#and that they don’t care about the plight of the homophobe

[tender-emotional-music]

One of my pet peeves is people who claim that Will’s feelings for Mike were added in as fanservice for byler shippers. As someone who has been a fan of the show for many years, I can assure you that byler was never this popular until they explicitly introduced it in s4. It still had an active fanbase in the earlier seasons - mostly made of people who were into the analyst side of the fandom and recognised the seeds they were planting from early on in the show - but it was nowhere near as popular as mlvn was in that era, and there was no way you could talk about it in the main fandom spaces without instantly being shot down.

It’s honestly disrespectful to the story the writers are telling to imply that they only added in this layered and complex plot line to appease a portion of shippers, especially when that demographic wasn’t even large enough for that to seem like a profitable choice at the time. If they really just wanted to “appease mlm shippers,” then they would have made harringrove canon, because that was the most popular mlm ship at the time.

Byler wasn’t put into the show because it was popular, it became popular because it was put into the show. Those who like the pairing and theorise about their future in s5 are simply picking up what the writers are putting down.

[god-forsaken-sp-confession-blog]

how are south park fans so viscerally hated by the rest of the internet that we end up on dni criteria and are told we have centrist brainrot when there are so many objectively worse things to be a fan of. the reasons they use for south park being “problematic” aren’t even exclusive to south park. why is it more shameful to be a south park fan than it is to be a fan of idk, family guy? a show that uses casual racism and antisemitism as a joke without providing any nuance or overarching message? rick and morty, a show where a minor is often put in sexual situations and incest is played for laughs and was literally created by a groomer? i like rick and morty fine (roiland can eat shit though) i’m just trying to point out the double standard. why aren’t those fans just as widely hated? someone said on here that south park antis are the outraged 90s moms from the movie and they were so right. not to sound like that one reddit copypasta, but i really do think some people hate south park so much because they are unable to think critically and just see shocking taboo thing being portrayed on tv = bad. people talk about south park+matt and trey as if they’re this plight on society that have created a generation of centrists that think it’s lame to care about stuff and that bigotry is funny and it is fucking crazy! they’re just two goofy dudes that built careers on making each other laugh. say what you will about some of their bad takes, at least they keep to their damn selves and don’t have a million allegations of gross misconduct against them like so many male celebrities do. there is a reason south park is one of the longest running cartoons of all time, and to view every person who enjoys it (and dare i say understands the commentary that is being made) as racist/homophobic/all the other ists and phobics is absurd on every level.

TLDR: “To be fair, you actually have to have a very high IQ to understand south park…” but unironically

.

[capseycartwright]

we're staying at your parents house, and it's bad timing, but let's make-out and risk getting caught. we're grown adults after all

ao3 link

It was probably a bad idea, Eddie realised – everything with his parents, it had been sort of complicated, in the end, when he’d come out to them. They hadn’t exactly been homophobic, but they’d definitely been surprised, and it had taken them a few months to not be deeply weird about it all, but when they’d realised Buck was there to stay, they’d come around – especially when they realised just how happy and settled Christopher was, and how happy Eddie himself was.

All of that being said – making out with his boyfriend in his childhood home was probably not a good idea. They were in Texas, for Sophia’s daughters christening, which had been an experience in itself. Buck hadn’t grown up going to church – and described his parents as WASPs, and definitely not Catholic church goers – and so Buck had been deeply weirded out when Eddie’s mother had thrown a fit when she discovered Eddie hadn’t been to confession in years.

Explaining the finer points of Catholicism to his boyfriend had been a mental trip – and Buck hadn’t exactly been sympathetic to Eddie’s plight, thinking it was utterly fucking hilarious that Eddie was getting dragged to confession because he was the godfather to Sophia’s new baby. Buck had even gone as far as suggesting that Eddie could confess about all the sodomy (“Jesus, Buck, don’t use that word.”) he gets up to these days, at which point Eddie didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about the fact Buck was sleeping on a blow-up mattress on the floor of Eddie’s childhood bedroom.

Eddie’s parents had a rule – no sharing a bed until you’re married. It didn’t matter that pregnancy wasn’t much of a problem, with him and Buck – no, Sophia and Adrianna had kicked up a fuss because their boyfriends hadn’t been allowed to share the guest-bed until they were married, why was Eddie different?

Except –

Except that meant it had been days, since Eddie had been able to get his hands on Buck, and he as desperate to touch the younger man – Buck thriving amongst the Diaz clan wasn’t helping matters either. Buck had taken the initial odd few stares in his stride, being his usual charming self, wearing his best suit to the church and letting Christopher explain how mass worked to him, taking an excessive amount of photos of Eddie holding the newest Diaz (well, Johnson, technically) and winning plenty of brownie points from Sophia and Adriana as he entertained all of the kids at once.

Sue him, Eddie had a competency kink.

“We’re definitely going to get caught,” Buck breathed against his mouth, letting Eddie shove him up against the wall of the laundry room. He was still wearing his shirt, a crisp white one that emphasised every one of the ridiculous muscles Buck had, his tie long since discarded and the top few buttons open and Eddie wanted to fucking devour him.

“I don’t care,��� Eddie panted against Buck’s mouth, kissing him furiously, enjoying the way Buck melted in Eddie’s grasp. Even now, after so many months together, getting to kiss Buck whenever he wanted was the greatest thrill of Eddie’s life. He was so convinced, for so long, that he wouldn’t get to have this, that he and Buck would never have their moment – and now, they had forever.

It made Eddie the luckiest man alive if you asked him.

“Are you getting off on the idea of being caught?” Buck teased, and Eddie couldn’t stop the way his face flushed bright red. “God, you are,” Buck was definitely teasing now. “Are we living out a high school dream of yours here, Eds? Getting caught making out with a boy when you thought your parents weren’t home?”

Eddie glared at him. “Do you want me to puncture your airbed?” he threatened, only half meaning it.

“I’m kidding – mostly,” Buck said, looping his arms around Eddie’s waist, making it so the other man couldn’t move away. “I think it’s cute. I’m glad you’ve got the confidence to do this here,” he said, the words meaning more than Eddie could ever possibly express – for a while, he’d wondered if he’d be able to do this at all, bring Buck to Texas and hold his hand in front of his family and be unapologetically in love.

“Stop being sappy,” Eddie said gruffly, leaning in to press another biting kiss to Buck’s lips. “Now hurry up and kiss me before someone notices we’re gone.”

“Too late,” and God, could Eddie not have five minutes alone to make out with his boyfriend before his annoying little sister appeared?

Eddie told Sophia exactly that, his sister simply grinning as she passed her daughter to Eddie. “Just be glad it was me, and not mom,” she grinned. “She’d never get over her – Eddie, her baby, her only boy – his virtue, gone!”

Buck grinned wickedly, speaking before Eddie could smack him into the next century. “Oh, that’s long gone,” he reassured, Sophia snorting in response.

“I think we’re going to be good friends,” Sophia grinned, taking Buck by the elbow. “Come on – let’s have some wine and gossip about Eddie.”

“You’re really – you’re really going to leave me here literally holding your baby? Your child? Light of your life?” Eddie called at his sisters back, looking down at his niece. “Well,” he sighed. “I guess it’s just you and me, sweetheart. How do you feel about getting a drink? A beer for me – some milk for you?”

Eleonora gurgled in response.

“Either you just farted, or you really love me,” Eddie tucked her into the crook of his elbow. “I’m choosing to believe it’s the love, sweetpea. Come on – let’s go find your cousin, he’s so excited to get to hold you.”

send me a kissing prompt

[venticaramelmocha]

Thoughts on CWC...TW

So sick of seeing the debate. So let’s clear this up from a long time ‘Chistorian’ or whatever you want to call me. Chris Chan Is NOT transgender! He has never been transgender. Chris gave himself the title of trans when being a ‘tom girl’ didn’t get him women like he thought it would. So titled himself trans and said he is a lesbian to try and get lesbians to date him which still didn’t work i might add. 

Christian Weston Chandler is on record during his ‘Tom Girl’ Phase saying that Trans people are: Freaks, disgusting, and are just homos. These are his quotes not mine!! I get so tired of people correcting people when they call him by He/Him pronouns and saying “actually it’s She! Stop misgendering.” If you knew the first thing about CWC you would know that he is: Racist, sexist, Fat Phobic, perverted, sex crazed, and extremely homophobic as well as transphobic as well as ableist (dispute him being autistic) He’s done black face, screamed the N word at black people, said he would never date a ‘darkie’ and claims interracial relations are disgusting. And called people ‘Jew’ as an insult on many occasions. Are you yourself autistic? Well chrischan would not care for you and this you are “re*arted” do you have Aspergers, well Chris Chan does not recognize your illness and claims you are stealing the lime light from autistic people.

During his ‘Tom Girl’ Phase he went in to girls bathrooms and used them to the much discomfort to women and the staff of stores being kicked out of multiple. Mind you he was not calming to be Trans at this time and said he was a man who was in touch with his girly side. 

Continuing to call a man child who R**ED HIS OWN DEMENTIA RIDDEN 90 YEAR OLD MOTHER by Her/She pronouns is insulting to the actual trans community. He is NOT transgender. He did this as a ploy to get a woman. Soon as he claimed to be ‘Trans’ he wanted to arrange an all lesbian slumber party at his house with hopes of sex. Sympathies with Chris and his plight if you want to. Though it’s unjustified. But do NOT call him Transgender!!

If you want sources for his Transphobia/Homophobia/Racism/Fat Phobia all packed together stright from his mouth: I have it right Here. For the full source watch the full documentary before you go talking about things you don’t understand.

I’m begging you please PLEASE educate yourself on Chris Chan before you fight for his right to be called Trans. You are helping destroy transgender individuals reputation as a whole. DO NOT call him Trans do not call him She/Her. 

[lyss-writes]

Excelsior (Part 9)

[9/12]

Looking back on that moment later in the privacy of his therapist’s office, Tom might have said any number of things. He might have said, Are you fucking nuts? (Pejorative, and potentially a trigger.) Or, Suppose you’ll want to be the one in heels, Ginger Rogers. (Passive-aggressive, with a subtle hint of good old-fashioned homophobia baked in, for flavor.) A simple No, thanks might have sufficed here, but.

The thing was, Greg used to do this competition with Andrew every Thanksgiving weekend. Greg, whose family was a grouchy Quebeçois hermit and a conniving New York news magnate and a handful of cousins who had never once mentioned him. Andrew, whose family was English and distant in every sense of the word. And now Andrew was dead, and Tom was going to—what, he was gonna tell him No, uh-uh, absolutely fucking not, Greg like some kind of homophobic monster, like some horrible beast who would sooner piss all over a dead guy’s memory than shimmy around a hotel ballroom in Spandex pants like some low-rent Midwestern Baryshnikov with his wife’s cousin?

Shiv. Now there was an angle. Oh, to think of Shiv discovering that Tom had taken pity on her poor widowed cousin! Oh, oh, oh, how she’d fall longingly at his feet when she heard all about his selfless act of kindness. How gallant he was! How dashing!

So he agreed, but—because Tom was smart and blessed with real business acumen when it came to cutting deals and closing tricky loopholes—Greg had to find a way to deliver the note to Shiv first. Send it first-class, via carrier pigeon, in a fucking stripper-gram, for all he cared. Just get it done, nice and discreet, and then they could talk about this… ballroom dance thing.

“This is a wonderful thing you’re doing, Tom,” Dr. Parfit said, smiling at him. “A wonderful, wonderful thing.”

Oh, it was wonderful. God, he was good. In awe of his own brilliance. He could be back home with Shiv by Christmas, if he kept playing his cards right.

“Gosh, is it? I don’t know,” Tom said, simpering. “I like to think I’m just… being a friend.”

“Of course,” Dr. Parfit said, hand to his chest. “Of course you are.”

But his therapist didn’t know about the letter. He didn’t know about the sneaky little (possibly illegal) side deal he’d struck with Greg.

Logan Roy had once said in a fit of passion that Tom was fathoms beneath his daughter. He liked to think that this bit of duplicitousness would do his father-in-law proud.

————————

His parents were thrilled, predictably. Less thrilled, when they realized who his new dance partner was. It seemed like everyone knew Greg somehow: as the twenty-nine year old widower, as the resident office nympho. His mom mentioned that Greg had shopped his wrongful termination suit around to the white-shoe law firms in the Twin Cities a couple months back, including hers, but he’d decided in the end that it wasn’t worth the time and money to pursue legal action. But gee, wasn’t that a terrible tragedy to happen, to lose his husband when he was ever so young, and so in love! And wasn’t Tom such a sweetheart for taking him under his wing. And did Greg know that he was welcome to come for dinner anytime—really, anytime at all, anything for Tommy’s new friend!

“Sure,” Tom said, just to get his mom off his case. “I’ll tell him.”

But first: the letter. He disappeared into his bedroom and settled at his old desk and wrote. And damn, it was good. Really moving stuff, just super romantic. Would Nate do this for her? Would he write a bunch of purple prose and wax poetic about how lucky he was to be married to someone so extraordinary, so breathtakingly beautiful? Would he break some smug bastard’s nose for daring to touch her? And, well. Would someone like him, so concerned with the plight of the working class, blah blah blah, do what Tom was doing for Greg? What was he doing right now? Was he making a difference in Shiv’s cousin’s pathetic life? Ha! As if!

He scrawled it all out on a bit of his mom’s stationery—proof of life, etc.—and sealed it up in an envelope to give to Greg at rehearsal.

————————

“Holy shit,” Tom said. “You’re telling me that this was a garage?”

He stood in the middle of what could have been a professional dance studio, which just so happened to be in a converted four-car garage behind an old derelicted Craftsman. It was gorgeously designed. Oak floors, an entire wall of paneled mirrors, a top-grade sound system with wall-mounted subwoofers.

“Yeah,” Greg said. “I know. It was a total mess before I moved in with my mom, but she let me, like, trick the place out. Cool, right?”

“Jesus,” Tom said, running a hand along a light switch panel on the wall: turn a dial, and the lights dimmed so that a single spotlight burned overhead; flip a switch, and there was a strobe effect that rivaled the display at a West Berlin discotheque. “How opulent. This must have cost a fucking fortune.”

Greg smiled, a little sheepish. “Roy money.”

“Ah.” Tom thought privately that it was probably a bit of a waste, throwing several hundred thousand dollars at a bachelor pad slash elite dance studio in your mother’s garage, but then again, if he had his hands on even a fraction of Shiv’s inheritance, God knew what he’d do with it. He probably wouldn’t be channeling his millions into funding the cure for cancer, either. Maybe that was why she’d been so insistent on signing a prenup. “I thought you said you weren’t much of a dancer?”

“I’m not,” Greg shrugged. “But it’s therapy, and it’s fun! And the walls in here are good because they’re soundproofed, so I can play music really loud and my mom doesn’t hear it.”

“Oh. That’s… useful.”

Greg plugged his iPhone into a speaker setup and started tapping at the screen, scrolling through a Spotify playlist. “Uh-huh.”

“So when are you gonna give it to her?” Tom asked.

“What?”

He pulled the sealed envelope out of his back pocket and held it up. “The note, Greg.”

“Huh?” Greg kept looking at his phone. “Uh, I don’t know. Soon. I thought I’d, like, email it to her? Do people even use the post office anymore?”

“You’re not gonna read it,” Tom said, eyebrows cinching in the middle of his forehead. “Greg. Tell me you’re not gonna read the note. It’s private. It’s romantic.”

“Fine, like, type it up for me if you don’t want me reading it,” Greg said, his eyes still glued to the phone screen.

“Greg, you know I can’t do that. I can’t use a phone, I can’t touch a computer.”

“Yeah, yeah. Right. I forgot, the restraining order.” Greg lifted a shoulder. “I’ll scan it, or something.”

“Good, good.” Tom hummed to himself, a little unsettled by Greg’s nonchalance. There was a lot riding on the successful delivery of this note. “It’s a good letter, though. I think.”

“Mm. I bet.”

“Yeah, Shiv’s not really much of a romantic, you know. Or, uh, she’s not really, uh, comfortable showing affection. Always hated PDA. She keeps her cards pretty close to the chest.” Tom cleared his throat. “But I think she’ll see where I’m coming from.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I mentioned in there, I talked about what I’m doing for you, the dance thing, how generous it is—”

“Very.”

“—and how I’m, ah, how I’m being of service to you—”

“No, like, yeah. Absolutely.”

“—to your need.”

“Right.” Greg took the envelope from Tom with a tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Uh, should we start?”

“Oh, ah, sure,” Tom said. Somehow he’d managed to forget that dancing was part of the deal. Apparently too much to hope that Greg would forget about it too, huh. “Show me what you’ve got, Stringbean.”

They warmed up for a bit in front of the mirrors, not so much dancing as they were swaying side-by-side to the beat of whatever treacly pop song Greg had pulled up on his phone.

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind There was something so pleasant about that place

It was… fine, but not really danceable. Not in the way Tom knew how to dance, anyway. (Yes, he’d dabbled a bit in theatre, back in college. And yes, he’d taken lessons with Shiv before the wedding, a simple waltz, nothing too extravagant.) If they were gonna do this, then they needed some damn wedding music. Whitney Houston! The Spinners! Earth, Wind & Fire, for fuck’s sake. Real music.

So he cajoled Greg into switching up the playlist a little, and then they were, uh. Kind of dancing, the two of them, Tom leading with a firm hand on Greg’s hip. It was weird, dancing with someone taller than him, who also happened to be male, and gangly, and redolent of Old Spice deodorant, but he was also surprisingly… coordinated? And he didn’t seem to mind that Tom had taken the reins and was pushing him around the dancefloor like a housecleaner with a Hoover.

The level of automatic trust was unexpected. Which was nice, Tom had to admit. Weird, but nice.

“Hey, you’re, like, pretty good at this!” Greg said at one point. They were dancing to an oldie, a Sinatra song with a slower tempo, while they caught their breath.

“Don’t sound so surprised, Greg.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to dance, is all.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and spun Greg in a loose circle under his arm, and went in for a dip.

“Of course I know how to dance, Greg. Jesus,” Tom said, expertly tipping Greg. Yeah, he still had it in him. “I’m not a philistine.”

“I–I know,” Greg stammered, blushing, on his way back up.

Dancing was more of a workout than Tom remembered. They were flush and out of breath after an hour. Greg’s hair was damp, stringy with sweat, and his cheeks were pink.

He looked good, all worked up like that.

“See you tomorrow?” Greg asked when Tom went to leave.

“Yeah, sure, tomorrow,” Tom confirmed. “And, uh. Don’t forget about the letter.”

[hawkeyedflame]

also @ the illegal immigration anon... you are clearly a random stranger who does not know me, so on that front alone i don’t owe you any explanation at all. however i would like to impart some advice:

1) do not assume you have thought longer or more critically on the issue than i have. 2) do not assume that my position comes from a lack of compassion. it is very much the opposite, in fact. you are mistaking my pragmatism for coldness, which betrays that you are the one incapable of thinking clearly about the issue. 3) when discussing something like illegal immigration, in which a country does absolutely nothing to outsiders except turn them away (without harming them), do not attempt to draw comparisons to genocide or slavery. they are apples and oranges. if you can read between the lines, you will see i am expressing disapproval of my country’s current detention methods with this statement (not that i expect you to read between lines; after all, you came screaming into my inbox treating my opinions in bad faith right off the bat). 4) do not assume that, just because the solution is simple, the issue must also be simple. illegal immigration is a delicate and complicated problem with more shades of gray than any one person is capable of perceiving. between the two of us, you are the one who is making it black-and-white, ironically while accusing me of being ignorant.

and finally, since i know that you don’t know, because i don’t parade it around, my fiancée is an immigrant from a third world country. when she was a child, her mother packed up her entire life and fled from an impoverished, violent, homophobic country where women regularly go missing and men are seen as emasculated if they don’t beat and cheat on their wives. she, a single mother, immigrated legally to canada to have a chance at a safer life for her daughter. she put herself through college and got a job, speaking and teaching not one but three languages, while raising my fiancée all by herself. she is an incredibly tenacious, empowered, dedicated, and hardworking woman whom i respect deeply. i sympathize strongly with her plight and i am very thankful that she was able to pursue a better life for herself and for my partner, who, had she grown up in her birth country, would right now be married to and forced into a sexual relationship with a man against her will, raising children she never wanted. instead, because of her mother’s efforts, she is able to pursue her own dreams and marry a woman of her choosing, make her own decisions about her body, and enjoy a comfortable life. i am very grateful for this.

the issue for me is not that i don’t care about people from these places. the issue for me is not that i don’t want them to be able to be here. there are no prejudiced or racist undertones to my position at all, and i do not appreciate the implication that i have not thought about the matter compassionately, or that i don’t have objections to the status quo.

if you want to have a mature and open-minded discussion about it, devoid of all the buzzwords and goalpost-shifting you littered your original ask with, you are free to drop by my DMs. do not expect me to address this publicly again. i have good reason for not discussing political topics here anymore and i have no intentions of reversing that decision. any further anonymous asks on the subject will be deleted.

[floatingbook]

What are your thoughts on political lesbianism? I personally find it very disturbing and harmful to me as a lesbian who resides in a homophobic country with conversion therapy. I have seen mostly younger lesbian and bi radfems try and speak up against the second wavers. However much we try to explain our plight to polilez women, they fail to have empathy for us actual lesbians and often shame us for it. I do not feel any sense of solidarity with them. It bothers me because there quite a large number of them in the rf community, and insinuating that lesbians can enjoy sex with men will never in my opinion be feminist in any way.

Short answer: I hate it. Just don’t.

My thoughts on ‘political lesbianism’ are of the same kind that women hold for men who pretend that they are women. Women who call themselves ‘lesbians’ because they have decided that they want nothing to do with men and because they think that calling themselves ‘lesbians’ gives them political and oppression points — and not because they are only sexually attracted to women — trivialise and disrespect our experiences. Lesbianism is not a club, just like womanhood is not a club. ‘Political lesbianism’ is a mix of homophobia (because they don’t seem to think that ‘real’ lesbians (read ‘female homosexuals’) exist) and of misogyny (because women just can’t survive without a romantic relationship, so if you’ve sworn off men, then you need to date women, there’s no way you could be celibate).

They are dangerous to lesbians. They trivialise our experiences and our pain by insinuating that our sexuality is nothing but a choice. That we could, at any time, identify out of homophobia (because ‘sexuality is not fixed’). That, as you’ve pointed out, ‘lesbians can enjoy sex with men’, because they did at some point, and now they are ‘lesbians’. Their behaviour opens us up to increased harassment and abuse by men, to continued discussion of our right or even of our existence. It baffles me how they can point out that the current trend of men pretending to be women is nothing but misogyny and harming women, but they don’t see that they are doing the same thing to lesbians. Maybe it’s because they just don’t think we exist; so they are not really hurting anyone.

They lack the understanding that sexuality is not a choice, or that you cannot conflate something that is just a fact (like being a woman, or being a lesbian) with a political choice. For them, a lesbian is someone who’s decided to quit on men, not a female homosexual. Of course they can’t understand or empathise, because their framework is completely skewered. If a het-attracted woman wants to fight patriarchy and misogyny, wants to escape men and not date them, wants to be free from the misogynistic oppression which is overwhelmingly present in heterosexual relationships, there is a solution readily available: celibacy! No need to pretend to be attracted to women/to pretend to be solely attracted to women if you’re a heterosexual or bisexual woman who wants out of relationships with men! Words have meanings, and they are not lesbians! There’s a difference between being a lesbian and being politically active, and pretending that you are something you are not and appropriating the pain and oppression of other women.

We have nothing in common with them except being women and perhaps hating men (but some lesbians are simply indifferent to men). Given their behaviour, and how they are setting us back in terms of understanding and respect and rights, I don’t feel any sense of solidarity either. To be quite honest, I’m terribly angry about it. I expect nothing positive of men, so when encountering misogyny or lesbophobia from them, I am not really disappointed. But for that kind of hate and disrespect and trivialisation and violence (because we already have to live with so much homophobia, their behaviour is plain twisting the knife in the wound) to come from women? And women who call themselves ‘feminists’ as that? Heart-breaking. We can just never catch a break.

And I’m writing this from an ok country in terms of lesbian right and homophobia. Homophobia is (normally) punished by law here, I could marry a woman if I wanted to. I only have to face the ordinary, entrenched, traditional homophobia (read the enduring fear that I might be abused because I’m a lesbian, the persisting stereotypes about us, and the whole you’ll-burn-in-hell shtick, the invisibilisation). So I can only imagine what your distress must be seeing women, who should care about us like sisters, act so. The only responses we can have in the face of this are: stay secure in the fact that we are wonderful as we are, that there is nothing wrong about being a lesbian and that being a lesbian is nothing more (but also nothing less) than being an homosexual woman; and (not necessarily every time we come across their rhetoric, because as it should not be women’s job to make men into better people to fight misogyny, it should not be our burden to make other women see us as human beings) point out their nonsense when we see it, not necessarily for their benefit but to remind bystanders that being a lesbian is a sexuality, not a choice.

Honestly, I’m not surprised that the ‘radfem’ community is so full of them or of lesbophobic women. Despite its name, there’s a lack of will to go to the bottom of things and to examine long-held bias. No wonder that homophobia is so pervasive, as it is everywhere else. Lesbians are not the majority here. We’re often either an afterthought — because everybody knows that by not engaging in romantic relationships with men, we’ve never been subjected to misogyny — or plain hated — because we point out their blindspot when it comes to participating and propping up the current woman-hating, lesbophobic system.

On another note, I don’t think we should call it ‘political lesbianism’ or them ‘polilez’ so easily. It’s letting them off the hook when they are not lesbians and when the whole thing is not lesbianism (which is our lived experience as lesbians, our sexuality). What they are doing is appropriation of lesbian terms and erasure of our experiences. Lesbianism is a sexuality, not a political stance or a political choice.   

[gallavictorious]

what about like mickey and geneva crossing paths somehow but don't know each other (i guess before the wedding bc i would guess they would have met at that point) and idk maybe she overhears him say something homophobic and she confronts him and somehow mentions gay jesus and idk. this is 100% inspired by my desire for someone to ask mickey if he knows gay jesus just for him to respond that he knows him biblically lol

Ah, this might just be the most justified desire in the world, nonnie; I salute you! Okay, let's see –

I'm thinking Geneva and a bunch of her friends decide to stage a protest of some kind. Maybe just to raise awareness of the plight of the LGTB+ community in general, or maybe in direct reaction to a store treating gay people less than right... let's be honest, there's a lot of shit happening, so it's not like it'd be hard for them to find a just cause. Brave and resolute they arm themselves with righteousness and march out in the name of their lord and savior, Gay Jesus!

March, as it happens, straight to A Certain Mall – CAN YOU GUESS WHICH? – where A Certain Disgruntled Darling – CAN YOU GUESS WHO? – works. Now, I don't think their protest is aimed at Old Army per se but maybe it happens right outside the store just next to it, and so the Gay Jesus Group and all of their signs and whatever other props they bring kind of spill over to halfway block the entrance to Mickey's workplace?

By rights this should be a case for mall main security, which I assume exists even if I have no idea what the right word for it would be, but let's pretend that they're unsure about how to intervene in a way that doesn't get them into trouble for being homophobic. Maybe their boss is a very anxious and pollitically minded person, highly unsuited for their job? Or just secretly supports what's happening? Either way, mall security does nothing. The protest continues. There's a crowd gathering, some jeering, some curious, and some in silent support. Between that and the protest itself there's not a whole lot of people making their way into Old Army which Concerns the staff working the floor there, and so they send Mickey out to deal with it.

“What's in it for me?” Mickey probably demands, savvy to the fact that this strictly speaking isn't his job, and the fuck does he care if a few hippies stand around chanting whatever so that no one can get in to the store to bother him while he dreams of all the stuff Ian and he can do to and with one another once he gets off work?

I'm not sure what the rest of the staff promise him, but it's good enough that fine, he'll go scare these rainbow kids away. So out he stomps and he immediately identifies Geneva as the ring leader, mostly because it's her holding the megaphon and leading the chants. Our highly questionable hero walks up to her, calling: “Yo! Gonna need you to pack this shit up and get the hell out of here. You're bothering the customers.”

Mickey's scary when he wants to be, that's true, but Geneva ain't no pushoever and she's used to standing up to all sorts of bullies – plus she has the unshakeable zeal of a true believer. She's not backing down, and maybe there's a small part of Mickey that can admire her courage, but a larger part is just really fucking annoyed at these people complicating his workday with this stupid crap.

Sadly (for Mickey) Geneva doesn't give a fig for his annoyance. She stares him right in the eye and launches into a spiel about how the store they're protesting has treated the LGTB+ community in a horrible, horrible way and people need to be made aware of the fact.

Mickey's face wrinkles in disgust. “And what the fuck's whining about it gonna do, huh? Someone insult you 'cause you're gay you beat the shit outta them, or you trash their fucking store to teach them a lesson, but nobody's gonna give a damn about a few signs. Besides, those ugly things” – he indicates the signs – “are boring as hell, you ain't gonna convince people of shit with those.”

(There's an alternative version of this story, I think, wherein Mickey now leaps into a lecture of how to make proper, eye-catching signs, and maybe even leads a little practical workshop in the art of it, because we know he's got an artistic streak. But as amusing as that image is, Mickey ultimately just doesn't care enough about whatever these people are doing to bother, so in this version of the story, that just doesn't happen. Sorry, guys. I cannot be blamed for Mickey not having a whole lot of communal gay spirit.)

Geneva is maybe a little surprised by Mickey's take on the whole thing, but not impressed: “Demanding that we should be interesting to be heard is putting unjust pressure on the victim of systematic oppression and – “

The crowd has followed this entire exchange with varying degrees of cautious interest and now someone – a big, beared man, probably, and likely sporting a MAGA hat too – calls out: “Nobody cares, you fucking dyke! Go suck a dick and maybe you won't be such a bitch.”

Geneva is sadly used to these sort of slurs, and she and her group are more than prepared to defend themselves, but before anyone has a chance to do or say anything, Mickey – whose face has collapsed into irritated disgust – turns around and walks straight up to the shouty bastard and gets right in his stupid face: “Yo, maybe you wanna keep your fat mouth shut, Cheeto-packer, or I'll give you a dick to suck on and I promise you, you gonna fucking choke on it.”

The man stares. The crowd stares. Geneva and the Gay Jesus Group stares too. Mickey, he just stands right there, smiling up at the far taller man; it's that dangerous smile of his, and the beared dude suddenly shows far more sense than his hat would suggest him capable off and walks away without another word.

Unperpetubed, Mickey turns back to the protesters: “So you gonna get out of here or what?”

Geneva isn't quite sure how to respond. She doesn't know what to make of this security guard and his frankly odd and contradictory behavior. “Thank you for shutting him up,” she begins slowly and a little grudgingly. “But we can't just walk away. Gay Jesus taught us – “

“Gay Jesus?” Ah fuck, he should have fucking known, and if he finds out that Ian had anything to do with this, he's going to fucking kill him...

Geneva frowns at his tone. “You know about Gay Jesus?”

Mickey's lips twist into something that's not quite a smile. “Know him biblically,” he offers sardonically, and he takes no small amount of pleasure at the sight of Geneva at an actual loss for words. (Sure, he's only known her for two minutes, but he has this feeling that it's a very rare sight indeed.)

Then he sighs; this has gone on long enough. He picks up his phone and calls his boyfriend (who has the very good sense to pick up almost immediately): “Ay, asshole, can you tell your fucking groupies to go be pains in someone else's ass?”

“... what?”

And Mickey explains while Geneva and her squad yet again stares and then Ian talks to Geneva and of course he doesn't talk her out of protesting – because she is right to to do it, let's not forget – but in the end they reach some sort of compromise that leads to the Gay Jesus Group taking themselves and their signs elsewhere, and Mickey swaggers back into the store, equally pleased and disgruntled. The staff working the floor has followed the entire thing and now they have questions, but Mickey just gives them one forbidding glare and they very hastily return to folding clothes and whatever. The customers start walking in; peace has been restored; all is well.

(And when he comes home that night the whole incident develops into a complicated – but utterly playful, never fear – argument about who owes whom what; does Ian need to make things up to Mickey for starting the whole stupid cult in the first place, or is Mickey in Ian's debt for needing him to resolve the situation? They don't actually reach an agreement on the issue, but I think it's safe to say that both of them feel quite satisfied by the time they eventually fall asleep in each other's arms.)

[bloody-wonder]

Any time I see a post going “fuck Nora for killing Seth” and lamenting that he died before he could get “redemption” I just get so confused. Nora’s the author; she didn’t physically murder a real person, she killed off a character she created, as was her right, whose place in the story was to die, to up the stakes and push them all to work together. Narratively Seth performed his duty. And “redemption”? AftG is not a story about redemption. It’s about living. And it wasn’t Seth’s story anyway

it turns out i’ve written An Essay on seth already so here it is if you’re interested

at first reading i didn’t think much of seth at all. there’s so much exposition and information about the characters and exy that the reader needs to get from the first book in order to understand and enjoy the other two, that i was quite overwhelmed and so the only things i remembered about seth were that he was kinda dick and that he died in retaliation for riko roast #1, which made the foxes work better as a team. then, after reading all the extra info on nora’s blog and re-reading the books i took a better look at him. he is certainly interesting. first of all he’s a symbol for the ‘old foxes’, those boys who were even more problematic than him and who failed to use the chance wymack had given them to make their lives better. unlike them he persisted, but at the same time – he gave up (he tells matt as much in their dialogue about the foxes’ chances to play better and for them to go pro). this aspect of his character is very relatable, for me at least. i mean i love neil and his unshakable will to make the most of any situation as much as the next guy, but i love it exactly because this is the inspirational shit i’m not able to do irl at all (riko roasts are so satisfying precisely because this is the kind of talk we dream we’d be able to give our offenders but most of us just can’t). seth on the other hand is my day-to-day mood.

he’s pretty down to earth and holds no illusions about his possibilities – this i would say is his most basic feature and at the same time it’s his fatal flaw. for if he were able to dare to imagine a prospect of more successful life for himself, if he were able to overcome his fundamental dislike of kevin, he wouldn’t disregard the team’s decision not to live the campus in the wake of riko roast #1 and, who knows, maybe he’d live. andrew saw matt’s addiction problem and chose to help him the hard way because he was positive that matt would survive, that he’d fight because he had it in him to overcome it. he didn’t regard seth in the same way – for many reasons, primarily seth’s being an asshole to andrew’s lot – but also because seth unlike matt had already given up on himself in a sense. we don’t know if he took the drugs that killed him of his own free will or if he was forced to take them, but i think he did it himself.

i find some of his characterization in the extra material very revealing: he was okay with his teammates’ shitty behaviors towards matt and the girls, with them doing drugs, with calling nicky the f-word, but he drew the line at some guys trying to rape allison while she was drunk at a party. most importantly this latter one wasn’t his instinctive action, like any person’s trying to save a fellow human from violence, like neil’s choice to stand up for kevin against riko at kathy’s show – this was a conscious decision (he passed the guys leading allison away, he went on, but then he thought no and went back for her). seth existed in this ethical grey zone, neither here nor there. every character in aftg is morally grey as we’ve established, but seth most of all, i think. if moral integrity was a scale, he’d be right in the middle of it. his inability to move brought his downfall. he’s a symbol for the ‘old foxes’, as i’ve said, and the story is about the ‘new’ ones, so it makes perfect narrative sense that he should die to make this ‘new era’ possible (it’s no coincidence that his death marks the end of the first book, the first act of this story). evolve or perish, so to say.

in this context he’s a tragic hero. he literally says ‘my life isn’t less important than kevin’s because he’s more talented’. this can be also read as ‘my life isn’t less important because i’m a minor antagonist in someone else’s story’. which he kinda is. he’s a secondary character whose death is a plot point, he’s a symbol and he’s the agent of tragic irony – all of which seems fascinating and rich to me. which is why i’m really sad that most of the fandom discourse on seth comes down to two camps: he deserved better vs. he deserved to die because he was homophobic and anyway he isn’t that important to care for him. the latter group also tends to view his death as him being punished by the narrative for being ‘bad’, which is the shallowest reading i can imagine. this is a common plight i see among my peers: people just dividing characters into the good ones and the bad one’s and debating whether those who are ‘bad’ deserve death or not. nobody deserves anything, people just get stuff or they don’t.

as for the former group, i can understand that people emphasize with seth’s struggle and would like a happier ending for him, because that’s humane, but i disagree, because although him living on would certainly dry some readers’ tears, it would impact the story in a bad way, make it less measured, it would remove all the complexity i’ve listed above. to put it simply, not every character who deserves development, redemption and what not has to get it, there’s absolutely no such rule. people who take to flawed characters and then feel robbed of a redemption arc if there isn’t one are missing the point of characters as a category in storytelling. 

as for me, i neither know nor care what he did or did not deserve as a human (which he is not, he’s made up), but i think that as a character he couldn’t be crafted better to play his role in this story and his death, i will repeat myself, makes perfect narrative sense.

[toneelspeelster]

portraying trauma, a skam and remakes comparison

disclaimer: i’ll start this by saying this meta will be critical of the way wtfock portrayed their version of a traumatic experience (the gay bashing). if you do not want to engage with criticism on this, i’d advise you not to read. this will also discuss only a few versions (skam, druck, skam nl and wtfock) in particular because i didn’t want to make it too long and because i feel these versions deal with trauma in an interesting way. 

common reactions

in any case, i’d like to start with common reactions after experiencing a traumatic event, be it a sexual assault, emotional assault, physical assault etc.

1. anxiety and fear 2. re-experiencing of the trauma. 3. increased vigilance 4. avoidance 5. anger 6. guilt/shame 7. grief/depression 8. self image and view of the world is negative, trust is difficult. 9. difficulty with sexual relationships 10. substance abuse (i’d include negative coping mechanisms here too).  source

now, i mention this not because i think every remake hits these but rather because i want people to see what commonly happens after traumatic events to people and how wtfock in one instance (robbe/sander) misses the mark completely while in another (zoe) it actually sort of works. and how other remakes have dealt with the subject matter. 

first off: skam

to start with even’s traumatic experience and his response. i’m starting with even mostly because it’s the original series, not necessarily bc i think it’s the most elegant portrayal (bc it’s definitely not). but in essence, what it does show is the effect of a traumatic event in the long run. even’s experience at bakka, where he kissed one of his friends he had a crush on; who rejected him; even being in a manic episode; resulting in a suicide attempt and his self inforced isolation from his best friends by going to another school and ignoring their messages - it’s touched upon in his initial season but expanded in season 4. and still at least one year later, still even freezes up in fear immediately after seeing his friends. even is incredibly anxious; it’s clear he’s recalling past memories he’s been trying to avoid for forever; he feels immensely guilty (he wants to see elias, he really does, he just doesn’t know how) and even though i think even’s self image is not necessarily the result of this experience, it does have an even more negative effect on his self-image. even has difficulties liking himself, seeing worth in himself, even in season 4. after reconciling w him (however that even went we don’t know) he appears in one of their vlogs and still you can see how uncomfortable it makes him to talk about it. but, this is what it ends on: you see the strength of even reaching out to those he loves and for them being able to reach out to him too. in the end, it’s healing. it is discussed throughout the season.

 then, numbers two: druck and skam nl

i’m combining these two in one entry bc i feel like these two portrayals deal with the repercussions of traumatic experiences to the life of these two very well. 

first off, we have david, who came out as transgender at a previous school and was met with intense transphobic reactions; deadnaming, invasive personal questions and just generally awful treatment by people - it resulted in david feeling very unsafe, difficulties sleeping and hiding and running away in the hopes of avoiding these situations. it affects his world view of the world as unkind, and him forcing himself to be okay with being alone bc the only one he trusts is himself. he doesn’t let people too close (wanting to stay anonymous) and when matteo breaks up with sarah he runs bc matteo is getting too close. and then, it happens again. he’s outed on social media in his new school, having difficulties even doing his exams bc his teacher is being a transphobic dick and he’s scared of both him and the kids at school. he then, after staying with his godmother, hides himself away at an unsafe, abandoned pool and even staying there for a night. 

then, we have liv. earlier in her life, she’s implied to have had an eating disorder - a traumatic experience in itself. and although she seems very aware of her needing to be careful not to fall into those patterns again, it unfortunately does come to the front again when faced with the fact that she’s been sexually assaulted in her sleep and it’s been filmed without consent. as an eating disorder survivor, i’d say her body is already something she might have difficulties with. to combine that with sexual assault.. it results in liv isolating herself at home, resorting to doing her white(!) laundry multiple times in one week and her stress baking cookies only for her to give them to her roommates. her mum even asks her if she’s eating well - for a mother who seems emotionally and physically distant otherwise, liv must’ve not sounded well. even when she seems a little bit better, engel still comes over to check up on liv and cook for her. engel has similar ed experiences so she knows it’s not something that’s just gone one second to the next. 

these portrayals work well bc it is clear that their experiences have become a detriment to their view of the world and result in them resorting to very unhealthy coping mechanisms. they both clearly feel the loss of control, the triggering of (past) experiences; the avoidance and the isolation. liv feels immense shame, david feels immense anger and fear - they both have difficulties trusting people, even the ones they care about the most. 

but, in the end? 

david does let matteo subtly know where he is, bc he knows matteo will see him and find him. matteo calls him even out on it: you are not a damned vampire who needs to hide away, he says - something that david didn’t even see about himself until matteo told him. he finds support in matteo and all of his friends and his sister. he doesn’t need to be alone anymore. 

and liv? she tells her friends about her troubles eventually, and they support her wholeheartedly, telling her it’s not her fault and flashing boobs while doing so. liv finds the strength to confront her attacker and blackmailing him, and eventually her boyfriend tells her she needs to go to the police to report his brother. 

these are both david’s season-long storyline and liv’s multiple episode storyline (all her clips for the first week after her experience focus solely on this). it’s healing to see this happen to survivors of these experiences. 

as a ender: wtfock

i think it’s important to establish first that this is first and foremost about robbe/sander’s gay bashing. robbe and sander have been dating approximately three days when they are violently and verbally assaulted and seemingly left for dead in antwerp’s streets. the next episode makes a point of robbe and sander being hurt badly with bruises and cuts and black eyes, robbe doesn’t sleep much and is irritated quickly and sander has a very weird reaction to violence in general and doesn’t want to go to the police. later, robbe is scared that sander was put off by the idea of going to the police, that he felt forced. within that same first episode, robbe tells milan the true story and zoe a little off story and they react sympathetically, zoe even offering her doctor. robbe’s mum’s psych also refers him to a therapist and he calls her. 

but then the storyline, after episode 6? it ends? milan seems to weirdly reference it sometimes but it doesn’t come to any conclusion in the end. after reconciling sander and robbe have no trouble kissing in front of everyone. there’s no sense of robbe or sander having internalised a different world view after this experience. they even never discuss it ever again after that first week. robbe going to a therapist is not even shown or referenced at all, even with the opportunity being there with social media updates. there’s no real repercussions, except for loss of sleep and sander maybe sort of seeing it as a way of destroying something time and again but that’s more his world view bc of his mental illness i’d say. it’s a storyline for one episode, that’s it. and with how irresponsibly they portrayed it by not immediately showing them being alright or together or taken care off but waiting hours for an update, it triggered a hella lot of audience members instead. as a bisexual woman myself, i felt scared watching that. 

zoe’s storyline of having to testify even got more of an appropriate portrayal as she’s scared to testify and also feels pushed by the people who love her the most (milan and senne). her breaking up w senne feels more an actual genuine decision bc of messed up feelings about the whole situation (senne being quite... aggressive with how he approaches her about it sometimes.. it felt like he wanted it for himself mostly, not for her). her not being able to sleep and feeling exhausted, months after the actual traumatic experience happened. it has an effect on her and how she responds and how she makes decisions.

conclusion

experiences like these have repercussions. but apparently in belgium only sexual assault results in trauma. gay bashing doesn’t. it had no true purpose except to educate straight people about the plight of lgbt people being attacked violently. but, as people far more eloquent than i have said, why? homophobes will not watch this series and suddenly turn around. and the world is damned if people just don’t realise that beating up people is bad and shouldn’t happen. 

the true purpose of skam is to teach people of all kinds, and to show people of a certain minority, community or with same/different life experiences that there is hope, and a lot more to them than just what they have experienced. now even the good portrayals could have all benefitted from telling the audience that it’s good and okay to go to therapy about this... but at least they didn’t shy away from a storyline that shows how deep this runs for people. they devoted time to it.

and that’s all wtfock really needed to do if wanting to make a point by including this. they didn’t. it’s sensational fodder at best. and i think that the characters as well as the audience?

they deserved better than that. 

[askdragonagecompanions]

Could you do a companions reacting to someone insulting an elvish inquisitor because of their race, and striking them? Companions and romances???

Dorian: Dorian had grown up seeing the injustices done to elves. They were enslaved and treated like nothing more. Free elves seemed to be treated even worse and preyed upon in every instance. It sickened him. He wanted to be better than his countrymen. When he joined the inquisition he was a tad surprised to see that the Inquisitor was an elf as well. As soon as their business in Redcliff was over he made sure to let the Inquisitor know that despite where he came from he wanted to do better than his countrymen and apologized in advance for anything that would come off as an insult. He wanted the Inquisitor to correct him. He thought that the south would be better about not being racist, but he realized how naive a thought that was. The ones insulting the Inquisitor must be idiots to not realize how powerful the Inquisitor is. He starts to move closer to be there if the Inquisitor needs him but he’s not fast enough. He sees the humans strike the Inquisitor and feels a deep anger in him. He helps his friend up before tearing these idiots apart with his words and scaring them with his necromantic spells. He laughs as they call him an elf loving freak saying that it’s a compliment. As soon as they’re gone his attention is on the Inquisitor again, making sure they’re okay and offering them the best bottle of tevinter wine he can find back at Skyhold and someone to talk to. He doesn’t really know what else he can do but he wants to help. +romanced: He can see the trouble brewing in this small town. The humans keep looking at his Amatus like he’s a freak, like his countrymen would if they saw an elf walking about. It makes him bristle. The Inquisitor assured him he would be fine. Dorian trusted him and began to look at some of the wares being sold which was a mistake. He heard his love gasp in pain as he was struck. Dorian caught the tale end of the insults and rushed over, gripping his staff tight as fire began to burn in his hands. “Striking the Inquisitor? My you Southerner’s are much dumber than I thought, see now I fear I’m going to have to ensure you never do it again.” They hurt his love. They’re disgusting little men who just make his stomach boil with anger. He doesn’t care about being called an elf lover. The homophobic insults they start to sputter only make the flames burn hotter. They start running away, their pants on fire and Dorian wants to give chase. If his love stops him he won’t. He’ll take the Inquisitor home and hold him close and assure him that he’s amazing and the most wonderful elf in all the worlds. Dorian wants to be sure his Amatus knows that he’s loved and that the bruise on his face isn’t too bad. If his love doesn’t stop him he encourages the Inquisitor to hunt them down with him. It’ll be fun. Afterwards he does the same if they had not given chase. 

Solas: While Solas was wary of another elf being the Inquisitor they have started to grow on him. They still hold their Dalish beliefs and worship those… He won’t get into it. What surprises him is their feelings on spirits and the fade. In time he found himself actually enjoying their company. He knows he shouldn’t get close to them, that it’ll only end poorly for them both, but it’s hard to keep himself isolated when they keep coming to talk with him. He enjoys their chats more and more. There’s one annoying constant that didn’t seem to change since the time of the ancient elves. Humans will still be racist no matter what, even if the elf in question was probably powerful enough to cut them down with one blow. He stays back at first, not knowing if the Inquisitor wants him to step in. The remarks he’s used to of course, barely even registering that he too was insulted. Then things turned violent and he acted swiftly, freezing the humans in their place. “I would suggest you move along before you do something that will get you killed human.” His words are calm but the icy tone to his voice is was truly scares the humans. When he lets the spell go they take off running. He makes sure the Inquisitor is alright and heals up any bruise caused by those idiots. +romanced: Solas curses himself for not staying closer or stepping in sooner. How can humans be so idiotic to threaten the Inquisitor especially with him right there. As his love gets struck he again freezes the humans in place, this time it’s their entire body. “How idiotic does one have to be to think it’s fine to strike someone down just for the shape of their ears?” He turns to his love, “What would you have me do with them?” He lets the Inquisitor decide the mens fate. Either way he takes the Inquisitor home to tend to their wounds and make sure those words did not harm them. They are just insults and his love his amazing. He won’t let anyone tell them otherwise.  

Vivienne: They’re traveling through one of the cities when a group of humans approach them. Her eyes narrow and it becomes clear soon enough their intent. Oh of course there’s going to be racists in this town as well. She doesn’t know how the Inquisitor deals with the insults, but Vivienne is proud that they can keep a straight face. They don’t need these humans spreading rumors that the Inquisitor is just a “Dalish Savage” that attacked them “unprovoked”. It would be total slander, but anyone would believe it to tarnish the Inquisitor. Then things take a turn for the worst. They strike the Inquisitor and she can see the Inquisitor getting mad. She steps in front of them and give them a small smile. With barely a flick of her wrist the men are frozen in place, “Oh how dreadful. A group of uneducated fools taking out their stupidity on one of the most influential people of the inquisition. I doubt that will go over well.” She tuts. “Now Inquisitor, what should we do with them?” She gives the choice to the Inquisitor once again and will do whatever they want her too. When the situation is concluded she pulls the Inquisitor aside to make sure they’re alright. It’s important to keep up appearances yes, but one also needed to take care of themself. Back at Skyhold she gets them some nice tea and make sure they take a moment for themself. 

Varric: It’s like a bad start to every fight that gets played up for drama in novels. A group of low lifes approaching the hero of the story. They start hurling insults and he gets Bianca ready for a fight. He thought that maybe they’d have some sense and try to not really make this a fight, but that was apparently hoping for two much because the next thing he knows the Inquisitor just took a punch to the face and is spitting out blood. Varric narrow’s his eyes and lowers his crossbow. “You’ve got three seconds before I start shooting.” And he starts the countdown, aiming for the the one who punched his friend. He gives them about two seconds before he lets his first arrow go. It hits his mark and he smirks, satisfied. Now the guy’ll have an arrow in his ass for a while. “You doin okay? Don’t let em get to ya. They’ve got approximately two thirds of a brain between the lot of em.” Maker if Fenris were here those idiots would be lucky to have one walk away. 

Cole: He feels the unrest the men are causing the Inquisitor and he doesn’t like it. Their souls are full of hatred and anger. Why must they take it out on the Inquisitor. They haven’t done anything wrong and these men keep getting more and more violent. Suddenly it all explodes and the Inquisitor’s pain flares along with anger. He steps in between the men and the Inquisitor, “Your hearts are full of hatred and anger. You know nothing of the plights of the elven. You don’t care to know. You are scared and you take it out on innocent people just because you can. You will leave. The next time you do anything like this you will not be so lucky as to keep your lives do you understand?” These men most likely won’t change, but with enough fear they might stop harassing innocent people. 

Sera: Oh she’s friggin pissed. Yeah she’s dealt with it on her own. There’s shitty people everywhere but now they’re coming after her friend? Sure the Inquisitor can be a little elfy but they don’t deserve to be fucking called racist shit. She’s already getting an arrow ready and then those shites fucking deck the Inquisitor and it’s on. Streams of curse words escape her as she lets off arrow after arrow at the idiots. They’re running away, well those who can. “I can’t believe… UGH how can they be that fucking stupid! Maker look you want to go after them? I’ve got plenty of arrows.”+romanced: She’s more than pissed. Her Inky is the most amazing elf in the whole friggin world and these shit heads think they can yell at her? She throws down a jar of bees that she’s been working on all week and quickly pulls her Inky away from the fray, protecting and shielding her as Sera shoots arrows at the assholes. She aims for their asses and smirks as she gets nearly all of them. Then it’s time to make sure her inky is alright. When they get back to Skyhold there’s lots of cuddling involved and the Inquisitor assuring Sera that she’s alright. 

Blackwall: Sadly this sort of thing was all too common. Humans thought of themselves as more common or the “right ones” the “default”. Blackwall knew he was guilty of it too sometimes. Hell he’d just assumed the Inquisitor would be human as well before realizing how wrong he was to do so. He should have stepped in sooner and glares at the men in front of him, holding his sword threateningly. “I would suggest you leave before making things worse than you already have. I don’t think the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste, takes too kindly to being walloped in the face by a couple of idiots who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.” Blackwall doesn’t want to make the situation worse, but he doesn’t want these idiots to get another hit in either. +romanced: He’s pissed. He has grown to love the Inquisitor and they are the most amazing person in Thedas, the most amazing elf. They can look past his past and still find it in their hearts to forgive him, to love him and these idiots think they can just spew their shit? He punches the one who hit his love and glares down at him. “I. Suggest you Move on before I decide that you need more than a fist to teach you a lesson in manners.” He growls out. He’ll fight if he has to, but once the idiots are gone he turns to his love to make sure they’re alright. He offers to get them both drinks once they’re back at Skyhold. 

Iron Bull: All Bull has to do is walk close to the idiots and they get nervous. He holds his battle ax in hand and starts to run a finger over the blade. It’s still covered in blood as he hasn’t had a chance to clean it yet. Besides Vivienne’s not here to see it so it’s a great intimidation tactic. “I must have misheard and my eye must have seen things, or did a group of idiotic humans just insult and then assault the Inquisitor. I mean it would have to be the world’s dumbest group of men to do that in front of me.” They try to say the didn’t mean anything by it and he laughs, “Oh right, because punching someone in the face because of their ears is nothing. You have three seconds to run before I start swinging this thing. And the next time you even look at an elf wrong? I’ll find you.” He growls out. Once they’re gone he makes sure the Inquisitor is okay. If they need a moment he makes sure no one around gives them shit for it. Sometimes that shit cuts deep no matter how much you guard yourself. +romanced: Oh he’s mad. Like really mad. His Kadan doesn’t deserve this. “You know maybe you should pick on someone your own size. Why don’t you try that shit on me?” And he gives the men a dangerous smirk. He has his axe in hand and they decide it might be best to run off. Bull then turns to his Kadan and frowns, checking them for any injuries before giving them a hug. “They’re assholes Kadan. None of that shit means anything okay?” He promises. Bull keeps an eye on them and makes sure they’re not trying to keep it all inside. Back at Skyhold he lets them talk it out with him and when they’re ready they have a great night. If they don’t want it he holds them close through the night and makes sure no one wakes his Kadan up until they’re ready. The Inquisitor already works hard enough. This incident was infuriating and added stress onto an already overworked elf. 

Cassandra: “Oh for the love of-” She doesn’t understand how these people don’t recognize the fucking Herald of Andraste. It keeps happening too. People mistaking the Inquisitor for an elven servant and it’s been wearing her down more and more. She punches the one who hurt the Inquisitor and kicks him away. “I would maybe think the next time you want to open your mouth. You Disgust me. This is the Inquisitor. They are working their ass off to save the lives of everyone in Thedas and that includes yours, so don’t even think about trying that again. Leave or I will draw my blade.” She waits until they’ve left before making sure the Inquisitor isn’t injured too bad. “The next person to even start saying something like that is getting my fist.” She grumbles. +romanced: For a second she thinks she’s seeing things. Then again they haven’t really had the best of luck with idiots like this. Her eyes narrow. She knows her love can handle themself but it pisses her off so much. When the Inquisitor gets struck she rushes forward and returns the blow, glowering down at the men. “Leave. Now.” She says. They don’t move so she draws her sword and the see the Seeker symbol on her armor. It’s enough to send them packing and she turns to her love, quickly inspecting their face and giving them a small kiss. She glares when she hears Varric snickering and turns away, waiting till they’re back in the privacy of Skyhold to make sure her love is truly okay. She grumbles about racist idiots for a while until the Inquisitor convinces her to read the next chapter of Sword and Shields to them. 

Bonus:

Romanced Cullen: He enjoys his trips with his love. It’s nice to be out of Skyhold. Maker knows they both need it too. He stays in his office a bit to much and the Inquisitor is always so busy on their missions. He frowns, brows furrowing as they’re approached by a small group. Cullen puts his hand on his sword, ready for a fight. The Inquisitor is a strong elf and can take care of themself, but he isn’t going to just stay back and let them take on a hole group by themself. The insults they hurl make his lip curl into a smile and anger boil in his stomach. Before he can do anything one of them strikes out and hits his love. He draws his sword and pushes the man away from the Inquisitor. “How dare you! You know nothing about them, what they’ve gone through, what they do just to keep the world from getting taken by the breach!” He’s speaking out of anger. He can’t believe that people would do this to his love, an elf so gentle, willing to help anyone, someone who was helping him work past his lyrium addiction, someone helping him to break past what the templar training had ingrained in his mind. They helped him be better and to see idiots just tear them down… “Leave.” He growls out. When the men are gone Cullen sighs and just carefully inspects his love. “Well this… this did not go as well as I thought it would.” He murmurs. “Lets get back to Skyhold.” Once they are back they cuddle and Cullen will listen if they want to talk. 

Romanced Josephine: Sadly Josie is not surprised that it comes to this. It’s quite common that even an Elf in a powerful position will still be treated poorly by most. They were enjoying a beautiful day when the group approached. Josephine’s not really the best in a fight and she can’t help the feeling of guilt in her stomach when her love gets punched. The Inquisitor is strong though and can handle themself. They leave the area, ignoring the insults still getting hurled at them. Back at Skyhold Josie takes care of her love’s wounds and curls up with them for the night. If they want to get it off their chest she listens, but as soon as they’re asleep Josephine works tirelessly to find out who those men were so that she can destroy their social standings.

[bob-dude]

Some Orange Jerk’s Hazbin thoughts, the longer version.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I  thought the pilot was so-so. Don't hate it with a capital H but find everyone's love for this show to be... odd. Though considering the late 2000s Devinart vibe I get from the show’s art style, probably not too odd now that I think about it. So here’s my longer, more rambly, thoughts on Hazbin Hotel by some rando Orange Jerk on Tumblr.  And as always, more power to ya if you do love it, obviously.

Art direction wise, I’m just not crazy about Viv’s color choice. The red and black and pinks give a Valintine’s day meets Wonderland Queen of Hearts vibe that just doesn't personally work for me on a visual level. 

As for hell itself, I thought the background stuff like ‘Radio Hack’ and the main city being named Pentagram to be... eh? Like, that’s the kind of world-building we’re going with here? It felt less like Hell and more like a city with the trapings of Hell, at least for me. 

So, main cast, the trio as it were. Eh. Meh. Like, Charlie is a Disney Princess of Hell... even though no one treats her as one respect wise which just strikes me as odd from a background perspective. And Charlie has that standard Disney nativity going on... even though she was born and raised in Hell? Like, why bother to make your most optimistic and native character a denizen of hell if she’s not going to look or act the part personality wise?

The reason the personality thing confuses me I guess,  is that take Charlie out of Hell and we’ve seen her character a thousand times before: The bubbly sweet optimistic girl that’s been done so many times before.  Is the ‘But in Hell!’ aspect really that much of a grabber for people? Guess it is and more power to em but it just strikes me as a strange creative choice where once again a character's personality doesn’t logically flow from their background. 

Design-wise Charile is fine, red tux reminds me of the God from the 1977 Oh God movie so that gets a thumbs up in my book. Still a bit weird that a princess is wearing it but it makes sense with the Hotel set up and all so her outfit has a logic to it. 

Then we have Vaggie. So, legit question here people: If you went into the pilot blind and Angle Dust didn’t make his ‘taco’ comment would you have ANY idea that Vaggie is supposed to be Latina? Because I legitimately had no idea that was what her design was supposed to say about her as a charchter. Also didn’t really get a moth vibe from her, either if I’m honest. As for her personality, she’s the standard ‘loving supportive’ GF but with an angry side protective side for Charile... and she’s a Latinia/Latinix.  Does... Does no one else think that’s just a bit... off? Making the one clearly marked Latinia character the ‘angry girlfriend’ archetype? 

Also, that weird pink X eye patch bugged the hell out of me when I was watching. Totally petty as shit nitpick, but I had to vent on that bit. Honestly, though Vaggie is also Meh? Like, she’s in a relationship with Charlie, cool and all but she just doesn’t strike me as a terribly interesting character if I’m honest. Gives me a sort of Lisa Simpson ‘stick-in-the-mud’ vibe. 

And then we have Angle Dust. You know, in the words of Netflix’s Big Mouth, “Sassy and Gay”  isn’t a personality. Angle Dust basically has that sort of ‘2000s  Yaoi OC’ vibe and considering Vive once had a DA character sheet where she literally listed his personality is ‘Bitch’... Yeah. 

Also, as I’ve said elsewhere, Viv and crew are doing too much with this guy. So he’s an ex mobster killed by his homophobic father in the 1920s (not mentioned in the pilot but it is a pilot in all fairness so you can’t throw all your cards on the table). And he’s a Spider Demon... even though per Word of Viv how everyone’s designed in hell doesn’t have anything to do with how they died on Earth (then why deign them that way?). And he’s a porn star (being ex Mob shouldn’t he be the one paying for porn stars as a power domination sort of thing?). AND he’s going for a Beetlejuice meets CJ from Regular Show sort of design.

It just seems a bit much, imo. Like, you could make him just a gay ex mob who mostly uses a Tommy Gun and design him to fit that and leave the Spider-Demon stuff out and it becomes a lot more manageable. Something like a simplified Zoot Suit, or the like. You could keep the sexual humor but throw it a bit more 1920s slang and pop culture references for characterization/comedy purposes (Vaggie, for example, has no idea what he’s talking about most of the time). Granted, I’d personally rather they ditch the ‘animal bits slapped on’ aspects of the designs as a whole but that, as always is just me.

For the record, I’m not ‘offended’ by Angle Dust as a character concept, I’m just not wowed or impressed, ultimately.

And then we have Alastor. Now, I LOVE Alastor as a character. He’s got that classic ‘reality warper’ vibe ala Bill Cipher or Discord but with a 1920s radio show host twist that I just think is amazing and the sound distortion they added to his voice was a really cool touch on top of it all. The problem, as always, comes more with the color choice. One one of your own characters can’t take someone seriously because they look like a ‘strawberry pimp’ that might be the time to maybe go with a different color pallet? Like, idk,  maybe throw in some warm browns and brass golds to involve the 1920s radio vibe stronger? Radios of the 20s and 30s weren’t famous for being red, is what I’m getting at.

The other problem with Alastor is that he’s too strong a personality, ironically. He comes in at the tail end of the pilot and basically steals whatever interest a potential audience member (or at least fat orange jerks like me) might have had in Charlie's plight. It's like introducing Bill Cipher in the first episode of Gravity Falls. At that point whatever interest you might have had in the MC goes out the window and you think ‘what’s this dudes deal and can the show be about them instead please?’ Sure, Alastor in all of his pesudo deer (Those don’t look like horns in my opinion but whatever you say Viv) is fun to watch but he drowns out Charile through sheer force of charisma and showmen ship. Maybe the series itself will fix this but for the pilot at least I think it’s an issue.  

Also, Nifty is Nifty and she needs her own spin-off ASAP. That is all. 

Husk is literally Avocato from Final Space with wings and some gambling bits thrown in design-wise. That’s literally all I think of Husk, sorry Husk fans :(

The animation is good, but I do find it ironic that as much as people like the bitch about  SU being off model, Hazbin I thought suffered from so many different animators tackling different scenes that it just felt jarring going from one scene to the next due to the difference in style and the shifts in animation pacing. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of it looks great but that switch in animators kinda just took me out of the experience in places.  Well, that and the lack of proper scene transitions. Those are what also made the pilot feel like whiplash for me.

And now comes to Bob’s thoughts on the plot of the pilot and this is where the logical holes of the series start to get to me just a bit.

So. Charlie wants to reform the demons of hell of their sins so they can get to heaven and Hell can lower its population and angles down come down and deliver some righteous furry smiting on their asses. Okay. Stupid question but what the hell is Charlie basing this off of? I mean, was AD really THAT good an actor that Charlie thought going full steam ahead on the Hotel idea was the next reasonable step up?

 Like, the Hotel was clearly a mess and her staff is literally just her and Vaggie and MAYBe Angel Dust. Even if the episode had ended with a horde of demons lining up to get into heaven by way of cleaning up their acts there’s no way two, three people could handle that (Or, you know, six if we throw in Nifty and Husk in fairness now that I think about it).

 And that’s ultimately the thing with the pilot, the demons are assholes as you’d expect the citizens of hell to be but if they are assholes... why should we care if they get redeemed or not when not one of them is clearly interested in the idea? As cheesy as it would have been, the pilot ending with a horde of demons wanting to give this ‘become better’ thing a shot would have at least left the pilot on a better note to end on. As it is it just seems like Charlie is doomed to fail because no one but her gives a shit or belives about her idea for the Hotel and we have no proof that her idea will even work. Which just makes me wonder: Why should I care if no one else does?

Ultimately, the show has potential but the art style and aspects of the writing just don’t click for me. The show doesn’t say ‘adult’ to me so much as it does 'Hot Topic Teen trying to be adult' which works for a lot of people but for me I think Hellevua Boss as more potential concept-wise. And has scenes on Earth which do the red and black and pink and white colors of the demons a lot better visual justice contrast wise but that’s just me. 

[migleefulmoments]

CC shipping is as much proving "stans" (who they also hate and think are everyone not CC shippers, apparently) wrong and them right, as it is hating Mia. That's what empowers their bullying & helps them convince themselves they're entitled to say these horrible things. They're so full of themselves & up each others asses, that they HAVE to hysterically prove themselves "right" ad-nauseum about anything Mia related, no matter how dumb, because they HATE the thought of "stans" being right.

Yeah, this has become a huge part of who they are. They can’t go more than a post or two without claiming that they are smarter than everyone who can’t “see” what they see and that we are all “Mia Stans” who are obtuse, stupid, dumb, can’t read English, homophobic, and/or don’t care about the plight of the modern-day, formally, closeted man. 

The irony of CrissColfer is that Chris is no longer a part of their narrative.  

[hunterinabrowncoat]

Not everybody has the energy to take care of a heavily disabled child. Or the resources. Listen, speaking from experience, being disabled is fucking expensive, in time AND money, and I don't even have it that bad. Now obviously the ideal is that these children get treated just as well as neurotypical kids, but unfortunately, people are cruel and selfish, and forcing parents to keep a child they will resent and often outright abuse? (1/2)

(2/2) We are the success stories. We are the survivorship bias. We're the lucky ones. And whether they're actually born or not, the kids in worse situations are going to exist. The ones who don't get out successfully. And that's not even getting into the whole issue of wanting to remove gatekeeping on abortion and then walking it back because well obviously we should regulate THIS thing. If we want this problem solved, we don't need a clumsy bandaid, we need proper health and childcare reform.

I’m well aware that living with a disability is expensive, it’s not ideal, it’s difficult. But you know a lot of what makes it difficult is the fact that society refuses to make space for or cater to disabled people.

Of course the ideal is that disabled people can live in a world where we’re accommodated and taken care of, but the solution is to try and get rid of ableism, not disabled people. The response to disabled people’s plight shouldn’t be “well lets just stop disabled people being born” it should be “lets fucking fix our abhorrent society that treats disabled people this way”.

I am not saying that we should force people to parent disabled children. Because any parent who wants a child but isn’t ready to deal with the fact their child might be disabled, and wishes they’d never had them if they are disabled? I would never wish that kind of parent on any disabled person.

The fact that some people are selfish and cruel is the exact reason why some people should not be parents. I’m not even remotely sorry but if you aren’t prepared to raise a child who might be disabled or gay or trans or unintelligent or neurodivergent or not the perfect child you want them to be in any way, then you should not be having children. If you are not prepared to love and raise and care for children who are inconvenient or difficult or not what you expected, then you shouldn’t be raising children.

Children are not prizes, possessions, or things for you to show off. They’re not vessels for you to live out your dreams or push your expectations. They are their own person, and they deserve to be loved and cared for and nurtured, regardless of how they turn out.

Disabled people who grew up with abusive parents don’t wish they’d never been born so that their parents didn’t have to deal with such a difficult burden. They wish their parents weren’t such shitty ableists.

I have never suggested how or even if we should be regulating abortion with anti-ableist policy. All I said is that it makes you a shitty ableist person if you abort for the sole reason that the fetus is disabled. Because.... shockingly, that is horrifically ableist. (It is one thing to get an abortion because the fetus is dying or will not survive outside the womb - that is a discussion about euthanasia, but getting an abortion because you just don’t want to deal with or raise a disabled kid is another thing entirely).

Let’s say we find this magical piece of DNA that supposedly makes people born gay. So now we can tell whether fetuses are likely to be gay when they’re older. And you wouldn’t want to force a gay child to grow up in a homophobic abusive household would you? So it’s better that they’re aborted. And that’s not homophobic, that’s not eugenics, because it’s the woman’s choice and if she doesn’t want to have a gay child, that’s her call. It’s a pretty big burden, afterall, raising a gay kid in this really homophobic society we live in. And when we figure out how to detect trans people while they’re still fetuses, aborting them will be fine too, because the HRT and sex reassignment surgeries they’re going to want later in life are really expensive, and not everyone has that kind of money!

That is what you’re saying. Only you’re saying it about disabled people.

I’d hardly say that calling out the horrific ableism that is apparently just fine in the pro-choice community, is a ‘clumsy band-aid’. Of course we need childcare reform. Of course we need to fight for reproductive rights. Of course we need childcare reform and a society that supports parents as much as they need. But those things to do not have to come at the cost of just allowing eugenics to pass through like it’s no big deal!

[yankeecountess]

So I just saw one of the grossest ads on You Tube (you know, those ads that proceed the video) and I was too dumbfounded by it to hit the “skip” button, although a part of me greatly wishes I had. It’s for this conservative propaganda think-tank that pretends its an educational resource (sure it is, for fascism) called “Prager U” and they had this video (with a woman narrating it, so OF COURSE it can’t be sexist) talking about the plight of boys in the public school system, how they are being “held back” because our modern education system only cares about girls and their academic needs, to which I started to gag (yeah, they care soooooo much for the academic needs of girls, who they send home if they dare show some collarbone).

Look, I’m not saying that boys don’t struggle with school. I actually do believe that boys struggle in academics to a point, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the fault of the public school system. I think that’s the fault of “masculine over-sensitivity” in our society, who don’t put a lot of emphasis on education. I mean, it’s the Republican Party who keeps gutting education and public schools, so clearly general education is not on their priority list. But also, society encourages boys to be more involved in sports and extracurricular activities that has very little academic emphasis. I mean, I remember when I was in school (granted, it was in the 90′s, but I don’t think time has changed *that* much) when the boys who were involved in the more “academic clubs” at school, were teased mercilessly by other boys, and practically every film/TV portrayal of boys involved with such things, have fathers who act “ashamed” and “embarrassed” that their son would rather be a mathlete than go out for the football team, even going so far as to use homophobic slurs as a means to shame them into being “more masculine”.  So no, this is NOT the fault of feminism, despite what this propaganda machine wants you to think. If anything, feminism is trying to say that it’s perfectly fine for boys to seek academic/educational activities just as it’s perfectly fine for girls who want to play sports.

Ugh, and they even had this woman narrator say that “we need to do away with Zero Tolerance” and more or less just let “boys be boys”.  Ok lady, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you’re simply an actress who was hired to spew this bullshit (although I fear you probably do believe some of it) but seriously...the whole point for “zero tolerance” has NOTHING to do with saying that “boys can’t play at recess” or even that boys can’t roughhouse--and for the record, girls roughhouse every bit as much as boys do. But the main reason for “Zero Tolerance policies” (and quite frankly, not enough places have them, in my opinion) was to try and stop bullying from turning into something deadly--and that goes for both genders. To say that Zero Tolerance is stopping boys from being their “true selves” is utter bullshit.  What you’re really complaining about here is that you can’t bully that one kid for how they look, be it their weight, hair, skin color, religious identity, or sexual orientation, or that you can’t snap a girl’s bra without getting into trouble. WE WOULDN’T NEED ZERO TOLERANCE IF YOU JUST TOLD YOUR KIDS TO TREAT OTHERS WITH RESPECT AND BE FRICKIN’ POLITE. Oh, and the “example” this woman gave about the unfairness of a boy being suspended from school was that he “ate around the edges of a pop tart until it resembled a gun and pretended to shoot others with it”. Um, HELLO??? With sadly all the school shootings we’ve had over the past few decades, I think something like that deserves zero tolerance.

The only thing I agreed with in this entire video was something the woman said early on, about how we need to encourage boys to read more.

Yes, absolutely. Girls are often encouraged to read more than boys, in fact when it comes to fiction for teens, a majority of it is marketed/geared towards female readers than male. But the market responds to the need, therefore the way to get more books written/geared for a general young male audience is to encourage boys to read! Although it’s not like these don’t already exist, meaning books geared for boys (and I’m using a “generalization” here) but if we don’t encourage/emphasize the importance of reading for boys, then boys aren’t going to read...and will fall behind in academics. But again, the public school system is not the enemy.  Make education a priority--TRULY a priority with boys, get them involved with reading and STOP referring to certain activities/hobbies as “soft”. If a boy wants to cook, sew, do theater, play an instrument, get involved in the arts, don’t treat that as something to be ashamed of! And STOP the whole “boys will be boys” mentality. That’s just an excuse for failing to teach good manners, respect, and basic human decency.

And stop with the whole idea that “girls have it easy” when they don’t. More often girls aren’t called upon when they raise their hand, aren’t taken seriously when it comes to interests in science, math, and technology, and 9 times out of 10, it’s girls who suffer from a “zero tolerance policy” in terms of what they wear or how they styled their hair or some other sexist crap, and are pulled out of class and sent home for failing to cover-up whatever bit of skin they dared to show (or accidentally showed, as is often the case) and the boys “couldn’t concentrate”. Yeah, girls have it sooooooo easy in school and never struggle at all. BULL. SHIT.

Like I said, this thing is a conservative propaganda think-tank that tries to make itself seem “legit” because they cleverly have people of color spewing things about how affirmative action is racist to whites, and women talking about the plights of men and their lack of rights in this femninazi world. Do not buy their bullshit, figuratively or literally.

[100-becs]

A Suffocated Soul

TW//Transphobia, homophobic and transphobic slurs, mentions of gore, and mentions of sxxcxde

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Who am I?

I’m an 18 year old disgrace to my family who sees her bearded face as an ailment, who's deep voice, a bass, makes me wish words would fail me, a spiraling mess who's fake masculinity trails me. A girl with a liar's face. A girl who's failing. But still I tire, inside me’s a fire with dwindling kindling, running down to the wire. A soul suffocated and strangled whose saving face is a shell of former self, self hatred shooting through her, forever forced to fester in her failings, sequestered into an inescapable quagmire.

And I said nothing when you told me that my body is not my choice

When I’ve found a way, my voice, my song, it brings me euphoria until you come along, lecturing me that how I'm living is wrong, and how being myself would make me not belong. Relentless ridicule of how my hair is too long, that there’s no going back if I alter my bod. That I can’t be a girl, I watch football all day long. It takes me everything not to pack up and say “so long”. Saying it’ll be my fault if someone kills me, it kills me. Of living, I’m not worthy, as I’m too far along a man to be girly. Oh, gosh, I’m getting wordy. I didn’t realize myself early. The downward spiral into nothingness around me is swirling, as I try to clean up my mess you made for me. Can’t you see I’m distressed? I’m worth less than worthless. Holy fuck, give me a rest. If a rest is too much leniency, go ahead and arrest me. It's torture to continue when my own mother detests me

I said nothing when you went on your tirades against who I am

I’m a girl who can’t cry, though I’m red in the eye. Knuckles bloodied with mirror shards surrounding her. In each is a reflection of a monster. A man who did others wrong and strung people along for his own amusement. Seeping out my hand is where everything I had to prove went. I need to vent. I’m fucking spent. I broke when others bent. Off the ledge, my sanity was sent, the life I’ve dreamt was met with dissent, but though inside, 100 times i’ve wept, I still can’t cry. And despite my eyes and thighs being red with this dye, I lie and say i’m fine. You tell me I'm wired, but my wires are fried and my identity you’ve vilified, and deep inside, I want to die. There's not a day that goes by where I dont think "maybe if I just try, I can act like everything's okay as a guy and i wont have to live with being the type of person you told me you loved but really you're ashamed of."

I said nothing when you told me I’m a man

I’m the antithesis of normality. Fuck the formalities. Send me to my grave at the edge of reality, for the way I exist, you tell me it’s confounding. You feed me to wolves who are hungry and growling. I raise my bloodied fists to fight back, but they all overpower me. The turmoil I face is what has the wolves howling. A little girl whose cries will never come out of me. A little girl named Jocelyn. The name that should never be uttered around you. What you call a trend is why my head's always pounding. The struggle I face every day is astounding. And it stacks up and stacks up and it all amounts to me running numbers through my head, 41 percent. I dont care what you meant because it's the message you sent that I am not welcome in this world being who I am, lest I be happy in my body that others may dissent, and that if my vessel meets an untimely end, the fault is on me, not how wrong society went

I said nothing when you told me it would be on me if someone kills me for wearing a dress

"It's just a trend. I thought I was a lesbian when i was a teenager" is the mantra you constantly use to defend your position. The trans people you mention, you say just want attention, and list ways they're not menschen, in hopes that I stop pretending. I'm not pretending! Apprehending my emotions flowing like the tides of the ocean makes me feel atrocious. The pain that shoots through my skin, skin that imprisons my livelihood within, within my self is a soul begging to be let out, out of my mouth shoots "Why can't I just be fucking normal?!" with my deep voice killing me, "methinks the trxnny doth protest too much" is the response I receive, leaves who I am to die in the darkness, darkness forever blotting out the sun. I'm not your son! I'd gladly run from this thing that I was, reach for my heart instead of a gun that threatens to send this whole operation asunder, and become a being worthy of love and of wonder, not for fun or because I've grown dumber, but because I would never willingly take the brunt of the hell that I live through daily to taste the unimportant heaven of a shred of attention. 

I said nothing when you told me I was following trends

You paint me as a terrible liar, but I was able to convince you that I was a man. I played along with my assigned gender roles when you watched over me, clueless of 10 year old me's crying sleepless nights, or 13 year old me's internal fights, how everything was eating away at me like termites. I know my rights and your words aren't right. I constantly escape to digital landscapes because however it infuriates me wont be a scrape against who I am, and will not cripple my mental state. 

I said nothing when you told me to change my preferred name everywhere.

The 19 years i've spent on this earth, what were they worth? From my birth to the present day, I've pissed my entire life away because I allowed my mother to convince me that she knows more about me than I do about me. That there was no overcoming my greatest obstacle because she birthed me. You've stripped my individuality away from me as if I had just given it away to you. You fed me ideas that I thought nothing of because I focused too hard on the fact that the figure that's supposed to be a universal security blanket won't accept me. And those ideas you spoon-fed to me was the waste of self-doubt I couldn't flush out. My bloody knuckles and shattered mirrors are products of your rhetoric. And as I ball my fist up one last time, bawling my eyes out on the inside, ready to smash the final pane, just end the pain as I go insane…

Why cant I do it?…

My reflection smiles back and shows affection. A disheveled, bloody, broken complexion, but oddly beautiful, a captivating introspection. Completely removed from your hateful gobbledygook, I rub my eyes to take a second look. She's smiling, like she can read me like a book. My ethereal self is happy, while I'm sitting here, still shook. A queer, trans, lesbian mess, but purely my mess. none caused by outside distress, a girl who is always her best and strives for nothing less, Jocelyn. October 9th, 2018 was the first time I saw this wonder, and she helped me see the meaning in my night-long internal plights, my shattered psyche from fights, blights I've brought on my body that brought me ungodly dysphoria and triggered upon me out of body memories because the last body I would possibly want for me is that of a man. She makes me look back on my past and revere it. Im smiling ear to ear because I know although I may fear and people may leer, as long as I'm here, I know I'm queer, I'm here, I'm queer, I'm here, I'm her.

I said nothing when you threatened to send me to a psych ward.

Coming to terms with toxicity can be a tumultuous task that tries to turn you against those you think you love. But that isnt the case here. I know you hate me, but love the boy you think I am. And any attempt I make to let Jocelyn make my life any amount more manageable is met with fury, the situation gets blurry, I constantly worry, like im being buried alive. I strive to be able to survive and thrive because you taught me that I shouldn't let anyone get in the way of me living my life. Please take this knife away from my sight as I contemplate this strife. My existence does not make things worsen, I am my own person!

I said nothing when you lied to me about your care for the LGBTQ+ community

The toxicity of your words only runs skin deep. But this toxic testosterone that courses through my every capillary and produced by my bones makes me scream bloody mary. My hearing is plagued with "fxggot", "trxp", and "trxnny", and if I outwardly say "Hi, I'm transgender", the further attacks on me would be many. But their blaring cacophony is nothing comparing to my body changing to be something that pains me. Waking up to being physically male is just a constant reminder of someone I'm not, an unsettling notification of times best forgot, and of a person who's better off being left to rot. I've screamed, I've shouted, I've sulked, and I've fought. Every day in this body is another day lost, never to be found until I end up deceased on the ground, iced over with the frost, or until this testosterone is replaced with estrogen. Estrogen, the chemical that will make me detest my body much less, make me my best self, but without it i don't know how long until im laid to rest.

Beneath me are the eggshells I've broken because you told me to walk on them. You signed and sealed my name in blood as the son you always loved. I am no husband, brother, father, son. I sold my individuality for safety untold, but as i grew older, the world around me grew colder, the pain inside I couldn't shoulder. My response was to be bolder, but at some point I just rolled over wishing everything would be over because the people i expected to fight alongside me shoved a dagger in my back because I dared to be too authentic to conform to who you thought I was, leaving me to die on the battlefield against my own dysphoria, signing and sealing my deadname in blood, Josh. But as my body grows cold as the blood will roll down my gouged armes from the broken mirrors and the dagger you shoved in my back as a hold. I take hold of the dagger and rip it out of my spine, I won't go down this time. Though it wont all be fine I will continue my climb. I'll push on through the muck and the grime. I'll rise to the top to give my eyes a sight to behold. You say I've lost my mind, I've just gained control. No, today will not be the day that I fold, I'll make sure my story will not go untold, I refuse to be melted and put into a mold, and I can do it all if I could just be bold!

I wont stay silent anymore.

Who am I?

I'm Jocelyn

Perfectly imperfect