Instead of a traditional Ship Week with prompts for each day, we're opting for a more relaxed, extended event to celebrate this tiny rowboat of ours, from October 27th to November 9th. You'll get a set of themes, related to each of the four seasons, with some suggested prompts for inspiration. You can check out the rest of the details (ground rules, extra prompts) here.

On tumblr, I was recently asked about nsfw headcanons about my darling Mia Dearden (among other characters I have yet to get around to). I'm just going to c&p them over here, because this is a fandom topic I've been thinking about a lot, and I'd welcome more discussion.

Heteroooo Mia

Initially, I was going to insert here some jokes about Heteroooo Mia; comment on why I see her this way, and on certain fanon trends that go against this and why.

This got long, and I have a few more nsfw headcanons I wanted to share. Luckily, I got another ask about Mia, so I’ll be dividing this and posting the second part in a moment (ETA: here it is!). Also, given the character and the topic, warning for mentions of csa and child trafficking.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom’s approach to sexuality, about “queer headcanons”; about how I’ve personally moved further away from said approaches, if I ever followed it anything more than half-heartedly in the first place. And Mia happens to be a good case study to illustrate my points.

Fandoms are built largely on shipping. That’s just a fact, and it’s not something I particularly object to. I understand why it’s bothersome when that’s all there is, especially if you run countercourse, and especially in fandoms where everything is reduced to one pair of characters (or a trio involved in a ship war) to the detriment of everything else. But I can’t say I haven’t had my fun in the eternal game of smashing dolls together in various combinations. Dynamics and interactions between various characters happens to be one of the main things I’ll pay attention to in any given story; I enjoy a well-written romance, and I love to ask myself “what if…”, in any shape of form. My main fandom, all my previous main fandoms, are built on large, expansive casts, where there are several characters and countless relationships that hold my attention, and in those I’d be called a multishipper, even if usually, when I walk away, all but the few dynamics that retained most of my enthusiasm fade away in my memory.

So this is not an indictment against shipping, by any means. But there are approaches to shipping that I find less and less fitting to my own way of reading texts.

One is the “queer (most often bi) until proven otherwise” approach. Not because I think us queers are these freaks of nature, these aliens that don’t fit with the rest of the human experience. But because the vast majority of characters in the fandoms we move in, like it or not, have been written, with varying levels of awareness, with the intent of portraying heterosexual characters, and that has shaped them.

Some of them, taking a Watsonian approach in mind, wouldn’t change much, if they suddenly were queer, be it thanks to their particular personality or circumstances, or thanks to the context of the universe they live in. Such is life. But in many cases, likely more than I think fandom likes to acknowledge, this would be a more than significant alteration. And, instead, because it’s often filtered through shipping and which dolls we want to smush together to the detriment, and not alongside character exploration, a lot of m/m and f/f fandom content comes across as two straight people who just happen to fuck people of their same gender. And “fuck” might be a strong word, because sometimes any inkling of raw desire feels utterly absent.

Going back to Mia: I read her as heterosexual because that’s what’s in the text. This is a woman (a girl, when she starts) that likes men.

That is attracted to them, that gets passing crushes on them, that develops stronger feelings for them. Her interest in men over women isn’t limited to the romantic territory: her stronger bonds are with men. Ollie and Connor, of course. Dinah is her closest female bond, and that one is built largely off-panel and clearly not on the same level as the other two. She admires Roy and wants to take his mantle, follow in his steps (not just as Speedy II, but also on Roy’s activism and advocacy, by sharing her own personal stories, as he did). On the Teen Titans, the characters she has the most significant interactions with are Victor Stone and Tim Drake. It’s been a while since I read this, but I remember little to no bonding with the female Titans, barring a couple jokes to Rose on her very last appearance. We see one female friend of hers at school, very briefly.

I think it’s fair to say that Mia has an easier time interacting with men. And I can think of why easily. Yes, men are the people who hurt her most. They’re also who she was most used to. And I can see how her past as a trafficking victim, engaging in survival sex works while living on the streets, wouldn’t have been conducting to building solid friendships with other girls and women. Those bonds can be beautiful, but I can picture the kind of competitiveness she was facing in that environment, especially at 15 and younger. She tells Oliver that she took drugs to stay awake, a practice they all did to prevent assaults or robberies -the latter, at least in part, likely from each other. Because you can’t trust anyone 100%, because no one is trustworthy. Not even Mia, in such a dog eats dog world.

At one point, Mia brazenly references a sexual act she did involving other girls… and it was in the context of male clients paying for titillation. There’s absolutely no hint of Mia thinking of it beyond that. And a key detail here, is that this moment, not to mention the bulk of Mia’s character, especially pertaining her relationship with sex, was written by Judd Winick. An author who has never once been subtle about queer subtext (and, when allowed to, text). He even has a character of his own creation, Grace Choi, with a similar background to Mia as a trafficked child, a queer woman who only dates women. And yet, with Mia… nothing. Not even an inkling that she is remotely interested in anything but men.

Queer!Mia, and especially lesbian!Mia, aren’t readings that are accomodated by the text. They are, if not going actively against the text, at least way beyond its boundaries.

And that’s perfectly fine. But it means that you have to build them up, apart from the text.

I find that more and more, I prefer some kind of stronger foundation to built upon for these things, be it subtext (intentional or not, death of the author and all that) or, yes, shipping. Because seeing how a given characters interacts by members of their own gender vis a vis the other is something to build upon. There’s preciously little (nearly nothing, really) of that with Mia, and not seeing anything there to go from means I am not interested in that process, but that’s a matter of personal preference, if anyone else is, go ahead.

Go ahead with the awareness that a queer Mia, and especially a lesbian Mia (and, especially, as I’ve seen before, an amab Mia), is a different character. That these are non-canon readings. Ask yourself, how could this change her reactions to her trauma? Her relationships with Ollie? With Dinah, if she had latched on a safe, older woman to explore her feelings? With her diagnosis? With the Titans, maybe with her heroism? With the world?

Sadly, this isn’t what I see when I spy a lesbian!Mia headcanon in the wild. It’s either lip service, betrays a deep discomfort with the way this csa victim expresses interest in men, or *checks notes* becomes a rhetorical weapon against us ten Jason/Mia shippers.

And fuck, if that isn't boring. Not to mention quite offensive, as a lesbian, ngl.

Other headcanons

I dug deep on my Heteroooo Mia headcanon in my last post, so I’ll take advantage of this one to talk a bit about Mia and sex, especifically. Warning for allusions to csa and child trafficking.

I’ve talked about this with other shippers but I think she’d love very involved roleplaying. She likely has past experiences with those kinds of games, and not good ones (yet, at the same time, pretending someone else can afford you some distance), so she might’ve been unsure at first, but to her surprise and delight, it’s immensely fun. Especially with costumes involved, which is something she ponders and jokes about out loud with other capes, Because.

I think she and Jason would feed into each other with this (because you know this would be a shared kink). Through anyone else’s eyes, the result is way too convoluted and complicated. These two are building up an entire film, a saga. They’re enjoying themselves immensely.

I also have this headcanon that her limits, her comfort zone, are in constant movement. Not static, shifting, hard to predict. What sometimes feels right, other times becomes a hard limit. If sometimes giving head feels active, feels like being in charge, feels like indulging in how much she can affect the guy, other times the posture itself feels degrading. If sometimes certain possessiveness makes her feel wanted and desired, as herself and not just a body and a means to an end, there are other times when it feels like ownership and she gets the urge to escape. Or simply, physical touches that usually cause pleasure will suddenly, without her being able to find an explanation, feel awkward and immensely unsexy. It’s a headache and a half, and something that can add to her insecurities about being too “high maintenance” (unlovable) in a romantic relationship.

The "Bruce is a girldad and suuuuuch a good father to Cass" takes are irksome and inaccurate and often used as a crutch to write Cass in without actually having to put any effort on her character in Batfamily/Batboys centric fics. Most troubling, even at its more earnest when it's done by genuine Cass fans, it operates on the premise that Cass matters because she matters to Bruce (who, despite David Cain setting the bar at approximately the height of the Earth's core, still managed to pull a few outstanding performances. Read Batgirl00, it's good).

This week I devoured Harrow the Ninth and absolutely loved it. I liked the first book, but this novel took the series to another level. I quite enjoyed getting to read something a little different, and piecing together the answers by the information that slowly trickled chapter after chapter. I want to read something else in between this and the third installment, but I can't wait to read that one. I look forward to catching up and finally being able to look at what my TLT mutuals have been saying without fearing getting myself spoioled LOL.

I also read a few short stories by the same author: Chew and The Woman in the Hill, two independent stories both available in Nightmare Magazine, and The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex, set in TLT universe, a little tale of an adventure Camilla and Palmedes have as teens that shows a bit of how the Sixth House works. 

What I've picked for the in-between of TLT was a reread of The Clan of the Cave Bear. There's a good chance I might only read that first book, but who knows. Maybe this time around I finish the saga. I think I made it to the beginning of the 5th book, back when I first picked them as a preteen. 

And I've started Yellowface, which has been on my TBR for a while. R. F. Kuang seems to be a hit-or-miss for people, as an author, but that first chapter and the narrator's voice hooked me immediately. I'm not surprised, because a friend of mine read it over a year ago and shared some quotes that felt very, very promising.

On the non-fiction side of things, I finished The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed, which I wholeheartedly recommend. I also read a few hand-picked essay chapters from larger books: Hélène Cixoux's "Coming to Writing", which will merit a second, more paused read to digest every bit, and Tricia Lootens's "Whose Hand Was I Holding?: Familial and Sexual Politics in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House". 

Comics-wise, there's not much to tell. I continue to enjoy Absolute Wonder Woman. I'm keeping up with Iron Man and the West Coast Avengers runs; they're better than most Tony runs of the recent past LOL, but I might only give them a few more issues to impress me. And I'll probably stop reading Wayne Family Adventures until the arc is over, at least, because the last few issues have done little more than aggravate me, and I have a firm "if it sucks, hit da bricks" philosophy with comic books.

One of my goals for this year was to read more non-fiction, in general -for enjoyment, and not just academic purposes as I've done some past years lol. This past week I finished two non-fiction books, and started another, so I thought I'd post about it a little.

The first of them was "City of Corpses" by Ōta Yōko, recently translated to Spanish. The author, already an established writer by then, was one of the survivors of Hiroshima's bombing, and wrote this book in the immediate months afterwards, convinced she was inevitably going to die from "atomic bomb syndrome", as many others did even when the danger had seemingly passed. She also wrote a short article that avoided the censorship from one or other side by being published at just the right time, "A light as if from the depths", included at the end of my copy. The book itself was censored, and even its first edition omitted some parts as well, which lead to the author publishing a second one later on, aka the one I read. This edition comes with a prologue that really gets into the history of the time: the literature of the atomic bomb and how it was received, Ōta Yōko's complicated journey as an author, etc., which paint a very interesting context. And the novel itself is harrowing, very descriptive, painting a very vivid picture of her mental state as she lived through this. I definitely recommend it.

The other one was "Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine" by Tim Hanley. It's by the same author as "Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet's Ace Reporter". That book analysed the complete journey of the heroine, while this one focuses almost exclusively on the pre-crisis time, particularly on Marston (with a full-on psychological profile of the guy LOL). It talks a lot about how "Corruption of the Innocent" and the Comics Code of Conduct shaped comics, of the Golden/Silver/Bronze era of the character, of the Women's Liberation movement and how it intersected (and didn't) with Wonder Woman's development, comparison with other heroines, public perception of the character... Another recommended read if this kind of thing interests you. I'm definitely going to hunt down his other books on DC/comics history.

The one I just started yesterday is "The Feminist Killjoy Handbook" by Sarah Ahmed. I anticipate finishing it this week, because it's quite an engaging read.

On non-fiction news, today my hardcover copies of "Harrow the Ninth" and "Nona the Ninth" arrive! I tried to start HtN on epub format but it's. Probably not a good idea LOL. I got my copies in Spanish as well, because that's how I read the first and eventually I might try to push these books on other people IRL who aren't fluent in English, so.

Lastly, comic-wise I'm keeping up with a few things (what little Jason is doing, Absolute Wonder Woman, Saga, Monstress, The New Gods...) I just started Zatanna's new run, and the first issue looks promising and came with great art. Next thing on the list is to finish reading through the main appearances of Duke Thomas and New Earth!Talia, before I really get on with Wonder Woman comics from all over the place. Recently I read Wonder Woman Historia by Kelly Sue DeConnick, which I loved, and Wonder Woman: The Once and Future Story by Trina Robbins (another author who entered my list thanks to Wonder Woman Unbound), a heavy one-shot about domestic violence. 2025 is going to be Diana's year for me, surely.

After that... we'll see. I've been eyeing Kate Spencer's Manhunter for a while, but there are a few comics I left half-finished that I want to complete, as well (Young Justice '98 and some of its characters' history, the original Suicide Squad, Gotham Central...). The love-hate affair with detective comics comics will continue for a while, suffice to say xD