#tragic and queer

[certainwoman]

"It would be naive to think that one could engage the politics of gay marriage without also engaging the fantasies that swirl around marriage. These fantasies are intensified for queers, who have been historically excluded not only from marriage but also from the serene and longlasting satisfaction it seems to offer. Of course, the promise of conjugal happiness is not the same thing as its reality, as many who are or who have been married will tell you. Gays and lesbians are now in the unprecedented historical situation of having to pretend that we too have happy marriages. It is no wonder that, given the novelty of the situation, these declarations often have the air of a forced confession. (...)

In the era of gay normalisation, gays and lesbians not only have to be like everybody else (get married, raise kids, mow the grass, etc.), they have to look and feel good doing it. Such demands are the effect, in part, of the general American premium on cheerfulness: being a 'gay American,' like being any kind of American, means being a cheerful American. For gay Americans, the pressure to appear in good spirits is even greater. Because homosexuality is traditionally so closely associated with disappointment and depression, being happy signifies participation in the coming era of gay possibility. In this brave new world, one can be gay without necessarily being tragic; however one may only belong by erasing all traces of the grief that, by definition, must remain sealed off in the past of homosexual abjection. Given this climate of emotional conformism, it makes sense to ask whether gays and lesbians still have the right to be unhappy"

Heather K. Love, Compulsory Happiness and Queer Existence

[knightedpuppy]

big strong knights covered in blood looking at you like a feral animal. that’s the post

[clonemmunism]

I think about this often

[hauntedbythenarrative]

It would be a hundred times easier

If we were young again

Where Did You Go?, Hishaam Siddiqi//Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another, Jan Heller Levi//Jodi Picault//Brutus, The Buttress//Two slow dancers, Mitski// House of the Dragon (2022-)

[mikasnazz]

Okay …

Fair enough

OH COME ON.

[pinkeoni]

It’s funny how audience members view Mike as their underdog-average-straight guy who is a total nerd but got an awesome girlfriend anyway when the character they are actually looking for is Dustin Henderson

[khruschevshoe]

There's just something very specific about homoerotic character-enveloping friendships from around 2010 where they're semi-aware that gay people exist but queerbaiting isn't quite a thing yet sp their relationship consumes the narrative and changes them both irrevocably forever and they end in tragedy but the ending is JUST open enough for the fic writers to wriggle into that just makes me go fucking FERAL

[cortex-rampage]

I find the way that BBC Merlin set up Merlin's powers in the first episode to be quite funny. I mean, we see this sort of lanky guy and it is established that he is Merlin and (according to our own common knowledge) therefore he is the most powerful warlock ever. Okay, cool. One might assume that he has come to Gaius to develop his powers, that maybe he's only in the beginning of his magical journey. But instead the exposition shows Merlin, in the pilot episode of this 5 series show, stop time and employ levitation to save someone's life with magic, and then it is announced that prince Arthur is essentially his soulmate, and their joint power will create the most glorious age Camelot has ever seen. Quite an exciting set-up. And then for the rest of the entire show this man who we know possesses TIME-ALTERING POWERS mostly uses them on-screen to do common chores and annoy and prank THAT SAME Arthur. Like that one post said, "All of it's destiny and all of it's his fault." :p

[floating--goblin]

you know what hill i'll die on? terzo is not the sluttiest emeritus

I mean sure, he's the most dramatic and the most outspoken about sex, and he gave us Mummy Dust which is its own discussion-- but I sincerely don't see him, in his private life, being so promiscuous. Like out of all of them, I'm the most certain Terzo would be either monogamous or have a few regular partners at most, but I don't think he'd be big on casual flings. Frankly I don't even see him having sex that much at this point, he seems more attached to it as a concept than an actual activity he regularly engages in.

You know who's the inverse of that, though? The one Tobias himself calls a pervert? Secondo. There's your whore. I know he looks big and mean and authoritary but let's be honest, half of Infestissumam is about ritual sex and he's out in Vegas on the regular with more women than he can reliably satisfy. He says it himself that he became Papa because "he likes a sexy beat". THERE'S THE EMERITUS WHORE, AND I'M CERTAIN OF IT

[d3m0n1c-cl0wn3ry]

Being an avatar of the eye is kinda gay.

The fuck are you beholding?? Other men???

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

So, I started watching Link Click...

[potato-lord-but-not]

would you be interested in some gay people plagued by horrors on this fine October evening?

[clonemmunism]

I feel like this will only mean something to a very specific group of people

[dinosaur-mayonnaise]

does anyone else really love seeing middle aged and older queer people in media?

i mean, don't get me wrong, i love seeing queer teenagers and 20-somethings grappling with their identity, young romances, rom com style stories, but it hits different seeing older people who've gone through it and come out the other side, people who have stability and a life together and just get to accept themselves and love each other.

i guess i like seeing that that's an option, even if it's in fiction. it's hope and that goes a long way.

[manichewitz]

why is it that 90% of criticism of the song of achilles just boils down to not accepting the conventions of romance as a genre and wanting it to simply be a different book than what it is? because seriously if you can’t get with the fact that the song of achilles is a queer romance story first and a retelling of the iliad second you’re never gonna make a criticism of it that’s interesting to me. if i wanted to read a book that was accurate to the source material then i would just read the iliad. if i wanted to read a queer romance unfolding on the backdrop of a mythical war i would read the song of achilles. if you dont understand the difference between those two things then your beef with that book is just a waste of time to me

[mikasnazz]

I have so many of these, so painfully much.