#queer labels

It is absolutely fine to use a label, only to realise it doesn't suit you anymore. Labels aren't there to bind you to them. They serve as a way to better describe how one feels and what ones lived experience can be like.

I had two pipelines of relabeling myself simultaneously.

From bi to lesbian, and back to bi.

From asexual to demisexual (because I thought, that one day, maybe I feel this kind of attraction, as sex-ambivalent and oscillating were terms I related with, and still do), and back to being asexual.

Does that make me less sapphic or a-spec? Absolutely not.

And to be honest: I still haven't figured out if I'm demiromantic or aromantic. And that is perfectly fine. We don't own anyone an explanation, but ourselves.

[pt. [Dark Avian Presentation System] /pt end]

We've decided to recoin these terms, as we didn't really like the original definitions we had created for them. Also some additional ones.

tagging: @radiomogai, @presentationflag-archive, @presentation-labels

RAVEN: A masculine presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

STARLING: A feminine presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

CROW: A gender-neutral presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

GRACKLE: A gnc or genderpunk queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

BLUEJAY: An androgynous presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

MAGPIE: A xenine presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

BARN OWL: A holy/holy-in-nature presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

HORNED OWL: An unholy/unholy-in-nature presenting queer goth, emo, or punk who seems or is often mischaracterized/stereotyped as being scary, intimidating, annoying, or mean due to mental illness, neurodivergence, and/or trauma.

no image IDs since we don't have any energy to do them. Any help with them would be greatly appreciated.

DISCLAIMER: These were coined over a year ago, they've just been rotting in our drafts. Some of these may also accidentally use names for other presentation labels, so you're free to give them an alt name if there are pre-existing terms that use that name.

~

We've been needing an identity with a flag

Similar to that of pansexual, but only for the attraction of one person. Here's a better example:

"The attraction for a single person, regardless of that person's gender or any other factors identities period). Once the person loves them, they will only feel romantic/sexual attraction for that one person"

Think you can do it? /nf

Devoheartsexual/romantic

pt: Devoheartsexual/romantic

(coming from devoted, wholehearted, and sexual/romantic)

The attraction for a single person, regardless of that person's gender or any other factors regarding their identity. Once the person loves them, they will only feel sexual/romantic attraction for that one person.

Flag colours don’t really mean anything other than the first, third, and fifth stripe colours slightly resembling the pansexual flags colours

Like a total lack of community, understanding of history, acceptance of others, and things like that.

It’s like people just repeat hot takes that became normal rather than thinking about the offline diverse experiences of LGBT+ people.

ADULT HATER

pt: adult hater end pt

𝄞　˘˘　NOTES　! : self indulgent again. lol

a general label for someone who hates adults, whether this be a distrust of, a phobia of, or just a general dislike of adults. this can also extend to a certain "kind" of adult (e.g. teachers, parents etc etc), but is made to be used more broadly.

anyone can use this flag/label for any reason; abuse victims, people with ODD, youth libs etc etc. it was coined with a more aggressive approach in mind, but does not have to be.

it's also inclusive of transage people, age regressors, system littles/middles, and permaminors. if this for some reason upsets you to the point of not using the term, then don't try to recoin or change my definition, just get over it and move on!

Show don't tell.

If you ever been in writing or critique circles, online or not, you are probably familiar with this term.

It's both a critique and a tip that people give writer that basically means that we should see certain character's characteristics in action and not just getting told about it through dialogue.

For example, if a show you watch keeps having its characters tell you that the MC (main character) is good at making pizza, but we never see said character make pizza, it'd be hard for us to believe said fact.

Show don't tell also has some backlash, mostly with how difficult it so apply it to your own story projects (especially those done in prose) if you are not too familiar with its complexities.

And there is a specific critique that I personally have of show don't tell that I don't think other people have talked about.

Does it promote bigotry? Let me explain.

Dead End paranormal park, also known as Deadendia, is a Netflix animated series adapting the first two Deadendia graphic novels that was cancelled after two seasons, and on a big cliffhanger at that.

One of the most well known aspects of this show was the fact that the male lead Barney is a gay trans man who is also Jewish.

The scene in which he comes out to Norma as trans has gotten a lot of praise for being the first instance that many people saw the word “trans” being used out loud in animation.

And as much as I love that, it does point out an issue this and other queer media have when it comes to how they handle labels.

The discussion about labels is usually centered around the fact that people are complex and we shouldn’t use labels to define an entire person’s identity” which is something I agree with.

When it comes to media however it gets more muddy.

To put it in simple terms, where members of the queer community accepted the complexities of labels, media isn’t as far ahead as for example queer labels are treated as taboo (name one time the word ace was mentioned in an animated show outside of bojack horseman) and as we time and time again, media does have the power to impact our every day lives.

An infamous example of that case was the movie "Birth of a nation" that many people criticized for making the KKK reappear in American society.

What does show don't tell have to do with anything like this? Especially for Dead End?

Meet Norma.

Norma is the female lead in this series. She is also south Asian, bisexual and autistic.

All of these traits are shown in the series in different ways. Norma’s ethnicity is very clear, the second half of the series has her go through an arc where she comes out as bi, and there was an entire episode dedicated to her troubles as an autistic person.

Only the word “autism” itself was never mentioned in the show.

Granted some of may not take an issue with this, most likely because if you watched the show you’d clearly see how the show didn’t even try to hide Norma’s autism. But I personally find it that it makes the issue worse.

To illustrate why, name me one show that has a queer brown ND girl as it’s female lead that uses the word “autism” in text. It’s hard to think of one right?

Even though the show did an incredible job showing us Norma's autistic traits over and over again. The fact the word autism was never mentioned itself makes me feel as if the creators still wanted to make the rep "safe" for big companies and audiences.

Not only that, this show is targeted towards a younger demographic, one which may not be even aware that autism is a thing. I didn’t know it was a thing until high school and there could be worse cases about that as well. Not only do I find the absence of the word ‘autistic” very frustrating as an ND woman myself, there is a high chance of it negatively impacting nd youth too.

“Isn’t this a blog about queer characters? What does autism have to do with that?”

For one, this show didn’t shy away from using queer labels in text

As I mentioned earlier, one of the show’s most well known moments was Barney saying “I’m trans, Norma.” and when Norma comes out as Bi to Logs (Barney's love interest) she gets so giddy that she keeps saying the word “bi” over and over again.

The word autism doesn’t get the same treatment whatsoever.

“Well, maybe the creators didn’t think of her autism as that important?”

The creator of the show is both an autistic trans man who use the word autism openly in the original deadendia comics.

Which make this whole case even more confusing. I used to believe they wanted to use the word in the third season that never came out, but the fact that it HAD been used in the comics makes that idea hard to swallow.

The point of this essay wasn’t to cancel the creator or deadendia itself, or to assume that the creator had bad intentions for not using the word autism in the script.

The point is to show the problem of how we handle labels.

Labels are important. They are a language by queer people for queer people to express themselves with words they connect to. The words themselves even saving people’s lives. And many are reclaimed from bigoted people as a way for us to stand up for ourselves

The amount of times I've seen people use the term gay to express themselves proudly in front of bigots, how lesbians keep defending the word "lesbian" with it's history of mistreatment. The various umbrella terms that help aspec and trans people use to better express themselves.

And yet these words don’t have a ton of respect. Case in point, we coined them as “labels”

Bi and trans, both words that help a large community express themselves, has been mistreated by bigots and their own queer peers, is also apparently just a label

Asexual and Aromantic, two terms that help people finally understand themselves to their core, is also a label, even if representation for aspec folk is still lacking to this day.

Autism, a word many people prefer to use to describe themselves over Asperger's (which has roots in Nazi history) seems to be just a label too. Autism in fact could be considered to be treated far worse than queer terms because of the fact that it's a medical term for a condition that can't be "healed," unlike queer labels that are more fluid in nature.

And media, whether it was created by queer or allocishet folks, refuses to use these “labels.”

Maybe it’s because those imply something ugly, strange or just don’t grab a mass audience. Or maybe they didn’t want to break the “show vs tell” rule. Maybe to some it is more important to follow loose storytelling rules to get a better audience reaction, than to showcase our true experiences that may give us ugly looks.

Who knows? I never worked for a big corporation.

TLDR: Deadendia not using the word autism, most likely because of the "show vs tell" rule, shows a bigger issue of how we treat labels used to describe various queer and disabled minorities, and how it can imply many negative things about the people who use these labels