Jacques and Josèe's platonic bond means so much to me oh my god

I've been thinking a lot about them lately

no bc after all of the vecna business, imagine eddie, steve, and robin being besties.

steve picking up robin and eddie after school. eddie can't drive because of a broken arm or something after fighting off all the demobats during a very close call. when steve and robin have a shift at family video, eddie likes to just hang around and annoy them enough that he eventually becomes a casual employee who fills in for people sometimes. sometimes, they both drag eddie to pep rallies just to support robin in band (and lucas). both boys tease robin about vickie, bc of course robin eventually tells eddie she likes women (eddie being like "well, i like men so.."). robin and steve are the first ones who get to hear about all of eddie's plans for his d&d campaigns. eddie and robin being the first to hear about steve's dates (before steve and eddie start dating ofc). all three of them smoking weed together in eddie's house and they all get super giggly.

just imagine.

ok hear me out. total drama high school au. alenoah. scott pilgrim but instead of evil exes noah is friends with them all and they find it hilarious so they make a pact to have to approve whoever he dates next, and noah finds it fucking hilarious so he goes with it.

1: owen (and izzy and eva by association)

e-scope are poly! izzy is dating eva and owen, and owen was dating izzy and noah. noah loves his idiots, but decided he needs a partner with at least a shred of sanity. they're all still best friends and very close! dated for fiveish months sophomore year!

2: cody (of course)

middle school bfs. dated for like two weeks until noah couldn't deal with cody anymore. have been friends for so long he can't get rid of him, despite it all noah appreciates the geek (even if he wants to strangle him most of the time)

3: tyler

tyler came out as bi in freshman year (noah was his gay awakening) and asked him out on impulse. noah found it amusing and accepted, knowing the jock would quickly figure out he wouldn't wanna date such a pessimist. broke up after like a month, tyler is a good friend and very happy with his gf lindsay!

4: justin

got dared to ask out noah and date him for three days freshman year, accepted the challenge. noah isn't stupid, so he accepted then broke up with him after two days, making him lose the bet. justin was so distraught about it he confronted noah, who quickly learned he may be a prick but really he's just a crybaby attention seeker. if you asked noah now why he's friends with him, he couldn't give you an answer. but they're on friendly-rivalish terms!

5: emma

first and only gf. was scared to come out as a lesbian to everyone, so noah offered to date her to ward of suspicion from her family (people assume he's bi, he's still not sure) till she was ready. dated for a solid year between sophomore and junior year before she came out and got with her current gf (courtney), her and noah are lesbian gay solidarity, he's good friends with her and her sister, kitty.

6: duncan:

most recent breakup. end of junior year they both wound up in detention together a lot (noah couldn't stop correcting teachers + being a snark in class) ((duncan is a delinquent)) and a very unlikely friendship formed. duncan wanted to piss his ex (courtney) off so he would constantly flirt with noah in front of everyone. unbothered, noah and him went on a few dates just to post about it. emma found it very funny, courtney did not. both boys enjoy being assholes and judging people together.

alejandro has to go through and befriend all of them to basically get a stamp of approval to date their fav snark <3333

total drama has effectively taken over every inch of my brain i hope y'all enjoy my silly thoughts

Man, this pisses me off so bad. If you're a woman who relates more to males than other women, it's because you've decided to focus more on how you're different from other women rather than how you're like them. You will literally never have more in common with males, and males do not feel the same way about you. These cute little posts that you write about how you love males more than your fellow women? They do not write the same thing about you. They hate and mock you constantly. Anyone remember "Cis women need to shut up"

"As a cis woman, I agree"

"You need to shut up, specifically"

?

Yea, that's how they feel about you and your solidarity.

The difference between lesbians and trans women in female spaces is the fact that lesbians do not have high rates of violence. There is no group of women that outclass men in terms of violent tendencies. Trans women retain the rates of male violence that regular men do. I'm not saying you have to treat trans women like they're all violent beasts, but if you can't see why female people would be uncomfortable with male people in their spaces, you're either naive or genuinely unsympathetic towards the very real fear that women have of being subjected to male violence. You can't say trans women and lesbians are similar because, unlike males, there is no statistical evidence that lesbians are highly likely to take advantage of a woman. If it turned out that 98% of rapes were committed by lesbians, I would 1000% understand why straight women don't fucking want to be around me. Have some fucking empathy, holy fucking shit. Even if you are completely on board with trans women being in female spaces, at LEAST acknowledge that it makes sense for women to be concerned about who is allowed in their spaces. It's crazy how I could tell someone I have a fear of dogs because one bit me when I was a kid, and they'd put their sweet pooch up, but God forbid a woman be cautious around a demographic who commit 90% of all violent crime. Oh no. That woman is suddenly a terf bitch.

I have nothing in common with trans women. I don't care how much pain they have experienced. We are not the same. When I was twelve, I cried and I cried as I put my palms together to pray to a God I hoped would be able to take away my homosexuality. I didn't even grow up in a particularly homophobic family. Both of my parents were accepting of me, but I still sat in the dark of my room, tears streaming down my face, as I prayed to have my sexuality changed.

Two years later, one of my friends made a joke about me dressing to impress my crush. She said my crushes name---a feminine name. A girl sitting in earshot heard her, turned to me, and asked me with disgust if I was gay. I said no without even thinking about it. It absolutely did not help that we were in a locker room with other girls. I was aware of my sexuality by that point, but I was 14 and unable to hold my own against a girl looking at me like THAT. For a few weeks after that, that girl made comments about how she was "watching me".

I know pain, I know discomfort, I know what it's like to feel predatory. Seeing feminine women, especially if they're white, makes me feel like an alien. I look at them and think "how are we so different? I see none of myself in you."

Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes we're not similar at all. But guess what? That doesn't mean I'm similar to a straight male. Fucking hell, sometimes I'm not similar to other lesbians. That's completely normal. I think OP needs to read better work by cishet women. If you think that there is not a single piece of cishet female writing that can move you more than something written by a male, you're not looking in the right places at all. I don't understand why some LB women seem to think that the very act of someone being a straight woman makes them incapable of relatability. Of course it makes sense for you to be cautious. Lesbians deal with a lot of alienation and predatory feelings, but if the very ACT of a woman being cis and straight makes you feel like she has absolutely nothing in common with you...? The issue lies with you. YOU are the one othering THEM. Not the other way around. You're the one who has decided that a few cis straight women othering you means that they ALL will so you'd better beat them to the punch. You're the one who has decided that your relationship to womanhood is so astronomically different from straight women that nothing they say speaks to you. That's INSANE. Do you realize how much you have to alienate yourself from womanhood to feel more relatability with a male person than a female one? Idk how to tell you this, but it is highly probable that the most cis, most het woman you have ever met has had a period. It's highly likely she's been harassed by a man. It's highly likely she's been made to feel inferior by way of being born female. No, they can't relate to the experience of being a lesbian who is made to feel predatory for no reason, but to say that nothing a cis het woman says/experiences can move you at all? Nothing they say can make you feel like your experience with womanhood and hers are similar? Do you realize how you sound? "Trans women have been harassed by men and made to feel inferior, too!!" Okay! So you should be able to relate to cis women in the way you do trans women, right?

I told my discord server that I was nervous about my future roommates. I showed them photos and someone said "all this tells me is that they're feminine and white" and I literally think about that all of the time. I was projecting. I was so scared that these white, feminine, probably straight women were going to judge me for being a black lesbian that I didn't even realize that I was the one violently judging them based off of nothing but their skin color and their femininity. I knew nothing about them. I STILL know nothing about them. I've barely spoken to them. But already I had labeled them as unrelatable judgemental women because of how they looked. Hold on. Wasn't I the one afraid of them judging ME? How could I be so afraid of them judging me for being a black lesbian when I was the one judging them already? What sense does that make?

You guys are so busy writing off cis straight women as unrelatable bigots that you've failed to see that you're the one who is extremely prejudiced against them. And I absolutely fucking know someone is gonna read this and say "well, you can't say that all trans women have male violence patterns and dahdahdahdah" and it's like. But YOU can say that cis straight women are so unbelievably different from lesbian women that you'd rather say you're more similar to a straight up fucking male???

I'm not saying it's not a little jarring to see women who are so different from me. I'm not saying I haven't been burned before and there's no reason for me (or other lesbians) to be cautious. But I will literally ALWAYS have more in common with cishet women than I ever will a man pretending to be a woman.

One time I had a professor. She was on the older side (I'd say 40's) and white. Not the type of person I'd think I'd click well with. She was straight and married with children. One day we talked after class, and the only thing that ended our conversation was the fact she had an event she had to go to. We would've talked longer if not for that. She emailed me a little while later to tell me that she enjoyed our chat. After that, she actually hugged me on two occasions. You wouldn't think we'd have common ground. An older, straight, married white mother and a young black lesbian. Both of us are "cis" but I can tell you I relate to her much better than I ever could someone born male.

I once had a personal trainer who was a feminine woman. She had acrylic nails and everything. One time she said that she couldn't hug her male friends anymore because she had a boyfriend (he wasn't the one enforcing that rule. That was something she personally felt). Also not someone I thought I'd click well with. But we did. One time we had a really productive discussion that was actually derived from the conversation with my professor. I felt very close to her in that moment. Our conversation came to a close because she had another client, but I still think about that convo.

There have been so many fucking times where I thought "this woman is not like me. Look at her." But what I realized was that I was the judgmental one. I was the one deciding we were different, not her. I was the one writing her off. I was the one convinced we had nothing in common.

I am BEGGING you not to alienate your fellow women. There are no inherent traits that make you unable to relate to other women. No amount of whiteness or cisness or straightness can make a woman completely unreachable. I am NOT talking about political parties or views so don't fucking try me with that shit. Obviously that puts a wedge between people, but someone simply being born cis and het does not make them alien from you. For God's sake, look at the fucking MeToo movement. Women from all fucking backgrounds who share an experience that an unfortunate amount of women go through. Women from all different races, sexualities, etc. who came together to talk about how they've been subjected to sexual violence. Ellen degeneres was one of them. How does that fit into your "lesbians and cishet women cannot relate to each other" spiel?

OP's post has 130k notes and it makes me fucking sick. Holy crap y'all, we need more solidarity than this. Other women are not your enemy. I'm begging you to reconsider your approach to women who are different than you. You are missing out on people who can love and support you in a way that literally no male can. You are depriving yourself. Just because a few cishet women in the past alienated you, does not mean that you have to continue their legacy. Let it go. Everyone on earth can see you embracing your hatred of women, and you wonder why your fellow women never hug you? They fucking can't! Put your hatred down and make space for the love that comes with realizing that you absolutely are like other girls!

same anon who sent the ask sending you beams and i just clicked back on your blog and saw that other ask.... yikes! so to change the topic, do you have any fun lil plot ideas for gmnt that you havent had the chance to share? or any details you want to elaborate on? i cant remember if youve mentioned anything about the shredder aspect of things yet or not so if youve got any ideas im listening! :]

OMFG THE WAY I JUMPED /POS OK SO .

1st off, with Casey Junior and Cassandra I have had SO many thoughts about them and their family. their designs and basic storyyy:

Junior and Casey are cousins in this AU but they were both raised by the foot clan - aka uncle Louie and uncle Brutus to Junior, and Dad and Pops to Casey respectively. Junior is a trans dude and because their parents thought it'd be funny when they were born they named them both "Cassandra." When Junior transitioned Cass let him keep the name Casey under ONE condition, that she would remain the one true Casey and that he had to go by "Junior" anytime she was around. Of course they're pretty much attached at the hip so everyone just calls him Junior anyway.

The reason they were raised together is because Junior's parents died when he was 6 and Junior went to go live with Casey's family. They're related through Louie (foot lieutenant if you couldn't guess) and are Technically half siblings since Louie's sister was the one who carried Casey but they never related to each other that way. To them they're just cousins who are basically siblings.

Junior's parents never swore loyalty to the foot clan and although he was HEAVILY encouraged by his uncles to join and put more effort into the clan he never really Cared that much. CASEY on the other hand eats sleeps and breathes the foot - at least as much as her parents let her. She needs a hobby. (One kid is too obsessed while the other isn't obsessed enough watcha gonna do.)

In terms of their relationship to the turtles Casey first met Raph b4 he knew that the foot clan was a threat. Raph just thought that her family were huge sneakerheads that also just so happened to be extremely into martial arts and it's history. Finding out Raph was bigender is actually what caused Casey to first start questioning her gender identity and she's now a she/him demigirl lesbian. YES they are in gay love ofc.

Casey' age: 16-18 (same as Raph)

Junior's age: 14-16 (same as Mikey)

And in terms of shredder it's probably just gonna be a copy-paste canon shredder of course with some minor adjustments. The foot clan still run the foot shack as a front (Junior works there) they're still trying to bring back the shredder. But I'd imagine that Casey turned on the foot clan much sooner than she did in the snow due to her relationship with Raph. So in terms of the finale instead of being redeemed at the end of the episode she would be fighting right alongside the hamatos. This is also my wish fulfillment au in which every character who WAS gonna have a nice complete redemption arc DOES have a nice complete redemption arc cause I don't have to worry abt time restraints.

OH YEAH ALSO THIS MINI comic with splinter and junior talking because they both lost their parents rlly young:

This is actually the comic I was talking abt earlier. I wasn't able to finish it when I first started it so each "page" you see is like .... 3 days a part which is why the style is so fucking inconsistent 😭.

Forgot to mention: They are "younger sibling getting taller than you" solidarity. And Casey not being a higher ranking turned into her parents desperately trying not to produce a nepo baby lol

as a trans gay guy, my relationship to the concept of the butch/transmasc overlap is so so weird. because on one level it's by and large a real social phenomenon that underlies a lot of common experiences and draws communities together and so on. but then on another level. like. some of us (transmascs) just Are Not Butch. i recently read fun home, and i was really struck by bechdel's account of butchness and how it... didn't actually resonate with me at all. like, i'm very familiar with feeling uncomfortable with conventional femininity, and with wanting to look male - but i keep re-realising that the experience of specifically aspiring to masculinity is just alien to me. in particular, bechdel describes feeling like she might have been compensating for her dad's femininity, and like... i've never felt anything like that. i've tried to put distance between myself and women's femininity, but i've only ever looked at fem men and felt jealous of them.

but then i look at the cis gay male community for examples of male femininity, and of course, it has its own gnc/trans overlap. and i don't aspire to trans womanhood any more than i aspire to cis womanhood.

so for people on those two cusps, gender and orientation might be very fluid and open-ended, but my personal desired gender expression is actually quite narrow and a very delicate balance - narrower and more specific even than a lot of other fem gay trans guys i've encountered.

what's more, i've heard from a lot of people on the transmasc/butch cusp in particular that, essentially, they know they're queer because they're attracted to women, and the rest is hazier, but maybe also less important. which is an interesting perspective, but again - completely alien to me. gender comes first for me, without a doubt - and even that can be subdivided. orientation comes after gender, but a positive sense of maleness also comes after a completely fundamental sense of non-femaleness. gender and sexuality are entangled for both of us - but once again, in opposite ways.

i conceive of myself as a binary man, but even so, it's like... almost a nonbinary experience, in a way. like, in very old-fashioned views of queerness, there are two basic types of queer - the butch-lesbian-transhet-man group and the fem-gay-transhet-woman group. there are male inverts and female inverts, FtMs and MtFs, or in polari, omee-palones and palone-omees (men-women and women-men). and someone like me just... doesn't fit into that framework. if an invert is a man with a woman's soul or a woman with a man's soul, what is a woman with the soul of a man with the soul of a woman? you need more layers. you need to recognise that gender and orientation are, or at least can be, separable experiences to be able to conceive of me at all. and ironically that often means you have to frame orientation almost like a gender, again - i believe lou sullivan referred to himself as female-to-gay-male, and i can see why.

but at the same time - we've allegedly come so far, and people can now nominally conceive of identities like mine - but it's still a huge struggle to even begin to express it. how do you reconcile rejection of cisfemininity and womanhood with a genuine desire to be subtly feminine/effeminate? i haven't found a way yet. i don't know if it will be possible until i can access medical transition (and even then, it might take years.) so in the meantime, i look butch, and i just have to live with the fact that the identity i'm broadcasting is the direct opposite of who i really want to be.

idk man. i'm a trans man, but maybe i'm transandrogynous. but it has to be the right androgyny, an androgyny i feel is "male", so maybe i'm not! i'm a faggot trapped in a dyke's body. i'm transitioning from one queer gender expression to another, and while i do feel a degree of solidarity and commonality with actual butches, i also feel like butchness is, for me, nearly as suffocating and dissonant as cisfemininity.

and reading this back now, i've realised i'm doing the same thing over again - i'm conflating my own gayness with my own desire for androgyny(?)/effeminacy(?), and somewhere out there, a fem transhet guy or a butch transhet girl is groaning with exactly the same kind of alienation i often feel.

god. gender is so complicated and so important and so stupid at the same time. why does it have to be so hard!!! we all just want to exist.

My semi-endorsed nuclear take is that having a, like, coherent, defined 'queer/gay/lesbian culture' that's something you can meaningful talk about as distinct from the wider mainstream basically requires that queer people be marginalized and cut off from hegemonic/mainstream culture - if society becomes less homophobic and people don't have to deal with the very high chance of burning most of their interpersonal relationships and the culture they've grown up around to come out they...mostly won't? And if you don't need solidarity and the support and community of people you think are pretentious fucks or joyless ideologues or weird perverts or just assholes because the alternative is being left to die on the street, well, why would you put up with them?

So all the effort people put in to putting together a, like, sacral history of queerness with its own culture heroes and rituals and symbols everyone should know the significance of and respect is...I don't know, it feels a bit quixotic? Even when it's actually well-intentioned and not kind of off-puttingly parochial ('gay people were invented in Ancient Greece, then homophobia happens and until about 2012 they could only be found in New York and San Fransisco'), I'm kind of always left feeling like unless things go horribly wrong they're kind of doomed? At least insofar as they're trying to sustain a living culture and not assemble a museum exhibit.

Not that there aren't almost entirely queer subcultures around still of course but like, calling any one of them 'queer culture' excludes way more people that'd ostensible fit than it actually fits, I think.

All you need is just some good, fucking music that you headbang to To forget all your problems and what's bothering you So c'mon, raise the volume, it will still feel good Alright, alright, alright ("Good Fucking Music" - Solence)

I think we all know that feeling when you hear a song and immediately imagine all the scenarios in your head? Yeah, this is one of those! I mentioned I wanna do a little bit more with Vince's and Judy's friendship. Because, lesbian-gay-solidarity <3 And me just loving Judy sm in general xD

Like, Judy and Vince are two people that would probably have never met, hadn't it been for Evelyn and the heist, so different their backgrounds and social circles. But what instantly connected them was that they're both nerds for tech-stuff. In some ways, they really mirror each other so nicely, in others they contradict each other, and it's this equilibrium and balance that I really love about their dynamic. Judy gets Vince down from his high horse, making him reconsider some of his views, and Vince looks out for her to not bite off more than she can chew when picking her battles, backing her up. And they have a similar taste in music, too! When you drive with Judy in her van, she's listening to Radio Vexelstrom, and in her apartment Johnny comments on her band posters disapprovingly ("Blergh, Electropunk" or sth like that XD). Both of these are instances of what Vince also enjoys, music-wise. So, while I don't necessarily see Judy as someone who goes out to dance and party much, maybe he did convince her some time to come along to a themed night at a club with some favourite bands of theirs in the playlist. Cause sometimes you just need to dance to some loud angry music with your friends for a couple of hours to forget how shitty everything else is.

Also: Judy's custom clubwear outfit for AMM

Happy Last Day of Ace Week!

Happy Ace Week!

I know it's the last day, but due to Long COVID among team members and technical difficulties, we weren't able to get to you sooner. Ace people are valid, are loved, are wonderful. The ace umbrella includes lots of kinds of gray-ace. I myself am gray-ace and have found the umbrella concept very useful for me as I find myself shifting farther away from "pure" asexuality. Positivity and validation posts are important, but I also want to take a moment to focus in on crises our community is facing, because ace people are everywhere. We missed posting on Disabled Aces Day earlier this week because we were too unwell to get it set up in time, because of eugenicist "let it rip" policies on COVID that have (further) disabled our team. Did you know the Centers for Disease Control has found that lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are at higher risk of COVID-19 infection?: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/cdc-releases-report-confirming-lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-people-at-greater-risk-of-covid-19-illness-calls-for-more-data-collection Bisexual and transgender people are at higher risk of Long COVID than cishet people and cis gay men and cis lebians: https://www.them.us/story/long-covid-trans-and-bisexual-people-healthcare-disparities . I can't find any data on ace people's risk! I've looked extensively. I am also thinking of ace Palestinians as Israel commits genocide in Palestine as I type. Palestinians don't need to be queer to deserve our support, but queer Palestinians by their very existence dispel homonationalist myths perpetuated by Israel and other settler-colonies that back it such as the so-called United States. Ace Palestinians in particular destabilize homonationalism through their very existence. Queer and Palestinian, and queer-in-a-way-other-than-gay and Palestinian, their existence shakes false dichotomies to their cores. Understandings of asexuality vary from culture to culture, language to language, ethnicity to ethnicity. To advocate for the preservation of ace community in all its variations and freeedom to be ourselves in all our variations is to advocate for the preservation and freedom of the Palestinian people.

As Ace Week comes to a close, please practice queer community care by masking to protect each other from COVID, especially when taking action for Palestinian liberation.

Take some time to think what it means to be in global ace solidarity in this moment, especially from the Anglosphere, especially on Turtle Island. Asexuality is not a made up tumblr distraction from these crises. Our asexuality means that we are in connection with ace people everywhere. It is not a distraction; it is a point of connection that we must use to build solidarity. Asexuality and Ace Week aren't distractions from life and death crises: they're purple, black, gray and white threads tying us together. None of us are free until all of us are free. None of us are safe until all of us safe. How do you want to finish your Ace Week?

I want the movie Bride Wars but exceptionally gay. Like instead of being about friendship it's just these lifelong friends realizing they're in love with each other, not their husband's. And secretly the husband's are falling in love (or at least becoming best buds out of solidarity). In a series of miscommunication and secret kisses behind closet doors, it all gets revealed on the wedding day, and they both just get married (the girls in a lesbian marriage, and guys in a gay marriage) so that they didn't waste all of their money and time on wedding to not get married day of. That'd be hilarious. I need more queer stupid rom coms.

I have so many thoughts and also questions about the Alan/Wen relationship so I'm just gonna dump it all here in typical incoherent bullet point style:

First of all I just want to say why do I know these gay people who still live with their ex in real life except they're lesbians agsjdhdjdj mlm/wlw solidarity but in being Messy Bitches I fuckin guess

I'm incredibly interested as to why they haven't told people why they're not together anymore, and also why they have to pretend in front of other people that they're together. I mean it seems pretty significant if even Wen's father who he has a very close relationship to doesn't know the full details of their relationship status, i would think if you had a close relationship with your family they'd be among the first to know about a break up. Gong might know they've split up (I think how nonchalant he was about Wen having a one night stand supports this) but still unclear at this point, maybe he just knows they're having some sort of big conflict or are on a break or something. Maybe there's a social dimension to it? I don't feel i know enough of Thai culture and social conventions to make a confident guess here skdjfskjdf but i would be surprised if there wasn't some sort of reason other than "it's too awkward we don't wanna" - and if there is a reason i'm guessing this is why Wen hasn't been forthcoming about the details of his personal life with Jim, though i really can't guess at this point what that reason might be

so my very first reading of the "i don't love you anymore" "that's a shitty excuse" scene when the trailer dropped was that Wen was maybe trying to break up with Alan but Alan for whatever reason wasn't letting him and you know what i still stand by that or at least like the general sentiment of that. i think it could go either way whether that scene is a flashback (to give context to why they're in such a bad situation now) or present day (to push the development of Wen and Alan's relationship forward); personally i lean toward flashback bc of Wen's emotional state in that scene, he seems much more sad and upset than angry and bitter like he does now with Alan, but i guess we'll find out next week!

I don't have anything resembling an intelligent guess as to what Gong was referring to when he said "you should have asked him if he wanted you to do it" or whatever the phrasing was but I'm guessing whatever happened there is at least a part of the reason why their relationship failed and maybe even a part of the reason why Wen is so cold to Alan now. idk it feels potentially quite big to me, like sure it could have been one isolated incident but based on what we've seen of Alan's character (my guy has some control issues #yikes) it strikes me as possibly being more of a pattern rather than one fuck up though at this point who can really say

Speaking of Gong, I find his friendship with Alan interesting. He claims he doesn't want to take sides or get caught up in the middle of their fight, but I think there are pretty clear signs of whose "side" he's taken: for example in the first episode he doesn't open the message when Alan asks where Wen is so that Alan doesn't know he's seen it and even goes so far as to check with Wen first what he should tell Alan (this does not read as particularly neutral behavior to me, personally); when Alan pointed out they're both friends too and if he really was staying neutral he'd tell Alan what was going on too his response was that Wen was talking with someone and that was all he knew even though he knows they had a one night stand, almost like he went with the bare minimum to get Alan off his back; and his comment at the end of his conversation with Alan of "maybe you should do nothing" felt very pointed esp with accompanying expression. What I'm curious about is why Gong still feels the need to keep up any sort of friendly pretense with Alan. Maybe it's a situation where he knows more than he's supposed to (like if Wen confided in Gong but no one is supposed to know they've broken up for whatever reason)? Or maybe there's some other social dimension to it, idk

I am so delighted to see we can send platonic ship and that you are insane about it!! (same here i love it so so much, tahat all my life) so what about Nami&Robin or/and Nami&Zoro

there are so many people asking me my opinions i can't believe y'all actually care about what i have to say ilysm <33

nami/robin: i love them and i wish they had more scenes together in canon :(( i love that they share a room and their beds are literally next to each other. i'm sure that they cuddle when they sleep. no doubt about it. robin reads out loud while nami does her nightly routine with makeup and stuff and then they talk for a bit before falling asleep. i love that they're the only girls in the crew but their role isn't just that. they both keep the guys in place but robin has that silly, satiric dark side that scares nami sometimes, and nami has that impulsive, thief side that robin loves too. and kjsdcjksdnjkasd they make me ill. they have girl nights. they go shopping. they talk shit about people together. they eat sanji's food together. nami talks about how much she misses her girlfriend (vivi, i miss you too. come back) and robin comforts her but instantly nami complains about her "not getting it" because she has her husband on the damn ship!!!!! then nami goes and hugs robin back again. i think they're the smartest and brightest girls ever and they deserve all the love. neither of them has ever had real friends and now that they have the chance to live freely, they finally can hang out together. robin is older and tbh i think she sees nami as this cute, young, brilliant girl with so so much potential. and nami sees robin as, like, this older, mature woman that's also her bestie and that's awesome!!! a lot of people ship them romantically but i personally see them as besties or sisters ngl. i think robin is still getting used to having friends like a normal person and nami teaching her how to enjoy life is so,,, so beautiful,,, they also have their own shenanigans and i need them to have wayyy more scenes together c'mon!!!

nami/zoro: i am so not shutting up about them i apologize- i love them. i am obsessed with them. we need to talk more and more about them. "they're overrated" they should be. they deserve it. i fucking love everything about these two. so, so much... the thing that makes me like them it's probably the fact that they're part of the romance dawn trio, and i'm very nostalgic about those three. they're all important to luffy, of course, all of his nakama are. but... there's just something about zoro and nami being the first ones that makes me insane. they're the ones that had to deal with luffy together when they first met, and ever since, they've just been sooo chaotic. i'm happy opla gave them scenes together (uhhh not so much the fact that people see them romantically. it's obvious they wanted to make them romantic. please don't, netflix, i'm watching you) because they mean so much to me! they have this lesbian/gay solidarity and hostility (yes, at the same time) that i LOVE. i'm obsessed with zoro being all edgy-wannabe (he's just quiet lmfao his dramatic gay ass wanting to be a dark swordsman is so funny) and nami like "??? shut up you're just dumb". the fact that they argue and zoro complains about her manipulative behavior but still always helps her and saves her every time,,, that's so,,, i love them. i know we all say zoro is luffy's guard dog, but that's not true. zoro is luffy's cat and nami's guard dog. he stays behind nami protectively with a dark stare and nobody dares to approach her bc they know they'll die if they try to hurt his navigator. he'd never admit it out loud, tho, but he cares for her an insane amount. and she loves him too. thinking about them cuddling when it's too cold and zoro's just the perfect pillow!! zoro braiding nami's hair!!! nami helping him clean his swords!! they look after the other all the time,, and they are the ones that know luffy the best, of course they're going to be the first ones to talk things out together if something's wrong with him. also, my zolu shipper heart needs to say that nami would be the first one to find out about them. in every universe. i love them.

honestly, i need help at this point keeping my community solidarity... it seems like at every turn every non-lesbian is looking to turn their back on us... if we're personally not into men, suddenly we're biphobic and want all men to die. people dig and dig and dig and interpret what we say in bad faith and just accuse us of whatever they want even with no context... the pressure to have sex with men to "be more queer" (which is obviously different from the pressure to have sex with men to make us less queer/conversion rhetoric)... gay men not giving a fuck about sapphic media because they're gay and don't want to see women kiss while every lesbian I know has always supported gay media... so on and so fourth.

like not to be defeatist, and i don't mean this in a """lesbian separatist""" kind of way because i've always backed trans women up, but fuck! it's beyond evident that this community doesn't want us. maybe they never did (there's countless reports of how gay men would mock lesbians until after they assisted in the aids epidemic), but i've put so much into supporting others just to get spat on and made to walk on eggshells! what's even the point- the community has outgrown itself. they will never care about us because they're too obsessed with us being available to men. i don't know... i really want to feel at home here but the door isn't open unless we assimilate and fall in love with a man. they just... hate us

sorry for subjecting you to this vent. i'm tired and lonely and heartbroken

It’s ironic how they are pissed off whenever a lesbian says how they’d rather separate from the rest of the community, they really lack critical thinking because how do we feel accepted and supported when all non-lesbians do is invalidate us, silence us, and blame for for every single problem?

We cannot fight lesbophobia if we don’t fight misogyny. The key is misogyny. People treat us like this because they’re misogynistic.

I really get your tiredness and loneliness, this is probably how most lesbians feel when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community.

That’s why we have to keep fighting. We have to call out lesbophobia and point out people’s hypocrisy of wanting lesbians’ support without giving that support back.

u know just imagining kian stone and the poly gang are all hanging out and they're all queer and they get rlly weird with it because i mean they're already freaks so why dont they just make shit up? and then kian leaves galloway and finds out that there's queers who just kinda suck and dont like you. it's hard being a trans woman who's also a guy and bisexual and loves polycules and also has significant mental issues.

which i think much have been in stark contrast to what it had been like for rolan, who just sorta easily slipped into a nice little category as he does. gay guy? relatively mentally stable? sure, have fun my guy!!

they totally needed some time to hang out after regrouping like kian starts going off about how rude ppl are, and how much he sorta hates the community, and rolan stares blankly having never run into any of this. rand is listening to this and getting two very conflicting accounts of what being queer is like outside of town. then becky chimes in like "i have never felt such solidarity on the scope i did after leaving. but girl FUCK some of those bitches, do you know what some lesbians are like??? holy shit never have i wanted to rip my hair out more than listening to some of those freaks!!!"

so yeah rand sorta wishes he didn't have to listen to all this queer discourse. like guys he still lives with his parents and is very not out, he can't even comprehend half of what you're all talking about, please stop talking.

I've suddenly concocted this silly idea in my mind where Dee starts seeing a woman who gradually turns out to be basically a girl Dennis (in a different way from how Dee already is), and The Gang finds out and Dennis scoffs at it like "well, this obviously can't be real. She's just hit a whole new level of desperate and she'll come to her senses and go back to (me)men soon enough", while Mac blasts him for being homophobic and claims to stand with Dee in solidarity, and Charlie doesn't really care but says "I mean, I think it's more about the girl thing than the gay thing..."

When Dee goes out clubbing with her, "girl Dennis" claims to be initiating her into the scene but all the lesbians there don't know her very well or like her very much, and eventually her real friends turn up and to the audience but none of the characters they're all clearly gay genderswapped versions of The Gang, with Mac trying to hook up with "guy Dee". And Dennis of course becomes increasingly riled up by the whole thing and schemes to sabotage it for Dee.

Oh oh oh that’s perfect! And would really fuck Dennis up because she goes a lot for guys who look like him, and he’s into that, but dating a girl version of him would mess with his head. And then of course he’d make it everyone else’s problem, because also if Dee is dating women then she might act more feminist to impress them (which she would, we know she would) and she would need him less.

It all turns out that Dee knew full well she was dating girl Dennis, even when he’s sabotaged her back, she just wanted her clit licked on the regular. But she’s not going to tell him any of this.

It's me again! I hope that you don't mind me chatting you up, just say so if you do, I'll understand! 😅

Do you think that Hassel can be originally from Johto? Since Blackthorn City is a home of probably the most well-known active dragon clan in the series so far (since Draconids, the people Zinnia's from, are mostly gone)? I've seen theories that the little cape Hassel has on his jacket is a call back to the capes "dragon tamer" trainer class has (and I'm mostly agreeing with this). And when I thought about it, I had this idea: What if Hassel's first pokemon wasn't the baxcalibur that's his ace now, but the dragonite he uses in the school champion tournament? Since the dragon clan from Blackthorn mostly uses the dratini line. What if he got that dragonite as a dratini when he was a kid and raised it his whole life, and now kinda retired it after a lifetime of battling? Baxcalibur is his main now during champion assesment, but he brings out dragonite for some friendly competition every once in a while, like the school championship. And, of course, that would mean that Hassel, Lance and Claire are distantly related.

Oh and I think that Hassel is totally besties with Rika. Gay/lesbian solidarity who go to brunches together. I think that it would be a fun contrast between his husband being such a grandiose artistic mind and his bestie being a very grounded and sober-thinking person.

Oh my god, could you imagine if the DLC will allow us to have some kind of a gym leader/elite four doubles tournament like they did in SWSH? If I'll get to see Hassel and Brassius fight together in doubles as partners I think that I will explode.

I'm also super excited to see them both in the anime and maybe, down the line, in masters. And I hope that they will somehow will return/be referenced in the DLCs- the first one is a school trip, so maybe Hassel will go as a chaperone.

And I totally get you about fanfics and such- I'd love to write something for them one day, when I will have a specific concept in mind. I'm thoroughly disappointed that I can't find any character studies for them, my favorite genre 😔 do you have any headcanons you'd like to share? 👀

You're definitely not alone on pretty much all of those >:D

Again, under a cut because I'm long-winded lol

I've got Hassel from Johto, Galar, or a region we haven't been to yet. Regardless of which region, I figure all the dragon clans are connected in some way so he's cousins with Lance and Clair in some sort of way. The childhood dratini -> semi-retired dragonite is definitely one I've seen and discussed before. I think the fic where Hassel rescues/nurtures a sick baby one isn't on AO3 but it's cemented for me that he's had it since he was young <3

The cape is a nice visual to connect him to other dragon tamers and it being short and part of his jacket also separates him from the dramatic looks of Lance and Clair

I think Rika teases Hassel for being old and out of touch but it's just friendly banter. I hope she was the one who told him about "fleek" over a cup of coffee with pastries.

I pray so hard for them teaming up for double battles (my drawing of them in a silly double battle pose) and/or for them to be at the festival at all (I drew them in the outfits from the trailer). I'm hoping for crumbs at most but I definitely want so much more of these two. They're so interesting.

I am so impatient to see Hassel in the anime. Besides that I love him, I also need to see him moving in 2D so I can figure out how to draw him better/more easily because he gives me so much trouble 😅. I want to know what kind of voice they give him too. Brassius' voice surprised me but it worked really well and wasn't distracting

If they end up in Masters, then I will be downloading Masters. God I want to see them put in funky alternate outfits. And whatever else happens in that game.

I'm super self-conscious about writing (and as you can imagine from my drawings, I'm all about that soft, tender shit) so most things I write pretty much live on Discord

I'm a little head-empty right now so the only headcanon that immediately comes to mind is that Brassius being ill and them spending a lot of quiet time together while Hassel helps care for him gave them both time to figure out their feelings and they don't do anything about it until after Brassius is better.