Going Where No One Goes @tuthithezebracorn - Tumblr Blog

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i hope everyone who reads ranked competitive breast growth appreciates just how tremendously bad the worst thing that could be written with that premise is. like. the sheer depths of slop that was avoided here

codegurl00

Reads the what now

tpwrtrmnky

the satirical trans comedy web serial Ranked Competitive Breast Growth that I write with @taliabhattwrites

tuthithezebracorn

I misread this as “competitive beast growth” and was very confused how it would become a trans thing, but then I started reading. Now imagining these idiots calling their tits ‘beasts’ to seem extra macho.

This is indeed much better than it could have been. If anyone is unsure, this is your sign to check it out.

I’m off to read chapter 2

overthinkingmoth

once again reminding that tgcf is about systemic violence

overthinkingmoth

JUN WU SUCKS BUT NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE BLAMED ON HIM

HE'S A PRODUCT OF SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE NOT THE CAUSE

tuthithezebracorn

And he is able to enact the violence he does BECAUSE of the system

candyskiez

The fact that people don't think friendship is enough to justify characters doing insane acts of love for each other baffles me. Like have you never loved your friend so so much you want to live in their ribcage. Have you never been really weird about a friend. Have you never wanted to bite your friends parents or shove them down a staircase. Have you never wanted to be buried in the same grave as a friend. Have u never. How do u people live like this.

ilovedthestars

I wish it wasn’t a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story

ilovedthestars

A lot of people really don’t understand amatonormativity as another dimension of “there is a right way to love people” that we have to dismantle.

Amatonormativity 101: Amatonormativity, a term coined by Elizabeth Brake, is the very prevalent idea that there is one relationship type that is above all others. This relationship is an exclusive/monogamous, committed, romantic and sexual relationship.

According to amatonormativity, this specific kind of relationship:

Is something everyone wants (or should want)

Is the most fulfilling relationship it is possible to have

Takes precedence over all other relationships in your life

This goes hand in hand with heteronormativity, which says that this ideal relationship also has to be straight. But if you remove that part, all the normative forces of amatonormativity still exist. And they suck for just about everyone! Amatonormativity says aromantic and asexual people will never experience the “highest” form of love. It says single people are inherently less happy than people in a romantic relationship and should always be actively looking for one. It says sex without romance or romance without sex are both lacking a fundamental part of an ideal relationship. It says polyamorous people are failing to choose the one person they can be fully devoted to. It says that your monogamous, committed, romantic/sexual partner is the most important person in your life—more important than your family, your best friend you’ve known all your life, etc.

I hope we can all agree that is something queer people, and also people in general, would benefit from dismantling!

Now let me talk about an example of what I was referring to in the original post.

If you’re not familiar, Elementary is a TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s a modern day adaptation featuring Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective for the NYPD, and Joan (rather than John) Watson, his sober companion and eventually detective partner.

Sherlock has many casual sexual relationships with women throughout the series, while Joan has a string of romantic relationships with men. Neither of them is textually queer (although Sherlock feels very aromantic-coded, if unintentionally, and I personally think an aro reading of both characters has merit).

However, the two of them share a relationship that defies amatonormativity. Sherlock and Joan share almost every part of their lives together—first because Joan is monitoring Sherlock to help maintain his sobriety, but soon because they have actively chosen to remain in each other’s lives. They eventually become partners as detectives but are also functionally life partners, living together, sharing their resources, taking care of each other emotionally and physically. At multiple turning points in the story, they express their love for each other. Throughout this progression, their relationship never becomes romantic or sexual. While Sherlock continues to have casual sex and Joan continues to go on dates, it’s clear that Sherlock and Joan remain each other’s most important person.

This relationship defies amatonormativity, and in my opinion that makes it queer. Queer as in breaking boundaries, defying norms, challenging the idea that there is any right or wrong way to love someone.

Now it’s time for my real hot take. There is a reason I used Elementary as an example, instead of the many other pieces of fiction that have a very similar dynamic between two characters of the same gender.

Those stories—stories that center a platonic relationship between two characters of the same gender, a relationship that remains platonic but is deep, devoted, and prioritized over other relationships in the character’s lives—are textually queer. They are not textually gay (although yes, many of them are subtextually gay). But that does not stop them from being queer stories.

If you want to read into whatever subtext might be there and interpret that relationship as a gay romantic/sexual relationship, that's great. But I wish more people shared my opinion that this is not making a previously normative story into a queer one. Usually, it’s trading heteronormativity for amatonormativity, creating a relationship that defies different norms.

I’m not saying that one or the other interpretation is more valuable (in general—which one is most meaningful to you is a personal preference). I think they’re both queer interpretations of the story. However, given how often stories like the ones I’m describing get accused of “queerbaiting” or simply “not being canonically queer,” I’m pretty sure my opinion on this is not widely shared.

In conclusion: Queerness is a much broader set of concepts than just gay romance. We should consider amatonormativity another dimension of oppression that queerness is in opposition to. Ship or don’t ship whatever is more fun or meaningful to you but please don’t assign moral righteousness to one kind of queerness while erasing another. Also, please be nice to aro and ace people, we already have enough to deal with. I wish none of this was a hot take. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

ilovedthestars

I've gotten multiple responses to this post that are basically along the lines of, "I mostly agree with this, but calling close platonic relationships 'queer' still feels weird to me. That's not what 'queer' usually means and I don't know if I'd use it to describe relationships like this."

And like. I appreciate that people are listening to my point and being receptive to it, even if it feels a little Out There to them! I genuinely appreciate the folks who aren't sure they get this but are hearing me out.

But I also keep wanting to be like. Yeah, that's my point!

We don't use 'queer' to describe platonic relationships but I think we should. (Or at least, should be able to, when it fits the circumstances!) I know, and I acknowledge directly in the post, that this is not a widely accepted usage of the term. I am arguing for an expansion of the term.

I can only make guesses as to what people with this kind of reluctance are feeling, but my best guess is that they're used to "queer" (or at least "queer relationship") being used mostly in reference to gay/lesbian/same-gender love and attraction. A lot of people mostly associate the word "queer" with gay romance. And while that's a big subset of queer experiences, honestly, I think it's a shame that it's often the only type of queer experience that gets talked about.

Queer is an umbrella term for a reason! Is there any reason "queer relationships" shouldn't include, say, friendships between queer/trans people? Or romantic/sexual relationships that could be considered straight, but include one or more trans people? Or, as I make the argument above, relationships that are breaking down the normative ideas of what kinds of relationships a person is "allowed" to have, regardless of whether the people involved are themselves queer?

Maybe that last one is a leap for some people, and you think that a relationship can't be queer if the people in it don't identify with any of the LGBTQ+ labels. I understand that reservation, but honestly, I think that there's so much social pressure against non-normative relationships that people who break them should get to be considered queer / in a queer relationship if they want, and that we should get to apply queer interpretations to characters in that kind of relationship as well.

(Also, like, a lot of people in non-normative relationships are in fact queer, especially aromantic and asexual. But if we aspecs can have fun with our queer friendships and queerplatonic relationships, I don't see why anyone else shouldn't be able to!)

Anyway, all that to say that if this is pushing your definition of queer a little bit, good! That's what I was trying to do! And I hope people come away from this a little more open to the idea.

If you still aren't really convinced, that's okay. If it doesn't change what you personally use the word "queer" for, I hope you still get something else out of this post—like learning about amatonormativity and starting to see it around you, or considering friendships in media through a queer / anti-amatonormative lens of analysis when it feels relevant. (Or just being more chill about aro and ace people in fandoms who don't ship your ships. Please. We would really appreciate it.)

And I just want to say, while I'm here: Thank you for the incredible response to this post. It's just over 10k notes as I'm posting this and I'm so happy that so many people are interested in this topic & my thoughts on it (and so grateful that the response has been 99.99% positive so far). To all the aspec folks who have told me I've put something into words that you never could—thank you, I'm truly honored and I love you all 💜💚. To all the people who have told me I've opened their eyes to something new—thank you for being curious and willing to learn! And to all the people who still don't get it but are here anyway—thank you for listening to what I had to say. I'm glad you're here.

tuthithezebracorn

I’m really glad this has resonated with so many people. In my experience, most allosexuals, even queer ones, completely subscribe to this idea that romantic and sexual relationships are always inherently more meaningful and more important than any other relationships.

As an aromantic person, I’ve never been able to understand that. I thought they were exaggerating for the movies and songs. I only realised the true prevalence of these norms after I came out as non-binary.

A loved one asked me very genuinely and kindly: “Who does a person like you fall in love with? Is it men or women?”. I had to think about my response. I couldn’t tell her, “no one.’ I could see in her face that she was trying so hard. Though it was confusing to her, she was ready and willing to understand the weird gender stuff - but she needed sexuality to make sense of it. If I were to tell her “I don’t fall in love and I don’t feel sexual attraction”, that would be even more world-breaking than the lack of binary gender, the change of name or even pronouns. Because people understand LGB-queerness through gender, and T-queerness through sexuality. They cannot separate the two.

I told her I didn’t have a preference, that it’s about personality for me. And I said I was pansexual, when asked for a label. This was my go-to for many years, since people tend to react unpredictably with asexuality.

#amatonormativity #platonic love #asexuality #heteronormativity

longsufferingcritic

One part of THW that might seem trivial but really bothers me is the erasure of Toothless as a disabled individual, and the ableist implications that he needed to "become normal" to get his happy ending.

The self-driving prosthetic is the same shade of black as his remaining tail fin - ostensibly it's coated with his own shed scales so it can be fireproof - and as such it hides the fact that Toothless is an amputee. The red tail fin was easily recognizable at a glance, but now you have to look really closely to notice he's wearing a prosthetic at all.

Before THW, Toothless openly preferred the "less advanced" red prosthetic when given the choice, because even if it was a visible difference and didn't make him 100% "normal", it represented his bond with Hiccup. He loved Hiccup so much that he never wanted to fly without him and was proud to have everyone know it.

But oh no, we can't have a physically disabled character be happy just the way they are - what would the love interest think?! THW makes Toothless resent his own disability in a way he never did before, because it comes between him and his love interest. The Light Fury isn't willing to stay with him when he can't fly, so when he's unable to follow her, we get this shot:

After his disability causes him to fall into the cove, he lifts his half-amputated tail fin in front of him, glares at it, and frustratedly slaps it down into the water, then looks at the sky with a forlorn expression.

Witnessing that is what compels Hiccup to finally bite the bullet and make the self-driving tail. Toothless is extremely excited about that because he wants to meet up with the Light Fury.

And he does, and the fact that he can now move both tail fins independently - in other words, the fact that his disability is completely mitigated and he can now pass for "normal" - is the very first thing he shows off to her. He clearly hopes she'll be impressed, and she is.

And then, once the third act comes to a close, he takes his new prosthetic to live in the wild away from humans forever. Normally I don't care about "realism" in a movie about fire-breathing dragons for obvious reasons, but this relies on several misconceptions about how living as an amputee actually works. Whether animal or human, prosthetics are typically not meant to be worn 24/7/365, since they can be uncomfortable or irritate the skin; in addition to needing breaks, they eventually wear out and require repairs or replacement.

Because of that, an animal could not return to the wild or live independently if it required a prosthetic to get around. Not that being interdependent with a human is something Toothless should be or canonically would be ashamed of, mind you. But the idea of his prosthetic holding up perfectly with zero issues even after a decade of constant use and no maintenance is just ludicrous. It's unrealistic about a disability that millions of real people actually live with, which I find in poor taste.

And that's supposedly the ending Toothless always wanted and deserved. When he had an observable physical disability, he was still able to be happy and thrive with his best friend who has the same type of disability. But come THW, he was eager to leave that life behind in favor of passing as able-bodied and living away from Hiccup, because the love interest who doesn't like Toothless's disability doesn't like Toothless's closest friendship either.

It's honestly a little maddening. Toothless was perfect just the way he was, and he knew it, and the narrative treated him as such. The fact he was an amputee was never a source of insecurity for him even when it made things challenging. He was never ashamed of being different; in fact, he was proud of how his condition brought him closer to Hiccup. That's such a heartwarming message to send with a disabled character, but THW threw it all away. Blech.