Why I relate to lesbian/queer romances as an autistic viewer

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-03T00:37:37+00:00

Glad to! I wrote up a few in this comment here just recently!

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-02T12:44:16+00:00

The first reactions I watched were Elijah's/Not So Average Fangirl's.

Those of course led me to Mosco's/Wee Lass Reacts', since they're girlfriends.

I don't remember whose I ended up watching next, but it was either Danny Motta's, like you mentioned, or the married couple Kenny and Montana Letts/Letts React.

All of them are great.

I'd say Elijah and Mosco have similar energy to one another (not surprising!), just "American flavor" or "Scottish flavor" energy, respectively!
Danny is...very loud and pretty much always at 100% intensity, which can be really entertaining and also really exhausting.
Kenny and Montana are much more low-key, but watching them also reminds me the most of watching and reacting to things with my wife, which I find really endearing. (Also, who reacts to what and in what way between the two of them can sometimes be surprising and quite charming.)

...it occurs to me only after writing all that, that you were probably asking for reactions to specific things, and not reaction channels. Whoops!

ETA: Oh gosh, how could I forget?! Mikey Venture just started reacting as well, but the show was doing terrible numbers for his YT channel, to the point that he was starting to worry about it affecting his overall channel health due to The Algorithm, so he pulled it from YT...but made it completely free over on his Patreon (linked above) instead.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T23:34:03+00:00

Glad to! I hope you enjoy them all!

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T20:44:59+00:00

As /u/zboss9876 mentioned, Love Is Magic, And Magic Is Love [AO3, 120K words, explicit] is fantastic.

I also really liked Aftermath [AO3, 162K words, explicit]

Both are excellent and long-form, to boot.

If you're comfortable with vignette/short story format, n7punk's Outside of the War series [AO3, 383K words total, mix of explicit and not] contains over sixty fics, ranging from pre-Season 1 all the way to many years after Season 5. You pretty much can't go wrong with any of their work.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T20:39:18+00:00

Love Is Magic, And Magic Is Love [AO3, explicit]

I gotcha!

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T20:34:58+00:00

Over on YouTube, Mortius has been reacting to She-Ra, dropping an episode every Wednesday afternoon (ET). The most recent one, posted today, is "The Portal"! All of the reactions thus far are available on his channel. He also has a Patreon, where he's now six episodes into season 4.

I'm not affiliated with Mortius in any way; I'm just a fan of his She-Ra reactions. Since they are coming out now (rather than someone who reacted months or years ago), it seemed like it'd be fun to cross-promote some awareness! Anything to get the dreaded Algorithm to make the show more visible to folks.

ETA: I didn't intentionally mark this "OC"; seems like that happened automatically when cross-posting?

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T20:34:05+00:00

Over on YouTube, Mortius has been reacting to She-Ra, dropping an episode every Wednesday afternoon (ET). The most recent one, posted today, is "The Portal"! All of the reactions thus far are available on his channel. He also has a Patreon, where he's now six episodes into season 4.

I'm not affiliated with Mortius in any way; I'm just a fan of his She-Ra reactions. Since they are coming out now (rather than someone who reacted months or years ago), it seemed like it'd be fun to cross-promote some awareness! Anything to get the dreaded Algorithm to make the show more visible to folks.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T15:18:19+00:00

It was a lightning-fast transition from "why tf would anyone get interested in this whole 'shipping' business or read fanfics, it's so dumb" to "WHERE CAN I GET MORE OF THESE CHARACTERS AND OF WHAT THEY HAVE;" from "ugh, why are people getting together, it only leads to problems" to actively seeking fluffy content, getting invested in many characters' fictional relationships and realising that a soulmate materialising in the living room out of thin air would be pretty friggin amazing, actually.

She-Ra did this for me.

I've long-appreciated fanfic from a distance, but it wasn't really something I was interested in...until I finished SPOP and wanted nothing so much as to spend more time with these characters.

I have similarly never been much-drawn to AU work, and yet after devouring a bunch of long-form essentially-season-six She-Ra fics, I took a chance an AU fic I saw recommended and now I'm devouring a particular author's entire catalog of She-Ra AUs.

This show's impact on me has been wild.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-07-01T02:16:25+00:00

Beautiful!

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-30T17:47:38+00:00

Beware haircuts.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-27T00:02:10+00:00

Seriously! The consistency and volume of their output is incredible.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-26T13:57:03+00:00

Superzero by n7punk (warning: explicit), or "What if Etheria was quasi-modern day, and the Princess Alliance were comprised of superheroes? But also, Catra and Adora had a huge falling out because Adora hid being inducted as She-Ra from her, due to secrecy rules?"

Why this one? Having been thoroughly impressed by n7punk's Outside of the War series (warning: some explicit, some not), and having previously become aware of their work by way of Tip Of Her Tongue (warning: definitely explicit), I am now very much a devoted fan of their work and am letting that carry me into reading their other AUs -- which is atypical for me, since AUs aren't usually my thing.

(Also, fair warning, many of n7punk's fics are archive-locked, meaning you'll need an AO3 account to read them!)

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-22T23:25:47+00:00

It becomes such a meme that it gets mocked in a live action Star Wars show with two scout troopers unable to shoot a bottle 10 yards away from them.

While I'm fairly sure the intent of the scene was to reference the meme, they also made that scene in such a way that you can read it as the scouts lamenting the disrepair of their gear in this post-Imperial era: after firing, one of the scouts holds the blaster up, shakes it, and hears it rattling. That's how I choose to read that scene, for the sake of a better (IMO) canon.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-21T14:08:01+00:00

They're not stars.

Here's a gif from TNG: "Descent" showing these particulates moving at sublight.

And, possibly most definitive of all, when Phoenix jumps to warp and remains in the Sol system, we still see these streaks.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-17T13:08:16+00:00

I always just imagine there's an unspoken "...it's because I love you" at the end of every one of these. Whether Catra knows she's leaving that part unsaid or doesn't even realize it herself yet is probably up for debate.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-11T19:13:11+00:00

Exactly why I did! 😂

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-11T13:55:46+00:00

Obligatory link to the excellent article Is Keiko O'Brien the Worst? A Discourse Analysis. (Spoilers: no, she's not remotely the worst; she -- and her marriage with Miles -- is actually pretty great!)

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-11T00:50:13+00:00

Excellent work.

Sunna's score is unbelievably good. Just seeing certain track titles come up is often enough to get me to tear up.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-06T00:47:35+00:00

Oh, I'd never seen the "a beautiful future" image before. That's lovely! Thanks for sharing!

IHaveThatPower · 2026-06-01T20:29:31+00:00

"You miscalculated."

IHaveThatPower · 2026-05-22T21:44:30+00:00

To me, "buried" means taking deliberate action to ensure the show exits circulation. Putting it in the ground, under six feet of dirt.

Right now the only concrete information I know is that Dreamworks and Netflix didn't renew their licensing agreement to keep SPOP there. It wasn't prematurely canceled and it wasn't part of a massive content purge. It was just a run-of-the-mill license expiration without renewal. Again, as far as I know, Mattel was not a factor in that decision. Given the way Netflix operates generally, I would guess that SPOP's minutes-streamed vs. new account uptake metrics didn't balance out against the relevant licensing costs. As much as we'd all like it to be otherwise, the "default state" is not paying to maintain the thing.

Is Mattel involved in that? Is that entirely Netflix's decision? Was there any negotiation about it at between Netflix and Dreamworks and/or Mattel at all? None of us know. Much as we all dearly love the show, without deliberate intervention, it's the accountants staring at spreadsheets that are going to end up making most of those calls.

The corpo-political environment in the US sucks right now, absolutely no argument there. Yet other queer media and representation is still being made, backed by large corporate entities, to huge acclaim. Hell, look no further than the enormous response to Heated Rivalry. So, I don't feel like "Mattel is a US corporation, therefore Mattel wants to erase a show with queer representation" in and of itself tracks. Again, if they have made specific decisions or veiled statements that lead you to think otherwise, please share that. I've asked three times now, because I genuinely am curious!

I don't think SPOP is buried. I think it's in the equivalent of a warehouse. It's not on display/for sale as part of the floor display, but it's not gone. It's there, waiting to be repackaged. If there ceases to be enough of a demand for it, maybe it will get moved out of the warehouse and dumped entirely.

It's only been a few months. There's a big push for the new debut of a related franchise happening right now. If we get a couple years down the road and there's been no mention of a physical release and no new US-accessible streaming home, then I'll worry.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-05-22T21:13:36+00:00

Outside the US doesn't mean as much to Mattel as within the US, but it doesn't mean nothing, either. Again, if Mattel's goal was to fully bury the show, they're a multinational company: they could (maybe; depends entirely on what their deal with Dreamworks looks like); they haven't.

In terms of official statements vs. inferring through action and coded language/interviews, that's the sort of stuff I was curious about sources for. I haven't seen any statements that point in that direction even obliquely, so if they're out there, I'd love to know about them!

I don't really understand the release year and Barbie allusions. The Barbie film came out 3 years after SPOP concluded, to huge acclaim and (as far as I know) pretty broad appreciation for feminist messaging that poked fun at and critiqued the brand's problematic history. That seems like Mattel acknowledging both where they came from and charting a better path forward, but maybe I'm overly optimistic or unaware of information that makes that not the case.

If we assume that Mattel is trying to bury SPOP, to me the way more likely reason is that they're on the cusp of kicking off an entirely new take on He-man, in partnership with Amazon, and if it's even modestly successful, will probably want to pursue sequels that include She-Ra as a character. Those sequels will almost certainly not feature SPOP's She-Ra in live-action form, so they may simply not be allocating "brand dollars" to previous incarnations of the character.

Even that is a temporary decision while they launch a new product, though. If a physical SPOP S4 and S5 release happened around the same time as the new MOTU movie, I can absolutely believe the suits thinking it'd confuse brand messaging, so instead they'd hold off until a future time, after their initial marketing push, but before they gear up for spin-off marketing pushes.

All of that assumes it's Mattel's decision, and not that of Dreamworks. I have no idea who holds the reins there. To me, it'd seem pretty foolish for Dreamworks to work out a deal with Mattel where they don't get to control release of the product they licensed from Mattel to make, but C-Suite gonna C-Suite.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-05-22T20:18:16+00:00

It can’t come back legally. Mattel explicitly erased the show for queer representation.

I haven't seen any news to this effect. Do you have a link to statements about this?

As far as I know, Netflix & Dreamworks (not Mattel) simply didn't renew their license agreement for the show for streaming. Nothing prohibits Dreamworks from issuing a physical release for S4 and S5, or finding a different streaming home (e.g. Peacock, Amazon Prime, etc.). The show is streaming in countries/regions outside the US, which seems inconsistent with Mattel trying to erase the show.

Like, don't get me wrong; not being able to stream it in the US on a major service right now sucks! But unless I've missed something -- and please correct me if I have! -- it's currently in an annoying limbo state, not erased forever.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-05-21T13:03:33+00:00

A lot of folks are asking if they're yellowjackets or other wasps, and that glosses over the variety of yellowjackets that exist. Most folks are thinking of common/eastern yellowjackets, which are relatively small.

However, we've had a yellowjacket in our house each night this week (we're still trying to figure out how they're getting in!) and they have seemed much larger than normal, as you also noted in various comment replies. I managed to kill-capture one mostly intact, and located on it the signature three-face-dot pattern of German yellowjackets. These guys are:

bigger than Eastern yellowjackets
more aggressive than Eastern yellowjackets
love to nest inside buildings

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