the building tension in your stomach.

___________

Ellie and Abby got along as roommates but not as people. Ellie kept to herself and in their shared space which was the living room she only had a tray with her smoking gear and a bag of weed but otherwise she didn’t cram the space with any other items. Abby liked plants and Ellie found them to be a decent choice for decor and that was that. Dormitory B5 was known for having nicer and more spacious rooms. Abby was rich and Ellie’s side hustle made her comfortable enough. In the first two years of them living together they talked occasionally and they knew each other's friend group. They did bond once over their shitty ex’s and Abby appreciated Ellie’s seriousness when she came out to her confused and convinced that she was perhaps a lesbian. That was it though. In the second semester of their second year however you moved in. Abby told Ellie that if they didn’t like their new roommate she could easily pull a few strings to have you out but that was thrown out of the window once they saw you.

You took up all of their space, You had pottery items in Abby’s room when you wanted to show her something and eventually forget them there, and you had left your makeup on Ellies desk because you often sat there since, in your words “The sun coming from your window is so much better than mine”

The living room now was full of posters and you insisted on having to spend time together at least on Saturdays. You were comfortable and your comfort made them relax as well. Ellie of course knew what it was. She wanted you and she was head over heels for you and all of that was sealed when she came to your apartment after a shitty 3 hour art history lecture to find you making dinner for everyone. You also had a gift for her

“Remember how you told me about that comic ? So funny story, my friend actually was getting rid of his collection since he is moving out and I asked him to give them to me so here you go”

Ellie actually cried that night, moved by your gesture and when she saw you now all she heard in her mind was “wife wife wife”

But Ellie wasn’t the only one. Abby had magically shifted her entire schedule in a way that whenever you had a free day she had one as well and she would be in the apartment with you.

Abby had never felt lust like this before. If she couldn’t own the wind she wanted to at least tame it and dance with it for a while.

The two of them talked and somehow came to a mutual understanding that if you were to choose either of them they would be peaceful about it. Another silent agreement that they took however was to make sure you would end up with either of them and not someone else.

The first time it happened, all three of you were drunk out of your minds blasting music from the speakers and played a raunchy card game that Abby didn’t even remember if it existed in the first place. One thing led to another and suddenly you found yourself in your underwear only, fondling Ellies chest while nibbling on her neck and Abby pressed against your back, her hand under your panties fingering you while whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

Just like you moving in and settling into their lives, a relationship between the three of you occurred just as naturally since you felt like the missing link that they needed to connect.

————-

Ellie was unhinged and she was aware of it and it was one of the things that she didn’t care to fix. not when Abby was a jock who flaunted her wealth and threatened with it and certainly not when she saw how aroused you were every time she brought her butterfly knife in the bedroom.

However she also knew that sometimes she took it too far.

She once overheard a guy in your major fawn over you in the most grotesque way, salivating over the fact that you wore a dress that accentuated your ass in all the right ways, and the low v front cut of the top showed your sternum tattoos in a “provocative way”

Ellie was no better than a man because she had noticed all those things herself which was why she ate you out in the elevator that morning and caused the entire building to believe that it was out of service for 36 minutes. However when Ellie thought of that it was different. So she leaned against the door and played with her knife, carrying them around campus under the excuse that she needed them to sharpen her coals for her artworks, even though she carried them for very different situations that she wasn’t shamed to admit that she made use of. She didn’t say anything but when they noticed her staring they did turn around to face her the same time that you were ready to leave. You walked up to her oblivious to the tension around her and went in for a small greeting peck that she turned into a french kiss with her hands on your ass pulling you closer. She lifted one hand to cradle your head and looked at the guy across the hall challenging him to continue his fruitless attempts to hit on you to which he just frowned and looked away confused and in disgust.

That night, when you were blissfully asleep on Abby’s chest she mentioned what happened to her in a tone that indicated that she planned on handling it herself. Ellie knew though, that if word of a situation like that reached Abby’s ears the guys would probably either end up kicked out of campus at best, hospitalised at worst.

••••

heres my ko-fi tip jar if you enjoy my work 🤍

[vyrewolf]

As much as I wanted to, I could never buy into the 2004 mean girls lesbian reading - Cady always just felt too straight, and Regina was too nastily homophobic to Janis for me to personally be able to read her as a lesbian with internalized homophobia. My lesbian heart wanted to buy into it so very bad but I just couldn’t.

But mean girls 2024?? Oh boy they got me. They got me by my dykish little throat. Those gay musical theatre ass bitches managed to give me toxic doomed yuri in my mean girls movie!!!

Anyways funny part of the post is over allow me to over analyze:

Janis is a lesbian - she always was and we already knew that and I’m so glad they weren’t cowards and committed to giving her a girlfriend for prom this time. Janis and Regina were close friends who started to realize they liked eachother and while Janis was comfortable with that Regina wasn’t which lead to the whole ordeal with spin the bottle and with the beanie baby and the pride pin which leads me to…

Regina is a lesbian with some deeply internalized homophobia. We see it with the way she treats Janis but keeps the pride pin WHICH by the way is like fanfiction levels of toxic doomed yuri and I appreciate it so much. She has all this popularity and control over the school that she’s so afraid of loosing which causes her to act nasty and bitchy and her being a lesbian can absolutely fit into this - being outed as a lesbian would hurt her popularity and reputation and so she throws Janis away and ruins that relationship, and as she grows older and matures she gets stuck in this toxic mindset where I feel like she knows deep down she’s a lesbian but she’s not letting herself acknowledge it because she knows what embracing that would do to her social life. HOWEVER she’s toxic and absolutely still uses her hot dom lesbian energy to enact control over her friends who are all very down bad for her which leads me to…

Cady - bisexual home schooled jungle freak who starts normal high school and realizes what romantic attraction feels like and doesn’t really know what to do with those feelings- did y’all see the way she looked at Regina’s titties during that seduction scene, we all saw it right?? (And yes I’m calling it a seduction scene because even if you don’t read it as a sexual seduction that’s the term I’ve been taught to use for a villain confrontation where the villain is trying to convince the hero to join their side - seduction as opposed to threat - fun fact from film school) Cady wants to be like Regina, she WANTS regina, and Regina’s absolutely aware of that but is so buried in her persona and internalized homophobia that instead of acknowledging and reciprocating those feelings in a healthy way she kind of half reciprocates them enough to lead Cady on but not enough to treat Cady well which leads to this relationship dynamic where Regina is pretty much benefiting off of the way her unacknowledged lesbianism is enacting control over her friends who are all down bad for her which leads me to…

Gretchen - you can’t tell me that girl isn’t in a horrific one sided situationship with Regina especially after her song!??? That girls WANTS REGINA SO BAD and Regina knows that and again exploits that somewhat unintentionally because she can’t acknowledge her own identity. Gretchen is what Cady very well could have became in a different reality where Cady didn’t have Janis and Damien’s perspective to help her realize what she’s gotten herself into and lead to the conclusion of the film.

ANYWAYS I’m a cadina truther because Janis and Gretchen both have been hurt by Regina and deserve better but that doesn’t mean that Regina doesn’t deserve better either and I thoroughly believe that after the events of the film Cady helps Regina work through her shit and Cady gets the hot dom gf Regina was meant to be

As for Aaron I can absolutely believe that Cady is genuinely attracted to him I don’t think it’s a case of Cady likes Regina but doesn’t realize and so redirects her feelings into a man (tho I also totally support that reading) but dude that guy is so bland there’s no way that relationship lasts.

Tldr a lot of Regina’s behavior and relationships can be explained by her internalized homophobia and the way she somewhat benefits off of the control she gets over her friends who have feelings for her and Cady helps her break the pattern and become a better person

[twig-tea]

Twig's GL Recs for March-July 2024

[Here’s my rec list for GLs through to Feb 2024 ]

Fake Buddies Korean, YouTube, 7 episodes (one ep BL, one ep GL, one ep crossover, and then 2 more BL prequel eps and two more GL prequel episodes), approx 45 minutes when compiled, Apr 27-Jun 28 2024

At first this was a little three-part series in which it turns out both members of the couple are secretly in a homosexual relationship with their best friends and using the other as a beard. Lots of comedy of errors and puns (“I like lilies better than roses”) as the characters try to make each other understand the situation they’re in. The backstory prequels were really cute friends to lovers, and it was really nice to see these couples land in solidarity! This series is short and cute and pure fluff.  

To the X Who Hated Me: YunO x Jane Korean, YouTube, 3 episodes ~6 mins each, aired May 22-29 [microseries complete, X who hated me series may be ongoing]

When the previous 2-ep miniseries under this umbrella landed (which I wrote about here: ), I had no idea it was going to be a series of microseries! These are all short but good second chance romances. This one has a “reality”-show-within-a-show format, with a frustrating misunderstanding, and a good kiss. Be sure to always watch past the credits for this series! 

You Are My Star, Thai, YouTube, 1ep 37 mins (aired as 3 12-min eps and then they compiled into this one short film), May 18 [complete]

This was a cute Thai GL that I enjoyed mostly because of the very clear cribbing of specific scenes from recent BLs. It was mostly trope-y (both cuteness and drama), with good kissing. See if you can spot the BL references.

Xiao Xiang Yi Jiu, Chinese, YouTube, 7 episodes 2 mins each, May 20-June 3 [complete]

This little microseries is about a girl becoming an intern for her crush/idol. Happy ending, and they do become explicitly girlfriends! No kiss because censorship.

Lonely Girls Korean, YouTube, 4 episodes 8 minutes each (32 mins compiled) May 14 [complete]

This is about a couple that struggles with the closet, lack of communication, and how to make their relationship last in the face of uncertainty. Also there’s good kisses. SukFilm have done other series before and since, but this is my fave GL of theirs so far. 

The Two of Us Deep Night spinoff, Thai, YouTube, 6 episodes, 15 mins each, airing May 30-July 4 [complete]

I was so confused at first, because I didn’t realize this was supposed to be their story during the events of Deep Night that we didn’t get to see. I was excited about this one but bummed that we started the miniseries with a health scare and then a threat by Meiji to marry some guy just to make Freya jealous? I found it a little frustrating that two women in their 40s could not be honest with each other. The couple is so cute, but the storytelling is not, so take this rec with a grain of salt. Still, it’s so nice to see women in their 40s being super cute and in love in between the drama so I’m keeping it on this list! I am very glad to have gotten the dance sequence and the bath sequence. 

******

And of course currently airing right now so take with a grain of salt because i don’t yet know how they end, but 

Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko Japanese, 8 episodes, 25 mins, airing July 4- August 22 [ongoing]

This is a laugh-out-loud funny office comedy in which Akaya flirts desperately with her senior colleague at work, Hiorko, who then spends her evenings complaining to her friends at the lesbian bar about oblivious straights who don’t understand the meaning of what they say. I've written a little more about this show here. It is my favourite GL of the year so far and if it stays this good is on its way to being one of my favourites of all time!

The Secret of Us Thai, 8 episodes, 50 mins each, airing June 24-August 15 [ongoing]

This series starts with the cutest episode of all time and then devolves quickly into serious drama lol but it did a good job avoiding pure “noble idiocy” so I’m hopeful it will continue to hold up. As of ep3 things are happening that I did not expect, so I’m really curious how this one will go. In the meantime, it is also worth noting that these actresses are excellent kissers.

[UPDATE: I already have to retract this, they left it at a weird place last week but I was giving it the benefit of the doubt; but alas it is not holding up friends]

[wowevenmoreloveonearth]

You know what? I have become a gaylor sympathiser

This is going to be a long post, sorry! Please read the full post before even thinking about commenting.

Over the past few days I’ve seen a few posts on my dash about taylor swift and her fans that have left a bad taste in my mouth.

I know that a lot of people think that some fans of her are “trying to make her gay” and I just wanted to put the record straight and defend some people after actually looking at what’s going on. And I know I’m probably opening myself up for tumblr’s poor reading comprehension but before I start I’m going to say this:

I do not think taylor swift is a lesbian

Ok? Now let’s have a conversation.

First of all from what I’ve seen most of the fans who talk about Taylor swift and queerness do it from a point of literary analysis and learning queer history. This is a huge part of the community and lots of people have said that they never would have learnt so much about queer history without reading taylor swift’s works through a queer lens.

Adding on to that point, it seems a little hypocritical for the gay site which loves queer readings of books, tv shows, songs, musicals, films etc to be bullying a pretty small group of people who are mainly doing queer readings of lyrics. Especially when those people get near constant death threats. Instead of bullying these people (who don’t think or do what you think they think and do) why don’t you go outside and think “does this affect me? No. Do I agree with them? No. Am I going to cyber bully them because of this? No.”

Secondly, for the people who believe that any speculation on a real persons sexuality is 100% wrong. I used to think this too but I have changed my mind a bit about this recently after stopping and thinking about it properly. I’m not trying to change your mind at all I just want you to stop and think for a minute.

If you only get mad when speculation is queer in nature, then maybe think about that for a minute. Why is it totally wrong to think a person might be queer. We probably do it in our daily lives with people we know and they likely do it with us, back in the day that’s how queer people found each other-by speculating on sexuality. Would you be upset if you found out someone that you know thought you might be queer? I wouldn’t, maybe you would but if you would, why? Why is it terrible to think someone might be queer (this is NOT about hounding a person to admit to being queer like shawn mendes, this is just thinking in your head and on your small blog that the person will likely never see). Also this is literally the website where we talk about historical (real people) being gay even when they would have never said something to the equivalent.

An addition to this point before people start saying in the comments is that this is NOT the same situation as with kit connor. The issue there was people assuming that he was straight and taking that role away from a queer person. Speculating that he was queer was the opposite of what happened in that situation. So this is not an example of what happens when you speculate queerness.

Final things to say:

1) don’t believe every post you see with someone looking insane about taylor swift being gay, a lot of them are fake.

2) before anyone says “they should listen to real queer artists instead” most of them very much do. There’s a lot of fans of Hayley kiyoko, girl in red, Janelle monae, tegan and sara, zolita, kehlani etc.

3) there are some queer flags that are there. Sorry but there are. Hairpin drops, lavender, the ladder, flag colours, songs about women, friend of dorothy reference. Whether they are intentional is a different matter.

4) shipping real people is not what is happening for the majority of the people in the community. Also this comes back to queer vs straight again. Plenty of swifties ship taylor with men she’s been seen with and no one goes into their inboxes and sends death threats even when they are the ones making taylor swift all about the men she may or may not have dated.

5) taylor swift has never stated her sexuality. I know this may be hard to belive based off of how some people act, but it’s true. She has made vague statements which could have many meanings but she has never clearly stated anything. When gaylors get upset with taylor it is not because she said she is straight, it’s because they are getting death threats and doxxed and she seems to either be unaware of it (which is unlikely given how she seems to be a little terminally online) or she doesn’t care enough to tell her fans to stop.

6) if she does explicitly say she’s straight then there will probably be disappointment in her use of queer history and flags and her potential queer erasure (as we saw with lavender haze, with straight women describing their relationships as lavender) and centring herself in queer spaces (like the you need to calm down music video) but no one will be angry that she’s not gay. And a lot will probably be grateful that she actually explicitly stated for the record to absolve any confusion. The main issue would likely be other fans ramping up the death threats and bullying.

In conclusion: these people who do queer analysis of Taylor’s work are not trying to out her or make her gay etc. if you don’t understand it that’s fine it’s clearly not for you and you can go quite easily without seeing any of it. It’s not illegal to read works through a queer lens and if it means more people know about queer history then I think that’s a very good thing.

I changed my mind after looking at what a lot of people are actually saying rather than what people perceive them to be saying and maybe you will too?

Just be kinder to people online please and if you don’t like what people are saying block them and do not engage!

[capricorn-season]

10 JUNE 2020

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

[frigid666]

re: why is radblr ‘like that’?

so recently i’ve been seeing some discourse among bisexual users in/orbiting the radblr space regarding its profoundly biphobic (and homophobic) culture. why is radblr hostile to bisexual women? why are lesbians and bisexual women constantly at odds? is this feud manufactured by outside influence? or is it inherent to the space? @watermelinoe wrote a great nuanced response to an anon who attempted to antagonize lesbian users. i agree with everything that was said, but i don’t think placing the fault on black-pill infiltrators and politically unserious edgy teenagers is the full story. this post is mostly in addition to that reply, but i figured i should create a separate post for my lengthy thoughts. 

for context: i’ve been working on a detailed post about the history and politics of the lesbian feminist movement (i.e. the political lesbian branch of feminism), as it is apparent to me that most of radblr is uninitiated due to how frequently its users conflate radical feminist principles and lesbian feminist principles. i still might finish that post at some point in the future, but i thought i should put some of the information i’ve come across while researching for that post out there now since it's become relevant.

one of the readings i found to be crucial in understanding how the culture of radblr enables biphobia (and lesbophobia) is sharon dale stone’s “bisexual women and the ‘threat’ to lesbian spaces: or what if all the lesbians leave?” (x) the title is inflammatory, but i highly recommend giving her paper a read. stone authored it in 1996 as a reflection on the culture of the canadian lesbian/cultural feminist spaces she was an active member of in the 1970s-1980s and provides a truly fascinating look into a niche community that i consider to be a spiritual predecessor of radblr.

the paper is quite dated in many regards. the most obvious being stone’s use of ‘lesbian’ to mean both ‘homosexual female’ (which is the only and rightly so accepted meaning of the word today in radblr) and the political ‘lesbian’ identity, of which the philosophy for is outlined as follows:

it was entirely possible to be a true female homosexual, or female bisexual, or even female heterosexual and be a ‘political lesbian’ and active member of communities like stone’s house on jarvis street. stone says that those voicing opposition to lesbianism as a choice were the minority, but i think this was largely the case because ‘lesbianism’ meant different things to different groups and organizations of cultural/lesbian feminists at that time. the reason i am reluctant to dismiss lesbian involvement in these spaces is because they were mostly born of lesbian (and bisexual) exclusion from other more mainstream feminist spaces and organizations by homophobic heterosexual feminists, as well as the marginalization lesbian (and bisexual) women in the gay liberation movement experienced due to lack support against misogyny by male counterparts. i am also reluctant to dismiss straight women’s involvement in these spaces because even into the late 1980s, lesbianism was conceptualized by many cultural/lesbian feminists as not needing a sexual component at all; all that was required from women to live a ‘lesbian’ lifestyle was prioritizing closeness and connections with other women and eschewing relationships with men (akin to radblr's idea of practicing 'micro-separatism' in one's day-to-day life in lieu of not being able to move to a women's land full-time). from my understanding, 'lesbianism' and 'female homosexuality' were not thought of as synonymous, which is why 'lesbianism' was considered a voluntary political philosophy, even by many female homosexual feminists.

all that said, stone’s descriptions of the jarvis house culture are very reminiscent of radblr culture (down to the usage of slang terminology like ‘gomer’ for men, the radblr equivalent being ‘nigel’ and ‘jakey’). this is because radblr culture is heavily inspired by cultural/lesbian feminist values, not radical feminist values. while both schools of feminism share similarities, lesbian/cultural feminism deviates significantly in its emphasis of separatism as the solution to the male supremacy and patriarchy present in all levels of society. meanwhile, radical feminism calls for a fundamental restructuring of society to eliminate women's oppression. radical feminism was never about female separatism. radblr culture is biphobic because female separatism 'as the solution to female oppression' will always require a politicization and objectification of female sexuality.

i normally wouldn't cite wikipedia articles as sources, but this distinction is outlined on the very top of the entries for radical feminism and lesbian/cultural feminism:

as an aside, this is why i find it very funny when radblr users try to 'kick out' other radblr users from the radical feminist club, because the beliefs these users are being kicked out for not holding (i.e. separatism as the means to female liberation), are conclusively NOT radical feminist beliefs. they are lesbian/cultural feminist beliefs!

the script of political lesbianism that radblr holds is "non-lesbian who believes inaccurately adopting the lesbian label is feminist action, therefore giving credence to the homophobic notion that lesbianism is an active, politicized identification choice, or born out of experiencing trauma from men, instead of a politically neutral, natural sexuality that some women experience." and yes, that is a large and significant aspect of why political lesbianism is harmful (and uniquely so to lesbians). but it also goes deeper than that. in truth, this definition is only surface-level. all women in feminist spaces can be guilty of holding and perpetuating polilez beliefs, and this rhetoric dehumanizes ALL women. through the political lesbian perspective, women's capacity for feminist action is made and broken by her sexual behavior - namely, her exclusion or inclusion of males from her sexual behavior - and by extension, her reproductive decisions (i.e. remaining childfree or birthing children 'for a man.') this is where the core harm of radblr's covert political lesbian rhetoric lies.

saying or implying that:

motherhood is compliance to patriarchy

engaging in relations with men is compliance to patriarchy

bisexual women have a moral imperative to only date women in order to defy patriarchy, and if they reject this, they are in kahoots with the patriarchy

patriarchy is defined by "sexual access" to women

lesbians are intrinsically 'better' feminists than non-lesbians

lesbians are inherently feminist, and choosing to not be living aspirational figures is a betrayal to womankind

patriarchy can be ended through female separatism

female sexual behavior can never be predatory or result in meaningful harm to others

men are fundamentally incapable of changing

and any other type of rhetoric that posits women's physical bodies as the territory for a gender war that can be "preserved" or "ceded" to the "enemy" in accordance to her sexual behavior (including reproductive choices, irrespective of her individual sexuality) ✅️ is political lesbian rhetoric. put radblr posts to the test; a good amount of them will contain or imply at least 1 of the above assertions. during a cursory search through recent/popular radblr posts, i came across several examples of this rhetoric:

i cropped out the usernames from these posts because my intention isn’t to single out any particular users for this behavior; these posts (and similar) have many notes consisting mostly of positive feedback and support, so its safe to say that these beliefs are widely held in the radblr space. the op’s are just the ones to put pen to paper so to speak. i don’t believe some of these sentiments are harmful or bad on their own either. i actually agree with some of them, especially the first one; although note its rhetorical similarity with this section of stone's paper:

however, in aggregate (and especially in addition to commonly held stereotypes about bisexual women and lesbian women that predate radblr), they create a harmful culture that covertly encourages women to objectify their and others' sexualities for political ends, which is never going to be a good or productive thing.

choice feminists and neo-liberals have run the phrase "don't rob women of their agency" into the ground to cheaply deny the power of gendered socialization and gendered consumerism, as they are quite allegiant to these systems for a variety of reasons. so i understand the instinct from radblr to not give it any credence, but handwaving women's (including feminist-minded women's) desire for children and/or romantic relationships with men as products of solely or even primarily patriarchal brainwashing that can be undone through enough cultural/lesbian feminist re-education, which is what many radblr users espouse, is just as cheap. 

for this reason, radblr is hostile to bisexual women, many of whom reject female separatism as the only means to female liberation and don't want to objectify their sexuality in service to this political goal. for this reason, bisexual women will be known as "traitors" and "fairweather." however, just as many bisexual female users believe the opposite and participate in disseminating political lesbian rhetoric (as do heterosexual and gay users). similarly, this is why radblr is toxic to lesbians who have deep friendships with men, who want to be mothers, who practice religion or don't believe in female separatism; their 'legitimacy' as lesbians is questioned, as there is the 'positive' stereotype (and key insinuation of lesbian feminism) that lesbians are naturally inclined towards feminism; and they are often accused of secretly being bisexual because these lifestyle preferences are viewed as in alignment with the patriarchy and therefore oppositional to the cultural/lesbian feminist perspective that reigns supreme in the space. radblr will not stop being biphobic (and lesbophobic) until it is free of cultural/lesbian feminist influence.

[familyabolisher]

re: this post, would you perhaps be able to reword it? i understand the words you're using individually, and i think i might kind of get what you're trying to say, but it's just one very long sentence and so i'm having trouble parsing it! (wait--i just reread it. initial question canceled, mostly--now: what alternatives might we have available to us?) and what does this section: "it feels all too easy to jump from that to then just stymieing our ability to actually describe the textual violences necessary to the discursive construction of that normativity in the first place" mean, exactly? thank you as always for running this blog. :-)

What I’m describing is a critical phenomenon wherein people will approach (usually canonical) horror texts which reify hegemony by ‘identifying’ with the monster who is generally figured in terms of alterity in some capacity; by extricating, for example, a queer narrative out of what is in fact a homophobic one, and treating this as something of a ‘reclamatory’ practice in which one ‘relates’ to that which the text figures as monstrous. The most common instance of this which I see is people’s discussion of Carmilla as an erotic lesbian romance; other examples include Dracula, or Frankenstein, or the socially currency invested in the idea of a ‘madwoman in the attic’ (ie. Jane Eyre).  

I don’t think this is like, a practice that we need to do away with entirely, lol – but I do think that a) there are marginalised writers + filmmakers who are making horror with actual teeth, with actual radical edge, and we don’t need to keep pretending like this approach of reclamation-through-identification with a monster in a v normative work is all we have available to us when politically subversive horror does very much exist, and b) this critical practice is often vvv limited in its discursive scope, and tends to lack the kind of materialist analysis that I would consider necessary in talking about literatures of alterity/marginality/violence.

When I talked about stymieing our ability to describe the textual violences necessary to the discursive constructions of that normativity in the first place, I meant that overfocusing on these texts as “reclaimed” articulations of an essentially queer (or otherwise ‘othered’) imaginary can inhibit our ability, as critics, to describe how those texts in fact do not think of their monstrous figures as worthy of a sympathetic or appreciative narrative. I mentioned Carmilla above – we can talk about Carmilla as erotically lesbian, sure, but how far down the line in talking about it as a Queer Narrative do we lose track of the fact that the text itself asserts the sexual norms of white Christian hegemony to necessarily succeed over the perversion of the corruptive, predatory lesbian, or as an Anglo-Irish work positing Carmilla as an Irish woman (and thus a contaminant threat to Anglo-Irish society)? At what point in adulating Dracula as articulating a particular form of queer, effeminate Jewishness destabilising and threatening Jonathan and Mina’s persistent heterosexuality do we lose track of Dracula as having grown out of the fear that the new waves of Jewish immigration in London’s East End were vampiric sources of contagion, or its possible relationship to the antisemitic smears that grew out of the Jack the Ripper murders? Or like, taking Bertha Mason (or ‘the madwoman in the attic,’ because truly, v few people using this phrase are actually thinking about Bertha Mason lol) as a kind of feminist paragon – at what point do we begin to overlook the fact that Jane Eyre is a v racist text?

These aren’t necessarily contradictory approaches – like, for example, you can talk about ‘identifying’ with Dracula as emblematic of British Jewish assimilation and the discontents thereof whilst also talking about Dracula as an antisemitic text, even if the analysis in the former isn’t especially coherent – but the focus of the ‘identification’ treatment is often incredibly limited in its scope, and those limitations can often be detrimental to one’s ability to talk frankly and honestly about what a text actually says and does. A very good example such limitations is that of Frankenstein; an identification with Frankenstein’s monster as an entrypoint for textual analysis obfuscates the way in which Frankenstein constructed a discursive template by which the ameliorationist argument against the immediate abolition of slavery could be argued for. (The linked post lays this out v clearly, but the cited source is Mary Mulvey’ Roberts’ ‘Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and Slavery,’ in Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal). What I basically mean is, when we talk about relating to, identifying with, ‘reclaiming’ the monster, we have to have a real grasp on what it is we’re trying to impose such a practice on, and what the actual substance of the source text has to say for itself. I’m not one for assuming a text as a body with a set of metaphysical properties that we as critics are tasked to find – I think the relationship between text and reader ought to be dialectical – but part of that dialectical process means situating the text in its material social context and responding appropriately.

[facingthenorthwind]

Don't get involved with Wookieepedia

We all know Wookieepedia — it’s the Star Wars wiki, and an invaluable resource for fic writers everywhere. I’m not telling you not to look at Wookieepedia, but I do need to warn you not to get involved with the community. If you do want to edit it, then never join the discord or get involved with the forums (Senate Hall). It’s a cesspit of bigotry, and you cannot change it.

I tried. Along with a very well-known and vocal user named Immi Thrax, we tried to push back against misogyny and queerphobia. We thought we succeeded. You might have seen supposed “progress” on Wook: the addition of pronouns in the infobox, the addition of an anti-discrimination policy and an apology from the male wook admins for historical abuse towards marginalised editors. We did this. We, along with a small group of queer women and nonbinary editors, badgered the admins to write that apology for months, spoon-feeding them the things they needed to address and telling them that the early piss-weak drafts were unacceptable. We demanded infobox pronouns. We demanded an anti-discrimination policy and worked with them to add a glossary. 

And then they ran us off the website.

We had a side server specifically for women and nonbinary people, with a few channels that also contained men we trusted. A woman (who was voted in as an admin after Immi) took screenshots from this private server and then posted them publicly. The screenshots were taken completely out of context and misrepresented their contents. The woman who took the screenshots deleted messages in them to make us look worse. They slandered us and put us in danger, because Immi has been targeted by dangerous corners of the internet before (which they were well aware of), and we were terrified we would be doxxed. All of the men approved of this, forced Immi to resign, and spread blatant lies about us. Wook users attacked us, and it was deemed perfectly acceptable to do so.

When I wrote the initial forum post about sexism and misogyny on the website, Master Fredcerique, one of the admins, told me that he was in fear of losing his job during 2021 because of discord screenshot leaks, and that "Safety for everyone was of utmost importance" to him, hence requesting I not provide usernames for my examples of bigotry. It is clear that Immi, myself and others in those screenshots do not count in this 'everyone'. I wonder why he wanted to protect the perpetrators of misogyny but was happy to endanger women!

As a result of this horrific breach of trust and privacy, every single queer woman and almost every nonbinary wook editor has left the site. We were too radical, and they had to destroy us. Sure, a woman did this, but I don’t think it’s an accident that a cishet woman who self-describes as a Republican in Florida forced the two loud leftist lesbians off the site. And the men approved of everything she’s done and contributed to it. One (1) man (notably not an admin) stood up for us, and he was banned for doing it. 

So don’t join wook. If you do edit, don't trust anyone. Have every single conversation about wook in public, where people can never take your words out of context. Do not participate in DMs, group chats or any wook-related servers, including the official one. Marginalised editors' very existence is a disruption to the status quo of Wookieepedia, and there is every possibility you will be seen as a threat, even if you are not initially treated as one.

[warehouse-in-la-cienaga]

My favourite trope in fanfiction is actually time-travel meeting, where the younger ones can see that things do actually get better, and the older ones can see that they have actually changed, and they’ve achieved so much. And I think the Bad Kids are primed for that kind of thing.

I’m imagining that they’ve been graduated for a few years, they’ve got their own careers, but they do still adventure pretty regularly and are a well known party. Then, they’re fighting something that’s gotten ahold of a chronomancy object, and when one of the BKs tries to grab it, they (and the thing they’re fighting) are sent back in time.

Meanwhile, it’s the second day of freshman year, everyone is still standing outside, waiting for the first bell, the younger BKs are whispering about what the corn means, when a huge monster falls through a rip in time and crushes one of the statues near the front doors. Then, before anyone can do anything, six full grown adventurers are destroying it and grabbing the watch and pulling each other up, congratulating each other, laughing.

Goldenhoard tries to go up to them and ask what’s going on, and the goblin on the half-orc’s shoulders pulls out a gun and shoots him point blank. Everyone’s confused as hell, and the group don’t seem to know where they are. Until someone mentions the date, and then they just look kind of exhausted. At the end of the day, when the young BKs try to go to Krom’s to spy on Johnny Spells, they find older versions of themselves, who spent the day reminding themselves what happened and figuring out how to help with Freshman Year level problems, including-

-Fig getting Gorthalax out, sitting all her parents and younger self down and having a talk about how best to keep communication open and be kinder to yourselves, since they all want each other to be happy.

-Fabien has a long talk with both of his parents, getting his mom sober earlier, and a talk with younger him about being your own person and living up to expectations.

-Adaine pulls younger her from her family, and gets Aelwyn to chill. She does get her parents out of Elmville, via Blackmail or other means, with the implicit threat of punching them to death. She now has two younger sisters, and encourages the type of emotional self expression that was previously repressed.

-Riz giving his younger self the schedule he works on, including breaks for all meals and six hours of sleep each night. He doesn’t allow younger him to fall int the bad habits he did. He also tells his mom a little bit about his dads new job, and they have a happy cry about it.

-Gorgug gives his parents the schematics for a reinforced bed and a few of his works. Younger Gorgug is a little starstruck that older him is so cool, and Gorgug takes a minute to explain to younger him that he deserves to have the things he puts effort and thought into pay off, that he deserves to take pride in the cool things he could accomplish.

-Kristin gets younger her to speed run an entire theological breakdown, reassures her at every step, and gets her into a more relaxed, solid mindset with a support system outside of her family. She also has to find a smart way of getting young Kristin to realise she’s a lesbian without sending her into a crisis, and is semi-successful.

-Throughout the year, the older BKs have run ins with their parents, go about fixing problems for Sophmore and Junior year (they stop Porter’s plan, and when he runs off Gorgug ends up being a substitute Barbarian teacher for half the year). They’re trying to figure out how to get back to their time. The ending is either Kristin dying to Coach Dawn and bringing Arthur back, who can send them back, or they can’t go back, so now there’s two versions of the BKs running around, and if both groups are in one place, everyone else evacuates, because something is about to go down.

[cordycepsfem]

Let’s read the news today…

Oh no, this sounds terrible! What are these bills about that could cause so much harm to the LGBTQ+ community?

Oh! I see. They’re bills promoting keeping sports sex-segregated (good), promoting bathrooms that are sex-segregated (good), and bills against children, mostly future homosexuals who will grow out of actual gender dysphoria, and many of whom are autistic, being put on harmful drugs that will affect their bone growth, emotional health, intelligence, and genital and sexual maturation, among other things (sounds good to me!).

But wait… what does this have to do with gays or lesbians or bisexual people? Maybe some other bills will clue me in.

I’m sorry, an “anti-furry bill” is “anti-trans”? So now being trans is to be equated with having paraphilias and/or fetishes? Why don’t you just say it out loud here, guys. I’m sure all of the trans people trying to live their lives really appreciate being lumped in with furries. A+ work.

Ah, there it is. This has fuck all to do with the LGB community and everything to do with the privileges the TQ+ demand. Not sure why they didn’t just say “trans bills” in the article title - it would have gotten just as many reads and probably a bunch of money thrown at it.

Also, extra points for mentioning “Harvard Law instructor” (not his actual job, it’s much less prestigious than that) Alejandra Caraballo in this article. You can find out all kinds of exciting things about him on KF, including how he had to testify in front of Congress about threats he made towards the Supreme Court on Twitter. Brilliant brilliant lawyer. 🙄

Thanks for recommending this article, Elliot Page!

[crooked-wasteland]

Something that always irked me a little was seeing fans say HB/HH have good queer rep. There’s been other adult/children animated shows that done it better. I think the reason fans say that it has good queer rep is it because they get to see the characters have sex, instead of characters having actual chemistry and good interactions.

No one in HB or HH had good chemistry. Charlie and Vaggie are just nonexistent or they should’ve been a slow burn from friends to lovers and blitz and stolas is the worst mlm ship because they don’t have anything they just have sex, they’re just meaning less sex that have to be a couple.

Husk is an asshole to Angel, he just shits on sex work and guilt trips Angel so he doesn’t take drugs but because Cherri is meant to be seen as the negative influence we’re suppose to take husk side and say no to drugs.

I don’t even consider fizz and Ozzie a relationship because they’re just sugaring, but fizz has a unhealthy codependency on Ozzie who kinda goes along because he gets to have sex with fizz and that too to me sounds like the spirit of lust. Doing immoral actions for you’re own selfish wants and desires. If fizz and Ozzie was rewritten and in the hands of a better writer this could’ve been a thrilling toxic story about a powerful prince of lust manipulating his insecure vulnerable lower class imp plaything and hundreds like him, in the spirit of lust

One of my unpopular opinions is that Elemental had the best examples of queer representation in Ember and Wade. And I am aware Ember and Wade are cis gendered and in a heterosexual dynamic. My point being that representation does not always have to be explicit to be profound or accurate. The movie gives Wade an unconventional form of masculinity that validates a nurturing expression that is stereotyped as inherently queer. Additionally, Ember's lack of identity due to the expectations of her family, father, and culture mirrors the existence of many queer individuals who fail to recognize they are bisexual or even gay due to the implicit pressure placed on them to fulfill the typical roles of their society.

Many people take the story in face value, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with seeing it as a story solely based on race, discrimination, the complexities of coexistence, and interracial love.

However, representation does not have to be explicit. There is absolutely plenty to be argued that by having an openly queer relationship moves to normalize the concept socially, but the unfortunate reality exists that (1) queerness is still inherently othering and you will not be able to normalize the existence of queer people just by shoving them front and centre. If anything, it is interpreted as a threat to the dominating social norm that causes people to reject the concept outright compared to subliminally connecting the ideas and experience of queerness to a more universal norm, building on tools and experiences to help others relate to our existence despite them never being able to truly live it.

And (2) movie-making and media is a business. A very expensive one. So risking hundreds of millions of dollars on explicit queerness that is still extremely fringe in most societies is, frankly, bad business.

The issues in representation for HH and HB comes down to what you said here: weak chemistry and toxic dynamics. These aren't good representations, not because they have these problems, but because these problems are overtly ignored or seen as not issues at all. There are a ton of harmful stereotypes that work in our society to keep queerness from being seen as normal or valid.

"Lesbians aren't real because how can two women ever love each other the way a man can love a woman and vice versa."

"Gay men just think about sex all the time. There is no love in their relationships."

"Bi/Pansexual will just have sex with anything."

"Sex is the highest form of romance and so any deviation from the strictly acceptable expressions of sexuality in society is a threat to love and relationships as a whole."

"Queer people are the result of brain damage through drug abuse."

"Queer people are the result of childhood trauma and/or sexual abuse."

"Who's the woman/wears the pants in the relationship?"

All of these statements are real social perceptions and stereotypes of the queer community which Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss directly contribute to. The narrative and characters adhere to every single one of these ideas at some point or another without ever challenging them and oftentimes reinforces them.

I understand and respect people who don't see Elemental as queer representation just because the characters do conform superficially to heteronormative standards. But just making a character gay doesn't make the story or series queer representation, and these shows definitely don't have good representation.

[vintagetvstars]

Nichelle Nichols Vs. Yvonne Craig

Propaganda

Nichelle Nichols - (Star Trek) - She speaks for herself. Legendary, iconic, at the forefront of feminism and civil rights in the 60s, she is a triple threat who did so much more. She volunteered from 1977 to promote recruitment diversity within NASA, including some of the first female and ethnic minority astronauts. Martin Luther King Jr. compared her work on Star Trek as a 'vital role model' to the civil rights marches. She refused to be dismissed, fought for visibility and shone whilst doing so. As a woman in stem, and simply a woman she means the world and stars above to me.

Yvonne Craig - (Batman, Star Trek) - 7 year old me didn't know she was a lesbian but she sure knew she liked batgirl

Master Poll List of the Hot Vintage TV Ladies Bracket

Additional propaganda below the cut

Nichelle Nichols:

She is the original badass babe. She was a black woman in a leading role on TV in the 60s, a trailblazer for black actresses for years to come. She is so beautiful and so awesome.

she's fantastic. have you seen her? paved the way for black actresses on TV even while her lines and scenes were being cut and improvised the most iconic uhura line in the series. (sulu: "I'll save you, fair maiden!" uhura, pushing him away: "sorry, neither!") she's incredibly talented and it's a crime the show didn't give her more screen time (or make her sing more often because she also has a beautiful voice!)

“Sorry, neither” in response to “fair maiden” was ad libbed by her. There’s a lot more I could say but what else do you need??

A sci-fi icon!

She was such a trailblazer, and Uhura was such an important character for so many people to be able to see on TV. Apparently Mae Jemison (the first African American woman to go into space) cited her as a reason she wanted to become an astronaut. She was just an absolute legend!

The story of Martin Luther King telling her not to quit Star Trek gives me chills. Representation matters. “Thank you so much, Dr. King. I’m really going to miss my co-stars.” Dr. King's smile, Nichols recalled, vanished from his face. "He said, 'What are you talking about?'" the actress explained. "I told him. He said, 'You cannot,' and so help me, this man practically repeated verbatim what Gene said. He said, 'Don’t you see what this man is doing, who has written this? This is the future. He has established us as we should be seen. 300 years from now, we are here. We are marching. And this is the first step. When we see you, we see ourselves, and we see ourselves as intelligent and beautiful and proud.' He goes on and I’m looking at him and my knees are buckling. I said, 'I…, I…' And he said, 'You turn on your television and the news comes on and you see us marching and peaceful, you see the peaceful civil disobedience, and you see the dogs and see the fire hoses, and we all know they cannot destroy us because we are there in the 23rd Century.'"

She shared the first interracial kiss on Star Trek, helped propel real life African American women into space-related careers, and looks divine in a mini skirt.

HOW DID UHURA WALK BACKWARDS SO FAR??? WOW!