List Of Queer Books I Read, Loved & Recommend!

i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck

“Do you like girls?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you like boys?”

“I don’t know. I think I like TV shows.”

I remember when I was in middle school all the other girls were talking about the guys they liked and I said I didn’t like anyone. I just wanted to do my own thing.

I didn’t really get why I would want to date anyone. I understood friendship, companionship— having someone to share my interests and mutually info dump to sounded cool— but I struggled to understand the appeal of spending every day and every night with someone else. Of holding hands and going on dates. 

This led to a lot of homophobic bullying and a few of them would act disgusted that I might be into them. Constantly acting like I was looking at their boobs and sexualizing them (I never made eye contact with anyone and would frequently look at the wall or space out while looking in their general direction). Or make a big show of not being interested and many other things.

I didn’t get this either. I didn’t know why I would be interested in any of them. They treated me poorly and I thought attraction was something people made up and simply just claimed to feel towards other people.

Just like I never understood celebrity crushes. You don’t know the person so how could you possibly know you liked them? And I never understood how people “chose” who they dated. Did they just choose whoever they liked hanging out with the most?

But any time I voiced this it was always met with worse and worse reactions. It led to isolation among peers and my family. My parents made it pretty clear I wasn’t who they wanted me to be. That I wasn’t normal.

I soon learned to fake it. Pretend I understood it.

The idea of not being attracted to anyone seemed like a foreign idea to most people I met. Even when I branched out and moved away, I met a few people in the lgbt community who couldn’t grasp it either and reacted poorly and it made me feel stupid. Like maybe I wasn’t just screwed up to people who fit in the neat little box society wants you to fit in, but to everyone else as well.

Maybe I was wrong. If it’s an impossibility even in this community that champions diversity and acceptance then can that really be my reality?

I kept trying to force it. To date, but every time I did I always felt that same skin crawling discomfort and it always petered out. It didn’t matter who it was or what gender. It always felt wrong. It was suffocating.

I don’t think there’s a movie that better portrays that all consuming, suffocating stagnation of feeling so out of place– knowing you’re out of place compared to those around you– and in response forcing yourself to fit what other people expect of you than I Saw the TV Glow.

Whenever I think back to growing up or whenever I return home that same feeling this movie is centered around always drenches my experiences.

And even now it’s hard to put into words when I talk to other people what I’ve felt when it comes to this aspect of my life.

That comment from Owen about knowing there’s nothing there when talking about romance and attraction, but being too afraid to look and knowing that his parents know something is wrong with him hit harder than any other scene from a movie I’ve watched this year.

It’s that absence of something that is at the heart of asexuality that makes me always question what I choose to identify as when I have to explain it to someone. Because for the most part my explanation boils down to (in broad oversimplified terms): I’ve never felt attraction, I’m more interested in watching a Spider-Man movie than I’ve ever been into even just the idea of dating, every time I’ve attempted to date it’s been uncomfortable and I’ve actively dodged anything beyond friendship while in the “relationship”.

And when I try to voice that to another person it always feels like those experiences don’t hold water. That’s describing the absence of something. There’s no real proof of the identity.

With being bi or gay or lesbian there’s something you can I don’t know—point to?— that can help you know your identity.

And that’s the fact that you’ve experienced attraction towards one or more people of one or more genders.

It’s defined not by the lack of something but the presence of an experience.

And so every time I try and explain it I end up feeling stupid. Like I just haven’t tried hard enough to find someone compatible. That I need to get back into the proverbial saddle and try again. I always in some way feel ashamed and backtrack as a result.

This is in no way to say that it’s harder or easier to be one identity or the another. Everyone’s experiences are different and everyone experiences are valid. This is just a struggle I’ve found that’s unique to asexuality that many people I’ve talked to have also experienced.

I haven’t felt that part of my experience be seen in media until I saw this movie. Maybe I’m latching onto what I can get or maybe that was an intrinsic part of the movie. That’s not important. What’s important is that it’s something I felt seen in even if it was literally just one scene.

This is my really long winded and roundabout way of saying that I really think this movie is going to stick with me much longer than any other thing I’ve seen this year.

Things can be hard to put into words and as a result I tend to keep things inside. I’m fairly certain I’m ace but it might turn out I’m on a different romantic spectrum then I thought or I fall somewhere different than I thought on the ace spectrum. I don’t know what I’ll discover in the future.

I’m likely not going to express my label out loud to anyone but a select few. I still can’t express this particular label out loud to many people. My family is definitely never going to hear it. A friend or two might.

It’s something I struggle with on a regular basis. I’m fine with identifying with the label in my head—in a lot of ways it makes me feel comfortable and happy— but any time I try to voice it the words die in my throat and I can’t help but feel ashamed. It’s easier to just tell people I don’t want to date right now. That there are all these factors in the way (finances, time, jobs, etc) than it is to try and explain what I’ve just rambled about above.

I know many people have felt and understood that experience and I hope people know they’re valid. You can express your identity with your full chest, shout it from the rooftops and let people know, or you can keep it to yourself, identifying as your label solely in your head. Both experiences are valid. And if your label changes at some point in your life that doesn’t make what you chose to identify as at this point any less valid too. People are always learning and growing. You can gain a new understanding of yourself as time move forward.

Sorry for the way too long ramble. This movie made me feel things.

i forgot to post this last year so im scheduling it to post march 15th 2024 (it's march 17th 2023 rn)

Damian, who grew up with advanced tutors in every subject at the loa, would NOT be chill with having to denigrate himself towards putting up with fucking. Gotham level teachers. so like what if after finding out one of his previous tutors that 1) Damian actually considered acceptable, 2) is skilled in multiple subjects, and 3) is Talia approved to the point of adoption, is actually in Gotham working as the Red Hood, Damian just stops attending the school Bruce signed him up for.

he’s smart about it; gets dropped off and picked up outside the entrance every day, lets Alfred/Dick/Tim/Bruce see him enter and exit the building, acts like he’s adjusting really well to the civilian school system, and yet on gods green earth that boy has not attended a single fucking class in five months. three minutes into first period he’s out the window and getting a ride to Jason’s safe house to continue learning at a pace that he actually benefits from.

i feel like having helped raise/teach the kid for a couple years in the league and having worked with/been on sort of amicable terms with a few other of Damian’s tutors (the ones that didn’t get killed anyway), Jason would be familiar enough with Damian and his little ways and habits that he would know that the kid would 100% benefit more from home schooling that whatever bullshit public school Bruce put him in. Damian’s very self motivated so he knows there won’t be an issue in slacking off if he allows Damian to ditch school and sort of rule his own schooling from Jason’s apartment. he’ll do his own advanced mathematics, history, science, whatever the fuck he feels the need to brush up on during that day. English and most physical training Jason does take control of, but that was what they did in the league anyway so that’s normal to them; they’re just settling back into what for them is a normal routine.

the only thing Damian doesn’t like about ditching Gotham Prep and going to Jason’s for school is that Jason forces him to join social groups at least twice a week, whether it be a reading group at the library, a painting club, volunteering at a hospital or animal shelter, just so that he can still learn to interact with civilians. still, he likes that the activities are always tailored to what Jason knows he enjoys and it is preferable to being in a school for five days a week, so he lets it slide. he even gets a bit more vigilante training bcs occasionally he gets to tag along with Red Hood during the rare day mission, so long as his identity is hidden. Jason always drops him back off at the school fifteen minutes before 3 so that Damian can sneak in and walk out the front doors when the bells go, just a normal school student like everyone else.

he keeps stealing letters addressed to bruce and intercepting phone messages regarding his absence, and eventually he fakes emails from Bruce that withdraw Damian from the school as a whole. Jason’s honestly really impressed that nobody’s noticed but the longer it goes the funnier it gets so he keeps helping out. it gets to the point where it’s been like a year and he’s convinced Damian to actually test out of high school early and start attending college courses part time, so he’s literally spending his days going to Gotham Prep five minutes after classes start, picking up his little brother, secretly driving him to the college that he’s attending under the radar, and then driving him BACK to Gotham Prep before school ends so that nobody knows where he’s been.

even funnier is that Damian ends up convincing Jason to start doing a lit course two days a week at the same college. so at this point Damian is not only lying his ass off about his own education, but he’s doing it by going to college with his brother who everybody else in the family still thinks is fucking dead.

eventually Dick reminds Bruce that Damian’s class should be doing an award ceremony for moving up a year, and they all decide to go to surprise Damian with their support. they go in and Damian isn’t a part of the group of kids graduating and they’re just like ‘wait what’

one of the kids sees them and is like ‘hey aren’t you the Waynes?’ and when they’re like yeah the kid goes ‘haha cool, you know my older sister goes to college with Damian and his step-brother, it’s nice that they still get to see each other often after Damian had to move from their mom to you guys.’ and the entire family bluescreens for about four different reasons.

they eventually show up at the college and see Damian and Jason on the grass outside getting into a rapidly spiralling argument about whether or not two of the professors there are secretly having an affair and the whole thing unravels.

I FORGOT TO REUPLOAD THIS STUPID JOKE

I laughed WAY too hard while making this btw

Only on tumblr could i get spoilers for one series (arcane) purely because it has tragic gay parallels to another series I do follow (the magnus archives)

pls rb if you think cuddling doesn't have to be s3xual

im tryna prove a point to my bf's mother help me out

happy barbieheimer day

happy barbenheimer day 🫶🏼