Yo, tumblr, I know you’re just dying for my TL;DR thoughts on this week’s new episode of Friendship is Magic and especially on neuroatypical!Pinkie Pie and why she rocks the house down.

Since I don’t know how much tumblr will screw with the sizes of my pictures:
text version posted here.

full-sized screencaps: one, two, three, four (this is where the neuroatypical!Pinkie rant starts), five, and six.

bitch-and-chips:

so a while ago i saw a post on how slash was radical and empowering, and then a widely reblogged rebuttal saying that no, it wasn’t, it was fetishizing, objectifying and often enforces stereotypes.

so this is my response:

slash fiction is not inherently radical. it is also not inherently not radical. it can be problematic. it can be misogynistic, it can be unrealistic. it can make light of mental illness, it can portray queer relationships in a woobiefied and overly dramatic way. it can enforce stereotypes, gender roles, the gender binary, patriarchy, and goodness knows it can portray queer sex incorrectly.

it can also be radical and empowering. sure, some of it sucks. some of it portrays queer life in negative or unrealistic ways. some of it doesn’t. some of it portrays queer relationships in a realistic light. some of it treats mental illness correctly. some of it understands that real life isn’t like the movies, that gay people aren’t a different species, that first-time sex is always awkward no matter who you’re with. some of it doesnt enforce gender binary, some of it doesn’t enforce patriarchy, some of it isn’t misogynistic. and when it is done correctly, it is radical.

why? we live in a heteronormative society, a society that forces people into closets and makes them deny who they are. it is still very much a part of our cultural values that queer is bad, sick, and wrong. queerness to the mainstream media is not a positive thing. being happy and healthy as a queer individual is an inherently radical concept because you are going against social norms to do so. you’re proving every house republican wrong. and thus portraying queer relationships in a realistic and positive light is a radical thing, simply because society dictates that such things do not exist.

I’m writing a TL;DR. Again. Until it’s done, have this lovely thing. ♥

Don’t mind me, I’m just having a Moment. My parents fell asleep with the Red Wings game on, so now I’m listening to the post-game sports commentary something or other, and I’m having a Moment. …Namely, one where. I don’t know. I want to catch up on SPN (I haven’t watched anything past “The Girl Next Door,” yet… despite having the AVI files ready for whenever I want them). I want to catch up because, if nothing else, Dean is my precious baby and if he’s getting as emotionally whumped as I’ve gathered he is from tumblr and LJ, then… I’ll at least have some delicious self-indulgence time.

But… I just can’t even with Supernatural right now. (Also, as a fair warning: this is really rambling and half-nonsense and way more TL;DR and Soapbox Sadie-licious than I intended, so… yeah, no hard feelings if no one reads it. Please, for fuck’s sake, consider doing something more productive with your life. It’s what Castiel would want you to do. ♥)

LOOK AT THOSE BIG BLUE EYES. LOOK AT HOW THEY’RE COMPELLING YOU NOT TO WASTE YOUR LIFE ON THIS DRIVEL.

Read More

crowleyshouseplant:

justawordshaker:

agentsex:

crowleyshouseplant:

• Lily: my touch killed my girlfriend. Think sex. Think how this is coded into lesbian sex is bad. But if she had been heterosexual then he would have died too! Except she was a lesbian. The first lesbian. The first queer on the show. You cannot toss aside bigger societal contexts when you don’t like them. period.
• Corbett: he is dead. and, much as I like the Ghostfacers, they were never meant to be taken seriously. Ever. At all. So, even though I’m more or less inclined to think that “gay love can pierce through the veil of death to save the day” was more sincere than a joke (because the moment itself had a sincerity that was markingly absent from the rest of their screen time)—it doesn’t change the fact that the Ghostfacers are seen and set up as a joke.
• the Cosplay Sam/Dean. To me, this goes back farther back—the convention is seen as a joke. Thus the “homoerotic subtext” lecture is supposed to be seen as a joke—this is confirmed by Dean’s and Sam’s reaction to it. Homosexuality is a joke. And, even though I think the actors who played the gay couple took it seriously, it was obvious that the writers of the episode and that the show in general did not.
• Crowley—is a demon. A bad guy (not even an antagonist). Also. The kiss between him and Bobby? Joke. The kiss between the banker and himself? Joke (compare the heterosexuality kisses—which were not to be laughed at—to Crowley’s—which were).
• Raphael: gender issues that are flagrantly ignored and delegitimized. (dude looks like a lady, the he/she bit with Crowley, etc.)
• and now Sue and Maggie

This is a running theme. So heterosexuals die all the time, don’t get your panties in such a fucking twist.

Bullshit.

Heterosexuals on this show are allowed to be sincere. 

They’re not always, /every single fucking time/, either turned into jokes or irrational bad guys.

So stop pretending it doesn’t matter. Because it fucking does.

this

…really? Really?

Okay, I can’t really fault you with the Crowley or Raphael bits (though the reason anything with Crowley is comical is because it’s Crowley not because it’s gay). But Lily, the Ghostfacers, and the cosplayers?

I’m sorry, but you got the wrong message there. 

Yes, the entire convention was a joke. But when the cosplayers admitted to being partners, that was far more serious. That part wasn’t a joke. It really wasn’t. How can we tell this? Because that admission is accompanied with Dean being told that being Dean and Sam - having someone to rely on - is everything. They were not a joke. Yeah, the head on the shoulder thing was a joke. But that’s what TV shows do. They take a serious moment and make it lighter.

Yes, the Ghostfacers are not really meant to be takent seriously. But Corbett’s death was the only serious part of that episode. He was the only character that wasn’t a caricature. He was seriously in love with Ed and the show did nothing to undermine that. Yes, they had the “go be gay for that poor dead, intern.” That was a joke. But when Ed actually talked to Corbett? It was surprisingly serious. Just because the Ghostfacers are set up to be a joke doesn’t mean they can’t be more than that.

Now to Lily. And this? This is where I think you got it the most wrong. You are basically saying they made her a lesbian just so she could kill her girlfriend. But what was actually implied in that scene when she said, “I touched my girlfriend”? Grief. Pity. When you watch that scene, you don’t think, “lesbian sex is bad!” You feel bad for Lily. It doesn’t imply that lesbian sex is bad. That’s just searching for things to find wrong.

In short, yes Supernatural tends to make a joke out of homosexuality. But they make jokes out of everything. And those jokes are littered with actual serious moments. 

I guess I didn’t want homosexual relationships to be correlated with wincest (which has always been seen as a joke) instead of standing on their own merits and strengths. Making light of their relationship with the head-shoulder thing is not okay when heterosexual relationships in the show are not treated in the same cavalier way and are, in fact, allowed to express their relationship with an actual, validating kiss (just look at Maggie and Don who were legitimized as a couple by the literal erasure/silence of Sue, a queer character, along with several other women and their passionate make-up/make-out scene). Heterosexualism is validated—queer relationships are not.

Regarding Corbett and the Ghostfacers, you are missing my point, and my op already acknowledged your point when I said that “the moment itself had a sincerity that was markingly absent from the rest of their screen time.”  However, it becomes problematic because a) the Ghostfacers are a joke! for the first half of the episode, Corbett’s crush on Ed was seen and set up as a joke! and b) the moment—the serious, beautiful moment, is literally /erased/ when Sam and Dean set up the magnet.

Read More

agentsex:

justawordshaker:

agentsex:

crowleyshouseplant:

• Lily: my touch killed my girlfriend. Think sex. Think how this is coded into lesbian sex is bad. But if she had been heterosexual then he would have died too! Except she was a lesbian. The first lesbian. The first queer on the show. You cannot toss aside bigger societal contexts when you don’t like them. period.
• Corbett: he is dead. and, much as I like the Ghostfacers, they were never meant to be taken seriously. Ever. At all. So, even though I’m more or less inclined to think that “gay love can pierce through the veil of death to save the day” was more sincere than a joke (because the moment itself had a sincerity that was markingly absent from the rest of their screen time)—it doesn’t change the fact that the Ghostfacers are seen and set up as a joke.
• the Cosplay Sam/Dean. To me, this goes back farther back—the convention is seen as a joke. Thus the “homoerotic subtext” lecture is supposed to be seen as a joke—this is confirmed by Dean’s and Sam’s reaction to it. Homosexuality is a joke. And, even though I think the actors who played the gay couple took it seriously, it was obvious that the writers of the episode and that the show in general did not.
• Crowley—is a demon. A bad guy (not even an antagonist). Also. The kiss between him and Bobby? Joke. The kiss between the banker and himself? Joke (compare the heterosexuality kisses—which were not to be laughed at—to Crowley’s—which were).
• Raphael: gender issues that are flagrantly ignored and delegitimized. (dude looks like a lady, the he/she bit with Crowley, etc.)
• and now Sue and Maggie

This is a running theme. So heterosexuals die all the time, don’t get your panties in such a fucking twist.

Bullshit.

Heterosexuals on this show are allowed to be sincere. 

They’re not always, /every single fucking time/, either turned into jokes or irrational bad guys.

So stop pretending it doesn’t matter. Because it fucking does.

this

…really? Really?

Okay, I can’t really fault you with the Crowley or Raphael bits (though the reason anything with Crowley is comical is because it’s Crowley not because it’s gay). But Lily, the Ghostfacers, and the cosplayers?

I’m sorry, but you got the wrong message there. 

Yes, the entire convention was a joke. But when the cosplayers admitted to being partners, that was far more serious. That part wasn’t a joke. It really wasn’t. How can we tell this? Because that admission is accompanied with Dean being told that being Dean and Sam - having someone to rely on - is everything. They were not a joke. Yeah, the head on the shoulder thing was a joke. But that’s what TV shows do. They take a serious moment and make it lighter.

Yes, the Ghostfacers are not really meant to be takent seriously. But Corbett’s death was the only serious part of that episode. He was the only character that wasn’t a caricature. He was seriously in love with Ed and the show did nothing to undermine that. Yes, they had the “go be gay for that poor dead, intern.” That was a joke. But when Ed actually talked to Corbett? It was surprisingly serious. Just because the Ghostfacers are set up to be a joke doesn’t mean they can’t be more than that.

Now to Lily. And this? This is where I think you got it the most wrong. You are basically saying they made her a lesbian just so she could kill her girlfriend. But what was actually implied in that scene when she said, “I touched my girlfriend”? Grief. Pity. When you watch that scene, you don’t think, “lesbian sex is bad!” You feel bad for Lily. It doesn’t imply that lesbian sex is bad. That’s just searching for things to find wrong.

In short, yes Supernatural tends to make a joke out of homosexuality. But they make jokes out of everything. And those jokes are littered with actual serious moments. 

Sure, Lily was a good person, and then she died. Do you know about the evil/dead lesbian cliche? 

How about how Ed and - shit, I forgot the Ghostfacer’s names. Whatever. The two main guys. They summed up the episode by saying “gay love can pierce the veil.” Gay love. Not just plain, regular love. There is love, like Dean’s love for Sammy or John’s love for Mary, and then there is gay love, which is inherently funny. You take something regular and make it gay and that’s funny! Like when Dean caught Sam having a wet dream and asked him if it was Brad Pitt. See, it’s funny because it’s gay!

This show is great with handling QUILTBAG issues in theory. Like when Castiel, as God, said he was “utterly indifferent to sexual orientation.” That was great! But at the same time, Castiel is a character who is very likely to be both genderqueer and asexual and the show is completely unwilling to examine either issue. Dean teaches him to act like a cisgendered straight guy - don’t watch porn in a room full of dudes, have you ever been with a woman - without even considering any other possibility. 

How about Bobby and Crowley’s kiss? How Bobby lied about it, like kissing a demon in a female’s body is more acceptable than kissing a male demon? How about Bobby telling Dean that his first girlfriend turned out to be a (guy) and Dean hanging up the phone before he could finish? How about the (possibly gay) magicians sending Dean to a gay S&M club? It could have been a straight club, right? Oh, but that wouldn’t be a joke then. Dean might be into that. Make it gay, then it’s funny.

Crowley’s implied homosexuality is classic “gay villain” stuff. See, he’s gay and he’s evil, and he’s going to make the heroes feel uncomfortable by hitting on them. Something no decent character would do.

And the many, many jokes about Dean and Sam being mistaken for partners - how many of those are about Dean and Sam being squicked out by the implied incest? And how many are Dean defensively insisting that he’s not gay? 

It is always a joke, and it’s not okay.

Also, I don’t see how “opportunism” is supposed to be a bad thing, or why Hermione’s trait is “egotism.” She doesn’t have an overinflated sense of her own intellect. On the contrary, as her boggart in PoA showed us, she’s motivated primarily by having little to no faith in her own intellect and abilities; she’s most terrified of failure and disappointing the authority figures who offer to validate her. Just because Severus calls her an “insufferable know-it-all” doesn’t mean that it’s TRUE, folks, and just because her catchphrase is, “Honestly? Haven’t you two read Hogwarts: A History?!” doesn’t mean that her flaw is egotism.

Just a thought.

1. Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles.  (Harry Potter)

2. Jealousy is a secondary emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity and fear. (Ron Weasley)

3. Egotism is characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one’s intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics. (Hermione Granger)

4. Anger is an emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. (Draco Malfoy)

Uhm. How about the way you spent the entire series building Voldetroll and, eventually, Bellatrix, among others up, as entirely terrible and irredeemable people who never even had a chance? Or how about the way that the narrative condones the anti-Slytherin, “they’re all doomed to be evil forever~” bias shown by… pretty much everyone? Or the way Marietta Edgecombe, Pansy Parkinson, and other minor female characters are reduced to roles like THAT GIRL WHO SNITCHED OUT THE DA, and THAT BITCH IN SLYTHERIN, and so on, and the reader’s just expected to agree with that assessment and not question it at all?

SO YEAH. ABOUT THAT QUOTABLE, JKR.

singingtomysoul:

amorremanet:

singingtomysoul:

sassbutt:

singingtomysoul:

myfeetlitup:

singingtomysoul:

rin-wolfy:

YES

Ariel got rid of her voice because, as was established for anyone who watched the movie for five minutes, she was fascinated with and dreamed of being a part of a culture she was not born into and having a body she was not born with.  This was established long before she met any human, much less Eric, who she originally wanted to meet on her own terms and in her own body before her father violently destroyed her possessions and made it clear he was never going to try and understand her feelings about something that had become a huge part of her life and wishes.  A sixteen year old girl willing to deal with a known monster, transform her body, and turn her back on everything she knows in order to get what she wants rather than accept what her society dictates or be concerned with the dangers is one part stupid and foolhardy and one part self-possessed and brave as shit.  It also feels very much like a trans metaphor to me, trufax.

Belle is still a BAMF though.

Just continue with winning all of the awards.

 #everyone fucking forgets jasmine or slut-shames her for using a guy’s sexual harassment against him

Wha???

This actually happens?

And here, I always viewed her as clever and resourceful….

I swear to God there was one of those obnoxious documentaries talking about how Disney shows poor feminist examples while taking every single story they’re talking about out of context, and they said that Jasmine pretending to be into Jafar/kissing him to distract him while Aladdin rescued her was some stupid thing about a bad way to teach girls to display/use their female sexuality?  Or something like that?

Which is a case of super duper victim-blaming if I ever freaking saw one…

#i have feelings about the little mermaid #and about disney girls #disney has massive race issues #but i can take some serious role model-ing from any of the stories post-renaissance #especially jasmine #everyone fucking forgets jasmine or slut-shames her for using a guy’s sexual harassment against him#jasmine is AWESOME #and aladdin is a pretty good demonstration of how to teach guys to behave like human beings

Aladdin has always been my favorite for this very reason. Well, one of. But it’s way up there. I feel like everyone also forgets about Megara, but I suppose she isn’t technically a princess. Then again, neither is Mulan and no one forgets her. So idk. Point is, Jasmine and Megara are awesome. 

Megara’s amazing but I guess because a lot of her issues come from men and she’s getting revenge on a man and she spends the majority of the movie enslaved to a man before being saved by falling in love with another man there are problems there on a meta level.  But she is just such a stone-cold badass that they really took something that could have just made me squirm and gave her agency and made her compelling and I just really loved her.

Also, only Slytherin Disney girl I can think of so whee! 

#belle is awesome no doubt #they are all in their owns ways if you bother to look hard enough

I think Tiana’s possibly a Slytherin, maybe? She might also be a Gryffindor, since they’re ridiculously similar, but… her driving motivation in the movie is to get what she wants. And she’s RIDONKULOUSLY oblivious to all the indications throughout the movie that, maybe, what she wants and what she needs aren’t the same thing. Like… she is the ONLY ONE who comes out of “Dig A Little Deeper” unchanged. At the end of the song, Naveen’s gone, “oh hey, I’m IN LOVE with Tiana, holy shit,” Louis has accepted that Mama Odie isn’t going to just turn him human because he asked for it, and… Tiana goes, “I HAVE TO DIG A LITTLE DEEPER AND WORK EVEN HARDER TO GET MY RESTAURANT!” She’s so blinded by her “I want it, I’ve worked for it, and I WILL GET IT OR ELSE” ambition that she doesn’t realize she’s in love with Naveen until she thinks she’s lost him.

So… y’know. She’s not underhanded or evil or a cold hard bitch or anything, but… Slytherin’s thing IS ambition~ and the seeds of greatness~ and I think Tiana definitely qualifies on both counts. Slytherin would be LUCKY to have her grace their dormitories.

and re: the original meme… *blinks* I. …but. …but. …if we’re going to go applying realism to one Disney princess (Ariel), then why not point out that there are some seriously questionable undertones in Belle and Beast’s relationship? By which I mean, “vaguely abusive and/or Stockholm syndrome-y, depending on how you look at it”? …so. …yeah. Logical consistency: it’s a good thing.

Shaming fans of one princess while lauding another one at the first princess’s expense: it’s a BAD thing.

Pssh are you kidding Tiana is a stone cold Hufflepuff.  No shortcuts for her, she will get her dream by plowing the hell away at it and nothing else.  Doesn’t even consider asking her extremely rich friend for a handout when a Slytherin would be shaking hands all up in that mess, spends all her time with Naveen going BUT YOU ARE MARRYING LOTTIE MY FRIEND WHO I AM LOYAL TO STOP CHASING SKIRTS, she’s friends with Charlotte since they were like five, still chills with her mom, is guided by her family in the form of her dad…  That whole end sequence with Facilier is her being tempted by the Slytherin side and she blinks for a second because oh hey she did all that stuff and it didn’t work because racism (someday I will talk about why I love Facilier so freaking much because of the race issues present subtextually in that movie) but in the end she’s like “lol no” and she never once considers getting what she wants by anything other than plugging away until she earns it.  Hufflepuff.  Slytherpuff, but Hufflepuff.

Sorting is so freaking fun oh god why can’t I get paid for this nerdy shit.

sfgkhetgk, NOW I WANT TO SORT THE DISNEY GIRLS BUT I ALSO WANT TO SLEEP. AND THE DECISION IS REALLY HARD. ><

singingtomysoul:

sassbutt:

singingtomysoul:

myfeetlitup:

singingtomysoul:

rin-wolfy:

YES

Ariel got rid of her voice because, as was established for anyone who watched the movie for five minutes, she was fascinated with and dreamed of being a part of a culture she was not born into and having a body she was not born with.  This was established long before she met any human, much less Eric, who she originally wanted to meet on her own terms and in her own body before her father violently destroyed her possessions and made it clear he was never going to try and understand her feelings about something that had become a huge part of her life and wishes.  A sixteen year old girl willing to deal with a known monster, transform her body, and turn her back on everything she knows in order to get what she wants rather than accept what her society dictates or be concerned with the dangers is one part stupid and foolhardy and one part self-possessed and brave as shit.  It also feels very much like a trans metaphor to me, trufax.

Belle is still a BAMF though.

Just continue with winning all of the awards.

 #everyone fucking forgets jasmine or slut-shames her for using a guy’s sexual harassment against him

Wha???

This actually happens?

And here, I always viewed her as clever and resourceful….

I swear to God there was one of those obnoxious documentaries talking about how Disney shows poor feminist examples while taking every single story they’re talking about out of context, and they said that Jasmine pretending to be into Jafar/kissing him to distract him while Aladdin rescued her was some stupid thing about a bad way to teach girls to display/use their female sexuality?  Or something like that?

Which is a case of super duper victim-blaming if I ever freaking saw one…

#i have feelings about the little mermaid #and about disney girls #disney has massive race issues #but i can take some serious role model-ing from any of the stories post-renaissance #especially jasmine #everyone fucking forgets jasmine or slut-shames her for using a guy’s sexual harassment against him#jasmine is AWESOME #and aladdin is a pretty good demonstration of how to teach guys to behave like human beings

Aladdin has always been my favorite for this very reason. Well, one of. But it’s way up there. I feel like everyone also forgets about Megara, but I suppose she isn’t technically a princess. Then again, neither is Mulan and no one forgets her. So idk. Point is, Jasmine and Megara are awesome. 

Megara’s amazing but I guess because a lot of her issues come from men and she’s getting revenge on a man and she spends the majority of the movie enslaved to a man before being saved by falling in love with another man there are problems there on a meta level.  But she is just such a stone-cold badass that they really took something that could have just made me squirm and gave her agency and made her compelling and I just really loved her.

Also, only Slytherin Disney girl I can think of so whee! 

#belle is awesome no doubt #they are all in their owns ways if you bother to look hard enough

I think Tiana’s possibly a Slytherin, maybe? She might also be a Gryffindor, since they’re ridiculously similar, but… her driving motivation in the movie is to get what she wants. And she’s RIDONKULOUSLY oblivious to all the indications throughout the movie that, maybe, what she wants and what she needs aren’t the same thing. Like… she is the ONLY ONE who comes out of “Dig A Little Deeper” unchanged. At the end of the song, Naveen’s gone, “oh hey, I’m IN LOVE with Tiana, holy shit,” Louis has accepted that Mama Odie isn’t going to just turn him human because he asked for it, and… Tiana goes, “I HAVE TO DIG A LITTLE DEEPER AND WORK EVEN HARDER TO GET MY RESTAURANT!” She’s so blinded by her “I want it, I’ve worked for it, and I WILL GET IT OR ELSE” ambition that she doesn’t realize she’s in love with Naveen until she thinks she’s lost him.

So… y’know. She’s not underhanded or evil or a cold hard bitch or anything, but… Slytherin’s thing IS ambition~ and the seeds of greatness~ and I think Tiana definitely qualifies on both counts. Slytherin would be LUCKY to have her grace their dormitories.

and re: the original meme… *blinks* I. …but. …but. …if we’re going to go applying realism to one Disney princess (Ariel), then why not point out that there are some seriously questionable undertones in Belle and Beast’s relationship? By which I mean, “vaguely abusive and/or Stockholm syndrome-y, depending on how you look at it”? …so. …yeah. Logical consistency: it’s a good thing.

Shaming fans of one princess while lauding another one at the first princess’s expense: it’s a BAD thing.

clockworkbard:

Okay, I’m going to rain on the collective parade here: so what? First of all, none of the dates we agree on are actually in canon; JKR just kind of approximated things, and beyond, “well, CoS comes after PS, and PoA comes after CoS and PS, blah blah, progression of Harry’s school years stuff” the dates are wonky. Like Cornelius Fudge for some reason thinking Margaret Thatcher was a dude.

There’s no set dates on anything, most likely because JKR hates doing math (I present as evidence, the very existence of “Flints” and the fact that they are so-named because Marcus Flint apparently had eight years at Hogwarts and JKR failed to notice that until it was pointed out to her), and probably also because it makes the story seem more like it could be happening when-the-fuck-ever, in some vaguely analogous to our own time period.

The biggest indicators we have to any set time period are: that Harry wears jeans (so… it’s sometime after the 1950s-ish, when jeans started really getting popular as casual wear); that Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald in 1945, as per the Chocolate Frogs card (which doesn’t really give us diddly squat about the time period in which the books take place, aside from establishing that Grindelwald should be interpreted as analogous to Hitler); that Dudley has a Playstation, which he chucks out the window in GoF (c.f. chapter 2, “The Scar”; page 25 in my edition, in Harry’s letter to Sirius; ergo, GoF takes place sometime after 1994. I’ll note: JKR just calls it a PlayStation, which could refer to basically anything put out by said company; given the fanon-ly agreed upon dates, it most likely refers to the original PlayStation console, which is funny… since GoF is supposed to start in summer 1995 by fanon reckoning and the PSX wasn’t available in North America or Europe until September of that year); and that, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione go on the lam in DH, they don’t bring cellphones, which means it has to be sometime BEFORE say… approximately between 2005 and 2007, which is when I remember cellphones being cheap and reliable enough that my parents didn’t yell at me for, say, texting my friends too much or using my phone to do something other than call and ask when my sister and I were getting picked up from school, or to call during an emergency.

Yes. I’m factoring in the mythical ~Time Before Cellphones~ here. To explain: basically, Astrid is writing me Supernatural/HP mash-up AU fic with Hufflepuff!Dean (wherein he is Cedric, and Cas is Viktor, and Sam is Harry, and Bela is Fleur, and basically, GoF happens, but with different characters, and then Dean and Cas had kinky sex forever after, the end), so we’ve been discussing HP stuff, and last night, we wound up talking about various ways in which a lot of bullshit could’ve been averted. Like, for instance, maybe Harry and Hermione, since they Know Shit about the Muggle world and Death Eaters totally don’t have tracking software, would get cellphones in DH, thus meaning they could move around and not lose each other or Ron. …The fact that they don’t do so could be excused with, “well, duh, they’re wizards” …except that, again, MUGGLE KNOWLEDGE. Hermione, especially, has no reason not to think of cellphones as an idea… unless there’s a reason why she wouldn’t.

Like, for instance, cellphones being really expensive and notably unreliable. Like they were until rather recently.

…so, yeah. I’m going to be over here, then. Raining on everyone’s parade and going, “No, guys. This is JUST A COINCIDENCE. JKR didn’t specify dates on jack squat, and besides, do you even know how much time and work goes into publishing a fucking book? Why would Scholastic and Bloomsbury go through the effort of scheduling some ~significant release date~ for the first book out of seven, only a few of which would’ve been anywhere near completion at the time, when they didn’t even know it was going to be as wildly popular as it wound up being? LOGIC. GET YOU SOME.”

(In this gif, I’m Spock, and everyone whose fun I’m ruining is Scotty.)

Hmm. Interesting question, nonny.

And I originally wrote a huge, TL;DR screed… but most of it was really rambly and nonsensical and irrelevant, so… this will probably still be TL;DR, but I’ll try to keep it brief.

Firstly, I want to squash the whole “canonicity” discussion that fandoms bring up. In other conversations, yes, it’s a fair point to bring up and respect for the works we flail over is hella sexy. In this particular discussion, though, it stinks like trans*phobia, especially since, at its heart, writing a fic with trans*!Kurt or genderqueer!Quinn or gender pirate!Dave or basically non-cis*!anybody exists in the same nebulous area of reinterpreting canon as most shipping fics. So… basically? Unless someone has never written a shipping fic, made shipping fanart or fanmixes, taken part in a discussion of shipping, or so on, they have no place to call non-cis*!anybody fanworks “not canon.”

As for the specific question: I’m generally in favor of any fanworks that want to take on gender issues, as long as they’re done sensitively. Which can be a hard line to walk in fic, if you’re working with a first-person POV or third-person limited POV character. (I don’t know why people write first-person fic, but… then, I have to be in the right mood to enjoy first-person anything, let alone write it, so… I’m biased.)

Like… for example: I remember back in the early days of the Glee fandom (like, around the first airing of “Mash-Up” early days), I saw some fic that was eventually going to be Puck/Kurt, and it involved Kurt transitioning and becoming Kourtney.

And… I don’t remember a lot of specifics. (The one scene that sticks out is Puck accidentally seeing Kurt and Artie in a disused classroom, and Artie is helping Kurt administer hormone injections.) But what I do remember is that the fic had to walk a fine line between keeping true to Puck’s POV and still being sensitive to what Kurt was going through — which was obviously difficult, since, aside from Beth, being offensive was Puck’s pre-character development raison d’être .

So… I’m sort of generally in favor of fandom exploring gender stuff. It’s something that I personally like reading and writing about, and I wish more people were interested in it, because I think it’s a really important part of being alive. And so on, and so forth, personal biases.

As to the characters themselves: my friend, Penny/rebootingfromstart, has a more developed idea of trans* girl!Kurt and why he seems like a trans* girl, rather than a camp gay stereotype, to her in canon. It’s not my personal reading of canon, but it’s one that I like. There are various reasons why I think it makes sense, especially given some of Kurt’s lines like, “Speaking as an honorary girl” and, “Fashion has no gender.”

That said, trans* guy!Kurt would also make my heart super-happy for the same reason that trans* girl!Santana would: in these cases, the characters would have transitioned and defied a lot of the prominent stereotypes about trans* people. They ESPECIALLY would’ve defied the idea that trans* people are all heterosexual (that is, the mistaken assumption that all trans* people are attracted to people of the same sex and gender that they’re assigned at birth, so by transitioning they “become straight”) by being a gay trans* guy and a trans* lesbian. And, again, there are different canon instances that can be spun in support of each — Santana’s fear of being openly in a relationship with Brittany could be due to how it would be super turned against her, not just because she’s a lesbian, but because of how trans* lesbians are maltreated by a lot of mainstream cis*, hetero society (and even within LGBTQIA+ circles — I AM LOOKING AT YOU, TRANS*PHOBIC “RADICAL FEMINISTS”). Kurt’s fear of sex could come not just from general adolescent insecurity, but from how, much like this hypothetical reading of Santana, he’s transitioning and experiencing difficulty getting used to his body again, not to mention dealing with being sneered at by various people and groups for not being a stereotypically hypermasculine trans* guy, for transitioning and being gay, and for otherwise defying the prescribed narrative of the trans* experience (written by cis* people and highly exclusionary).

As for Quinn… This is hard for me to be objective about, just because Quinn is one of my bbs. I love her to pieces, and just like I’m pretty much always in favor of exploring gender and sexuality in literature and art (be it fanworks or original or more scholarly-minded stuff), I’m pretty much always in favor of exploring Quinn and what’s going on underneath her surface, since… whether or not the writing intended for the layers to be there originally, Dianna and the editors put them there, through carefully choosing which takes to use and through being a wonderful actress. And so, so much of Quinn Fabray is hidden in all those little nuances. It’s why I love her.

…I may have just made myself crossover ship her with Bela Talbot, because Bela is similarly layered and nuanced, and there’s so much of her that’s hidden in the briefest of tics, and that’s why I love her. …anyway.

Genderqueer!Quinn would be interesting to see done, and I think someone trying to make a case for it would… actually have a lot of their work done already by the majority of the Faberry shippers and their delicious character analysis meta. Obviously, the “Quinn is a repressed lesbian” arguments wouldn’t be the same as the ones for “Quinn is genderqueer” — BUT they’ve come up with a lot of lovely lists of quirks that Quinn has and possible interpretations of them, and it’d be possible to build off of that. The real challenge I see would be in keeping the fic from stagnating into telling and internal monologue without any action, just because… like I said, Quinn exists in her layers, and if she’s repressing her gender identity (which she wouldn’t have to do, but… it makes the most sense to me, at least as a starting point for her), it’d be really easy for her to close it off and… basically, a writing challenge, show don’t tell, yada yada, creative writing 101.

…and now I’m reminded of a Criminal Minds fic I should, like. try to finish someday. …I mean. There are two I should try to finish — one, I have no real excuse for not finishing, since I was almost done with the last installment when I basically got distracted and forgot about it. Plus, I was getting a little bored with my fic that should really just have been summarized, “Reid finds Gideon while working a case. In Search of Lost Time ensues. Reid intentionally orders Frank’s favorite milkshake to put Gideon on edge. Gideon ain’t even bovvered. More In Search Of Lost Time ensues. Oh, and did I mention Morgan/Reid? Because… Morgan/Reid.”

…but the RELEVANT one was a comment_fic prompt for androgynous!Reid that really grew on me. …and then came the time to write the chapter that really heavily dealt with Tobias Hankel, Dilaudid, addiction and recovery, some disordered eating (which admittedly had been in the fic already, but… it was going to get worse), and other not-so-nice things, and everything was triggering forever, and I got anxious about a comment I got on it that made me go, “but… but I didn’t intend for it to come off that way *flails* D:” … sooooo. Finishing the thing never happened. Oops.

sfkghg. *flails* uhm. I’m sorry if this answer really sucks. Sick. Tired. Frazzled. Trying my best? ♥