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outlawqueen2016 · 4 months ago

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Restructuring in the Face of Failure

The Board, an Overview

As it so happens, things change. Especially in times of conflict, let alone times of global crisis, the power struggle for advantage on the field of battle, control of culture, and strength of specialized strategic investments influences the day to day development of this ongoing Great War.

The board as we knew it comprised of the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples against the communist organizations: Transatlantic Alliance, forged between the Calvanists and the Kremlin; Hazbollah; Viet Cong; African Union; Syndicate; Kingdom of Pacifica; the traitors of Hazbollah, Palestine; and Transatlantic Alliance offshoots: ANTIFA, Confederacy, Pride (LGBTQ+).

The board as defined by Nikia O’Niele, General of the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples; Queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii Nei; Empress of the Galactic Republic, features the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples against the communist organizations: Hazbollah, under the command of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah; Hezbollah, under the command of Major General Hassanal Bolkiah; African Union, under the command of Dictator Djibouti; Syndicate under no cohesive command; Palestine, under command of both, Whore Al-Assad I and her daughter, Whore Al-Assad II; Viet Cong, under the command of the current shadow Dictator Shae Shi Ping; and the New World Order.

Pivotal Moments

The International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples made critical statements which sparked further investigation by independent journalists; leading to scrutiny on the Transatlantic Alliance public facing organization, NATO. The inquiry was founded and the end result is the United Nations cut ties from NATO in June of 2024.

The International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples gained substantial numbers advantage over the course of the Battle of the Dungeon in the Outskirts.

Analysis of the organization Pride and the LGBTQ+ community revealed the sexual perversions hiding behind sexual deviations (homosexual and bisexual). The International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples condemns sexual perversions and the organizations which lobby for the cultural acceptance of sexual perversions which lead to the acceptance of communism and the adoption of slavery.

The International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples released statements, at multiple levels, explaining and condemning New World Order Project 2025; meanwhile Democrats in the United States insist the Republican Party is to blame.

The International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples targeted leadership and command of the Transatlantic Alliance a few short months into the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine Conflict. The high success rate of these missions has left the Transatlantic Alliance without command and organization.

Conclusion

In sum, the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples entered the field of battle in Europe in 2022, with the intent to defend the freedoms of our peoples in Ukraine against the tyrant, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The unfortunate truth of the matter is a dead man strived his entire life to make a difference in the life of the commoner in Central Europe. The terrorist who replaced an honorable man, has made his catch phrase “slavi ukraini.” a chilling phrase translated as, “enslave the free peoples.”

I, Nikia O’Niele, General of the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples; Queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii Nei; Empress of the Galactic Republic, was moved to tears when my dear friend, Vladum Romanov, General of the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples; Crown Prince of Transylvania, told me of the plight of the Ukrainians.

I felt I had no choice. So many of my men had fought shoulder to shoulder with these men during joint military operations in Afghanistan. So many of those men had fought toe to toe against kidnappers for the pedophile circuit with my men. So, the Kingdom of Hawaii Nei, on behalf of it’s Queen, Nikia O’Niele, Queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii Nei, declared war against the Transatlantic Alliance.

The sum of these individual losses is devastating. The Transatlantic Alliance lacked leadership and strength. When this power void occurs in a company, usually, a specialist is called in to restructure the organization and payroll is reworked. In this case, a new organization made of cross-functional traitors over the ages has come to power: the New World Order.

In the time since, the International Legion for the Freedom of Free Peoples has taken enemy objectives around the world and crippled the powers that be. The only thing left is to continue to erode the New World Order grip on media and expose their unethical behavior and irresponsible practices in order to preserve freedom for one more generation to come.

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ezraholic-art · 2 years ago

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Politics. Stuck-up aristocrats. Etiquette. He had enough of being a lord sometimes, despite all his love for Kryta and the queen. With time it got way more boring and tiring, all the intrigues and games, than Giovanni wished it would be. He sometimes pondered if his father joined the White Mantle cause just to see some change. Ah, he missed his younger days a lot. Not of because his father betraying the country, of course, but because it was a time of freedom. Not like anyone could order him around now really, even the queen, but not being a widely known aristocrat made everything easier.

So when an opportunity appeared to shed this skin for some time at least, he gladly caught a lift with Kasmeer to where nobody knew him - Cantha. A bit of holidays he deserved, leaving all diplomatic stuff to her, just as she would want anyway, to prove herself.

It were hell of active holidays though, there was so much new stuff to discover and try, and what of course did not escape Giovanni's attention was how Canthan mesmers wielded magic. Being a duelist at heart and an avid learner, he quickly threw himself into studying the ways of a virtuoso. All the excitement running in his veins made him feel at least 20 years younger, finally getting to match his looks.

How could I celebrate Pride Month without my biggest gay? Good thing I got this idea randomly during a dungeon 😆

Gio's forever young aromantic homosexual man and the first character in GW2 universe I created outside the game before making him there later, hence cool violet hair streak. Still livid to this day that later they added similar hair only for females just to spite me.

Inspired by Heathens by Smash Into Pieces

#ez-art #gw2 #art #guild wars 2 #gw2 art #gw2art #guildwars2 #digital art #digitalart #procreate #fantasy #fantasy art #mesmer #virtuoso #OC: Giovanni Vicino #magic #gw2 fan submission #comissions open

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solitaryspirits · 3 years ago

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❀ *ﾟ alberto rosende. twenty-five. cis male. he/him. homosexual & virgo. ⇝ looks like renato “ren” luna blew in two years ago and never left. they’ve proven themselves to be insightful & optimistic, but being argumentative & distractible is their downfall. it’s only fitting that michael in the bathroom by george salazar is playing when they leave their home in gargoyle garden apartments. rumor has it that they run an illegal gambling ring, wonder if that’s why the lawyer intern & ectoplasm arcade game attendant moved out of their place in queens, new york.

THE BASICS

NAME: Renato “Ren” Junior Luna AGE: Twenty-five BIRTHDAY: September 18, 1996 STAR CHART: Virgo sun, cancer moon, leo rising GENDER: Cis male PRONOUNS: He/him SEXUALITY: Homosexual

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 5’10 GLASSES OR CONTACTS: Glasses JEWELRY: Matching watches, slender belts, gold necklaces FASHION: Patterned button-ups, light colored shirts & pants, cuffed pants, streetwear PHYSICAL DISABILITIES: None

PERSONALITY

POSITIVE TRAITS: Appreciative, empathetic, honest, optimistic, sensitive NEUTRAL TRAITS: Competitive, emotional, experimental, moralistic, outspoken NEGATIVE TRAITS: Argumentative, critical, egocentric, meddlesome, opinionated INTROVERTED/EXTROVERTED/AMBIVERT: Introverted OPTIMIST/PESSIMIST: Optimist DAREDEVIL/CAUTIONS: Cautious MESSY/NEAT: Messy FEARS: Turning into his father GOALS: To protect people HOGWARTS HOUSE: Ravenclaw MBTI: INTJ

PAST

HOMETOWN: Queens, New York EDUCATION: Columbia University School of Law MOTHER: Assumed deceased FATHER: Imprisoned SIBLINGS: Adoptive

PRESENT

LOCATION: Gargoyle Garden Apartments CAREER: Law intern & Ectoplasm Arcade game attendant SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None

LIKES

FOOD: Ajiaco COLOR: Green MUSIC: Pop, Lo-fi ANIMAL: Cats LITERATURE: Fantasy, historical, gaming magazines

HABITS

SMOKES: No DRINKS: Socially HANGOUT: Cryptid cinema, Ectoplasm arcade, & Flying saucer pizza SPENDING: Takeout, name brand clothing, vintage pokemon cards QUIRKS: Never cooks in the kitchen, always carries change, only drinks iced coffee NERVOUS TICKS: Bites nails

HEADCANONS

He writes in every book he owns. Yes, he knows plenty of people hate it. No, he doesn’t care in the slightest.

Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite game and he loves running any sort of tabletop roleplaying game. He participates in several online communities and runs several games in his free time.

Because he never had to learn how to cook, Ren has horrible eating habits that include only ever getting takeout, donuts, mac-n-cheese, and instant ramen. Does he know it’s bad? Sure. But will that affect his future? Eh, probably not.

BIOGRAPHY

The earliest memory Renato has of his father is of waiting outside of the courthouse for him. Which, as far as Renato is concerned, is the only memory of the man worth having. A few short months after Renato was conceived, his father entered a very lengthy, very public legal battle after he assaulted and kidnapped a man. Growing up, Ren did all he could to avoid reading any of the news articles or court records - his mother said he was a bad man, and that was all Ren needed to know. He didn’t need a father, after all, so long as his mother was at his side, life would be just fine.

Until, of course, she wasn’t.

He recalls waiting outside of his elementary school, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting until a teacher saw him and attempted to get in contact with his mother. She never forgot to pick him up. Traffic must’ve been bad or an emergency came up and…Ren came up with every possible reason for why his mother hadn’t shown or answered, but it was as if she never existed. She had simply disappeared in the middle of the day. With a father in prison and a mother that many presumed deceased, Ren spent the following weeks in a foster home, just long enough for next-of-kin to be contacted, which proved difficult when Ren knew no one. His mother had always been his whole world. They didn’t need anyone else.

She wasn’t next-of-kin, but he did, eventually, recall a family friend close to his mother - Susanne Ricci, who Ren eventually went to live with and was adopted by. He grew to love her more than anything, and enjoyed being welcomed by his various new adoptive siblings, but the ache in his heart still persisted over the absence of his mother.

As he grew, Ren decided he wanted to make some sort of difference in the world. Despite the tragedies he suffered, he still saw the world with a bright light. Why cause more people pain? Why not at least try to protect them? With his love of learning, when Ren was in high school, he decided he would begin to study law to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves, to protect them from people like his father, to ensure children like himself weren’t lost along the way.

When he lost contact with one of his old foster-siblings, Ariana Maleki, Ren followed his adoptive sister, Gabriella Ricci, to Salem, only to learn the news of her untimely demise. His sleuthing made Ren realize that Ariana isn’t the only one to have gone missing in the mysterious town, and ever since, Ren has stuck around in an attempt at uncovering the mystery and getting justice that Ariana deserved.

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS

Online RP Buddies: Not to be meta and break the fourth wall. Ren has always had a love of playing any sort of game, board games, video games, roleplaying games...he hasn’t always been able to find people nearby him who were up to playing, but he’s been heavily involved in several communities and run countless campaigns for people. Can You Even Cook?: Perhaps someone that works at a restaurant in town that has come to notice the frequency of Ren’s visits. No...no he can’t cook for himself and he’s very grateful that he’s able to order food so easily. I’m Not Playing Poker With You Again: In general, Ren really enjoys math and statistics - not for anything theoretical, but he likes to use this ability when it comes to gambling. Who says card counting is cheating? Ren says that it’s using information to your advantage. He won’t go to most casinos, but he enjoys playing games with friends. He even goes as far to pull out a calculator and do a few calculations to better know his chances of winning. It’s the exact reason why most will no longer play with him. Sorry About Your Sibling: They may recognize him from Ariana Maleki’s funeral and were unaware of the connection the pair shared some years ago. The sympathy is nice, but Ren is more interested in getting answers. Daddy Issues Club: His father is, technically, alive and well, but Ren has made little to no attempts at contacting the man since he was imprisoned some years ago. Ren’s not too interested in speaking about him, but it sure would be nice to have someone who knows exactly what he went through. Not Dead Yet: The only reason Ren believes his mother is dead is because he doesn’t want to think that she would abandon him in the middle of the day without a word, though there’s still a small part of him that thinks she might be alive out there...somewhere. He still has questions left unanswered, and wants to get to the bottom of her own disappearance.

#salemintro #renato luna; intro

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thingsifeelicantsayhere · 3 years ago

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About Kink at Pride

One: Thanks SO Much to the person who decided to @ me about 6 different times after I already mentioned how I can’t reply. Edit: Just read them! Thank you for linking me to the same article twice. I saw that one to, and at least 7 others! I closed out of all of them. Read on to see why!! And I call everyone hon, hon - sorry if I offended you!

Two: Kink at Pride thoughts, below the cut. TL;DR: Yes, I was wrong on certain things. Does that change my opinion? Nope! Still think Kink shouldn’t be at Pride.

Note: an entire history of gay Pride is listed below, starting with the Reminder marches. I started there because it felt like the logical place to start, given the organizers of Pride participating in those as well. It’s a LONG one guys, so strap in.

So, starting out: Gay Rights Timeline (it’s brief, because I don’t have an entire night of getting triggered and showing I can research things)

July 4, 1965: “Gay rights activists gathered outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia carrying picket signs and demanding legislation that would secure the rights of LGBT Americans. Referencing the self-evident truth mentioned in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” the activists called for legislative changes that would improve the lives of American homosexuals. Activist Craig Rodwell conceived of the event following an April 17, 1965 picket at the White House led by Frank Kameny and members of the New York City and Washington, D.C. chapters of the Mattachine Society, Philadelphia’s Janus Society and the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitus. The groups operated under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). It was called the “Annual Reminder” to remind the American people that a substantial number of American citizens were denied the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

June 28, 1969: A police raid on Stonewall [a mafia run gay bar] occurs, leading to the Stonewall Riots. Marsha P. Johnson, a “transexual drag queen” and known sex worker, frequented the Stonewall Bar, being the first drag queen to go to what had previously been a bar only for gay men. Police raided the bar to check for unlicensed liquor sales, but also to arrest those who were in violation of the state’s “gender-appropriate clothing statute” (which meant that any female-presenting people in the bar who passed as female had their genitals checked by female police officers, and female-presenting people who did not pass were arrested). Fed up with harassment from the police, the community around the bar became agitated. After a policeman hit Stormé DeLarverie, a “dyke” lesbian on the head while pushing her into his police van, the crowd grew violent. Police barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn for safety, which was soon set on fire. It is still debated whether police or the rioters began a fire in the building, but most sources claim the rioters began the fire. Marsha P. Johnson became well known as the one who “Threw the first brick at Stonewall” (though she herself has stated that she came late to the riots).

That night, while returning home, Craig Rodwell passed Stonewall, and alerted the press in order for there to be news coverage of the historic event. Rodwell was a well known activist at the time, one of the organizers of ECHO, sitting in on protests, opening the first Gay Bookstore (dedicated to Oscar Wilde), and of course, helping to organize the first Gay Pride Parade in the bookstore.

Five Months after the Riots: Among those who proposed the Gay Pride parades were Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant (who later tried to claim transgender people and POC did nothing in the riots), Ellen Broidy (former member of the Gay Liberation Front, Lavender Menace, and Radicalesbians), and Linda Rhodes (genuinely having trouble finding information on her; I just know she was friends with Ellen and Craig). Together, they made a proposal for an annual march on the last Saturday in June where there were “no dress or age regulations.” Their proposal was given at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) in Philadelphia.

After the proposal was made, Brenda Howard (a life-long bisexual and openly sex-positive activist, as well as anti-war feminist “radical” by some sources) helped plan it. Making use of the Oscar Wilde mailing list, word got out. It was Howard’s idea to turn this march into a week-long celebration. Also on this committee was L. Craig Schoonmaker, who had been arrested the previous year for talking to another male. He coined the term “Pride” for the slogan of the parade. (Note: L. Craig Schoonmaker was an INCREDIBLY problematic person, and discussing just how stupid that story is really deserves its own post – needless to say, I’m a little sad he’s the one who coined “Gay Pride” as the slogan.) This was the one and only contribution he had to the parade.

June 28, 1970: The first Parade, organized by Chicago Gay Liberation. The first parade was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, named after the street where Stonewall Inn was. These were different from the Annual Reminder marches, where those in the gay community “walk in an even line, wear professional clothing, and do not display affection for a partner of the same gender” (Waters, 1). “The march was 51 blocks long from west of Sixth Avenue at Waverly Place, in Greenwich Village, all the way to Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park, where activists held a “Gay-in.” Borrowing a technique that had been popularized by the Civil Rights Movement, the “Gay-in” was both a protest and a celebration.”

From there, there were more parades of course. But as promised, here’s all my research on Kink at Pride.

….

I would provide sources. I would share what I tried to look at for multiple hours tonight. But the fact of the matter is, this is the part where I got triggered, nearly threw up, and had to exit most tabs.

What I managed to find out: Yes, Kink has been a thing at Pride for a long time. I do not know the extent of this, but I do know at the very least (due to some image sourcing) that the 1980s saw men in leather that covered most of their skin (it was not inredibly revealing). I was incorrect about this fact, so shit on me I guess. Now, what all I saw was just… men in leather sometimes. I did NOT in fact see people on leashes, naked with only a bandana around their legs to hide genitals, or muzzles (as I have seen in modern-day prides). I saw people who took pride in being leather gays without doing strict sexual acts – costumes, not whipping their partners in broad daylight or walking them like dogs, which is sexually gratifying for the sub (which I have also seen at modern day prides).

Note: I have not personally been to a Pride parade, but I have seen pictures and videos of modern day prides showing these acts. For obvious reasons, I am not including them here.

The reason for the previous inclusion of kink in pride seems to have grown from the fact that, for many LGBT+ people, they are both kinky and LGBT+ in some way. I saw numerous sources talking about how being Kinky is just part of being LGBT, and how pride in being LGBT+ also means pride in being Kinky.

I deadass could not look at anymore sources because I am so physically nauseated by it, and reading about this (as I mentioned numerous times to every single person who DMed me tonight telling me to “Read fucking sources”) triggers me. But can’t stop getting screamed at unless I “do my research” right?? Joy of all joys.

So what do I think about getting rid of kink at Pride?

I still think we should move to phase it out.

Reasoning:

1. The original people who thought up Pride were not the best. They thought up Pride through transphobic, sexist, radial feminist, insert-other-dated-views here. And I don’t blame them – it was the 1970s. But I feel that, by the 2020s, the idea of “Pride” should have changed. And it has! I saw that Ellen B. discussed how Pride had changed “Far” from what was originally intended in the interview with her (raising the entirely valid concerns that I agree with that Capitalism has too strong of a foothold in current pride). I just think that it should change more, to fit with what is currently needed.

2. This leads to my next point: what is currently needed? Back in the 1970s, Gay Pride was about having pride in, well, sex. Pride was based so strongly in having sex with the same-sex, being deviant, being different. But that isn’t what Gay Pride is anymore, or at least, Gay Pride includes much more than just sex now. Pride is meant to be an inclusive place for all LGBT+ communities – including fucking asexuals. Like me. See, when researching all of this, I had a hell of a time, because I’m “damaged goods” so to speak. I’ve been hurt through sexual stuff in the past, and yes, that has probably influenced my asexuality. Am I against sex? No! I enjoy it! With my partner. And that’s basically it. Am I okay seeing sex stuff? Yes! Most of the time. On a consentual basis. Would I probably be okay seeing it at Pride? IDK Maybe? But it would spark bad memories, to the point that I would rather avoid Pride, avoid going to the Big Event™ that everyone always says You Have To Go To that would make me feel validated… than go to it. Because of Kink Gear. And I have had other people contact me tonight saying the same thing – they can’t go to Pride because you Kinksters. They can’t because of triggers, or the fact that it’s uncomfortable, or the fact that “well, my parents aren’t homophobic, but it’s too adult.”

3. “Okay, so make a PG Space – we were here first.” “It’s not inclusive if Kink isn’t there.” “Children won’t even understand the kink in the first place.” Here’s my problem with all of this. Kink already has spaces, but PG spaces don’t exist in this much openness. See, I’ve always heard of kinky spaces. Expos, dungeons, etc. I’ve always heard of safe-spaces for kinky gays. Including Pride. But I rarely hear of PG Spaces for Gay People. I rarely hear of PG spaces at all. It’s hard to exist in this world without people making it about sex, so much so that I find myself often getting stuck in Children’s Fandoms, Children’s Spaces, because they’re the only spaces that haven’t been touched by sex stuff. So we need PG Spaces for Gay People - and yes, we COULD make a PG thing for gay people. I think that’s a great idea. I think a parade sounds nice. A PG Parade for Gay People!!! It sounds perfect, like a perfect solution ----- except now I’m not being Inclusive Enough.

We’ve wrapped around to my big problem with Kink at Pride. It always boils down to not being inclusive of Gay People. But the issue is… By keeping Kink at Pride, we aren’t being inclusive of a lot more people.

Banning Kink at Pride: We have gays, lesbians, trans folks, queer folks, people who still aren’t sure, allies, asexuals, aromantics, children, and yes, kinky people who are not wearing fetish gear. You can still come to pride and have pride in your sexuality. You have now excluded anyone who cannot stand to not wear leather/chains/leashes in a sexual manner for a few hours.

Keeping Kink at Pride: We have Kinky Gays, Kinky Lesbians, Kinky Trans Folks, Queer Trans Folks, People who aren’t sure but Are Kinky, Kinky Allies, a handful of Asexuals/Aros, please god don’t bring children, and kinky peope in fetish gear. You have now excluded anyone who is uncomfortable with sex, triggered by sex, or minors.

I assure you, the amount of people who are exluded keeping Pride Kinky is more than if you could just not be sexual for a few hours. Literally. I’m not saying Kink isn’t valid – fuck, dude, I’m kinky. But there is a reason sex isn’t meant to be public. Consent is important, and I’m shocked that people who insist they know about kinks and BDSM don’t understand that.

Pride has changed. In a lot of ways, not for the better, but in some ways, yes, for the better. It’s bigger, with more people, and more inclusiveness. But your idea of making a “PG Pride over there away from ours” --- well, where do you think we should? How can we do it without getting screamed at for not being inclusive? When can we do it without people screaming at us for “taking up too much time with being gay”? We already have a full month and a whole parade – and clearly everyone should be okay with the kinky shit that goes on.

My suggestion is this: Have Pride be PG, and have the Kinky Pride things isolated to Private Kink Party things that aren’t publicied on television because we don’t need people to know more about our sex lives – the majority of gay people just want to exist now. Those in 1970 needed to be loud, proud, and yes, openly kinky – but we don’t need that now. With keeping sex stuff private, you can still celebrate your Kinky Pride with all those who are capable of celebrating that Pride, while those who can’t, don’t need to be subjected to it. Because the fact of the matter is, Pride Parades are subjected to the eyes of the world – the most public thing you can have right now as a gay person. Subjecting people to nonconsentual kink is not the way to make people approve of sex work or kinky pride. It makes them rage against it. And I would rather be able to work for sex positivity through conversation and hard work, rather than alienating anyone who speaks against it (and those who speak for it).

Some of the sources I used (not all - again, no kink sources here, because I closed all of them. I couldn’t handle it.)

http://www.phillygaypride.org/annual-reminders-50th-anniversary/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-history-month-road-america-s-first-gay-pride-march-n917096

https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/when-was-first-gay-pride-parade-origin

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-pride-marches-photos-1-180972379/

https://greenwichvillage.nyc/blog/2019/06/13/remembering-craig-rodwell/

https://phaylen.medium.com/stonewall-vet-fred-sargeant-attempts-to-erase-black-trans-activists-from-history-2e82ac59e96f

https://addressesproject.com/memory/ellen-broidy

https://www.them.us/story/brenda-howard

https://talbertario.medium.com/pride-and-prejudice-the-craig-schoonmaker-story-122c8a4c1339

https://www.history.com/news/how-activists-plotted-the-first-gay-pride-parades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_P._Johnson

One last thought, after the sources, because I work in Analogy the best:

Imagine this amazing bakery. This bakery sells a lot of cakes: chocolate cakes, strawberry ones, blueberry ones. This bakery gets national press coverage. Now, from day one, this bakery has used gluten in every single cake. It’s a time honored tradition! And every single Cake Eater goes to this bakery. It becomes a rite of passage, to the point that some people even say “You aren’t really a cake eater if you haven’t gone to this bakery.”

But as the bakery gets more and more popular, people start saying “Hey. We need some gluten free cakes too. Can you please keep the gluten away from our cakes?”

“NO!!! If you want gluten free, go somewhere else!”

“But everyone else only has gluten cakes. Even when they say they’re gluten free, they still bake other gluten cakes. Please, we know how to make the gluten free cakes taste just the same as gluten cakes – we’re only getting rid of the one thing. It’ll be taste almost exactly the same, and you can make those other cakes, so long as they don’t touch our cake. You can still enjoy your cakes. We just ask that we can enjoy ours.”

“NO! Go make your own then!”

“But… This is the bakery with the most famous cakes. We could always make our own, but the world will never know about it, because YOU’RE the biggest bakery in the world. And of those few who have tried, they’ve been yelled at for not using gluten because they aren’t inclusive. We wanted to be able to enjoy cake with everyone else – we just need our cake to be a little different.”

“If I make YOU Gluten Free cakes, that means the Gluten won’t be included!”

“That’s the point – gluten is bad for us. If we have gluten near us, it will actively hurt us.”

“No. This is a gluten bakery only. We refuse to change.”

And so, those who were going to enjoy the cakes there – who wanted to enjoy the cakes there – couldn’t. And even those who would try to make their own gluten-free cakes were overshadowed by the behemoth that was the gluten bakery.

That is how this entire night has felt.

Night, y’all.

#LGBT+#Discourse #Kink at Pride #I do not think Kink should be at Pride #And harassing me all night in DMs and Replies did not help your stance #Triggering me with links all night did not help your stance #All you did was piss me off more #And solidify the fact that I don't think I would even get to enjoy pride if people like you are there #Thank you for reminding me more reasons why the gay community is incredibly toxic

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kichimiangra · 5 years ago

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So... an imaginary episode of the 1983 D&D cartoon...

It’s a Meta episode.

The kids wake up to their average normal everyday lives. Nothing weird or anything. Have breakfast, do a few chores, say good morning to their parents, head out to school, etc. Normal shit.

While at school they kinda bump into each other a lot though and they get a weird vibe off of the others. But... why? I mean, they know of these other kids, some are friends-ish with others but they’re not particularly close? Bobby is Sheila’s kid brother, Diana is that girl who does gymnastics after school, Presto’s that dork who gets picked on for his crappy card tricks, Hank does sports or something, Eric is the haughty son of that CEO they keep seeing on magazines at the grocery store. They’re not really super close friends, they have nothing in common really but... they get a feeling from each other?

On top of that they occasionally get a strange flash memory in their heads.

-Diana is about to do a cool gymnastic demonstration for a new team member at the request of the teacher. Halfway through she bungles it when a memory of being surrounded by monsters flashes in her head. Her coach approaches to see if she’s okay and on instinct kicks the teacher’s feet out from underneath them, easily taking them to the floor without hesitation before realizing what she had done.

-A card trick goes array in the lunchroom causing a bully to be wearing his lunch and turn his sights on Presto. The bullies cap fall onto Prestos head prior and he finds himself impulsively start a rhyme about taking out the ugly fucker, reaching into that hat and pulling out-- nothing? What did he think that was actually going to do? I’m mean... he did insult the bully more so I guess it’s gonna get him punched?

-Eric happens to have lunch period with Presto and sees the whole thing go down as he is walking by to his usual table of more affluent “Friends”. Heh... kid’s gonna get beaten up. That’s what happens when you insult your bullies mom or whatever. Not Erics problem. He doesn’t even know this kid. Does seem Familiar though. The bully swings his fist back to hit that kid with glasses and Eric feels utter terror, like life or death fight or flight terror and before he even realizes he’s moved he finds himself between Presto and the bully, lunch tray blocking the fist and bully now wearing more lunch than before. Crap... what the fuck did he just do?!?! And why?!

(Not gonna come up with one for everyone I’m tired you guys decide what happens to Hank, Sheila and Bobby)

-----------------------------------------------------

At this point the audience knows somethings wrong so why hide it from THEM anymore? It turns out through an untold adventure before the episode began some bullshit happened and the kids find themselves trapped in some kind of magic sleep caused by this dream master monster wizard or something I don’t care what he is. I’m vague on this part but He’s either

-gonna sell the kids to Venger so it’s like that time Dungeon Master got captured and took a nap and that very homosexual fairy showed up and helped the kids save him.

-OR He’s already working for Venger and they’re picking the kids brain for something while in the magic dream sleep. Like their Untold quest prior to the ep. involves them hiding their weapons so venger can’t get them and the Dream wizard guy is keeping their brains loosey goosey and complacent while he searches through them for the weapons locations or something like that.

-OR He’s working for Venger and the kids are hostages to convince DM to turn himself over and he’s having his own B plot of the good of the realm vs the good of these kids?

“Ehhhhhh....... Nah! I’m sure they got this... Not the first set of kids I ruined.”

-OR He’s gonna rewrite their brains and turn them evil so they work for Venger and he can sick them on DM AND Tiamat! “If you can’t beat them, take over their brains and recruit them!“ (I like this one but that’s just cuz I like Mind control trope....)

-OR any combination of the above. It really doesn’t matter you know he’s gonna fuck up.

Anyway Mr.Dream over here is having a little trouble because DMs disciples COULD realize they’re dreaming and shock them selves awake and fuck up the Evil Plan (tm) And unfortunately the kids having flashbacks, vibes, and triggers is not on the menu, so he needs to come up with an in-universe explanation for the kids in the dream to be having these funky feels so they don’t question the funkitude going on...

---------------------------------------------------

Back in dream-school DMs Disciples are a little gonked up over the whole ptsd trigger flashbacks they’re having, some of which involve kids that they have almost no connection to! But before they can ponder further they notice the time, or their watch or alarm or someone mentioning the time alerts them. They have a THING to get to! They pack up their stuff and we follow a POV character (Probably Hank) as he makes his way to a specific classroom, or he leaves the school and heads home or to another house. Matters not. As he arrives he opens up the door and there everybody is!

Oh yeah! That’s how they all know each other! They play a fantasy tabletop rpg board game together! [Good idea Mr.Dream! Now they can explain away Their vibes!] Diana even considers maybe she should quit playing with them if it’s so immersive that it’s effecting her normal everyday life. But it atleast explains where they got these random memories from! It’s just their campaign! They sit down and shoot the shit and start playing.

“What sort of adventure are we doing this time?”

*They begin to play out one of the episodes... Let’s do the Prison without Walls one for example... but things aren’t... right*

*Rolls dice* Presto DMing: “17! Hank lets his arrow fly, piercing through the chest of the shambling monster! It trumpets in pain before laying in silence! The band of adventurers has defeated the monster and the gnome village has been Saved!”

Hank has a flash back... this... isn’t right...

Hank: “No... no I didn’t fire my arrow! That Monster was Lukyan!” Hank explains.

Presto protests. “But Hank... there was no Lukyan in this campaign???”

Eric: “He’s probably just salty over the last time we played when he opened that box and let all the evil out-- wait...” Bobby: “Didn’t YOU open that box Eric?”

Eric: “... The evil box or Zinn’s box?”

Presto: “It was Zandora’s box. Where’d Zinn come from?”

Diana: “Zinn was that Queen Eric Married when that Sorlarz monster poisoned Bobby and we slayed him for the antidote!”

Sheila: “SORLARZ?! No Bobby was Poisoned buy the turtle dragon! Sorlarz was a cursed king!”

Eric: “A WHAT?!”

Their bickering becomes too much for Hank and enough reminders of everything wrong with their adventures triggers his memory and slams his firsts on the table silencing everyone else.

Hank: “ENOUGH!!!!” They stare at him in shock and silence. Hank was never angry like this... not that they knew him well enough... “We-- Guys we... never made it home... We’re still in the realm!”

This triggers the kids memories and they realize just how wrong everything is and that all of these vibes they’ve been having are their REAL memories.

They are commended by Mr.Dream who fucked up because he’s very bad at keeping the continuity of his own story down but chastised because it would have been so much easier for them if they just stayed unaware and complacent. Now the dream world is turning against them and they need to figure out a way to wake up. But where better to hide the end of the dream than at the beginign of the adventure: At the Amusement park.

#dnd cartoon #dndc #Dungeons and Dragons #dungeons and dragons the animated series #dungeons and dragon #hank the ranger #diana the acrobat #sheila the thief #Bobby the Barbarian #eric the cavalier #presto the magician

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snakeley · 5 years ago

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( Here we go, I finally mustered the will to write an about for my glorious trash son Richard II !! )

FULL NAME: Richard II of Bordeaux, Of the House of Plantagenet, King of England.

TIME AS KING: 1377 A.D. - 1399 A.D.

BORN: 6th of January 1367.

SPECIES: Human.

GENDER: Male.

PREFERRED PRONOUN(S): He/Him/His.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Homosexual.

OCCUPATION: Drama Queen.

FANDOM: Historical/Shakespeare.

FACE CLAIM: David Tennant.

RELATIONSHIPS

PARENTS: Edward the Black Prince & Joan, Countess of Kent (”The Fair Maid of Kent”).

WIFE (verse dependent): Anne of Bohemia (married 1382). Dearly beloved by Richard, but not in any romantic sense.

PHYSICAL TRAITS

EYE COLOUR(S): Warm brown.

HAIR: Light red, long, wavy.

HEIGHT: 185 cm.

BODY BUILD: Athletic, thin, fit.

NOTABLE PHYSICAL TRAITS: His long hair and gold-coated nails, exquisitely manicured hands, fair skin, very neatly groomed appearance.

SMELLS: Rosemary, incense, a mixture of rose water and iris perfume.

CLOTHES: Long flowing robes of silk and velvet, richly embroidered and bejewelled, fine shoes, expensive jewellery, and quite obviously his crown.

BODY LANGUAGE: Regal, cultured, upright, quite still at times until there’s a sudden outburst of activity.

PHOBIAS AND DISEASES

FEARS: Losing his power, solitude, death, paranoia.

MENTAL DISORDER(S): Narcissistic Personality Disorder, BPD, his “ temper on any given occasion was incalculable. Energy and apathy, over-confidence and abject depression came to him at the inappropriate moments. . . . He was a creature of moods, and his moods always visited him at the wrong time. ”

PERSONALITY

USUAL MOOD/EXPRESSION: Rapidly changing between aloof and melodramatic.

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Neutral.

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Ravenclaw.

FIVE PROMINENT TRAITS: Extravagance, Glamour, Self-Importance, Fragility, Impulsiveness.

BAD HABITS: Richard is known to be unreliable in his decisions and rather biased in his personal opinions, with a tendency to play favourites among his friends and councillors. He thrives on attention and will go to great lengths to ensure he is constantly at the centre of any social interaction. He ranges between extreme moods and is known for trying to follow in his father’s military footsteps, without much success on his behalf. He is religious to the point of self-abandon and views himself as a martyr to the crown, appointed by God and infallible in his divine decisions. He can be cynical and rude, as well as vengeful towards those who wronged him.

GOOD HABITS: At the same time, Richard is a diplomat and a peace-seeker who cares extraordinarily much about the common people, which endeared him to his soldiers. He can be a cunning strategist and proves himself a lover and sponsor of the fine arts and architecture. He is cultured, charming, lively, and a charismatic companion with a lot of stashed-away tenderness and love to give. He is unshakably loyal and generous towards those who prove themselves worthy of his trust.

BIOGRAPHY

6th January 1367: Richard is born in Bordeaux, the second son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent. His older brother dies when Richard is six years old, his father follows in June 1376. Richard inherits his father’s titles. 16 July 1377: Richard is crowned King of England. Due to his young age, royal matters remain mostly in the hands of his councillors. 1381: 14-year-old Richard quenches the Peasants’ Revolt, realising the importance of the people’s obedience towards their king. This experience would later come to influence his absolutist attitudes. 20th January 1382: Richard is married to Anne of Bohemia to gain allies against France in the Hundred Years’ War. The marriage remains childless. 1385 - 1388: Richard leads an unsuccessful punitive expedition into Scotland. Tensions begin to grow between the King and the Parliament, who are now in control of the royal finances and finally destroy the community of Richard’s favourites by executing several of his loyalists and chamber knights. 1389: Richard regains control of the government, aided by his uncle John of Gaunt. Richard lessens the parliament’s taxes on the common people and rules over the realm peacefully for the next eight years. 1394-1395: Richard leaves for Ireland to settle the Irish revolts. The invasion is successful. 1396: A long-lasting truce with France is established. 1397: Richard arrests a fair number of men who conspired against him and his loyalists a decade earlier, sentencing them to death, life-long prison stays, or exile. Furthermore, Richard exiles two of his own friends: his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, and Thomas de Mowbray, seeking to clear a dispute over the death of Bolingbroke’s uncle. After John of Gaunt dies, Richard seizes his belongings, which infuriates the nobility. 1398: Richard becomes an absolute ruler, unbound by the decisions of Parliament. His court culture is one of the fine arts rather than warfare. June 1399: Bolingbroke returns to England with a group of followers and quickly gains popularity among the nobles. Richard, currently in Ireland, remains ignorant of the growing opposition at first. Bit by bit, his remaining loyalists are overthrown, executed, or won over. On the 19th of August, he surrenders to Bolingbroke and promises to give up the crown in exchange for his life. He is imprisoned in the Tower of London. 14th February 1400: Richard dies in Pomfret Castle, locked away deep in the lightless, damp dungeons. To make sure Richard’s loyalists will not try to regain the throne for him, one of Bolingbroke’s followers - formerly part of Richard’s entourage and his love interest - murders a hunger-weakened and insanity-ridden Richard in his dungeon. Richard dies alone and betrayed, extraordinarily dramatic even on his last breath.

What endears Richard to me? His humanity - his flamboyant, abundant self; his antics and big talks about death and gloom followed by his joy for the little pleasures in life; his deeply repressed gay longing; his unwavering certainty that he has been appointed by God personally and can do no wrong; his self-importance coupled with his fragility; his desperate need for love and companionship and true loyalty; his effeminate exterior and his golden nails; his terrible decisions that clash ever so strangely with his ( theoretical ) competence; his beauty in the face of all the ugliness that dominates his life. The way he knows he should not trust, but hungers for friendship and affection and romance. And lastly, the way he kisses other men: full of despair and wonder and tenderness and overwhelmed hunger. It’s that historical gayness, damn it. My lesbian heart cannot help but ache.

#♫ he's a drama queen; gunpowder gelatine ( verse: richard ii ) ♫#( i'm love him ughhhh #you don't have to read this !! it's #just going to be his about page :') )

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swordbreakerz · 5 years ago

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romanticized asks do all the evens motherfucker

i’ll hunt you for sport

2. if someone were to catch Hanahaki disease for you, what flowers would they cough up?

thats such a loaded question god, fucking. green carnations i guess? simply cause of the gay coding of that flower idk man

4. tell us about your ideal battle outfit.

im gonna take this literally so base layer: nice linens, and then a silk shirt and pants. well fitted leather armor with a good range of motion, sturdy but flexible boots, leather arm guards, a swooping cloak and simple jeweled diadem

6. name five iconic quotes that make you feel things.

may butcher these i have a shit memory and i cant think of anything like. ‘iconic’ rly so bear with me

‘and don’t forget sam. frodo wouldn’t have gotten far without sam.’ ‘now mr frodo i was bein serious!’ ‘so was i.’ - lord of the rings

you’re right-- holiness is in the hands even if it’s always the head that gets haloed. - c.t. salazar

are you there, sweetheart? do you know me? is this microphone live? let me do it right for once. - richard siken

you cannot kill me in a way that matters - that tumblr post abt mushrooms

there is no greater innocence than our gentle sin - hozier

8. what combination of natural scents would you use as perfume?

manzanita, pine sap, forest duff, juniper, very earthy and sharp

10. describe yourself as if you were a storm.

on again off again all day rain, sometimes no more than a drizzle and sometimes a raging thunderstorm

12. honey in milk or cinnamon in tea?

yeah

14. curtains of beads or lace?

mmmmm beads i think cause of the click clacks

16. describe your ideal fantasy outfit

high waisted cotton pants and a poofy linen shirt, leather half corset, a couple belts for my sword and daggers, either no shoes or soft leather slippers, cape obviously and lots of jewelry

18. hard candy, fruit preserves or spice cake?

if i had to choose right now spice cake but like all of them depending on my mood

20. tying your hair up using ribbon, yay or nay?

hell fucking yes i just dont have long enough hair right now

22. tell us, in detail, about a curse a witch would put on you.

god fuck you uhhhh. probably like a curse to not be able to articulate myself? i would be able to get the general idea across but not what i Actually Meant wow that sounds like my personal hell

24. mint, rosemary, basil or sage?

mint or basil depending on my mood

26. tell us about an experience you’ve had that seemed unreal or supernatural. (doesn’t have to be scary)

ok so 2018 i did a haunted house and for the first few days i was behind a door that essentially led to a service hallway fr the security cause there was a lot of people instead of like, an actual scare spot in one of the rooms and it was great UNTIL i started hearing knocking from the wall behind me, and keep in mind this was a warehouse i was at the edge of the haunt there was nothing on the other side of me but the Outside so its not like one of the actors or patrons was knocking around behind me, a couple times i saw a stack of hat boxes jostle which was Not fun no sir i really hated it, this went on for a couple nights before one night it was a slow period and i was standing by my door waiting to hear someone come in, and let me clarify the setting a little bit i was in a storage area so there was bins and shit all around me, and i was chilling and i heard smth like sliding behind me? and then a stack of empty tubs fucking slid into me and hit my shoulder. now this stack wasnt in danger of falling it was sitting back pretty stable on top of a pile of boxes so tldr a ghost shoved a pile of emtpy storage bins to try and hit me it sucked. it stopped after that and then i moved rooms after to fill out the necessary spots but it uhh sucked lol

28. tell us three sayings that you live by.

ah jeez um. lets see

do no harm, take no shit; it takes two to tango; curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back

30. describe your ideal masquerade ball outfit (mask included).

tailored three piece suit with a corset styled like a waistcoat, dress shoes with a small heel, cane with a handle styled like a big cat, maybe a panther or smth, full-face barn owl mask with pale filligree you have to get close in the right light to see clearly

32. what would you end up in the dungeon for?

homosexual activity and public dueling

34. if you could have any magical item, what would it be?

definitely a flying carpet

36. would you rather be a pirate or a king/queen?

pirate pirate pirate pirate 100 percent oh my GOD please let me sail the open seas with my gay lover

38. would you have a painting of yourself?

nah maybe if it was a group piece with my friends or s/o or smth but not a solo portrait

40. if you could live any fairy tale, which one would you?

idk i dont have the braincells to give this question a lot of thought, theoretically i guess but it depends on the fairy tale

alright motherfucker expect retaliation im coming for you

#ilysmmmm #friendos #jade #and z answers #prozacking

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hiphipturra · 6 years ago

Video

vimeo

“3 ERAS of GAY SEX in 3 Minutes”– Viral Valentine Film Celebrates The History and Power of Gay Sex, Fetish & Cruising An Original Three-minute Film by Leo Herrera Visually Spans The History of Homosensual Communication from Pre-Stonewall to Present Day Leo Herrera, a NYC-based visual artist, filmmaker, writer and advocate with a focus on cataloging and presenting gay history, today announced his latest work “3 ERAS of GAY SEX in 3 Minutes” an original piece illustrating 3 generations of gay sex in three-minutes, featuring Pre-Stonewall cruising; 1970’s/80’s Leather BDS&M; and Present Day App usage, filmed in NYC and San Francisco. Instead of presenting gay history as sexless or focusing solely on AIDS, the film celebrates Gay Communication in its most sensual form, through the glances, codes and technological breakthroughs that have allowed gay sex and gay communities to flourish through generations of oppression. Taking us on a time machine into archetypes of Gay Sex and the unspoken communication methods of these communities, “3 ERAS of GAY SEX in 3 Minutes” informs us and a wider audience, of the rich sexual history of the modern gay male; the symbolism and power of our once ‘secret’ encounters; and a glimpse into the infrastructure of deviant gay communities that are the foundations for the modern gay civil rights movement. There is a love for gay culture and iconography that vibrates in the film, from the setting of historic landmark Julius, the SF army barracks and a sex dungeon, to the soundtrack, which features poetry from Walt Whitman, Truman Capote and human pup play master, Pup Boss Jyan. The film stars Gay Hip-Hop artist, Rikki Crowley and HIV Activist Zachary Barnett. It touches upon the themes of technology, PrEP, the closet and gay S&M in a way that’s tasteful and romantic. “This film is about sharing a facet of our history that is rarely represented in mainstream gay media,” said Herrera. “While I applaud the strides we’ve made in our mainstream visibility, it sometimes comes at the expense of our sexuality. Gay fetish is treated as a punchline, or punished with disease. The drag queens and gay characters I see on television do not represent what I see at Folsom Street Fair, or at a Brooklyn gay warehouse party on a Saturday night or any of the Eagles in the country. There is an inherent romance to cruising, a jolt of electricity to our secrets and codes, that’s what this clip is about.” “The idea that as a culture we DO have a past, present and future is something that is very, very powerful. We didn’t come out of nowhere, and we haven’t been standing around waiting to be “accepted”, and we aren’t this monolithic culture that will just be part of any “mainstream”, there are too many facets and subcultures. Who better to tell these stories than ourselves.” The film is a followup to Leo’s “The Fortune Teller,” the 2013 Pride Month Viral hit that presented 50 years of Gay History in 5 minutes, garnering 50,000 hits during Gay Pride Week. About “3 ERAS of GAY SEX in 3 Minutes” “3 ERAS of GAY SEX in 3 Minutes” is Leo Herrera’s most ambitious project to date. It’s comprised of all original footage filmed in iconic gay locations, such as Julius, the Army Barracks in SF, and a gay sex dungeon in Brooklyn. Costumes were provided by Mr. S Leather in SF and the Leatherman in NYC. Leo worked closely with producer Jonathan Daniel Federico, a fellow NYC filmmaker as well as filmmaker Aron Kantor and cinematographer Nathan Lee Bush to realize his vision. About Gay/Artist and Activist Leo Herrera “I grew up an illegal Mexican immigrant in Republican Arizona, as far from “gay” as possible. Yet, the challenges and hopes I’ve faced as a gay man are the same as all of my peers across the world, as if homosexuality can transcend culture, geography and race. Homophobia is the same in New York City as it is in Russia, HIV and its stigma are as devastating in the South as they are in San Francisco, our sexual freedom is as reviled in America as in Uganda…and yet we are all moving forward on a global scale: our contributions to nightlife and the arts are as pronounced in Berlin as they are in Provincetown, the legalization of our unions is spanning continents, the unmistakable softness of our gestures transcends language. I don’t know if these universal similarities make homosexuality a culture, a race or a shared experience. What I do know is that they stir a deep pride in me that is almost religious.” Tag: #FutureGaySex PR contact: [email protected] point-bl_nk communications

#3 Eras of Gay Sex in 3 Mins #IFTTT #Vimeo #Film by Leo Herrera

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121distractions · 6 years ago

Text

21- CIGARETTE

I am in the 16th arrondissement but Martial is not there. And if I called Michel, the weird guy, he lives next door. A lady with a very 16th arrondissement accent answers. She screams, half of the hand on the handset, that it is for Michel but he does not come immediately, Michel must be far away. “Michel, it is for you, it is Philippe Claude,” said the impatient lady. I hear a very distant “I am coming”. These people live in a castle in the middle of Paris or what? No, I do not disturb, I can come if I want, there are books that I can come and borrow. I must note the code of the door of the building.

People always ask what is your highest quality, and right after your biggest flaw. You have to look surprised and say that you have no idea, that no one has ever asked, and pretend to improvise. “My greatest quality is sincerity, I think” Sincerity, it sounds good, and gives the right to say mistakes in the future. For the biggest flaw, it is more delicate, it is necessary to find a fault which is in fact a quality. Mine is curiosity and it is true, I am incurably curious. People then say that it is not really a flaw, it is almost a quality. And there, I give an example where my curiosity has put myself in an embarrassing situation and everyone laughs. The conversation is launched, each one tells his own adventure and I become suddenly someone very charming and witty. But in truth, if someone invites me to his home, I really cannot resist. Without lying. The most dubious people, living in uninhabitable places, if I am invited, I go there. Knowing that I will regret. I regret without really regretting. Is there anything like short-term regret? I am in a sordid place and I regret to be there at the moment but as soon as I left, I am so happy to have lived this intense moment. Today, I am invited to a castle, I will not refuse.

In 1984 in Paris, the punks do not exist, you have to be BCBG, be Good Chic and have Good Type. The top for the BCBGs is to live in the 16th arrondissement, but not any part of it. There is a golden triangle. Neuilly-Auteuil-Passy. The inhabitants of this triangle are the “NAPies” not to be confused with “Nappies”, these adults who have the fetish of diapers. Martial and Michel are NAPies.

There is a cut stone facade, mirrors, a concierge’s lodge with a Portuguese woman, a grand staircase and an old-fashioned lift with sliding railing. Everything is in its place. I am immediately advised, with a funny cliché Portuguese accent, not to use the lift, Mister van Lierde lives on the first floor. The door of the apartment is a gigantic double door with a doormat that occupies the entire width of the landing, not only there where one actually enters.

The lady on the phone opens the door, a cigarette in her hand, and tells me that Michel is waiting for me, it is the room in the back. The apartment is really like a castle, it is full of 18th century furniture.

I know the castles of the Loire well. All the castles of the Loire. I even knew one of the guides of the castle of Cheverny, the inspiration for the castle of Moulinsart in Tintin. There are two kinds of castles along the Loire, the private and the others; national or heritage site or Unesco or anything with subsidies. The private usually belong to families who manage somehow to maintain and repair their estate organizing visits of a part of their home and appealing to the good heart of tourists. The antique furniture is gathered in the historic wing. “Francois 1st slept one night in this bed. One ancestor of my first cousin was Napoleon’s companion in arms. The fireplace dates from the first construction in the twelfth century …” The impressed visitors walk on the scratched wooden floor between the shabby furniture and imagine a past full of grandeur. A creperie is improvised in the outbuildings and a gift shop in the stables. That is all there is to it, the repairs of the dungeon will begin next year, … or maybe the following one. By bike, it is all flat, it is along the Loire, and if everything is well prepared, between the big and small castles, an extraordinary building is to be found each 10 kilometers. For some small castles, you have to make an appointment to see them but all are absolutely seeable.

At Michel, it is not Renaissance style, it is very Louis XV. It is full of chests of drawers, glass cases, secretaries and books. The books are everywhere and the library covers two whole walls. On an ugly stained carpet, wing chairs are upholstered with a green velvet discolored by the light; they look sagging but very comfortable. A book is placed there with the armrest of one of the wing chair as a bookmark. The lady settles there, adjusts her glasses, uses her cigarette butt to light a new one.

I am in front of the door of the room in the back and it is closed. I cast desperate glances around me but the lady resumed her reading and do not see me. I am in a haunted castle, all alone in the middle of the corridor, with ghosts ignoring me. Perplexed, I knock on the door and I hear “Come inside Philippe and close the door behind you.” There is no more formal addressing but Michel is sitting on his bed with his legs stretched out, all dressed, smoking with a book in his hands. What a staging! He is re-reading Proust. To read Proust, it is already so snobbish, but here re-reading Proust, I haveve never heard anything so hysterical! No, I only studied “The madeleine” at school, and no I did not know that the Marcel Proust’s young girls in bloom were actually boys. I am invited to sit down and I have the impression of having to attend the levee of the king, or of the queen, I do not know very well any more.

For me, homosexuality is not a detail, it is a fight, a daily struggle for the recognition of basic rights denied to gays. I do not consider myself an activist, but our community must be united and active. Staying at home reading books, it is not very productive in the end. He asks me if I want to smoke a cigarette. I do not smoke.

I will never say that I was raised in the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses and that it was strictly forbidden to smoke. But I gladly tell my single try. When I was 15 and my parents were away for the weekend, I decided to break all the taboos. I will drink alcohol, smoke and go to a nightclub. Alcohol would be whiskey and I would put Coca-Cola in it. Even Coke was forbidden, this product of a materialistic and mercantile society. The cigarettes are Marlboro. The pack cost 7 francs, it was expensive. In high school many smoked, some in secret. 15 years old was the age when smoking parents allowed their children to smoke. The worst was “to crap”, pretending to smoke. It was necessary to swallow the smoke making noise and reject it, after a long time, without any noise. I stood in front of the big mirror at the entrance to the apartment and trained. Inhale Exhale. Nothing to do with gymnastics. Inhale Exhale. I was looking at myself in the mirror and I could not take the right position. My hands remained awkward, my attitude clumsy. I had smoked the entire Marlboro package in two days and had done an assessment. - At the age of 15, the cigarette experience is not for me, as it is for teens of my age, a social experience. It is a scientific research, with an analysis. I am a little disturbed but I do not realize it - I made a study where the meaning and usefulness of the cigarette had not been demonstrated. It was enormously restrictive, smoking in secret would be really complicated, and in addition it brought no pleasure. I could see the nonchalance and phlegm associated with smokers on trendy cafe terraces but I would never get there. The wannabe part of it without making it was just ridiculous. 7 francs to look ridiculous, it was an expensive price. The cigarette was only for me an attitude, no pleasant sensation of taste, smell or any pleasure in general could be associated with it. I threw away my empty package, promising never to smoke in my life, and I was there. The truth is, even if I had not experienced any pleasure, those poor 20 cigarettes had created a kind of mini-habit. I had wondered if the secret of smoking was not simply satisfying a need that had been created artificially. I had so many needs that already existed, I did not see the interest of creating a new one so expensive.

Michel listens to the expurgated version of my experience, makes smoke rings and asks me if the smoke disturbs me. I am not the coolest but I am not an old fart. All my friends are super cool and all smoke, so that does not bother me at all. In fact, I am suspicious of people who do not smoke, it is weird. Yes, I am weird too, but I look after myself, I look for the company of normal people, … who smoke. I speak and try to be amusing. I do not realize that what I say does not matter. I am pretty and desirable, it could be enough but I always have to prove something, a social and intellectual ability that is not there at the base. I say that the smoke does not bother me but the truth is that I learned to be able to bear this terrible odor. I think my sense of smell is more developed than average, I react violently to odors. There are three things whose smell disgusts me and these are the most social things, the cigarette, the beer and the coffee. I am (or want to be, I do not really know anymore) a social person, so I got used to these barbaric rituals around me. Without laughing, the smell of a cold ashtray makes me feel sick! But really, if people put their noses over a beer, can they still want to drink it? It is worse than the smell of piss, right? Do not talk about cold coffee, unbearable! I do not say anything about my peculiarities. I am not even sure I am really aware of it, I am too unsecure to say such provocative things anyway. The story will end only with the ridiculousness of my appearance by trying to smoke in front of the mirror. I apologize for not smoking by invoking ridicule.

I am intrigued by Julien Green and I would like to borrow one of his novels. I am going to see, it is extraordinary. Michel finally gets up and three pretty yellowish little fascicles of the NRF are immediately in my hands. As soon as I read them I will be able to return to exchange them for others. I read very quickly, I will certainly be there the following week. But it would be with great pleasure. I will be escorted to the door? What politeness with the well-mannered people! The lady is standing up and holds out her hand. Do I have to hand kiss her? No, the hand is pretty soft but the words are enthusiastic. It is such a pleasure to see Michel receive a visit, I absolutely have to come for dinner one night. “Mom, you see that you are making Philippe uncomfortable!” The lady is Michel’s mother! Michel is 25 years old and he still lives with his parents! These people are really out of the ordinary!

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nonameinanytongue · 7 years ago

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The Flower & the Serpent: The Violent Women of Game of Thrones

“Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”

-Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Act V, Scene I

DC’s Wonder Woman opened this summer to critical acclaim. Pop culture outlets made much of its empowered protagonist and progressive themes, lauding everything from its feminist fight scenes to Wonder Woman’s thigh jiggle. In approaching the first superhero flick of the modern big-budget tentpole era both helmed by and starring a woman with such intense and specific scrutiny, much is overlooked and more repurposed to suit a flexible, almost reactive set of ideals held by fans and critics alike. If a woman does something in art that shows her to be powerful, it is interpreted as inherently feminist no matter its context in the work of art or the world beyond.

Perhaps in a world where women, homosexuals, and transsexuals lobby vigorously for the right to serve in active combat zones a conflation of ability to do violence and the possession of feminist power is understandable. Surely there are many women who, for reasons understandable or awful, crave invincible bodies and the power and grace to crush the people who hurt them. Many more are happy to acclaim any media in which a woman emerges victorious as another mile marker driven into the roadside on the highway of equality. Especially beloved are movies, shows, comics, and novels in which such victories are portrayed as straightforwardly virtuous and good.

Think of Sansa Stark condemning her rapist and tormentor, Ramsay Bolton, to a grisly death at the jaws of his own hounds. How many fans and critics expressed unbridled joy at that, as though Sansa had won some kind of symbolic victory for all women? Her sister Arya’s rampage, which has taken her across the Narrow Sea and back again and claimed the lives of dozens, has likewise been applauded as a meaningful triumph in the way we tell women’s stories. For the record, I think both of these plots are intensely compelling and reveal volumes both about the characters themselves and the world they inhabit. Game of Thrones is a show nearly singular in its refusal to make violence joyous or cathartic, no matter the whoops and cheers of many of its fans.

Still, no matter how many times the show delivers searing anti-war images or explores the corrosive influence of violence on those who commit it, viewers remain hungry for the spectacle of women overpowering their enemies and turning back on them the weapons of their own oppression. In a culture where Redpill misogynists hold elected office and our president is a serial rapist, a desire to see women take power with a dash of fire and blood feels all too understandable, but celebrating the destruction of their personalities and lives is a reductive way to understand their stories.

In order to understand what Game of Thrones has to say about violent women, it’s necessary to set aside the thrill that seeing them materially ascendant brings and focus on the images, words, and larger context of the show’s particular examples. Where films like Wonder Woman thrive by repurposing a complex and horrifying conflict (World War I in the first film, the Cold War in the upcoming second) into a heroic battle between good and evil, Game of Thrones, rooted in a genre where conflict is often artificially cleansed of moral ambiguity through devices like entire species of evil-doers, makes no attempt to sand the edges off of its depictions of war or violence.

Nearly every woman on the show, with the possible exceptions of Gilly and Myrcella, are directly involved in war, torture, and many other forms of brutality. From Catelyn and Lysa’s ugly mess of a trial for Tyrion, an act they surely must have known would cost many smallfolk their lives once Tywin Lannister caught wind of it, to Ygritte fighting to save her people by sticking the innocent farmers in the shadow of the Wall full of arrows, the actions of women with power both physical and political are shown to bear fruit just as ugly as any their husbands, sons, and brothers can cultivate. There’s an uncomfortable truth lurking there, an admission that some modes of action and ways of being may not intersect meaningfully with many of modern feminism’s tenets.

In this essay I will dissect scenes and story to illustrate the show’s deeply antipathetic stance on violence and the ways in which it is misunderstood both by those who enjoy the show and by those who detest it or object to it.

I. ARYA

If a man is getting his eyes stabbed out by a child he intended to beat and rape, does the child’s gender matter when determining what the scene is meant to convey? Is it somehow triumphant for a girl to do that to another living person, no matter how repugnant he might be? Isn’t it possible that what the scene communicates is not that Arya’s slow transformation into a butcher with scant regard for human life is something we ought to cheer for but that the fact she couldn’t survive in Westeros or Essos as anything else, much less as a little girl, is deeply sad?

Arya’s crimes nearly always echo those of her tormentors. Think of the first person she kills, a stable boy, not so different in age or appearance from her erstwhile playmate, Mycah, who was slaughtered by the Hound a bare few months before. Or else consider Polliver, the Lannister soldier who murdered her friend Lommy and whose own mocking words she spits back at him as she plunges her sword up through his jaw. More recently, her wholesale slaughter of House Frey recalls with a visual exactitude which can be nothing but intentional the massacre of her own family and their allies at the Red Wedding. In this last instance she literally dons their murderer’s skin in order to exact her revenge, pressing Walder Frey’s face against her own in an act that feels uncomfortably more like embodiment than disguise.

Arya’s long journey through peril and terror has hardened her, but there’s little reason to rejoice in her hard-won powers of stealth and bloodletting. Who, after all, does she resemble with her obsession over old scores and her penchant for cruelly ironic punishments if not the subject of this essay’s next section.

II. CERSEI

Cersei Lannister, is distinguished from a hundred other interchangeable evil queens by the attention devoted to her own suffering. Sold by her father to a man who beat and raped her, denied the glory heaped on her twin by sole dint of her gender, humiliated and terrorized by the despicable son whose monstrosity she nurtured, and finally stripped, shaven, and marched barefoot through jeering crowds after being tortured for weeks or months in the dungeons of the church she armed and enabled, Cersei’s brutality serves only to deepen her misery and isolation.

The aforementioned tyranny of the High Sparrow she put in power, the murder of her monstrous son by her political rivals after she groomed him to be the beast he was, her conflicted and good-hearted younger son’s suicide after his mother’s revenge on the High Sparrow and the Tyrells broke his spirit; Cersei’s litany of victories reads a lot like a list of agonizing losses when you look at it sidelong. Certainly her grasping, vindictive reign has brought her no joy. It’s true that audiences are expected to see Cersei as a horrible human being, which she is, but the time the show spends on giving viewers a chance to empathize with this badly damaged person trying to throttle happiness and security out of a recalcitrant world argues for a more complex interpretation of her character. Watching her need to dominate rip her family and sanity apart, ushering all three of her children into early graves, transforms her from a straightforward villain to a troubled and tragic figure.

III. DAENERYS

Sold into slavery after a life on the run with her unstable and abusive brother and raped on her wedding night by a foreign warlord, Daenerys’s relationship to violence after her ascent to power is complex and heavily ideological. Her crusade to end slavery, motivated as much or more by strength of character and an innate sense of justice than it is by personal suffering and an impulse toward vengeance, has engendered sweeping changes throughout Essos, but at times it has taken on shades of the ostentatiously symbolic punishments for which her family name is famous. The crucifixion of the Masters is a particularly gratuitous example as Daenerys allows her desire to change the world and her need to feel good about the justice she doles out combine to produce a dreadful and inhumane outcome.

This act of performative brutality finds its echo in the rogue execution of a Son of the Harpy, imprisoned and awaiting trial, by Daenerys’s fervent supporter Mossador. Dany may claim that she is not above the law when Mossador confronts her, but when butchery without trial suited her she was quick to embrace it. Her case is uniquely complicated by her enemy: the slavers. Nothing excuses violence like a civilization of rapists and flesh-peddlers beating and maiming their human chattel onscreen, and there is powerful catharsis in seeing their corrupt works shredded and their hateful and exploitative lives snuffed out, but in making them suffer and in choosing the easy way out through orgiastic episodes of violence, Dany betrays her own unwillingness to do the hard work of reform. In many ways, her long stay in Meereen functions as the tragic story of her decision to embrace the grandiose violence her ancestors partook of so freely. We may feel good watching her triumph over evil, but we’re reminded frequently of the horrors and miseries of her reign.

IV. BRIENNE

Brienne’s pursuit of knighthood and adherence to its practices and code is no warrior-girl fantasy about a scabby-kneed tomboy learning to swordfight. Trapped in a body unsuited to courtly life, mocked by suitors and competitors alike, and yearning for the right to live by the sword as men do, Brienne finds challenging refuge in a way of life intimately associated with violent acts. From her butchery of the guards in Renly’s tent to her honor-bound execution of her one-time king’s brother in a snowy forest, Brienne’s path has frequently led her into mortal conflict.

At the climax of Wonder Woman, Diana kills a super-powered caricature of historical figure General Erich Ludendorff, a character who seems to exist solely to uncomplicate the moral landscape of World War I. A few minutes later she kills the man behind the man, her divine uncle Ares, and breaks his grasp on the people of war-torn Europe. The presentation of the act of killing as a triumph for human morality strips away much of what violent media can offer. Contrast Brienne’s desperate fight with three Stark soldiers as she attempts to spirit Jaime Lannister to safety on Catelyn’s orders. Screaming with every blow and leaving her opponents hacked to pieces, Brienne succeeds in her mission at an obvious human cost. Men, despicable men but men nonetheless, are dead. She and Catelyn are now in open rebellion against Robb’s authority.

To kill is to sever a life and give birth to a living, growing tree of consequences. To explore it instead as a tidy way to resolve problems and make the world a better place is to misrepresent its essential nature. You can’t improve the world through butchery. You can’t heal by harming. What violence in media is meant to teach us is a capacity for empathy, a reflexive understanding that all people are as fully and completely human as ourselves. Loathsome or virtuous, kind or cruel, no human suffering should be a comfortable or affirming thing to witness. (The Republican Party’s elected officials and pundit corps certainly makes a strong case for an exception to this rule).

One might charitably assume that lionization of violent women and their specific acts of violence stems from a place of vulnerability, a desire to balance the scales and erase the danger and aggression with which almost all women must live on a daily basis. I would argue that while this may hold true in part, a deeper truth is that many people have not been taught to feel pain for others in a way that allows for true emotional vulnerability or complex feelings about morally ugly and confusing actions. It’s easier to cheer when the guy we hate gets his than it is feel sorrow for the former innocent who dished out justice, or empathy for the deceased whose life must surely have held its own miseries and secret hurts.

Audiences would be well-served by taking a moment to step back from their reactions to violence in media and attempting to interpret what message the art is trying to convey. Is the violence slickly produced and bloodless, a parade of cool moments and heroic victories? Or is it focused on the humanity of victims and perpetrators and the cost of their actions? What is the camera telling us? The colors? The editing? Are we meant to agree with King Theoden’s speech about the glories of war in Return of the King when the very next cut brings us into the hellish, pointless confusion of the taking of Osgiliath? Are we meant to be happy when Sansa smiles at Ramsay’s death when the very last thing he told her was that she would carry him, his essence, with her forever?

The most transcendent joy art brings is the opportunity to reach out of your own beliefs and feelings and into someone else’s dreaming mind, to parse the language of symbols and ideas with which they have addressed the world and make in the negative space between your consciousness and theirs a new understanding. Learn to relish the complex and sometimes hideous nature of humanity over the easy thrills and cheap moral lessons of crowd-pleasers made by billionaires. Understand that art that makes you uncomfortable could be helping you grow.

A woman’s actions are not laudable just because she’s a woman, or just because she’s been wronged. In our rush to associate the violent triumph of women over the men who’ve hurt them with personal strength, healing, justice, and praiseworthiness we ignore what shows like Game of Thrones are saying in favor of what we want to hear. Violence should never be easy, and violence that assures us, or that we think assures us we’re good and rooting for the right people should always be suspect.

In labeling anything that pleases us, that satisfies our own hunger for justice and supremacy “feminist,” we forget that feminism is first and foremost an attempt to remake the world. The structure of things as they are is brutish and oppressive, and to cry tears of joy as women, even fictional women, fall prey to the allure of those same structures is to fundamentally misunderstand the point of a life-or-death struggle in which at this moment in history we are perilously engaged. As assaults on our tattered reproductive rights continue, as women struggling with addiction, illness, and homelessness are thrown into prison en masse, as our political leaders openly contemplate sentencing the most vulnerable among us to death in order to pay off the corporate elite and the Left (justifiably, in my opinion) contemplates and utilizes resistance through force on a scale unheard of in this millennium in our country’s history, learning to see violence for what it is has become more imperative than ever before.

#game of thrones #brienne of tarth #cersei lannister #arya stark #Sansa Stark #polliver #the hound #mycah #the freys #walder frey #catelyn stark

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emsmay96-blog · 6 years ago

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Piers Gavestone, Hugh Despenser and the downfall of Edward II

so I have been reading up on loads of different British monarchs over the past few weeks and I stumbled upon something rather peculiar about our monarchy and homosexuality, most people don’t actually know that one of our medieval kings Edward II was forced to abdicate this throne to his wife and her lover because she suspected him to have more than just friendly encounters with his “favourites” as they were called Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser.

In 1300 Piers began to appear in Edward’s houshold accounts Gaveston was son to one of the household’s knights and the two bagan a close relationship, however after a falling out with both Edward and the king he was banished to France , it was impossible to know exactly the extent of their relationship but there is strong evidence to suggest it was a romantic one.

Fast forward to 1308 in a strategic move to tighten relations with France Edward married Isabella, daughter of King Phillip IV of France. Edward aged 23 and Isabella 13. Once they were both crowned king and queen Wdward invited Gaveston back to England and made him Earl of Cornwall.

Ten years later Huh Despenser the younger another one of his favourites was made royal chamberlain, he was Edwards nephew by marriage and was showered with titles, Isabella grew suspicious over her nephew and her husband’s relations and as the years went by and 5 male heirs were Born Isabella grew tired of her husbands ways, she started having relations with her liver roger mortimer and ordered Hugh to be hing drawn and castrated in front of everyone, his man hood thrown into fire. Edward was then taken to Berkeley castle and held in a cell above a dungeon of rotting corpses till he abdicated his throne to his son. To which he did.

He later died when someone snuck into his cell and a red hot poker was forced up his backside into his bowels.

This story is so unique and as homosexuality wasn’t spoken of it is one of a kind to British history.

#history #historical # LGBT #factorfiction

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nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 8 years ago

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Satin is a former male prostitute, but he was sent to the Night’s Watch for some unspecific crime (found in a lord’s dungeon near Gulltown), so he doesn’t really count re situational homosexuality. However, the fact that Jon makes Satin his personal steward does lead some Watchmen to insinuate that he traded sexual favors for the job. (I’m afraid for him after Jon’s assassination, as someone will probably take the opportunity to kill him too, but with luck he’ll make it through the interregnum alive.)

But there is another example, although a subtle one:

[Three rangers Jon sent out have returned only as eyeless heads on spears, killed by the Weeper]

The crowd of crows beyond the gate had swollen to two score by the time they emerged from beneath the Wall. The men pressed close about them. Melisandre knew a few by name: the cook Three-Finger Hobb, Mully with his greasy orange hair, the dim-witted boy called Owen the Oaf, the drunkard Septon Celladar. “Is it true, m’lord?” said Three-Finger Hobb. “Who is it?” asked Owen the Oaf. “Not Dywen, is it?” “Nor Garth,” said the queen’s man she knew as Alf of Runnymudd, one of the first to exchange his seven false gods for the truth of R’hllor. “Garth’s too clever for them wildlings.” “How many?” Mully asked. “Three,” Jon told them. “Black Jack, Hairy Hal, and Garth.” Alf of Runnymudd let out a howl loud enough to wake sleepers in the Shadow Tower. “Put him to bed and get some mulled wine into him,” Jon told Three-Finger Hobb.

--ADWD, Melisandre I

And if you doubt that Alf and Garth’s closeness was more than friendship, note that Alf was one of the three men with Bowen Marsh right before Jon read the Pink Letter...

Othell was surrounded by his builders, whilst Bowen had Wick Whittlestick, Left Hand Lew, and Alf of Runnymudd beside him.

Lew and Wick are stewards like Bowen, but Alf is a builder, so why is he not with Othell? But then, during the assassination, Wick went for Jon’s throat, Bowen stabbed him in the stomach, another man got him in the back, and there was a fourth knife Jon couldn’t even feel by that point. 1, 2, 3, 4 - Bowen, Wick, Lew... and Alf.

Why… Why does there seem to be no gays at the night’s watch? The oath right there says “I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.”. Gay sex seems like the most obvious loophole in the world? And yeah, we know they sometimes sneak out to near villages to visit brothels, so they’re probably not AS sexually frustrated as prisoners, or sailors from the 18’ century, but still. It seems highly unlikely there would be NO GAYS at all. Even if they hid their deeds, there are bound to be at least rumors, right?

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #the night's watch #lgbtq #satin of oldtown #alf of runnymudd #garth greyfeather #the ides of marsh #jon snow

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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What I Can Tell You About DragonBlade, GayBlade, and Citadel of the Dead

Where fortune and fame await the oold? What does that mean?

An awful lot of administrative work and emulator-fighting went into tracking down, sorting out, an running the three variants of this exceptionally mediocre game. This was not time well spent. When Dragon magazine, home of the modal five-star review, gives your game no stars and calls it the “worst dungeon-crawl, you-do-the-mapping, oops-you’re-in-a-trap-and-your-torch-went-out, mindless click-the-‘attack’-button game I’ve seen in a decade,” you know you have a problem. This is an account of why I didn’t get very far with these games and why, at least for now, I’m not interested in trying harder. To judge by the manual and character creation process (the only part of the game I could really experience), DragonBlade, offers essentially nothing that Wizardry (1981) doesn’t except for color graphics. But even worse is the re-skinned GayBlade, which bills itself as the first gay-and-lesbian-themed CRPG, which it probably was, but only in the most superficial way. If I were a gay CRPG Addict, neither game would satisfy my gayness nor my CRPG addiction. That GayBlade received so much press in its day goes to show how starved the genre really ways for authentic gay representation in games.

The timeline is a little confused because a lot of sites give GayBlade as a 1992 game and DragonBlade as a “straight fantasy variant of GayBlade.” In fact, the reverse is almost certainly true, particularly since the “About” screen for GayBlade is still titled, “About DragonBlade.” There are a lot of sloppy bits like that in GayBlade. (That double-entendre is gayer than anything in the game.) Making things more confusing, author R. J. Best went on a Macintosh Garden forum last year and claimed he wrote GayBlade and released it for free in revenge for a distributor withholding royalties from Citadel of the Dead. But it’s clear from both news accounts and magazine reviews that GayBlade was available in 1993 while Citadel didn’t come out until 1994. Citadel, as far as I can tell, is just DragonBlade with a new title screen and a few bug fixes.

Let’s talk about DragonBlade first. The manual offers the most generic backstory possible: Once peace reigned in the land, led by a community of knights and mages who followed “the gentle philosophy of DragonMagic.” They were headquartered in the DragonKeep and ruled by High Wizard Alastor. But a demon army led by Lord Xygor invaded the land, lay waste to the keep, and imprisoned Alastor in a “dimension of frozen souls.” A party must brave the now-monster-ridden keep to rescue Alastor.

The game opens on a menu town with a “training yard” (character creation), tavern, general store, guild (for level advancement), magic shop, healer, and dungeon door. Classes are fighter, mage, priest, samurai (fighter/priest), wizard (fighter/mage), and master (fighter/priest/wizard). Races are orc (c. 10%), ogre (10%), elf (40%), gnome (20%), and dwarf (20%). When you roll a new character, his race is randomized along with his attributes: strength, wisdom, intelligence, constitution, dexterity, and hits. Each attribute is rolled from 1 to 15 (there are no racial modifications), and the aggregate determines your available classes. So far, with the exception of the monster races and no human race, things are identical to Wizardry

Except for low hits (which prevents him from being a “master”), this character has some unusually high stats.

The manual doesn’t tell you the prime requisites for each class, so I spent far more time than made sense noting the minimum scores every time an option came up and then figuring out the associated probabilities. First, there isn’t an equal probability of each number between 1 and 15 appearing for each attribute. For some reason, 8 is heavily weighted, accounting for about 15% of values. The numbers 1 and 15 are weighted low, accounting for about 3% each. Everything else is in the 6-8% range. Priests require at least a 12 in wisdom and mages require at least a 12 in intelligence; each comes up as an option about 21% of the time. Samurai require 13 strength, 12 dexterity, and possibly smaller values for the other attributes. They come up only about 5 times in 1,000. Wizards require at least a 12 in wisdom and dexterity and a 13 in intelligence; they come up 6 times in 1,000. Masters have at least a minimum requirement of 12 or 13 in all attributes (I’m guessing a bit) and come up less than 1 time in every 10,000 rolls. I only ever got one once, and I forgot to click the “Master” option when selecting him, so I accidentally made him a fighter. That hurt.

Starting items in the store.

It turns out that much like Wizardry, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to sweat through thousands of re-rolls for the perfect character anyway, since Level 1 characters might as well be wearing red Star Trek uniforms. This is particularly true for DragonBlade, where enemies attack the moment you enter the dungeon, before you can even light a torch, and never stop. Combat is also Wizardry standard. Each character can attack, parry, use an item, or cast a spell, although it executes the action immediately (more like Might and Magic) rather than running through the entire round at once.

Combat against giant rock ants.

The game uses Wizardry‘s “slot” system (e.g., a Level 6 priest gets 3 first-level spells, 2 second-level spells, one third-level spell), but there are only 11 spells for each spellcasting class. Mages get “Light Wound,” “Evade,” “Light,” “Heavy Wound,” “Invisibility On,” “Invisibility Off,” “Locate,” “Lightning,” “Fireballs,” “Ice Storm,” and “Castle” (as in, “return to”). Priests get “Disarm” (the only way to disarm, since there are no thieves), “Light Cure,” “Compass,” “Cure Poison,” “Resist Fire,” “Resist Ice,” “Raise,” “Heavy Cure,” “Eye of Death,” “Cure All,” and “Restore.”

Looking at spell options while facing an undead.

It soon become clear to me that the programmers had built DragonBlade to serve up a combat once every n clock cycles and hadn’t accounted for faster models. (If I don’t have that quite right technically, I’m sure someone will correct me.) Thus, the combats never end and you never get to explore the dungeon or even retreat out the back door. I tried Citadel of the Dead and ran into essentially the same problem. I could actually get a torch lit and occasionally move a step, but generally speaking I was trapped in an endless succession of combats from the moment I entered until they finally overwhelmed the party. Death is permanent in the game, although one weird feature is that enemies continue to attack slain party members in combat, slashing and bashing their helpless corpses. I guess that’s good news for the survivors but still somewhat gruesome.

An inevitable message in my DragonBlade experiences.

The Basilisk emulator that I use for Mac games doesn’t offer dynamic clock speed scaling the way that DOSBox does, and I was unable to find a Windows version of DragonBlade even though it existed. (I think Citadel was Mac-only.) I fiddled around with other models and settings in the Basilisk GUI, but I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t too fast. Thus, I tried GayBlade, for which I could only find a Windows version. This was my first experience emulating Windows 3.1, and it went about as smoothly as all my experiences with a new emulator, which means it took several frustrating hours to get it right (and would have taken longer if my commenter Lance hadn’t given me a head start with his configuration).

There’s no way it’s the world’s first. What about Leather Goddesses of Phobos? What about the game version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

GayBlade is a gay-themed game if by “gay-themed” you mean taking all the trappings of a typical computer role-playing game and replacing them with trappings of gay life. Not real gay life, but stereotypically flamboyant gay life, and not “replaced” in any thoughtful way but clumsily and senselessly. Let’s start with the classes. In place of fighters, samurais, wizards, and priests, we get queers, drag queens, guppies, and lesbians. Mages and masters aren’t even translated. Prime requisites are lowered significantly, and instead of default-naming every character “Dufus,” this game picks names that begin with the character’s class. You can only create four characters instead of being able to create up to 8 and only assign 4 to the party the way the other games work.

Assembling a gay party.

Then we get to inventory. Instead of useful items like armor and swords, we get aprons, mace (not the weapon, but the chemical spray), blow-dryers, press-on nails, and condoms. If the relative positions are any guide, purses are substituting for cloaks, tiaras for helms, press-on nails for gauntlets, and condoms for shields. Okay, I just got that last one. That’s a little clever.

The ostensible goal of the game is to rescue someone named “Empress Nelda.” But once you enter the dungeon, you’re just in the same medieval dungeon as the straight versions. Some of the monsters are replaced with menaces to gay people, such as “FBI Probes,” homosexual thugs who say “you fag” when they attack, televangelists, KKK grand dragons, and spineless politicos. You even have to face some external representations of inner demons such as suicidal tendencies and age spots. But there are also regular monsters carried over from DragonBlade, like giant insects and rats. The spells aren’t “translated” at all. Drag queens get the priest spells.

The characters face an “FBI Probe” led for some reason but a naval officer.

I tried to last long enough to explore the first level. I’m pretty sure it’s only 10 x 10. I didn’t find any special encounters or navigation tricks. But my queers and lesbians and their mace and hairdryers were far less effective against enemies than the swords and armor of the fantasy versions. I hate the control system in all three games: they’re mouse-buttons only, even for movement. I also hate the perspective, which insists you’ve hit a wall (not only subtracting a hit point but making you acknowledge a message) even though it looks like there’s plenty of space.

Sure, it was “plainly marked.” ONE SQUARE AHEAD of where I am.

I’ll leave it to you, gay readers: what impressions do you get from this description? Are you happy to have any acknowledgement, even if the best it aspires to is high camp and doesn’t really succeed even at that? This will be better served in a longer entry specifically on the topic, but milestones that I can remember for gay representation in RPGs are:

Ultima VI (1990): Earliest game that I can remember that allows same-sex sex, albeit with a gypsy prostitute.

Ultima VII (1992): Continues the tradition, albeit at a brothel.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002): Made things equal-opportunity for creepy sex predators, as Crassius Curio will sexually harass males and females alike.

Jade Empire (2005): Introduced BioWare’s from-then common theme of offering at least one same-sex partner, often a bisexual who could also be romanced from the other side. I remember accidentally falling into a gay relationship based on some tricky dialogue options.

Fallout: New Vegas (2010): In a game famous for not introducing “romance options” with its NPCs, the only exception (sort-of) is for lesbian characters.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011): Introduced full equality. Any character who could be romanced, married, and bedded could be done by both men and women with no additional commentary. Unfortunately, all relationships were a bit boring and bloodless.

Dragon Age: Inquisition (2015): Kicks up the complexity a notch with a wide cast of characters with a variety of racial and sexual preferences–plus mature attitudes (and a sense of humor) about sex and sexual situations.

I’m sure more experienced readers can think of more, but for 1993, I think you’d be better off playing a regular CRPG and just imagining the protagonist as gay rather than paying homage to this penis-lollipop take on gay themes. Even if you feel differently, I simply can’t bring myself to fight rednecks with press-on nails and blow-dryers for 13 levels. Thus, I guess I’m rejecting the entire group on “notability” grounds, although I’ll hold myself open for taking up one of the medieval versions if I can get Basilisk to slow it down. I’m done with it for now; the game has kept me too long from Ultima VII. Note: The title of the gay version is perhaps a reference to Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981), which not enough people have seen. Ironically, the authors removed swords and daggers from the game so that the characters no longer have any blades.

*****

I’ve put Planet’s Edge on the back burner because it’s clear that I’m going to have to start over. I’ll pick it up again after a couple of games have gone by; this isn’t going to be another Magic Candle III. I just hate doing the same things I’ve already done, and I needed some space in between.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/what-i-can-tell-you-about-dragonblade-gayblade-and-citadel-of-the-dead/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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