im still so mad tho im mad about rizzles about swan queen about bering and wells about so many non-canon wlw ships because even tho we are starting to see more queer representation we still dont get slow burn relationships we get a few episode arc and then they hook up we dont get castle and beckett or booth and bones we dont get two characters finding a deep love over time we never get this we just get instant girlfriends or long term queerbaiting and im fucking sick of it im not satisfied with most canon wlw couples because they dont often get epic falling-in-love stories and i want that romantic shit
Everyone is mentioning different ships saying “this has all of that!” and they really don’t. Two or three episode angst isn’t a slow burn, really I don’t even call it a slow burn if they’re together by the end of the first season, but that’s all we ever get in these ships. Everyone claims it’s going to be a great slowburn and yet by two episodes in they’re always announcing their love for each other. Give me three to five seasons of “will they, won’t they” angsty looks, actual tension between them that grow with each season. Let them grow as friends first before introducing actual romance between them.
Because my mother told me that all I needed to do was get drunk and lie back and let my husband have his fun. Because if I was drunk, I’d be more relaxed and it’d be over sooner
Because my sister told me that I was trapping my husband in an abusive marriage, and that one day he was going to leave me
Because both of them looked at me in disgust
Because my asexuality is considered to be as great a crime against my husband as a woman who has affairs and cheats on her husband
Because my cousin didn’t even try to understand, and just kept asking ‘but what about in five years? how will you feel then?’
Because I was so afraid of my body and so afraid of sex that I didn’t seek medical help for a legitimate question for over a year for fear of being labelled a deviant or something broken
Because I still ask myself at least once every day if my husband wouldn’t be better off without me
Because I still ask myself at least once every day if I’m broken
Because I still tell myself at least once every day that I’m pathetic and useless and an abnormality
Because I love my husband with every fiber of my being, but everywhere I turn I’m told I really don’t, because love = sex
I need A to stand for Asexual because nobody ever talked to me about asexuality even when I was an outpatient at the women’s hospital for 18 months, and everyone told me desire would come in time
I need A to stand for Asexual because we are literally invisible, and so unimportant that people assume we don’t even need representation, because everyone assumes our lives must be bland and unimportant and lacking in challenges or bigotry
For every asexual that wants a relationship, for every asexual that does not want a relationship, for every asexual who has not yet come to terms with their identity, for every asexual who was told we were abnormalities, for every asexual who was told we just weren’t doing sex right, that we needed a good fucking, that we needed to be drunk, that we needed to relax, that we needed to be raped
We need representation, and we need visibility
That is why the A needs to stand for Asexual, and never for Ally
Fucking Important Post.
Just so we’re fucking clear, this blog is inclusionist. If that’s a prob, gtfo.
People don’t understand the enormous and insidious pressure aces are under to just give in and pretend you like it already. This at an individual and institutional level- look at the way psychologists treat people who don’t want sex, whether they are ace or not. Conversion therapy for aces is so normalized that people don’t even notice it exists.
hot take: the answer to the Bury Your Gays trope does not automatically have to be only having the purest, softest coffee shop au kind of queer media and only the most uwuified queer characters. we can have dark queer media, queer media in the suspense and crime and horror and any other genres, morally grey and morally bankrupt (or at least not one-dimensionally heroic) queer characters — all without killing off every queer character that shows up in the media in question for no damn reason.
queer characters don’t have to all remain saints in G-rated comedies in order to stay alive in their media or to be worthwhile to the people viewing that media.
When a showrunner decides to destroy a canon same-sex relationship through infidelity/cheating and then claims it is “equal treatment” because studies show there is approximately the same rate of infidelity in committed same-sex relationships as there is in committed opposite-sex relationships, they are LYING.
The rate of infidelity might be roughly the same, but what ISN’T the same – not by a fucking long shot – is how many happily-ever-after storylines same-sex couples get in media.
When you’ve given me 1.5million Hallmark rom coms featuring two women finding each other via contrived and often forced circumstances in the weeks before or after Christmas, and then discovering not only were they made for each other, but – somehow – their unlikely relationship has inspired the townspeople around them to be kinder/more emotionally open/less douchebaggy, bringing an unprecedented era of success and abundance to snowy Wingdancer-Springwood-Creekside-ville, then we can talk about adding infidelity into the mix because “equality.”
When you’ve given me 5.5million scifi/fantasy/superhero films where the poignantly earnest but less-than-competent soldier/loner/wanderer/farmer discovers her core of strength, her destiny, and the crafty little minx who’s the love of her life after being thrown into the deep end of some world-ending crisis, which she – along with a scruffy, mismatched band of marauders – narrowly averts with skill, innovation, and a little luck, then we can talk about adding infidelity into the mix because “equality.”
When you’ve given me 8.9million action films where the brusque, brooding former CIA agent with the big brown eyes and impossibly long, inky hair falls in love with the naive, scrappy innocent blonde with a price on her head and mouth that is going to get everyone killed, THEN we can talk about adding infidelity into the mix because “equality.”
Until then, it’s just another trope meant to show same-sex relationships as broken, unsustainable, inherently flawed, and other.
Same-sex relationships deserve ALL the tropes, not just DEAD, CRAZY, CRIMINAL, and CHEATER.
tv shows helmed by heterosexuals only know how to make existing characters gay in one way: by introducing the character to a new side character who appears visibly gay or mentions a past same-gender partner or whatever in one of their first conversations, then letting that dynamic develop at a rapid pace until they finally have an emotionally charged kiss. bonus points if the side character never meets any of the other main characters and if the main character they’re flirting with is at a point of feeling isolated from the main group, allowing the two of them to spend more time together.
you see this script everywhere: veep, the bold type, crazy ex-girlfriend (with darryl, but honestly it seems like maybe with valencia too), the 100, supergirl (really great job with this shit, the CW), etc. clearly i’m familiar with these arcs in a lot of lowbrow shit but i’m confident it appears at the prestige level too.
sticking to the same plot beats so predictably is a waste of the natural ability to analyze media that all gay viewers innately have. historically gays have been reading texts with a fine-toothed gay fucking comb to find lines loaded with extra intimacy and assessing that dynamic in a way straights don’t know how to. it is an insult to our intelligence to make everything so blatant and soapy. also this script reinforces some bad ideas. for one thing, the idea that gay people act and look “just like them,” but at some point in their lives they fall for one specific person who happens to be their same gender. this does happen, but making it the dominant narrative creates the impression that being gay is circumstantial; that without having met that one special person, they could have lived quite happily in hetero relationships until the end of time. this script also overlooks the huge amount of lgbt people for whom their identity is a huge part of their experience, and who came out not because they met that one special gay person but because they never could have missed that they were gay because every part of their personality screamed it at them since childhood. in crafting these somehow sexless yet overly romanticized friendships that develop along the same beats, straights neglect to understand that being gay isn’t a RELATIONSHIP, but a LIFE EXPERIENCE AND IDENTITY. it is not, for most people, a narrative arc that starts at 30 when we meet that one nice girl with short hair.
this is why so many times i have almost 0 interest in “canon” f/f ships and why so many of us latch onto “crack ships” harder and then straight people and/or writers call us ungrateful because “hey! you already have a canon relationship! why can’t you just be satisfied with what you get?”
while it had many other faults, poi did not follow this trope with root and shaw
can we also talk about how the only way they make characters queer from the outset is to have them already in an established domestic relationship so that they never have to show anything too passionate or sexual wrt the characters (ex: modern family, grace and frankie, the fosters, star trek discovery)
i guess i just wish we could have what the straights have for once. two main characters getting that slow burn sexual passionate romantic development of feelings, a will they-won’t they type situation, even overt fan service i don’t care i’m just desperate for it
honestly one of the most evil things is when a character is popularly headcanoned as gay by fans and then creators give them a heterosexual love interest just to put a stop to it because they hate gay people so much they can’t stand to see them identify with characters they love or have any sort of happiness at all
yes this post is about luke skywalker but also ryan from high school musical
Before I get going, I’m 75% deaf, as some of you know, semi-reliant on hearing aids and lip reading. My first languages were Makaton sign and then BSL. I now use spoken English.
There are a lot of issues I find with how deaf people are represented in books, when represented at all. I would love to see more deaf and hard of hearing characters in the books I read- without having to read books specifically about deaf/HoH people- but when I find them, they’re grossly undercharacterized or stereotyped. Authors write them in a way that sets signing language characters apart from speaking characters as if they are inferior, and this makes my blood boil.
Some technicalties
I’ll keep this brief.
You may have heard that “deaf” is a slur and you should use “hearing impaired”. Don’t. I’ve never met a deaf or hard of hearing person who believed that. Use deaf for people who are deaf, and Hard of Hearing (HoH) for people who lack hearing. These can be interchangeable depending on the person. This is why sensitivity readers are a useful part of the beta process.
Sign language is incredibly varied. It developes in the same way as spoken language. Fun fact: in BSL there are at least half a dozen ways to say bullshit, my favourite of which is laying your arms across one another with one hand making a bull’s head sign and the other hand going flat, like a cowpat. It’s beautifully crude, and the face makes the exclamation mark. Wonderful.
There are different sign languages. Knowing more than one would make a character multi or bi-lingual, even if they are non-speaking.
Makaton is basic sign language used by children, and it mirrors the very simple language used by toddlers.
Yes, we swear and talk shit about people around us in sign language sometimes, and no, it isn’t disrespectful to have signing characters do this. Just remember that we also say nice things, and random things, and talk about fandoms and TV shows and what we’re having for dinner, too.
Each signed language is different from another. ASL and BSL? Nothing alike. Just google the two different signs for horse.
Remember that sign language is a language, equal to the spoken word
Therefore, treat it as such. Use quotation speech marks and dialogue
tags. You only need to explicitly state that this character uses signed language once, and then let your modifiers and description do the rest.
It isn’t a form of “sub-speech" or “making hand actions”- sign language is a language all on its own: it has its own grammar rules, syntactical structures, punctuation, patterns, idioms and colloquialisms. For example, “what is your name?” becomes “Your name what?” with the facial expression forming punctuation in the same way that spoken English uses alterations of prosodic tone (inflections). There is even pidgin sign; a language phenomenon usually associated with spoken language.
In the same way that you would describe a spoken-English character’s tone of voice, you would describe a signed-English speaker’s facial expressions and the way that they sign- keeping in mind that these things are our language’s equivalent of verbal inflection.
So please, none of that use of “special speech marks” or italicised
speech for sign. If your viewpoint character doesn’t understand signed
speech, then you take the same approach that would be used for any other
language they don’t understand, like French or Thai. E.g “He said something
in rapid sign language, face wrinkling in obvious disgust.” is a good
way of conveying this. The proof that you’ve done this well is in whether or not you can switch “sign language” for French or something else, and it would read the same.
Don’t be afraid to describe how things are said, either.
Sign language is such a beautiful and expressive way of talking, and to
see a writer do it justice would be truly fabulous. Putting this into practise:
“Oh, I love maths!” She said, fingers sharp and wide with sarcasm. She raised her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry.” He replied and made his face small, but could not keep the grin forming. She was starting to laugh, too.
This is part one of two, for the sake of readability and keeping the information simple as I can. Part two- writing the deaf characters themselves- is coming up over the weekend. See you then and best luck with your writing until that point 😀
This is part of my weekly advice theme. Each week I look at what you’ve asked me to help with, and write a post or series of posts for it. Next week: settings and character development (including heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and every other kind of character).
Question of Smoke 