#Gay Village culture

[uglyandtraveling]

Discover Toronto's Gay Village, a vibrant hub of resilience & pride! From scandal to celebration, uncover the secret history of this iconic neighborhood & find out how it became a beacon of hope & inclusivity in the heart of the city.

[vaspider]

Y'all, I love Ten Second Songs in general but this is one of his best pieces. It's... great.

[judas-isariot]

People used to think the village people looked straight. It's also one of the few French-American band to have exist, that's why they look gay AF.

[sabertoothwalrus]

Your tags on the Elven Queen vs Laois "close to a mixed race child" and the differences and. The fact that Marcille as well half elf head magic advisor, him canonically wanting his misfit friends help him run the country (whether capable or not). She can't even pull the "older and wiser" card with Yaad "I'm older then all you long life races" around. She thinks about how somehow this all boils into a fairly successful kingdom and gets a migraine

Godddd I spent so much time thinking about dungeon meshi politics yesterday.

I genuinely don’t think the Queen of Elves would have a change of heart towards mixed-blood people. I think it would stress Kabru the FUCK out because the political tensions this would cause (but also he’d be a smug about making the elves angry, serves them right.)

The dwarves are a different story. Even if the King also hated mixed-bloods, most dwarves look to their local governance than the King. It’s also common for dwarves & gnomes to have families together, so at the very least, dwarves are accepting mixed-bloods as long as they’re both long lived races.

Even if they weren’t, it’d be funny if dwarves became more progressive culturally just because they hate elves so much shfhshdhsjs AGAIN. THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THIS.

Imagine. Marcille feeling guilty and targeted simply for being mixed-blood on a royal council. Trying not to feel like her whole existence is undermining the legitimacy of Laios’s new kingdom.

And the worst part? she’s GAY

LIKE!!! we don’t know how accepting this world is of gay people. And ngl I sometimes think it’s more interesting when stories have homophobia. We know the village the Toudens grew up in was fairly conservative. We know Otta is a canonical lesbian, but she was, yknow… arrested.

What if Laios, wishing the best for his little sister and one of his closest friends, legalizes gay marriage in Melini. What if their marriage isn’t recognized in other countries? What if people start to move to Melini BECAUSE they want to get married. What if Melini is seen as some silly, backwards, laughing-stock of a kingdom. God, Kabru would be like “listen I love what we’re doing here but I’m trying not to start an outright WAR. 😭”

Oh god I haven’t even touched on Falin’s chimerism. That’s probably also a sore subject. WHEW!

[galerymod]

Klaus Nomi was a countertenor and pop star who made a significant impact in the music scene and pop culture.

mod

EVENTS

[tofixtheshadows]

Hot take: Laios wouldn't actually mind an arranged marriage. Obviously "reluctant royal being pressured into marriage" is very fun for shipping purposes. But I have harlequin blood, so bear with me. Join me on this journey of character theorizing/shipping nonsense that makes it abundantly clear I have a Scrivener document I'm neglecting.

Laios was promised to someone from a young age. He and Falin both were; it's probably how their parents ended up together. They both broke it off by leaving their village, but it didn't seem to be a factor in Laios's own decision. And when Marcille, presumably, asks about his hypothetical love life (bicorn chapter), he not only brings it up readily, but actually seems kind of flattered? lmao

I love when smug Laios comes out. Underrated factor of Laios's personality for me is how much he enjoys being seen as cool. I think you'd expect Laios to be embarrassed or uneasy over this line of questioning, and the fact that he isn't is fun to me.

So when Yaad and his other old advisors bring up his need for a wife, Laios is ready to go along with it. Not necessarily thrilled by the prospect, but he was raised to think of marriage as a business arrangement you do because it's beneficial for your household/bloodline (as was often the case historically). He's already made the big step to claim a throne, and the idea of becoming village chief after his father seemed to have been vaguely in the back of his head all his life. Besides, if he has to do it anyway, I think he'd take comfort that there was a formalized process for an otherwise socially messy undertaking.

This dovetails neatly with my personal headcanon that Laios is gay but unaware of it. He comes from kind of a repressed culture- or at least I can imagine he does based on context clues- and has spent most of his life being ostracized in one way or another, feeling like he's on the outside of humanity. So he doesn't realize that his lack of attraction to women is unusual- he assumes that nobody really enjoys romance that much. It's not like his own parents married for love. It's just something people play up for stories, right?

It's all tangled up with his fraught desire for human connection and platonic companionship anyway. Meanwhile he's blithely unaware that the things he says about Toshiro are not normal bro things. Oh you'd totally marry Toshiro, Laios? Tell me more.

I see this in Marcille too. Firstly due to her unstable development, which has only recently allowed her to reach maturity (I headcanon her as somewhere between 20-22) and secondly due to her being a half-elf (infertile+a too-long lifespan), I think she has the expectation that she's simply not destined for love. The half-elf character she relates to in her favorite books says as much. So she, too, confuses a genuine lack of heterosexual attraction with the belief that this is just because of her half-elf status distancing her from it. Plus, she spent over a decade as a student/researcher in a nice little sheltered academic bubble, at an all-girls academy populated by adolescents. She's the most sheltered of all the characters: she's only spent the past year in the "real world", and she still focuses all her romantic attention on living vicariously through her favorite characters or her friends (except for Falin, conveniently!).

And Marcille would absolutely want to live vicariously through Laios and his future wife. She would not want him to go through a dispassionate formalized process: she wants her bestie to have a fairytale romance! What is the point of being a heroic king in a mythic castle if you can't even get a love story for the ages out of it?

This would result in a lot of Laios meeting with eligible bachelorettes at Marcille's urging, looking to Kabru for help the entire time and being grilled by Marcille afterwards about what he liked best about each girl. "She had nice, um, teeth?" They're both so close to getting it.

Kabru, meanwhile, is agitating for Yaad and the other advisors not lock the country into a hereditary monarchy, they have the chance to do something radical here, to break away from the systems that the elves and dwarves uphold. At the very least, let Laios marry for love, or formally adopt an heir and name them his successor if he wants, he's already sacrificed enough for the sake of Melini. Don't make him jump through these circus hoops for the chance of some trade agreements, we can get those without a royal marriage. And even if Laios was willing to go along with it, he does look at Kabru like he's his hero for sticking up for him.

The vague unhappiness Kabru feels at the idea of Laios being married off is easy for him to ignore. Kabru didn't actually get better at honoring or even recognizing his own wants just because he's moved past the dungeon. And Laios hasn't gotten the hint about his crush on Toshiro and is still 50/50 on saying casually shocking things, so when he remarks that he doesn't need a wife anyway when he has Kabru, he has no idea why that gets him the looks it does. After all, where he's from, men marry women to run their households, but Laios has castle staff for that, and Kabru is handling the rest?

That comment alone ticks one month off their collective gay awakening countdown.

Anyway. How many repressed gays in their twenties does it take to run a country?

Answer: Yaad can tell you.

[coriphallus]

DA: The Veilguard Spoiler review pt2 - The Grime

this is a hard one to tackle without strawmaning anyone because itll be a direct response to alot of defense ive seen for the games morality system so ill just start by saying, iykyk

never a genre has been better equipped to discuss ethics than the interactive medium of games and yes, bioware games have been doing it since baldurs gate and no, theyve not always been 'centrist' and 'conservative'. im not even gonna entertain that idea. do you remember the cultural landscape DA:O released to? the landscape it was developed in? dont give me that just because zevran doesnt write in his little notes -that you can conveniently read- 'gay good. not me but me bisexual'

Thedas is a flawed world and its a world thats just as desperate to hang on to its status quo as our own. every time you play an elf thats thriving, or a human thats queer, or a mage thats not institutionalised you exist in a world that doesnt want you, it is an act of defiance that you do.

im sure we can all see why these games were so popular with the audience they can only weakly try to pander to today.

derailing time again; so one of my favourite paintings of all time is saturn devouring his son. it makes me feel so uncomfortable that it gave me nightmares as a child, and i still cant look at it without feeling this knot in my throat. i hate it. i hate how it makes me feel, how that man looks at me in terror like its begging me for help while cannibalising another. weird story but i was bewitched by that painting as a little kid.

it is not a well drawn painting, the proportions are all over the place, brush strokes crude and inelegant. it doesnt even have a deeper story nor was it intended for an audience. i will never know what goya thought of when drawing it.

i thought alot about that painting later in my life when i was struggling with mental health problems, i thought about goya alot too as an adult and after learning about his life. i stared at his paintings and remembered when i told my dad that i hated [saturns] big eyes and hed jokingly said "it would be scarier if he didnt have eyes"

i know what the drawing looks like now, nearly everyone with a little access to the internet does. if somebody removed saturn from it, we'd still be left with a brutalised headless carcass of a man in a canvas too big for itself. if we removed that too all we'd be left with would be void.

i dont want to live in a world where all i know of goya is his rococo work, i dont want to stare at the painting of a void knowing what filled it before. i hated every second of germinale but i never wanted it to be anything other than itself, the story it tells could never hold credence otherwise.

DAV has done its best to paint over it, but its still on the old canvas and i cant look away from the negative space its left, i know whats under it and it unsettles me, infuriates me. it hands me a palette with baby blues and pinks and tells me to paint over it to make a prettier painting. didnt i hate the eyes? wasnt it gross before?

i am not going to write why we need some grime in art, but its absence is disheartening. and to those who say hanged people in the streets or blighted villagers is dark and mature ill say no. its a kids idea of maturity, its the aesthetic of it with no substance. it means nothing to me if rook can just drench themselves in gallons of blight as they crawl through it. the horror of blight has never been the black goo and slimy tentacles, or the monster woman with way too many tits. it is watching people you love slowly fade away, it is a woman who was forced to cannibalise the contaminated flesh of her friends because the woman she loved betrayed her, it was the sheer scale and inevitability of it.

one area we go to is overrun by it and the game begs me to feel hopeful that flowers are growing again when it never let me lose hope. people have already prevailed, they have roofs over their heads and a steady supply of food on their tables. their spirit is unwavering.

its bad, everybody says. the sky is grey and soil is blackened, as my rook turns some statues to access a haunted house whos inhabitants are long gone and the only story they could ever tell is gone with them.

if the question is do i want to see famine? plague? misery? abuse? assault? the answer is yes. yes. i want to see it all of the filth. i rather face the fucking monster head on with its big bulging eyes and misshapen limbs than stare at the abyss its absence leaves on the canvas.

and if nothing else, this bastardization is disrespectful to the people who gave the IP its fame.

Why choose to be good?

back in the bsn days ive wondered why, even in a fictional universe where your choices have no real-life repercussions what-so-ever, players had more 'good' playthroughts than 'bad'?

what happens when you start killing NPCs, when youre needlessly mean to them? the game actively closes off its own content. you get less out of the game. just as, completely incidentally, you'd get less out of your life if you just started killing everyone around you. The world would be emptier, youd be alone.

in that quote i stole from good place chidi doesnt ask "why be good?" the wording is painfully deliberate. doing good is always a choice, and often not the easy one. what makes the act matter is that you chose to do it, even when given 6 other options not to. did i stop in the middle of an important quest to help a man retrieve an heirloom from a darkspawn infested hut? did i hear what that heirloom meant to him?

i cant stop thinking about that speech ever since playing this game after knowing its predecessors.

So, why do it then? Why choose to be good, every day, if there is no guaranteed reward we can count on, now or in the afterlife? I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.

i cant stop looking at this game that spits on its own legacy and think how could they have missed what fundamentally makes us human so bad, what makes us relate and empathise with eachother. what makes us pick the option to interact with an npc who openly hates what hawke is, and allow us to see the traumatised man underneath.

these characters of fiction are written by real people. i have absolutely nothing in common with a guy from canada yet for a brief moment in time i feel a sense of camaraderie as ive felt with goya that i couldnt articulate as a kid.

Nothing too terrible

DAV says it over and over again -as its wont to do with every piece of its flimsy morality- that people can change, people can be redeemed yet it shines as the game with most static characters in its franchise. it simply says things, and since it has nothing to show for it it makes sure to say it repeatedly, in case you missed it.

so when i first played DAO i was in high school, i started with a human noble because fresh out of dark side edgy kotor fame i wanted to be a posh brat. also because, ya kno, we were poor my entire life up until that point and i wanted to have power.

i committed to it, even as the game stripped cousland of everything he had, because i thought a man like him would. i picked the racist options, the sexist options, the options a man in couslands place would. halfway point of the game as i exhausted the initial dialogues something happened; this man who got paid to kill people, who showed no remorse nor care for his victims, begged my cousland to stil his blade.

and i did. i thought maybe he would be as confused as i was, maybe he had a moment of clarity but from thereon bit by bit he was less of an asshole. the characters grew around me, and my character grew around them. i chose to be good because -textually- we were in this together, at the end of all things.

rook is not a character, theyre a mascot. and quite frankly i think they may be a very evangelical mascot because they remind me of evangelical preachings of jesus more than the man from the bible (and i say this as someone whos only exposure to christianity has been through foreign media and the bible ive read that one time). they are the epitome of do no evil and their existence hinges on the frail concept of moral purity. theyre not a person trying to do good, who wants to be good, they are 'good'

-and lemme tell you its a wild choice to have someone like that locked in a prison of 'regret'-

rook can be mean to only one person in the game, and thats someone they dont even have a personal beef with for the most part. but even then they would be shouting at a wall because the game doesnt only undermine them with its narrative, but also every npc in the game suddenly gets possessed by the ghost of wattpad rejects past for a moment to tell them everyone can be redeemed. and i believe it because i played the other games, i believe it because i know zevran and sten and morrigan, isabela and thom and iron bull and dorian. i know it because i can see the vague shapes behind the new coat of paint but i am not rook.

so no, the game fails to get people-can-change points by its own merit, and it cannot gain points from its prequels because it destroyed them. none of those characters i watched grow exist in this universe. zevran cant exist with DAV crows, fenris` story cant exist in an imperium with invisible slaves only glimpsed through empty cages and broken chains left scattered on the ground. i dont know which morrigan this NPC is, is it the woman who grew to learn kindness, who begged to sleep with her friend just to save them despite knowing it would play into the plans of a destiny she so desperately tried to break free from? or is she the clever puppet her mother groomed her to be who wanted to harness the power of a god? i dont know her, i dont know this dorian or this isabela beyond their names ipso facto this is not a sequel.

bellara asks an assassin why he is trying to save the world and his answer is "ive done some things in the past im not too proud of. nothing too terrible, but some of it was bad." and i can hear the games desperation for me to not engage with its material in that 'nothing too terrible'

lucanis never killed anyone innocent, taash never harmed an animal they could shoo of or reason with, emmrich venerates the dead and is friends with every wisp he pulls to use in menial labour, davrin joined the wardens willingly because he wanted to do good...

rook tells harding that her anger is justified when shes not even allowed anger of her own.

nothing too terrible.

aside from creating boring and nonsensical and static characters it creates a dreadful echochamber that we're forced to sustain. No taash is not valid, their gender is but their behaviour is not and for the character to grow and mature it needs to be addressed. lucanis doesnt need to be pampered in shock blankets he needs to see how repressing his problems and jeopardising his health puts people around him in danger etc etc. they are adults and they need to learn more complex ways of healing. and if rooks flaw is that theyre an enabler, then that needs to be acknowledged by the narrative in some way too, and not mindlessly endorsed because they say some buzzwords.

none of these interpersonal relationships feels real because none of these people feel real beyond some draft of themes and tropes. some interactions literally remind me of two bots in facebook comments

i look at this dialogue wheel with familiar symbols and all im reminded of is hawke telling carver he carries every death with him, of him telling his uncle that he wasnt fast enough, of him begging the person he loves to tell him that his mothers death wasnt his fault.

and they dont. they just sit there with him.

[tuttle-did-it]

A lot of your questions, I'm not really qualified to answer as I was not in the writer's room. I have written on the show academically, about the queer and camp relationships, but as to how much was intentional, I cannot say as I was not in the writer's room. Maybe some of the writers intentionally put things in, maybe they put it in cos they thought it would be funny. I can't say. Maybe get in touch with writers like Ken Levine and ask him most of this.

But whether intentional or not, there are queer signifiers within the show. And a lot of it has to do with the visuals of queer in 1970s. I was alive then, and I was queer, and most of the queer men looked like BJ, Fonzie and Thomas Magnum.

I think it’s been said that it was Alan’s idea for the BJ moustache— but that could be wrong. Whether intentionally or not, BJ’s moustache and over-all appearance with the moustache does fall in with the post Stonewall gay scene— particularly the ‘Castro Clone.’

Archetypes like sailor, biker, etc— these clones were a send-up of the hyper-masculine — so butch it’s gay. Ever notice how gay Fonzie seems coded on Happy Days? Clone. Why Thomas Magnum on Magnum PI felt somehow really gay even if he was kissing a woman? How gay the Village People (All stereotypes of hypermasculinity) all were not in spite of the hyper-butch outfits, but because of it. All worth a very similar aesthetic.

BJ’s hair style, moustache and that straw hat, the pink Henley with red braces, a green vest, slightly curly hair and bit longer than traditional, occasionally a tighter t-shirt, the motorbike, and occasionally in the skates with a lot of chest hair. These images were very common within the clone look.

Couple this with VERY lesbian coding of Margaret (especially when Helen visits), the occasionally usually quite limp-wristed performance of Hawkeye (along with the occasional straw cowboy hat), and how often Hawkeye and BJ tend to touch and embrace, shower together, and their general body language—intentional or not— made them visible to us queers who recognised those aspects.

Let’s take this single moment:

BJ’s hands on the hip, the swagger, an arm around him slightly possessively— met with Hawk’s entirely unnecessary grabbing of the fabric on his waist and holding it there— for most of us, there is nothing heterosexual about this moment. It’s too intimate— especially as it’s in front of so many people, showing a comfort and confidence that this kind of touch it’s normal and acceptable.

And because there are repeated moments like this in most scenes in nearly all the episodes.

There is a reason I say that the final scene with Hawk and BJ in GFA is the most romantic divorce in cinematic history. With the queer coding especially with BJ��s aesthetics, there is and has always been a romantic element to this scene. And most of their scenes.

I think that if you showed this scene to someone who didn’t know the episode, didn’t know this show, and told them to focus primarily on body language, they would say this looks like a break up between these two men—neither of whom want to leave the other. That is a very intimate move. Watch that whole scene i entirety-- watch their body language, their expressions. Watch it with the sound off.

Especially because the hand on the back of the head is how Hawk has previously hugged his canon lovers.

How he held Kyung Soon:

And Carlye:

Thanks to @efort for the pics and so quickly!!

When Hawk loves someone and hugs them, he holds their head. This is just a Thing He Does. Did Alan do it to show that Hawk was gay? I doubt it. But I am convinced he did it because Hawk loved BJ.

Did the writers all decide to make M*A*S*H incredibly gay? Did he actors unconsciously about this body language? Did the costume department decide to queer BJ up? I doubt it. Could one or two of the actors or writers see things this way and decide to play off it? Possibly. Do any of them in the show intentionally construct all of this? Did it just magically happen? I don’t know. Wasn’t there in the room with them.

But I can tell you that to those of us who recognised those queer signifiers, seeing body language like this constantly, there was no question. Did the straights get it? Probably not. But that doesn't mean we didn't see it.

Whether they meant it or not, most of the M*A*S*H characters are queer-coded in one way or the other. But BJ is probably the most visually queer, whereas Hawk 100% is a bisexual disaster. On purpose or not, that's what the show definitely makes clear.

you know we’re all rational adults: there’s no way we all hallucinated gay mash narrative out of nothing

[hersterical]

I’ve put a little too much thought into atla slang for gay people tonight so here’s this.

Kyoshi Island:

Speaks about sexuality openly on Kyoshi Island but knows to be more careful around outsiders.

“Is she, you know…a student of Rangi?” (gay/lesbian)

“No. But she does follow in the footsteps of Avatar Kyoshi. She prefers the versatility of the fan over the sword or the shield.” (bi)

Water Tribe:

More “traditional” than the other nations so it’s a bit more subtle and reliant on accompanying eyebrow movements, hand gestures, and tone of voice.

“He’d rather go sailing than stay in the village.” (mlm)

“She’s shown some interest in ice fishing.” (sapphic)

“I personally prefer to fish in the same waters as Avatar Kuruk.” (bi)

“He’d rather spend the winter months alone.” (ace)

Earth Kingdom:

“Are you a member of the Flying Opera Company?” (lgbt+)

No one, including the Kyoshi Islanders are aware of the origins of this particular phrase

Fire Nation:

“I’ve dabbled in dragon’s fire before.” (This phrase specifically would be something like ‘I did some experimenting in college’ but the reference to dragon’s fire/breath would mean lgbt+)

“He wears a crown of fire lilies.” (lgbt+)

Even before the hundred year war they were one of the more intolerant of the nations (based on the Kyoshi novels) and they probably only got worse during the hundred year war. I’m sure they would’ve come up with more slang by the time we get to Korra’s time but I’m out of ideas for the Fire Nation.

Air Nomads:

As they are totally open and accepting to all genders and sexualities they wouldn’t feel the need for coming up with specific labels, let alone weird secret codes and slang. When nomads begin exploring the world and start to learn about the other nation’s ideologies and slang and everything they’re always confused but respects the other nation’s traditions and cultures.

bonus

Swamp benders:

Even more open about gender and sexuality than Kyoshi Islanders. They’re super casual and blunt about it without being disrespectful but also not trying to be respectful because why would anyone be disrespectful about this? There’s a polycule consisting of roughly ten people who all connected through an asexual tribe member that each member of the polycule has a qpr with. Darryl over there is interested in folks of all sorts. His spouse is all the genders. Not to be confused with Jim over there who is none of the genders. Not to be confused with Junjun who is the third gender… (etc)

I didn’t do a big deep dive into each nation’s culture and history. This is just from the top of my head and is just for fun. Let me know if you guys have any other ideas!

[thejoyofseax]

Why We Can't Have Medieval Food

I noted in a previous post that I'd "expand on my thinking on efforts to reproduce period food and how we’re just never going to know if we have it right or not." Well, now I have 2am sleep?-never-heard-of-it insomnia, so let's go.

At the fundamental level, this is the idea that you can't step in the same river twice. You can put your foot down at the same point in space, and it'll go into water, but that's different water, and the bed of the river has inevitably changed, even a little, from the last time you did so.

Our ingredients have changed. This is not just because we can't get the fat from fat-tailed sheep in Ireland, or silphium at all anywhere, although both of those are true. But the aubergine you buy today is markedly different to the aubergine that was available even 40 years ago. You no longer need to salt aubergine slices and draw out the bitter fluids, which was necessary for pretty much all of the thing's existence before (except in those cultures that liked the bitter taste). The bitterness has been bred out of them. And the old bitter aubergine is gone. Possibly there are a few plants of it preserved in some archive garden, or a seed bank, or something, but I can't get to those.

We don't really have a good idea of the plant called worts in medieval English recipes. I mean, we know (or we're fairly sure) it was brassica oleracea. But that one species has cultivars as distinct as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan (list swiped from Wikipedia). And even within "cabbage" or "kale", you have literally dozens of varieties. If you plant the seeds from a brassica, unless you've been moderately careful with pollination, you won't get the same plant as the seeds are from. You can crossbreed brassicas just by planting them near each other and letting them flower. And of course there is no way to determine what varietal any medieval village had, a very high likelihood that it was different to the village next door, and an exceedingly high chance that that varietal no longer exists. Further, it only ever existed for a few tens of years - before it went on cross-breeding into something different. So our access to medieval worts (or indeed, cabbage, kale, etc) is just non-existant.

Some other species within the brassica genus are as varied. Brassica rapa includes oilseed rape, field mustard, turnip, Chinese cabbage, and pak choi.

We have an off-chance, as it happens, of getting almost the same kind of apple as some medieval varieties, because apples can only be reproduced for orchard use by grafting, which is essentially cloning. Identification through paintings, DNA analysis, and archaeobotany sometimes let us pin down exactly which apple was there. But the conditions under which we grow those apples are probably not the same as the medieval orchard. Were they thinned? When were they harvested? How were they stored? And apples are pretty much the best case.

Medieval wheat was practically a different plant. It was far pickier about where it would grow, and frequently produced 2-4 grains per stalk. A really good year had 6-8. In modern conditions, any wheat variety with less than 30 grains per stalk would be considered a flop.

Meats are worse. Selective breeding in the last century has absolutely and completely changed every single species of livestock, and if you follow that back another five centuries, some of them would be almost unrecognisable. Even our heritage breeds are mostly only about 200 years old.

Cheese, well. Cheese is dependent on very specific bacteria, and there are plenty of conditions where the resulting cheese is different depending on whether it was stored at the back or front of the cave. Yogurts, quarks, skyrs, etc, are also live cultures, and almost certainly vary massively. (I have a theory about British cheese here, too, which I'll expand on in a future post)

So, even before you go near the different cooking conditions (wood, burnables like camel and cow dung, smoke, the material and condition of cooking pots), we just can't say with any reliability that the food we're making now is anything like medieval people produced from the same recipe. We can't even say that with much reliability over a century.

Under very controlled conditions, you could make an argument for very specific dishes. If you track down a wild mountain sheep in Afghanistan, and use water from a local spring, and salt from some local salt mine, then you can make a case that you can produce something fairly close to the original ma wa milh, the water-and-salt stew that forms the most basic dish in Arabic cookery. But once you start introducing domestic livestock, vegetables, or even water from newer wells, you're now adrift.

It is possible that some dishes taste exactly the same, by coincidence. But we can't determine that. We can't compare the taste of a dish from five years ago, let alone five hundred, because we're only just getting to a state where we can "record" a taste accurately. Otherwise it's memory and chance.

We've got to be at peace with this. We can put in the best efforts we can, and produce things that are, in spirit, like the medieval dishes we're reading about. But that's as good as it gets.

[makingqueerhistory]

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers

Mark Gevisser

More than seven years in the making, Mark Gevisser's The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers is an exploration of how the conversation around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide--and describe--the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition are celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. As new globalized queer identities are adopted by people across the world--thanks to the digital revolution--fresh culture wars have emerged. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the globe, and he takes readers to its frontiers. Between sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he's encountered along the Pink Line, Gevisser offers sharp analytical chapters exploring identity politics, religion, gender ideology, capitalism, human rights, moral panics, geopolitics, and what he calls "the new transgender culture wars." His subjects include a Ugandan refugee in flight to Canada, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, a lesbian couple campaigning for marriage equality in Mexico, genderqueer high schoolers coming of age in Michigan, a gay Israeli-Palestinian couple searching for common ground, and a community of kothis--"women's hearts in men's bodies"--who run a temple in an Indian fishing village. What results is a moving and multifaceted picture of the world today, and the queer people defining it.

(Affiliate link above)

[gothhabiba]

please predict the various stages of the “are parades gentrification?” discourse

[based on this post]

Around Thanksgiving someone points out that the Macy's Day parade (in the 1920s and 30s usa) can be analysed as part of a push against ragamuffin parades, in which children dressed as houseless beggars would go around begging for candy. The anti-begging pro-commercial sentiment that regarded department-store-sponsored parades as good, clean fun, while regarding an earlier 'folk' tradition as an annoyance and a chaotic misuse of public space (especially since it evoked begging), is part of a pattern of corporatising and 'purifying' public space in NYC.

Someone vagueblogs about how obviously completely laughable it is to claim that "parades are gentrification" (even though the original post never used this term or framing). "The Village Holiday Parade is extremely queer, guys. And it's obvious that OP is a white person who has never heard of Carnival." From here a couple side-eddies of discourse break out about the usage of the term "queer" as an "umbrella term" and whether white people can go to Carnival.

People start sending the OP of the inciting post mawkish asks about how much they love their local nowhere town's special Thanksgiving parade and is it really, really wrong to go :(

Someone makes a post like "it is so clear that none of you have ever read anything on what the term 'gentrification' means and are just going by vibes."

People agreeing with the OP point out the corporatisation of Pride. This of course leads to discourse about kink at Pride, corporation floats at Pride, PDA and "straight-passing" couples at Pride, &c. The terms "homonationalism" and "pinkwashing" get thrown around. Someone claims that the very concept of such a thing as "pinkwashing" is homophobic since it ignores the fact that gay people are oppressed or something.

Someone is like um why are we arguing about whether Thanksgiving parades are good or bad while paying no attention to colonialism. Who cares if your parade on stolen land is queer or not. This gets completely ignored.

Some people argue that different parades in different locations take place for different reasons and promote different ideologies. This breaks off into another discourse tributary about various countries' Independence Day parades and whether nationalism on the part of an oppressed group or colonised nation is good or bad.

Most people however insist upon arguing about whether all parades are good or bad and take turns listing half-remembered examples of a parade being good or bad as though they are meaningfully arguing with each other.

At some point the discourse turns to whether Carnival is an example of "cultural Christianity."

The entire time no one will define what they include in their usage of the term "parade."

[eternalera]

im sorry but love IS the main theme in jjk, no not just in the movie but ALL of jjk.

dont believe me? fuck it, fine, i'll explain

lets start it out with the obvious, jjk 0. this is the prequel to the actual anime and manga series (although i guess actualy isnt the correct term... you get the point) and it starts all because of yuuta and rika who were both children when they fell in love.

rika gives yuuta a ring and tells him that its a promise ring and that its a promise that they'll be together forever.

yeah rika DIES

but dw, she gets turned into a curse... by yuuta, but it was on accident so... yeah fun-

then geto shows up and basically attacks the school and yuuta and rika save it using LITERALLY the power of love. then soon enough gojo ends up telling yuuta this 'love is the greatest curse of all'

yeah love is literally the main theme of that, yuuta's love is what cursed rika and caused her to become a curse but what of gojo? why is he saying 'love is the greatest curse of all'?

well soon after this he mentions his 'one and only' and its heavily implied (actually canon) that its suguru geto, YEP the mf who attacked the school. now lets take it back a few notches shall we <33

gojo and geto went to school together where they became extremely close friends (implies lovers as they do a TON of romantic stuff in japanese culture such as giving geto second button to gojo aka the one close to his heart and them riding on a bike together which is illegal in japan but its also considered romantic to break the rules with your lover so like??!?! yeah theyre gay)

soon after they have a mission to protect the star plasma vessel and imma spare you the details lets just say that it goes HORRIBLY wrong and it ends up causing a rift between gojo and geto. gojo ends up awakening becoming a better version of himself for it and is trying to show it to geto. yet he doesnt know that what happened with him and how he basically got a power up did NOT happen to geto.

geto was left to question who he was fighting for anymore and this caused him to... get a little silly and kill an entire village anyways the kfc breakup happens yada yada and remember that these two were really really REALLY close friends at least and most likely lovers (how i'll be referring to them from now on)

now what day did geto attack the school aka the night of 1000 demons parade? december 24, the same date which is the most romantic in japan (to my knowledge) and the same date which gojo killed him... YEAH THAT SHIT WAS PLANNED

but lets move onto something a little more... recent.

ITAFUSHI!!!

honestly my fav ship and why im all writing this in the first place. their love for each other was literally so great that they killed the king of curses. the whole reason that megumi locks in is because he realizes that yuuji is gonna be sad if he dies and that he doesnt want yuuji to be sad

these two care for each other so much and its basically shown at the start of the manga, how megumi sees yuuji and saves him without hesitation, he just doesnt want to see a good person die.

he then says 'what if someone you saves kills another in the future' and when yuuji asks him that megumi cant answer. and when he can yuuji literally flips back and kills himself in order to save megumi and mind you he was fearing death a few seconds ago, saying how he didnt want to die yet and how he had regretted eating that stupid finger

yet when it came to saving megumi all of the sudden that didnt matter anymore, in fact when sukuna offered to bring him back he said no because he didnt want sukuna hurting more people... speaking over that-

SHIBUYA!!! yeah sukuna takes over yuuji and kills a bunch of people- kinda ironic seeing how megumi asked yuuji 'what are you gonna do if someone you save kills those later?' even MORE ironic that before that its revealed that yuuji swallowing the finger caused a bunch of parts of sukuna to wake up and start killing people and both of them realized this and went 'imma not tell the other cause thatll make them sad'

anyways megumi gives his bf a pep talk and then BAM megkuna and yuuji goes batshit against sukuna <3

anyways before megumi separates from sukunas body he says that he's gonna try living for someone else just one more time and its pretty obvious that this person is yuuji.

ALSO fun little thing.

love the greatest curse of all won against the king of curses, sukuna. sukuna who refused to feel or care for human emotions. aint that something?

[v0idund3rth3v3il]

https://www.reddit.com/r/progressive_islam/s/1401QvzC6v

These are not my words, please use the link if you want to see the author.

Explanation to verse 7:81 or the "Anti-gay" verse.

People often bring up verse 7:81 with out any context to show why the Quran forbids gay people and thinks that gay sex is haram, I'm here to give the full context and show why their wrong.

For those who don't know, verse 7:81 say's something like "Indeed, you approach men with desire, instead of women. Rather, you are a transgressing people." Which sounds bad alone until you actually take into full context what it means.

The verse is talking about the village of Lot who were actively RAPING men, not just having sex with them (a major problem in the world back then as both the Romans and Greeks were known to rape other males). As in their lust had become so overwhelming that women weren't enough anymore, they had to attack visitors (a big no no in Islamic culture) and rape them even though they where guys. The people of Lot where so depraved that they literally tried to rape angels before being wiped out so it's a warning against the depravity of rape instead of homosexuality in general as no where in the Quran, unlike the bible, does it say anything against gay sex.

The verse literally right before it say's something like (plenty of translations but roughly) "How do you commit such a horrible that NO ONE/THING BEFORE YOU HAVE COMMITTED". This can't mean homosexuality as we know homosexuality in animals does exist and homosexuality was very well known to just about every person on the planet as shocker, gay people have always existed. Historically speaking, the Code of Hammurabi , which ordered society in most of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley for more than a thousand years, has nothing to say about homosexuality. The laws of Eshunna and Egypt are also silent on the subject with us knowing that there were ancient Egyptian gay couples including a Pharaoh who was more then likely bi. The Hittites forbade father-son relations, but that was part of a general rule against incest. The Assyrians thought it shameful for a man to repeatedly offer himself to other men, and also prohibited men from raping males of the same social class, but all other male-male sexual relations were ignored. These are all states that were around centuries before Sodom and Gomorrah were apparently destroyed destroyed. The much more rational explanation would be they made an entire society based on rape of men and other "abominations" to a point where they would kick people out for wanting to stay "pure" (line 7:82), something that no group of people before them have done.

Now people will often say "if it's bad raping man then it's ok if we rape woman right?" well no. This is because when you take it with the previous verse and the verse after it, it's clear that these people wanted the pleasure of doing something that no other group of people had ever done which was the mass rape/normalization of rape of men. It's absolutely horrible but the rape of women was a lot more normalized back than and so wouldn't fit with the previous line of them doing something that no group of people/creatures had ever done before. That also explains why they didn't except Lot's daughter (which could be interpreted as him trying to save them because the angels didn't take to kindly to wanting to be raped) as they got their rocks off by doing what no other people had ever done which was to mass rape men, not women which again, is also disgusting but a lot more normal back then.

To go more into Islamic history courtesy of u/cold-blue, The grand mufti of the Abbasid caliphate in the mid-9th century, Yahya ibn Aktham, was a known homosexual, and viewed a few verses through the gender/sexuality lens.

One of them was the verse where Allah says He prepares males for some, females for others, and mixes the males and females. I’ve read that ibn Aktham once said that this verse confused people because it alludes to sexual preferences. He also said that the heavenly cupbearers mentioned in the Quran are sexual rewards like the houris. (Whether or not homosexuality is allowed in Jannah was debated, and some came to the conclusion that it is, and the only reason it isn’t in this life is because the rectum is dirty.)

The Ottoman empire, the last caliphate of the Muslim world, not only didn't care about gay people (unlike the Europeans) but actually had art depicting it.

Another is al-Razi. While he didn’t outright say that homosexuality is allowed, he allowed gay couples to be together sexually so long as they didn’t have anal sex. He was concerned with homosexual men committing suicide over their innate feelings and said that if there is risk of that, and the man cannot change himself from homosexual to heterosexual/survive in an opposite-sex marriage, he may be with his beloved (a man) so long as he does not transgress the limits (in his opinion, anal sex).

One of the transmitters of the Quranic variants we have today (of which Warsh and Hafs are two) was a man named al-Kisa’i, who was also a known homosexual. So one of the seven qira’ats came from a gay man.

There was another man ALSO named al-Kisa’i, who was a historian in 1100 CE, and he said in his Stories of the Prophets (Qiṣaṣ al-'Anbiyā') that the people of Lut were specifically MEN WITH WIVES who raped other men, not homosexual men, lining up with what we know historically.

And speaking even more so on the physical element, the male "gspot" is actual in the anus which even if you find gross, is a design of Allah and not a flaw. Why would he do that if homosexuality is a sin?

The reason homosexuality is so hated in the Islamic world is none other then the heretical Salafi and Wahhabi movements (actually considered heretics for most of the time they were around including their top scholars, not my opinion, and the only reason their not now is because of British) and because of Europeans as homosexual relationships were generally tolerated in pre-modern Islamic societies, and historical records suggest that these laws were invoked infrequently, mainly in cases of rape or other "exceptionally blatant infringement on public morals". Public attitudes toward homosexuality in the Muslim world underwent a marked negative change starting from the 19th century through the gradual spread of Islamic fundamentalist movements such as Salafism and Wahhabism, and the influence of the sexual notions and restrictive norms prevalent in Europe at the time: a number of Muslim-majority countries have retained criminal penalties for homosexual acts enacted under European colonial rule.

People often only bring up verse 7:81 and don't bring the verses directly previous or after it nor does it take into consideration the histography of their actions and the verse. It would be like me saying a book said "...kill all black people." but not elaborating and saying that the line previous to is says "These people were so horrible that they would regularly chant..." and the line after it is "I can't believe they would say/do something so disgusting." with the entire context of the book being that they would kick out anyone who didn't want to kill all black people. They only say's that the book said to kill all black people. It's very disingenuous to say the least.

To further prove my point, the word "sodomite" is often used to mean the rape of another person through the ass, not consensual sex between the two. If you google "sodomized" than you'll see rapists, not a loving consensual couple. Even the Arabic words for "sodomite" and a gay person is different as sodomite is literally translated into "lut" well a gay person is translated into "shakhs mithliu aljins".

To get more philosophical about it, sex is not some fetish which just develops in people, it is the most primal human desire that a person can have. So why would Allah make a group (there's homosexual animals as well) a certain way and then say not to follow the most basic desire they'll ever have right after wanting food and water but then say the rest of that group can follow that desire after they get married? People can control their desires until marriage as the Quran makes clear, they don't just never have sex. So why would it be any different for a gay couple? This is like saying that sex with it self is haram.

Finally, people often forget the fact that Allah is an all loving and all knowing being so why would he make certain people that he hates or want's other people to hate aka be "phobic" of when in the Quran it's made clear that we should be loving and affectionate? Now even if after all of this people still believe homosexuality is haram, Allah is said multiple time to be all loving, all understanding and all forgiving so as long they are good people and don't commit a truly horrible sin (shirk aka worship of other false gods, rape, murder, hurting others, you know, the classics) Allah will inevitably forgive them for giving into their most basic human desire especially if it's with a loving partner with in a marriage so why would anyone else have a problem with them?

I'm not gonna add a tl;dr because I worked waaay to hard on this for it be condensed into a few sentences and I really want people to read it and fully understand where it's coming from.

[suratan-zir]

Most Russians really shock me. Because of homophobic laws, their site with fan fiction was blocked, and they blame Ukrainians in the comments. And among the readers of this site there are many outright fascists with the letter Z on their avatar. Do these animals really read fan fiction?

I have to be honest with you, I know nothing about fanfiction. I am so uncultured that I don't think I've ever read a single fanfic in my life. But I can't see why russians, just like any other people with internet access, wouldn't read them. I try not to call them animals. They are people. Animals aren't usually homophobic, that's a very human trait, unfortunately.

If the sky falls on their heads tomorrow, they will blame Ukrainians. Their country, their culture is built on a foundation of hatred. They hate Ukrainians, gays, Westerners, and each other. They need enemies to fight to stay united.

As for the Z avatars...isn't it the new normal for russia now? They have Z's on billboards, t-shirts, cars…you name it. Here, for example, a russian woman complains to the local authorities that they do not protect her sufficientry enough from the visious Ukrainian drones.

It is a border village, just a few kilometers from it russians drop tens or hundreds of heavy glide bombs per day, flattening Ukrainian cities and villages. But she proudly has Z on her t-shirt, and the only thing she complains about is that these vile Ukrainians fight back. She doesn't understand how cause and effect work. To her, this house is destroyed not because they commit genocide in neighboring country, not because they started the war of aggression.

Anyway, most of them shocked me at first. In 2022, maybe 2023. Now the rest of the world shocks me much more, by tolerating them.

[handweavers]

of all the questions in the world "why are you trans" or "why are you gay" has to be one of the least interesting ones that exist but it's often the go-to question for conservatives when faced with the existence of lgbt people esp in conservative countries in my personal experience. and i've been trying to figure out why they ask that because it feels like such a stupid question on the surface like what do you mean 'why'??? but it occurred to me that the question really is "why did you choose to be open about this/make it my problem" and many try to answer by saying "i didn't choose i was born this way" which i personally find to be an unfulfilling answer, especially because that isn't really what the person is asking. they ask that question not necessarily because they can't fathom why people have such feelings but because they can't fathom why we would act on them, why we would be open about it, why we would do anything but keep those feelings very tiny and miserable within ourselves.

like i think most people regardless of their politics can understand to some extent the concept of gay attraction or gender euphoria, can recognize some aspect of that in their own experience, and if you come from a conservative country or culture you'll discover many people who have such feelings but have entirely stifled them, stamped them down, disregarded them, and it's clear those feelings still haunt them. people who will say "of course everyone has feelings for people of the same gender you just can't act on them" with a straight face or "everyone has wished they were a different gender but we cant do anything about it so oh well" not realizing how they sound and they're upset with you because you didn't ignore those thoughts or disregard them. they aren't exactly upset with you because you have those feelings, they're upset with you because you aren't ashamed of them, and whether that specific shame is a feeling that they relate to or the shame they're familiar with is of a different kind, if you're from a culture where social shame is so powerful and encompassing, the idea of someone not also being internally or externally crushed by that shame and taking their life into their own hands is upsetting. to see someone do that and not suffer consequences of doing so feels wrong to them.

like we have family members who remained stuck in marriages that made them miserable, in towns and villages that made them miserable, in jobs and lives that make them miserable, even if they had the material means to escape, but did not do so because of shame and some sense of duty, like that misery means something. perhaps those who did not have the material means to escape their misery, but you did, and what results is resentment and blame. and they look at you and it's not even necessarily that you're gay or trans or whatever that they hate you for, but because you escaped that shame, you were miserable and you decided you did not have to be and you did something for yourself, and just that act is often seen as selfish and upsetting within this cultural context.

esp in cultures where this kind of misery is seen as familial duty, so by forgoing such misery and the social expectations placed upon you you are simultaneously shirking your familial responsibility, in a society where familial and communal ties are everything. so when family members ask me "why are you trans" i just answer that i chose happiness and i am content with my choices, and the rest is something for them to work out.