Minotaur Is Not A Species

Minotaur is not a species

The Minotaur was named that because he was the son of King Minos. Anyone with a bull head has to be named after their dad, like the Kyletaur or something.

give me ace characters who are unabashedly sexy and flirtatious.

give me aro characters who are emotional and clingy.

give me bi characters who can't even make eye contact with anyone, let alone flirt with them.

give me pan characters who are deadpan (haha get it) and have black cat energy.

give me non-binary characters who dress completely femme or masc, who don't “look non-binary”.

give me trans characters who don't completely pass as their gender but are still respected and not the butt of a joke.

fuck the stereotypes, give me more variety in queer representation.

hmm.

Okay, I've told myself I'll write a fic about this for a long time, but I don't think it's going to happen, so let's write about it here instead.

Consider: aroace Betrand Baudelaire. Specifically, consider aroace Bertrand Baudelaire along with Violet Snicket.

A Bertrand whose best friend was always Beatrice. She understood him as he was and loved him like no one else. A Bertrand who spent his whole life thinking about how lovely it would be to live with one of his friends, but knew it would never happen because they were all very alloromantic and weren't going to want that with him.

And then one day, Beatrice shows up at his door, crying. He knows what happened between her and Lemony; how she still loved him, but had to end it for enough reasons to fill a 200 page book. He knows that Lemony is now on the lam and has faked his death. So he thinks he knows what's wrong. It's that she is still mourning her relationship with Lemony.

And then Beatrice tells him that she's pregnant. She doesn't know what to do. She wants to keep the baby, but Lemony's situation is not one that would allow him to be a father. That's why she broke up with him. His circumstances are too complicated for anyone to be involved with him, especially an innocent infant. Even if Lemony isn't involved, everyone will know who the child's father is. It's obvious.

So Bertrand proposes a solution: he will marry Beatrice and act as the child's father. Beatrice gladly agrees. She has always loved Bertrand. She has always clung to Bertrand. Lemony has always been her love, but Bertrand has always been her rock, her comfort, her sanity. And after the way everything went down with Lemony, she would be more than happy to never have a romantic relationship again. Bertrand is sweet. He's smart. He is kind and gentle. He'd make a loving father. It was never the future Beatrice pictured for herself, but it isn't hard to say yes.

At first, everyone is still suspicious of the child's paternity. They know how recently Beatrice was together with Lemony, and they know Bertrand was never one to have sex. But within a few years, Beatrice is pregnant again, and there's no sign of Lemony anywhere. Clearly Bertrand is at least willing to have sex for procreation. By the time Sunny is born a decade later, no one questions their marriage.

Their marriage is real and beautiful. They enjoy raising their 3 children. They spend every day in each other's company. It is, in effect, a queerplatonic relationship. Beatrice often wonders what could have been if Lemony's circumstances were different, because how could she not, but she never regrets a thing. She is happy this way. No doubt happier than she ever could have been with a man as troubled as Lemony, even with how much she loved him.

I don't know if Violet and Klaus notice that there's something different about their parents' relationship when they're still alive. To them, this is what marriage has always looked like. Their parents are close and they love each other; that's more than can be said of some of their friends' parents.

I do think that when the books come out and they see Lemony's dedications to Beatrice, some things click into place. Their father loved their mother, but not quite like that.

I'm not sure when Lemony caught on, but I have to imagine he is respectful of it all, even if very saddened. Bertrand was always a good colleague and a good man. If Lemony's downfall was what it took for Bertrand to get the kind of relationship he always wanted, perhaps it was for the best. Bertrand would certainly be a better father to his child than messy, unpredictable Lemony, whose passion had always been his downfall. Lemony would have much preferred to be with Beatrice and raise his own child, but clearly things are better this way.

Anyway. Perhaps one day I'll write the fic. If any of you want to beat me to it, please go ahead. But that's the headcanon I've had for quite a while. I've always liked the takes on the Sugar Bowl Generation where Bertrand is Beatrice's best friend first and foremost, and this is really just an extension of that. But I love this theory so much that I'm still not entirely convinced I didn't steal it from someone else (although I've never seen anyone else say it, so I don't think I did).

Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".

The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?

"if i was orpheus i would simply not turn around" yes you would. if you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. to love someone is to turn around. to love someone is to look at them. whichever version of the myth — he hears her stumble, he can't hear her at all, he thinks he's been tricked — he turns around because he loves her. that's why it's a tragedy. because he loves her enough to save her. because he loves her so much he can't save her. because he will always, always turn around. "if i was orpheus i would simply —" you wouldn't be orpheus. you wouldn't be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. be serious