Rose's Space

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

is because people have been arrested and put in fucking PRISON just for having gay sex in the privacy of their own homes. in the United States. this millennia.

if you think i'm joking, look up Lawrence v. Texas (2003). 14 out of the 50 US States STILL had laws on the books criminalizing sodomy--and yes, you could be imprisoned for multiple years and sometimes even life for repeat offenses.

in the years directly leading up to the landmark case, enforcement even in those 14 states varied, but it was absolutely weaponized against queer people, especially when stacked on top of other offenses to make up a longer sentence.

"Sodomy" does not, in a legal context, mean "anal sex."

It means "any sexual act the court has decided is deviant."

BDSM? Sodomy.

Crossdressing for sexual pleasure? Sodomy.

Jacking off to nude photos or video your consenting adult lover sent you of themselves? Sodomy.

Het oral sex? SODOMY!!!

If you're starting to think "but how could anyone prove that happened without breaking down the door?"

Ha. Haha. Ahaha.

First, I'll give you one guess how they did prove it.

Two, these were often scapegoat charges--basically they couldn't actually nail you on anything because you hadn't done anything actually illegal, only things they didn't like, and they relied on public disgust against your "degenerate character" (yeah there's a very big reason we keep saying not to use that word and it's not to be killjoys) to make sure you knew your place.

Which means that in practice:

Went to a socialist meeting? Sodomy.

Male kindergarten teacher? Sodomy.

Mixing races? Sodomy.

Not Christian (or the right kind of Christian)? Sodomy.

YES THEY FUCKING DO COUNT.

Wanna know why?

Take a look at how many politicians have labeled trans people and their allies as pedophiles.

Take a look at how many politicians used to label gay people as pedophiles.

Take a look at how much suspicion falls on innocent men who just think working with kids is fun and want the chance to help, grow, nurture, and teach.

Take a look at yourself.

What about you could someone twist into "that person is a pedophile" if they wanted rid of you?

I can tell you exactly how they'd do it with me. I'm queer. I have a niece who came out as lesbian in her teens. I supported her.

Clearly I groomed her into that lifestyle, right?

Child sex abusers should be proven in a court of law to be guilty, and penalized to the fullest extent of the law. Pedophiles who have not abused children and seek to avoid doing so should not be hanged for something going wild in their brains.

Yes! That's super uncomfortable to say! I'm a CSA survivor! It's awkward and it means I have to defend people I really wish were not the way they are!

But the rope you use to lynch another will yank you into the tree to die.

Its also a fucking useless example for sodomy law especially because of how wildly age of consent can vary even in the united states. Which I hate that people get so weird about when you try to discuss it. No, knowing this stuff isnt a "red flag" you have to know something before you can speak on it or try and change it!

Child marriage is legal in 34 states with 4 of them technically not even having an age minimum outside of common law that could theoretically set it at 12. If we go back a few years the state of it would be even MORE dire as many of these laws putting age minimums only were put into place in the past eight years! So if one defines sodomy as "any sexual act done premarital that isnt missionary" then these wouldn't be covered.

Sodomy laws are USELESS for protecting children, because laws about CSA are better off being their OWN thing with strictly defined terms. Sodomy is so nebulous and hand wavy it does nothing but punish people who have done nothing wrong, strict terms with clear meanings is what creates protections. "You can't just make "if we think its gross" the law and expect that to actually work on deterring people who are doing the actual crimes. Which are ALREADY illegal.

“We need a law that makes it illegal to go into a bathroom that doesn’t align with your birth sex! Otherwise, people might go into the wrong bathroom to sexually assault someone!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t it already illegal to sexually assault someone, including in a bathroom??? Because if so, then you can just completely discard that explanation for the entire law. It is already illegal to go into the wrong bathroom and sexually assault a person; ergo, the law is not about sexual assault at all, it’s just about bathrooms.

“We need to arrest undocumented immigrants in order to crack down on gang activity!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t that gang activity already illegal??? So, if you wanted to crack down on gang activity, you could simply arrest people who are associated with gangs, and in fact, we do already do that. Ergo, this rhetoric isn’t actually about gang activity at all; it’s just about undocumented immigrants.

“We need to diminish free speech and freedom of movement rights for suspected terrorists, because otherwise they could commit mass murder!” Well, interestingly, mass murder is already illegal, and if you have probable cause that indicates that someone is planning to commit mass murder, you can simply arrest them for that. Since the law is already fully equipped to go after people who are genuinely suspected of gearing up to commit a violent terroristic act, this clearly isn’t really about terrorism at all; it’s just about diminishing free speech and freedom of movement rights.

“We need tort reform that caps the monetary damages that large corporations can be forced to pay, in order to keep people from bringing frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits!” Hmm, but see the thing with that is fraud is already a crime, and frivolous lawsuits can already be thrown out. If a law caps the amount of damages corporations need to pay in lawsuits which were not found to be frivolous or fraudulent, then almost by definition, it has nothing to do with frivolous lawsuits or fraud – it’s just about limiting corporate liability.

I could go on.

Always ask yourself what the actual function of a proposed law is – not just the stated goal, but what it actually does that is not already covered by an equally restrictive law.

And remember, a good general rule is:

[ID: a rectangle flag made to mimic the progress pride flag. The flag is horizontal, equally sized, and 9-striped with the colors lavender, magenta, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, indigo, and purple from top to bottom. There's a layered Star of David on the left of the image with the colors black, brown, blue, pink, white, and yellow from outside to inside. The yellow part has a small purple Star of David that makes the yellow part mimic the intersex flag. /End of ID]

Yup, definitely sounds like death cult behavior.

The INCREDIBLY talented and amazing @carcrash429 bound Safe and (the) Sound as a gift for a friend and also sent me a copy!

This is such a stunningly well-made trade bind that honestly, for like half a minute I thought they'd done the typesetting and then had the printing done by a printshop (which, to be clear, would already have been extremely cool)!

BUT NO! Once I looked at it a second time, I realized the whole thing was handmade! (Listen, in my defense, my mail arrives really late and I excitedly opened the package before I even got inside so it was dark!)

I love everything about it, from the font choices to the nautical theme in the accent art to the gorgeous cover and end papers! All the gorgeous art is in there (even the saucy stuff!) and our chapter notes, and it printed so beautifully!

Also I am just crying over the thought that anyone would love a nearly ten-year-old fic enough to want a physical copy!

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for this!!! ❤️❤️🐉❤️❤️

(More pictures under the cut!)

The first book was a collection of all of Rose's Marvel poems, which was super cool and unique to work on! Usually this wordcount (~12k) would be an A7 size book, but... since it's poetry and I wanted each poem to effectively be its own chapter (eg starting on the right page even if the left is blank) as well as for as many as possible to be on a single page rather than split across couple, this ended up as a 167-page A5 book!

I also indented the text twice as much as I do for a prose block, since the lines mostly didn't take up the full width of the page and I didn't want the shorter ones to get buried in the crease

The title pages in Gabriola, the table of contents page is in Garamond, and the textblock is in Gabriola and Noto Serif Hebrew. For this book I did the typesetting for the textblock in Libre Office Writer and for the front matter in Affinity Publisher.

The second book I made was of Safe and (the) Sound by @27dragons and @tisfan:

This story is mostly set in a beachside town, so I used nautical drawings by Ramona/alderdoodle for the interior design elements.

The title font is Marline Staylish, the chapter headings are Ink Free, and the textblock font is primarily Carlito. This book was entirely typeset in Affinity Publisher.

"Well not when *I* use it!"

The one shown by @bippysaurus-rex which is to deny that it is, which is just engaging in antisemitism.

Or the one which a friend did on Discord when I pointed it out, which is to apologize and start trying to find a non-dogwhistle to say what she meant.

The first means I can’t trust you to take any antisemitism seriously. If it was done by a friend it would be grounds for IMMEDIATE distrust and a weakening of the friendship, if not an end to it.

There are actual, real issues that we could talk about. We could talk about the systemic issues in Israel, the problems (the BIG problems) with the Israeli government. We could discuss the settlements in the West Bank, we could discuss the issues with extremism within Zionism.

We COULD do all of that and possibly have some really great, productive conversations about how to fix these issues!

2026 - Make the Republicans hurt for all the ways they're trying to strip people of their votes and put a check on Trump. We can flip the House and maybe even the Senate and actually put some of the checks the Constitution intended back in place. SCOTUS is still fucked and not a lot will get passed over Trump's veto, but we can stop the bleeding.

2028 - Get Trump, Vance, and all the fascists out of the Executive Branch. It's also the only way to start on SCOTUS reform and getting back on the right track. This is also the president who will be overseeing the next census that controls which states get how many Congresspeople.

➡️ Not every medium of fiction and storytelling has or is expected to have content warnings or extensive tagging.

➡️ Print novels do not traditionally warn for content in any way.

➡️ Until AO3 came along, fanfiction did not traditionally warn for content in any significant way.

➡️ An author is only obligated to warn for content to the degree mandated by the format they publish their fiction on.

➡️ Content warnings beyond the minimum are a courtesy, not an obligation.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is a valid tag that authors are allowed to use on AO3. It means there could be anything in there and you have accepted the risk. 'May contain peanuts!'

➡️ Writers are allowed to use 'Creator chose not to warn' for any reason, including to maintain surprise and avoid spoilers.

➡️ 'Creator chose not to warn' is not the same thing as 'no archive warnings apply'.

➡️ It is your responsibility to protect yourself and close a book, or hit the back button if you find something in fiction that you're reading that upsets you.