Gay rights for Mal Lexi Yoly Sam and Xander

Therapy for Tiff Mildred Rae and Aussie

JAIL for Vanessa

Gay people pls confirm

Sometimes being trans is growing a beard that’s as red as your grandfather’s. That catches drops of soup the same way, and needs the same type of trimming you did for him when his hands no longer worked.

Sometimes every curly, red hair is nothing but grief. When you look in the mirror and you’re more him than you.

Sometimes it’s that old Facebook post, long before the egg cracked, about growing a beard and putting wax in it to make it smoke like Blackbeard. It was a joke. Only a joke.

Sometimes the beard is the shield that keeps you safe. So many zeros and ones that any confusion about your body or voice is shrugged off. They’d never guess. They can’t imagine what you really are inside.

Sometimes it catches snow the same way you remember looking up in awe of. Too small to know anything other than wonder and trust.

Sometimes you pull, rip, tear patches out. You’ve never been well, but the trans part had nothing to do with that. Not like he said it did.

Sometimes it’s all wrong, it’s not the gender you actually are. It’s too something else. Too strong a statement, a lie.

And sometimes… sometimes it’s fine. Normal. You remember when you dreamed about this beard, hopeful but not daring to believe it. And it’s fine. Nothing more than a beard on a face.

🗣️‼️IMPORTANT SHIT INCOMING‼️🗣️

Please sign this petition if you haven’t already. KOSA is a dangerous anti-privacy bill that’s harmful to marginalized groups, ESPECIALLY minors. I thought this bill got vetoed months ago, but I was unfortunately wrong…

In a nutshell, it will severely censor the internet in order to “protect” minors from “inappropriate” content, which can include LGBTQ+ content. But then they were like, “BuT WhY sToP thEre?” And guess what? (Possibly toxic) parents of minors can now view their kids internet history more than ever. This can, of course, lead to abuse incidents, minors getting disowned, or even suicide.

Is this bill scary? Hell yes! Can we fight it? Again, hell yes! So get on it. Sign some FUCKING petitions!!/lh

If I see one more "poor Izzy was in an abusive relationship for twenty years :'(" take I'm going to set this pirate ship on fire.

Just finished rewatching bride of reanimator as well and omg I have so many thoughts about the last like 20ish minutes. The ending is a parallel to Herbert's little hubris speech:

"Blasphemy? Before what God? A God repulsed by the miserable humanity he created in his own image? I will not be shackled by the failures of your God. The only Blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance. I have taken refuse of your gods failures, and I have triumphed. There. There is my creation"

He would never admit it, out loud or to himself, but his "creations" are well out of his control, and really his understanding too. He won't fail the same way God did, yet he rejects his 'children' and they reject him in return. Those that don't become vengeful fall apart (literally). In the the end hes left in the rubble of his world.

there are a lot of reasons i'm really, really impressed by how well sdmi portrayed the dynamic of an abusive relationship with pericles and ricky, and one of the big ones is how accurately they show what it looks like when abuse starts to escalate.

the extent of that is yet another thing that'll take a longpost of its own to go into, because it spans like.... the entire arc of their relationship in the show. but one thing that stands out to me in particular is their portrayal of the massive red flag that is a partner trotting out bigoted behavior against a group you're in. especially insults, and especially directed right at you.

this show has a LOT of fatphobia, jesus christ does it ever, and there are certainly some fatphobic tropes going on with ricky; but i've always been surprised and impressed by how many of the nastier ones they avoided, especially considering his role in the story and what his arc is about.

he is a major, nuanced character whose trauma is treated with full weight and sincerity. it's implied that his body type changed the way it did due to the trauma he went through when he was younger, and the ensuing mental illness, which is a pretty realistic experience for a lot of people. the things that happen to him are played for full tragedy and horror, when it would have been so, so easy for them to make light of it because Tee Hee Fat Guy and Tee Hee Male Abuse Victims Funnee. despite how his whole thing involves corporate greed, they don't go the route of portraying him as Gluttonous and Hedonistic; if anything he is very obviously not using all that money for even basic physical self-care, and the only time we ever see him eating anything it's when he's drinking wine grape juice with pericles. which, like, there's issues to be unpacked with that too, but jesus christ it's an improvement over what usually happens with characters like him.

he's a fat queer man who isn't degendered or made feminine in a mocking and/or predatory way. (there's nothing wrong with feminine fat queer men and they need more non-shitty rep, please and thank you god, but there is a lot of nastiness in the tropes they're often used for in mainstream media, and one of those tropes is when people consider 'fat queer man' and 'masc' to be oxymorons.) no one ever once calls him ugly; if anything multiple people in his life think he's attractive and desirable, for better or for worse. no one body-shames him. and no one ever mentions his weight.

except pericles.

'The Horrible Herd' and 'The Devouring' are two halves of a whole here, re: escalation of abuse. 'Devouring' is when the abuser goes full mask off and shit hits the fan; 'Horrible Herd' is the wind-up before the punch. HH is when ricky realizes things are getting Bad and he needs to put a stop to this now, and Devouring shows what happens when he tries, because by the point where it's gotten bad enough to give him a wakeup call it's already too late. it's how abusive relationships tend to go, and it's chillingly accurate.

and what's one of the things pericles says during Horrible Herd when that punch is winding up? something no one's ever said before now, including him? 'you pudding-faced dummkopf.'

he body-shames him. he insults his weight, and that's a major turning point. bigotry is something that's often there to some degree from the start, but not always, because some abusers are good at hiding things like that until they're confident they've got you where they want you. the message with ricky and pericles is loud and clear: when this happens, the walls are dripping blood. get out.

(if you can. and be careful when you try.)

when this show is good, it is really, truly good. god damn.

Underline the Blue (Nate/Janusz - Omegaverse)

Title: Underline the Blue

Pairing: Nate Prince/Janusz Bodanowicz

Notes: This is another story in the Underline the Black universe! Set prior to Underline the Black.

Summary: Nate, an omega, has been sent to Hillview by his alpha partner who doesn’t believe he’s good enough to claim or bond with, and wants him trained up at an omega rehabilitation facility to be a better partner. Nate is paired up with the alpha Janusz, who soon realises Nate has been micromanaged and ‘trained’ already to the point of having his soul shattered, and a journey of slow recovery and rehabilitation begins.

Underline the Blue (Nate/Janusz) - 11/? @ AO3

In which Nate recovers from his heat and is allowed to go outside. He explores the beach with Janusz, but ends up realising something that makes him depressed and unwilling to talk about it. When they get home, Janusz uses a very direct method to help Nate to feel better: Mounting.

Want to read the next few chapters available on Patreon or Ream? Get early access now on the Augus&Gwyn tiers! - Thanks to all the Patreon & Ream folks for making this story possible!

i know it's a complaint as old as time but literally white queer people stop being racist omggg. or at least stop calling urselves anti-racist just bc u wanna get a good grade in woke activism

no. no absolutely not. "this name that has stumped every scholar ever is actually the name of an island in Scandinavia and somehow nobody caught that" cut the shit. you're devising a way to lower the speed of light to one-tenth of its capacity and yet a Norwegian word stumped all your collective asses i am going to rip out someone's throat.

Despite my dash being very careful of curated, I have seen multiple absolutely rancid takes about characters I love today and I’m trying to not be annoyed about it.

The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) is a lot of fun so far, but I'm not surprised that the same folks who made Bly Manor are so thoughtless about their use of queer characters. Looooot of evil people whose evilness is highlighted by queer debauchery in this show. Still better than what they did at the end of Bly Manor, but an uncomfortable reminder that having a diverse cast of queer characters is often only greenlit if they are evil characters.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole RTD thing and I guess what I keep coming back to is.

he wrote Jack kissing Nine in 2005. at a point in time where he must have known that having a same-gender kiss on a 'family show' was going to attract some pretty open vitriol - I mean, it probably still would now, but even more so back then. he must have known that any homophobic commentary around that would have reached the ears and eyes of vulnerable people, and would have hurt them. he could have opted to make a different writing decision - just had them shake hands, or nod to each other. anything at all. but he stuck with it and had them kiss. maybe knowing that showing that kiss on tv would do good, even if the backlash would do bad.

I do believe he's made the decision not to carry over Thirteen's clothes out of a place of genuine concern. and I do think it's heavily influenced not just by the levels of rabid transphobia in the UK at the moment, but by his own experiences as a gay man who has lived through a lot of very serious homophobia and transphobia. I believe he's wanting to spare people the pain of that backlash. and I can't blame him for that. maybe there's no right choice here. someone's always going to get hurt.

but I just wonder what the effect might have been if he'd stuck with it, just as he did in 2005. knowing that there would be backlash, but choosing to put a male actor in clothes designed for a female actor anyway. I have no doubt that there would have been people who laughed, or raged, or threw out all sorts of horrific things. but if he'd gone with it, and never made a joke of it in the show, never had a comedic moment or written any character commenting on it, just treated it as if it were as normal as any other regeneration costume carry-over -

maybe it wouldn't have changed anyone's minds. the people writing transphobic headlines and takes on social media probably wouldn't have picked up any nuance from the show, or have been effected by it treating the whole thing as if it were normal. but it would have /been there/, like Jack kissing Nine was in 2005. just there, in the show, normal. we've never gotten anywhere without vitriol and hatred and criticism following along. and I can't shake the feeling that it would have mattered, just like it did in 2005, if he'd taken that risk.

xxx

[cws: non-detailed discussion of both fictional and irl SA/CSA/abuse dynamics, apologia for the previous, homophobia, fetishization of wlw, and anti rhetoric.]

-

having a lot of thoughts about the wider fandom's treatment of the various abuse dynamics present in sdmi--supposedly in the name of being anti-abuse--and how instead it's propagated deeply anti-survivor/abuse apologist sentiment and behavior through where they choose to apply that rhetoric, and where they choose to look the other way.

(first off, if you're someone who does not and has not done this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. second, this is not at all exhaustive of my feelings on the subject and there will probably be more posts about these dynamics and people's behavior toward them in future. as you can imagine by the length of this post that is saying something lmao)

one of the reasons i feel as strongly as i do about the way both canon and fandom have historically been about pericles, pericky, and shitting on anyone who likes them because it Normalizes Abuse(tm), is that their fans are pretty open and emphatic about the fact that it's Fucked Up. it's why we find it compelling. it is vanishingly rare that we don't.

meanwhile, velma is the UwU Cute Sassy Lesbian Icon whose relationship with shaggy was Cringy and Immature (and mutually so 🙃) at worst, when it directly mirrored such visceral aspects of my experience with CSA that i almost threw up rewatching the second episode.

and that's not even getting into how normalized it is for women to abuse men in a relationship, in broad fucking daylight in front of other people, and how men are supposed to Always Want It and it's an insult if they don't, and how the vast majority of CSA--which it overtly is in shaggy's case, he is implied not to be an adult yet--is perpetrated by other kids.

and it's also not getting into the fact that the ~cute lesbian relationship~ is almost certainly going to end up with the other queer girl in the show also being abused, because abusers are not Magically Cured by True Queer Love's Kiss. how it is incredibly difficult for survivors of abuse in a wlw relationship to be acknowledged or get support because then they'd be a Traitor, or people would rather maintain the feel-good fuzzy feelings wlw exist to give them, or they're closeted and it's not safe to let people know they're in a relationship with a woman. how queer relationships, especially between women, are fetishized as cute pure healthy fairytale romances and not dynamics involving real people who might harm each other or be harmed and need help.

and that's not even getting into the fact that mlm are seen as inherently predatory to an extent that the majority of other queer identities are not. how older queer men grooming boys is a classic homophobic stereotype used to justify violence toward them, up to and including lynchings, and how that is the abuse dynamic everyone in the show and fandom latched onto to revile as the Disgusting Evil Predatory One while giving everything else a pass. how mlm have a long history of forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, and the Predatory Gay Man is subjected to decades of--you guessed it!--forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, which is framed as what he deserved and where he belonged. how he's supposed to be unattractive (and the majority of the people who do this shit lean hard on that), while people are way more likely to give Charming Attractive Aesthetically Pleasing abusers a pass.

this is just..... normal, to the fandom. it's treated as completely normal. and i think that's a whole lot more fucking harmful than finding emotional catharsis in exploring an abusive dynamic that would not fly in broad daylight irl in a million years.

Daily excerpt from Underline the Blue 10:

'Nate,' Temsen said softly, 'you've been taught by your alpha that things have to go a certain way, but if that certain way was going to magically turn you into what he thinks you should be, then it would have worked by now. I know this situation is extremely hard for you, but will you try it our way for a little while? We have no protocol in place that would ever make us give you to a meaner alpha. We just don't work that way. Christian's no idiot, he could have chosen any rehabilitation centre for you, he chose Hillview. He must have been able to see for himself that it was going to be different here.'  Nate didn't take his face away from Janusz' belly and felt like a child.  'You said I'm traumatising Janusz,' Nate said weakly.  'No, sweetheart,' Janusz said. 'It's not like that. The situation is difficult.'  'I don't want to be difficult. And I talk back too much. And I'm too mean. I don't respect anyone's authority enough. Maybe you don't have anyone mean enough.'  A hand resting gently on the top of his head, and Janusz' fingers scratching gently, mussing up his hair.  Temsen took a breath. 'You have one job, Nate, over the next few weeks. And that job is just to...settle in. You're going to have time with Janusz, time to yourself, you'll have your own room, you can ask for things if you need them, and Janusz is going to take you out so you can explore Hillview together. The weather's still warm enough to enjoy the beach, the forests, and I think you could grow to like it here, Nate.' 

every time i see the "kids and teens should actually get to interact with decent adults" post i just feel unimaginably depressed because people are talking about how these adults helped them at their worst points. meanwhile the ones i knew convinced me my ocd was my actual thoughts and continually exposed me to horrific things and gaslit me constantly