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takaraphoenix · 3 years

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Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

#Anti Solangelo #PJOverse #Riordan Critical #Shipping #Ship Ask Game #send me asks #it IS both a positive AND negative game #and I gotta admit #it is nice to put these things #into proper words #every once in a while

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stonebutchcowboy · 4 years

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Faggot Butch

“I hated that essay, “ he says to me, “about femmes who care for you when you travel; I really hated it.” And when I ask why he tells me that he thinks it sounds like all butches should be soothed by femmes, and vica versa; he says, “Why would those femmes have assumed that you were a butch who liked femme?” He says, “Maybe you’re a faggot butch, did they even consider that?” He says, “I know you’re not just for femmes.”

That’s what he says, but I know what he’s thinking. And even though I know how dangerous it is to assume I know what someone is thinking, I know this butch maybe as well as I know myself, and he’s thinking, “Fuck you, for having it easy even in being queer. Fuck you for going along on your happy little way to San Francisco and finding a bunch of femmes who see you as a big stud-duck butch and just want to pour themselves through your fingers. It’s just as hard to be a faggot butch as it is to be any kind of fag.”

There’s all that masculinity to consider when you want to rub up against someone, like that old joke about porcupines:

How do porcupines mate?

Very carefully

He’s saying, “ I want to show up at brunch someplace and assume that anyone who I want to flirt with will want to flirt back, and will do it, will want to, without fear of recrimination from hir community. I want you to put something in that book of yours for me. I am a butch whose identity, sexual or otherwise, has nothing to do with femmes. They are not my natural partners in this gender crime the way they are yours.I wake up and sleep in the arms of butches like me, butches who understand the whole host of things about my life, my world, the way I see things, the way things affect me that no one else could understand. Write about us. Write about that we have sweet hot sex in which no one has to put on a pair of panties, or take them off; write about how good it feels when ze fucks me hard, so hard. Write about ho it feels to fall asleep with the weight of a butch on you, tattooed arm and one furry leg pinning you down and grounding you in your sleep.

“Write about all the ways in which butches are for each other, comfort each other. Write about how we understand all the shit that comes in the world for our partners and salve it as best we can, about how I have all the more respect for hir because of all I know it takes to survive as a butch.

“Write about how, as soon as butches were no longer the scourge of dykedom for aping masculinity, or whatever that baloney was, it became faggot butches who were scorned and derided. Everyone understands butch/femme because it seems familiar, like Ozzie and Harriet but with better hair and more pussy. Everyone understands femme on femme, even though you don’t see it often because it doesn’t read queer, you know, but it’s in the first images of ‘lesbian love’ most of us see, in porn or on television. Two long haired pretty girls smooching in a daring fashion wherever they happen to be. No one’s threatened by that, not the dykes, not the men, nobody, but if I want to kiss my butch anywhere, I’d be damned sure of my audience, or better yet, better be sure we don’t have one.

“I can be a butch without opening doors for girls,” He’s saying. “I can do it even if I follow while dancing, I can do it without spending mu Saturday afternoons as a femmes shopping bottom at the mall and I do. I am. I am honorable, I take good care of the people I love, as well as I possibly can; I watch out for my community. I have a butch heart full of love that I can express when I feel safe enough; I walk in the world resisting gender norms and transgressing gender rules, transcending them. I am fixing whatever I can, whenever I can, and I laugh, and play, and let the spaces in my masculinity show, just like you, just like every butch. I get all slicked up in a suit and tie and I pick up my date, also in a suit and tie, and we just open the door if we get to it first and we take turns paying, and it doesn’t make me less butch. It doesn’t make me less anything. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think femmes are swell, I surely do, but they are not my salvation when I travel, they are not the North of my heart’s compass. That’s butches for me, and I will always go a little weak when I see someone scared and hardened and delighted and ashamed and proud -- proud like me.

“You’re writing a book? Of course, I’m glad, but don’t chicken out. Don’t write a book that speaks so many volumes about your adoration for femmes that it leaves out the ways in which I know you cherish butches too. Yes, not the same was as you cherish femmes, entirely differently, butches and femmes are different creatures, sure, but I don’t just mean how glad you are and will always be to have butch brothers, a butch tribe. I mean, make sure you don’t forget to mention that you put butches on their knees in front of you from and enjoy them, that you kneel down too, that you sit sometimes stunned by how much you want to lick a buzz cut or a hot tattoo, that you know what a great grace it is to fall asleep next to a butch’s heart nad muscle and skin and ink and fur, that you understand how wonderful it can be to feel butch arms around you. Make sure you mention me, make sure you give me and my lovers and my life the same benefit of some of your words, make sure you don’t write another book that leaves us on the cutting-room floor. Give us a place on the landscape, help us become visible. Say this: Say that when butches love butches they hold lightning between them, that it burns as much as it illuminates. That it’s the sweetest burn I’ve ever known in my life of searing pain, that keeps me from feeling the flames of the world’s hate licking the soles of my boots, that I hold it in my heart and it fuels me every day. Say that it shows me things I could never see in any other way, that without it I would grow cold and die. Say there is nothing else I’d rather be.”

- S. Bear Bergman, Faggot Butch, Butch is a Noun, 2006

#butch #butchbutch #butch4butch #faggot butch #reading #quotes #s bear bergman #butch is a noun

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juneviews · 2 years

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I don’t know if it’s a norm in Thai Lakorn but I am deeply disturbed at the level of violence that I feel almost each Thai show has. It’s not little violence with a punch being thrown (which is still very bad). it’s literally multiple people ganging up on one person and/or literal beating.I don’t understand they are blurring cigarettes and alcool but they show people being beaten to a pulp. It’s not even if it was part of the storyline and they were showing the damage that it can cause, they act like it’s not a big deal, never pressing charges, only ever ending up solely with some bruises. No brain damage, no long term pain, no blurry vision…

I’m sorry I am ranting but I feel it’s everywhere, in BL and non BL and it’s not something that should be deliberately show as a small thing. Of course it touch everybody and it’s awful but currently there is a high amount of hate crime where Asians people and LGBT people are being beaten up, ending up in the hospital and some not even surviving. I wish they kind of take that seriously.

ohhh, good point anon. I personally had never realized that at all bc I came from western shows that I find way more violent & explicit in every way. in fact some shows that depicted violence super explicitly like the revenge really surprised me, bc it wasn't something I was used to in thai dramas. I feel like violence is very much normalized in media, so I've frankly never blinked an eye at it. but it's true that it often is pretty unnecessary, let's be honest, and violence is very much used as a plot device most of the time. that being said, if we're gonna talk about hate crimes, I'm not sure it applies to thai dramas in the way you're saying. firstly thailand doesn't have much immigration at all, and most of it comes from other asian countries, so it's almost an entirely asian country. the hate crimes against asian people have been in western countries against asian immigrants (which btw were criticized by thai citizens everywhere online when a thai person got killed in one of them.) therefore, the violence shown in thai dramas is a thai on thai, or at the very least asian on asian violence & never has to do with the ethnicity of the character. as for lgbtq+ hate crimes, I'm sure they still exist in thailand, but they're a LOT less likely to happen than in the west. thai people are known for their tolerance, bc even when they don't like lgbtq+ people, they aren't very likely to physically hurt or kill them. not saying it doesn't happen, but it definitely happens less, so once again I don't think it applies. besides, most of the violence is either straight on straight or lgbtq+ on lgbtq+, I've never seen a straight character beat up an lgbtq+ one, unless we're talking about homophobic parents hitting their queer child, but we can argue it's to show the reality that many lgbtq+ people go through. so yeah, sorry it got long as always, but I do agree with your point to a certain extent, though I must admit violence has never really bothered me bc I realize it's fictional & I've never experienced it myself. it could definitely be triggering for victims of domestic abuse & bullying though, and it's important to keep that in mind so thank you for bringing that point up!

xxx

#answers

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kaypeace21 · 3 years

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Rebel Robin podcast (ep 3 &4 analysis)

For those who haven’t read them yet. Here’s the analysis for podcast ep 1&2. Analysis of Rebel Robin book-here. And eastereggs from rebel robin novel- here.

So the main things I noticed in ep 3 was how Robin spying was shown as a huge NEGATIVE-and Mr Hauser got upset over her doing so. Robin listens to mr. Hauser’s phone call (like Karen with Mike in s3/ us gov spying on calls in s1) & on a different occasion Robin also eavesdrops on a private convo he is having with someone else in his classroom ( like El spying on Mike talking to Lucas in s3). And when he finds out about this he tells her how wrong it was to spy on other people like that. In the past, I also talked about how the theme of spying is shown for many other st characters ( in the show) and how it isn’t romanticized like people think it is- here .

Anyways , Ep 3 ends with a call from a h*mophobic teen( Dash) telling Robin to “stay away” from Mr. Hauser cause he’s “dangerous”. Why he thinks he’s dangerous is solely for the fact he’s gay.I think this theme may come into play in s4 Hawkins (in relation to the satanic panic). In ep 4 Robin jokes to (gay) Mr. Hauser : “ So what are you into... satanism?” (Sadly most queer people have been told over and over we’re going to hell for being gay/lgbt+. it’s sadly an almost universal experience.) For those unaware- the ‘satanic panic’ was a right wing christian movement in the 80′s that WRONGLY associated certain things with supposed satanism. Just some of the many things they demonized : rock music , stephen king , wearing black, horror/fantasy media, and of course queer people and d&d (hellfire club - the name is a a xmen ref but in the show it’s probably an inside joke about the satanic panic and people being scared of d&d). We see foreshadowing of the satanic panic hinted in s3 (in relation to d&d)- on tv the narrator asks if “satanism” (pans to d&d set) is to blame for the odd occurrances in Hawkins. And given how the s4 el-trailer had the clock say 3:00am for the “witching hour” also called “the devil’s hour” since it’s supposed to be a subversion of jesus dy*ing at 3:00 pm. And the possibility s4 may take place around Easter. I think we’ll see that religious (Christian) extre*sm causes many people in Hawkins to interpret the supernatural as ‘satanic’. And no , I’m obviously not talking poorly about all religious/christian people).

After this Mr. Hauser jokes how Hawkins is like “lord of the flies” and how he “worries” what would happen if teens were left to their own devices-like in the book. The themes in the book mostly focus on the dangers of ‘mob mentality’ and how human beings can become v*olent and turn on each other- if the safety of civilization disappears...

This I believe is foreshadowing - i mentioned in a post a while back (here). How movies on the s4 list had the theme of : a supernatural event indirectly causing towns people to act irrationally and turn on eachother v*olently. Despite literal monsters attacking them from outside (they chose to turn on eachother instead). In the end some townspeople become the real monsters via mob mentality/v*oence/false witch hunts (the mist, the birds, etc). In ‘the birds’ (while people are hidding in a store)- they wrongly blame certain characters for the supernatural chaos. Similarly, in ‘the mist’ (crowd of townspeople are trapped in a store) and some start interpreting the monsters as being sent as punishment by god- some town’s people start quoting the bible and saying the only way to stop the punishment is to start “sacrificing the s*nners and nonbelievers”. BIG YIKES.ST references mapple street (where the wheelers and sinclairs live). It’s based on the twilight zone ep of the same name “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” .The ‘monsters’ of that episode -were the townspeople turning on eachother because they incorrectly think their own neighbors are part of an invading supernatural army. The enemy was actually the paranoia/mob mentality-not the supernatural force they feared. And yes i do think this concept is linked with 80s satanic panic and will cause some town division/obstacles for our heroes to deal with . **I also think the s4 bts of the Hawkins blood clinic-may be used to show h*mophobia (linked to satanic panic) in the town. Like in one s4 movie “paradise lost”the punk rock boys who were into black clothes, rock music , horror/stephen king books- were accused by the town’s people of being gay AND have demonic powers that are k*lling fellow town’s people.

Mr Hauser says he thinks steve Harrington is Ralph from lord of the flies. And Robin disagrees saying he’s Jack. Personally- since this was when Robin didn’t know/hated Steve. I think Mr hauser is right that Steve is Ralph (one of the oldest boys) who’s “commitment to civilization and morality is strong”. But Jack (perhaps the popular s4 kid Jake?) and his savage crew take control of the group and start trying to attack Ralph and his friends (steve’s crew- over satanic panic?). How this begins is -

Jack, torments Ralph and others. And some kids begin to develop savage personalities, after someone claims to have seen a Beast (demongorgan?) in the woods. This creates fear among the boys, which allows Jack to access more power.Ralph gets into an argument with Jack, who splits from the tribe. Many of the other boys follow Jack, who uses fear to manipulate the boys into leaving Ralph. And Jack’s crew begin attacking Ralph and his friends.

----------------

Ok, next topic of ep 4- the sentimental part of my brain got emotional when hearing how upset Robin was. And than Mr Hauser-telling her she’s wrong and she’s not “broken” or “rotten” and “nothing about her needs to be fixed’” (got me right in the feels) . As a queer person- I feel like every lgbt+ kid/teen needs to hear what Mr. Hauser said to Robin.

However, the analytical part of my brain -did notice some easterggs/ series parallels.

The convo starts with them talking about music Mr hauser likes (such as Bowie). And transitions to Mr Haauser asking about things she likes, whether she’s being bullied, and he later tells her “ DON’T let other people’s small mindedness make you fell bad about yourself. you don’t need to change yourself-no matter what anyone else says” . And Mr Hauser than says him calling her the “weirdest girl in Hawkins” was a compliment (not an insult-like she initially assumed).

This is remarkably similar to certain scenes in s1/2. In s1, Jonathan mentions musicians he likes such as Bowie, asks Will about what he likes, and tells Will “don't like things cause people tell you you’re supposed to-especially not him (their dad who called him h*mophobic names)” . In s2, Jonathan tries to cheer Will up after asking if he's being being bullied. And calls Will “a freak” (and says it’s a good thing) and he should be content with being a “freak “ and compares Will to Bowie ( who was openly queer since the 70s) .

In ep 4, Robin also mentions how sad she is that her parents won’t let her ride her bike anymore cause their paranoid about her safety (like what happened to Will in s2).

Robin (before Mr. Hauser comforts her) says she feels like she has a “rot” inside her . This is a s2 eastergg that could be linked to either Will or El. Will says his now-memories are “growing”, spreading”, and killing.” Later Kali says the emotional pain caused by her father caused a “wound” to “spread”. Later allusion-Brenner tells El she has a “terrible wound “ (“a rot”) that Will “grow, spread, and kill.”

The reason Robin rants about feeling like she has a “rot” inside her is because she’s being bullied, and lost all her Hawkins friends and says “maybe I’m broken maybe there is just something about me that drives people away? I’m the only common denominator-there’s something wrong with me! There’s something inside of me that’s just rotten and there’s nothing i can do to fix it”. Which 1)-poor Robin. 2) I feel like could easily be How Will feels in s4(who will be the same age as Robin is here in the podcast)- his dad abandoned him, all his hawkins friends are gone , the st s4 movies have h*mophobic bullying in them (and he was bullied in the past). In a interview Noah said Will in s4 “doesn’t really get along with people-it’s just him and Mike.” I think it fits more so with Will than El . But they may feel similar: it’s implied in s4 audition tapes she’ll be bullied too, she moved away from her friends, and her father (Hopper) fake “passed away.” It could easily be how both Will and El feel in s4- that there is something “broken”/ “rotten” about them . In fact, in the rebel Robin novel there is even a character named Sheena. Sheena reminds me a bit of a mix between Will and el . She is very quiet, queercoded, and is often bullied. And she finds mean notes and other things stuffed in her locker- placed there by bullies. A bit like how Will found the zombie-boy note in his locker. A teacher doesn’t stop her bullying just blames her and says “ This wouldn’t happen if you made it just a smidgen easier for PEOPLE to understand you.”(sort of reminding me of that Noah quote about s4 Will not getting along with most people/Jonathan saying not to change himself cause “people” say to). But sheena can be another name for Jane (there was also a 80s show character named Sheena who was psychic) so ...maybe foreshadowing of el/jane being bullied in highschool? Along with Will?

*It’s not a eastergg/parallel...just speculation. Unlike the rebel robin book... in the podcast (in multiple episodes) almost every time she opens up to Mr Hauser about her problems she says it’s ok for him to do the same and she’ll be supportive and listen. However, Mr Hauser (so far) always rejects her offer-much to her hurt/frustration. In ep 4, she asks if he has someone his “own age” he can talk to about his problems-which he says he does. Now... since in ep 4 Mr hauser is paralleled to Jonathan maybe Jonathan will have someone his own age to talk to about his problems (maybe his new friend Argyle?) We see similar to Mr Hauser giving advice/pep talks to (gay) Robin. Jonathan is always giving advice/peptalks to our (gay-coded) Will. But so far- Jonathan has no one he really emotionally leaned on in the same way (Will does with Jonathan). I also wonder if Will in s4 starts gets tired of how he always confides in Jonathan (but Jonathan never does the same with Will in return)? Like Robin with Mr. Hauser?

#robin buckley #steve harrington #will byers #el hopper #jonathan byers #stranger things #stranger things theory

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the-ghost-king · 3 years

Note

Interestingly enough the fandom isn't always rational with their criticism. Take Percy and Rachel for instance. A perfectly healthy cute and functional relationship dynamic, but people really hated it because it got in the way of Percy/Annabeth.

I think it can also come down to the fact that not all situations are exactly equal if that makes sense. If you have a character dynamic in couple A, that often playfully bully of fight with eachother that's a different dynamic than relationship B, where one person has trauma resulting from bullying and the other parter behaves in roughly the same way as couple A do. In that case the behavior may be seen as inappropriate. Not that this example has anything to do with the ships at hand, but I think a long form meta examining the different paralleling issues from both relationships and their validity would be easier.

Also I haven't seen anything about about Nico/Will being called toxic. Yikes, what are people saying exactly, because I don't doubt a lot of people might be projecting unconcious bias.

Oh absolutely, I may seem young but I remember the Rachel vs Annabeth ship wars all too well... I do not want to go back 😅

The rest is under a read more though, I got a little carried away talking! Also this isn't my best post on the issue by far so please feel free to check out the tags I mention later on!

(AN: I use nblm alongside mlm in this post because some nblm individuals will consider their attraction to men as gay, or queer, while others will not and those individuals are often closely connected to mlm experiences and they also deserve to talk about their thoughts and feelings if they wish. I am aware nonbinary people are not a monolith and not all nonbinary people will categorize themselves or their attraction this way, it's up to nonbinary individuals reading this to determine where they fall on what)

As for Solangelo being toxic some of the conversations revolve around the ableist nature of the ship, this is definitely most obviously a dynamic in BoO, and it's a more than fair point about the ship I don't have anything negative to say there in the slightest!

(The above parallels with the idea that Will is introduced as a "healer character" for the "sad gay kid", which is a fair criticism as well but one that's often left rather one sided, because while that is true- if it's a way Nico likes being treated (watched closely for injuries and cared for) then it's not wrong, and in ToN Will is seen overstepping Nico's boundaries which causes a healthy argument about Will doing so and he stops, so if Nico doesn't tell Will "no" or some variation he's obviously not horribly uncomfortable with the situation, or from the way it would be interpreted alongside previous text, there's fair reason to think he likes it)

The thing with Solangelo I see often is "Nico is still processing trauma, and internalized homophobia and isn't ready for a relationship" which is a huge misunderstanding on how trauma and internalized homophobia work as a whole, because the experiences can be different for everyone. You can absolutely date someone while processing internalized homophobia, you may struggle with certain things but it is absolutely doable for some people. And trauma is such a varied thing, and it's not like he's solely relying on Will either, he is seeing Dionysus for therapy and getting the help he needs! Your life doesn't have to go on hold for therapy no matter how much trauma you are sorting through! (Not disclosing my medical history or anything but I have struggled with both things and my life didn't stop for me to deal with them, I made new friends, went on dates, etc- it is possible depending on the person so the very narrow view of "this is unhealthy" and "this is impossible" rubs me wrong when it's treated as fact over opinion, because it's an opinion).

There's also constant discussions about how fandom (in current) fetishizes both Nico and Will, which I, and other mlm and nblm have spoken our own thoughts on multiple times to be largely ignored by the biggest perpetrators of this "they're overly fetishized narrative". There's also fairly consistent discussion of how fandom treats Nico and reduces him to uwu small gay boy, which more often than not seems to mean "effeminate" rather than actually harmful stereotyping (yes queer men are allowed to be "girly" especially considering there is some canon text that could be interpreted with that meaning, if there wasn't a plausible way to determine canon that way I wouldn't care if people were going after others feminizing Nico a bit- but the issue is again, fact and feeling aren't the same and fandom seem to conflate the two rather often).

(Some of that ties into nonbinary Nico head canons which are common as of current, and that argument quickly becomes transphobic is people don't watch themselves... Even without bringing nonbinary Nico into the equation, headcanoning Nico as femme isn't bad or wrong, and to say otherwise becomes gender policing which is bad).

There's also this weird obsession with there being a "correct way" to ship mlm ships (specifically solangelo), which when considering it's not mlm or nblm saying those things, it becomes really uncomfortable. Especially because the wording of some posts is less "hey this is homophobic" and comes off more like people are more upset at seeing an mlm couple than at the fact that they're being shipped poorly.

All of this in combination with the constant, talking over of queer guys (specifically mlm and nblm) comes off really messed up, and yeah homophobic.

It's not something that can be pinned down to one specific thing but rather a series of smaller microagressions (which in sure most of are intended in good faith but are being filled with subconscious bias) that build up over time- which is why my concern is that solangelo is facing harsher criticism/different treatment that percabeth simply for being a queer ship.

I can't be 100% sure on that like I said, because that's something that is hard to gain tangible evidence for, or maybe even impossible :/

If there wasn't so many other small things going on alongside the harsher criticism of solangelo, I would honestly just ignore it... But the weird policing of "how to ship solangelo" while proclaiming it's "overly fetishized" all while speaking over a not insignificant number of mlm and nblm who have agreed with certain opinions, or taken time to write their own (+ some of the rhetoric that can be found on he blogs of people commonly expressing these opinions) is super uncomfortable and definitely homophobic... Even if they were treating the ship kind of weird, but treating the queer guys talking about it well and actually listening (because the current solangelo fandom probably has the highest proportion of queer guys in comparison to any other fandom I've been in with an mlm ship as of right now) I wouldn't be so bothered... But sadly that's not the case..

(I'd also like to note out of my posts criticizing the current conversations happening around the issue my post saying "listen to mlm voices" got a lot more notes than some of the other ones, which I can't say is specifically anything, because like solangelo perhaps being treated unfairly to percabeth, I am willing to acknowledge there might not be an issue- but it's weird how often mlm and nblm's posts on "listen to us" will be uplifted but never any actual criticism... Just a thought)

I detail things a little closer and in more detail in some of my posts tagged #fandom homophobia, #mlm fetishism, and #gender policing in fandom, it's not a full or comprehensive list (I've only really started speaking up in the last month or so), and it is largely solangelo specific. However I am always interested in listening to the voices of other queer guys about the issues and hearing out their thoughts as well (people aren't a monolith and I'm interested in trying to be as nuanced as possible!) and I acknowledge that although I am mlm and am going to be a little better at recognizing issues and calling them out (although I like every person am not perfect of course)

So yeah! That's a bit of the current ongoings, again not a full comprehensive list, and definitely not my best explanation ever but I think the point gets across well enough? Definitely check out my other tags if you're interested in more, there's also definitely more posts I need to make on some of the things I've seen (maybe not all of them so solangelo fandom specific, and maybe some of them even more solangelo fandom specific) but it's rather slow work in progress!

#asks #anon #long post

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roboticutie · 3 years

Text

There is largely two ways the term transmisogyny is being used right now:

Transphobia targeted at and experienced by transwomen specifically, explicitly excluding any other trans ID's from the topic and focusing on how trans women experience [insert transphobic thing here] and no one else's experience of [transphobic thing] even if it's a general transphobic issue not solely pertaining to women. This is an important highlighting of how women are hurt by this stuff!

Transphobia + misogyny means transmisogyny and because it has women in mind, trans women are more frequently and/or visibly impacted by [list here] (however this definition is opened up to how abuse with transfeminine folks in mind can and does harm others in the queer community based on time, place, etc.). This is an important highlighting most often of how transwomen's hypervisibility harms them and people's hatred of them spreads to other trans and GNC folks! It's important to frame this in ways that do not blame trans women for the hatred, of course.

Transmisogyny as a word is currently being used interchangeably in these two ways which is causing a lot of hostility. It's important that we work out: is transmisogyny solely transphobia against trans women only? Or is it transphobia with hatred of women at the core of it?

These are two very different things. One means there IS exemption from transmisogyny by way of not IDing as a trans woman. (If that's the case, is TMA/TME still useful in that context if it just means trans women/not-a-trans-woman?)

The other brings up a lot of questions: is (mostly black) cis women being barred from olympics due to testosterone levels transmisogyny? Is straight, cis GNC men getting assaulted for wearing nailpolish or makeup on the street transmisogyny? What about queer GNC men in that same predicament, would that change your decision and why? When a trans man is forced into the woman's bathroom and is physically assaulted for being a man in a woman's restroom, which happened because of bathroom bills with trans women in mind, is he a victim of transmisogyny as a systemic oppressive force? If someone who was AMAB now ID's as agender and does not associate themself with trans women and presents femininely, are they the "intended" target of transmisogyny? Where do intersex folks of ANY gendered assignment fit in with all of this, with their experiences of abuse surrounding their genders and sexes? Is transmisogyny an underlying part of their medical abuse? Do perisex trans women get to dictate intersex people's experiences with this broader definition of transmisogyny? Is there ANYONE exempt from its influence in our communities?

Both of these definitions have seperate and important meanings and valid contexts of their useage. These are both important things to talk about and highlight. However, if we're using the same word for two different but related things, there's going to be some rocky roads. I'm not trans fem, so I don't get to pick what happens from here. I'm just concerned with what I'm seeing because it's causing a lot more harm than good!

Also to note: is it a mix of both? Do you think of transmisogyny as solely transphobia + misogyny against trans women and no other ID's? If that's the case, what could we do to come up with a way of addressing the broader spread of this issue as well? What could we use to denote the way most transphobia is lead by the idea of women being the default trans folks due to their hypervisibility coupled with trans masculine's hyperINvisibility, and transphobia holding that at large? Letalone when it's taken against cis people?

TL;DR

Do you think of transmisogyny as transphobia against trans women (and no one else), or do you think of it as transphobia with trans women in mind? What does this mean for your thoughts on who experiences what? How can we resolve the issue of these miscommunications that result in a lot of inter-community hostility?

#transphobia #transmisogyny #all of these questions i'm asking are genuine. I am looking for replies and I am interested in my current understandings being challenged #i want to understand these issues more and i encourage others to work on it as well - that's the intention of this post #my text posts #long post

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adorpheus · 3 years

Text

on fujoshi and fetishization

Lately, more and more, both here on tumblr and on other sites, I keep seeing people spew unfiltered hatred at fujoshi - that is, women who like mlm content such as gay fanfic and fanart featuring men with other men. And I don’t mean like a specific type of fujoshi, like the ones who are genuinely being weird about it, but just like a general hatred for girls (but especially straight identifying girls) who express love for gay romance.

I hate to break this to you all, but women (including straight women!) actually are allowed to like mlm fanfiction and fanart, even enthusiastically so. A woman simply expressing her love of gay fanfic, even if it is in kind of a cringey way or a way that you personally don’t like, is NOT automatically fetishization.

I’ve been on the receiving end of fetishization for my entire life, from a very young age, as many black and brown folx have, so I consider myself pretty well acquainted with how it works. Fetishization isn’t just like, being really into drawings of boys kissing, or whatever the fuck y’all are trying to imply on this god forsaken site.

Fetishization is complicated imo, and can encompass a lot of things, such as (but not limited to):

1 - dehumanization, e.g. viewing a group of people as sexual objects who exist purely for entertainment purposes, rather than acknowledging them as actual people who deserve respect and rights

and

2 - projecting certain assumptions onto said people based on their race/sexuality/whatever is being fetishized. These assumptions are often, but not always, sexual in nature (like the idea that black people in general are more sexual than other races, etc etc etc).

I’m going to use myself as an example to illustrate my point. Please note this isn’t the best or most nuanced example, but it is the most simplistic. A white person finding me attractive and respectfully appreciating my black features as part of what makes me beautiful is not, on its own, fetishization. A white person finding me attractive solely or mostly because I’m a PoC is now in fetishization territory. Similarly, assuming I’m dominant because of my blackness (like saying “step on me mommy” and shit like that) is hella fetishistic.

That being said, theres definitely a difference between how fetishization works in real life with real people, and how it shows up in fandom.

Fetishization manifests in many different ways in fandom, but most commonly on the mlm side of things, I personally see it appear as conservative (or centrist) women who love the idea of two men together, but don’t actually like gay people, and don’t necessarily think LGBT+ people deserve rights (or “special treatment” as its sometimes dog whistled). These women view queer men as sexual objects for entertainment rather than an actual group of people who deserve to be protected from systemic oppression. I’ve noticed that they often don’t even think of the men they “ship” together as actually being gay, and may even express disgust at the idea of a character in an mlm ship being headcanon’d gay. In case its not obvious, this is pretty much exactly the same way a lot of cishet men fetishize lesbians (they see “lesbian” as a porn category, rather than like, what actual LGBT people think of when we read the word lesbian). There’s a pretty popular viral tweet thread going around where someone explains seeing this trend of conservative women who like mlm stuff, and I have also personally witnessed this phenomenon myself in more than one fandom.

The funny thing is, maybe its just me buuuut.... The place I see this particular kind of fetishization happen most is not in the anime/BL fandom, from which the term fujoshi originates - I actually see these type of women way way more in western fandom spaces like Supernatural, Harry Potter, and Hannibal. I can’t stress this enough, there’s a shocking amount of people who are like, straight up trump supporters in these fandoms. If you want to experience it, try joining a Hannigram or Destiel group on facebook and you will probably encounter one eventually especially if you happen to be living through a major historical event. Like these women probably wouldn’t even be considered “fujoshi”, because that term doesn’t really apply to them given they aren’t in the BL/anime fandom, yet they’re the ones I personally see actually doing the most harm.

Of course this isn’t the ONLY kind of fetishizing woman in the mlm/BL world, there are other ways fetishization shows up, but this is the most toxic kind that I see.

A girl just being really into BL or whatever may be “cringe” to you, or she may be expressing her love for BL in a “cringey” way, but a straight woman really enjoying BL is not, on its own, somehow inherently fetishization. Yes, sometimes teenage girls act kind of cringe about how much they like BL and that might be annoying to you, but its not necessarily ~problematic~.

That being said, IT NEEDS BE REMARKED that a lot of the “fujoshi” that you all hate so deeply, are actually closeted trans men or nonbinary people who haven’t yet come to terms with their gender identity, or are otherwise just NOT cishet. I know because I was one of these closeted people for years, and I honestly think tumblr and the cultural obsession around purity is one of the many reasons I was closeted so deeply for so long. STORYTIME LOL!!! In my early adolescence, I was a sort of proto “fujoshi”. I identified as a bi girl who was mostly attracted to men, or as most (biphobic) people called it, “practically straight”. I wrote and read “slash” fanfic and looked at as well as drew my own fanart. We didn’t use the term fujoshi back then, but that’s definitely how I could have been described. I was obsessed with yaoi, BL, whatever you want to call it, to a cringe-inducing degree. I really struggled to relate to most het romances, so when I first discovered yaoi fanfics (as we called them at the time), I fell in love and felt like I finally found the type of romance content that was made for me. I didn’t know exactly why, I just knew it hit different. LGBT+ fanart and fanfiction brought me an immense amount of joy, and I didn’t really think too hard about why.

At some point, in my early 20s, after reading lots of discourse™ here on tumblr and other places like twitter, I started to get the sinking feeling that my passion for gay fanfiction was ~problematic~. I had always felt a sense of guilt for being into mlm content, because literally anyone who found out I liked BL (especially the men I dated) shamed me for liking it all the fucking time (which btw is literally just homophobic, like can we talk about that?). In addition to THAT bullshit, now I’m seeing posts telling me that girls who like BL are cringey gross fetishists who inspire rage and should go die?

Let me tell you, I internalized the fuck out of messages like this. I desperately wanted to avoid being ~problematic~. At the time, I thought being problematic was like the worst thing you could be. I was terrified of being “cancelled”, before canceling was even really a thing. I thought to myself, “oh my god, I’m gross for liking this stuff? I should stop.” I beat myself up over this. I wanted so badly to be accepted, and to be deemed a Good Person by the internet and society at large.

I tried to shape up and become a good ally (lmfao). I stopped writing fanfic and deleted all the ones I was working on at the time. I made a concerted effort to assimilate into cishet culture, including trying to indulge myself more deeply in the few fandoms I could find that had het content I did enjoy (Buffy, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, etc). I would occasionally look at BL/fanfic/etc in private, but then I would repress my interest in it and not look for a while. Instead I would look at women in straight relationships, and create extremely heterosexual Couple Goals pinterest boards, and try to figure out how I could become more like these women, so I, too, could be loved someday.

This cycle of repression lasted like eight years. Throughout it all, I was performing womanhood to the best of my ability and trying to become a woman that was worthy of being in a relationship. I went in and out of several “straight” relationships, wondering why they didn’t make me feel the way reading fanfic did. Most of all, I couldn’t figure out why straight intimacy didn’t work for me. I just didn’t enjoy it. I always preferred looking at or making gay fanfiction/fanart over actual intimacy with men in real life.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a trans coming out video that someone I was following posted online, my egg started to crack, and to make an extremely long story short, after like 3 years of introspection and many gender panic attacks that I still experience to this day, I realized that I’m uh... MAYBE... NOT CIS..!? :|

I truly believe if I had just been ALLOWED TO LIKE GAY STUFF WITHOUT BEING SHAMED FOR IT, I probably would have realized I was trans way way sooner. Because for me, indulging in my love of gay romance and writing gay fanfic wasn’t me being a weirdo fetishist, it was actually me exploring my own gender identity. It is what helped me come to terms with being a nonbinary trans boy.

Not everyone realizes they are trans at age 2 or whatever the fuck. Sometimes you have to go through a cringey fujoshi phase and multiple existential crises to realize how fucking gay you are AND THATS FINE.

And one more thing - can we just be real here?

A lot of anti-fujoshi sentiment is literally just misogyny. omg please realize this. Its “women aren’t allowed to enjoy things” but, like... with gay fanfics. Some of the anti-fujoshi posts I see come across my dash are clearly ppl projecting a caricature they invented in their head of a demonic fujoshi fetishist onto any woman who expresses what they consider to be a little too much enthusiasm for gay content and then using their perception of that individual as an excuse to justify their disdain for any women, especially straight women, ‘invading’ their ~oh so exclusive~ queer fandom spaces.

god get over yrselfs this is gatekeeping by another name

idk why i spent so long writing this no one is even going to read it, does anyone even still use this site

*EDIT: HOLY SHIT WHEN DOING RESEARCH FOR THIS POST I FOUND OUT THAT Y-GALLERY IS BACK OMG!!!

#rant #fujoshi #I SAID WHAT I SAID #personal #gender stuff

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cthulhuliet · 3 years

Text

my high hopes (are getting low)

3.9k words [total 13k words] (part one) (part two) (part three) | AO3 Link | warnings: homophobia, use of slurs, dubious morality, completely unnecessary religious references, implied/referenced self-harm

'Cause my High hopes are getting low because these people are so old The way they think about it all If I tried I would never know

Light Yagami's world view is shifted after a conversation with his father concerning L's sexuality. Anger in his veins and unconfessed feelings bubbling to the surface, Light and L enact a plan of revenge against the homophobic views of the task force.

Out of the task force headquarters for the first time in months brought him a certain amount of joy, an extreme weight of his chest- or rather weight off his wrist. With his memories back, himself and Misa cleared of any suspicions thanks to the fake rules he constructed in the Death Note, Light had won.

Of course, there was still much work that needed to be done. This roadblock had lasted longer than Light wanted or anticipated, but no matter. To achieve everything the world needed was going to take time and effort- time and effort that he alone could commit to. He needed to be rid of L as well. Foolish, stupid Misa forgot his name, so that was simply another obstacle he would need to pass. But no matter, tonight was for celebration.

The celebration at a bar only miles away from task force headquarters is not exactly where he would have chosen, but Ryuzaki insisted that if the task force were going out into the public to to celebrate they were to not stray far from headquarters. Light idly looked around the lowlights of the bar, shaking his head into his beer. He wouldn’t be surprised if L had every shop within a 5 mile radius littered with cameras and bugs.

“Attention everyone,” Soichiro stood up, hold his glass out to the detectives, “I would like to make a toast: this is to all your hard work, the long hours, the uncertainty of tomorrow, the progress we made, and-” He pointedly looked at Light , “To the clearing of names.” He raised his glass, “To Light!”

“To Light!” The detective’s echoed, Matsuda softly clapping, and Aizawa giving him a sock to the arm.

“How’s it feel to be a free man?” His father asked, eyes shining behind his glasses.

Light chuckled, “Father, this is the best I have felt in a long time,”

“Here, here!” Mogi agreed.

“Fresh air, sun on your face,” Matsuda mused, “Boy, that Ryuzaki really doesn’t get out much, does he?”

“Can you imagine him coming out to a bar like this, or even a restaurant or gym?”

“No wonder he is so skinny,”

“And pale,”

Light shook his head, “Hey now, no need for any of that,” He took a quick sip of his beer, “You guys may know him, but I was chained to Ryuzaki, ok? Talk to me when you get kicked in the face by him,” The table roared with laughter, Light smirked to himself. “Might just get a kick of PTSD when I eventually do get to cuff Kira,”

Soichiro shook his head, smiling, “We are closer than ever, I can feel it. The real Kira is in our grasp, now that we are all cleared,”

Light huffed dryly, “Well, some of us aren’t fully in the clear,”

Soichiro sighed, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. Light looked into his father’s eyes: determination but exhaustion were swimming behind his pupils- Light hates L for causing his father so much stress. Even the hardest working, most respectable men need time stress free. God himself created a day of rest for a reason.

“Ryuzaki will come around, I am sure of it,” He idly scratched the stubble on his cheek, eyes on Light but mind elsewhere, “I am not exactly sure what more proof he needs… The young man’s pride is getting in the way of his deductive skills,”

“He did say at one point he did want Light to be Kira…” Matsuda chimed it.

“Precisely,” Soichiro took a long drink, “He will come around, I am sure of it. I mean, look at us now. Even a few weeks ago, and outing such as this was completely out of the realm of possibilities,”

“I am more surprised Ryuzaki himself didn’t come with us just to keep tabs on what we are talking about,”

“Matsuda, you are insane if you believe that he wouldn’t find out some way or another,”

“Ahh, yeah. A small part of me wishes Ryuzaki would come out with us, though. I do have to admit that I am mildly curious as to what he would drink,” Matsuda shrugged.

Soichiro grunted, shaking his head, “I am sure each of us wishes that we knew Ryuzaki just a little bit more. We simply have to make our own interpretations based upon the small bits of information and hints he drops us,”

Light nodded, a small smile on his face, “That man would probably be an even longer investigation than the Kira one,”

The table nodded, but Aizawa drummed his finger on the table, “You guys say that, but I already know everything that I need to know about that little freak,”

Aizawa took a long sip of his whiskey, the detective’s eyes narrow and angry. It had been obvious to most of the task force that he never liked Ryuzaki: Aizawa’s short temper and L’s aloofness often clashed, but there also seemed to be something else bubbling under the surface- and itch that needed some sort of external validation to be scratched.

“What do you mean, Aizawa?” Light probed the detective. If he for some reason and somehow got more information about L…

Aizawa looked around, now holding the full attention of the table in the palm of his hand. He rubbed behind his earlobe, his voice sharp and intense, “I was talking with Wedy and Aiber after the arrest of Higuchi. Just idly chatting. I was curious about their history with Ryuzaki. What kind of criminal would endear themselves to the most prolific detective? When did they even get close enough to be on call for him?” Aizawa idly cracked his knuckles, looking down at the stain wood of the table, recounting the events from that night, “It seems as though those two know Ryuzaki better than we do,”

Light’s skin felt as though it was on fire. He had never had much interest in the detective, but his attention was solely focused on Aizawa. Whatever it was, whatever Aizawa found out from the two con-artists, he simply had to know, his need and curiosity were going to burn him alive if the normally straight-forward cop didn’t speak faster.

“What did you find out,” Soichiro frowned, “Like, his history or name or something,”

Light wanted to scream.

Aizawa shook his head, sipping the brown liquid, “No. Nothing like that, just some taboo information that our good friend Ryuzaki opted not to tell us,”

Matsuda frowned, “Taboo?”

“Yeah,” He scoffed, tapping the glass with the palm of his finger- eyes hard and jaw set. His eyes quickly darted from one side of the nearly empty bar to the other, now staring down his whiskey. “Let’s just say,” He spoke in a low voice, “I am certainly glad Ryuzaki doesn’t go to the gym. I would pity any man who had to share a locker room alone with him.” Aizawa threw the rest of his drink down his throat and loudly set the empty glass on the table, the silence thick and palpable.

No one said anything for a long time. No one moved their drinks or spoke. Light looked down at the table, eyes hard, waiting for someone to break the silence; someone had to release him from this torture, and he couldn’t be the one to speak up.

When Soichiro scoffed, picking up his glass, all eyes turned to him, “Well. I can’t say I am surprised,” He grumbled. The rest of the squad nodded in agreement, all going back to their idle actions.

“I mean, I always had my suspicions,” Matsuda said, “He is a pretty weird guy and something always seemed a bit off when we were alone together. I just chalked it up to Ryuzaki being Ryuzaki but now that I know- like I know ...” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck, “Uck… I need to go home and have a shower,”

Soichiro then locked eyes with Light, “Light, if that Ryuzaki ever made a pass at you or made you feel-”

“Father, I promise you everything was fine,” Light muttered, responding to his father but his head was elsewhere, “I never even knew, or considered it a possibility, actually,”

Aizawa frowned, tapping the table harshly with his index finger, “With the chain, when you had to shower, or use the restroom, what did you even-”

“There was a hook in the bathroom, so there was at least some semblance of privacy,” Light opted to keep the fact that there were cameras covering every inch of the bathroom to himself.

Soichiro seemed unsatisfied with that answer, “I was never a fan of that chain situation, none of us were, but we all trusted Ryuzaki. Now- now that I know my son was chained for months on end to some pervert…” He steady his rising voice but Soichiro was gripping his glass so hard, Light was worried it would shatter under his hold.

“It is just wrong,” Aizawa chimed in, Mogi nodding along, unenthusiastically, “Morally, completely wrong.”

“Here, here,” Matsuda echoed, cheerlessly. “Those are the kinds of people Kira should take care of,”

Light’s eyes widened, shaking his head, “Matsuda, don’t talk like that,”

Aizawa shook his head, a short emotionless laugh was followed with an omission from the other detective. “This may just be the whiskey talking, but instead of FBI agents and business men, maybe Kira could work on keeping those kinds of people out of society. I don’t need queers around, I have 2 kids,”

Soichiro nodded, “It is a pity. Can’t imagine how Ryuzaki’s parent’s must feel. Maybe they know and that’s why he is the way he is,”

“Pity the pair of them,”

“Yeah,”

Light said nothing. Soichiro continued, “Glad I don’t have to worry about that. Sayu talks about that Hideki Ryuga on too many occasions to count, and that Ms. Amane is more than treating Light here well,”

Eyes hard set on his Father, Light asked his dad a question that had been on the tip of his tongue since Aizawa’s information had been revealed. “Father, what would you do if-”

Cutting him off, Soichiro looked at Light seriously, “If that happened, I wouldn’t need some magical notebook. I’d take my marksman training and deal with it myself,”

Light smiled, chuckling, “Of course, Father,”

Light’s fingernails were gripping the inside of his palm, the force at which was nearing the point of drawing blood. He was doing his best to remain cool and collected, but the more the men talked the more his anger was becoming all consuming: a threat that was rearing its ugly head and threatening to crawl out of his throat with an ear splitting cry of rage.

“I think I need the restroom,” Light stood up stiffly, 4 pairs of concerned eyes on him. He gave them a curt nod, “Gentlemen,” And walked quickly to the other side of the bar.

The restroom was a unisex single stall that Light opened with more forced then neccesarry and locked the door. He stumbled over to the sink, switching it on the coldest setting. Balling up his fists, he slammed them down onto the dirty ceramic, a frustrated cry erupting from him.

“Son of a bitch!” Light choked out. Neat fingernails gripped the sides of the sink, chilling water splashing and threatening to soak the edges of Light’s expensive button up, but he barely noticed that fact, as he was mentally steeling himself to not allow the hot tears he felt bubbling to spill. Crying in any capacity was wasted energy, and even more so, he didn’t want to have to explain the tear tracks on his cheeks to any of his much older colleagues.

“Geez, you look like a mess,” A gravelly voice phased. Light looked in the mirror in front of him and saw Ryuk’s wide eyes staring back at his reflection.

Light scoffed, looking away from the mirror, “Welcome back, where have you been, Ryuk?”

Ryuk floated closer to the sink, casually wiggling his fingers, “I was nagging some cherries from the bartender. Not as good as apples but I’ll take what I can get,”

“Does fruit even taste different to Shinigamis?”

“Oi oi, what is that supposed to mean,” Ryuk frowned. Light shrugged his shoulders, sighing. Ryuk put a thumb to his chin, “It is clear I missed something. You going to fill me in, Light?”

For the first time since entering the bathroom, Light felt about 7% calmer. He took a deep breath, studying the brown eyes of his reflection. Still rimmed with red, but not nearly as dam breaking as before. He turned around to face the Shinigami, casually leaning against the sink, arms crossed.

“Aizawa just told me some information,”

“Eh?”

“Information about L,”

Ryuk laughed wildly. Flipping himself upside-down, he continued to cackle, “Isn’t that just interesting. What did he say? Is your plan going to be a little easier?”

Light crossed his arms, refusing to look at Ryuk’s animated movements, and instead inspected a cracked tile in the otherwise pristine floor, “No. Aizawa told me that L is gay,”

“Eh?” Ryuk flipped himself upright and stood on the floor normally, curiously looking at the human, “Well, I suppose that is fine… Though I guess that means it isn’t with you. I didn’t realise that you were uh, what’s the human word for it...” Ryuk scratched his hair, and Light quirked up an eyebrow, “Oh. Didn’t know you were homophonic,”

Light frowned, “What?”

“Homophonic. You don’t like gay people,”

Running a hand through his hair Light sighed, “It is homophobic, not homophonic. Homophonic has to do with music,” Light turned back to the water that was still running and rolled up his sleeves, idly washing his hands, “I didn’t think you would get this much stupider after being away from me for so long,”

Ryuk defensively put his hands up, talking to Light’s reflection, “Hey, don’t look at me. You humans are the weird ones, making up gender and sex and all these words we don’t have in the Shinigami realm. It’s confusing sometimes, ok?” Light didn’t respond as he pulled some paper towels from the holder and dried his hands, “Either way, I didn’t know you were homophobic. Hyuk, probably makes you want to kill L more, doesn’t it,”

Light’s eyes flashed red, and in an instant, he kicked the plastic bin across the room in a blind rage of fury, “Of course it doesn’t!” Dried towels littered the ground, Ryuk slapping one away from himself as it floated onto his shoulder, “But apparently if you don’t fit into the perfect straight mold that we have been told, all morals go out the window!” His back hit the wall, and Light sunk down onto the floor, Ryuk still standing in shock, “All of the detectives out there said that they would want to rid the world of anyone who was different. No matter how hard working, or what they do, or how much they are worth to society, if you don’t fit that mold, you are better off dead. They said they L would be better off dead, that-” He paused, picking at a loose string on his pants, tugging on it and idly throwing it away, “My own father said he would kill me,”

Ryuk stood next to Light in stunned silence, only a couple times before had he seen the man lose his temper and each time he was unsure of how to respond to it. He began picking up the towels littered on the ground, “So, Light, are you saying that you’re…”

Chuckling dryly, Light shook his head, “I thought this kind of thing didn’t matter to Shinigamis?”

“No, but it matters to you humans. Besides, this is very interesting,”

Light rested his head against his knees, staring at the crack in the tile again, “I don’t want to label myself, not really. Like you said, it is a dumb human thing.” Biting his thumbnail, Light thought for a moment about what he wanted to say, “I was about 13 when I realised I couldn’t relate to my friends. I thought I was smarter than them for not caring about kissing girls and spin the bottle. I pretty much wrote off relationships altogether. It wasn’t until Misa that I realised what was wrong,”

“Eh? Misa?”

“Yeah, I know,” A rare smile formed on Light’s face. Rare because he was talking about Misa, someone who he regarded as one of the banes of his existence, “She was rambling on one day, and told me that she also likes girls in the way she likes me. Granted, she immediately went on to say she would never leave me, and we were soulmates, but those words kept me up because I never even realised it was an option.

“I did some research and some of the greatest minds on Earth were also queer in some capacity. Alan Turing, Julius Caesar, Ihara Saikaku- all great people who made waves in history. And yet,” Light made fists with his hands, “Some people, some idiots would believe they were better off dead just because of who they choose to lay with.

“I may have a personal bias, but if the Gods never cared about gender and sex, then why would I when passing judgement? You said it yourself, Ryuk: it is merely a human constructed concept. I am far above viewing people as just that. It is simply an aspect of yourself, not who you are. Your actions are far more important. Be a useful, moral member of society and why does it matter who you sleep with?”

Ryuk finished cleaning up the towels and sat on the floor across from Light, “Heh, and the detectives don’t share that same sentiment?”

“Yeah,” Light’s voice dripped with venom, “They told all of us multiple times to not pass judgement off of one action, and yet my father said he would put a gun to my head and if I kissed a boy he would shoot me dead,”

Ryuk tilted his head to the side, “Guess we finally found the greyness in your morality,” He cackled wildly, but Light was not amused.

Light sat up straight, looking Ryuk straight into his eyes, “I don’t need those kinds of people in my world,” He spoke with finality, and tapped open the secret compartment of his watch, the small corner piece of the Death Note blank and ready for him.

“Light, wait,” Ryuk’s eyes widened and he took a couple steps towards him, towering over Light. He frowned, red anger brewing in his pupils, “I am not supposed to help, not really, but please think, ok? For one, this is your father we are talking about, you can’t-”

“Ryuk, he said he would kill me!” Light stood up and shouted, all care for staying calm left him, “He said I would be better off dead, how am I supposed to take that?”

“Alright,” He responded, the almost 7 foot Shinigami felt very small all the sudden, “What about this? You and the task force leave headquarters for the first time in months. You disappear to the bathroom and all the task force is dead except for you. What conclusion is L going to draw from that, hm?”

Light threw his pen across the room, hitting and marking the wall it connected with, “So what should I do, then, huh? Just let them all walk around, making judgements about those who didn’t do anything?” He made fists with his hands, not paying any attention to pain, fury and rage was all Light felt now. Drops of blood trickled down his palm and under his nails- he finally broke the skin. “They don’t deserve any of that, so why did my father say that? Why do they get to decide what is moral? Where is the justice for them!” His breath got more and more ragged, to the point of hyperventilation. Light suddenly felt very, very dizzy.

When he was a young child, after he just learned how to swim, Light would go off the diving board and teeter at the edge of it, testing gravity. Challenging it. He wanted to fly. He thought he could cheat it somehow. If he ran quick enough, if he closed his eyes, if he acted casual as he stepped off the board, but everytime the wind on his face and the unforgiving coldness of the pool water let him know that Light had failed. Getting the Death Note was the closest he felt to defying gravity. Light could step off the board now and simply float; floating high above the gravity that pulled him down, and high above the water that wanted to engulf him.

However, for the first time since he got the Note, Light was no longer floating: Light was drowning. Gravity was forcing him underwater, suffocating him. It was filling up his lungs and choking him. Is this the grim misfortune that Ryuk said to him? Is this how it feels like to be held underwater- thrashing and crying and begging for the element to relent? To release it’s hold and breathe? Light can’t imagine the real thing feeling any other way.

A knock on the door brought Light back to land. He stayed silent as he listened to the voice outside the door, “Light? You doing ok in here? Your dad is worried about you and…”

Matsuda trailed off. Light paused for a moment, and walked himself to the other side of the bathroom, raising his voice, “Yeah, I am ok. Just, uh, the drink I had before the beer was pretty strong, and I didn’t eat beforehand so, uh, y’know,”

“Oh, are you ok?”

“Yeah,” Light struggled to keep his voice even.

“Something always seemed a bit off when we were alone together…”

“I am all good, Matsuda,”

“Uck… I need to go home and have a shower…”

“I appreciate your concern,”

Matsuda stayed silent for a minute before responding, “We are about to head out. Do you want us to wait or-”

“Go on ahead,” Light responded immediately, “I’ll get Watari to call me a car or something,”

Matsuda sighed, “As long as you are sure, but just let someone know when you get back. I’ll tell Soichiro you aren’t feeling well,”

Light listened to the detective’s retreating footsteps. He closed the lid on the toilet and put his head in his hands, “I want to kill them,” Ryuk cackled wildly, causing Light to look up, “What? Unless you have something helpful to contribute I-”

Ryuk floated, spinning himself above Light, “You could kill them, that is easy. Killing is like breathing to you, Kira,” He laughed again, “But trust me when I say that there are much more creative, much more fun forms of punishment,”

Light’s interest was piqued, he looked at the Shinigami with curiosity, “What exactly are you thinking?”

Shrugging, he began to phase through the wall, “I am not going to tell you what to do, that is all up to you, Light. However-” Ryuk’s head was all that was remaining in the room, a smile even more wicked than his usual one plastered on his face, “-maybe you should talk to your pal, L, about what you learned today,”

Cackling, Ryuk left the room, but Light alone with his thoughts. It didn’t even take 3 minutes for Light to come up with a plan.

#death note #light yagami #l lawilet #lawlight #my writing #dn #death note fanfiction #I am actually really excited about it!!#kind of proud of myself ngl #I hope you guys enjoy!!! pls let me know!!!#there is more to come

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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Heyoooo, it’s another episode of Holy Hell! This one is dedicated to the manchild himself, Dean Winchester.

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Transcript below!

CW: discussions of child abuse, child death, suicide, alcoholism, family trauma, mental health

[Music]

Dean Winchester is, in a word, my soulmate. I started kinning him when the show aired in Australia on Fox8 and I have not been the same since. From his devil-may-care attitude to his undying love for his family that pierces the veil of death to save the day, he really is the most. I have to say at the beginning that this episode of Holy Hell will not include discussions of Dean’s sexuality and gender. I’m saving that for its own episode, so stay tuned my pals.

What we know of Dean as he develops over the course of the first episode is: he’s been hunting, and hunting alone, he’s 26 years old, he drives a sweet ‘67 Impala, he wears an old leather jacket, he listens to 1980s metal, and he has an arsenal of weapons and supernatural fighting talismans in his trunk. He’s also a smartarse, one of his most endearing qualities. He gets defensive about their mother and her death, and he defends their father over and over. He’s a loyal son and brother. The impetus to bring Sam back into the hunting life, after Sam decided for good that he was going to leave, is to bring his fambily back together.

The quality that defines Dean Winchester is how much he loves he loves his fambily. In the first episode, he is so worried about his father that he recruits Sam to help look for him, even though Sam and Dean haven’t spoken in two years, and Sam ran away to college rather than continue to live with their father. He spends most of the first season defending their father, but when John comes back and starts arguing with Sam, Dean protects his brother from John. It’s one of the most significant examples of character growth Dean undergoes throughout the entire series, and it’s where his loyalty shifts from John to Sam.

In the episode of season 2, “Croatoan,” Dean decides not to shoot Sam when Sam contracts the Croatoan virus which turns people rabid and makes them kill. In the next episode, “Hunted”, Dean reveals that John told him to kill Sam if Dean couldn’t save him. But Dean doesn’t. He says that John begged Dean not to tell Sam, but it’s not John’s words that keep Dean silent. It’s his love for Sam and Sam’s wellbeing. And this brotherly love slash codependency is used by characters throughout the entire series, from the demons in season 1 to the literal character of God in season 15, to manipulate Dean and Sam. As many characters have pointed out, including Dean and Sam themselves, they are each other’s weak points.

At the end of season two, when Sam dies from a stab wound in his spine, Dean trades his own life for Sam’s. He makes a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for Sam’s life—and subsequently dies and goes to hell at the end of season 3. Dean literally dies a gruesome death and spends forty years being tortured in hell because he couldn’t live without Sam. At the end of Season 8, Sam is dying from the effects of the trials, which he undergoes in order to close the gates of hell, and Dean convinces him to stop because, again, he can’t live without Sam. Sidenote: this is where I stopped being interested in their brotherly dynamic to the point of losing interest in the show. It became clear to me that the showrunners were more concerned with rehashing the same tired storylines between Sam and Dean than focus on characters who could expand the world and make the show better. In fact, they killed a lot of the interesting side characters in order to keep the show solely focused on the brothers. The exception to this is Castiel, and the reason they kept Cas around is because when he died in season 7 the ratings tanked. If that wasn’t a clear enough sign that the showrunners needed to open up the show to more than just Sam and Dean’s caustic dynamic in which they die and kill for and then betray and lie to each other over and over, then I just don’t know what the fans could have done to convince them. Nothing, apparently, because they ended the show with just Sam and Dean.

Dean’s relationship with John is fraught with insecurity and codependency. Dean has so little sense of self that what he does consider to be his carefully curated list of likes and dislikes were inherited directly from John: his car, his leather jacket, his hunting abilities, and his music taste. He also throws himself into hunts without any regard for his own safety, because he doesn’t believe that he is worth saving, or that his life is worth living. His personality is crafted from both John’s reliance on him as a son, hunter and partner in crime, and the woman he assumes Mary to be. Dean’s sense of self-worth relies on how many people he can save. This is why, in season 2 episode “What is and what should never be,” Dean’s dream reality is one in which he’s a low life loser who disappoints his family—because without John pushing him to be a hunter, Dean doesn’t save people, and because he doesn’t save people, he isn’t worth anything. Bear in mind that this is the best reality Dean’s mind could conjure for him: one in which his father is dead, and he himself is not worth saving.

In one of the most famous exchanges, he asks Cas why an angel would rescue him from hell, and Cas replies, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Twenty-nine years of bluster, insouciance, and a give-em-hell attitude crumbles in two sentences, wrought by a being Dean refuses to believe exists because, again, he doesn’t think that he deserves to be saved by them. He says, “[Why me? I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, let alone by God].” He thinks of himself so lowly that he accepted a one-year deal in exchange for Sam being alive. Dean cares so much about his family he lets it kill him.

But it’s not just Sam, Mary and John. Dean’s family grows to encompass a number of side characters: most notably Bobby their surrogate father, Charlie Bradbury the hacker, Claire Novak, Jack Kline, and Lisa and Ben Braeden. Even Mary makes another appearance in seasons 12 to 14. Unfortunately, because the show is the way it is, Dean puts Sam above all of these side characters, and then these characters are written out of the show. I should specify that Cas is not a side character; in most seasons, Misha Collins is billed as a main cast member, with his name appearing after Jensen Ackles in the credits. But he still dies in the third-last episode in order to have the show stay about the brothers. Even Jack, inarguably Cas and Dean’s son, is written out of the show in the second-last episode after dying multiple times. I say inarguably because I am not gonna argue with anyone about this. Claire and Jack are Dean and Cas’s kids. Dean and Cas are great parents who chaperone Jack’s prom and buy Claire her first hunting bow. They’re all one big happy, queer, neurodivergent family.

Dean loves the people in his life with reckless abandon. The times he’s excused Cas’s behaviour after Cas has done something ridiculous or foolish are too many to count. He grieves Cas’s multiple deaths, often succumbing to his alcoholism and entropy whenever Cas leaves him for more than a day. In a truly beautiful scene, Dean wraps Cas’s corpse in a curtain and watches, utterly and completely devastated, as his body burns. By this point, they have done so much for each other that it’s impossible to even envision the show without Cas, and indeed imagine Dean without his love for Cas. And we don’t have to for very long, as he always comes back a few episodes later. Even knowing this, the episodes where Dean mourns Cas are so heartbreaking and haunting that I cried for days after watching them.

Dean is great with kids, and every time he’s not is completely the fault of whoever is writing him in any given episode. We see him bonding with Lisa’s son Ben in season 3 and 6, Jesse in the season 5 episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future,” and Lucas in the season one episode “Dead in the water”. With every child he meets, Dean gets on their level, empathising with them in a way most adults can’t. Like Claire and Jack, Dean has a complicated relationship with his father, who dies in the beginning of season 2 after bargaining his soul for Dean’s life to the demon that took their mother. Just like anyone else’s life, right? Must be Tuesday. This means Dean can relate to most children with traumatic backgrounds involving their parents, as a victim of parental abuse and having his mother die at age 4. I can’t find any sources to back this up, but a theory that rolled around in fandom was that Dean became mute after Mary died, which is what happens to Lucas after his father drowns. He says in “Dead In the Water” that he loves kids, and it’s true. As one tumblr user put it, Dean wanted to be baby trapped.

Dean carries the deaths and pain of his loved ones with him like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. When Claire is bitten by a werewolf, the characters administer blood of the sire wolf that bit her in order to cure her of her lycanthropy. Dean has to leave the room while she’s in pain, because he can’t bear to watch her die. The same goes for when Jack dies. Thankfully, Claire lives and Jack comes back a few episodes later.

When thinking about Dean being a father, I’m reminded of that scene from Scrubs when Dr Cox says he’s worried about being a father because his own dad was an abusive alcoholic. The difference between Dr Cox and Dean is that Dean doesn’t have his reservations about raising kids. He fits into Lisa and Ben’s life easily, at least for the first year, and we see a montage which includes him teaching Ben how to fix cars. When Claire lets her guard down enough to hug Dean, he hugs back just as hard. When he finally deals with the trauma of Cas dying in season 13, he accepts Jack into his life, and even grieves Jack when he dies. Dean escapes the intergenerational trauma that plagues his family by being a fantastic dad to the random kids who happen into his life by chance. He was born to be a father, and the fact that this show took that away from him and us as the audience makes me want to kick the showrunners into the sun.

Until season 6, Dean’s family only included men. The concept of the nuclear family—two sons, a husband and a wife—was ripped apart in the prologue of the first episode when Mary dies. Dean doesn’t know family for the first 5 seasons of the show outside Sam, John, Cas and Bobby. I do consider Ellen and Jo to be important to the story, but they’re only in a handful of episodes and die in season 5 for a reason that is plainly ridiculous. Did the Winchesters have to lose every single person in their lives to the fight? Clearly Kripke thought they were going to be cancelled after the fifth season, because it shows. And honestly? Maybe they should have. Let’s retroactively cancel the whole show. It can’t hold power over us anymore, because it’s dead and we cremated it.

But when Dean moves in with Lisa and Ben, he discovers a new type of family he didn’t have before, and new family dynamics. Instead of the 28-year-old son that Sam is to him, he takes the opportunity to teach Ben about cars and spend time with him and Lisa without the need to hunt. He gets a job, he makes some friends, and he lives the safe, apple pie life he begrudged Sam for in the pilot episode. It’s only when Sam reappears in his life that Dean’s codependency strikes again and he realises that he can’t live half in the normal world with Lisa and Ben and half in the hunting world with Sam. Sam says this himself in the first episode of Season 6, “Exile On Main Street”. Despite the ways Dean tried to settle down throughout the rest of the 9 seasons, the showrunners ultimately decided a man who was healing from trauma and alcoholism, who had adopted two kids as his own, and was learning how to bake cakes for his son’s birthday, deserved to die at the ripe age of 40, a week or so after he’d learned that his best friend was in love with him. You gotta laugh. Instead of getting the ending both Dean and we deserved—which was Dean settling down, opening a bar, and living the next forty years in relative gay peace while he got fat and watched Cheers reruns—well, we got something else. And I will always be bitter about that.

While it’s clear from the first season that he has reckless and suicidal tendencies, he doesn’t stop fighting to the bitter end. Even when faced with his own impending death in the season 2 premiere, “In my time of dying,” he fights to stay alive for Sam and John, while working the mystery that is overcoming his own death. Devastated as he is by Sam diving into hell at the end of season 5 and seemingly gone for good, Dean still gets up everyday and makes a life for himself in Lisa’s home. While season 6 was overall a bummer of a season, just god-awful in every aspect, saved from my complete vitriol only by “The French Mistake,” it did show us how great a dad Dean can be, and readied us for what was to come—being Claire and Jack’s dad. The lengths he goes to for his family are immense and all-consuming. As Cas says in “Despair”, Dean is a being of love. He loves everyone else, even when he can’t find it in him to love himself. He really thinks that he’s just a killer, not a father or a husband.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else, or before anyone else can love us. Sorry Rupaul, you old bitch. We are all deserving of love, because love sustains us and helps us grow. And when we don’t know how to, it’s through loving others that we can learn to love ourselves. If Dean knew what a great father and friend and husband and brother he is, if he could see himself the way others, in the show and out of it, see him, I think he’d burst. You don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties? Well tough shit, Dean Winchester, because I’m gonna devote an entire podcast to you.

I talked about Dean’s carefully curated list of likes and dislikes before but I’ll go into more detail now. Things he likes: guns; rock and roll; nice cars; women; fighting; scamming people at pool; back alley blowjobs, probably; pie; driving across the country; Ozzy concerts; cowboy movies; being in control of every little thing in his life. His dislikes are: flying on planes; hair metal; angels and demons; anyone who harms his brother, his best friend or his kids; boredom; and being jerked around.

Okay I literally cannot talk about the cowboy movies without mentioning that he makes Cas watch them with him, in his Deancave, and the implications of that make my head roll off my body and into the dirt. Like they literally have gay little movie nights and watch their gay little cowboy movies together and Dean says all the gay little lines. I said I wasn’t going to talk about his sexuality, but mentioning cowboy movies leads to Cas wearing a cowboy hat and saying “I’m your Huckleberry.” This makes me insane. Excuse me, I must have my daily scream.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. Have I? Let’s just move on. In the Winchester tradition of inherited family trauma, Dean gets all of John’s interests, and Sam gets all of John’s mistakes. Dean’s personality throughout the show is basically quippy remarks, pop culture references, laughing with food in his mouth, and grouchiness. In case you haven’t realised, he is amazing to me. Every time he fires a rifle or pistol? Couldn’t be better. Eating a burger made of out donuts? Fucking incredible. Even when faced with beings with untold power, he doesn’t lose his cool. One of my favourite exchanges is when Zachariah comes to Chuck’s house in the first episode of season 5, “Sympathy For The Devil,” and starts soliloquising at him, Dean tells him to “cram it with walnuts, ugly.” Cram it with walnuts, ugly. It’s been ten years and that still makes me laugh. Top ten Dean lines for sure. Like all of my main characters throughout the years of writing original fiction are just “Dean Winchester but girl,” and I’m a good writer, but I can never come close to the level of hilarity that he achieves. And every single writer on the show seems to get that. The only times I can think of where Dean’s characterisation has irked me on a writing level are in season 6—basically the entire thing—and the way he treats Jack in the later seasons, specifically late season 15. But it’s really rare for me to watch an episode and not enjoy Dean. Even throughout the Mark Of Cain era, which I loved, when things were very serious, he had such style and panache and held himself so confidently that I was like, wait maybe he made some points? Maybe he should kill everyone?

Dean is a hunter and a killer, but that’s not all he is. He’s very skilled in hand to hand combat, weaponry, and tactical manoeuvres. Even when something doesn’t go exactly to plan, he’s usually able to improvise something to end up with a win. Because he is the main character, his choices and reactions, while sometimes extremely problematic, are never questioned, and that’s to his detriment. In the last episode of season 14, “Moriah,” Dean is unable to kill Jack, but in early season 15, he treats Jack’s betrayal as Cas’s fault, because he can’t take it out on Jack. Cas leaves, but it’s framed as a good thing because Cas is Jack’s father, and has to take responsibility for what Jack has done. In this instance, I don’t blame Cas at all. Okay I rarely blame Cas for anything, including the things he’s done wrong, because no he didn’t and you can’t prove it. But he especially didn’t do anything wrong when Jack killed Mary, and he didn’t do anything wrong by killing Belphagor. But by the middle of the season, in the episode “The Trap,” Dean admits his wrongdoing in taking his anger out on Cas, one of the only people who loves him without conditions. You’d think this would be a defining moment of character progression, but then Dean chooses to act exactly the same way by throwing Jack under the bus. Like, throwing him harder, under a bigger bus. So what was the point.

Anyway, those are choices the writers made, and not Dean.

Going back to what I was saying about being neurodivergent, Dean has adhd. I know this because I have adhd, and I’m Dean-coded. He’s wildly creative, impulsive, has a touch of OCD, and he has a hard time making long-lasting friends, although this is mostly due to how all his friends die. His best friend is an autistic angel and the only reason they’re still friends is because they’re obsessed with each other, in like a really unhealthy way. One of the funny things about his and Cas’s relationship is that every time you see them in the same shot, Cas is standing perfectly still and Dean is constantly moving. They are almost complete opposites, aside from their queerness and neurodivergence. But then, I haven’t met a single queer person in my entire life who isn’t neurodivergent or disabled in some way. That doesn’t mean we can’t live perfectly functional and normal lives, it just means we’re better than everyone else.

Dean also exhibits black and white thinking—to him all felons are redeemable and all monsters should be killed. Felons are redeemable because he himself is a felon, and monsters should be killed because they all do monstrous things. When faced with the possibility of angels being real, he refuses to believe it for the first two episodes, because, as he says, “he’s never seen one.” Eventually he learns how to see in shades of grey and not kill every monster he meets, but this is because of his time in purgatory with Benny, his Cajun vampire boyfriend.

Another sign of Dean’s ADHD is physical sensitivity. In the season one episode “Bugs,” he comments on the shower’s water pressure. Like it’s a big deal to him, when he’s only ever used 1-star motel room showers. In the later seasons, he’s also seen to wear a fluffy robe and soft pajamas with hotdogs on them and socks that say “Send Noods” but noods spelt like noodles. And so he should! Dean deserves comfort! He’s a special boy.

ADHDers often have problems with executive function—remembering appointments, cleaning up after ourselves, showering, eating, even going to the toilet when we need to pee. The hunting life excludes Dean from the normal functions of usual life, such as dentist appointments, dropping the kids off at school, meal prepping for the week, or turning up to a job on time. These were only factors in Dean’s life during the gap between seasons 5 and 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben, and it’s not shown how his executive dysfunction impacted his suburban, settled life, but Lisa does mention that Dean drinks a lot. It’s another thing he inherited from John, much as I did my alcoholism from my father, and my adhd too. But Sam doesn’t drink to excess more than a handful of times over the entire 15 seasons, whereas Dean subsists on alcohol to get through the day. At one point in season 11, I’m pretty sure, don’t fact check me, he is shown to be drinking a beer at about 10 in the morning, because, as he says to Sam, “You drank all the coffee. What do you want me to do? Drink water?” Dean your liver must be quaking.

Excess is a common problem for people with ADHD. We have problems with limiting ourselves—because our dopamine machine broke, anything that gives us a little bit of high—such as sugar, sex, alcohol, stimulants, any kind of food that is bad for us but tastes real good—we usually have it in excess because we can’t help ourselves. In the season 4 episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” Dean eats the entirety of the candy in the Impala. The only reasons I don’t eat everything in my fridge every day is because, one, I don’t have the money, and two, it’s all ingredients I have to prepare and not ready-made food. Whereas Dean has only known fast food for the first 10 or so seasons until he starts cooking and baking and settling into domesticity. Like anyone who gets UberEats every day instead of cooking for themselves knows how expensive that is. He also engages in meaningless sex, although people have pointed that Sam actually gets more on screen action than Dean. But I know a lot of amab people who engage in casual sex with randos because it satisfies a base need. Dean could be classified as hypersexual in some regards, but I know what hypersexuality feels like and it’s like this overwhelming miasma where you can’t think about anything except how horny you are, and I don’t think Dean has that normally. Maybe when he was a demon in season 10, but generally I think he can control himself.

His settled life in the men of letters Bunker is a far cry from his flashbacks in season 8 to Purgatory. From what we know of purgatory, the land of gods and monsters, it was a year-long monster hunt, but without any of the boring paperwork. Dean got to fight and kill as many vampires, ghouls, leviathan, etc as came his way, which is why it’s absolutely ridiculous that he died by rebar in a vampire fight. He spent an entire year spilling blood and chopping off heads, day and night, and he dies by metal bar to the spine? And he’s not even coughing up blood? Andrew Dabb, I’m coming for you. Of course purgatory is the perfect place for Dean because it’s constant adrenaline, constant excitement, constant stimulation, which is what every day life lacks. Even Dean’s every day life is like, 20% monster killing and the rest is leg work. They go weeks or months between cases, and sometimes don’t find the monster at all. So I’m not surprised he gets bored easily and drinks. Would if I could too, my pal.

Which leads me onto Dwelling. Dean dwells on the horrors of his life in a way I do and my carefree older brothers don’t. In the season 4 episode “Heaven and Hell,” he reveals to Sam that he remembers his entire forty years in hell, and there are flashes of his memory littered throughout the season in creepy, split-second increments. He dwells on the people who die, doing his thousand-yard stare into the funeral pyre of everyone they cremate. In the most egregious display of dwelling, he rewrites history TWICE to deal with his grief — in season 8 he makes himself believe that it was his fault Cas didn’t come back from purgatory with him, and again in season 13 he invents the story of Jack controlling Cas to deal with his grief over Cas’s death. His PTSD twists the truth until it becomes another way to torture himself, because if someone gets hurt it’s on him; everyone who loves him is just one more person to disappoint.

On a lighter note, Hyperfixations, equivalent to Autism special interests, are a common trait of ADHD. Some of Dean’s hyperfixations include: hunting in general; cowboys and cowboy movies; the musical Rent; the movie Braveheart; larping. He loves dressing up and acting, and what is putting on a monkey suit and lying about being a Fed if not larping? Oh god the meta of that coupled with the season 4 episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book” is making my head hurt. And actually, the next episode of Holy Hell is on the subject of meta-textuality so stick around if that’s something you enjoy.

One of the amazing things about ADHD is creativity. Since we’re easily bored and easily amused, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of our curiosity. In season three episode “Bloodlust,” Dean decapitates a vampire with a miter saw, something that even veteran vampire hunter Gordon Walker comments is a thing of beauty. Dean creates a Ma’lak box in season 14 episode “Damaged Goods” as a way to contain Michael if he ever inhabits Dean’s body again. Dean is always making up words like “were-pire” and “Jefferson Starships,” and he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references in almost every line of dialogue. Like tv and movies raised me, but even I don’t understand a lot of his references. It’s almost like he’s a character in a tv show being written by dozens of people. But that’s not right. He’s a real person and my friend. My friend Dean Winchester, who shouts me burgers and passes out on my couch.

Also, I’m bragging now but as of the day of writing this I got my ADHD diagnosis and it feels so good to have a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, confirm my belief. After about three or four years of figuring out I have adhd and then trying to make everyone else believe me when I say I do, it feels like a huge weight off. Dean deserved to feel that. He deserves to put a name to his differences and be in charge of his life instead of letting his anger, confusion and impulses control him. If anyone is worried that you might have something and don’t know whether to pursue a diagnosis, my two cents are that it has only improved my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder in 2014 and it allowed me to go on medication, which snapped me out of the worst period of anxiety I have ever gone through and also a psychotic episode that featured talking walls and a swarm of Christmas beetles. Trust me, we all need help sometimes, and some people like me need more help than others, but you can take control of the forces in your life that hold you back. As my mother used to say to me when I was a child, the world is your oyster. It really fucking does get better, and since I started on the right anti-depressants for me my life has improved so goddamn much. The world is fucked right now, and it’s impossible to even function on most levels. We all need therapy. I myself have a gp, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist and they keep me relatively sane. I would not be alive if I didn’t have years and years of ongoing therapy and good drugs. Plus I journal everyday and practice gratitude. I’m still crazy but the craziness is contained and doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Despite never going to therapy, Dean grows from being a loner with one friend (his own brother) to someone with a wealth of connections and family. He picks up new people to love like he’s velcro, and when he goes in he goes all in. He would die for the people he loves. He’s constantly putting himself in danger to protect his loved ones. In the Season 6 episode “Let It Bleed,” Dean captures and tortures demons in an effort to find out where Crowley took Lisa and Ben. He then has Cas wipe their memories so that they don’t remember him and can live their lives without him, at his own great distress. In season 5, he goes to Stull Cemetery to impinge on the fight between Lucifer and Michael, just to be there for Sam. As Dean says, he’s “not going to let him die alone.”

That being said, I do have to talk about Dean’s very few, but ultimately life-ruining, flaws. His emotional dysregulation makes his moods unpredictable at best. By virtue of his black and white thinking, he forces the people he loves to choose sides between him and other characters, such as Sam and Ruby, Cas and Crowley, Mary and the british men of letters, and Cas and Jack, and when they don’t choose him, he passively aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, tortures them until something else usurps their betrayal. His anger issues are par to none, and often get him in a lot of trouble. But since he is the main character, he never really faces consequences for this, and neither does he mature. Even in the final season episode “The Trap,” while Dean admits how angry he is and how wrong he was for taking it out on Cas when Jack died, mere episodes later in “Unity” he turns Jack into a nuclear reactor to take out God, and Jack dies again. His characterisation in the last few seasons, especially in regards to Jack, is all over the place. I would have to start a murderboard to explain how Dean feels about Jack and how he reacts to what Jack does in every episode. Like, pictures and red string and everything. And even then I would not be able to comprehend exactly what the writers did and what they thought they were doing.

But unlike me, Dean always believes the best in people until proven otherwise, and he does always come around to the people who atone for their sins. Even when Sam refuses to get his soul back in season 6, Dean keeps trying until Sam is put right. Between seasons 7 and 8, He spends a year in Purgatory looking for Cas despite how Cas sent Sam insane, ingested billions of monster souls, and became God. When the people he loves choose him, he chooses them back.

But even when they betray him, lie to him, deceive him, and hurt the other people in his life, he can’t stop loving them. He never stops loving Sam or Cas or Jack or Mary or John or Bobby. He loves with everything he has. He is, as Cas says, a being of love.

Oof. That was a lot of words and I feel like I only just scratched the surface. Like realistically I just talked about fambily and ADHD. There is just so much to Dean Winchester that maybe I’ll make another episode sometime. But I am definitely making an episode purely about Dean’s gender presentation and sexuality in the future. You can find the show at holyhellpod on Tumblr where I post transcripts for the episodes and Instagram where I post memes.

I don’t see myself doing an episode about Sam any time soon, Not because I don’t like Sam, but because I can’t stand Jared Padalecki. He’s done some things that I can’t support, and I’m really bad at separating the art from the artist. Especially when it’s something like Supernatural, which is not art. Supernatural is an experiment. It’s not Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Like Jared Padalecki didn’t invent rock and roll, you know what I’m saying? However, if you really want me to do an episode about Sam, you can pay me 101 Australian dollars and 50 Australian cents at patreon.com/holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you next time.

Links

http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/dean-winchester-has-adhd/

#supernatural #spn #supernatural podcast #dean winchester #holyhellpod #transcripts

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buddiewho · 3 years

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This is about wanting QUEER representation across the LGBT+ community. This is not about there being 'too many' queer characters, and this is not about ignoring the other characters perceieved as heterosexual. It's about how often queer people are begging for scraps and by telling us to "get our rocks off" to the m/m couple in the other show defeats the purpose, because by golly do we want all the gays!!

Sometimes I often wonder how much personal experiences come into play when watching a fictional TV show. For example, many of us are queer. Many of us are LGBT+ watching 911. What I think scares some of the general audience is the idea of "too many" queer characters. "Too many." You can have one, and as for 911 it has two gay couples. Michael and David. Hen and Karen. They are not at the forefront of the current narrative, but they are there.

911 Lonestar of course has TK and Carlos who had a steamy meet up and yeah it got my rocks off. I am not going to lie, but in all seriousness if I were looking to ACTUALLY get my rocks off, I'm not finding it on a "censored" network television show. I can look for that in something else and somewhere else. Though the irony of telling me to go get my rocks to TK and Carlos is interesting, because in season 2 their relatonship went and disappeared a little bit. We had a little bit of growth into their relationship, but now it seems we're following a pregnancy storyline. I don't know I'm confused by Lonestar right now.

Some people also seem to think that just because I intrepret a character as bisexual (or any part of the queer community) means that I suddenly don't notice any heterosexual characters or I am perceieved to want "everything gay." Thing is, right now, hands down if you were to ask me what couple goals I want in life I'd look you square in the face and say, "Grace and Judd Ryder" from 911 Lonestar. That being said it doesn't mean that you couldn't pull from different types of relationships on the screen of whatever show you're watching and want something from each of them. Who knows, but if I were to praise a heterosexual couple then it's Grace and Judd Ryder, I love them so deeply; probably because of their overall loyalty and sense of committment.

Essentially, though, what this boils down to is wanting bisexual representation. There have been enough hints given on 911 to insinuate that there could be a little more to Evan Buckley's sexuality [and do I base this solely on the fact they have not scripted Buck as some 'no homo' type profusely denying the possiblity? Yes, mostly]. There's also the notion as to why we as queer viewers have to keep begging for scraps, and you want to talk about how the aforementioned gay couples on 911 are POC and are still put on a backburner so to speak? It's sort of happening to TK and Carlos as well, but especially just Carlos as a POC (latino) character who suddenly disappeared from the show if you ask me.

This also boils down to what we're going to perceive as enjoyment and most of us queer folks will not watch a TV show or movie if it's so overtly heteronormative/sexual. If there isn't a scrap and come on, we know we flock to the tiniest of queer shit mentioned- but if there isn't any then we're left kinda bummed. However, that doesn't mean you still cannot collectively enjoy something or even PAY attention to the whole narrative. If 911 can convince me of a straight Evan Buckley who co-parents the child of his best friend Eddie Diaz, then sure we can run with it. Although, I'm going to be miffed, because to most of us queer and especially BISEXUAL people we noticed the hints. We noticed something the show seemed to be implicitly or subtextually saying and so therefore I say "I can run with it" but it's going to come with some discussion over just how "straight" Evan Buckley is.

#there was a comment about how I should go get my rocks off to TK and Carlos #well #the way I get my rocks off is really no ones business #but you know I also had to write up something...#911 show #evan buckley

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callumsmitchells · 4 years

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my big bang is here!

thank you to @dinglexmitchell for being my beta and helping me!

thank you to @totallyradioactive15 for stepping in and doing some art at the last minute! you can find jess’ art here and here

i see your face in people i don’t know (ao3)

“Is that him again?” Jay asked, hearing Ben’s phone beep – a sign of a notification from Ben’s dating app, or, the one he refuses to acknowledge is essentially a dating app.

“It might be.” Ben rolled his eyes, taking his phone from his pocket and smiled. “Yeah, it is.”

Lifesahighway: it’s weird. being so open with you on here, but I couldn’t be like that with people I actually know

BigBen: you don’t actually know me? I’m hurt

It had been like this for a couple of months now, ever since Ben had been told about the forum in passing. It was a place solely for gay men, where they could just talk to people about their experiences in coming out, boyfriends – anything. At first, it was just a bit of fun, Ben going on there occasionally, looking at what people were saying, rolling his eyes at some of the dull stories people told. He was tempted to just splurge his entire life story out on the app, a story that could probably fill pages upon pages in spite of his relatively short life, but hey, he was a Mitchell, and a gay Mitchell at that. It was all fun and games, until he came across the user known as ‘lifesahighway’, and something just struck a chord with him.

You see, Ben’s story was long and complex, so much so that even he didn’t fully understand most of it. It was a long time ago that Ben had decided to boil down his life into pivotal moments. The areas he doesn’t remember at all, those being born, and being diagnosed with meningitis, thus causing him to have hearing loss and forced to don glasses. The traumatic events, those being losing his mum and subsequently flown back to the country he was born in to live with a parent he didn’t even know, watching his dad become even more of a raging alcoholic and on top of all that, dealing with the abuse he suffered at the hands of his step-mum. What didn’t fit into that category, however, were two huge moments in the life of Ben Mitchell. Losing who he lovingly referred to as the love of his life, and the trauma surrounding the horrific way in which that happened, and then the utter confusion of finding out his mum was actually alive, thus meaning that most of what had happened through his childhood, didn’t need to happen at all. The overriding arch in the tale of Ben Mitchell was, of course, that from a young age he wasn’t the most stereotypical of the Mitchells. He didn’t care for boxing or football or fighting. The music he listened to wasn’t the rock of London town past and present. He preferred to dance, and when he saw his family feuding, he was often the one to defuse the situation, throwing his scrawny body in between two or more huge men, knowing from a young age that he wouldn’t get hurt if he did that. When he was old enough to understand, he started to realise that he was different from the rest of his family, and most people around him: because he was attracted to men. It struck fear in him, the terrifying realisation that a Mitchell was gay, and that he was the gay Mitchell, because that didn’t happen. Mitchell’s were meant to get married to women, all long hair and white frocks and a bust up at the wedding, because what was a wedding in Walford without a fist fight? He was meant to create an heir, a legacy to carry on the Mitchell name and the Mitchell bloodline. He wasn’t meant to be gay.

And when he read this anonymous man’s story, he realised it was shockingly similar in some ways.

It was all about how he had struggled his entire life with his sexuality, and his family. His big brother, someone who he was meant to look up to, had struggled himself with substance abuse from a young age. His older brother had a daughter young, and the anonymous man had helped to bring her up initially, before her mum had taken her away. Then he was left with nobody but an abusive alcoholic for a father, his mum nowhere to be seen. All he wanted to do was run away and hide, rather than face the consequences of being around his father when he’d had something to drink. And then in his teen years, whilst all of his friends from school and on the estate were getting girlfriends and having sex and going out to drink on public parks: he worked. He spent all his free time, learning how to cook, working at a corner café, not far from his estate. The pay was shit, but at least he had some income, and now a lifeline, because learning to cook meant that he could apply for more jobs when he left school, with the skills he had learnt. And then his dad found out, and called him all the names under the sun, saying it was a poofs job to learn to cook, saying that his son wasn’t a girl, he wasn’t a jessie. He had been beaten, and then had managed to run for safety, finding solace in his friend’s house. When he was old enough, he signed up for the army and never looked back. Initially his sign up was to prove to his dad that he could be a man, but when he thought about it, really thought about it, he realised he signed up because he knew that he was gay, and he couldn’t be all those things his dad said he was. He just couldn’t. So, he trained and trained and proudly donned his army uniform. It was difficult, cooking for thousands of people each day, especially in the conditions he found himself in, ridiculously hot countries on the other side of the world, places he never even thought about visiting, hearing shouts and bangs and screams. It was whilst he was in the army, whilst trying to prove to himself that he was a man, not a queer, that he met someone important. The first person who he felt something other than hatred towards. Chris. With his bright smile and catchy laughter. At the time, he wasn’t aware of it, but the anonymous man was certainly in love with him, even if he couldn’t admit to himself, let alone anyone else. The real stinker came when they had both left the army, and Chris was involved in a head on collision, dying on impact. In the weeks and months that followed, he’d discovered that the feelings were very much mutual, and Chris had loved him too. Since then he’d moved house to a new part of London, had fit in straight away with the lifestyle there, and even reached out to his brother again, discovering that he was now clean. He’s still not out to a single soul, and even though he knows gay people in the area, he’s too terrified to even think about coming out himself, his past mentally scarring him.

#ballum big bang 2020 #bbb2020 #bbb2020 entry fic #ballum #ben x callum #ben mitchell x callum highway #ben mitchell #callum highway #myfic

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