#and make them “bi” just so they can legally push them into lesbian relationship

[kravchikfreak]

i bet you know how these two pairs are the same one ship

and i FUCKING HATE them both for that

shit's gross, i'm actually anwell

i'll rant on my stupid tags but this is important

[jev-urisk]

Writing thrupples with a 'hinge', from someone who falls asleep in the middle every night.

A hinge thrupple is where two people are dating the same person, but not one another. So, not a triangle.

I don't know any thrupples with a childish Jacob-Edward rivalry over the 3rd person (annoying, overplayed)

I don't know any always lovey-dovey thrupples where the two suitors don't do anything outside constantly showering their 3rd with affection (honestly a bit creepy to me)

I'm bi/pan and nonbinary/fluid. My partners are a big burly cis dude and a tall snarky androgynous lesbian, they're not at all attracted to one another. Sexuality/gender plays a big part in dynamics and what I'm called (one calls me Wife and the other calls me Boyfriend).

Many poly peeps set out with intention to have multiple partners, my situation happened accidentally with some help from my autism. Basically I fell in love with two people like the movies but instead of drama I had an honest conversation and they both agreed to try it out. 🤷

I call both my partners 'babe' which in hindsight maybe I should've used 'hun' for one of them, but it's also so cute when I say babe and have two people turn to me. ❤️ They do have some unique, less appropriate pet names tho.

So so so much communication is needed to make sure you're on the same page as your partners. Google calendar helps, as do chore charts. I have 2 date nights a week, one for each partner. Holiday plans are discussed months ahead of time.

Relationships develop at different speeds! One partner may be ready for a milestone a month in, a different partner may be ready for the same milestone in 4 years.

So many perks! Splitting bills, splitting chores, coordinating when emergencies happen, and VOTING! With 3, the discourse for deciding anything from what to eat to what color to paint a room is SO much quicker.

I think the biggest difficulty was getting over my fear that I was doing something wrong, that I was selfishly drawing 2 people into something that would end in heartbreak. I was also afraid my partners wouldn't get along. 😵‍💫

Minor difficulties include deciding who to take for events that are +1 only, remembering who we've come out to, and getting crushed in the middle of the night when both partners roll towards the center of the bed where I sleep. 🪦

I can only be legally married to 1 partner where I live, but my other partner hates the idea of doing joint taxes so 😂 when we have a wedding one day, we're going to get legal permissions to, say, visit me in the hospital when I'm dying and call it good.

Yes, I can have another wedding and it will be just as beautiful and symbolic as the one that included legal paperwork.

Only two people can be on a marriage certificate, but three people can be on a mortgage! We've jointly owned a house for almost a year and a half and it's been so much work but so nice to have our privacy.

My partners get jealous of one another, that's normal. They know to communicate that feeling with me so I can give them some 1 on 1 time or special attention.

If me and one of my partners are struggling in our relationship, I DONT vent to my other partner and just give a basic 'I'm working through something with X right now'. I know too many polycules that have become a drama mosh-pit. 😓

My partners can be friends, or lovers, or simple acquaintances but THEY decide that and I don't push them to do anything except communicate when needed. My partners are introverts and it's taken years for them to build up their platonic relationship lol

Yes, I do occasionally get double-teamed in sexy ways (less than you'd think). 90% of the double-teaming I get is both of them calling me short or agreeing that I'm cute when I'm angy about trivial things, though. 😾

My partners now consider each other metamores, friends, and team-mates. My lesbian partner calls my male partner their 'husband in-law' sometimes, particularly when they want something from him.

Sometimes my partners bicker and I think it's cute bc it means they've become very comfortable with each other. If they have an actual issue I just encourage them to talk about it/I don't try to fix it for them.

We generally live a comfy, laid-back life and do all the mundane things you'd expect of mid-twenties to early-thirties folk- raising two dogs, fixing the sink, caving and ordering taco bell, forgetting to make that appointment, griping about the economy, bringing home plants, watching birds fight over the bird feeder, and sleeping in on the weekends. We just do it with 3. ☘️

Extra note: Polygamy is a term used in religious and male-centric plural partner situations. We use polyamory, polyfidelity, harem (jokingly), and thrupple to describe ourselves. Maybe some use polygamy and like it, but where we live (Utah) the term is generally reserved for fundentalist mormons.

There's probably a lot more to say, so maybe this is just a part 1. Feel free to ask me questions or comment with your own hinge experience (or tell me about your thrupple ocs)!

[nerdygaymormon]

I always struggle with knowing that as long as I stay in the church, I will be rejected by many members of the LGBTQ+ community for “supporting homophobia” and enabling a homophobic/transphobic system. I don’t know how to grapple with knowing that I’m enabling a system that actively wants me to repress myself, but I can’t just leave because I don’t want to abandon the only thing I truly believe in. I’ve always had an intense fear of people disliking me so idk how to deal w the fact that people from both sides will always hate me, even if I don’t give the church money. Do you have any tips on how to deal w that? Have you faced a similar situation?

Yes, I've had other queer people chide me about still going to church, telling me that I'm contributing to my own oppression. And I want to turn to them and say, "By telling me I'm not allowed to participate in something I find meaningful, who's oppressing whom?"

However, they have a point, most religious environments in the U.S. do not affirm queer people. I know the problems with the church when it comes to queer people. Like you, for many years I withheld my tithing, it made my stomach sick to think the funds I contribute could be used to fight against my legal rights. I do not agree with using religion as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.

We each have to live with the consequences of the choices we make. Those who are not living my life can express their opinion but ultimately I choose whether or not I attend church. For LGBTQ+ people, faith can bring both comfort and pain.

I choose to be vocal that I'm gay and be supportive of other queer people at church by giving them positive messages and pushing back against the negative ones taught at church.

One thing I think about, just by being at church, queer people challenge the patriarchal and heterosexist culture. We don't fit into their existing conceptions of gender or gender roles. The more people who know me, those are people who have to think about me when they hear the anti-queer rhetoric.

The scriptures have been incorrectly interpreted to condemn same-sex sexual acts and therefore gay and lesbian relationships. The fact that homosexual behavior is hardly mentioned in the scriptures shows how minor a concern it is in comparison to things such as justice. It's interesting how Christians emphasize being anti-queer at the expense of many of the things Jesus himself taught.

The apostle Paul apparently never knew any queer Christians, we do. We know queer people who truly worship and serve God and still affirm their identity as gay, lesbian, trans, bi, ace, aro, nb, and so on.

Furthermore, the concept of homosexual versus heterosexual orientations, and of cisgender versus transgender did not exist in biblical times. People using these terms to discuss what the Bible means are surely misinterpreting, they're inserting their own bias rather than looking at how those verses were understood at the time.

You are morally accountable to yourself. If you feel like church is where you belong, that you're called to attend and you receive comfort & benefits from your participation, that's enough. You don't have to justify your choices to others. It's between you and God. The same is true if in the future you feel it's time to cease attending church.

[churchoftheconfusedchicken]

probably should’ve posted this at the beginning of the week but happy bi visibility week!! now we gotta talk about some serious stuff

somehow in 2021, bisexuals are still striving to have our existence acknowledged. yes, gay rights and bisexual rights often go hand in hand; legalization of same-sex marriage or allowing same-sex couples to adopt children has benefitted bisexual people, as will the final end of conversion therapy.

however, just because we go hand in hand in some areas, it doesn’t mean that we still face the exact same challenges. bi people are often the forgotten part of the lgbtq+ community. so many queer experiences end up being labelled lesbian and gay experiences that bi (and many other identities within the community) discourse falls at the wayside.

when someone comes out as bi, their identity is often erased according to their gender, too. bi women are too often accused of attention-seeking when they come out, whereas bi men are frequently seen as going through a phase.

bi people also face a number of negative stereotypes. years of harmful tv and film representation have contributed to the idea that bi people are greedy, manipulative, incapable of monogamy and unable to make their minds up. every member of the lgbtq+ community has been subject to some sweeping statement or stereotype, but those faced by the bi community often contribute to the soaring rates of sexual violence and abuse they face in and out of relationships.

we all know the issues that the lgbtq+ community face when it comes to mental health, but a 2018 Stonewall study found that mental health outcomes are worse for the bisexual community. more bisexuals have thought about ending their lives than their gay or lesbian counterparts, with 50% of bisexual women and 43% of bisexual men having considered it in the past year, compared to 37% of lesbians and 32% of gay men. another study published in 2020 found that bisexual people were four times more likely to self-harm than gay people and twice as likely as lesbians.

the entire lgbtq+ community needs to help stamp out these unfair stereotypes and misleading claims around bisexuality. one way you can help do that? speak up. when you hear someone accuse bi people of ‘always cheating’, call them out on it. if someone you know comes out as bi, support them instead of questioning them. push for accurate and fair bi representation in the media because everyone should be seen and heard for who they are.

on that final note, happy bi visibility week!!

(source: @ feminist on instagram)

[female-malice]

One of these days Candace P@rker is gonna snap and say some terfy shit on twitter.

Basically the minute she was drafted in 2008, the WNBA told her "Lisa Leslie's retiring and we need a new player to be the face of the league. We have no straight superstars right now. Tweety Nolan and Diana Taurasi are way too wild, but you're young, impressionable, and straight-passing. You're our new poster girl. People are getting suspicious of how many lesbians are in this league so we need you to be unquestionably straight. None of this glass closet stuff. It's probably best if you marry a man as soon as possible. If you do this, we'll give you MVP consideration as a rookie." I'm not saying she didn't work for that MVP, but she's only the third person in men's or women's basketball to get a rookie MVP. Rookies are normally taken out of consideration.

So that's the league she walked into in 2008. Then in the early 10s, there were two out stars, Seimone Augustus and Brittney Griner. But they spoke out about gay rights on their own. The WNBA never sponsored or supported anything they said. After gay marriage was legalized in 2015, other lesbian stars gradually went public with their relationships. Sue Bird got dragged out of the closet by Rapinoe in 2016. Diana Taurasi ended her extended stay in the glass closet in 2017 with some wedding photos. And still there was no major endorsement of LGB rights coming from the league itself. Even though lesbian and bi women kept the league from collapsing for two decades, the league would not advocate for them.

Ok maybe you see where this is going. 1-2 years ago, bench rider Layshia Clarendon's pronoun mastectomy journey kicked off. And the league loved it. They put her face on every WNBA promo, asked teams to make trans pride merch and trans youth initiatives, and basically went full TRA. Its not just Clarendon being a TRA in her free time, it's the actual league itself officially sponsoring trans rights in all promotional materials.

The league pushed their lesbian poster girl to live a false life for the public. They had an unofficial league-wide "don't even try it" policy about coming out until Seimone Augustus tried it. They never advocated for gay marriage and neglected to advocate for their lesbian superstars when they gradually came out.

And then they replaced their closeted lesbian poster girl with a poster TIF. They went from "everyone is straight" to "no comment" to "TRANS RIGHTS NOW! and lgbtqiap+ too i guess." The WNBA has had the word "lesbian" blacklisted for every one of its 25 seasons.

And now that Candace P@rker has tons of media obligations after being the WNBA spokeswoman for 12 years, she can't come out. They still want her as the "straight" pretty face on NBA talk shows.

Anyway Candace has been pissed off and vocal about everything happening in basketball these past few years. And honestly? It's a good look. She's very comfortable criticizing the league these days now that they've replaced her with a talentless TIF.

And if she does terf out, what exactly can the league do? I mean holy shit, there was a player in the 2010s who was constantly promoting ex-gay conversion therapy. And she never faced any penalties from the league. If they fined Candace for terfing out she could point out the double standard.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

I’d go so far as to say that the nomination probably saved the site, in fact. For those who need a little background: despite being a small voluntary project the site was nominated for the 2014 Publication of the Year award by Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT charity, just nine months after its inception. This was a landmark step in Stonewall’s positive new direction on bi issues. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time Stonewall had specifically nominated a specifically bi publication or organisation for an award. At this point my co-founder, who was taking care of the business side of things, had recently jumped ship and I was seriously considering packing the whole thing in. I won’t lie, I was astonished to read the email.

I’d worked on a publication which won the award under my editorship a few years previously. Unlike Biscuit, however, g3 magazine – at the time one of the two leading print mags for lesbian and bi women in the UK – had an estimated readership of 140,000, had been going for eight years and boasted full-time paid office staff and regular paid freelancers. Biscuit, by contrast, was being dragged along by one weary unpaid editor and a bunch of unpaid writers who understandably, for the most part, couldn’t commit to regularly submitting work.

Little Biscuit’s enormous competition for the award consisted of Buzzfeed, Attitude.co.uk, iNewspaper and Property Week. We didn’t win – that accolade went to iNewspaper – but the nomination was nevertheless, as I say, a huge catalyst to continue with the site. I launched a crowdfunder, which finished way off target. I sold one ad space, for two months. Then nothing. I attempted in vain to recruit a sales manager but nobody wanted to work on commission. Some wonderful writers came and went. There were periods of tumbleweed when I frantically had to fill the site with my own writing, thereby completely defeating the object of providing a platform for a wide range of bi voices.

The Stonewall Award nomination persuaded me to keep going with the site

The departure of the webmaster was another blow. Thankfully by this point I had a co-editor on board – the amazing Libby – so I was persuaded to stick with it. And here we are now. I don’t actually know where the next article is coming from. That’s not a good feeling. But, apart from for Biscuit, I try not to write for free anymore myself, so I understand exactly why that is. As a freelance journo trying to make a living I’ve had to be strict with myself about that. I regularly post on the “Stop Working For Free” Facebook group and often feel a pang of misplaced guilt because I ask my writers to write for free, even though I’m working on the site for free myself, and losing valuable time I could be spending on looking for paid work.

Biscuit hasn’t exactly been a stranger to controversy, in addition to its financial and staffing issues. Its original tagline – “for girls who like girls and boys” – was considered cis-centric by some, leading to accusations that the site had some kind of trans/genderqueer*-phobic agenda. Which was amusing, as at the height of this a) we’d just had two articles about non-binary issues published and b) I was actually engaged to a genderqueer partner, a fact they were clearly unaware of. Now the site is under fire from various pansexual activists who object to the term “bisexual”. To clarify – “girl and boys” was supposed to imply a spectrum and, no, we don’t think “bi” applies only to an attraction to binary folk. The site aims the main part of its content at female-spectrum readers attracted to more than one gender because this group does have specific needs. But there is something here for EVERYONE bisexual. Anyway, it’s a shame all of this gossip was relayed secondhand, and the people in question didn’t think to confront me about it (which at least the pan activists have bothered to do). We damage our community immeasurably with these kinds of Chinese whispers.

Biscuit ed Libby, being amazing

Whilst trying to keep the site afloat, I’ve also been building on the work I started right back when I edited g3, and trying to improve bi visibility in other media outlets. I’ve recently had articles published by Cosmopolitan, SheWired, The F-Word, GayStar News and Women Make Waves and I’m constantly emailing other sites which I’ve not yet written for with bi pitches. Unfortunately, although I am over the moon to be writing for mainstream outlets such as Cosmo about bi issues, it’s been an uphill struggle trying to persuade some editors out there that they have more readers to whom bi-interest stories apply than they might think. It’s an incredibly exhausting and frustrating process.

Libby and I are doing our best with Biscuit. I can’t guarantee that I would be doing anything at all with it if Libby hadn’t arrived on the scene, so once again I would like to mention how fabulous she is. But we desperately need more writers. We need some help with site design and tech issues. We need a hand with the business and sales side of things. We can’t do it without you. And if you know any rich bisexual heiresses who read Biscuit, please do send them our way. 😉

Grant Denkinson’s story

denkinsonpanel

Grant speaks on a panel chaired by Biscuit’s Lottie at a Bi Visibility Day event

So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in. 


“I’ve been involved with bisexual community organising for a bit over 20 years. Some has been within community: writing for and editing our national newsletter, organising events for bisexuals and helping others with their events by running workshop sessions or offering services such as 1st aid. I’ve spoken to the media about bisexuality and organised bi contingents at LGBT Pride events (sometimes just me in a bi T-shirt!). I’ve helped organise and participated in bi activist weekends and trainings. I’ve help train professionals about bisexuality. I’ve also piped up about bisexuality a lot when organising within wider LGBT and gender and sexuality and relationship diversity umbrellas. I’ve been a supportive bi person on-line and in person for other bi folks. I’ve been out and visibly bi for some time. I’ve helped fund bi activists to meet, publish and travel. I’ve funded advertising for bi events. I’ve set up companies and charities for or including bi people. I’ve personally supported other bi activists.”


What made you get involved?

“
In some ways I was looking for a way to be outside the norm and to make a difference and coming out as bi gave me something to push against. I’ve been less down on myself when feeling attacked. I’ve also found the bi community very welcoming and where I can be myself and so wanted to organise with friends and to give others a similar experience. There weren’t too many others already doing everything better than I could.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“There have been great changes for same-sex attracted people legally and socially and these have happened quickly. Bi people have been involved with making that happen and benefit from it. We can also be hidden by gay advances or actively erased. We still have bi people not knowing many or any other local bi people, not seeing other bisexuals in the mainstream or LGT worlds and not knowing or being able to access community things with other bis. We are little represented in books or the media and people don’t know about the books and zines and magazines already available. The internet has made it easy to find like-minded people but also limited privacy and I think is really fragmented and siloed. It is hard to find bisexuals who aren’t women actors, harmful or fucked up men or women in pornography designed for straight men. We have persistent and high quality bi events but they are sparse and small.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?

“I’m fed up of bi things just not happening if I don’t do them. Not everything should be in my style and voice and I shouldn’t be doing it all. I and other activists campaign for bi people to be more OK and don’t take care of ourselves enough while doing so. People are so convinced we don’t exist they don’t bother with a simple search that would find us. We have little resources while having some of the worst outcomes of any group. I don’t want to spend my entire life being the one person who reminds people about bisexuals, including our so-called allies. I’m not impressed with the problem resolution skills in our communities and while we talk about being welcoming I’m not sure we’re very effective at it. I’m fed up with mouthing the very basics and never getting into depth about bi lives and being one who supports but who is not supported. I’m all for lowering barriers but at a certain point if people don’t actively want to do bi community volunteering it won’t happen. Some people are great critics but build little.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Why are we doing this personally? I’m not sure we know. How long will we hope rather than do? Honestly, are there so few who care? Alternatively should we stop the trying to do bi stuff and either do some self-analysis, be happy to accept being what we are now as a community, chill out and just let stuff happen or give up and go and do something else instead.”

Patrick Richards-Fink’s story

085d4de So first of all, explain a little about the activism you’re involved/have been involved in.

“Mostly internet – I am a Label Warrior, a theorist and educator. Here’s how I described it on my blog: “One of the reasons that I am a bisexual activist rather than a more general queer activist is because I see every day people just like me being told they don’t belong. It doesn’t mean I don’t work on the basic issues that we all struggle against — homophobia, heterosexism, classism, out-of-control oligarchy, racism, misogyny, this list in in no particular order and is by no means comprehensive. But I have found that I can be most effective if I focus, work towards understanding the deep issues that drive the problems that affect people who identify the same way that I have ever since I started to understand who I am. I find that I’m not a community organizer type of activist or a storm the capitol with a petition in one hand and a bullhorn in the other activist — I’m much better at poring over studies and writing long wall-o’-text articles and occasionally presenting what I’ve gleaned to groups of students until my voice is so hoarse that I can barely do more than croak.” So internet, and when I was still in school, a lot of on-campus stuff. Now I’m moving into a new phase where my activism is more subtle – I’m working as a therapist, and so my social justice lens informs my treatment, especially of bi and trans people.”

What made you get involved?

“I can’t not be.”

How do you feel about the state of bi activism worldwide (esp UK and USA) at the moment?

“I feel like we made a couple strides, and every time that happens the attacks renewed. I hionestly think the constant attempts to divide the bisexual community into ‘good pansexuals’ and ‘bad bisexuals’ and ‘holy no-labels’ is the thing that’s most likely to screw us.”

What’s causing you to feel disillusioned?



“It is literally everywhere I turn – colleges redefining bisexuality on their LGBT Center pages, news articles quoting how ‘Bi=2 and pan=all therefore pan=better’, everybloodywhere I turn I see it every day. The word bi is being taken out of the names of organisations now, by the next group of up-and-comers who haven’t bothered to learn their history and understand that if you erase our past, you take away our present. Celebrities come out as No Label, wtf is that. Don’t they make kids read 1984 anymore? It’s gotten to the point now that even seeing the word pansexual in print triggers me. I’m reaching the point now that if someone really wants to be offended when all I am trying to do is welcome them on board, then I don’t have time for it.”

What do you want to say to other activists about this?

“Stay strong, and don’t give them a goddamned inch. I honestly think that the bi organizations – even, truth be told, the one I am with – are enabling this level of bullshit by attempting to be conciliatory, saying things that end up reinforcing the idea that bi and pan are separate communities. We try to be too careful not to offend anyone. Like the thing about Freddie Mercury. Gay people say ‘He was gay.’ Bi people say ‘Um, begging your pardon, good sirs and madams and gentlefolk of other genders, but Freddie was bi.’ And they respond ‘DON’T GIVE HIM A LABEL HE DIDN’T CLAIM WAAHHH WAAHHH!’ And yet… Freddie Mercury never used the label ‘gay’, but it’s OK when they do it. And he WAS bisexual by any measure you want to use. But we back down. And 2.5% of the bisexual population decides pansexual is a better word, and instead of educating them, we add ‘pan’ to our organisation names and descriptions. Now, this is clearly a dissenting view – I will always be part of a united front where my organization is concerned. But everyone knows how I feel, and I think it’s totally valid to be loyal and in dissent at the same time. Not exactly a typically American viewpoint, but everyone says I’d be a lot more at home in Britain than I am here anyway.”

[aizenat]

Regarding claims that asexuals weren't around, I have read old documents from well before AVEN was made discussing how the community viewed asexuals as a flavor of bisexuals since both groups feel equally attracted to all genders. The difference of that equal attraction to all genders being zero for for asexuals was a later distinction. Just because the labels weren't made yet doesn't mean asexuals popped into existence when AVEN was made! (This is similar to how the lines between the lesbian and bi women communities used to be a lot fuzzier back then, with both gay and bi women being labeled under the lesbian umbrella. Labels have changed over time.)

It is indeed different from BDSM because BDSM is a fetish about how people like to perform sex and is not directly related to attraction, marriage, and other orientation-relevant topics. Your comparison makes it seem you misunderstand asexuality as a function of sexual performance rather than orientational attraction. Which is wrong. It is 100% about attraction! Within the label of asexual, people still fall on a spectrum of liking sex to not liking sex independent of their asexual lack of attraction to any gender. It is not abstinence it is not preferences in bed, it is purely the lack of ability to be attracted to others. You may have defined LGBT+ as only "same sex attraction" but plenty others in the community--dare I say the majority of the community defines it as simply not being straight and/or cis.

Asexuals get medically mistreated in similar ways to gay and trans people through attempts at conversion. Asexuals get bullied, abused, correctively raped, etc by violent homophobes for all the same reasons too. Asexuals do not perform attraction and romance to the satisfaction of homophobes. Asexuals need community for the same reasons you do. They need similar protections from discrimination against orientation. This push to exclude asexuals is a rather recent trend that helps nobody, only serves to divide a community of vulnerable people that is strongest when united.

You’re a fucking liar, and disgusting and I hope you know that.��

You don’t get to retroactively tell people how they identified. You’ve “read old documents from well before AVEN was made discussing how the community viewed asexuals as a flavor of bisexuals since both groups feel equally attracted to all genders?” Liar. You mean you’ve read RECENT articles of people analyzing texts describing bisexual people and reading that as “asexual” even though that’s not how those people identified. 

You want to know how I know you don’t know SHIT about gay history? “This is similar to how the lines between the lesbian and bi women communities used to be a lot fuzzier back then, with both gay and bi women being labeled under the lesbian umbrella.” That never happened! Lesbian/gay women identified as such, and bi women identified as bi! Back then, bi woman said they were bi with their whole chests! They didn’t go around calling themselves lesbians! They do that now! Like what the fuck revisionist bullshit are you on about? Fuck off. 

Asexuality is not a sexual orientation because by your own definition, asexuals do not feel sexual attraction. What kinda nonsense? And there is no way for an asexual to “like” sex or whatever nonsense. You guys just made that up because in our hypersexual world, you don’t know the difference between someone with a low (or, hell, a healthy) libido and an actual asexual person. 

And shame on you, and there is a special place in HELL for you, for bringing up violent homophobia and conversion therapy and corrective rapes. Are people going around writing laws forcing you to have to have sex with someone? If you ever wanted to adopt, would the agency disqualify you for being asexual? 

The medical ish is real, and obviously traumatic, but to pretend that’s on the same level as conversion therapy (seriously, a deep, dark, HOT place in hell for you for that!), is deplorable! You have obviously never been to one, been threatened to be sent to one, or even spoken with someone who went through conversion therapy to pull that out of your ass. 

This is the reason why people don’t like you idiots. You take what could be valid critiques of our society’s views towards sex (hypersexuality, medicalization of low libidos, conservative expectations of relationship dynamics that treat people as broken for not wanting or enjoying sex) and morph them into fallacies, half truths, and false equivalences. You’re literally taking the experiences of other groups of people, and trying to say they happen to the same degree, and from the same place, as what asexuals face when that is just NOT true based on reality. 

You could grow up to be an adult, quietly never get married or date, and live your entire life without having sex and no one will kill you for it. Homophobes don’t care that you’re not fucking other people. They don’t care enough to use gay panic as a defense to murder you, they don’t care enough to ban you from marrying, you weren’t ignored during the AIDS crisis, you wouldn’t have to hide the fact that you don’t have sex from colleagues for fear of getting fired from your job for it, you don’t have to worry about being sent to camps to be electrocuted or sent to mental institutions or religious conversion therapy camps. Not now, not 20 years ago, not 50 years ago, not EVER. 

You can play the “we’ve always been there” game because there have always been people who probably would ID as asexual today, but the vast majority of those people got married, had kids, and that is more due to the fundamentalist religious nature of western society, especially in America, than it would be due to homophobia. Completely intellectually dishonest. 

Don’t fucking send me any more fucking shit, and if you do, come off anon so I can block you. In fact, I’ll make it easy and turn it off so you don’t hit that button by mistake. 

I have seen and experienced first hand real life traumatic homophobia, so don’t ever in your life try to come at me with that shit. I spent years thinking *I* was asexual because I was repressing my sexuality.

And that’s the biggest issue I have you with weirdos. Talking about “you can like sex and have sex and be asexual” nonsense. I see so many kids coming up that are taking LONGER to realize they’re gay/same sex attracted because they don’t relate to the hypsersexual, porn-obsessed way sex is portrayed. And they hear THIS nonsense and think “oh, I’m asexual.” Then they grow up, get interested in sex, and have literal mental breakdowns over their identities because they made not wanting to fuck their hogwarts house badge. 

We’re not talking about grown adults who have gone through numerous experiences coming to an understanding of their sexualities. It’s a bunch of kids who don’t realize that it’s normal to not experience overt and raunchy sexual attraction, that only wanting to sleep with someone you’re in a relationship with is literally normal, and who aren’t even old enough to legally rent a car trying to tell grown adults about their lived experiences. 

Fuck off mate. Just fuck off. You’re an idiot, and if you think you’re going to convince me of your side, you’re not.

And you really want to know how you’re not LGBT. Because with all the alphabet soup terms that have come up to describe bisexuality 40392092039220 times in recent years, gay people have (for the most part) not said that these people aren’t same sex attracted. Because, despite how unnecessary, they are same sex attracted. But you lot are the ones actual homosexuals and bi people are like “nah, you lot are weird. We don’t know you.” And there’s a reason. Because this response, aside from being intellectually dishonest, historically inaccurate, and filled with logical fallacies and bad-faith arguments, was at it’s very core WEIRD. 

You’re weird. Now sod off. 

[sapphic-sex-ed]

So like, is it weird that i don't have a desire for marriage? Like if i get married, cool. But i don't feel like it's a goal of mine. Like if it was a goal for my partner, and i had been with them long enough to consider it and i know they've been thinking of it, I'd waste no time in proposing, and i would most likely say yes if they proposed. Seeing my theoretical lover happy is really all i want~ but unless it's a situation like that, i have no desire for it. Am i weird for that?

I can actually semi-relate, but I will tell you not that my reasons for relating doesn’t have to be (or might not even be close to) why you feel like this. 

So firstly, it could just be that you don’t really mind. Marriage is pushed as a goal everybody (esp. women-coded peeps) should desire or even need in their life. But looked at it objectively marriage is just a legal contract which’s current function is basically what to do with belongings if a partner dies or there id separation (in my uni program we just had a course in law surrounding relationships so this is pretty fresh in my mind, although obviously my laws will differ from others’ since I’m in sweden, but the point is the same for most of the western countries). 

Historically marriage was also about property, but more of “the husband now owns the bride instead of her father. she is needed to produce heirs who can own his land after he is dead” so yeah, good stuff. Then marriage for love began being pushed as an ideal but this too was in a way of making sure people lived in nuclear families bc economy and stuff. The societal view as marriage as romantic and the height of love was pushed as a way to sell people (esp women who got a really bad deal at the time and according to current studies still do in m/f relationships).

Even sam-sex marriage became a huge political talking point not because of right to love - we have allways loved one another and found ways to spend our lives together - but because of the HIV crisis in the 80′s and 90′s, where life long partners would be denied visitation or left homeless when their partners got ill and died. We wanted the legal protection of marriage to spend what limited time our loved ones had left with them, and for some financial security after they passed. 

So if you simply don’t really care for the concept of marriage, it’s just a narrative we push in society that doesn’t accurately reflect the nature of marriage. If you don’t want that legal bind then you don’t have to.

Now to the part about my own feelings, and you didn’t mention any sexuality so this could be the fartherest from what you experience, but I think is good to put out there for others who might be dealing with this.

For me, those feelings were a sign I was actually a lesbian and not bi and I believed at the time. I felt really repulsed by the thought of marriage with a man but I simply told myself I was neutral to marriage with a man, and only if a man wanted to marry me I would say yes but not seek it out. Towards women I really wanted to get married. I explained that away with some “I just want to against the norm and a m/f couple not getting married is less ‘normal’ than a marriage but an f/f marriage goes against it” (note: lack of nb people here is just because theis was years ago and I didn’t really know much about non binary genders). 

What is important here is the contrast though. Idk if you are gay, bi, pan, etc, but if you think you might be attracted to more genders and this only happens to one or a few but not all, then maybe considder my experiences, but if you are gay or like multiple genders but this applies to all of them, then it’s probably just your preference.

Not wanting to get married is not odd, even though society might treat it like it is, but there is nothing wrong or bad with you. You are valid.

-mod liz

[tree4life25]

Deadnames/Birth names

So. Deadnames. Those are a thing. When I first learned what that meant, just like with homosexuality, I kinda just shrugged it off, thinking it was something that would never apply to me. I wasn't against it, I would be completely supportive of anyone that it did apply to, but I never thought it would apply to me. And yet, here we are. And yes, when I first learned what homosexuality was, in any form, (gay, lesbian, bi, pan, etc.) I honestly didn't think I was anything but straight and now I just laugh at my younger self. Anyways, back to what I originally wanted to talk about. For those of you that don't know, a deadname, also referred to as birth name, is the name that someone was given at birth or the name that they were called growing up but for whatever reason, they did not want to be referred to by that name anymore. There are a lot of reasons why someone might change their name, whether they just really really don't like their birth name, or they have bad memories attached to that name, etc. Another reason why someone might change their name is because of their gender. A lot of people that are part of the lgbtqa+ community change their name, and that would most likely be attributed to the t, q, and + part of the community. Once again, to anyone that doesn't know, the t stands for transgender, the q for queer/questioning (I apologize to those that see queer as a slur for the lgbtqa+ community, I don't mean to offend anyone. I know that the lgbtqa+ community is doing everything we can to reclaim that word and use it in a positive way but unfortunately not everyone feels comfortable with using it as such yet. I am someone who does use it in a positive way, as an umbrella term for the community and I'm sorry if I've offended anyone.) And the + is for every gender identity and sexuality that is not represented through a letter already here, like pansexual and non binary, etc. I don't think it's very hard to understand why someone who is transgender might want to change their name. If someone is a transgender man, it wouldn't exactly be comfortable for him to be called the feminine name that he was given at birth. Same for a trans girl, she wouldn't want to be called a guys name. There's also the non binary part of the community, someone who is non binary might not want to be called a name that is very feminine or very masculine. Depending on how they feel, they might want a gender neutral name, like Jessy or Robin. There's people like me who would rather have a shortened name that is technically gender neutral but could stand for anything. My name is Will, it could stand for William or Willow, you'll never know. There's a lot of gender neutral names like that, Alex, Max, Sam, Chris, Charlie, etc. Someone who is nonbinary doesn't have to have a gender neutral name though, they can have a feminine or masculine name if they'd like, it really depends on the person. I have a non binary friend named Michael. Not a very gender neutral name but then again, it's their life so they can do whatever the fuck they want. (I'm a bit defensive of them, I love my friends and I will not have anyone say anything bad about them) There are many different reasons for someone wanting to change their name. One thing that I don't think is discussed too much, at least that I've seen, is deadnames and the relationship someone might have with their deadname. From what I've seen and heard and read, there are a few different kinds of relationships that people can have with their deadnames. Now, before you start saying "relationship? It's a name, you can't have any kind of relationship with a name!" Take a second and think. I know for some that might be hard, as you don't do it too often, (those people that leave anons telling others to kill themselves or are just generally hateful in any way) but just really try. In fact, think about the relationship that you have with your name. You are you. Your name is a name. There is a 99% chance that someone else on earth either has the same name as you or that someone in history had the same name as you. It's just a general name. The relationship you have with that name is that it is yours. Think about your best friends name. The relationship you have with that name is that it's the name of your best friend. Whenever you hear that name again, you will think of your best friend. Sometimes there will be a name that you have no relationship with. That is because you don't know anyone with that name. It is a new name to you. Sometimes these relationships are great, like your best friends name or your favorite actors name. Sometimes these relationships are bad, the name of your least favorite teacher or of someone that hurt you in some way. Some are neutral, like the name of that girl that sits in front of you in class that you've never spoken to. You don't know her, you don't really have any opinion of her, that's neutral. You don't have any positive or negative connotations with that name. I've found that a lot of people unfortunately have very bad relationships with their deadnames. They hear that name, even if it's not in reference to them, and they get very upset. If referred to by their deadname, they get triggered and very anxious or depressed, maybe both.That is a bad relationship with a deadname, when someone gets upset by just the mention of it. Some people probably have a good reason for that, such as it might be the name that they were called by an abuser or where bullied for, but it's still something that can be worked through. It's important to work through any negative connotations that you might have with a certain name, whether it's because it's your deadname or even if it's just the name of someone you didn't like, because you might find yourself one day faced with a situation where someone in your life has that name and you can't afford to get so upset. For example, a boss or a coworker might be named the same name that you were named at birth, your deadname and you can't afford to be so upset by that name anymore. No one is saying you have to love that name, no one is saying you have to get over it right now, but if you or someone you know gets very easily upset by just the mention of their deadname, it is something that needs to be worked on. I am personally not upset by my deadname at all. My birth name is illana. I think it's a beautiful name and the meaning behind it is great and the reason I was named that at birth is an amazing reason. I hold no animosity towards my birth name, I never have and I never will. I don't get upset when people that know my name is Will accidentally call me illana. Depending on the situation, I just politely correct them and move on, although if my anxiety is bad, I just don't say anything because anxiety. I know that my family is never going to refer to me as anything other than illana even when I get a legal name change and I'm fine with that. And it's not something that I'm ever going to lose either, that part of me that is illana. I don't like to say deadname when I'm referring to myself and the name illana because it's not a part of me that I'm ashamed of or that I want dead. I prefer to say birth name. For a long time, I was illana. That's who I was. And that time in my life is never going to change, it's never going to be any different than it was because it's the past and when it happened, I was illana, not Will. There are parts of my time as illana that I love and I never want to forget but ultimately, that's not me anymore and I'm fine with that. This is who I am now and it's very different to who I was back then. Illana and Will are two different parts of me from different times in my life but they are both still me and I wouldn't change that even if I had the option. I'm not ashamed of illana and I never will be. At one point, I was. I was ashamed of everything I was, everything I did. I was ashamed of being illana, I hated hearing my own name because it reminded me of everything wrong I'd ever done and it hurt so much to think about. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted a new start. And I can be someone else, but that doesn't mean I have to start from scratch. I can be Will, someone I've always wanted to be and have thought about for so long but that doesn't mean I have to cut out any and all parts of illana. And I haven't. I have become the person I wanted to be for so long, that I never thought I could be, while still managing to keep almost all the parts of my life that I love and never wanted to lose, even when I was ashamed to be me. I don't have a negative relationship with my birth name. I don't get upset when I hear it, I don't push that part of me away, I don't bury it so far down so that no one can ever find it. I'm not illana anymore but that doesn't mean I resent the part of my life when I was. It's a part of me, that's never going to change and I don't want it to because without that part of my life, I wouldn't be where I am now and I honestly love where I am right now with myself. I'm by no means ok, I still have a lot of things to work through, but when I think of where I am now compared to where I was just a year ago, I am so happy with my progress and a big part of that progress was learning to not be so ashamed of who I was in the past. That was me then, this is me now and I don't know what I'll be like in the future but I am working hard to make sure that I am never ashamed of any part of me, including who I was when I was illana. Whether you call it a deadname, a birth name, or whatever, it's not something to ever be ashamed of. It's not something you have to be afraid of. It's not the easiest thing in the world, it's probably a lot harder for some people to have a good relationship with their deadname than others but it's important to try. It's important to have a good relationship with yourself and your past. And if you don't know where to start, you don't know how to get over the fear of your deadname and all the negative emotions that you hold for that name, I can give you a start, a little push. A motto. Your new motto, for every time you hear that name and you start spiraling down that hole of shame and fear. That's not you anymore. When you hear that name or read it or anything and you start to feel all those bad feelings, just tell yourself over and over, that's not me. I am not that person. That is not my name. I am not the same person now as I was when I had that name. It no longer applies to me. That is not me anymore. And even if people do still call you by that name, if there are people that will never call you any thing but that name, you just keep telling yourself, that is not me. They can call me that but I know better. I know me and that's not me. It once was but not anymore. Find some people that you feel comfortable with and maybe tell them. I know that it really helps me to have people calling me Will even though some people still call me illana. Even when only one person knew me as Will and called me Will, it still helped so much. And now, I have a lot of people calling me Will. My internet friends were the first people and then when I finally talked to my school counselor and my teachers, they started calling me Will too and it makes me so happy that they do. At home, I'm still illana and I always will be but I know that doesn't mean that's who I am. Please, for your own happiness and mental health, try to do this. Find someone you trust and even if you can't, you don't want anyone to know yet, just tell yourself that that is not you anymore. It may seem small and stupid even, but that's not true. You have a right to be called by the name you want to be called and if the people in your life currently aren't willing to call you that and you can't find anyone who is, then you have to do it yourself. Be your own support until you can find someone to help. It can be hard, ridiculously hard at times, but it is so worth it in the end, I promise. And if you don't have anyone, I'll do it. Send me a message or an ask with your name, the name you want to be called but can't due to circumstances and I will call you that name. I will answer your messages with that name, I will answer your asks with that name (if you prefer to remain on anon sign off with an emoji so I know who it is), I will do everything I can to help you feel comfortable with who you are. I will try to help you feel comfortable with your name, I will try to help you not feel ashamed or upset with your deadname and I will support you through every time you feel invalidated because of your name. It's your life, your name, and you deserve to be proud of who you are. Ps, I'm really not the best with tagging so if you feel there is something that hasn't been tagged that should be, please let me know what it is and how you think it would be best to tag it. I never want to trigger anyone in any way. Thank you!

[thebreakfastgenie]

sorry for the long post but you said there were some feelings that inspired your first post, specifically that you feel like, as a lesbian you're preemptively told to shut up. That's fair, and I can see that! but I also wanted to say that's exactly how a lot of the bi women talking about this kind of thing feel.

They're (we're) told, one on one and in media and in reactions to media over and over that their attraction to men is unappealing or uninteresting or even un-queer. We're told to "shut up" about our attraction to men because we "dont experience homophobia in opposite gender relationships" as you said. (frankly thats untrue from my pov, at worst/best id say its experiencing the kind of homophobia you do as a closeted person, not to mention all the systematic biphobia thats both related and distinct- it goes *way* beyond just not being seen as yourself).

This expression of biphobia is very systematic imo, and you're right that it goes beyond positive portrayal of attraction to men. Bi men do experience a similar thing with their attraction to women, but it's also....tumblr is thought of as a very female centric space so that's part of it, but also this is just one way to push back that's happened to trend!

I do empathize with that! I do! I think there's an element here that is not present in all of these posts, but is definitely present in some I've seen and has contributed to how I feel. It's not just individual people saying "hey, I love being attracted to men! That's part of who I am and I love myself!" I don't find that relatable, but I easily scroll past. It doesn't make an impression on me. But I see a lot that are phrased as if they're being contrarian to some big scary overpowering force telling you that you're not allowed to like men. And like... what force is that? As I've said, for MLM obviously that's homophobia. But these posts are definitely reblogged by women too. So it feels like if I were to speak about my experiences, I would be the big bad wolf telling people they were wrong for having different ones. And there's definitely an extent to which that's a me problem, but I think my observations here are reasonable. I acknowledge the emotional part because it obviously plays a role and I think it's good to be honest about how we're all biased in one way or another, but it's not the whole thing.

What I am specifically referring to re: bi people not experiencing homophobia in opposite gender relationships is structural homophobia. Bi people in opposite gender relationships could be legally married in all 50 states before 2015 and don't have to worry about losing that right now that the Supreme Court is controlled by far-right judges. Sex with an opposite gender partner was never illegal (I recognize gender identity complicates this, but I also trust you all know what I'm talking about). I'm not discounting that biphobia can be systemic, I'm really not speaking to that. But there is an element of structural homophobia that affects gay people and also affects bi people when they are in same gender relationships that does not affect people in opposite gender relationships.

I do try to stay aware of the fact that on social media a lot of things trend removed from their original context but I'm a human person and I can't stop myself from reacting to things as I see them on my dash, you know? And I don't really have anything else to add about tumblr being seen as a female-centric space other than that I spent four years at a women's college and it was like tumblr in some ways but very different in others.

[freaoscanlin]

Extra, Ride or Die

a-windsor replied to your post: All right, I want to write some Lauricity today....

I need some Nyssa discovering Lauricity is a thing. Sara can be there or not. But Nyssa figuring it out would be Awesome

Even though Nyssa al Ghul grew up without any contextual clues about healthy sisterly relationships due to her own troubles with her sister, she’d knew enough to be aware that the Lance sisters’ rivalry was very much Not Normal.

She had no idea how it normally worked between sisters when they weren’t overachievers—though the others certainly wouldn’t have called them that; she believed the term Thea had used had been “Extra” with an implied capital letter—but she figured even then the two would be considered strange. They were “ride or die” (another Thea term) for each other after Sara’s return from the League, but they could also fight as viciously as mortal enemies. They took pride in each other’s achievements, but also griped about the other reaching said achievements first.

The most puzzling for her was when Sara threw a knife at a practice dummy and turned to Nyssa. “I didn’t even get to be the gay cousin first,” she said.

Nyssa merely slanted a look at her. “My condolences.”

“I mean, I’m bi, but it’s a thing. An established thing. And she beat me to it.”

“You have a gay cousin? You’ve never told me of such a person.”

“No, of course not. My cousins are from Iowa and they’re straighter than their teeth—my aunt’s an orthodontist,” Sara said, waving that explanation away as unimportant. “Bad joke, I’m sorry. But Laurel! She hooked up with the class lesbian before I could. She couldn’t even let me have that.”

“The...class lesbian?” 

“It was the early 2000s, every class had one out lesbian.” Sara waved that off and viciously attacked the training dummy as she told Nyssa the story, evidently working off her anger years later.

Years after that, Nyssa barely even remembered the conversation as she picked the lock to Laurel’s apartment. Passing through Star City meant that there were many ex-League buildings where she could crash, but in her days of retirement from the League, she’d become both a spendthrift and a woman who liked her creature comforts. Laurel’s guest bedroom had the best mattress in Star City. Her friend was no doubt out fighting crime either legally or through vigilantism, so she wouldn’t mind. “My door’s always open to you,” indeed.

When she pushed said door open, though, she realized how gravely she had miscalculated, and that perhaps she should have knocked.

At least she could take pride in her trainee’s reflexes: the second the door swung open, Laurel rolled off the other woman on the table, snatched up the first thing that came to hand, and hurtled it at Nyssa’s head. Were Nyssa anybody else and therefore slower, it would have knocked her quite silly.

“What the—Nyssa?” Laurel had snatched up her tonfa, but she lowered it now.

“Nyssa’s here?” Felicity scrambled to her feet, yanking her shirt closed. She jerked her glasses into place and gaped.

“What are you even doing here?” Laurel asked, tossing aside the tonfa so she could shrug back into the upper half of her uniform. She had a red mark on her neck.

“At the moment, I am deeply regretting that I didn’t knock,” Nyssa answered honestly, more amused than anything. Felicity had begun to flush bright red. “I didn’t see, ah, anything, if that’s what concerns you.”

To Laurel’s credit, she recovered quickly, stepping over to hug Nyssa—and retrieve the tablet she’d thrown at Nyssa’s head. “You scared the hell out of me. Come in.”

“My apologies for interrupting.”

“That’s—that’s okay.” But Felicity looked a little wild-eyed as she buttoned up her shirt. She cleared her throat. “I should maybe—I should go. Yeah, I should definitely just....go.”

“Are you sure? We didn’t even order the takeout yet.”

To Nyssa’s trained eye, it looked like it would have been some time before that would have happened, if at all. She said nothing.

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll just grab something on the way home. And I really should get some work done tonight. I’ll see you later?” There was a lot unspoken in the look Felicity exchanged with Laurel, and Nyssa decided politely not to notice. She stepped to the side, nodding at Felicity as she left.

The second the door closed, she turned and raised an eyebrow at Laurel.

“It’s new,” Laurel said. “Like...today new. Don’t read into it.”

“Hm,” Nyssa said.

“And don’t tell the others.”

“You are concerned that I have somehow become close enough to anybody but you on this team to consider them a bosom companion?” Nyssa said.

Laurel let out a shaky laugh. “When you put it that way...Is something the matter? Do you need my help with something?”

“I was merely passing through and thought I might ask the use of your guest bedroom for the night.”

“Help yourself—to the room and anything in the fridge, though there’s not much there. We were planning on ordering something. Eventually. I’m going to go get changed.”

By the time Laurel emerged, dressed more comfortably in a pair of lounge pants and an ancient Starling City Flock T-shirt, Nyssa had located a bottle of ginger beer and some crisps and had shed some of her armor in the guest bedroom. “I don’t supposed you’d give me like a day so I could tell Sara myself?” Laurel asked without preamble.

“A day or two, I can grant you, but I don’t keep secrets from my beloved.”

“I know.” Laurel wrinkled her nose. “I can’t figure out if she’ll be happy about this...development or if she’ll just be like, ‘I told you so.’ It’s hard to tell.”

“She might be a little testy. She clings proudly to her identity and her place in the family.” Nyssa ate a crisp. “She once confessed that she was upset not to be the first ‘gay cousin.’ She told me all about your hooking up with Isabelle DeWitt.”

“Isa—” Laurel ran her hand down her face. “I didn’t hook up with Izzy! God. How many times do I have to tell her that? It was Seven Minutes in Heaven, for god’s sake. On a dare. I really did think I was straight.”

Nyssa debated asking what Seven Minutes in Heaven was, but decided she’d rather not carry that knowledge around. “Izzy?”

“My friend from the volleyball team—who admittedly, yes, came out of the closet later that year. But I thought I was straight. Sara can keep the First Gay Cousin title. Though she’s bi.”

And that, Nyssa thought, was the “ride or die” component of the Lance Sisters. They’d defend each other to the grave—literally—even while they exasperated the hell out of each other.

“She’ll be pleased to hear that,” Nyssa said. “I think she’ll be pleased to know she’s definitively not the only gay cousin, no matter how you identify.”

“Yeah, jury’s still out on that, I’ll get back to everyone later.” Laurel picked up her phone. “And speaking of relationships, can I make one request?”

“In the future,” Nyssa promised, “I will knock.”

Laurel didn’t even blink that Nyssa had anticipated her question. “Thank you.”

“Though I can’t say the same of Sara.”

“It’s her that will be scarred for life, not me. I don’t care.”

And that, Nyssa decided, was everything one needed to know about the Lance sisters.

[bisexualpirateheart]

Written for @buildarocketboys because we both wanted to see more happy poly bi flinthamilton fic. 

                                  Your Laws Do Not Apply To Me

                                                       *  *  *

Saturday, late November, the dark already closing in even though it’s only a little after six.

The shops are busy and James is more than ready to be done and just be home already. He grabs a carton of milk and adds it to the cart. Cereal, bread, cream, eggs, orange juice, bacon. More butter, he thinks and continues strolling down the aisle. At last he finds Thomas in the biscuit aisle, studying a packet of Ginger Cremes with a studious expression.

“Ginger or chocolate?” Thomas inquires.

“Both.” James says.

“Mm, good answer.” Thomas drops a package of each into the cart and they start walking down the aisle together. “Did you get the cream?”

“Yes.”

“Is that all?” Thomas runs his eyes over the rest of the contents of the cart.

James procures the list which he wrote on his phone earlier because he knew it would it be like this if he didn’t. “Wine.” He remembers.

“Why don’t you go get in line and I’ll grab some?” Thomas suggests.

“Would you?” James asks gratefully. The sooner they’re in line, the sooner they can go home.

“Of course.” Thomas squeezes his hip lightly and goes off towards the wine aisle.

James makes his way to the front of the store, already feeling better. It’s not that he dislikes winter, but he’s ready for spring already. He wants it to still be light out when he’s done with work for the day. He wants to have time left in the day, damn it.

He has most of the groceries unloaded by the time Thomas returns with three bottles of wine.

“Here you go, my love.” Thomas says cheerfully. He sets them on the counter.

The cashier smiles at him. “You and your partner are very attractive together.”

James forces a smile while Thomas simply beams at her. “Thank you.”

                                                   “That still bothers you.” Thomas observes as they walk out with their bags.

“What?”

“When people simply assume you’re gay?” Thomas unlocks the car and they start setting the bags in the back.

Something flickers in James’s eyes. “No…” He doesn’t want to get into this again; there’s no solving it.

“Or straight.” Thomas amends because he knows it’s not that simple. “Admit it.”

James sighs. “It’s just…you know.” He never means to make Thomas uncomfortable but it’s true.

Thomas sighs as well. “I know.”

And he does, because while Thomas is also bi (and Miranda as well, for that matter) he does understand that out of the three of them, it frustrates James the most, all the assumptions people make when it’s just the two of them, or when it’s James and Miranda together, or the inevitable confusion and generalizations when it’s the three of them. There is always an assumption and either one has to go along with it, or one has to correct someone and it’s exhausting.

He’s lucky and James knows it. It’s rare to meet one person you fit with in this mess of a world. Two is extravagance, pushing the limits of what the universe will give him. Maybe he shouldn’t ask for more, but he still wants more, damn it.

He wants people to know that he’s with the Hamiltons. That they are his. They’re the married ones, yes, but that’s a simple legality. He’s Miranda’s and Miranda is his and he’s Thomas’s and Thomas is Miranda’s and his and she is Thomas’s and and they all fit.

It’s rare and he’s lucky and James knows he needs to accept this but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t still want more.

                                                 *  *  *

“Do you miss having a girlfriend?” Thomas asks one morning while they’re lingering in bed. James has already left for work, getting dressed in a rush for an early meeting before his first class starts. Thomas can still taste the toothpaste on his lips from the quick kiss James had given him.

“What brought this on?” Miranda murmurs sleepily, her eyes not even open yet.

“Nothing in particular.” Thomas’s fingers stroke her shoulder absently. “I just think at times, it stillwears on James…the assumptions.”

“That’s not your fault.” Miranda says consolingly. “We’re both just more used to the way the world perceives us.”

“I know.” Thomas sighs. “I just wish it were easier, you know.”

“I know.” She slips an arm around him, embracing him. “And to answer your question, yes sometimes I miss having a girlfriend, but I don’t assume I will never have another one, you know.”

“Of course, I never meant,” Thomas starts.

Miranda leans up and presses a soft kiss to his mouth. “I know, darling, I know.” She leans back against the pillow, smiling at him. "It’s just a matter of meeting the right woman.”

“Don’t I know it.” Thomas murmurs, leaning down to kiss her again.

                                                  *  *  *

Miranda had known she was bisexual since she was ten and a girl with glasses and short black hair in her class had asked to borrow a pencil. She smiled at Miranda, and Miranda had thought she had never seen such pretty lips before. She had always liked both girls and boys and it had been a source of consternation and constant problems with her parents so eventually she had stopped bringing people home to meet them. They weren’t appreciated, and they deserved to be appreciated.

She brought Thomas home because it didn’t matter that her parents assumed she was “choosing.” It didn't matter what they thought at that point. She had never thought she would marry a man, but Thomas was different and better and she fell in love.

And then one day she had met an auburn-haired man in the coffeehouse near the university where she taught music classes and her heart stopped again.

Sometimes the universe simply brings people to you and says, ‘here you are, you should be together, but you have to make the effort to keep them, show them they're wanted.'

Miranda likes listening to the universe.

                                                   *  *  *

It’s mid-afternoon, the gray twilight slanting across the windows of James's office. There’s been silence in the room for five minutes now while he waits for the student sitting across his desk from him to speak.

“Eleanor.” James prods. “If you don’t actually talk during your visit to my office, then I need to make my office hours available for other students.” Usually Eleanor has plenty to say during their meetings. She’s one of his best students (His favorite student, if he’s honest.) But something has been going on lately and he’s let it go on long enough.

At last Eleanor sighs. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s evident.” James says. “Judging from your work you’ve turned in the last few weeks. Now what’s wrong?”

She sighs again, fingers picking at the corner of her notebook sitting on her lap. “So there’s this girl.”

“Ah.” James says, and waits.

“I really like her.” Eleanor says, glancing up and off to the side, nowhere near meeting his eye.

“All right.” James says and waits.

Eleanor draws a long breath and then finally looks up at him. “So if I tell everyone and by everyone I mean my dad, you know, but yeah, everyone, they’ll be like 'so you’re a lesbian now then?'”

“And?” James asks when again the silence grows and grows.

“And I’m not…comfortable with that label.” Eleanor says finally, chewing on her thumbnail.

“Because…” James prompts when she’s been silent again for a while. He resists looking at the clock. Eleanor deserves all his time and attention and Thomas and Miranda will understand.

“Because I still like dick, okay?” Eleanor shoots back and then blushes furiously.

James snorts. “I see. So what’s the problem then?”

“They always want you to choose?” There’s a note of desperation in Eleanor’s voice and James finds himself flinching in sympathy. “They make you choose and I don’t want to, even though I really really like this girl, Professor, and if I thought for a second it was just girls forever, I’d say it in a heartbeat, but I can’t, cause it’d be a lie, you know?”

“I do.” James says, and whatever tone he has now makes Eleanor look at him a little sideways.

“You don’t have to choose.” James tells her, softening his voice just a little. “Society does tend to be unnecessarily confused by bisexuality, but no one can make you choose, Eleanor.”

“And you know this from personal experience, do you?” Eleanor crosses her arms over her chest and sinks lower in her chair.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” James says.

Eleanor sits up straight in her at that. “But your boyfriend!”

“What about him?”

“I mean, you are with Mr. Hamilton, right? You’ll break all the girls hearts if you say you’re not.”

“Rest assured, Mr. Hamilton and I are still very much together.”

“Oh thank christ.” Eleanor says. “But, what do you mean then?”

“For starters, like you pointed out, even if you’re with one partner, it doesn’t mean you’ve stopped being bisexual. It just means that’s the partner you’re currently with.” He hesitates. It’s always dicey saying things to students. It’s a fine line, being honest with someone who needs personal reassurance and another saying things of a personal nature to a student that could so easily be misconstrued as inappropriate if they were reported. If it was any other student, he might have hesitated further, but Eleanor would never...and sometimes it's worth taking a risk, to encourage a student.

“Are you saying you’re…” Eleanor pauses, and then almost defiantly, “bisexual too?”

“Yes.” James says after a moment. “I am.”

“So…”

“So I am very happily not choosing.” James says and then, what the hell. “Because not only am I that, but I am also polyamorous.” He wonders if there will ever come a time when he could ever just say that without second-guessing everything. Time would tell, he supposes.

“Do you have pictures of your partners?” Eleanor demands next.

James wavers. And then, what the hell, he’s already in this deep. He takes out his phone and tapes it. He holds it out for her inspection.

Eleanor stares at his background with surprise and delight. “So….”

“That’s Thomas and Miranda and me.” James hears the blatant affection in his voice. No wonder no one is surprised by his relationship. It’s openly nauseating, the sort of thing he would loathe in someone else. “We’re all together.”

Eleanor just gazes at the picture and then she hands the phone back. “Thank you.” She says quietly. “For sharing this with me.”

“You’re welcome.” James puts his phone back in his pocket. “I just wanted you to know, Eleanor….you get to decide what happens in your life. It doesn’t mean it will be easy, in any regard. And other people won’t always like it, but that doesn’t necessarily matter. What matters is you are doing the right things for you, making your own choices.”

“Are you happy?” Eleanor asks abruptly.

James pauses again, honestly considering the question. What would be encouraging, but truthful? What could he say?

He worries about the effects of the world, how the future is going to turn out. So much is discouraging from day to day interactions to politicians being less and less truthful every day…the state of the country, the state of the fucking planet for that matter. But at the heart of it all, he has two people he loves very dearly to come home to and they make the hardships of the world a little easier to bear, and more worthwhile to endure and his sheer existence is more real and more joyous and more wonderful because of them.

“Yes.” He says. “I am.”

“Good.” Eleanor says, finally sitting up. “You should be,” She heads for the door. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” James tells her, a little bemused. “Any time.”

                                              *  *  *

On the way home he stops and buys a bottle of wine.

Miranda is ensconced in the studio when he gets home. He can hear the sound of her piano, the delicate dance of her fingers upon the keys making him smile. The first time he had ever spent the night here Miranda had played while James had stood behind her and kissed her throat until she turned around and kissed him back.

The piano bench was wonderfully sturdy, James recalls with a faint smile.

He goes to the studio and pauses in the doorway. Miranda is lovely as always, completely lost in her music, concentration carrying her far away, her hair pulled back with little tendrils escaping to drift past her cheeks. She’s wearing one of his thick sweaters over her pajama bottoms and fuzzy socks and James knows exactly how soft it is against her skin.

“I love you to the ends of the world and back.” James murmurs.

“Then where’s my kiss?” Miranda says without looking up.

James laughs. “Here.” he moves to stand beside her and leans down to kiss her. Her skin smells like violets and he breathes in deep, suddenly overwhelming happy.

“Thomas is running a little late.” Miranda informs him, her fingers still moving gracefully over the keys. “It’s all right as that gave me time to finish up with one of my pupils who needed a little extra time this afternoon.”

“Which?” James’s fingers trails down her hair softly.

“Abigail. She’s really coming along. She plays beautifully, and she has such natural talent, of course, but her relationship with her father causes her such stressful periods it’s appalling.” She sighed. “I wish I could just explain to the damn man that harassing her and causing her stress about her talent doesn’t help.”

“I know the feeling.” James kisses the back of her neck, brushing his fingertips down to the collar of the sweater.

Miranda makes a wry face. “We all know that feeling.” She says quietly. “It’s a hard thing to escape.”

Miranda rarely talked about her own family. James knows that she had been glad to get away from them. His hand closes over hers as it pauses on the piano keys in silence.

“Anyway.” Miranda turns to smile at him. “You seem rather contented tonight.”

“I am.” James tells her. “I had a conversation with one of my students today and it just reminded me of a few things.”

“Such as?” Miranda inquires, loving the way the studio light catches the distinctive lines of his face. She loves those lines so dearly, how often she had kissed each and every one.

“That in the end it doesn’t matter what other people think. Oh, it would be nice if they didn’t assume things.” His fingers played over hers gently. “It would be nice if it didn’t bother me on some level, but I have you and Thomas and that’s what’s truly important in the end.”

“It’s not wrong to want to be visible, James.” Miranda tells him softly. “To be seen for who you truly are.” She cups his face in her hands. “I see you.” She says and kisses him.

“I see you too.” James breathes, kissing her back, his arms going around her. In the end, that was enough. To be recognized by the people you love.

                                                  *  *  *

Outside in the drive, Thomas puts the car in park and sits there for a moment, watching the people he loves embrace there through the studio window.

He smiles at the sight of them. It’s been a long day, but it had ended on a curiously optimistic note. His assistant had been late to her shift and then spent the entirety of it, mooning over her phone instead of helping Thomas with his research as she usually did.

“Max. Max. MAX.”

“Hmmm?”

“What on earth is going on with you?”

Max looks up from the page she had been doodling over, instead of checking for errors. “Oh. It’s a girl.”

“Ah.” Thomas says knowingly. “Say no more.”

Max eyes him. “You know how girls make you feel?”

“Yes.” Thomas says in mock indignation. “I know how girls make you feel.” He starts to open his mouth to explain and Max just nods.

“That’s nice.”

“…What’s nice?” Thomas says completely blindsided.

“That you’re bi, right?” Max blinks up at him with quizzical eyes. “So many people are really hung up on that you know, not knowing how to identify, afraid to figure it all out. It can be difficult sometimes.”

“Yes, I know.” Thomas says slowly. He waits a moment. “So this girl, does she return your affections?”

“She does.” Max says with a broad grin. “I think it’s gonna take a little while for things to get sorted..but I think it will be okay.” Her face holds a quiet glow and Thomas can’t find it in him to remind her again that she’s supposed to be checking the papers rather than drawing hearts on them.

“That’s very nice to hear.” Thomas tells her. “I’m glad.”

                                                       *  *  *

Sitting there now in the car, thinking about what Max had said. ‘It can be difficult’  is an understatement. There are so many confusing things to figure out all on your own, and when you add in other people’s ideas of how you’re supposed to be, what you’re supposed to be, it often simply adds to the confusion. Exploring the possibilities just made the world that much more interesting in Thomas’s opinion. The world is so much bigger and more wonderful than people want to believe and he’s happy to share it with his partners. He opens his car door and gets out, whistling slightly as he walks up the pavement towards their home, to the people he loves.

[closedspeciesdrama]

Burningwhite - PSA

Hey! LunarLilac here from DA sharing this journal with some updates!~

This is a PSA to beware the person known as @/Burningwhite on DA also known as MunkWhite on Discord/Skype and Shire on FA. They may go by other names as well, but these are the ones I know of.  I implore all of you to share this journal! Post it everywhere, DA, Tumblr, FA, Facebook, on everything you’re on! Save others from going through the same thing and protect your fellow artists! ————————————————————————————————– Update 9/3/2017: Linking whites accounts that I know of for people to block~ Toyhouse - toyhou.se/Burningwhite and toyhou.se/Input Furaffinity - www.furaffinity.net/user/shiir… and www.furaffinity.net/user/burni… and www.furaffinity.net/user/degil… ————————————————————————————————– Warning 9/5/2017: Unfortunately I have to mention this. Any comments regarding the LGBTQ community will be hidden. That is not the point of this post just because it is mentioned that White is trans doesn’t make all trans people bad. Please keep all commented related to White’s actions (not her sexuality/identity of what she identifies as), what they’ve done to you and the degil species. You are entitled to your own opinion, but as I stated, White being trans is NOT the main point of this journal.  ————————————————————————————————– Update 9/8/2017: So if any of you have been checking degils or looking at my gallery and may have noticed I tried to revoke the Sunset Tiger mascot design from degils. Turns out I cannot legally revoke this design since White now owns the copyright and will not relinquish it back to me, but I’ve just learned something else. White seems to be trying to find “sleazy loopholes” to revoke designs from people.  I have blacked out the name of the person I spoke with about legal rights of my design and revoking it as I do not wish to cause any drama for them. I am assuming the person they’re talking about is @/Roiell-arts also known as Zena because white has been trying to get their Roiell character ever since Zena left the degil species and took the design with them.  Roiell also has a small psa on white - 

PSADA/FA user Burnignwhite/Shirree and any alt accounts. White has tried to blackmail Zena out of 150$ to allow them to keep their own character and so White would back off from taking that character. She did not “sell” Roiell to Zena since Roiell was already Zena’s. She blackmailed 150$ out of Zena to make her leave Zena alone. White manipulated another user into taking the 150$ from Zena into their paypal as white did not want Zena having her paypal. This money was later returned by the 3rd party user and white turned around saying that user “scammed” them out of the 150$ - sta.sh/2mlosaz22ki However no sooner after telling me that she left Roiell alone she turns around and tells me she wants to stress Zena out more. White was giving them trouble before for no reason just because she wanted to get a character (Vesta) back from them -   ————————————————————————————————– I will not be taking down this journal regardless of what they say even if they post on this journal or have their friends post on here.  For those of you who care about pronouns please let me state now that White never told me whether them to call me he/she/they/it. Therefore you may notice I tend to call White “him/he” more than anything as that is just my default pronoun and I truly apologize if this offends those of you who care about pronouns.  White has caused a lot of people grief and stress, including myself. Earlier this year White had asked me to make a base for the @/Degil-Hollow group after I had entered a mascot contest for the group. I had agreed to try making a base, however they never discussed payment for this. They had later also asked me to do the trait sheets to which would be asked as compensation for backing out of the base, trait sheets, and most of all their Shara commission. White had asked for all of these things to be done in 1 month and every time I tried to do them they were pushed to the back burner and he asked me to do something else be it his shara ref or a piece of gift art.  This is the commission of Shara he asked for -  This is not all of it, it is missing the nsfw portion on it as I am still a minor and I didn’t want to draw those pieces. When I am 18 those sketches will be posted to my FA. I was offered a single character as payment for this whole ref. Some things on there were not agreed to when he first asked for it such as the 3 outfits. During the process of the sketch which White constantly had me stream to him, he was extremely picky about every little detail passed the point of frustration. When I had asked for more payment I was thrown low quality adopts as “payment” to pick from. When I said no to those they showed me the two characters of theirs I liked and told me I could have them on the terms that I - 1. Don’t make gore art of them. 2. If the “friendship” between white and I broke off the character would be returned to them. and 3. Any ships the character was in with whites characters had to stay the same. I declined those terms as I do not think its fair that I would have to return a character over a friendship. White would be making off with a free reference of his char pretty much while I had lost the “payment” I would’ve gotten for that reference.  Now before I go on let me say that White is a minor, they are only 16 years old. They have been commissioning NSFW stuff from other artists and asking other minors to do gift art of nsfw things even if they decline it. This can get people into trouble as it is illegal to sell NSFW things to minors. White had also guilt tripped a piece of gift art out of me.  There are 4 different versions to this gift art. The two shown above are the SFW versions, the other two are the same ones above except with nipples on the art. There was only supposed to be 1 version of this piece of art and White forced me to make 3 other versions, one without the halo I had put on it and then two others with nipples on the first two versions.  White also had me design their kobalt creature for them for their animation class which I tried colors I wanted to test on them that White hated so he went with different colors. I later used those colors on one of my characters in slightly different hues and White forced me to change them calling it a ripoff of his kobalt and that he’d see it as his character because it was basically one of his “old” designs from the designing process of his character. On top of all of this, White had been trying to get between me and my current boyfriend of 2 years. At the time I had known White only a few weeks if maybe a month and he claimed to have loved me. He tried to force me into a poly relationship with him to which I did not agree to. He then told me he was trans (male to female) and wanted me to be bi-curious/lesbian for him when I told him many times I was straight. His response to me being straight was “a noodle is only straight until its wet.” When that did not work White constantly complained about my boyfriend and tried to find ways to make me break up with him, even trying to force me to split my time by giving White 50 percent of my time and my boyfriend 50 percent of my time. He demanded movies every Fridays, calls every night before he went to bed at 2-4am my time and wanted me to spend every single evening with him talking about art, degils, fluff, and his characters.  He tried to get me to teach him art, but most of the time he just sat there crying about not knowing how to do the sketch and didn’t even bother trying to do it. He later blamed me for the reason he couldn’t draw.  This is the proof for everything above - sta.sh/2daftob1pj4?edit=1 Soon after this I had blocked White for the first time on Skype, White then contacted me on DA crying that they missed me and wanted a second chance. He begged to try to regain my trust back on DA.  So I decided to give them a second chance. It took something drastic to make them lay off a little.  They had recently opened up designer applications in their degil species and I decided to try it out, but I found out that was the worst choice I’ve made. On all the designs I’ve made so far from their species they constantly complained about the nose being wrong and they forced me to change themes on their whims because they thought a certain pose looked more like this theme. They were constantly making me do the designs to what they liked, they have a bias against leopard/cheetah spots and hate the color black so they tried to force me not to use either of those things. On the egyptian blues, I had put snow leopard spots, I was forced to remove them because White hates spots and believes they are overused and has told me they’re not allowed on degil designs, however this would mean requiring all previous degil designs to remove any type of spots they have. During the sweltering fire designing process white had forced me to change its pose from a rainbow theme to a fire theme, when I said I was going to do a black base he claimed there had been too many black bases recently as to why I couldn’t use the color black at all on the design, but when I looked there was only 1. He had approved the fire I had on the hooves and when it was finished he changed his mind and forced me to remove it and fought with me about the color of the fire being green. When I told him the green fire did not match the design he went on to complain about the silk color being ugly since it was black and constantly nagged “what about the silk?” until I changed it.  According to white he thinks designers do whatever the owner tells them, when they tell them to do it and it has to be exactly their way down to every detail meaning that designers don’t really get to pick anything about the design. The designers aren’t even considered staff to him.  I had asked White to remove me from designer as I was tired of the drama and instead he cried about being stressed as to why he does everything he does (he uses this stress excuse for every single thing). He then turned me over to the co-founder to tell her what was going on and she understood completely. All white had to say to me was “please don’t leave, think about staying, you’re the only designer I have!” The other designer White had in the group was not making any designs, hence why I was the only designer. White refused to remove them from their designer status for whatever reason despite both me and the co-founder telling him to get rid of them if they’re not doing their job. The degil species will die with White so long as he is owner. White’s co-founder was the one doing everything in the group and once she is gone he will be lost with how to run the group. A few of us have been telling White to step down from owning degils as they can’t run the group properly and don’t treat their staff nor members with the respect he demands from us. White refuses to give up degils and claim they will either succeed with them or die with them. White currently claims to be trying to change within 3 months and will probably claim that this is ruining his reputation even more that he says hes trying to “fix” right now.  This is the proof from this recent bit - sta.sh/23dve9jh2lx?edit=1 I apologize for how long this journal is. Those of you who have had dealings with White are welcome to share your proof in the comments, but for those of you who have yet to deal with White let this be a warning to you as this is what may happen to you. 

If you cannot see the stash files above here is the drop box with my screencaps - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8sJSUUHwaO2b205S1U0ZW5qaWc?usp=sharing

[lunarlilac1]

PSA - Burningwhite

Hello! This is a PSA to beware the person known as @/Burningwhite on DA also known as MunkWhite on Discord/Skype and Shire on FA. They may go by other names as well, but these are the ones I know of. I implore all of you to share this journal! Post it everywhere, DA, Tumblr, FA, Facebook, on everything you're on! Save others from going through the same thing and protect your fellow artists! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update 9/3/2017: Linking whites accounts that I know of for people to block~ Toyhouse - toyhou.se/Burningwhite and toyhou.se/Input Furaffinity - www.furaffinity.net/user/shiir… and www.furaffinity.net/user/burni… and www.furaffinity.net/user/degil… ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Warning 9/5/2017: Unfortunately I have to mention this. Any comments regarding the LGBTQ community will be hidden. That is not the point of this post just because it is mentioned that White is trans doesn't make all trans people bad. Please keep all commented related to White's actions (not her sexuality/identity of what she identifies as), what they've done to you and the degil species. You are entitled to your own opinion, but as I stated, White being trans is NOT the main point of this journal. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Update 9/8/2017: So if any of you have been checking degils or looking at my gallery and may have noticed I tried to revoke the Sunset Tiger mascot design from degils. Turns out I cannot legally revoke this design since White now owns the copyright and will not relinquish it back to me, but I've just learned something else. White seems to be trying to find "sleazy loopholes" to revoke designs from people. I have blacked out the name of the person I spoke with about legal rights of my design and revoking it as I do not wish to cause any drama for them. I am assuming the person they're talking about is @/Roiell-arts also known as Zena because white has been trying to get their Roiell character ever since Zena left the degil species and took the design with them. Roiell also has a small psa on white - PSA White has tried to blackmail Zena out of 150$ to allow them to keep their own character and so White would back off from taking that character. https://sta.sh/0qqxsi7rj99 She did not "sell" Roiell to Zena since Roiell was already Zena's. She blackmailed 150$ out of Zena to make her leave Zena alone. White manipulated another user into taking the 150$ from Zena into their paypal as white did not want Zena having her paypal. This money was later returned by the 3rd party user and white turned around saying that user "scammed" them out of the 150$ - sta.sh/2mlosaz22ki However no sooner after telling me that she left Roiell alone she turns around and tells me she wants to stress Zena out more. White was giving them trouble before for no reason just because she wanted to get a character (Vesta) back from them -  https://sta.sh/221nrhcracfv?edit=1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will not be taking down this journal regardless of what they say even if they post on this journal or have their friends post on here. For those of you who care about pronouns please let me state now that White never told me whether them to call me he/she/they/it. Therefore you may notice I tend to call White "him/he" more than anything as that is just my default pronoun and I truly apologize if this offends those of you who care about pronouns. White has caused a lot of people grief and stress, including myself. Earlier this year White had asked me to make a base for the @/Degil-Hollow group after I had entered a mascot contest for the group. I had agreed to try making a base, however they never discussed payment for this. They had later also asked me to do the trait sheets to which would be asked as compensation for backing out of the base, trait sheets, and most of all their Shara commission. White had asked for all of these things to be done in 1 month and every time I tried to do them they were pushed to the back burner and he asked me to do something else be it his shara ref or a piece of gift art. This is the commission of Shara he asked for - https://lunarlilac.deviantart.com/art/Shara-Ref-Canceled-Commission-WIP-665825150 Drawings & Paintings > Other"> This is not all of it, it is missing the nsfw portion on it as I am still a minor and I didn't want to draw those pieces. When I am 18 those sketches will be posted to my FA. I was offered a single character as payment for this whole ref. Some things on there were not agreed to when he first asked for it such as the 3 outfits. During the process of the sketch which White constantly had me stream to him, he was extremely picky about every little detail passed the point of frustration. When I had asked for more payment I was thrown low quality adopts as "payment" to pick from. When I said no to those they showed me the two characters of theirs I liked and told me I could have them on the terms that I - 1. Don't make gore art of them. 2. If the "friendship" between white and I broke off the character would be returned to them. and 3. Any ships the character was in with whites characters had to stay the same. I declined those terms as I do not think its fair that I would have to return a character over a friendship. White would be making off with a free reference of his char pretty much while I had lost the "payment" I would've gotten for that reference. Now before I go on let me say that White is a minor, they are only 16 years old. They have been commissioning NSFW stuff from other artists and asking other minors to do gift art of nsfw things even if they decline it. This can get people into trouble as it is illegal to sell NSFW things to minors. White had also guilt tripped a piece of gift art out of me. https://lunarlilac.deviantart.com/art/Thrayn-Without-Halo-659785220 https://lunarlilac.deviantart.com/art/Thrayn-659778171

There are 4 different versions to this gift art. The two shown above are the SFW versions, the other two are the same ones above except with nipples on the art. There was only supposed to be 1 version of this piece of art and White forced me to make 3 other versions, one without the halo I had put on it and then two others with nipples on the first two versions. White also had me design their kobalt creature for them for their animation class which I tried colors I wanted to test on them that White hated so he went with different colors. I later used those colors on one of my characters in slightly different hues and White forced me to change them calling it a ripoff of his kobalt and that he'd see it as his character because it was basically one of his "old" designs from the designing process of his character. On top of all of this, White had been trying to get between me and my current boyfriend of 2 years. At the time I had known White only a few weeks if maybe a month and he claimed to have loved me. He tried to force me into a poly relationship with him to which I did not agree to. He then told me he was trans (male to female) and wanted me to be bi-curious/lesbian for him when I told him many times I was straight. His response to me being straight was "a noodle is only straight until its wet." When that did not work White constantly complained about my boyfriend and tried to find ways to make me break up with him, even trying to force me to split my time by giving White 50 percent of my time and my boyfriend 50 percent of my time. He demanded movies every Fridays, calls every night before he went to bed at 2-4am my time and wanted me to spend every single evening with him talking about art, degils, fluff, and his characters. He tried to get me to teach him art, but most of the time he just sat there crying about not knowing how to do the sketch and didn't even bother trying to do it. He later blamed me for the reason he couldn't draw. This is the proof for everything above - sta.sh/2daftob1pj4?edit=1 Soon after this I had blocked White for the first time on Skype, White then contacted me on DA crying that they missed me and wanted a second chance. He begged to try to regain my trust back on DA. So I decided to give them a second chance. It took something drastic to make them lay off a little. They had recently opened up designer applications in their degil species and I decided to try it out, but I found out that was the worst choice I've made. On all the designs I've made so far from their species they constantly complained about the nose being wrong and they forced me to change themes on their whims because they thought a certain pose looked more like this theme. They were constantly making me do the designs to what they liked, they have a bias against leopard/cheetah spots and hate the color black so they tried to force me not to use either of those things. On the egyptian blues, I had put snow leopard spots, I was forced to remove them because White hates spots and believes they are overused and has told me they're not allowed on degil designs, however this would mean requiring all previous degil designs to remove any type of spots they have. During the sweltering fire designing process white had forced me to change its pose from a rainbow theme to a fire theme, when I said I was going to do a black base he claimed there had been too many black bases recently as to why I couldn't use the color black at all on the design, but when I looked there was only 1. He had approved the fire I had on the hooves and when it was finished he changed his mind and forced me to remove it and fought with me about the color of the fire being green. When I told him the green fire did not match the design he went on to complain about the silk color being ugly since it was black and constantly nagged "what about the silk?" until I changed it. According to white he thinks designers do whatever the owner tells them, when they tell them to do it and it has to be exactly their way down to every detail meaning that designers don't really get to pick anything about the design. The designers aren't even considered staff to him. I had asked White to remove me from designer as I was tired of the drama and instead he cried about being stressed as to why he does everything he does (he uses this stress excuse for every single thing). He then turned me over to the co-founder to tell her what was going on and she understood completely. All white had to say to me was "please don't leave, think about staying, you're the only designer I have!" The other designer White had in the group was not making any designs, hence why I was the only designer. White refused to remove them from their designer status for whatever reason despite both me and the co-founder telling him to get rid of them if they're not doing their job. The degil species will die with White so long as he is owner. White's co-founder was the one doing everything in the group and once she is gone he will be lost with how to run the group. A few of us have been telling White to step down from owning degils as they can't run the group properly and don't treat their staff nor members with the respect he demands from us. White refuses to give up degils and claim they will either succeed with them or die with them. White currently claims to be trying to change within 3 months and will probably claim that this is ruining his reputation even more that he says hes trying to "fix" right now. This is the proof from this recent bit - sta.sh/23dve9jh2lx?edit=1 I apologize for how long this journal is. Those of you who have had dealings with White are welcome to share your proof in the comments, but for those of you who have yet to deal with White let this be a warning to you as this is what may happen to you. Dropbox with all my proof screenshots in case the stashes above cant be seen - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B8sJSUUHwaO2b205S1U0ZW5qaWc