I guess this is me being strategic

Like, I do overwhelmingly think that in fandom the way to attract people to your ships and characters is honey, not vinegar. I generally dislike leading conversations by pointing out that people are generally biased towards characters like Saga because of the double whammy of being the only black woman in a cast of mostly white men, and I think any kind of mud-slinging about not being into het or "fandom thinks het is icky!" is entirely unnecessary and distracts from the point about how people really do have an empathy gap towards black characters.

...however. For the purposes of having a rich, diverse fandom, sometimes throwing my lot in with someone who thinks differently than I do on both of those points is acceptable to me. Because as much as I disagree with "the problem is that people think het is icky and would rather Objectify Those Gays" and think it's actively poor analysis, the core problem of "people will ignore the compelling dynamic black lady leads have with their white supporting cast" is very important to point out and address.

I'm not gonna linger on a single bad phrasing, or a single mischaracterisation of the source of a problem if I can go "Yeah that's a problem -- and I'm gonna do my part to solve it, now when it's been brought to my attention". Sometimes, the honey is agreeing with some poorly worded points because you think the core message is worth addressing. The way to get people to be more considered with the way they talk is to take seriously what they're trying to communicate. It's much easier to communicate someone's mistakes to them if they take you seriously in the first place.

I can recognise the pain of rejection. Snide nitpicking of the way they express that pain isn't going to make anyone believe I'm taking it seriously.

AWE posting 18.2.

(Crossposted from Tumblr)

Listen, I don’t really talk about it because personally it didn’t read as romantic to me but I am a believer in the beliefs of SagaCasey shippers. Like, they’re just fucking right about this one, and I love nothing so much as Saga ripping Casey out of Alan’s hands, in no uncertain terms telling him fuck you, he’s mine, you can’t have him. That is, in fact, the only way for me to read the text. Casey is Saga’s partner. It doesn’t matter what the story thinks, his belonging to her is unconditional.

Furthermore it’s a lot more interesting for me to consider their relationship existing in a sort of emotional middleground because neither of them wants to overcomplicate it for themselves – transcending labels, not compromising over them.

Saga takes things at face value, and has no ego about having her conclusions proven wrong or having fallen for misdirection. She has a very high tolerance for ambiguity, and I just can’t see her being bothered by not having the exact right words to describe something as long as she had the freedom to express her feelings about them. The volition of choosing not to label what’s between them, choosing to just let it exist on its own terms, strikes me as a very characteristic trait of Saga, who does want to understand the world, but from a distinctly two steps back kind of place.

And Casey, well… he is, by all accounts, a straight guy in his fifties who is entangled in the text and the concept of what a guy like him is supposed to be. The barrier to acknowledging anything that doesn’t fit a neat narrative about what men like him are supposed to be is already high, and if the only options really are “tragic second fiddle fruitlessly in love with a married woman” or “homewrecker” – if those are the only options, if giving into the narrative is his only option, it’s a weight off his shoulders if he doesn’t have to step into either label, if he’s just allowed to have the peace of mind to just feel however he feels.

Put those two together, I think Saga’s influence on Casey would lead to both of them being fairly selfconscious of how they’re perceived, but really that fussed about what they actually are. If they like each other, they like each other, it actually is as simple as that, and everything else is just playing defense to stop other people from encroaching on their perception of reality.