[ SECRET POST #5348 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5348 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.
[Dhux's Scar]



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02.


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03.



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04. [SPOILERS for The Green Knight]




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05. [SPOILERS for Song of Farca]




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06. [WARNING for incest/underage ship]

[Enola Holmes]



























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #765.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

02. https://i.imgur.com/FUfInu8.png

[(Anonymous)]

I had never thought about it that way but you're right I'd be damn offended if my best friend assumed without asking that I was A) straight, B) a bigot that wouldn't stay friends for that reason. And this would be someone that thinks they like me???

[(Anonymous)]

Ehhhh I mean tbh regarding thinking someone is a homophobe or will be uncomfortable. IME, gay people often have to think like that if they're given good reason to believe it.

Bc there are so many cases where gay people have been killed out of so called "gay panic" or just plain homophobia. So I can understand keeping attraction to myself .

[(Anonymous)]

If it were a stranger I'd get it but this is talking about long term established friends. Would you be friends for years with someone you think might panic and literally end your life if they found out you're gay? Should you be friends with that person?

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking as an actual gay who grew up in a very homophobic place: it's the fact you don't know. You're flipping a coin, and while it could end up bad, it could also end up good, and ending up utterly alone is kind of bad on its own. It ends up a very complicated mess of "coulds" and "maybes" and scares you into paralysis sooner.

As well, you also tend to have a much more limited pool than straights, so there's a big fear about speaking up and losing or "tainting" a friendship that you don't want to lose.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I cannot imagine being friends with someone, much less having serious feelings of attraction toward, someone who I am not sure might literally kill me, according to the earlier anon's gay panic example, for having those feelings toward them or someone else. Or someone who might think I'm disgusting for it. The fact that this is possible and that I don't know for sure would turn me right off any affection for them. If I don't know for sure, then they can stay at arms length until they prove whether they're a bigot or not, because as a queer person, I sure am not diving into decades of good friendship without that being on my mind to clear up beforehand.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh. People stay friends with genuinely shitty people all the time, for years, for the same reasons anyone stays in any relationship (platonic and/or romantic) with meh-to-shitbag range people. Relationships are complicated, people second guess themselves a lot, and very few people can objectively calculate that point where an old friend has become too toxic to stick with, so they remain stagnant.

It's not that hard to imagine staying friends with someone where you're not sure how they'd react to your sexuality and you were too afraid to pull off the band-aid and find out.

[(Anonymous)]

These are wise words.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

This is true, but this is also not the trope that OP is addressing in their secret wherein the friendships are portrayed as wholesome.

If we had been talking about dysfunctional, self-abusive relationships to start with then I wouldn't be agreeing they don't make sense.

[(Anonymous)]

Listen, if this past year of racist and anti-vax absurdity has taught me anything, it's for sure that a lot of us didn't know our loved ones as well as we though we did, okay?

[(Anonymous)]

There are also different types of homophobia. I grew up in an accepting area where being out was the norm. Now I live very far from there, and I haven't met anyone who is out. I've made new friends, and all of them are straight as far as I know, and if not then they're closeted like me. Nobody I've met is openly homophobic either. They support LGBT+ rights and such and are fans of some queer celebrities and media with queer themes.

I'm not attracted to any of them, but I have reservations about simply coming out to them because they might be the type of homophobes who are uncomfortable actually being around queer people. I'm not going to end a friendship with them over that because - unpopular take but - I don't think that type of homophobia equals bad person. It's internalized over a lifetime and often subconscious, and the people who have it may not even like that they have it. You can't help irrational feelings of discomfort, and you may want them to not exist, but they do anyway. I could come out and hope that if they're uncomfortable at first, they'll loosen up and become more accepting once they get used to the fact that I'm still the same person. Or they could start gradually avoiding me until we're no longer in contact and I'm left friendless again.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, my mom was one of those kinds of homophobes. She had a best friend when I was younger, they were doing stuff together all the time for years. Then Friend just stopped coming around. I always thought it was kind of weird.

Then when I was in my late teens, I think Mom was trying to feel me out on the subject or something, and almost out of nowhere she was like "Do you think you could be friends with someone who was a lesbian?" and ... uh what? "I mean, I was really good friends with someone once, and then I found out she was a lesbian, and after that I just couldn't think of her the same way. I couldn't be comfortable around her. Like, what if she was attracted to me?"

...Then you tell her you're not interested and both of you move on? Not to mention, married to my dad the whole time they were friends. (I can be pretty sure that's who she meant, because Mom never socialized with anyone else much except people who went to our conservative church, and in hindsight Friend was kinda butch.) For crying out loud, Mom, wtf.

[(Anonymous)]

+1, I've been out for a long time and live in a small town and people are *still* all "oh!" when they realise that no, she's my wife. I don't expect violence or even rudeness, but it's still uncomfortable and has greatly reduced my pool of friends.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a closet case. It's not necessarily because I think I'll be persecuted but I'm deeply uncomfortable. Basically it makes me feel like people will be repulsed by ME being attracted to them. So I feel like from personal experience, it's possible to hide for reasons other than assuming the other party is a homophobe. Not only that, I would absolutely not want my friend to pine after me so actually I get characters not wanting to make their unrequited love interest uncomfortable.

[(Anonymous)]

I was with you until the second part. I grew up in a fairly liberal area, with an open and accepting family, and I still was terrified to come out to anyone for a long time, because you can hope for and think the best and there will still always be the chance of rejection (and much worse). Some people react differently when it's someone close to them--and not for the better. You do what you have to do to feel safe, even if it means protecting yourself from people that you know, rationally, aren't going to hurt you.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, MTE. If someone I'd been friends with for years revealed that they'd been terrified to come out to me, I'd feel nothing but empathy for them. The last thing I would do is make their painful insecurity and fear about me.

When it comes to people's prejudices you just never know for sure. Also, our insecurities often aren't rational. That goes for most deeply-felt insecurities, IMO; they're just not rational.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT exactly. It doesn't have to make sense--not to mention that coming out and existing openly and admitting crushes should be a personal choice anyway, and one of those choices is "I don't want to do it"

I'm also thinking OP is probably on the younger side, since millenials and older can more clearly remember when thr best you could reasonably assume was that someone was "okay" with gay people, not even a full ally.

[(Anonymous)]

I hate the words friend zone so much. I also hate good guy narrative where girls like bad boys versus good guys with their only virtue being... that they're not bad?

However I love fic plots where one character goes "they can't love me back. I'll stay silent and enjoy being near my beloved". I think it's cute.

In reality Nice Guys TM will reveal their true self after being rejected, cursing at the other party, saying they were leading them on, etc. Then they will hate all the girls because the ones they like don't like them back. I believe the term is incel?

[(Anonymous)]

Well if it's older BL/yuri, the character wouldn't be able to think in terms like their friend potentially being a "homophobe," and they probably wouldn't even think in terms of themselves being "gay" because they themselves would have internalized homophobia and think of it as them only being in love with that person. Modern language and concepts about LGBTQ and homophobia just weren't a wide enough part of the culture they were written in.

[(Anonymous)]

Take 2.

I'm generally just not into to childhood friend romances in general. I just can't ever imagine being attracted to anyone I grew up with

[(Anonymous)]

oh this, 100 percent all the way. I understand it as a narrative device and I suppose in theory it could be done well, but I will never be able to personally identify with it and thus hook myself into the story over it. it's been almost 30 years but I can still remember the creeps who crushed on me in middle school and I have never even been curious enough to look them up on FB. I always did wonder of authors who leaned into this trope had actually had a situation where someone they brushed off grew up hot, or if they were merely fantasizing that someone did.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you IF the friend tries to interfere in the new relationship, I guess? On the other hand, there's a reason why the 'not actually unrequited love' tag on AO3 is one of my faves. If there's pining, and then the other person realises what they're feeling themselves I'm into it.

[(Anonymous)]

Getting offended because your closeted friend who has a crush on you is not yet 100% comfortable coming out lowkey has "Not all men!!" and "Racist is a slur!!!" energy. It's just not something a decently empathetic person would get hung up on. You wouldn't immediately feel aggrieved over a false perception of you over your supposed friend's very legitimate concerns about their own safety.

[(Anonymous)]

For real. It ain't about YOU.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm cracking the hell up at this because this called my mid-20s gay ass out.