#and that he probably a gay or european man

[ajax-mew]

[chlochette-sunde]

Know your Destiel/Cockles history: a calendar 

As a newcomer on Tumblr and on the Supernatural fandom, I first had trouble following all the past events that were regularly reminded and celebrated.

On this very special day (December 14th, European time), the following post is an attempt at listing those events, focusing on Destiel and Cockles (with a hint of Jenmisheel). Feel free to advise me for more (or less) dates!

Acknowledgement: The idea came from @youchangedmedestiel who also contributed to the content. The present post would never have been possible without @livebloggingmydescentintomadness 's Cockles masterlist. Color code: Destiel / Cockles

Honorary periodic event: FIMMF (Finger In My Mouth Friday)

January

12th: "Mish. Dee." (2021) - 1

16th: Broadcast of 15x09 “The Trap” (2020) - /

17th: ‘Isn't the season you met Misha?’ ‘Taste the rainbow’ JaxCon (2016) - 1

18th: The abandoned Jenmisheel podcast (2022) - 1

24th: Dean's birthday + ‘Jensen's the horse’ HousCon (2015) - / + 1

February

2nd: Broadcast of 12x10 “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” (2017) - /

14th: Destiel wedding anniversary (2021)

16th: Broadcast of 12x12 “Stuck in the Middle (With You)” (2017) - /

26th: ‘Which is funny, because so do I’ JIB11 (2023) - 1

28th: ‘Misha's been working out’ ‘He has though, hasn't he?’ NashCon (2016) - 1

March

1st: Jensen Ackles' birthday (1978) - 1 2 3 4

18th: Danneel Ackles' birthday (1979)

20th: Broadcast of 8x17 “Goodbye Stranger” + Gag reel (2013) - / + 1

23rd: Broadcast of 7x17 “The Born-Again Identity” (2012) + Broadcast of 15x13 “Destiny’s Child” + Gag reel (Jensen's infamous fart joke) (2020) - / + 1

April

1st: Mishapocalypse (2013) + Mishapocalypse 2.0 (2023) - 1 2 + 3

10th: “When Harry Met Sally” JIB2 (2011) - 1

13th: Season 15 EW Photoshoot (2020) - 1 2

15th: Broadcast of 5x18 “Point of No Return” + Gag reel (blowjob+‘we’re missing the gay angel’+‘confetti it’s a parade’) (2010) - 1 + 2 3 4 

15th: Bishagate 2.0 NJCon (2023) + Misha’s Cas essay (2022) - 1 2 + 3

23th: Bishagate ‘I’m all three’ NJCon (2022) - 1

25th: ‘I happen to be straight’ (2022) - 1 2

27th: Broadcast of 12x19 “The Future” (2017) - 1 2 3 4

28th: ‘Balls deep’ CR8 (2024) - 1

29th: Broadcast of 6x19 “Mommy Dearest” + Gag reel (2011) - 1

May

6th: Broadcast of 6x20 “The Man Who Would Be King” (2011) - /

7th: First release of 'Watching Over Me' (2021) - 1

19th: Straddlegate JIB10 (2019) - 1 2 3 4

21st: Jensen's bear underwear reveal JIB8 (2017) - 1

23rd: ‘Okay babe’ (2021) - 1

24th: Misha tenderly rescuing Jensen+’We like you the best’+Hitch scene JIB5 (2014) - 1 2 3

26th: ‘It’s not a subtext. It was clear text.’ PurCon8 (2024) - 1

27th: ‘I talked to Jensen and Danneel this morning because I couldn’t sleep’ PurCon7 (2023) - 1

June

July

1st: ‘I miss my blanky’ + ‘I love you’ VS ‘I need you’ (2021 (yes, on the same fucking day)) + ‘Also, Cas is gay.’ (2023) - 1 2 3 + 4

14th: 'Destiel is Cockles Fault' Day SFCon (2024) - 1

24th: ‘Wow, that was really informative. Thank you.’ SDCC (2011) + ‘How do you know’ SDCC (2016) - 1 + 2

August

9th: Destiel fanfics first ship to reach the milestone of 100,000 stories 'I have to admit, I like being on top' (2021)

13th: ‘I’d love to do a Western…slash romcom with Misha’ VanCon (2017) - 1

17th: Cockles day at sea (2015) + ‘I would probably choose to be the car, because Dean would ride me all day’ SPNDEN (2018) - 1 2 + 3

18th: Destiel winning TV Choice Best Chemistry (2015) - 1

20th: Misha Collins' birthday (1974) - 1

September

8th: Release of "Some things I Still Can't Tell You", poetry book by Misha Collins - Men in the Woods (2021) - 1

13th: First broadcast of Supernatural (2005) - /

18th: Broadcast of Lazarus Rising, first appearance of Castiel (2008) + First release of Jensen publicly singing 'Angeles' (2012) (+Bonus: Jensen serenading Misha at JIB11 (2023)) - 1 + 2 3 4

24th: Broadcast of 5x03 “Free to Be You and Me” (2009) (Bonus: reference of ‘personal space’ at SFCon (2024)) - 1

October

11th: Danneel Ackles, sharing a picture of Jensen, reading "Some things I still can't tell you" by the fire, Misha tagged on his heart (2021) - 1 2 

13th: Broadcast of 12x01 “Keep Calm and Carry On” + ‘You're poking me’ Gag reel (2016) - 1

16th: ‘He’s like an angel plushie’ DenCon (2021) - 1

20th: ‘I can say whatever I want because Danneel is in love with you' HCCB (2024) - 1 

21st: Broadcast of 10x03 “Soul Survivor” + ‘Aloha cowboy’ Gag reel (2014) - 1 2

23rd: ‘I should have said ‘I love you too’ and hugged him’ VanCon (2022) - 1

28th: Broadcast of 11x04 “Baby” (2015) (Bonus: reenactment of the CasDean scene at JIB7 (2016))

November

5th: Broadcast of 15x18 "Despair" - Destiel's anniversary (2020) - /

8th: ‘Homosexual declaration of love’ Darklight Online Con (2020) + 'I live it' (2021) - 1 (no official proof because the panel has mysteriously been deleted from social medias around the 26th) + 2

11th: Broadcast of 10x05 “Fan Fiction” (2014) - /

12th: Broadcast of 9x06 “Heaven Can't Wait” (2013) - /

16th: Broadcast of 13x06 “Tombstone” (2017) + ‘Release the tapes!’ Day (2020) - / + 1

19th: Broadcast of 15x20 "Carry on" -> Last episode of Supernatural (so far 🕯🤞🏻) (2020) + Misha sharing by mistake (?) “The epic love story of Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins” blog (2013) - / + 1 2

24-25th: 'y yo a ti' (2020) - 1 

24th: ‘His ferret goes other places’ (2024) - 1

26th: Misha having to live stream and do PR during Thanksgiving, in mid divorce, following 'y yo a ti' (2020) - 1

December

1st: Danneel sharing a post to promote "The Adventurous Eaters Club", featuring Jensen and their kids (2019) - 1 2

5th: ‘I love you, not like a brother, but like a lover’ CCXP (2024) - 1 2

6th: ‘Cas was supposed to have his arm around Dean in the bar’ CCXP (2024) - 1 2

14th: Cockles anniversary (2009) + Introduction of 'Eyes Like The Sky' beer (2020) - 1 2 3 + 4

19th: Jenmisheel holiday package (2017) - 1 2

[evermoredeluxe]

How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Took Over the Entire World

By Chris Willman

By Alissa Gao for Variety

On the morning that Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is about to begin a three-night stand in Dublin, the older gentleman taking charge of my passport at airport customs has clearly had his fill of Swifties, probably processing them by the hundreds already today. When I reveal myself to be one too — despite being arguably the wrong gender, inarguably old and lacking a telltale “Lover” mascara star over my right eye — his disdain is palpable. Suddenly, I’m getting way more screening questions than anyone not on a watch list should. “What do you like about her?” he sneers, peering up over specs.

This is probably the wrong time for me to point out Swift’s Irish heritage, or to assert that she is this generation’s James Joyce. (The original king of the Easter eggs, right?) I wouldn’t really go that far — I’m only on record as doing my best to certify her as this century’s Beatles. Trying to figure out how to answer him, the past 18 years of extolling Swift in print flash before my eyes. I end up murmuring the bare minimum: “Um, her songwriting.” This seems to disturb him further. He snaps back: “Aren’t they all the same song” — a slight pause, and I know what’s coming next — “about her breakups?” Then, abruptly, he stamps me through, sparing me a detour to Interpol for more grilling.

In the cab into town, the driver is blasting a local talk-radio personality sharing his dismay about the fans of an awful superstar taking over his country. The host reads an email sent in from a hater who says, “A year ago, when tickets went on sale, my partner and I made a reservation to take our kids out of the country this Friday morning. … Thank you for creating a safe space with your show.” I start to wonder if Swift might have met her match at the Cliffs of Moher.

But from my drop-off forward, the next three days are like living in a Swift-topia. The mile and a half to Aviva Stadium each night is like Disneyland when it shuts its doors early for an affinity group. Whether stopping in the pubs or walking through the charming neighborhood of Victorian brick homes adjoining the fancy new stadium, there’s that warm feeling of people who are united by one quality: They are all super in touch with their feelings — or else they wouldn’t be Swift fans. And they all are happy to stop on the street or over pints to talk about poetical expression. (Well, except for the occasional taciturn, invariably straight young male who has signified his supportive-plus-one status by wearing a jersey bearing the name of Swift’s Super Bowl beau, Travis Kelce.)

So it is that I end up chatting with a middle-aged gay man in a sequin-covered shirt whose female companion whispers to me, while he steps away to trade friendship bracelets with a 10-year-old girl and her mum, that Swift’s music just helped him through a difficult breakup. The girl then runs off to trade her homemade bracelets with a pair of high-helmeted Dublin policemen loaded up to their own elbows with friendship swag — unexpected accessories for long arms of the law.

All the stories about American Swifties swarming overseas to catch “The Eras Tour” turn out to be true: You couldn’t swing a neon golf club around here without hitting a Yank. Approximately one out of every five fans I approach is visiting from the States — and the jubilation they’re feeling about the night’s impending concert is compounded by the fact that nearly all of them financed a European vacation and a concert ticket for roughly the same amount they would have paid on a secondary ticketing site for a typical four-figure ticket to one of last year’s predatorily repriced U.S. shows.

Remember the venerable stereotype of the Ugly Americans, brusquely trampling over refined Europeans in their travels? Thanks to Taylor Swift, who has a gift for laying out global welcome mats, this is the summer of the Spangly American.

At the stadium on night one, just down the row from me are a group of millennials from New Jersey, several in glam unitards inspired by the “Lover” or “1989” portions of the career-spanning show and looking like they were costumed by Swift’s own designer, with fake jewel-encrusted microphones to match. I ask how many hours went into perfecting these nearly pro-grade outfits.

“About 80 hours for mine,” says Megan McLaughlin. “Hers probably longer,” she adds, nodding toward one of her sisters, Margo Steinberg. “She knows all the glues and the best gems.” Indeed, confirms Steinberg, “I was working on mine since January. And, yes, I did quit my job to finish it!” She adds, when I ask if she cares to share any secrets to a particularly good look, “You have to use the B-7000 glue.” (A third sister, Amelia McLaughlin, admits she resorted to buying her spangly dress off Etsy — “I was doing a PhD, but I had to match these girls’ enthusiasm” — while a fourth, Carolyn McLaughlin, skipped the glitter and went for a red dress that matches Swift’s from the “I Bet You Think About Me” video.)

Certainly, there is an element of cosplay to many of the fans’ outfits. Some have seen footage of the new segment Swift added to the tour beginning in April 2024 — devoted to her most recent album, the 31-song “Tortured Poets Department” — and have managed to manufacture gowns that look like they’re made of paper and feature lyric excerpts printed on them in script, à la Swift’s custom-made Vivienne Westwood dress. I meet a group of American women who became friends as literature majors in college who have “Tortured Poets”-themed outfits, one duplicating the Westwood dress and the other with handmade printouts of the latest album’s lyrics pinned all over her black dress, as if she were literally pulling pages out of Swift’s playbook.

It’s the devotion to lyrics, even more than glitter, that is most impressive about the bespoke outfits fans have concocted for the occasion. There are scores and scores of Swifties wearing homemade T-shirts — sometimes singular, sometimes matching with a friend, like walking Burma-Shave signs. Some of the messages are obvious, like the dozens of laddies wearing “It’s me, hi, I’m the husband/boyfriend/father, it’s me” shirts. (Bet that seemed really original at one time.) But a lot of them refer to more obscure songs or stanzas, as if every nearby street or stadium loge section is full of human Easter eggs, begging to be unpacked. It’s hard to think of any other superstar in the history of stadium tours who could have inspired as much fan-crafted clothing rooted in the power of words.

Combos of middle-aged mothers and their teen or 20-something daughters abound; some of them have seized on Swift’s mentions of her own mother, Andrea, to come up with their T-shirt ideas. On Lansdowne Road, I talk to a mum whose red-on-black shirt says, “Had to listen to all this drama,” accompanied by a daughter bearing the legend, “And here’s to my mama.” (This is a reference to Swift’s song “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.”)

Later, in a stadium Guinness line, I chat up a pair of thirsty locals, the daughter’s shirt reading “I call my mom, she said …,” with the mom’s shirt completing the thought: “It was for the best.” (Damn it, I had to Google to recall that’s from a “1989” Vault track that came out last year.) I ask the daughter if she had to explain to her mom what she was wearing. “She’s 52,” she replies. “I don’t think she knows.”

Age is really no guarantor of not getting it — the popular #SwiftieOver50 hashtag on X proves that. Although outnumbered, plenty of older people are unaccompanied by a minor, or by anyone who has been a minor in the past 20 years. I approach a middle-aged couple, Jean Sebastian Conley and Natasha Gagne, again bidden by their matching shirts — “Who’s Taylor Swift?” and “Who’s Travis Kelce?” They turn out to be French Canadians who found their 206-euro SRO tickets to be a steal compared with the extravagant resale prices they briefly considered back home after being shut out of the initial on-sale. I ask what attracted them to Swift since, unlike so many others here, they didn’t grow up with her.

“I really fell in love with her with the ‘Folklore’ album,” Conley says, referring to her low-key Grammy-winning album recorded during the early months of the pandemic. “I think different audiences and older audiences found her through that and ‘Evermore’ because they were more singer-songwriter, a little bit rougher indie music, and that’s what we like most. So that’s how I got hooked.” For her part, Gagne says, “I like everything she represents. And when she redid all her masters, that’s where I thought she was a lady boss.”

It’s a reminder that, for however many mini-narratives Swift packs into the three hours and 20 minutes of an “Eras” show, there are really four or five years of backstory that feed into the audience’s shared awareness. When she sings the ominous ballad “My Tears Ricochet,” accompanied by a coven of stone-faced dancers, at least some fans will understand it as a distant reflection of her very public feelings about the men she considers her business bêtes noires, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, who bought and sold (respectively) the rights to her first six albums, spawning much vitriol as well as four “Taylor’s Version” rerecorded albums to date.

When the dancers put their grins back on, Swift plays an ebullient excerpt of a very recent “Poets” bonus track, “So High School,” which every person in the crowd will know is inspired by Kelce. There are some breakup songs of recent vintage too — yes, Mr. Customs Man! — like “The Smallest Man in the World,” which may or may not have cost Matty Healy, the 1975 frontman and former Swift paramour, a night of sleep.

The whole tour is themed around not just the newer records but the rerecordings that have made every older album in her catalog feel improbably fresh. It was, quite possibly, the single most baller move in the history of the record industry … and led to the career-retrospective concept for what is already unquestionably the biggest tour in the history of popular music.

Any discussion of the charms of fandom isn’t meant to forestall discussion of “The Eras Tour” as big business. The numbers are fuzzy because Swift’s camp does not release grosses from her shows, unlike nearly every other artist at the stadium or arena level. Even when the tour wraps after 20 months on Dec. 8 in Vancouver, it seems likely those numbers will continue to be guarded with a zeal on par with the government of North Korea’s. Many industry experts believe the gross will approach or even surpass $2 billion.

What is known for certain — even without a confirmation from Swift World — is that she broke the all-time tour-gross figure when she hit the $1 billion mark, whenever exactly that might have been. The two trade publications that specialize in the touring industry have slightly differing estimates: Billboard calculated a cumulative gross of approximately $900 million when she took a break at the end of 2023, figuring that she would crack $1 billion shortly into the tour’s resumption in April, while Pollstar estimated that she had passed $1 billion by the conclusion of last year. Any way you guesstimate it, Swift took less than a year to break the previous record of $939.1 million, which Elton John grossed with his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour across nearly three years of shows.

One source close to the production said early in the “Eras Tour” era that her average gross each night is $14 million. Others believe that is a highly conservative estimate, with a possible total that on at least some nights edges closer to $17 million. One remarkable aspect is that this does not include the revenue from any inflated resale tickets — which, as anyone who has tried to get tickets through Vivid Seats or StubHub knows, mostly have gone for several times their face value. It was little publicized, but Swift had “dynamic pricing” turned off for her ticket sales, possibly to avoid the controversies Bruce Springsteen encountered when the face value on some of his tickets leaped to the four-figure range upon their first sale. Swift left money on the table by not participating in the scalping of her own tickets, which had an average price of around $230 and topped out at $499, excepting VIP packages, which zenithed at $899 — all well short of what some other superstars ask nowadays. Of course, neither Argentina nor anyone at Wembley Stadium ahead of Swift’s opening night performance in June will be crying for her when she’s in reach of $2 billion without the resale inflation … not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in merch.

(This is extraordinary also because Swift hasn’t done any press to promote the tour, except for when she was selected as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in December. But she doesn’t need to — the tour is constantly being celebrated on social media with every outfit change. And it’s also become so huge, it’s featured more A-list sightings than the Oscars, from Julia Roberts to Tom Cruise to Stevie Nicks, who had the surprise song “You’re on Your Own, Kid” dedicated to her in Dublin.)

Benson Boone, whose “Beautiful Things” is the most-streamed song of 2024 in the U.S. and the world, says he felt dwarfed when performing as the opening act at one of Swift’s seven shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. He has forever committed to memory the exact attendance figure he was given for the night: “89,497,” he says. “Just her stage alone is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen — 300 feet of it!” he says. “I took in every moment. It was cool for me to experience another artist’s world and learn from it. I want to work that hard and be the captain of my ship.”

Although it’s maddening to a media that likes official box office reports and can’t get them, it’s easy to see the wisdom in not flaunting those figures if you’re a superstar artist who counts on being seen as relatable. Swift certainly is proud of breaking records — she posted a tweet when “The Tortured Poets Department” spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1 on the album chart, one of only three albums in history to do so. But she’d rather count fan impressions than dollars. By the same token, she doesn’t publicize or confirm acts of generosity that leak out, like the sizable food-bank donations she makes in every city she tours, or the $100,000 bonuses that the tour’s 50 truck drivers reportedly got for Christmas.

An addendum to all this is how the “Eras Tour” film — released last fall, less than halfway through the actual tour — grossed just over $180 million domestically and $261 million globally, beating the records set by Justin Bieber’s concert film in the U.S. and Michael Jackson’s globally. Massive big-screen spoilers only heightened, rather than diminished, resale demand for the shows yet to come on the 152-date tour and helped precipitate the movement among Americans to head overseas, to make up for the supply found sorely lacking at home.

“She is the torchbearer for the live industry,” says Andy Gensler, editor of Pollstar. “It’s nothing we’ve ever seen before, and it’ll be a long time before we see it again. Her timing was exquisite: The pandemic created this yearning and hunger for live entertainment like nothing else in our history, so she couldn’t have picked a better time to go out.” Pollstar called last year a “historic golden age” for touring, as the top 100 global tours collectively surpassed $9 billion — up 46% from 2022 — with Swift obviously contributing a significant chunk of that total. (This year, the trade reports that overall tour attendance is down, with flat grosses, representing a slight reckoning for the live industry that, obviously, isn’t impacting “Eras.”)

“What my partners and I talk a lot about is how it’s one thing to have a big tour in North America. It’s another thing to have an equally big tour wherever you are in the world and to do doubles and triples in these markets,” says Bernie Cahill, an Activist founding partner and manager of acts including the Grateful Dead and the Lumineers. “It’s an anomaly. It’s not normal. And don’t forget, you’re going into what I call asymmetric venues, which are venues that are not really built for music; these are venues that are built for football games or soccer games and can be very challenging to do music. And they get it right every time — Louis Messina [Swift’s tour promoter since her earliest days] and his team are world-class.” But for all that globe-trotting, he notes, “there are some artists that you see do a show and you know they don’t even know what city they’re in. I always feel like Taylor knows exactly where she is. She has a relationship with that city or that market and those fans and she’s connected to them in ways that are very authentic, that you can’t fake.”

The one big snafu in the rollout of “The Eras Tour” occurred in November 2022 when the Ticketmaster system melted down after too many North American dates went on sale at once, causing thousands of fans to experience long delays. The on-sale broke the all-time record for tickets sold in a single day at 2 million, but it also nearly broke the world’s largest ticketing platform. Swift herself was Teflon in this situation, as the blame fell on a ticketing system not capable of handling so much of the Swift-loving world at once. And although most of the problems people have with Ticketmaster are different from what fans faced in the “Eras Tour” debacle — mainly, hidden fees and monopolistic practices — it could have big legislative consequences anyway. Dean Budnick, co-author of “Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped,” believes that the Swift hullabaloo was the main catalyst for Congress enacting reform. “There’s no question that perhaps there’s gonna be some meaningful change in ticketing as a result of what people experienced with that on-sale.”

That sense Cahill spoke about of the singer making it clear to an audience she knows exactly where she’s at is in full force in Dublin. Swift introduces the “Folklore”/”Evermore” segment by suggesting that she had a spiritual locale in mind when she started writing that more intimate material, locked in during the first part of the pandemic. “It keeps me up at night all year long: Which era is the most Irish?” she half-jokes to the crowd. “I’m gonna make a case for it being ‘Folklore’ … This album’s imaginary world had a whole aesthetic — like I lived in this cabin in a really green, nature-y, moss-covered landscape. You see where I’m going?… Another thing that I think makes it more Irish than the other eras is, ‘Folklore’ was all about storytelling. And I know you hear this a lot, but you guys are naturally gifted storytellers, right?”

Later on, Swift will cement the local connection by playing, as a “secret” surprise acoustic song, “Sweet Nothing.” She doesn’t have to give the crowd any explanation for that: From the first notes, Irish Swifties will immediately recall that the lyrics reference to the coastal town of Wicklow. The real cherry on top of the show for locals at any international Eras Tour stop, though, comes with a customized moment each night during “We Are Never Getting Back Together” when the spotlight is put on backing dancer Kameron Saunders for a couple of seconds, as he blurts out something locally appropriate, and cheeky. One night in Dublin, it’s the Irish catchphrase “the neck of ye!”; on another, he yells out “pog mo thoin,” meaning “kiss my ass!”; the massive, knowing laugh that inside joke gets makes it clear this isn’t entirely an audience of American tourists after all.

But the basic theatrics and emotional currents remain consistent from show to show. If Swift is surprisingly reticent to make her “Eras Tour” numbers public, that may be, in part, her desire to keep the focus primarily on a personal fan connection. Music industry veterans are taken aback by Swift’s ability to be giant and intimate onstage. “She’s a master marketer of herself — and she is not afraid to be vulnerable to her fans,” says Michele Bernstein, who runs a consultancy that works with stars like Drake. Bernstein could almost be quoting the lyrics of “Mastermind,” where Swift describes herself in almost comically omniscient terms, then dives into a bridge about how no one would play with her as a little girl.

People like my guardian of the customs gate may complain about Swift’s songs centering on her romantic splits, but that subject matter magnifies her own insecurities and weaknesses, expressed in genuinely eccentric wordplay, in ways that keep the audience in thrall to someone they perceive as a humble underdog as well as a veritable cage fighter. She could do a $10 billion tour someday and still keep the crowd enraptured by how she measures up to, or rallies to exceed, the smallest man — or men, or Kardashians — in the world.

This plays out in the “Eras” show in all sorts of symbolic ways, like the new segment in the “Tortured Poets” section where she seems to have fainted from the vapors of failed romance. Dancers in tuxedos try to revive her while a swing version of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” plays over the PA. A pair of women dressed as nurses fit her with what looks like a majorette’s uniform — or, with all its off-white stripes, is it really meant to resemble a straitjacket? The resemblance is probably not coincidental. Swift fans know there’s nothing like a mad woman.

The most exhilarating moment that has been added to the show this year has her gliding down the ramp on a platform, appearing to anyone at floor level like she is levitating like the witch she makes herself out to be in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Taylor Swift: She was Agatha all along!

Yes, there is much to unpack. But in Dublin and in every other city where “Eras” has alighted, there is also pure inspiration for those who maybe haven’t always felt like they’ve had a voice, whether it’s her LGBTQ+ fan base or, well, women. It’s a modern transmutation of Beatlemania in which Swift manages to be all four Fabs, and a mirror, as well as object, of that gaze. You don’t have to be a woman to experience the explosion of pure female joy that takes place on a mass scale at an “Eras” gig, but for men, it doesn’t hurt to have a healthy sense of where you might sit on the female spectrum.

Outside Aviva Stadium, two young Londoners have formed their own two-woman straight-gay alliance: One is wearing a shirt with the hand- drawn words “You’re obsessive and crazy,” and the other’s shirt has the phrase “You’re gay,” each with an arrow pointing to the other. This echoes the original lyrics to Swift’s 2006 oldie “Picture to Burn,” which was rerecorded after some were offended by “gay” as a possible teen epithet. “I am obsessive and crazy, and she is gay,” laughs Zoe Gibson, pointing to her friend, India Day. “We want to bring back the original lyrics. We never found them homophobic — we want to reclaim it.” Day adds, “We’ve listened to her since we were 4 years old, so obviously there’s the nostalgia factor. But for me, she speaks on quite a lot of issues like gay rights and feminism, and all of her songs perfectly sum up the experience of being a woman.”

Some of the shirts are apropos for Pride Month. Seeing a boy of no older than 15 or 16 wearing a homemade ��But Daddy I Love Him” shirt (the title of a “Tortured Poets” fan favorite), it’s easy to imagine some courage was required to don that apparel. Along the same lines, I spot any number of women making their own statement in shirts with the modified exclamation “But Daddy I Love Her.”

Gay or straight, 6 years old or 60-something, female or just female-allied, the crowd inside gets its sway on early in the show, with the arrival of the gentle, waltz-time “Lover.” It’s not one of the big set-pieces of this nonstop Broadway-style production — the spotlight is just on Swift and her acoustic guitar — but it might be the one where the entire audience feels like it’s at a four-minute campfire. No wicked witchiness here, just winsomeness.

Down on the floor, I’m seeing what amounts to a Taylor Swift mosh pit: gangs of two or three or five young women, ignoring the fact that Swift herself is just yards away from them on the ramp. They’re singing and acting out every last line to each other, as if the superstar isn’t even towering right over them. A waste of their euros? Hardly. Swift will capture their full attention again as the show proceeds, but in the moment, she isn’t just a superstar — she might be the world’s greatest community organizer.

[sad-trekkie-life]

Random Star Trek TOS analysis: Spock & male gender expectations and stereotypes

I was recently discussing with my best friend his experiences growing up in a very binary “right-wing” society. He expressed that he often felt ashamed of the fact, that he’s very emotional, soft person, with big interest in fashion and other things which stereotypically associated with female experiences (manicure, makeup, emotionally-driven literature, “girly” cartoons & shows, etc). He also shared that his male friends would rarely discuss emotions, feelings, and allow themselves to just feel, as it is not seen as “masculine” in the society we both grew up in, so he relates more to female experiences.

And we ended up talking about TOS and Spock. Because I am trekked in the head I guess, and he would also relate to Spock in this particular situation.

I’ve noticed, that despite the stereotype that men are not emotionally and physically gentle with each other, it does not coincide with what straight male writers and creators love to portray in male friendship driven media, which is often considered as an ideal. For example, Lord of The Rings comes to mind. It was written in the 30s-40s, and male characters are very gentle with each other and are open about their feelings with each other. They hold hands, kiss each other, cry. It is not portrayed as romantic or weak, at least, romantic possibility part is not portrayed so intentionally, and those tender relationship we can also observe in the film adaptations of the books.

Also, I’ve read a book by USSR sci-fi writers Strugatsky brothers, Prisoners of Power. USSR’s ideal of a man is seen as pretty stereotypical, BUT, it is actually far more normal for men to be physically affectionate in the Eastern European society. If you watch USSR 50s-60s films you’d probably be surprised to see men randomly kissing each other in the lips because, for example, they are happy… And also holding hands and dancing with each other if there’s no female partners is considered normal still. BUT still I was surprised by the fact that in the USSR book, male character Guy calls the novel’s also male protagonist Max “beloved” multiple times, and it literally says that “Max made him fell in love with him”. Of course, it could be intentionally romantic, as Strugatsky brothers were very progressive and critical about USSR, but the fact that censors said zero things about this very open tenderness between two male characters, in my opinion, says a lot. That at least it wasn’t seen as gay, and even if it WAS written as gay, which is obviously a huge possibility, this amount of love between two males was seen as normal or at least idealistic.

Watching Star Trek I realized that Kirk and Spock’s relationship do remind me of Max and Guy from this obscure Soviet book. If we go away from the romantic interpretation of the relationship, we can’t ignore that

1) Spock and Kirk’s relationship is often the focus of the show and a primal focus of the Star Trek films

2) Spock and Kirk are canonically soulmates and in The Search for Spock it is told literally multiple times.

Spock’s popularity as the character also proves his relatability to the audience, regardless of their gender and identity.

Roddenberry himself said the following of Kirk and Spock relationship:

“I definitely designed it as a love relationship. And I hope that for men…who have been afraid of such relationships…that they (Spock and Kirk) would encourage them to be able to feel love and affection, true affection…love, friendship and deep respect”.

You can also read this exact quote on Wikipedia. Star Trek is a highly idealistic show, as it portrays the perfect society, and in that society it is completely normal for men being emotional, open, and being open about their affection to each other.

But what does it all have to do with Spock and my friend’s experience?

I’ve concluded, that Vulcan society aligns with what society typically expects from men, or what many men feel it expects. In the beging of the show Spock experiences shame for the fact that he feels friendship for Kirk. Spock grew up in the society where emotions are seen as weak, despite the fact that Vulcans do feel emotions. A lot of emotions.

But the fact is, Spock is a VERY emotional and emphatic individual. He is half human, so he’s an outsider in his society. He cries mostly in the show, and actually he is very tactile with his friends despite that Vulcans like to keep their personal space.

Kirk, on the contrary, while being an officer, for whom it’s important to be collected and calm, and the situation often forces him and the whole crew actually to not let their emotions take control (otherwise they’d be screwed up) is pretty open about his tender side. With him Spock learns to accept himself. And he only becomes the closest to being happy, when he fully accepts his emotional side. Kirk is a pretty happy person although he has been through a lot, because he’s not ashamed of being a romantic, idealist and the person who can say to you quite easily “you make me believe in miracles”.

So, you can interpret Vulcan as a reflection of gender stereotypes that are imposed upon men, and the whole message of Spock finding the balance, is that to be happy is allowing yourself, as the man, to let those standards go. That being open about your emotions and tender side is noble, heroic, and masculine.

This interpretation is quite possible, as science fiction is created to analyze society and human flaws by allegories and hyperbole.

We, as society, still need to learn and we need to have such examples of healthy masculinity as Kirk, Spock, Bones (also Doctor of Doctor Who, Frodo, Sam, Aragorn from LOTR) and such characters’ popularity proves, that many men do experience the pressure, and do want to be open, they like it, it is healthy, and it’s their ideal. And Prisoners of Power I mentioned earlier is a very popular book in the USSR and in post-USSR as well, and is considered a science fiction classic.

It doesn’t matter if you read those relationships as homoerotic or not. The intention is, no matter what kind of relationship it is, it is healthy, manly and great.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[bbg100]

No literally what the fuck. Is this a joke. Is this a joke site. Do we laugh here? I'm not laughing. I'm about to start breaking into people's houses like the Grinch and pouring beer bottles into their bath tub. Is this a game? Is the game of life playing all of us for fools? I'm going to kill everyone and then myself. Harry du Bois is the poorest little meow meow ever concieved. He's got the sad eyes you only see in eastern European gay porn. He smells like ass, pure ass, pure stale dry shit, and if I don't lick all his body hair the wrong way I'm going to fucking blow up. Do you hear me. How can you look at this man, this man who needs someone to use a qtip to clean his skin folds like an inbred pug, and say he's not the poorest littlest meowiest meow. This fucking man dies from kicking a mailbox for no reason and I swear to fucking god I'm going to lose it. VRISKA??????? VRISKA?????? Harry du Bois oinks for a teenager and then freezes like a pussy when his coworker raises an eyebrow. He's like a puppy. He probably has foot fungus. He walks around in clothes he picked up off the street and perpetually holding a grocery bag full of trash. He doesn't know what gay people are. If I don't suck his dick I'll die. I cannot believe the pure hearted audacity of coming into the heavenly sphere of online popularity polls and making vriska- vriska!!! Win. I'm seething. The grass around me is turning red. My very presence is changing the genre of the story. I cannot believe you'd do my little hotdog scented man like this.

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization” of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[flower-boi16]

It's funny that the hazbin fanbase has decided Stella is evil and abusive and that despite nothing in canon suggesting it, that she also hates Octavia.

And its funny because as a child of divorce, she seems to me more like a mother furious that her husband is abandoning her daughter for a sexual fling with a man who doesn't even care about him. Like she's accepted that he's gay and that he's probably had male lovers before during their relationship and that she's his beard but now he's asking for a divorce so he can be with a man who doesn't even want him.

Like she knew about his thing with Blitzo and let it slide because he was still there for Octavia and it didn't really affect her but now hes going to traumatize their daughter for no other reason than his own selfish desires.

Hell, throwing all that out the window, maybe shes furious because she's scared. We don't know any goetia lore (thanks Viv) and since they seem to function like old European royalty, maybe Stella and Octavia will be punished or disowned or even killed because Stolas divorcing her means she loses her social standing, power and worth. Maybe they'll be thrown to the streets and have to fend for themselves without any money, friends or places to go, with sinners and hellborns who might want them dead around every corner.

Either way, Stella just. She comes off as a mother to me. A mother who hurts for her daughter, a mother who wants what's best for her, a mother who's scared for her, a mother who sees that her child needs her father and is repeatedly, constantly and intentionally cast aside for a man who wouldn't care at all about her father if he wasn't holding something over his head.

Sorry this is so long lol

I think the reason why people think that she hates Octavia is because the Stella we have right now is already an incredibly one-note asshole. The show itself never bothered giving any nuance to her character so why would the fans? That being said, I wish we got to actually know her relationship with Octavia.

Does she care about Octavia? Does she love Octavia? Or does she not give two shits about Octavia? We don't know.

And I don't think we ever will. It just sucks seeing how little nuance Stella has as a character, the show made her into a one-note abuser just to make Stolas look more sympathetic and so it can use her as a scapegoat for his flaws.

[gusty-wind]

CHILLING REPORT FROM HOLLAND'S Prime Minister Geert Wilders

Every word in this paper has deep thought-provoking effects.

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me. I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself. It is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States was the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is http://changing.You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe, a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders, if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I can not read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, and city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. In every European city, there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille, and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities, the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya , Israel . I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization. A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live.

San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening  if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate.

[pub-lius]

Why don't you have any detailed posts about Steuben smh do better

AW FUCK NO MY REPUTATION!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE THE GAY HISTORY PERSON IF I DONT HAVE A DETAILED POST ABOUT STEUBEN!!!! i have to fix this...

Early Life

Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Baron de Steuben was born on September 17, 1730 in Prussia. He joined the Prussian army at the age of 17, so he got a real early start.

Note: I've written his name here as "Baron de Steuben", as this name is from a French record, however he is typically referred to as "Baron von Steuben", as "von" is the translation of "de" from French to Prussian, and they both mean "of" in English. I just wanted to clarify that for the sake of my own linguistically correct sanity

Steuben began his service in the French and Indian War (or Seven Years War if you're a dirty European) as a second lieutenant, and was then wounded at the Battle of Prague, a Prussian victory. Then, he joined General Johann von Mayer's adjutant and principle staff officer in a special detached corps.

Then, he was promoted to first lieutenant and wounded AGAIN at the Battle of Kunersdorf, which was a Russian and Austrian victory. He was then transferred to general headquarters as a staff officer in the position of deputy quartermaster (this is important!!).

He was taken prisoner when Major General von Knoblock surrendered at Treptow, and was released after a year in 1762. He was promoted to captain and then became an aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great, which is as metal as it gets. He joined the King's class on the art of war, where he learned even more super cool military leadership skills.

Life Between Wars

Steuben met St. Germain in Hamburg (a notoriously great place to meet people). If you aren't in the know like I clearly am, St. Germain would eventually be the French Minister of War during the American Revolution. They'd meet again in France when Steuben was serving as Grand Marshall to the Prince of Hollenzollern-Hechingen, and if that sounds made up to you, it's because you don't even know him like I do.

Steuben continued looking for military work, but those European assholes (the British, French, and Austrians) rejected my man for no good reason (probably because he was gay or something). It was during his stay in France where he heard of the rowdy Americans across the pond.

St. Germain introduced Baron von Steuben to Silas fucking Deane and Benjamin "Slim Shady" Franklin, but they weren't able to promise Steuben anything but some regurgitated American propaganda, since, by this time, they were already getting yelled at by Congress and Washington for allowing too many incompetent Frenchmen into the Continental Army. They told him that the only way he could assist in the American fight for independence would be to go to America and present himself as a volunteer to Congress (like Lafayette ended up having to do).

This obviously pissed off Steuben since he was actually experienced trying to get a job, because its not fun being an overqualified, unemployed gay man in 18th century Europe. But still, he settled for being a volunteer, and set out for America, his passage being paid for by the French government.

WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETERRRRRRR

Steuben traveled to America with his Italian greyhound, Azor, and his two assistants, Louis de Pontiere (ADC) and Pierre Ettienne Duponceau (military secretary). They arrived in New Hampshire on December 1, 1777. They were almost arrested upon arrival because Steuben had a blond moment and mistakenly dressed them in red uniforms instead of blue. They traveled through Boston to York, Pennyslvania, arriving on February 5, 1778.

In Steuben's letter of recommendation, Franklin mistranslated Steuben's rank to "His Excellency, Lieutenant General von Steuben, Apostle of Frederick the Great", which made him seem way more distinguished than he was. As a result, he was presented a much higher rank by Congress.

Steuben was ordered to report to Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge, where he arrived on February 23, 1778, and was described by a soldier as "a perfect personification of Mars."

Steuben's good first impression also had an effect on Washington, who appointed him temporary Inspector General, and it was in this position that he had his largest impact on American history, and changed the course of the war

Why Every Army Should Have Gay People, An Essay by Publius

Baron von Steuben began his transformation of the Continental Army by writing training drills, overriding the regional trainings of the state militias into a unified and universal regimen. There was a significant language barrier, however, as Steuben originally wrote the drills in French, which were then translated into English by Duponceau, John Laurens, and Alexander Hamilton. Then, they were given to the brigade inspectors, who made the copies which were then copied to be delivered to each officer. There was definitely a more efficient way to do this, but you know. It was also Valley Forge.

General Washington's Life Guard and some men from each state (totalling around 120 men) were used as a model to show the rest of the army how they were supposed to go through the drills. As they trained and demonstrated the drills, Steuben was writing new ones, only a few days ahead, which is a massive time crunch. This was done intentionally to make the drills as simple as he could, so the training of the army was dispersed in a rapid, orderly fashion. This man was a genius, I can't emphasize it enough.

The officers in the British army, which was the standard for Americans in many respects, would allow the sergeants to drill the men, but Steuben said fuck that, I'm gonna do it myself. This made many American officers uncomfortable because the men developed a bond with him because of how talented he was (and the fact that he was funny and used profanity in multiple languages), and along with the fact that Steuben's office seemingly had no limitations, this caused them to complain to the big boss, Washington. To make them feel better, Washington issued orders on June 15, 1778 to govern the Inspector General's office until further word from Congress.

The reformed Continental Army showed off their swag on May 6, 1778 when they celebrated the news of the Franco-American Alliance, which impressed soldiers, officers, and civilians. More happy news came when Steuben was given his commission from the Congress as Inspector General, with the rank of Major General.

It was at the Battle of Monmouth when the new training of the Continental Army was able to take what would have been a losing battle for the Americans to a technical draw. Steuben was actually almost killed/taken prisoner (depending on the mood of the British) during this battle because he was wearing so many metals of honor that he glimmered in the sunlight, and was spotted by the British. He was fine, though.

General von Steuben went to Philadelphia in the winter of 1778-79 to write his book of regulations, referred to as The Blue Book. Lieutenant Colonel Francois de Fleury, a volunteer, assisted in writing it. It was with the assistance of ~Benjamin Walker~ and Duponceau that the blue book was translated into English, which is why we know Walker as being important! And the fact that he and Steuben totally boned! Anyway, Captain Pierre Charles L'Enfant was illustrated it, and the book was used all the way until 1814.

After the war

General von Steuben rejoined the Continental Army in April of 1779 to serve through the end of the war. He was an instructor and supply officer for General Nathanael Greene's southern army from the beginning of the southern campaign until Yorktown. Steuben commanded one of three divisions in the Continentals at Yorktown. He assisted in demobilizing the army in 1783, and resigned his commission in 1784, which is actually the latest I've heard of a Continental General resigning his commission!

Steuben continuously petitioned Congress for financial compensation for mesothelioma (not really) and fuck ass Congress only gave him a part of what he was owed, which was pretty typical. But! New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia all gave him land grants, which he sold portions off to have enough money to live. So, he retired from NYC to his land holdings to live the remainder of his life.

Oh, and fun fact, Steuben was present at one of the riots in New York that Alexander Hamilton tried to stop, and they both had bricks thrown at them. It might have been the Cadaver Riots, but I could be wrong since I didn't feel like double checking.

Steuben never married, and instead lived with Benjamin Walker for a long period of time. He died on his 16,000 acre farm tract in the Mohawk Valley of New York on November 28, 1794.

Homosexuality

The source I used for this does not mention his homosexuality at all, but I'm going to, because the last thing you'll ever see me do is pretend like gay people didn't exist or are "unprofessional" to talk about in history.

If you say that Alexander Hamilton was gay, you have to say Steuben was, and vice versa. Rumors of homosexuality followed Steuben from Europe all the way to America, and play a large role in why he relocated many times, and never seemed to have a permanent home until the end of his life. This was a form of unofficial exile that many queer people faced in times where their existence was illegal. As soon as your name was associated with possible homosexuality, you couldn't get comfortable anywhere.

But von Steuben wasn't brought down by this, and you've gotta respect that. He threw elaborate parties starting almost as soon as he arrived at the Continental Army. If you're new to the amrev community here, this is what we mean by "flaming shot/pantless parties", because they had shots of liquor that they would light on fire, and in order to get in, at least part of your breeches had to have been missing. While straight men did attend these parties, the subtext in discussions about them seem to imply that they were also a gathering place for queer men.

These parties continued, and some familiar faces were there, such as Duponceau, Walker Hamilton, Laurens, and, later on, Charles Adams. However, I'm not going to speculate on who was fucking who, though it has been largely accepted by historians that General von Steuben and Benjamin Walker were lovers, and I personally think there is substantial evidence to support this when you align their personal correspondence with the close proximity they maintained throughout their lives.

General von Steuben is a figure that is very important to many queer people as a conspicuous queer man in history who had an undeniable impact on the course of American history. Portrayals of Steuben in media typically disregard this, however more and more biographers are discussing his homosexuality and the significance it plays in queer history. So, I'll end this post by saying this: Steuben is just as significant in American history as he is in Queer history, and it is irresponsible to pretend like he isn't.

Source:

National Park Service- Valley Forge

British Battles.com- Battle of Kunersdorf

George Washington's Indispensable Men by Arthur S. Lefkowitz

John Laurens and the American Revolution by Gregory D. Massey

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Anyway, thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about Steuben lol. I didn't previously know much about his life before the American Revolution, so I was very happy to learn. I actually bought a biography about him not long ago, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army by Paul Lockhart, but I haven't read it yet. If anyone has, pls let me know if it's good or not. After Massey and Chernow, I'm practically on my hands and knees begging for a male author to treat queer history seriously. Anyway, thank you for the ask! I'm going to go watch the george washington mini series for steuben content

[oryu404]

What is your opinion on Sting Eucliffe's queer coding?

I’m going to try to keep this as short and sensible as I can, but–You know what? who am I kidding. I know me, and I’ll go ahead and predict this is going to be anything but short or sensible. Buckle up.

Queer coding. The implication that a character is queer through subtext. So the thing is that Fairy Tail is made by Japanese person in Japan, so there's probably a lot that gets lost in translation, or that I interpret very differently because I'm Western European. That being said, I'll share my thoughts on what's commonly pointed out as subtext, as well as the stuff that stands out to me.

First up: Sting's clothing. The fur, the crop top, the single earring (in his left ear; in case you were wondering, that's not the supposed Gay Ear from the 80s/90s)the whatever situation he’s got going on there with his pants that reminds me of cowboy chaps… Yeah, I see it. I definitely see it. I know not to judge a book by its cover, but Sting's outfits don't exactly scream heterosexuality to me, even in the world of Fairy Tail fashion.

Another thing that’s mentioned a lot is his feelings for Natsu. I say feelings because some call it admiration, others call it bromance, some like the idea that there’s romantic attraction involved. I personally think Sting views Natsu as a goal he has set for himself. He wants to be like him, measure up to him in strength and spirit. That's what I'm getting from the way their dynamic is presented. Sting has looked up to Natsu from a young age, when Natsu was 7 years his senior. This was already the case before the dragons slayers traveled through the eclipse gate, and it was the same way before the Tenrou crew disappeared. Because he was still so young when this admiration started, it feels more like a mentor/older brother thing than any queer hint.

What does stand out to me and I've mentioned this often is the harmony between Sting and Rogue. Everything about the way they were presented when we got to know them as new characters. Two mages wielding opposite elements in perfect sync. Their ability to do Unison Raids as if it's nothing. It's giving that “Historians would say they were best friends” vibe. They'll likely never become a canon couple, but they've been presented as a unit from the very start, their names are usually mentioned within the same breath.

I know you specifically asked about Sting, but I also know you love Rogue, so consider this a bonus track:

I think Rogue actually has more of that queer subtext than Sting does. His name alone, “going rogue” can be used to describe behaving against what's considered the norm. Now add in the fact that he was ashamed of his name and its meaning when he was young, and then chose to go by Ryos for a while. He later went back to Rogue, implying he reached a point of self acceptance.

Honoring his name, he was pretty much the outlier within the Sabertooth of the GmG. What made him stand out was that he was kinder, more caring and sympathetic–traits that were considered weaknesses in Jiemmas’s Sabertooth. You know what these traits are also typically associated with? Femininity, which also tends to be a gay criterion.

(Just to be clear, I don't agree with the notion that femininity equals to weakness or gayness, and I think gendering traits is frankly quite ridiculous. I'm just analyzing and seeing some parallels to the toxicity from Sabertooth and that of the real world. Sadly homophobia and misogyny go hand in hand.)

Then there was the “as long as he's here” line. Sorry Rogue, but entrusting your life and sanity to the hands of another man and his proximity to you sounds pretty gay to me.

Back to Sting.

Other, smaller things I'd consider possible queer subtext are:

- he sure likes to fight dudes and watch dudes fight each other.

- he’s never shown to have any interest in women, while I’m sure girls would throw themselves at him because he and Sabertooth were pretty popular.

I probably forgot stuff, despite this post already being longer than a Monday morning without coffee, but I'm calling it a day. I'll end with this official artwork. Are we still considering this subtext, or is this just text? A flashing, multicolor neon sign? Up to you to decide.

PS: past me was right. this was neither short nor sensible.

[ac3may]

“ the wag diaries ”

The Origin Story

~ Millie Bright ~

~~~~~~~~~~

♥️ 💬

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your.username the calm before the storm🌪️

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papa.y/l/n if there's one thing I never expected from fatherhood it'd be coaching my daughter through contractions on our kitchen floor

♥️ 💬

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your.username new books and new looks

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your.username day trips with pops, new house boogies, and bedtime kisses with my baby boy

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papa.y/l/n happy to have you home y/n/n, kingston missed you

user01 hey girl! been loving your tiktoks!

bsf.user my favourite new baby gay!

~~~~~~~~~~

at fifteen you met the lad you thought to be the love of your life

at sixteen you bailed him out of jail for the first time

the night of your first date none-the-less

the by eighteen you had birthed the first of your three children together

your twentieth year saw you married and the birth of your second daughter

and more nights spent alone than with your husband

raising two-under-two practically alone made you grateful to be the strong, independent London girl you were

despite being forced to move hours from your hometown and your only family

you had grown up a Kingston girl and Chelsea fan, just yourself and your dad from the day you were born

countless conversations with your father had him trying to convince you to leave the useless excuse of a man" you married

but no matter how many days you spent alone and how much jail time Jayden racked up you couldn't quite bring yourself to go

you felt like doing so would be ripping away something from your children

especially growing up without a mother yourself, you didn't want your kids to hate you when they found out you kicked their dad out

not that he would make any effort to return if you did

the final straw, ironically, came the day of England winning the European Championship

heavily pregnant with your third child in the games 109th minute, just before the winner, you received the call from Jayden

he was imprisoned again

this time for something far more serious than drunk driving or casual vandalism

collapsing on your fathers kitchen floor, held tightly in his arms, you make the decision to file for divorce and full-custody

it was that moment, as your daughters ran ruckus in the garden celebrating the Lionesses win, tears spilling from your eyes that your baby boy chose to make his presence known to the world and your water breaks

~~~~~~~~~~

Maybe the least generalised but probably my most favourite concept ngl

[gilsart]

I just KNOW that Frederick the Great is tweaking in his coffin right now with the victory of the rotten orange.

It's jover for all of us in politics 💀, we need a hero (historical political figure from Prussia who happens to be gay)

Oh no we do NOT need a comeback no thank you nuh huh not agreeing with this he better stay dead 🚩🚩🚩

All jokes aside!

I think we need to talk about this statement you made. I'm european, that means I'm not directly affected by Tr*mp's election, but I will be in the near future considering most politicians in my country love to lick fascist boots (not surprised, they're fascists themselves). This is a premise to say that we are collectively sinking deep in a pile of shit, but that I'm also used to fascist ideology comfortably sitting in Parliament chairs as I am used to anachronistic statements, so here's my two cents about what you just said.

I admit I have no idea if by "tweaking" you mean tweaking with joy or tweaking in horror, I've seen the verb being used in both contexts and English isn't my first language, but this doesn't matter. Whatever you meant, I wouldn't make a statement like this one to talk about the current situation, if I were you. Now, I know you were probably joking and that's fine, but I still feel like it is my responsibility to answer back to you with what I think about this, especially with what is happening right now: we need to stop thinking about historical figures with our 21st century mindset, ESPECIALLY when it comes to political matters like, for example, segregated and oppressed communities' basic human rights.

Especially when talking about queer historical figures such as Frederick, considering the time he was born, lived and died, he wouldn't even know what the word "gay" means. He wouldn't use the word "homosexual", he wouldn't know how to label himself, he wouldn't think like we do because we're talking about an 18th century rich white man. And he probably wouldn't align with any feminist ideology, as wouldn't most (if not every, but I'm not educated enough to speak on behalf of historical feminism) male figures from his time period. When thinking about it, being considerate enough towards oppressed communities as to, for example, not use certain slurs is a fairly new thing. The words used to describe a gay man back then would be considered extremely offensive right now – not to mention being a lesbian was equated with being mentally ill.

To mix historical figures and modern day society is anachronistic and aside from not leading us anywhere it can be extremely dangerous. What you said was innocent, I think, so I'm not accusing you of anything, and while anachronism can sometimes be funny (like, for example, a meme or a drawing) when dragged into modern society's ideology, it becomes a double-edged sword. Especially when it comes to Frederick. Idolizing him lead to some very bad stuff. N*zis glorified him as a hero and a great German leader prefiguring H*tler. Joseph G*ebbels commissioned artists to render fanciful images of Frederick, Bismarck, and H*itler together to create a sense of historical continuum amongst them and legitimise the Regime by doing so. To this day there are people who proudly call themselves "Prussian nationalists" which in the year of our lord 2024 is rather pathetic (wake up, Prussia doesn't exist anymore, guys) and deeply concerning. These people have reached out to me in the past and I ever so quickly blocked them.

When it comes to a drawing, something silly, something done lightheartedly, it is one thing. When people (not just me, people) draw modern AUs with historical figures just to have fun, with nothing problematic attached to it, that's just what it is: a drawing. But when it comes to politics let's remember that these people are dead, have been dead, and better stay dead and the fuck out of Parliament seats, politicians' mouths, and human rights movements because most of the time they wouldn't even know what the hell we're on about. And that is okay. They have done their time on Earth and we can study them, like them, make content revolving around them like I do along with many other people, but what we cannot do is use them to say they'd stand by us and agree with us because that takes us nowhere.

I'd like to end this by saying I'm not attacking you, and if you feel like I am or would like to talk about this further feel free to DM me. This is just a general message to everyone to not come to me with anachronistic takes, be they voluntary or involuntary, because I'm way too used to them not to start being really annoying.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … December 2

84 BC – Gaius Valerius Catullus, Roman poet of the 1st century (d: 54 BC); His love poetry was never surpassed in ancient times, and influenced a great many poets, both ancient and modern. Tibullus, Propertius, Horace and Ovid imitated his techniques, and, during the English Renaissance, English poets such as Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick attempted to capture the quality of Catullus (unsuccessfully) in English.

Most of Catullus's poems are short; in a few concise lines he is able to create an experience of love, friendship, or sometimes bitterness and anger either at his mistress (whom he called "Lesbia") or at some person he despised.

Although most of his poems are about heterosexual love, a good number of them are devoted to the love of boys. These are particularly lusty, some of them very funny, and all of them explicitly sexual. (Since many editions of Catullus prudishly omit these poems, and since almost all translations are severely bowdlerized, only one edition in translation is recommended, that by Peter Whigham.)

For example, in a gay rape fantasy Catullus promises to throw his pal Aurelius a beating if he finds out he's toyed with the young boy who he'd been saving for himself:

... you bastard, you're willing to provoke me, Ah, then you'll feel my dire retaliation, feet spread and strapped, back-passage widely gaping, reamed all its length with radishes and *mullets! *mullet - a European fish

In one poem, the poet comes upon a young boy "stuffing his girl." With a wink to Venus, he "stuffs" the boy as "poetic justice." Since Catullus was a contemporary of Caesar, his pederastic poetry is characterized by the basic prejudice of the period: "taking" a boy is a manly act, but allowing another man to do unto you what you did unto him is sheer depravity.

Another of his poems:

This scenario is ridiculous and too funny, Just now I cought my girlfriend's little boy Wanking. If Dione approves, I took him With my hard-straining cock.

We would call this sexual abuse. For the Romans it was different. Assuming the boy Catullus assaulted was a slave, the worst he'd have to do was compensate the slave's owner for property damage.

Catullus also wrote love poems for his male lover Juventius. In Roman society, homosexuality itself was not an object of criticism, only the adult passive/penetrated participant in a homosexual act. We assume that Juventius is the younger, passive partner of Catullus, probably a teenaged boy, who at least in one poem cruelly rejected catullus..

756 – Abu-Nuwas al-Hasan ben Hani Al-Hakami (d.814), best known simply as Abū-Nuwās, was one of the greatest of classical Arabic poets, who also composed in Persian on occasion. Born in the city of Ahvaz, in Persia, where his father was from southern Arabia and his mother was Per-sian. His first teacher was the poet Waliba ibn al-Hubab (died 786), a master who initiated him into the joys of pederasty as well as poetry.

Although in the modern world, the Islamic countries are known as those most hostile to male love, it was not always so. In earlier times in the Moslem lands, famous Iranian and Arab poets such as Hafiz i-Shirazi and Abu Nuwas praised and rued the charms of boys (whom they plied with wine and seduced). Sufi holy men from India to Turkey sought to find Allah by gazing upon the beauty of beardless youths. Storytellers included gay love tales in the Thousand and One Nights. Artists like Riza i-Abbasi amused kings and princes with exquisitely wrought erotic Persian miniatures and calligraphies. Mullahs and censors railed against male love, but men of all walks of life, from Caliphs to porters, delighted in it and all looked forward to being attended by fresh-faced tellaks (masseurs) in the hamam, and "unaging ghilman (youths) as beautiful as pearls" in paradise.

I die of love for him, perfect in every way, Lost in the strains of wafting music. My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body And I do not wonder at his beauty. His waist is a sapling, his face a moon, And loveliness rolls off his rosy cheek I die of love for you, but keep this secret: The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope. How much time did your creation take, O angel? So what! All I want is to sing your praises.

Originally trained in theology and grammar, Abu-Nuwas gained his great fame as a poet who excelled in lyrical love poetry, in lampoons and satire, and in "mujun" - frivolous and humorous descriptions of indecent or obscene matters. As with many other Islamic poets, he particularly celebrated in his poetry the love of wine - and boys. As one of the earliest Arab poets to write lyrical love poetry about boys, his achievement and influence helped to bring the genre to great heights.

In the Bath-House In the bath-house, the mysteries concealed by trousers Are revealed to you. All becomes radiantly manifest. Feast your eyes without restraint! You see handsome butts and shapely trim chests, You hear the murmuring of pious formulas, One lad to another: "God is Great!" "Praise be to God!" Ah, what a palace of pleasure is the bath-house! Even when the towel-bearers come in And spoil the fun a bit.

The only woman who played an important part in his life was Janan, a slave girl, but, because of his libertine conduct, she never trusted the sincerity of his love. When she asked him to renounce his love of boys, he refused, saying that he was one of the "people of Lot, " with reference to the Arab view that the Biblical Lot was the founder of homosexual love. Abu Nuwas was sexually interested in women or girls only when they looked like boys, but even then he considered their vagina too dangerous a gulf to cross. As he said (symbolically): "I have a pencil which stumbles if I use it on the front of the paper, but which takes great strides on the back." He also wrote about the pleasures of masturbation, which he saw as inferior to the love of boys - but preferable to marriage.

Samoan man, plus size, slightly muscular, sweet and kind looking

1899 – American Samoa is obtained by the United States. It has no law against sodomy, making it the only “free” jurisdiction of the United States.

1943 – Steve Rubell (d.1989) was an American entrepreneur and co-owner of the New York disco Studio 54.

Rubell and his brother Donald grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. His father worked as a postal worker and later became a tennis pro. Rubell was also an avid tennis player, but decided against playing professionally.

Entering Syracuse University, Rubell completed bachelor's and master's degrees in finance. While attending college, Rubell met Ian Schrager, who became a lifelong friend and business partner. Rubell and Schrager were both brothers of the university's chapter of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.

Rubell joined the National Guard, returning to New York after a tour of duty in a military intelligence unit. He worked at a brokerage firm after his return. Rubell then decided to start his own business and opened two Steak Lofts restaurants, one in Queens, New York, and the other in Mystic, Connecticut.

With the help and knowledgeable influence of disco promoter Billy Amato (Smith), executive vice president 20th Century-Fox Records, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager were introduced to the dance and disco market in early 1975 by John Addison of La Jardin. Rubell and Schrager opened two clubs, one in Boston with John Addison from La Jardin, the other, called The Enchanted Garden, in Queens in 1975, which later became Douglaston Manor. In April 1977, they opened Studio 54 in the old CBS Studio on West 54th Street that the network was selling. Rubell became a familiar face in front of the building, turning people away and only allowing entry to those who met his pedantic standards. Rubell also dealt with the club's celebrity patrons, ensuring that they were thrown lavish parties. His approach worked and the club made $7 million during its first year.

In December 1978, Studio 54 was raided after Rubell was quoted as saying that only the Mafia made more money than the club brought in. In June 1979, Rubell and Schrager were charged with tax evasion, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy for reportedly skimming nearly $2.5 million in unreported income from the club's receipts, in a system Rubell called "cash-in, cash-out and skim." Police reports state that cash and receipts were in the building and were hidden in the ceiling sections of Rubell's office, where both he and Schrager worked. A second raid occurred in December 1979. The pair hired Roy Cohn to defend them, but on January 18, 1980, they were sentenced to three and a half years in prison and a $20,000 fine each for the tax evasion charge. On February 4, 1980, Rubell and Schrager went to prison and Studio 54 was sold in November of that year for $4.75 million. On April 17, 1981, Rubell and Schrager were released from prison after which they lived at a halfway house for two-and-a-half months.

In 1985, Rubell, who was closeted for most of his life, discovered he had contracted HIV which later progressed to AIDS. He began taking AZT, but his illness was furthered by his continued drug use and drinking, which affected his compromised immune system. A few weeks before his death, Rubell checked into Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City under an assumed name, to seek treatment for severe peptic ulcers, kidney failure, and hepatitis. He died there on July 25, 1989. Rubell's official cause of death is listed as hepatitis and septic shock complicated by AIDS.

1946 – Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer born (d. 1997); Italian designer of both clothing and theater costumes. He was influenced by Andy Warhol, Ancient Roman and Greek art, as well as modern abstract art; he is considered one of the most colorful and talented designers of the late 20th century.

Gianni Versace met Antonio D'Amico, a model, in 1982. The couple embarked on a long-term relationship that lasted 15 years, until Versace's untimely death. During that time Antonio worked as designer for the Versace sports line. Versace's will left his male partner D'Amico with a pension of 50 million lire (about $26,000) a month (for life), and the right to live in any of Versace's homes in Italy and the United States. D'Amico now runs his own fashion design company.

One July morning in the summer of 1997, returning from his customary walk on Ocean Drive, Versace was gunned down outside his ocean-front mansion in Miami Beach. He was murdered by spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who committed suicide shortly after the murder. Versace was buried in Lake Como, Italy.

1976 – Erik Everhard is the stage name of Mitchell Hartwell, a Canadian pornographic actor and director, known for gonzo pornography films (porn's version of "reality" tv).

Everhard is a Canadian national of Ukrainian ancestry. In 1995, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend university, at which time he made his first forays into adult films. Everhard's adult film career began in Canada performing for websites. At the urging of friends and colleagues, he moved to Los Angeles in 1999 to pursue his career. His first shoot in the United States was for director Jules Jordan.

After securing himself as a performer, Everhard began directing videos for Anabolic and Diabolic Video in 2001. In 2003, he landed a distribution deal with Redlight District. In 2005, Everhard left Redlight, suing the company for breach of contract. He won the suit. He was then hired by Evil Angel Video. After shooting several films with Evil Angel, Everhard returned to work with Jules Jordan.

Everhard performed in about 2,400 films in his pornographic career.

1980 – Ricky Godinez, known by his stage name Ricky Rebel, is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, musician, and recording artist. Politically, Rebel is known for at once being pro-Donald Trump and advocating for LGBT rights.

Rebel was born in Upland, California. He began training as a gymnast at the age of 7 years old, and ranked 15th in the state of California at the age of 11. Rebel began training in classical ballet and jazz dance styles around the age of 11. Rebel immediately entered dance competitions at the regional and national level. After some years of competitive dancing Rebel then began acting, and performed in musicals like Annie (1991), Oliver! (1992) and Phantom (1994).

In 1996, Rebel started working with the band No Authority as their lead vocalist. Since 2010 Rebel has been performing as a solo artist Ricky Rebel.

As part of his commitment to advancing gay rights in the United States Rebel performed at the 2014, 2015, and 2016 "Out at the Fair" festivals at The San Diego County Fair. Rebel also performed at Gay Pride festivals in major cities like Phoenix, Long Beach, Orange County, Palm Springs, San Diego, and Las Vegas. Also, in 2015 Rebel performed at Matinee festivals in Las Vegas and San Diego.At the 61st Annual Grammy Awards Rebel wore a pro-Donald Trump jacket. He stated, "I'm reflecting millions of Americans out there who voted for Trump. Keep America great. That's right, baby. We are here. We're here all around the world, 50 million of us. My name is Ricky Rebel and I'm a reflection of America."

Rebel has since attempted to appear with political commentator and public speaker Milo Yiannopoulos at a concert in Honolulu but the event was cancelled by the venue when they learned of Milo Yiannopoulus's controversial statements and alleged pedophilia advocacy.

1992 – Cason Crane is an American mountain climber. In 2013, he became the first openly gay mountaineer to scale the Seven Summits.

Crane is the oldest of five children born to David W. Crane, the president of NRG Energy, and Isabella de la Houssaye, an international lawyer, in Mercer County, New Jersey. He lived in Hong Kong between the ages of one and six before returning to Lawrenceville, New Jersey. His younger brother Oliver Crane is an American adventurer and rower.

Crane attended Princeton Day School through his eighth grade year, along with the rest of his siblings. In 2011, he graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Connecticut, where he competed in a number of sports. He came out as gay at the age of 14; both his parents and his school were supportive, although he experienced bullying by classmates on occasion. After deferring for two years to travel to Lebanon and Israel and climb the Seven Summits, Crane joined the Princeton University Class of 2017, majoring in history.

Crane summited his first mountain, Mount Kilimanjaro, as a 15-year-old freshman in high school with his mother. He described it as a "gateway mountain" which piqued his interest in mountaineering. As a junior, following the suicides of Tyler Clementi and one of Crane's friends, he was inspired to raise awareness about suicide among LGBT youth through mountain climbing. This led him to start the Rainbow Summits Project, with the goal of climbing the Seven Summits—the highest mountains of each continent—in order to raise funds and awareness for the Trevor Project.

By the beginning of 2013, a year after starting the Rainbow Summits Project, Crane had successfully climbed five of the Seven Summits: Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Elbrus in Russia, Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina, Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia and Vinson Massif in Antarctica. In May 2013, he reached the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal, guided by New Zealand climber Lydia Bradey, the first woman to summit Everest without using supplemental oxygen. Crane's successful ascent of Mount McKinley in July 2013 at the age of 20 marked his completion of the Seven Summits, making him the first openly gay man to have done so. By the completion of the project, Crane had raised US$135,000 for the Trevor Project.

2013 – This is the first official day that LGBTQ couples in Hawaii, both residents as well as tourists, may marry in the Aloha State

[noxiousgrace]

Cale henituse taking an edible and forgetting he no longer lives in the 21st century

In the year of our lord 783 of the felix calendar (wait is felix the jesus of the raon kingdom??? Why'd the year count start w that guy)

This is krs!cale by the way

-------

Cale, lowkey woozy: bro...

Ron: yes, young master-nim?

Cale: did you put weed in my brownies?

Ron: no? Why would i put invasive plants in your snacks? *Confused benign chuckle*

Cale: why.. *smacks lips* why is the world so topsy turny ron? Hm?

Ron: ah, it must be the sleeping herbs.

Cale: no, you just gave me an edible.

Ron: ...is it not supposed to be edible?

Cale: *snort* that's something a boomer would say

Ron: a what?

Cale: *waves hand* whatever, you wouldn't understand internet culture anyway.

Ron: *is honestly just confused*

Cale: *already forgot about the subject at hand* i remember this one time i was in highschool *snort*

Ron:....?

Cale: i was with a bunch of kids, theatre kids, and we all did *snort* edibles and thought it would be fun to play truth or dare

Ron: young mas-

Cale: *talking over him* and well, I didn't think it was a good idea cuz we were probably gonna do something stupid and like *wheeze* we made this one guy dress up as eric cartman *absolutely losing it, smacking his knee and laughing*

Ron: *honestly thinks cale is hallucinating at this point and is debating on calling a priest*

Cale: and we fuckin made him sing an entire lady gaga album, can you immaaagiineeee?? *Wheeeeze*

Cale: and oml what he did after was insane! So we didn't get off very well so he thought it would be sooo funny to like... *He looked up at the ceiling, completely losing the plot again* hehsh did i ever tell you this ceiling lowkey looks European

Cale: *starts mumble singing* gay or europeeaann,, it's hard to guaranteeee,,, is he gay or europeeeann???

Ron: *has already left the room in order to get someone to help cale*

---

*cale has migrated into the library*

Priest: young master-nim pleas-

Cale: whyyyy did you get an entire squad of exorcists in here ron????

Ron: young master, you're not yourself *he actually looks concerned*

Cale: *wheeze* what are you? Y/n???? My coworker wasn't crazy after all,,,

Ron: ...??

Cale: No because drinking games are crazy

Cale: anyway i miss mmorpgs man *sigh* i miss my wife tails

Ron: wife???

Cale: *ignoring him* pink fluffy uniiicorns dancing on rainbooows *knows this song from the one time he had to babysit the neighbors kid*

---

The day after

-

Ron: young master-nim

Cale: *jumps out of his skin because of rons sudden appearance* what????

Ron: what is a boomer? You were saying a lot of funny things yesterday.

Cale: *sweating bullets* I've been having weird dreams lately???

Ron: uhuh *it's obvious he doesn't believe cale but just leaves it alone for now*

[feyd-meowtha]

Cutting room tag thingy!!

What didn't make it into your fic? Tell us about a scene, a character, a plot point, a theme - anything (!) that didn't make it into your fic and why, and tag up to three people who might want to take part, too.

Tagged by @blixabargelds!! This is fun though honestly I don't have much for MOTA fics so you're gonna get this which I think I already posted a snippet of before for another tag game. This is from back when Uli was only gonna be evil in a funny way and everything was a lot more fun. A relic of a better time. I will also tag @london-cowboy!

Curt, he’s German, he’s not a fucking communist.” Brady said, his voice dripping with scorn. “Yeah, Curt,” said Bucky, this close to sticking out his tongue. “Yeah, if anything we,” said Kenny, gesturing around the table, “were on the side with the communists, Germany was like, very much fascist. That was the whole problem.” “Also,” added Benny, chiming in with a much needed non-moron perspective, “that’s not cool Curt. The dude can be a communist if he wants. No Mccarthyism at the dinner table, didn’t you read The Crucible in high school?” “We all did,” Brady said, his head in his hands as he was ignored once again. “Miss Finch, tenth grade.” “Yeah, Curt,” said Bucky, pointing at him with an onion ring, honestly just glad that for once it wasn’t him who was being ganged up on. “Stop being, like, so xenophobic.” A hush fell over the group before Curt and Brady erupted at once. “Bucky, who taught you that word?” Brady asked. “Did he teach you that word?” Curt echoed. “We told you not to listen to that creep! He’s putting all kinds of crazy thoughts in your head, turning you against us.” “Stop it, all of you. You’re not allowed to not like him just cus he’s a communist.” said Bucky. “He’s not a communist, that’s what we just said!” shouted Curt, “Kenny said he’s a fascist and that’s not why I don’t like him, I-” “I mean, he’s not actually a fascist right?” Asked Kenny. “Nah,” said Bucky, a hand on his chin as he squinted thoughtfully. “At least I don’t think so, he’s like, really gay.” “You can be a gay fascist,” said Brady. “Speak for yourself,” shrugged Curt at the same time as Bucky yelled, “Shut up Johnny, we all know you can be a gay fascist!” Brady’s look of disappointment would haunt him forever but there was no time to dwell on that as Bucky turned back to Curt. “So he’s not a communist or a fascist. You’re just xenophobic,”he said, gesturing accusatorily with his now half-eaten onion ring. “I’m not xenophobic. You don’t even know what that means! Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what the hell we’re talking about anymore. I’m too stoned for this shit.” He took a deep breath, holding up his hands and looking Bucky straight in the eye. “I don’t hate him cus he’s German, I hate him cus he spiked you with goddamn LSD!” “That was psycho behaviour,” Benny agreed, having been happy to watch from the sidelines until this point. “I dunno, I think it’s kind of funny,” shrugged Ken, “Is this a bad time to mention that I actually quite like him?” “Thank you, Kenny,” Bucky said with a smile. “You like everyone, you’re too nice. That’s why he’s nice to you, probably wants to study you for his pervy little experiments,” said Curt, looking Ken in the eye and pulling him in closer to his side. Brady looked like he agreed. “Hey, no-one said the experiments were pervy,” Said Bucky. “No-one said they weren’t,” Benny shot back. He didn’t really have much of a stake in the conversation but he thought it was funny to stoke the flames “Well they’re not! He’s a man of science, for God’s sake," said Bucky, slamming his fist down on the table a little too hard before conceding. “Unless they’re experiments on me but that’s, like, different. The fact of the matter is that I’m sleeping with a cool, rich, hot, smart, European and you’re all just jealous.” “Hey, I’m sleeping with a cool, rich, hot, smart European too, pal,” Curt said, pointing at Kenny’s smiling face as he pulled him closer into his side. “You’re not special.” “Kenny’s not European, he’s British,” Bucky replied. “Jesus H Christ, we went to the same school,” Brady groaned into his hands.

[heesulovebot]

ik there's the contentious topic about categorizing things as bl and making the distinction between bl and queer media, and i do think there have been valid points in the discourse about how bl is changing and its going through a sort of r/evolution now that bl is getting pretty big (and i'm talking exclusively about asian bl here btw, so in this context it would be the globalization of asian bls). but i also think that it's important to not disregard history and bl's roots.

bl was created by women for women in the 1970s in japan. although from a feminist perspective, bl challenges gender and sexual norms, bring capitalism into the equation, and we're getting the fetishization of gay relationships for (predominantly) straight female consumption.

idt it's a "right or wrong" situation. i believe two truths can exist: bl is a capitalist venture that oftentimes perpetuates harmful stereotypes, but bl can also be liberation for a lot of people. especially asian bl—as a bisexual woc, seeing nonwhite queer media is so so important to me. and i am not asian, but i know it's especially been revolutionary for my fellow queer asian brothers, sisters, & enby siblings.

i read somewhere that the directors instructed juntaek to not watch (korean) bl when studying for his role in the eighth sense. i found this reeeeally interesting, since i've also seen people mention that the eighth sense is not a bl, but queer media. i also think it's important to point out that one of the directors/writers is a white european man, and i'm pretty sure he was the one who told juntaek to watch things like skam or call me by your name instead of kbls—i haven't seen skam but cmbyn is white queer cinema (also problematic, but i digress). in the past, there was also that british bl heartstopper (sorry besties i still haven't seen it i probably should), in which the author expressed that they did not want to label it as bl, but there was backlash as, at least the show, clearly drew inspiration from asian bl.

as a historically asian genre, how does this distinction (bl vs. queer) perpetuate the western hegemony of queer thought? usually when people make this distinction, i don't think they take into account that race plays as much as a part as queerness (intersectionality is so important). but on the other hand, i also understand that bl has clear tropes and narrative structures that make it a bl. we wouldn't call moonlight a bl, or the handmaiden a gl. but also, films are a different medium with less restrictions (if you've seen a korean film vs. a kdrama, you get me lol).

i definitely don't have an answer or anything. the eighth sense is filmed through such a queer lens and it touches on the nuances of the queer experiences in a way i haven't really seen in bl, but i still i find myself wary of proclaiming that it's not bl, ja feel? is the eighth sense (along with bls such as bad buddy, old fashion cupcake, to my star, etc.) a marker of the r/evolution of bl? i guess i just wanted to open up the conversation to hear people's thoughts, especially from my fellow queer pocs.

at the end of the day we're all here to be entertained, but i'm glad to see discourse and think it's fruitful in the long process of decolonizing our mindsets.