Ghosthost

The way people talk about queer media is sometimes such a good litmus test for their views on gender

a power dynamic in a hetero relationship is just as bad as one in a queer relationship. Sentences that are weird and downright abusive in hetero relationship are exactly that in queer relationships as well. Character A not apologizing to Character B for something absolutely disgustingly bad is just as bad if they were queer.

Absolutely fucking not.

No, uh-uh, I’m not having that.

I will not let you compare all the thought and effort Rebecca Sugar put into Ruby and Sapphire to Amanda Overton’s sickening and drab excuse to execute her cop fetish.

Rebecca Sugar had to find clever loopholes for ensuring Ruby and Sapphire’s character integrity and their marriage scene across censorship in other countries, hence why she had Ruby wearing a dress (in other countries Ruby was censored to be a man), and having their wedding take place in an episode that involved the diamonds, making it impossible to omit or skip.

Despite lesbians constantly being sexualized and fetishized, a sex scene MAYBE could have still worked/been important if it was a culmination of their love and care for each other, BUT IT FUCKING WASN’T. THE CAITVI CELL SCENE IS SEXUAL COERCION IN ACTION. Vi was in no state to have sex initiated onto her, she wasn’t in a state of mind to properly clearly consent. It’s no different than if Cait boozed her up to get in her pants.

...Are you kidding me? People would hate Will if he was a girl. They'd call her an overdramatic pick-me and burn her at the stake for trying to interfere with Mileven, especially if El was a boy and Mileven was gay.

Like you're really gonna look me in my eye and tell me people wouldn't have ripped a female Will to shreds for flirting with her sister's boyfriend? Or that she wouldn't have been called jealous and vindictive for calling El stupid? The only reason Will gets away with his behavior is because he's a gay white boy. No one else would get so much grace, which I know for a fact because look at how this godforsaken fandom treated Kali.

el is a neurodivergent abuse victim who grew up being treated like a lab rat, mike has been bullied his whole life & has insecurities due to his parents' strained relationship, and they both defy the stereotypical roles in a m/f romantic relationship; there is nothing conformant or insignificant about them and to insist that there is & try to erase the importance of these details is disgusting, especially on el's part.

it's actually scary to me how much these blatantly false takes on el/mike/mileven have spread and are just constantly regurgitated without a second thought & ppl will double down on them even when they're proven false. i honestly feel like this is an example of how susceptible a lot of ppl are to falling into bigoted echo chambers. you might say i'm overreacting and maybe i am, idk, but tbh i don't feel like i am; everything i see bylers claim about el, mike, and/or mileven is just is ableist, misogynistic, and not at all based in reality with what is said/shown in the show.

Saying that Mike never actually loved El is saying that the most meaningful relationship in a lifelong abuse victim's life was a lie.

Saying that Mike only loved El's powers is fucked. It perpetuates the idea that an abuse victim is unlovable.

Saying that Mike was attracted to El when he first met her because her short hair made him think she was a boy is wildly misogynistic and sounds like what predatory straight men tell WLW.

1- Mike is not a toxic boyfriend, he dropped the ball a few times, but he did pick it back up every time.

2- Lucas Sinclair is 100x cooler than Billy Hargrove and Jason Carver combined

3 - Will does not need to be with Mike to be happy

4- No, Will is not the most traumatized. Stop putting everyone’s issues on a totem pole and putting Will on the top

5 - Jonathan and Joyce were more likely to have been physically abused by Lonnie than Will based on the way they acted around him

6- Yes Jonathan was parentified, no it was not Joyce’s fault

7- Billy was not a good brother, Max was his emotional (and maybe physical) punching bag really

8- Steve probably does not have abusive parents, stop copy-pasting Jonathan and come up with something new.

9- Nancy is not an apathetic person, this girl is ruled by her emotions, it’s a canon fact.

10- Nancy and Mike’s sibling relationship is fine. It makes sense that they don’t hang out all of the time as they have different friend groups and schedules. Nancy drives Mike to school every day canonically. Just because they aren’t the hugging type doesn’t mean they hate each other.

11- El is mature enough to have a romantic relationship, she is mature enough to understand what a romantic relationship entails, she understands that she likes Mike romantically, she did not mistake him for a brother or a friend.

12- El is not stupid

13- If you think Martin Brenner loved El genuinely, I do not trust you

14- Henry Creel was a nice kid. He stopped being a nice kid when he killed children.

15- Will is actually the one who needs independence from Mike

16- In every byler fight, Will was also in the wrong, he also had terrible timing.

17- If you judge max for “using el for her powers” when she was worried sick and terrified for Billy, then show some of that judgement to Will when he canonically tells Mike in the van scene that he wished that El could make money for them to play DND all day

18- Nancy did not abuse steve

19- Nancy had every right to call their relationship bs (it was bs)

20- Mike was not under any obligation to play DND with Will, nor was he under any obligation to find Dustin. He is not their mom.

21- Nancy is not Steve’s prize because he matured

22- Steve canonically was a bully in s1, stop ruining his character growth by denying it ever happened.

23- Steve is not the mom, he is the annoyed big brother who is actually good at taking care of kids and thus gets saddled with it

24- Someone needs to pry Robin away from Steve. (The fanon Robin, not the canon one)

25- Max’s advice to El in season 3 is more of a case study of the blind leading the blind. But she genuinely thought she was helping though. I love mileven though and I was sad they broke up, but I don’t blame Max though. She was just excited that El wanted to hang out with her.

26- I feel like we understate how much Sara’s death hurt Hopper. Like why does no one talk about it?

27- Barb better keep haunting the narrative.

Dom/sub vs. top/bottom discourse is.. not a debate, I fear. Top/bottom is who is giving vs. who is receiving. Dom/sub is who is giving orders, laying down rules and giving commands vs. the one who is receiving those orders, who is following (or meant to follow) said rules, who is expected to follow or listen to the commands.

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME!!!

Two completely different things. I am sick of seeing posts where someone is referred to as a "dom top"/"sub bottom" when the Character™ in question is very obviously a sub top/dom bottom.

I repeat;

service is the third category, which is neither in the dom/sub nor in the top/bottom plane

so you can serve in any of these four positions and their combinations

my headcanon - is Cas being a service dom top

as a dom he is the one who leads the scene, taking on equal power over his partner and responsibility for his partner's safety

as a top he is the one who plays an active role in bed and carries out penetration

and his service lies in the fact that his driving motive for being in both of the above hypostases is the need to take care of his partner, meet his needs and be useful

but as I said, this is my headcanon

I think in the fandom space it makes sense to be careful with the use of words like "obviously", because every fan has their own headcanon, and even if there are more widespread theories in the fandom, this does not invalidate all the others.

I can totally see Cas being service sub top - where he obediently allows Dean to use his dick however Dean tells him to

or service dom bottom - where he imperiously orders Dean to hammer him in all his holes because he knows that Dean really likes it, but without an order he is afraid to do it

or even service sub bottom - where he's like a puppy, docilely accepting Dean pounding him the way Dean sees fit, because he'll do anything for him

the endless infinity of interpretations is my favorite thing about this fandom. that's why it's fun to stay here even decades later (っ˶ ˘ ᵕ˘)ˆᵕ ˆ˶ς)

A lot of us were raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families. 

I reblogged descendintorantness's point to try and clarify my point but guardiandue91 only reblogged descendintorantness's point, leaving my point moot.

I don't think I clarified my point correctly even when I replied to descendintorantness so I'll clarify it again.

I... was fucking stupid in how I phrased my point originally because "And something I'll note that a lot of people don't seem to understand, even though Mal had planned on manipulating Ben with the love potion, it's actually pretty good that she didn't do anything problematic. I know that sounds like the bare minimum considering he was hypnotised but Mal never once kisses Ben or makes an actual attempt with him when she thought he was still under the effects of the love potion" is a pretty poor explanation because I said "It's pretty good that she didn't do anything problematic" and "I know that sounds like the bare minimum."

I really should have left those parts out if my aim was to clarify something that happened in the original script but I just had to say something fucking stupid to nullify my own argument.

So, to clarify the original point with 20/20 hindsight, or as good as my eyes can get:

A common misconception about Ben and Mal's relationship is the idea that it plays into the trope of victimising male characters using hypnosis. However, Mal refuses to do anything with Ben while she was convinced he was hypnotised. That's really about as plain as we can make it. She hypnotised him because she was a villain, that's a bad thing. But she didn't do anything with him, that's the main thing. I've also seen people claim it was hypocritical of Mal to react the way she did when Uma did the same thing to Ben in Descendants 2, but even in the first Descendants movie the story recognises that hypnotising Ben was a bad thing. And it wasn't treated cutesy either just because Ben thought Mal couldn't talk to him. Ben's opinion is not the story's opinion and Ben solicited his opinion before he learned Mal's true intentions. And why did Ben have this weird opinion? It's because Ben... is a fucking idiot.

I reblogged descendintorantness's point to try and clarify my point but guardiandue91 only reblogged descendintorantness's point, leaving my point moot.

I don't think I clarified my point correctly even when I replied to descendintorantness so I'll clarify it again.

I... was fucking stupid in how I phrased my point originally because "And something I'll note that a lot of people don't seem to understand, even though Mal had planned on manipulating Ben with the love potion, it's actually pretty good that she didn't do anything problematic. I know that sounds like the bare minimum considering he was hypnotised but Mal never once kisses Ben or makes an actual attempt with him when she thought he was still under the effects of the love potion" is a pretty poor explanation because I said "It's pretty good that she didn't do anything problematic" and "I know that sounds like the bare minimum."

I really should have left those parts out if my aim was to clarify something that happened in the original script but I just had to say something fucking stupid to nullify my own argument.

So, to clarify the original point with 20/20 hindsight, or as good as my eyes can get:

A common misconception about Ben and Mal's relationship is the idea that it plays into the trope of victimising male characters using hypnosis. However, Mal refuses to do anything with Ben while she was convinced he was hypnotised. That's really about as plain as we can make it. She hypnotised him because she was a villain, that's a bad thing. But she didn't do anything with him, that's the main thing. I've also seen people claim it was hypocritical of Mal to react the way she did when Uma did the same thing to Ben in Descendants 2, but even in the first Descendants movie the story recognises that hypnotising Ben was a bad thing. And it wasn't treated cutesy either just because Ben thought Mal couldn't talk to him. Ben's opinion is not the story's opinion and Ben solicited his opinion before he learned Mal's true intentions. And why did Ben have this weird opinion? It's because Ben... is a fucking idiot.