it’s psychological horror to YOU. to me it’s a romcom

it's a romcom to YOU. to me it's psychological horror

it’s psychological horror to YOU. to me it’s a romcom

it's a romcom to YOU. to me it's psychological horror

it’s psychological horror to YOU. to me it’s a romcom

it's a romcom to YOU. to me it's psychological horror

alcoholism is a problem in the lgbt community yes but there's something weird and mentally disconnecting about trying to say that's because there's too many gay nightclubs or whatever instead of the reality that being lgbt is just genuinely oppressive and will push people to maladaptive coping mechanisms. like did we forget that people become alcoholics for a multitude of more reasons than because they went to a club once

alcoholic dyke here and i think a lot of nuance has been lost in this conversation.

i've been here for all of it (i don't know if you have, OP, so forgive me if this sounds condescending at all) and i pretty much watched it happen and was annoyed and upset the whole time, 'cause you are fundamentally correct--being marginalized is a hell all its own, that is the root of why we have higher death and addiction and suicide and mental illness rates. i don't think anyone was ever insinuating otherwise, at least not anywhere i've seen it.

but from what i saw on this website & other online spaces vaguely adjacent, it went like this:

2. young queerfolk, alcoholics, disabled queers (with both physical & sensory sensitivities), and many other groups that fell in agreement with this for their own personal reasons added onto the sentiment. at the time (over a decade ago, give or take?) it was not the norm to have many other options besides 1. bar/nightclub or 2. GSA, if you were lucky enough to have one at your school/university.

3. of these groups that showed support for this sentiment were sex-repulsed asexual people who felt uncomfortable with the sexual nature & unspoken pressure to 'hook up' at gay bars & night clubs.

4. around 2014, exclusionists on this website decided that it was trendy to violently abuse asexuals & aromantics for clout. every single thing the aroace community did on tumblr was met with meangirl backlash at best and relentless vitriol at worst. this more or less destroyed the aroace community and it has still not recovered to this day.

5. one of the most potent forms of propaganda leveled at the ace community was malicious reframing of sex-repulsion as a concept. the sex-repulsed ace is, obviously, just minding their own business and living their truth--but exclusionists intentionally framed them as virulent, homophobic prudes who went around telling the ~real~ queers where they were and were not allowed to have their Gross Faggot Sex, etc etc.

6. one of the most effective ways they propagandized this was by out-of-context circulation of posts like the one i posted above.

(and, occasionally, actual psy-ops where users would pretend to be asexuals and intentionally post cringey, anti-sex, anti-kink, homophobic nonsense and of course the 'no internet skepticism skills' website believed it)

7. posts like this stopped being read in good faith. seeing a post like the above, tumblr users before the ace discourse instilled brainrot in half this website would see it and think "yeah! it would be awesome if we had more options." after the ace discourse, the reaction a lot of those same people would have would be more like "i cannot believe the cringey aces on this website are still acting like gay bars and night clubs are depraved sex dens full of rambunctious horny dykes. they don't even know how homophobic they are."

8. miraculously, eventually, the ace discourse freaks all either 1. moved onto bi/pan lesbians (and so far are doing a pretty shit job) or 2. were run off the site/out of communities because people unpacked shit and realized they were on the wrong side of things.

9. arguments in defense of the original point came back out of the woodwork. "now that the ace discourse has died down, can we please fucking get back to rallying for more queer spaces other than bars and clubs? the autistics, the mobility aid users, the children and teenagers, the sex-repulsed asexuals, and the alcoholics deserve options for community too."

10. presumably, these posts are circulating now, because they make good points.

i don't think any queer alcoholic is going to genuinely say that gay bars are the reason we have a higher alcoholism rate. we have that because society wants us dead and you have to find a way to survive knowing that. but 1. the alcohol companies know that and intentionally prey on us, see them setting up their rainbow floats at pride every year and 2. the lack of sober queer spaces makes it hard, often nigh impossible to stay clean and sober. it's hard enough to stay clean and sober as a cishet, alcoholics bleed friends like fucking crazy when we make the choice to stay sober or even just cut back. 12 step programs are largely bunk, but repeated studies have shown that the reason they work on accident is because they are a social space where addicts can find community without the pressure to use.

so if cishets struggle that hard, we struggle much harder. and, yes, the lack of sober queer spaces is a huge part of that. back in 2014, we addicts on tumblr were largely laughed out of every room we entered, every point of discourse we tried to spur on. i got a multitude of pretty violent threats on here back then for talking openly about intoxication culture and how addiction was a disability. and that was before the ace discourse ramped up.

so i think probably what's happening is queer addicts are finally feeling emboldened again to discuss this and perhaps some nuance is being lost in the many, MANY layers of telephone over the years. perhaps some of them are remembering the shitty discourse and how they were swept under the rug and persecuted as homophobes/apologists because they, for their own reasons, dared to share similar opinions with asexuals in 2014.

no, going to a gay bar doesn't turn queers into alkies, but it sure as shit is a lot easier to not die of alcohol poisoning at age 27 when you have the choice to walk into a social club or a cafe instead of a bar.

Very quick decompression sketch because the last few weeks of uni semester are kicking my ass. It’s mermay so have some mer!Clark and baby kon from a superwonderbat mer!Clark/pirate!Bruce/princess of themiscyra!Diana AU that lives only in my head

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Cloisbat!!

I SWEAR THIS FUCKING MAN RIGHT HERE

dudes be like the alien guy was hot so pinned him to the fucking floor

I can’t with this scene😭😭😭😭😭jonn standing up in a way that prob gives him knee damage and bats still grabbing his collar and clinging onto him for a second as he stands up😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭help

I’m prob gonna always draw them with JL animated design its just very comfortable for me to do so🥰🥰

maybe dumb question, but why does dick have blue eyes if he’s Romani?

His Romani parentage is a retcon from about 2000. Dick have always been blue eyed and fair-skinned. He’s never been fluent in a Romani language, he’s an American citizen with English as his first language.

And it’s one Romani parent, which one has varied between writers. Currently it’s his mom, who grew up in France. The court of owls storyline introduced that his dad’s grandmother was from one of Gotham’s richest families.

Hi, Angloromani gal here (as you may have guessed from the url). Just a couple of things:

I think non-Romani Dick Grayson fans need to be way more careful speaking about how he should or shouldn’t look. Race is societal, not biological.

You can advocate for more dark skin/dark eyes representation, of course, but we need to be mindful that the idea that people of certain races SHOULD look a certain way is also racist, and it is directly harmful to Romani people.

Just because Dick doesn’t “look Romani”, doesn’t mean he isn’t.

Several recent cases of suspected kidnapping involving the Roma in Europe have had some some odd but peculiar resonances for 21st-century American life.

In one case, the police received a tip that a blond, blue-eyed girl was living with a Roma family in a Dublin suburb. The tipster believed that the 7-year-old didn't look like the Roma family with whom she lived. The police came and removed the child from the home, despite protests from the Roma family that the child was part of their family.

But after DNA test proved that she was, in fact, the biological child of the people who were raising her, she was returned to the family.

[…]

These stories were initially covered in the press as possible instances of child trafficking, owing in part to stereotypes about Romas being unscrupulous and untrustworthy. For many folks, it was hard not to see the suspicion cast on the families of these children as instances of racial profiling.

“Not all Roma communities have dark skin: There are Roma who have light skin and green eyes,” Dezideriu Gergely of the European Roma Rights Centre told the BBC.

I have to repost this absolutely fantastic addition, because this is the reality of the situation.

We could sit here all day and discuss why it is that some, especially Northern European, Romani groups are more white-passing or even just considered white - which is completely ok btw (e.g. in official UK government legislation, GRT people are considered white ethnic identities, and the majority of my relations are completely comfortable with that, though of course I do know some who disagree with it, and that’s fine, as both are coming from informed positions regarding themselves) - or whether having a gorja great-great grandfather who has very strong genes excludes you from being Romani in the eyes of gorjas (because I can damn well assure you that no one in the community cares - we’re all watered down to some extent, that’s how you get distinct subgroups in the first place).

But, at the end of the day, we are a closed culture for a reason, and whilst some education (such as in cases like this to clear up misconceptions) is a positive thing which I’m happy to contribute to, people should respect that our culture is closed to outsiders and that it’s sometimes ok to not be a part of things. The opinions of gorjas on how we should identify, therefore, aren’t really at the top of my list of priorities (as I’m sure any of us whose families have suffered from discrimination and persecution - aka basically all of us - will concur). Education is one thing - but don’t confuse some research with the lived experience or reality.

I really don’t want to sound rude or mean, but half the time it really does feel like people don’t quite grasp that they’re talking about a real ethnicity and a real group of actual people which exist outside of books and comics and films, what with the discourse I’ve witnessed around a community which the most vocal voices often don’t even belong to, and often couldn’t identify in public.

This definitely is not a response to any particular person, and definitely not anyone in this post who have all been very honest and respectful in their inquiries, but rather just an analysis of a wider trend I’ve noticed (particularly in this fandom), which I feel is relevant to @amazingmichelleman’s wonderful and important addition.

This also really isn’t meant to sound chastising, and I apologise if it does come off that way, but before contributing to fandom discourse surrounding things like ethnicities or sexualities or religions or cultures which you don’t belong to, maybe take a step back and question whether your input is informed, accurate, relevant, and constructive. Activism is great, but misinformation is not, and sometimes it is better to choose your battles: a doctor of literature wouldn’t attempt to explain anatomy to a brain surgeon, and it’s ok to realise that maybe you’re not the best qualified person to add to a discussion. Stereotypes and Wikipedia aren’t the same as experience or belonging, my dudes.

Also, just another small addition:

Having one Romani parent still makes you ethnically Romani. Both John and Mary have been shown as Romani diaspora in multiple comics throughout the years. Regardless if both or just one is Romani, that still makes Dick Romani. Also, believe it or not, since this seems to be up for discussion as well with the inclusion of Dick's wealthy grandmother: plenty of Romani folks got money too. Plenty don't. Idk, the wording of that just sounds like "Your family had money how could you be Romani". Let's not do that, okay? Caste, Classism and the social constructs of Race do play into wealth gaps however if you aren't versed in speaking on how that applies to an entire (diverse) ethnic group, don't make unnecessary implications.

What differs, from subgroup to subgroup is the social acceptance of being Romani. Some groups will adopt payos as Romani if they accept the social and cultural customs of being Rom/Roma/Romani for that group. Others are more strict, requiring both ethnic and cultural connections. It is how culture and language have been preserved when dog whistling, segregation and racial profiling were and still are prevalent.

It is naive to believe that any ethnic group cannot display variations in phenotypes such as hair color and texture, skin color and eye color. It is harmful to us, to box people into these categories, especially when many do not understand that one groups way of dealing with discrepancies in phenotype (favoritism towards lighter skin for example) is not the same as another groups.

Ian Hancock wrote We Are the Romani People and included within its pages are several photo examples of the variety of Romani groups around the world. I suggest it to anybody who is interested in dipping their toes into learning about Romani culture.

“Learn to Fly” A while ago I wanted to paint something light and fun so I made something I’d want to see if I ever got to make my own Superman movie - a shot of teenaged Clark Kent discovering his ability to fly and having fun with it.

I SWEAR THIS FUCKING MAN RIGHT HERE

dudes be like the alien guy was hot so pinned him to the fucking floor

I can’t with this scene😭😭😭😭😭jonn standing up in a way that prob gives him knee damage and bats still grabbing his collar and clinging onto him for a second as he stands up😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭help

I’m prob gonna always draw them with JL animated design its just very comfortable for me to do so🥰🥰

"doesn't this charater under insane stress going through extremely traumatic events realize how inconvenient their irrational emotional reactions are to the people around them?" well, see, you're not gonna believe this, but the thing is,

actually my tags need to be in the post i think

#this is why i love writing characters with ptsd#like love love LOVE it#i love the rage and guilt and grief and extreme emotional reactions that seem crazy and isolate the character#cause there is something so elegant and natural about its internal logic#like yeah youre human. youre a creature with a body that loves you and a brain that loves you#and this thing that seems to be clawing its way out of you#is the perfectly NATURAL ferocity of a creature fighting to LIVE.#like it's just so. yeah. that's being an organism. thats having a body. its one of the oldest parts of you and it is beautifully refined#by a billion years of evolution. but it seems so CRAZY! so DISRUPTIVE! so IRRATIONAL!#the traumatized character is a sane man in a mad world#it hits so hard because our world is so casually cruel#so much more so than anyone wants to openly admit.#their body testifies to the truth but their surroundings are Nice and Normal and Safe in a way that is culturally agreed upon#so the trauma becomes a kind of otherworld they are wandering through only dimly tethered to the present reality#their body inhabits the otherworld of trauma and cruelty and pain but that world is not a dream the otherworld is closer to us than breath#i just love it how alive and violent it is#i love the anger and unpredictability the explosiveness and self sabotage and feelings of being trapped and damaged and tainted#it will have you writing stuff you didnt plan and cant explain#cause this character needs to claw and bite and thrash and scream through you and you just gotta let it happen you gotta rampage#its like throwing a live grenade in the middle of your story and you gotta clean up the shrapnel and that process is how you really#learn how to write. how you learn to wrestle with the power and strength of humanness instead of caging it within silly little outlines#shakespeare is the GOAT because he understood all this so well

Clark dozing off after work….

Some things you can only ask your mentally ill friends about later in life.😅

they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

It's not a cure but you have no idea how many times this image has helped me with my OCD

"I am going to get a good grade in ___________, a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve" drifts through my brain with positively alarming regularity.