het-jacking is what happens in a world that loves men and only men. it’s when you think you’re reading a queer story with all of the things that make queer stories queer (nihilism, secrets, subtext) but then you start to notice that there is always a character who is more femme and they basically do all of the emotional work in the story and that there’s always a character who is more masc and that they are only desirable because of their unavailability. it’s when straight love stories are jacked into yaoi or slash because writing femmes is a black hole that includes wondering if you’re either servicing tHe MaLe GaZe or SuBvErTiNg ExPeCtAtIoNs in all these boring little ways.

writing femmes is hard. it’s easier to just write yourself into men and it’s stress reducing too. even for lesbians or, maybe, especially for lesbians.

het-jacking is when queer characters get together and immediately their families celebrate the union. het-jacking is when queer stories must necessarily end with a wedding. het-jacking is when the dynamic is a question but somehow all of the friends around the characters involved have all of the answers for what is the right thing to do because there are normative social rules around romantic conduct. het-jacking is when there is a right and wrong way to fall in love and it usually begins with a dinner and movie and ends with a happily ever after public reveal.

i mean, c’mon. this shit happens with straight couples: congratulations from family, celebrations, and dynamics that are actual relationships because they hit the social cues for what a meaningful presence entails.

and the thing is—queer people het-jack our own stories all of the time. we don’t always want to fantasize about romance that’s basically a dirty little secret and feelings that are so nebulous that they’re basically jokes. we want celebration and social validation. so we jack our own fantasies with everything that seems to frame heteronormal feelings and give it the structure that says, “hey, here are two people who are engaging in romance in a productive and healthy way! here are two people who are building a life together.”

or, maybe i’m not gen z enough. idk what it would actually be like to have the weird parts of queer life validated by institutions. maybe it’s closeted or nihilistic of me to want love stories to stay weird and to be totally not about building lives together but collapsing and repairing and keeping one another sacred by keeping each other as a secret.

i’m just wondering—when did yaoi get so normal?

yaoi is supposed to be fun, not right or self righteous. you can have a murder without solving it. you can have feelings without climax. you can have a voice without revealing who the voice is. you can pose a hundred questions without answering a single one.

and i don’t want to complain specifically about folks who wants to write stories with storylines where friends support your romantic anxieties and where no one bats an eye around queer marriage. it’s just not what i’m used to. maybe i’m too old for fandom. maybe that’s not how i want to escape.

it's not that i don't want to see people write a successful relationship. it's just that, why is does all of our images of success in relationships seem to be completely derivative of heteronormal culture?

i want to see nihilistic feelings run fun and flirtatious. when i read yaoi, i want to see lesbian sentiments because we’re already compromising by making male characters our escape vehicle for every disembodied feeling. and there’s a big fucking emotional difference yaoi that exists solely to produce a sense of yearning and yaoi that assumes that all love stories must produce a sense of nuclear responsibility and end product. yaoi is supposed to be without end and without product. it’s supposed to be nihilistic because it’s supposed to be process driven.