#we're here we're proving they're queer

[himbosandhardwear]

It's a stupid fucking scheme, and he never would've gone along with it if he was sober, but she really didn't give him much time to contemplate it, she just shoved him into the pantry and yelled for Eddie to come into the kitchen.

Now he's got his head pressed against the slats while Rob asks Eddie if he thinks Steve is cute. Like they're in the fifth grade.

“Uhh,” Eddie drawls, clearly confused and put on the spot.

“C'mon,” she coaxes, “you can tell me, gay to lesbian solidarity.”

That's terrible, using that to weasel the information out of him.

“I mean…sure, I guess he's alright,” Eddie admits. “He's not really my type though.”

Oh.

Well…that's…fine.

“Seriously?” Rob asks like she doesn't believe him. “You don't think he's hot?”

“I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers, but, yeah, seriously. Not my thing. He's too…I don't know, high maintenance or something. I like my guys a little more, like, dingy.”

Steve nods to himself in understanding. He should've seen that coming but he hadn't. It's sobering.

Robin isn't finished arguing her case, the beautiful idiot. “Steve's dingy!” She yells, making Eddie laugh. “He is! He's plenty dingy! And he has other fine qualities! Like, uh, loyalty! And being helpful!”

“Are you trying to set me up with your painfully straight best friend or a golden retriever?”

“Steve's not-”

“Okay!” Steve shouts, bursting out of the pantry, yes he understands the irony, with both hands waving. “This was fun but let's wrap it up.”

Eddie stares at him, wide-eyed, but it quickly melts into anger. “What the fuck, Buckley? What kind of weird, pointless ambush is this?”

“It wasn't pointless, you fucking troglodyte. If you were paying attention-”

“Rob.” Steve didn't mean for his voice to do that but it has the intended effect. She clamps her mouth shut and pouts. “Sorry,” he says to both of them. To Eddie, “Seriously, it was a stupid idea. We're both drunk and being stupid, just forget this happened.”

Unfortunately, it doesn't look as though Eddie is going to forget any time soon. In fact, it's more like he's studying them both for clues, the wheels turning despite the whiskey and weed gumming them up.

Steve's about to turn tail and run when the lightbulb goes off. Eddie doesn't look like he believes the conclusion he's come to but he's figured it out nonetheless. “Wait. No. Seriously? No way.”

His eyeballs are aching. He pushes against them, causing starbursts behind the eyelids. “Can we please not do this?” He begs.

Eddie sputters. “If this is me finding out you're queer, Steve Harrington, then yes, we most certainly are!” He looks at Robin but she's stonewalling him in solidarity.

The fact that neither of them has said anything to the contrary is damning enough. Steve might as well have ‘bisexual’ tattooed across his forehead.

“Holy shit.” Eddie snatches Robin by the wrist, she tries to wrestle her way out but he's jangling her about like a rag doll. “Holy shit! You were trying to set us up! Holy shit!”

“Let go, asshole! You ruined it, remember?”

He does let her go, so he can stare at Steve in horror. “No! Fuck! Steve, I was bullshitting! I was lying my ass off, I swear!” He tries to round the corner of the island but Steve moves to keep it between them, unsure of this sudden development. Eddie stops when it's clear Steve isn't reciprocating.

They stare at each other until Robin breaks the awkward silence. “Prove it.”

Eddie shakes off the cobwebs. “Huh? I mean, how? I wasn't exactly doodling Mr Edward Harrington into my journals.”

She crosses her arms. “Then I guess we're done here.”

Steve doesn't point out that she's not actually in charge of this situation because it seems to motivate Eddie into action. He gives them the ‘one moment’ finger and then dashes outside.

“You believe him?” She mumbles.

“I don't know. At this point I'd probably settle for him looking to turn me into a bedpost notch.”

“Have some self-respect.”

“Nah.”

Eddie comes back, dragging Jeff by the arm.

“Tell him!” He shouts, finger pointed at Steve.

“Tell him what?”

“The thing that shall not be spoken.”

Jeff raises one eyebrow. “How am I supposed to-”

“Oh my god, just tell him.”

“No.”

Eddie blanches. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“You made me swear.”

“So?! I'm unswearing you! This is important! I need you to unfuck this situation, pronto! You can give him all the gory details, I don't give a fuck, just tell him!”

A gleam sparkles in Jeff's eye. “Every gory detail?”

Now Eddie, correctly wary, hesitates, glancing at Steve nervously. “Well, maybe not all-”

Jeff interrupts Eddie, turning fully toward Steve with, “Eddie is bananas in love with you. Probably has been since school, but it's gotten so much worse since this spring. I'd say seventy five percent of the songs he's written are about you. He's also got a fully fleshed out fantasy life involving you, including, but not limited to, five adopted Vietnamese kids, two cats and a dog.” He turns back to Eddie. “Can I go back outside now? Those hotdogs aren't going to eat themselves.”

Eddie, eyes closed, waves him away.

Before he's fully out of the kitchen, he turns and says, “Oh, also he has a VHS copy of one of your swim meets. Bought it off of some AV kid for sixty bucks.”

Steve's stomach, already roiling with excited nerves, erupts in butterflies.

Eddie does not notice this, head buried under crossed arms on the island.

“I think we've swung too far in the other direction,” Rob points out, oblivious to Steve's excitement. When she finally does notice, it's met with rolled eyes. “Of course you're into that. Absolute freaks, the both of you. You know what? Good. Take each other off the market. My job here is done.”

She hops off the stool and leaves them alone.

Eddie cautiously pokes his head up, sees Steve smiling at him and jolts up straight like a prairie dog. “You believe me?”

He wants to toy with him for a minute, a touch of revenge for the dismissal he made earlier. “What swim meet was it?” He asks, like a test.

Without missing a beat, Eddie answers, “March of ‘85. You beat some kid from West Jefferson by four seconds.”

Steve preens. Eddie isn't bullshitting, he really did beat that kid from West Jeff. Only someone who gave a shit to pay attention would know that off hand. The whiskey makes another appearance in his bloodstream, giving him the courage to lean over the counter, into Eddie's space.

“So…you like me?”

Eddie has this incredibly endearing habit of hiding behind his hair when he’s nervous, it takes Steve out at the knees every time he sees it. “I'm gonna be really pissed off if this is some convoluted prank but…yeah, man, I fucking like you. Romantically. In case that was in question.”

“Mmm,” Steve agrees. “What are our kids' names?”

Eddie closes his eyes against Steve's smug stare. “I hate Jeff so much.”

“I don't. I'll thank him at our wedding. Maybe we name one of the kids after him.”

When Eddie peeks at him, one eyed, Steve does his best to convey his amusement and fondness both.

His body goes lax, finally, at seeing Steve take all it seriously. “Okay, so I like the idea of all of them keeping their Vietnamese names, except one who we name James.”

“After Hetfield?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Please.”

Some time later, after making out in the pantry for a while, Steve vetoes James, but only because he doesn't want the poor kid to grow up with a complex.

“We’ll call the dog Jimmy.”

“Cool.”

[spaceysoupy]

So apparently it’s that time of year again where I have to post about this.

On lesbianism, white queerness, and 2S identity

Text below readmore

I am a two-spirit. My identity is specific to my Tribe and Clan, and even more specific to my family. I am not a man, I am not a woman, and I am not nonbinary; I am not defined by what I am not.

I am a two-spirit and I am a lesbian. That's not debatable.

But I am not a non-man.

There's an idea of two-spirits that we are just the ethnic version of non-binary

We're not. The reason you're so comfortable calling us nonbinary is because your idea of queerness is centered around the binary&what you are not: you're not cishet, you're not the oppressor, etc

White queers like to speak about 2S identities constantly as if we are monolith. "It's just a gender" "it's not a gender"

"they're not trans" "they're not queer" "they don't belong here"

The community tries to decide for the individual and that's so weird to me.

So much of white queerness is inherently about exclusion.

You need strict labels to exclude the people you fear. You write your definitions around your fear of intruders and by consequence you exclude the people that need your support the most.

You need people to "prove" they are queer before you let them in. You're like a fortress and you let vulnerable people drown in the moat; ignoring that the real oppressors don't need to be a Trojan horse to do damage, ignoring they are actively burning down the castle.

It's very sad to me, because it's ultimately tearing the community apart even further.

I've never felt very welcome in white lesbian circles and they've never understood my experience of gender, but it's gotten worse in the past 5 or so years.

As TERFs start to revive gold star lesbianism and center hatred of men as their definition of lesbianism, you start to get these younger lesbians that don't know history that start to parrot the rhetoric. First it's "non-men loving non-men" then it's "you're too close to Man™"

For many two-spirit lesbians like myself, this is very concerning. White lesbians are historically not the ones targeted by radfems.

Now we've gotten to the point that there are people denying that lesbian is an spec (multispec) identity while including (white) nonbinary people

White nonbinary people (usually AFAB nonbinary people) are seen as woman lite and are welcome in white lesbian spaces while queer Indigenous people are considered dangerous because white lesbians can't understand their gender.

When did understanding become a requirement?

We're getting very dangerously close to "lesbianism is ONLY attraction to women" and very close to "lesbianism is only attraction to *a very specific type of (white) woman*" and I really need young white lesbians to read about political lesbianism so they can see this

I don't want to hear "not all lesbians" or "well then they aren't welcome" because every time this rhetoric goes unchallenged you are actively welcoming these people to continue it and make it more and more extreme. Yes, even the kind that seems to have nothing to do with racism

Almost all of your exclusionary rhetoric is based on the racist ideas of political lesbianism and I do not know why you all cannot see that they want to move goalposts. It wasn't just bi lesbians, it wasn't just he/him lesbians, it wasn't just nonbinary lesbians. It's a tactic.

It really feels like young lesbians are not only letting us go backwards, but encouraging it. And that's thanks in part to the historical racism of political lesbianism, but many of these people ARE old enough to think critically and talk to people who've been through this.

So far I've seen this in younger lesbian spaces; the ones with older generations (the ones that don't welcome TERFs) have been pretty welcoming even if not totally understanding, because they at least recognize that you don't need to understand someone's experience to validate it.

But I'm really concerned for the young Indigenous lesbians who don't feel comfortable around older people and are going to these younger lesbian spaces only to be indoctrinated with thinly veiled TERF rhetoric. It makes me very concerned for our spaces as well.

So I'll say again

I am not a non-man and I am not a non-woman. I'm not defined by what I am not. I do not ascribe to your binary-centric definitions of queerness. I experience queer attraction to women. I'm a lesbian. You do not get to use community to decide my individuality.

Thread by ~Alitsanosga

Pronouns: hi'a/vsgina/utseli/uwasa

[chirpsythismorning]

Skam show-runner Julie Andem clocking the fuck out of Mike being queer-coded in s1 of Stranger Things, and then using it as inspiration to queer-code Isak in s3 of Skam can be something so epic.

THIS! THIS is what I'm talking about!

In ST, there are two scenes in s1 (pretty/still pretty) that milkvans use as irrefutable proof that Mike has always had romantic feelings for El, with the primary object in the scene being a mirror.

THIS. MEANS. SOMETHING.

Mirrors in film mean something more often than not, but especially when they are the focus of a scene is when they definitely mean something. And the way they go about it differently in between those two scenes in ST, drastically differently, and considering the subject matter is very very queer coded, is how you really know there is a significance in this case.

And that scene above from Skam proves it.

Because apparently, another filmmaker watched ST, picked up on those odd details surrounding Mike and said shit I'm gonna use that...

Notice how Isak here, a gay teenager who is fully in denial with others and himself, to the point where he makes really homophobic remarks often, gets caught denying a bunch of girls as being attractive in a conversation with his friends. And so now they're questioning him and making him feel on edge bc the focus is on him and his attraction (lack thereof) to girls.

While his friends aren't even implying he is gay in this moment, it's just them genuinely being confused why he doesn't think any of the girls they think are attractive are attractive, you can still see that Isak starts to feel the pressure and so he latches onto the first girl he thinks of, Emma.

Emma just so happens to look like Natalie Portman with her extremely short hair.

Low and behold this very girl enters the room shortly after he says this and so now Isak has to face this and give his friends the impression he is fully interested in this girl, otherwise they would DEFINITELY suspect something is off. And so he goes all out.

He outs himself.

He literally says Don't you look like that boy from Stranger Things, and then follows it up with saying he would only be attracted to her if we're assuming he is attracted to boys, only to quickly backtrack and start to approach her really flirtatiously, then going all out by making out with her.

As this happens, he is kissing her in the bathroom, in front of a mirror...

Now I want to make clear, I am not saying ST was inspired by Skam. I'm pretty sure I did make that clear, it's actually the other way around, which is even more incriminating arguably.

S1 of Stranger Things came out in 2016, whereas s3 of Skam came out the following year in 2017. The hype for ST was so immense, to the point where you had Norwegian teens referencing it in everyday conversation.

The creator of Skam took scenes from ST that framed Mike very peculiarly in s1, and used it as queer-coding for a character that ended up being revealed as gay.

For those that haven't seen Skam Norway... Run. Leap. Drive. Teleport. Do what you have to do and go watch it. It's not available on any streaming, in fact it's only available online through fan-sites outside of where it's based. Conveniently, all 4 seasons with English subs can be found HERE.

Basically this show is amazing and you need to watch it. Some seasons I like more than others. But the gist of it is that every season focuses on a different character from the main group, where they experience some sort of misunderstanding/miscommunication that leads to them being misinformed about certain things, followed by them making mistakes and having doubts, though it tends to end in a way that feels so refreshing compared to what we're used to.

Skam also translates in english to shame, so the idea is that there is an arc surrounding some form of shame every season.

With Isak in particular, he's the focus for s3, though his arc starts to become more clear as early as the end of s1.

Eva, the character in focus for s1, borrows Isak’s phone to call someone, and ends up seeing that there's gay porn in a bunch of his tabs on his browser. Their friend Noora also witnesses this and she ends up being the focus of s2.

Throughout s2, we get even more blatant hints that Isak is gay and in love with his best friend...

So it's established pretty early on throughout the series that Isak is queer and in denial about it, but it isn't until s3 that he himself is able to confront it.

The way they go about this arc, with Isak having unrequited feelings, is exactly how ST would have done it IF Mike hadn't returned Will's feelings.

So if you're looking for more byler proof, go watch this show and see how they don't let Isak pine over his best friend Jonas for more than 2 seasons.

When the story finally puts Isak at the forefront, they give him his own love interest instead of keeping him pining for his friend. It's really pure and amazing and TBH I would have been fine if ST was framed this way, with it being clear from the beginning Isak's feelings were unrequited, and with the other half of the series focusing on him moving on and finding love himself, and also with his best friend and him still being very close.

Although Isak has that queer-coding from the very beginning, with him looking at his friend all fondly, he is still not able to confront any of it. The following season he dates a girl and is a little over the top about it, though we can also see that he is struggling despite not wanting to face it. It isn't until s3 when the story shows us his inner struggle at the forefront, that we see him finally confront it and accept it.

For those that don't know, Skam also loosely inspired the Nick Nelson gay test scene... So we have character that despite showing many signs of being queer, to the point where we know he literally watched gay porn, is still finding himself in a situation where he's taking gay tests 2 years later....

While he might have the knowledge deep down, he was not willing to face it. In fact he was doing everything he could to avoid confronting it.

But then he falls in love and suddenly it's not something he can ignore anymore...

[nicnacsnonsense]

I'm thinking about Ed at the beginning of episode 7 and how he was getting ready to leave. I'm imagining that maybe the night before he tried making one last pass at Stede, one last try to see if Stede was interested, but still nothing. And Ed is being so blatant now, even more so than he had been with the "Run me through" thing and yet still no response from Stede. And Ed thinks that Stede can't possibly be this oblivious, he must be ignoring it on purpose as a way of letting Ed down gently. So Ed gives a subtle "message received" and starts thinking about leaving.

Ed's words the next morning make so much sense and hold so much weight in this context. " Prepare for the next adventure... I can't stay around here forever. Besides, a ship has only one captain." Ed got rejected last night and so now he's making plans to move on.

Stede's response (after a brief interruption from Roach) seems clear too. "Hey, listen, don't feel as though you need to rush out on my account. I mean, we're all enjoying your company here." He's letting Ed know that just because he rejected him that doesn't mean he's running him off. He's not going to make Ed leave or kick him out of the friend group.

This leads to Ed's last response of this interaction. "Mate, I know, I know. Me too. Uh, just, you know, I've stayed longer than I figured I would, and I just wasn't built for sitting idle, man." This is a polite fiction they're sharing in, an excuse for Ed to leave and get the space he needs without making Stede out to be the bad guy or forcing Ed to make himself vulnerable by admitting how much the rejection hurt him.

Stop. Rewind. The night before, Ed expressed his interest in Stede in a way that was very blatant IF you speak queer-coded gay subtext. Stede does not speak that language; he's never had the chance to learn before. He wasn't rejecting Ed, because he had no idea anything was on offer. So to him, Ed's plans to leave come out of nowhere, and the only explanation he has is the "only on captain" comment, immediately reinforced by Roach being confused as to which of them is captain.

This is what Stede is actually speaking to. Don't rush off on my account is him expressing that he, as the other captain in this two captain situation, is not bothered by it at all. And he reassures Ed the crew is fine with it too. There's no reason Ed has to leave.

Stede recognizes Ed response as a polite lie. Of course he does; you think Stede hasn't been subjected to hundreds, thousands, of polite dismissals in his life. Stede is too much, not enough, too soft, so weird, so boring. And to get brushed off by Ed, Stede's first friend, the one person that he thought understood him, that's devastating.

Stede has to keep Ed as a friend, so he does the only thing he can think to do: Be Better. It's never worked before, but it has to work this time, so it will. Stede will Be Better.

He finds the treasure map, excited to bring Ed the next adventure he was going to go out searching for. But Ed is still brushing him off, pretending that the map isn't real (of course it's real! its got tatty edges!) saying he wants to take a nap. Which fine, if Ed wants to keep throwing all these polite excuses at Stede, then Stede is going to use them against him. Ed said there can only be one captain? Fine, then Stede is the captain and he's going to make Ed come with him on this adventure to fix their friendship and prove that Stede can Be Better.

Except, stop, wait. Ed is not giving Stede the brush off. Remember, to Ed, Stede reject him last night and now Ed is expressing the desire for a little space. And even if he's not willing to say outright that he was hurt by the rejection, in expressing the desire at all, he is implying it. And now Stede is ignoring Ed's request for space and throwing Ed's own vulnerability back in his face to force him to come along. What an unbelievable asshole move.

Ed is pissed now, of course. He's being forced to spend time with someone who just rejected him to do something he wasn't interested in doing at all, and he didn't even get lunch! So he's pissy, but it's because Stede is being dick, so he doesn't care who knows it.

And then Lucius calls Ed a dick. And suddenly the whole situation gets flipped. Stede put this day together for Ed, presumably because he took Ed's comments about the next adventure and sitting idle as a serious expression of desire, and tried to deliver on that. Does Stede actually return Ed's feelings after all? Does it matter? Stede is Ed's friend who deeply cares about him, and that is a relationship worth preserving.

Meanwhile poor Stede is at the end of his rope. He tried to Be Better, and once again he failed. He always fails. Except now suddenly Ed has changed his mind. Does Stede know why Ed flipped scripts out of nowhere? Again, does it matter? Ed is here now, putting in the effort to engage with Stede and cheer him up. He's Stede's friend again; everything is going right again.

The day ends well enough that Stede is willing to reach out once more that evening. It is perhaps part apology for using Ed's words against him earlier that day, part offer, and part request. "I don't know if I, well agree that a ship can only have one captain."

Ed hears the offer clearly this time, and makes one of his own, "Yes, well, I suppose if you found the absolutely two perfect people, then they could potentially…"

And then, finally, after a long day of hurt and talking past each other, now together, in every sense, they say,

Co-captain.

[outrunningthedark]

I find it interesting when ppl go on about bucktommy fans reading into things to much etc but are out here believing bt won't be endgame and oliver doesn't like lou bc he doesn't follow him on instagram or whatever like make it make sense

I honestly think it comes down to people having spent SO many hours talking about the fanon ship, creating/sharing content, and (sadly) "gaining a following" because of what they believe that they aren't ready to find a new fandom just yet, if at all.

Buddie stans will say we're watching a "six year slow burn" or "build up", but that's not what this is; not unless everyone with a vote decides to vote the same way when opportunity knocks. (And as of right now? They're still not.) The stans have chosen to wait six years, chosen to stick around and see what happens (while complaining when things unsurprisingly don't go the way they want), chosen to give a fictional show and a fictional story their spare time and attention. It's reached the point where six years of "loyalty" and "support" (and this season it will be seven...and then...and then...) has become something to be compensated for. They feel they are owed Queer Eddie and Canon Buddie because they never gave up hope. [And because you all know how I feel about the hypocrites!] I don't remember anybody who didn't already hate Ryan for what happened during the hiatus in 2020 saying Ryan and Oliver weren't besties anymore because they unfollowed each other and stopped interacting on social media. The fact that those same people (we see 'em, we know who they are) feel the need to use social media to say Oliver likes Ryan better is funny because...if you believe in your heart that they're BFFs, that no one else can compete...why would you need a social media post to prove it? Lou (and Tommy) is that much of a threat to the fate of a fictional ship, huh? 🤨😏 (They tell on themselves every time.)

[terror-punk]

be openly scary bro nobody is scared people just get second hand embarrassment , id tell you to go outside but i dont want more innocents smelling your unwashed ass from 3 miles away

Okay, let's see that post you're talking about here and ignore your attempt at an insult that proves you know nothing about us and what our offline life is like.

The post talks about highly stigmatised mental illnesses such as personality disorders and psychotic disorders. People "just" get "second hand embarrassment" from them? Please explain to the people who have had their friends shy away from them the moment they mention they're mentally ill in any capacity. Please explain that to people who end up forcefully institutionalised. Please explain that to the people who couldn't fathom even being friends with someone with such a stigmatised, scary disorder.

The post talks about trans and queer identities. Do you really think people just get second hand embarrassment from that? Is the fearmongering of "protect our kids" all second hand embarrassment? Is the "trans women want access to spaces they make others unsafe in" just.... a reaction to internally cringing?

The post talks about nonhumanity and alterhumanity at large, which even if it's seen as "cringe" or "embarrassing", alterhumans are lumped in with psychotics and commonly treated similarly.

People are scared of the mentally ill, people are scared of those who are queer, people are scared of alterhumans--that's the reason for a good chunk of the hate. In fact, it would be so much safer for us to be us if they were just embarrassed for us and nothing else. If people weren't scared of anything remotely different, maybe people would even cringe less, because we would be normalised and allowed to be more open.

I'm responding to this because you're almost an example of my point. You may truthfully not be "scared" (though if you weren't scared of something, even if it's just a block, why exactly are you on anon?), but if society were better, people wouldn't feel the need to send anons like this to people trying simply to exist. You likely wouldn't even bat an eye. We simply want as much of a right to exist as possible, and if people are scared, that's solely a them problem. It might not be safe for everyone to be "scary" or "cringe" right now, but we should be allowed to. That's the point.

Thank you for being an example of what ideas we're aiming to dispel.

[opheliasflorist]

I'm still thinking about Good Omens, and I want to drop a thought I've had. Spoilers ahead, beware!

So many of the queer-focused shows I've loved have waited til the very last minute to confirm a queer romance. Often, it doesn't seem to be the fault of writers or the creators, but rather the networks not green-lighting a queer romance til the last episode. I'm thinking She-Ra or Legend of Korra. And of course there's situations like Supernatural, which is its own barrel of problems. It's exhausting, and probably why fandoms like these generate so much fan content: because we never get to spend the time with these characters after romantic interest is canonically confirmed.

That is NOT what is happening here. As we've discussed many times, Neil Gaiman has been making queer content since 1990. I'm guessing he's well aware of how these last-minute, left-hanging stories harm the LGBTQ community. I know that ending kiss of Season 2 was both painful and beautiful, and we're all emotionally reeling from it. But, we're (very likely) going to get A WHOLE SEASON of the pining, groveling, communicating, make-up fluff that this fandom has been dying for. Yes, that kiss was brutal. But good lord it's confirmed! And they're going to have to spend a whole season fixing it! A whole season where the audience knows for a fact that the feelings are romantic. A whole season where we all understand just how badly Crowley wants to kiss Aziraphale again. And oh my god it will be so good. We just have to be patient. Neil Gaiman will not treat this fandom the same way other fandoms have treated our community. His track record proves it. As he's said before, we'll just have to wait and see.

[peachjagiya]

Taehyung was associated with an LGBT image early in his career. In 2016 or 2017, he was photographed in a t-shirt featuring Keith Haring, a gay artist, during a period when BTS members were styled according to specific concepts. The song "Stigma," co-written by Taehyung and Bang Si-hyuk (the first author), was released in 2016 and is speculated to have LGBT undertones. In 2017, Taehyung wore a blue LGBT pride shirt during a performance. It's likely that their stylists chose their attire for them back then. He sang "Singularity," a song written by Namjoon inspired by Yukio Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask," which deals with hidden sexuality. In 2022, HYBE released "7FATES: CHAKHO," featuring Jooan, a character described by Taehyung as someone who loves beyond his species and whose love is forbidden and not easy. These instances suggest that the image of an LGBT person was assigned to him by his company. What are your thoughts on this?

Just to be clear, we're speculating that any queer coding we attribute to Tae is company mandate?

Why would they do that? To what end? In a country where homophobia is still a problem?

Here's Tae wearing a Keith Haring tee:

And a post showing what they're all wearing in this moment. Looks like their comfy clothes/pyjamas to me. I don't think they are styled that intensely that they can't pick their own loungewear.

Here's Tae at Disneyland Paris in July 2023 wearing the Disneyland Pride hoodie. Someone has bought two for his security too. Hybe?

Tees and hoodies don't prove queerness. But I find it easier to believe that Tae is either queer or a staunch ally than to believe the company dresses him in queerness like a jacket that he can shrug off at the end of the photoshoot.

Is the company instructing him to keep mentioning CMBYN? To seek out foreign language queer cinema? To reference Maurice in his photofolio? To champion queer photography?

Ask yourself why it's easier for you to believe he's been forced to portray queerness than to accept he might just be queer?

Ask yourself why it's easier for you to believe that than him just being an ally even?

This is so close to jkkrs rhetoric that he is super straight because they're casually homophobic enough to think gay means he's definitely into all the guys around him and therefore feel threatened by any suggestion of Tae not being hetero.

I'm side-eyeing it.

Please if I've misread your meaning here, feel free to come back, anon. But long story short: no I don't think Hybe did this.

[reitheist]

The way I'm seeing Bucchigiri so far is that the Honki people feel coded as homosexual and as a kid Arajin was really into being like that. But he was never open with that to anyone but his one friend, who was supportive and bonded with him over it. And in trying to defend that, that friend got mercilessly attacked while Arajin just ran away. So the way that Arajin so desperately avoids even Matakara is that he feels like that lifestyle reminds him of both that danger and his own personal weakness. And so he finds it safer to overcompensate by trying to act 110% straight.

ooh this is an interesting reading! i've thought about how fighting=an act of love in this show, but honki people=homosexuality could fit quite well into ara's character arc and relationship with matakara.

given how arajin is the protagonist of a brawling show, I think it would extremely strange for arajin to completely reject his childhood desire to become a honki person by the end. they've definitely played up his refusal of the call so far, so i think we're going to see ara stepping up into his fighting anime protagonist role. if we assume that fighting, in the language of bucchigiri, is an expression of true self/feelings, i think we're definitely in for some kind of reciprocity of matakara's feelings on ara's part. i will be very surprised if we don't get an arajin x matakara fight by the end.

arajin has obviously buried his feelings about his past very deep and has tried to pivot his life in a completely opposite direction. I wouldn't be surprised if it's revealed that his obsession with dating is due in part to his trauma surrounding fighting; possibly him trying to emulate what a normal teenager does instead of 'embracing his true self' (ie. becoming honki). if this is how the story goes, there will be a definite queer reading to be had.

allegorically, the story would read as: young matakara is beaten up for being queer, arajin sees this and knows being queer is dangerous, he runs away and tries to compensate for his queerness by acting 110% hetero, matakara meets back up with him years later and tries to bond with ara over queerness, ara soundly rejects him and tries to distance out of shame, and ara (assumingly) learns by the end that being queer isn't shameful and embraces that part of himself (i.e. becomes a honki person.)

this all makes me a bit curious how mahoro's character is going to be dealt with going forward. i think there's a few things they're likely to do with her:

get over her brocon stuff and get with arajin at the end as his 'prize' for finally accepting his role as a fighter

arajin's moved on from focusing on girls by the end, mahoro gets with matakara

remain brocon to the very end

get over brocon stuff, become friends with arajin

i'm not a fan of option 1, i find it boring and a disservice to ara's and her character. i think option 2 is plausible given the romantic trope-y type scenes we've been seeing between matakara and mohoro, plus them bonding a little over their brothers. however, neither of them seem really interested in each other during those scenes beyond caring that other knows arajin. these scenes seem superficially romantic to me. i'm not really a fan of this ship so i wouldn't enjoy this outcome and i find it a boring thing to do with mahoro. option 3 sucks, but it wouldn't do damage to any other character at least? option 4 is my ideal outcome. it would allow mahoro to finally function outside of being in love with her brother and be a 'look how he's matured' moment for arajin.

there are a few appealing other options (like giving her a kickass majin) that i would personally love the show to pull off, but unfortunately i don't think bucchigiri is going to do them with their limited run of 6 eps left. i'll be super excited if it proves me wrong, though.

sorry for the rambling here, thanks for giving me something to think about anon!

[justanotherhh]

@girlbossradiodemon: Queerness as an insight into humanity. I am curious what that means.

heya, hope it's ok to move your question to a new post, because it gave me an opportunity to ramble about something I've been thinking about -- so we'll call this post:

hazbin hotel, aroace alastor, and complicating redemption

cannot remember how i phrased it in the original post, but the main crux of the idea about queerness as humanising is "when does horror and villainy use queerness as a shorthand for Other/deviant and when are those thing subverted"

in terms of alastor specifically, aspec identity (especially the kind that is on the repulsed side of things) is often used -- without people knowing they're even describing real experiences and identities -- as a way of describing a lack of feeling, a lack of empathy, a lack of connection with other human beings, as a way of signposting "this is going to be a Bad Guy, look at this person who can't engage in the Universal Human Experience Of Love (sometimes with the prerequisite desire for sex, and sometimes it's the just-wanting-sex-but-not-love that's the Evil Code)"

note here, of course, that a lack of empathy also shouldn't be a shorthand for evil! the word "psychopath" generally needs to be put on a high shelf for anyone writing anything unless they can prove they know what in the world they're talking about!!

with alastor, when reading with the aroace hat on, we get an insight into how he does relate to other people. rather than going "he's so evil he can't love," it's opening up questions about what sort of connections he does form with people, and how those are complex, and possibly there's a lot of backstory there -- that's part of the whole story we're seeing with pretty much all the main characters: "misfits who have struggled to form connections because of their specific brands of Weirdness (and also they're in hell)"

now something im interested in with him being aspec, is how the show also to an extent deconstructs the ideas that being alloromantic and allosexual are necessarily indicators of goodness, and could go a lot further in future, if it wanted to -- this works better because almost all the characters in this show are queer (and tbh, until niffty is confirmed to be allorom, i am hc'ing her as aro), and so there's much less risk of falling into the trap of "deviant sexualities vs normal sexualities" that even some shows with queer characters fall for, because they still set up monogamous, allosexual relationships as More Correct vs Other Kinds Of Queerness That Is Bad

in the hellaverse, being kinky isn't semiotics for evil, being poly isn't semiotics for evil, being arocoded isn't semiotics for evil, etcetc.

being aspec is a difficult pill for a lot of people to swallow, including other queers, especially aromanticism, and so it's neat to consider the potential of portraying depictions of love and sex that are healthy (charlie and vaggie, pentious and cherri bomb, etc) next to depictions of love and sex that are unhealthy/toxic/abusive (valentino's and vox's ways of interacting with these things) next to depictions of not-love and not-sex that are complex and (i hope) indicators of how to get to know a character better, rather than villainising or simplifying a character. that maybe initially a character like charlie (amongst others) might not get it, but that's something she needs to sort out, not alastor

it's another way the show could go a step deeper into deconstructing how we take in ideas about "goodness" in narrative and in life based on simple clichés, for example the idea that "love redeems you" -- well, what if you don't love? and what if you do love, but that's not an indicator of goodness at all? is "love" in fact an all-encompassing positive force in the first place? why do we place it on this pedestal?

in many ways the potential of alastor through being aroace, reminds me a little of how we see angel in season 1. he's introduced a Certain way -- as shallow, as someone who doesn't put the work in, as someone who "doesn't care," -- and these narratives are enforced diagetically and non-diagetically by showing that he's an addict and a sex worker. a lot of the scenes related to drugs and sex work and kinky sex are funny (crack is expensive), and/or are met with disgust by the main characters (the sex dungeon), are considered things he needs to overcome in order to be worthy of redemption (the roleplay with sir pentious)...

and then those things are pulled apart, and both narrative and characters go: "what's wrong with being a sex-worker? what's wrong with being an addict? hell, what's wrong with liking sex???" and through that "why does he need to prove himself to be redeemed?" and i predict, eventually, already heading in that direction "why even need to be redeemed when the problem is the black-and-white morality of pure goodness/badness to begin with?????"

and i think alastor being aroace could play a cool part in that. it's not love that makes alastor human, and it's certainly not sex. it's how he interacts with not fitting into those normative boxes, and how other characters, hopefully, eventually, will learn to see things from his perspective (at least, in this case)

the whole the idea of "queerness as an insight into humanity" is something both hazbin and helluva do really well, because of their portraying queerness as a given, as the thing that it simply is how these characters interact with the world -- whether good or bad or somewhere in between, the characters' queerness invites us to ask questions about them, and i think some characters offer that opportunity even more starkly than others...

i mean alastor of course. keeper of the aroace Themes.

so yeah. aroace as humanising. love doesn't mean goodness. what even does redemption mean?

[bylrndgm]

Hear me out: we're in 4x08 and the Cali gang is looking for “Nina” and at one point Jonathan stops the van to check if Mike located the computer correctly, given Suzie's coordinates.

Just for context: this is the first time we are shown the Cali gang after the van scene.

The sequence is the following:

Nothing wrong right? Just four guys trying to see if they're going the right way? Well, yes, but the whole "straight, straight, straight..." thing stood out to me.

During the van scene, like many others, I've always got the feeling Jonathan wanted to blow Mike's head up: he couldn't quite get his head around the fact that Mike didn't understand Will was talking about his own feelings.

Typically, when you can't understand something, you just stop and think through that -> Jonathan stops the van, before he gets too lost in trying to make some sense of what he had witnessed minutes prior

Mike doesn't understand why Jonathan stopped the van -> he doesn't think there's anything to make some sense of

If you understand where I'm trying to go here, Jonathan then, wants to prove Mike wrong regarding his calculation (but in the analogy, also regarding his "pretending to be straight").

The calculation is correct and Mike's facade of the "straight guy" doesn't crack at all (remember: we're from Jonathan's pov -> he stopped to think, but all the facts bring to Mike being actually straight).

But that doesn't make sense = it doesn't make sense that Mike is straight (indeed, Jonathan witnessed Mike's monologue in S2 + who knows what else!):

Yes, apparently, Mike is straight: because he's with El, because he didn't react at Will's muted love confession in the back of the van BUT, Jonathan can sense that something doesn't add up, i.e., that Mike isn't really straight.

And his feeling about this is kinda confirmed, because his thoughts are interrupted by Argyle, who found some tracks... and we all know that Argyle is often associated with rainbow imagery.

Ergo, I think that Jonathan actually knows and realized about Mike being queer.

(in the tags i lay out some more evidence ABOUT manual driving lol, but that is more of a crack thing lol)

[quietwingsinthesky]

hey bug,

what do you think of

Gayest Supernatural Character, Quarter-Finals

drama and who do you believe is the truest queerest character in supernatural?

i think all spn polls drama is nonsense. it's fun until people start being actual assholes about stuff, and a poll like 'gayest spn characters' does make the worst elements of the fandom get overly aggressive trying to prove their claim to the queerest blorbo. a lot of people here have attached an unhealthy amount of their own identity to their favorite characters (and specifically, to a very narrow perception of said favorite characters) that leads to them lashing out when they feel that character disrespected, as it feels like a slight against them, personally. deeply strange and uncomfortable behavior when we should all just be talking about how crowley kisses men on screen for fun.

anyway, 'truest queerest character of supernatural' is a bit of a mixed bag because there's two options here. which character is the queerest textually, as in, was allowed to be openly queer and express queer love the longest and most often. and which character's subtextual narrative was most reflective of queerness, which is what a lot of people are arguing about the most. because you can't really argue about the first one. like. the only queer character who got to be queer, openly and constantly and for multiple seasons, make out with multiple women on screen, and not be treated like her sexuality is a joke is charlie bradbury. and we can talk about how well or poorly she's written as a character, but in supernatural, she is like a fucking lesbian beacon. and she's still bare fucking minimum in a cast whose other notable queers consist of 1) joke characters we are meant to mock for the fact that they are queer, 2) one-off characters who either die or in the case of later seasons where killing off gay people instantly because slightly less okay, do not get to express a lot of their queerness on screen before being shunted off to never scare the largely cishet audience again, or 3) villains. just like. villains. i know we love this about them, i know we're all gay little freaks here on the lucifer stan blog who enjoy that he's Like That about sam. but the fact that a lot of the villains on supernatural are queer-coded if not just openly queer is. :/ not great, folks.

and now we get to what my answer is for number 2) most subtextually queer. because like. it isn't charlie. charlie's queerness is not a part of her journey in any way. which is, kind of refreshing? but also very evidently the result of the writers not actually knowing how to integrate a lesbian into their story other than like. let her kiss women. charlie is written about as deep as a puddle 90% of the time, and that's the real crime we should talk about with her at the end of the day. getting distracted. anyway. for subtextual queerness. i mean, for me, it's sam. quite obviously, it's sam. sam the othered, sam the defiled, sam the broken and never pure. sam in his struggles trying to connect to a religion and a god who rejects him. sam who is and always will be the devil himself even when he proves that he can overcome him. sam who cannot win, no matter how quiet he makes himself and how much he acquiesces to the demands of the patriarchal family structure he's been slotted into.

hm. sam who knows he's dying, and sam who refuses to take a chance at life if it means burying everything about himself he's tried to construct and rising again as someone new.

i don't think you can honestly argue that sam's story doesn't resonate queerly. and i know this because most of the arguments i've seen against it have been "well, but sam (or sometimes "jared") feels too straight to be queer in any way". to which the only response can be THEY'RE ALL STRAIGHT. ALL OF THEM. THERE ARE NO QUEER MAIN CHARACTERS ON SUPERNATURAL. and yes, i am intentionally including castiel in there, for the people who argue his status as a main character. no. i don't think a love confession -> death pipeline is particularly compelling as a queer narrative, least of all because his potential queerness has always been treated like a joke or a reason to emasculate him, and to actually explore what it means that castiel loves dean winchester would take a much better show than supernatural could ever be. and it still wouldn't be a show that makes people happy, if it was honest, because it'd be a show about the slow and steady decline of one broken man constantly proven right about his paranoia and his abuse and his control issues, and one broken angel who has set him up as a god because he never really learned what free will was, just learned that following dean winchester means he has it.

[tommystummy]

i mean you want names of bucktommy fans being pieces of shit look at every single person that responds to and likes posts by kinardscoffee on tumblr and you will see the most vile disgusting shit around. And this hag(kinardscoffee aka bree aka the self proclaimed queen of Bucktommy) is even worst on Twitter but you want some examples of how Bucktommy fans are pieces of shit?

Threatening to doxx media members just cause majority of media people are buddie shippers and don't like BT. Kat from Fanatic posted about how a BT shipper threatened to DOXX her on social media. it's on her Twitter.

Bucktommy fans are the ones that said not to donate to the Gaza thing because one of the admins did not like Buck and Tommy. So because of personal preference they told their followers NOT to donate because of a petty shit like that.

Some BT fans on here and on Twitter have DM'd disgusting things to Ryan including posting that Eddie should have an arc where he actually ends up trying to kill himself so that Ryan can relive the past.

911news posted a post during pride month that had Buddie in it as well as Bucktommy and BT fans blew a gasket because how dare queer people see themselves in Eddie a person who even Ryan has said is ambiguous especially post finale....gee I wonder why could it be they're setting up queer Eddie/Buddie? Which is something they've wanted to do for years.

BT fans especially recently have said how they've been blocked by Oliver, Ryan, Tim, and crew members on social media. They've also started to turn their backs on Oliver because he never promotes anything BT yet he'll post gifs of Buddie moments or Buddie stills in his IG stories. It's especially ugly on X the disdain for Oliver now.

So rather then try to say that Buddie fans are pieces of shit you may wanna look in your own fanbase before burying your head in the sand and say "oh we're just vibing". Cause nah man YOU yourself may be vibing but your new fanbase sure as hell isn't.

Like I said… I have Bree blocked so I don’t see that shit anymore. Does that prove I’m doing my Due Diligence?

[itchyeye]

@apocalypticsinn replied to your post “ok. i'm giving the first episode a shot.”:

Oh noooOOOO welcome to hell :,) Alice remains like this the entire series btw and it just. It doesn’t get better. The newest episode I wanted to strangle her- I’m VERY interested in hearing your full thoughts on even just this first episode-!

​whgau first thing's first i am touched to hear you're interested in my thoughts

ok so overall it was very bad. @socvinc is correct that the sound mixing is fantastic, especially contrasted against s1 of tma which was shoestring budget dogshit. but then again this new show was funded by a seemingly boundless supply of patreon dollars so it fucking better sound expensive!!

alice is absolutely insufferable. you could stick a classroom full of twelve year old bronies (and i mean the og 2010s bronies not the gen z post ironic queer reclamation kind) in front of a hundred typewriters for all of time and they would eventually produce every single thing that has ever come out of alice's mouth. sure, it seems like gwen and most other people are annoyed with her, so at least she isn't being treated as funny and charming in-universe!! but absolutely fucking impossible to listen to. will not be putting myself through more of that.

also, the general animosity and malaise is unearned. sure, we have all been at jobs where everyone is burnt out and nobody cares anymore. but there's a sort of creeping realization that comes with that. even if things are bad right off the bat, they still get worse as you familiarize yourself with your new surroundings.

to have your exposition be alice telling sam that nothing matters and there is no point to his job and everything is stupid and he shouldn't even be here just makes me hate her. it doesn't matter that she's doing it to give gwen a moment to shine and prove her diligence and dedication. it immediately makes alice a deeply unlikeable character. she is relentlessly negative and cynical and lazy and we have been given ZERO justification for why she would be so abbrasive to someone just starting a new career!! plus she's fucking annoying so the cards are REALLY stacked against her.

and the relentless gloomy bleakness of the Archives was so. so. so. earned. all of s1 had this slow slow sloooooow build up of tension and horror and false leads and red herrings and SUDDENLY WORMS. SASHA'S DEAD. TIDAL WAVE OF WORLD-ENDING WORMS. THREE DREAD POWERS AT ONCE. AND EVERYONE HAS PTSD AFTERWARDS AND STILL HAS TO COME IN TO WORK. JON'S GONE OFF THE FUCKING DEEP END. THEN S2. NO ONE CAN LEAVE. WE'RE ALL TRAPPED HERE LIKE RATS IN A SINKING SHIP.

the gloom and malaise and desperation is real and tangible and you are there with the characters as it builds. it's rewarding and dynamic. opening episode 1 with "everyone hates it here bc it's very spooky and bureucratic" is just a pale and unsuccessful immitation of the slowburn that MADE the archives what they were.

also the very first little mini statement was so lame??? no build up. no atmosphere. no character development. not even a short story, just a tumblr uquiz option. "i saw my husband but he was Shaped Wrong and also dead" jesus christ...

i might listen to episode 2 just because i have time to kill but being dropped into the middle of an office party gave me traumatic tma s5e1 flashbacks and i can't live through that again. one of my tmp anons who mentioned it was very office-banter based was SOOOO right. the majority of the episode felt like those incorrect-quotes accounts that clog up tumblr search results. just people i don't know and voices i don't recognize having weird try-hard conversations.

oh that's another glaring difference: the dialogue and voice acting in tma feels incredibly natural. the way conversations are written and the way they are performed feels believable, like listening to recordings of people who do not know they're being recorded. the conversations in tmp feel like watching f.r.i.e.n.d.s in that every line feels really rigidly scripted. no one talks over one another. no sounds overlap. there are no natural sounding pauses or stutters. just bad sitcom dialogue. BUT as i said to anon.... that's what the people want.

overall feels like an ogfic "inspired by" tma that i would have no interest in reading. a pale immitation of lightning in a bottle.

can't say i blame them. we all have bills to pay. but i can say i resent them.

[deancasforcutie]

listen I so cannot vibe with any posts calling this fandom dead or feeling nostalgic about 2021, all I see is nature truly healing as it proves my theory the Real Ones will stay like we have for the other great old guard like Buffy and X-Files while being stopdon'tcomeback.gif about the worst people here ragequitting to become every newer fandom's problem. Cas voice why would I miss the end of times, why would I miss tens of thousands of bitches in my ear contributing nothing but abuse and derailment of all legitimate conversations on queer media. if they're not careful we're returning to 2014 levels of non-toxicity from before everything changed when they attacked. the toxic cloutchasers are so mad we're not only thriving but better off without them they're just flailing and I love to see it. y'all know I want the reboot more than anything but I want to keep/improve upon this Quality Content:Wank ratio even more, I meant it when I made this image

[meangirlsautism]

i was going to write something abt "monosexual privilege" (esp within th equeer community) bc i saw something stupid on the previous post. but ill just shut up. just know that im getting real sick of some of you people. #love and light

actually no im gonna say something

speaking abt lesbians in particular here, since im obv one, but. we've had to literally validate and prove our lack of attraction to men to EVERYONE. both inside AND outside the queer community. of course, hating men inherently is bad blah blah. but theres a difference between straight up hating them and not being attracted to them. learn it. everyone assumes we hat eall men bc we're not attracted to them, of course theres overlap and such, but equating ALL LESBIANS to DESPISING men is just😭😭😭 GET A LIFE. YOURE A LOSER

and like.. yes there CAN be privilege if youre a lesbian, esp if you;re white, cis, etc. but have we forgotten that like..... its still real shitty being a woman in society....... esp in a non usa area................. not to say you should be going out hating men w/ no good reason but... dont you think we earned it . as a treat (for legal reasons this is mainly a joke) (i dont even consider myself to be a cis girl)

but basically what im saying is. grouping hetero and homosexuals together is just.... do you not hear yourself. this is why we're like no longer a community . bc o fpetty shit like this. lesbians and gay men dont have privilege over you just bc they're onl yattracted to one gender SHUT UP