Taima Matsumushi

Welcome to G-A, A and J! Hope you have fun, and enjoy yourselves!

Happy B-Day Rainbow! And Stew, too, of course. ^^ Poor Stew got all but ignored.

Well, good for you, if that's what you want. I'll be keeping my bisexuality, although generally I don't bother telling people about it unless they ask (otherwise, I let them assume whatever they want). I've had too many gay people get sour/lose respect with me because I'm technically a "breeder" to bother anymore.

Kewl! Gonna read it now.

Get well soon, Nick!

Happy B-day!

That may be true, but just because minorities don't have a huge voice in the gay community doesn't mean that it's okay to pigeonhole us into objectified categories. I mean, are you really going to help warm the aforementioned communities up to the idea of homosexuality when the gay community treats us with so little respect? The latent racism of the white-dominated gay community is part of the reason I have a difficult time warming up to it sometimes. For example, Queer As Folk, aside from being one of the worst shows I've ever seen, is also one of the whitest in terms of cast. In the first season, the only minority character that appears is a one-shot Japanese male prostitute who DEFINES "rice queen". It certainly doesn't help that he doesn't speak a word of English and is treated like a practical joke by most of the cast (Emmitt, who thinks he's dating him, doesn't know that "Kane dayo" means roughly "pay me, I tell you" instead of "I love you", as the other characters lead him to believe). As a result, the gay rights movement often (to me) takes on a character of being a bunch of whiney middle-upper-class white people trying to "play minority". Half the time, its methods and/or goals completely contradict the lessons other minorites learned long ago about discrimination. For example, the all-gay high school in NY. Black people (of which I am one) learned a long time ago that segregation is never a good idea. All it does is diminish contact between groups of people, which allows stereotypes and bigotry to grow at a much faster rate. This is basically the arguement for diversity. The all-gay high school is, in my opinion, one of three things. It's either a misguided attempt to build up gay solidarity, a misguided attempt to make dating for gay teenagers easier (PLEASE don't pretend that this isn't a lot of the appeal of this school), or a well-planned perpetuation of issues that will keep those who make their livings on gay rights issues in power. The reasoning behind the third possibility is thus: eventually, something bad is going to happen as a result of the all-gay HS being built. Either they will experience some kind of homophobic display at/concerning a sporting event (as we all know, HS rivalries can get quite vicious), or someone who attends that school will be harassed/beaten/killed. Think about it. If you were someone with such a hatred for homosexuals that you would wish to kill them (we all know that such people exist), with the introduction of this school, they would know precisely where to find some "faggots" who are likely too young to defend themselves (a gay-bashing Columbine comes to mind, as well). Sure cuts out the middle-man of having to out someone locally, doesn't it? Of course, the real kicker is that once something bad inevitably happens either at the school or to one of its students, the gay rights people can turn the event around and say "See? This is why we need this school, and this is why you still need to give us your money." Ignoring, of course, that the school was their bad idea to begin with. I've seen the same kind of "engineered oppression" happen with the black community (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc), and it's a shame to watch the gay community fall into the same trap. The black community's freedom was stifled for decades through Jim Crow laws, separate schools, and other means of segregation. Does the gay community really think that their freedom will be increased by it? I may be WAY off here, but I don't think it's a good idea to send the message to the straight community that we consider gay people and straight people so different that they can't go to school in the same building. Yes, I'm aware of kids whose school lives are really messed up because they were outed (of course, there are other alternatives to going to the same school), but since when is segregation a viable alternative? Somehow, I can't help but see a link between the mistreatment and stereotyping of minorities in the gay community and its inability to learn from minorities' experiences in some regards. Sorry about the rant, I really hope I didn't offend anybody... So I'm not exclusively bitching, I would like to point out a counterexample; the interracial gay couple in Six Feet Under. I applaud the writers of that program, because it is the only time I've seen an interracial male/male couple on television that was handled appropriately and realistically. It is also the only time I've seen a religious gay character portrayed with any degree of respect. I would highly recommend to anyone interested in gay-themed media to pick up the first season of Six Feet Under on DVD.

AMEN, fear1980. I find the same thing happening with "giant d*ck black slave/gangsta" stereotypes. It's only lately that I started to realize just how anglo-centric the gay community really is. @_@ I'm trying to do something similar with my story (Talents) as well with a white/asian pairing that doesn't have a creepy racial fetish attached to it.

Umm... Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but... What's Tom of Finland? ^^;;;

Yay! Good to have ya back! I think you told me about that a few days ago. Glad to see it all worked out!

Heheh, not bad! ^^

It's from the old, ooooold X-Men arcade game by Konami. It played similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, only some of the machines had 2 screens and a 6-player setup to allow all 6 X-Men on the screen at once (Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Dazzler). That quote gets said by both Magneto and the White Queen in a display of weird translation. But this is about Wolfboy. ^^ Sorry about that.

Whee!! Welcome to GA! I'm 21, too, and I'll try to get in contact with ya. I really hope you decide to post something of yours here, I love having the opportunity to read other people's writing. Besides, it's always great to have more people posting in the Library. ^^ Prevents me from having to make the loooooong trek to another website. Well, have a great time, GenesisBoi21!

Heylo! Can't wait to give some of your stuff a read. Have fun here, okay?

Yeah, don't diss Irish people. Half my family's Irish. >=O

GYAAAAAAAH!!!! Not again!! >o< This'll be the top-grossing horror flick of the year, no doubt.

"Welcome... to die!" Just kiddin' If anyone else knows where that came from, you get a cookie.

AIEEEE!!!! Cute redhead!! o^______^o I called him first! *kidnaps Johnny Stevens* Sorry, redheads + me = insanity.

Have a good time here, k?

I'd like to see a story in which the gay character(s) are allowed to be so without making half the plot a drawn-out lesson in homophobia. Some of the stories I've seen that do this can, unfortunately, be rather unrealistic in its application. For example, either everyone's gay (read- most HP fanfics) or it's set in a dream-like or fantasy setting where somebody explicitly points out that everybody in said setting accepts homosexuality. Admittedly, to pull this off without such an explanation would require a story to be set in the last ten or so years in an appropriate area of the world. This isn't to say that I don't want intolerance of sexuality to appear in a story (that's equally unrealistic), but I'd like to see a story where the intolerance isn't one of the main plot points. I'm hoping to pull this off in Talents, although Myr has done an excellent job of putting together a world very similar to this idea in Psionic Corps. Please note that I'm not against putting intolerant characters into a story (it's a sad fact of life), but I'm tired of the stereotypical "dumbass alcoholic troglodyte father" (who often has a southern accent for no good reason) who threatens to kick out/beat up/kill his gay son. Personally, I find this chiche' unfair to fathers because often the mother either doesn't exist in the household, or fills the role of "the understanding parent". Why not make the mother the crazy parent once in a while, while the father is the nice guy? Maybe both of them can deal with their child's sexuality in a reasonable fashion? This doesn't so much have to do with the idea of a homophobic parent so much as the cliche'd troll-like father figures that appear in a lot of gay fiction. Particularly with stories set in more recent times, I have to wonder what happened to the people who marched with their gay friends in the pride marches of the 70's (like my best friend's parents who, oddly enough, are native Texans). It would be interesting to see how ex-hippies would react to having to deal with a "test" of their ideology, as it were, to have a gay child. Maybe they were sincere in their ideals and deal with it fine, or maybe they'll have a crisis of conscience when homosexuality arrives in their family. Once again, I'm trying to work with this idea in Talents, but we'll see how it turns out. It's possible I'll fail spectacularly, but hopefully that won't happen.

To spell "our" correctly! Just kidding. Actually, I think we should focus on making this place more lively. There were a few weeks in February where I thought the board might be dead. @_@ Very few posts or visits. If anybody knows people who would be interested in this site, bring 'em in! It would be nice to expand the fan base of GA as best we can this month. What do you think, Myr?

Happy birthday! *gives you a gift, but you get to choose what's in it* Well? Whatcha get? ^.^

Happy birthday! Let me be the second to say that I hope you have the best one ever, and many more after that!

Happy Birthday! Hope you get what (or who) you want

Take off their shoes? Depends on how their feet look.