#both kinds of art block are kicking me and throwing me in a river

[kanonbea]

its just a matter of preference

[capricornus-rex]

A Test of Wills (5)

Requested by Anon. Prompt:

What about...Cal x reader fic, getting stuck on Jakku because the Mantis needs repairs?

Cal Kestis x Reader

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | Masterlist

5 of ?

You kissed Cal on the forehead and you called for Rani to take him out to the ring. The spectators gave way as you gently pushed Cal out of the ring and handed him over to Rani.

“Mind his head,” you stammered.

“I got him, I got him,” Rani said as she caught the wounded boy in her arms. She wrung his arm around her shoulders and supported his back with her other hand.

Rani then looked to seeing you in the ring again. She may have spoken highly of you back at the cantina, but tonight, immense concern outweighed her high regard for your prowess.

“What are you going to do, [y/n]?” her voice was shaky, she shuddered at the idea.

“What else?”

“[Y/N], NO!!”

Rani’s call fell to deaf ears. Her voice soon drowned in a sea of barbaric cheers and whoops. It was all that you could hear until the silence faded in.

“Let me take a shot on Four Eyes over there!” you roared.

“Well now, this is an interesting turn of events!”

The Aqualish chortled, underestimating your threat. He took pride in being a defending champion after taking down Cal.

Unkar chuckled, he repeated the rules for you—the same set of rules that he announced when it was Cal in the ring. In the midst of the excitement, you slipped on Cal’s climbing claws—you’ve swiped them off his hands when he was being taken away by Rani.

Your opponent began in the offense, brute strength gravitating to his fist; at the last second, you evaded it with lightning speed, followed by a kick to stagger him and the claws slashed on its exposed chunk for a neck the moment he turned to face you.

“Come on, you scummy lug!” you taunted.

“Go get ‘im, [y/n]!” Rani cheered from the crowd whilst still supporting an unconscious Cal.

He gurgled—possibly saying something to you in his native language—and then charged at you in a bear-hug position, you dodged it by a hair. You rolled over his back while he was still crouched and uppercut his side with the claw. You were suddenly a fan favorite. Each blow from you was repaid with a cheer from the crowd—and the hollering got louder and louder each time you overwhelm the opponent.

The thrill was nostalgic. Every sensation back in that fighting ring came rushing into you like an untamed river current. Your vision narrowed, your periphery was a shimmering blur. He was still on his toes, he still has some life left in him.

But not for long. You thought.

The Aqualish’s hand was covered in blood, he dismissed it as a scratch. You’ve made him angry, though. You let him lunge at you, to which you dodge and then quickly follow up with a punch or a kick. He afforded a few punches on you but you didn’t allow yourself to falter and be overtaken by this creature.

The precise calculation of your moves was your advantage—mixing both Jedi arts and common hand-to-hand combat skills—compared to the opponent’s cantina brawl moves.

Survive—in a way you know how!

A part of you gave a little push until it came to shove. That wild current in your streams flowed again. Energy courses through you—unsure whether it was the Force or your raw willpower—and guided you to every dodge, kick, and punch.

Eventually, you’ve overwhelmed the Aqualish with the swiftness of your moves. He couldn’t keep up to your agile attacks. Every time he would turn to one side to hit you, you’ve already switched and dodged to the other.

There was a graceful viciousness about your form and fighting style. Your evasive maneuvers adopted the gracefulness of the Jedi combative arts, while your offensive attacks were that of a cantina brawler’s caliber.

“Come on! I thought you were a champion!?”

Aqualish gurgled again, the appendage where his mouth should be began to bleed, but he doesn’t seem to be backing down at any moment. The right side of your lip curled upward, shooting a smug face at him, taunting him. It was a common strategy: taunt the enemy until they’ve become reckless enough to lower or disregard their defenses. Surely, a few from the crowd have seen it coming—but perhaps they were too ignorant and blinded by the bloody glory of the ring.

Your opponent managed to throw a series of punches—that you either successfully blocked or dodged—and when his pattern finished, it was your turn to throw some of yours. Your target was his face and neck, with the climbing claws there was sure to be a lot of damage and a considerable amount of blood.

A punch, a jab, and then with a sweeping kick you’ve got your target to the floor.

“This! Is! For! Cal!” you said with each blow you landed.

The thought of ripping his face open was satisfying, but you weren’t that person anymore. You know you’ve won. And you know when to stop.

You pulled away from the Aqualish, cuts were all over his face and mouth appendage; the crowd was jeering at him—at least the ones that didn’t root for him—mockingly tapping the floor as if they were the referee doing the counting. One of Unkar’s thugs had that task. Ten counts later, the bell rang repeatedly—it was almost just as deafening as the crowd’s howls and whooping.

“Looks like scrapper girl is tonight’s star of the show!” Unkar announced.

The crowd showered you in cheers and applause. You did not bask in it, your eyes surveyed for the sight of Cal and Rani in the sea of spectators. Rani could see that your breathing was labored, you were exhausted, your knees could barely hold your weight but you fought it, it was only a matter of time for you to feel your body aching all over—but you couldn’t fall, not until you name your boon.

The applause finally died down. On the top of your lungs, with what little energy you have left in you, you declared your prize.

“Parts and fuel for my ship—that is my boon!”

Unkar Plutt ordered his men to pull out the unconscious Aqualish from the ring. Once the knocked out opponent was out of sight, the Blobfish entered the ring himself—he had to take a special set of small stairs and unlatch one end of the rope so he could enter without getting his body mass stuck between the clotheslines.

“What kind of parts?”

“Hyperspace compressor, power cells, and fifteen tanks of fuel for an S-161 Stinger XL. I name my price: half of its actual grand total.”

“And where did you manage to get yourself a luxury yacht, girlie?”

“And since when did you add “20 Questions” into your program flow?”

A low series of “ooh” rang amongst the crowd. Unkar was impressed with your bark and your bite; he may not have feared you, but you somehow got his respect, as well as the crowd’s.

Without any pressing questions, Unkar ordered his thugs to gather the parts that you asked.

“I want them ready by tomorrow morning,” you demanded.

Exploiting this somewhat flawed system, you took advantage of the boon system in a way that will get you what you needed for less. A part of you felt heavy like an anchor. It was the lingering thought that you were responsible for what happened to Cal. Now, you’re uncertain if what you did was justice—but then again, what is justice in an unforgiving world such as this?

[testifytime]

do everything for me, you already know about me BUT: im described as "chaotic faggot" by my friends, i have no filter, I can switch from being outgoing to really nervous in a second, i like drawing, dice, and divinitation. i hoard candles and incense, and i like paintball.

- A Pokemon team/type theme (+ fun facts abt your team!)

Your team is full of Poison types! They’re used the most often for rascly lil fucker trainers, so, it fits :3c

Your signature Pokemon is Toxtricity, though your team also consists of Whirlipede, Haunter, Gloom, Toxicroak, and Crobat!

Fun facts!

Your Toxtricity was sent to you by your juggabro. In his words, it’s a “cool Pokemon to fit your aesthetic but keep you on track”. It can be pretty overprotective, but sometimes it turns a blind eye to the more chaotic things you do. 

Your Whirlipede is just an entire baby. Even though it’s got toxic spikes on its shell that COULD kill you, it’s pretty much a lapbug. You just have to try and remind it to be careful before it goes in for snuggles. 

Your Haunter and Gloom actually kind of hate each other! Having them out at the same time often ends up with you either getting paralysed or put to sleep. They’re super sweet when they’re apart, though, and both LOVE scritches. 

Toxicroak used to be really loveydovey when it was a Croagunk, but now it acts like it’s too cool for school. It’s really not. If you pay more attention to another Pokemon it WILL jab you in the stomach. And then it’ll pretend like it totally wasn’t even because it was jealous. 

Your Crobat is the sweetest of the bunch!! It likes to collect (read: steal) things for you that it thinks you’ll like, and is almost always attached to your back out of its Pokeball. Sometimes without you wanting it to be. It can be a bit of a pain, sometimes. 

- Bloodcaste/lusus/chumhandle as if you were a Homestuck troll (+lore)

You’re a purpleblood with a seaserpent lusus! Your chumhandle is acquiredTalisman. 

You live with your lusus in a hive that boarders where the jungle forest ends and the beach begins. It’s a pretty popular spot for violetbloods, admittedly, but it’s also the only place your giantass Seaserpentdad can actually fit; the mouth of the river is deep and leads directly out into the ocean, where he spends most of his time. The hive itself is pretty cluttered - because man, you suck at keeping shit tidy - and filled to the brim with your dice collections, your religious paraphenalia, and all the random junk you’ve stolen (of which there is a lot). 

You have a few interests, of which the main is your religion. You’re a diviner of sorts, oddly sought out by your fellow purplebloods to tell them what their purpose is in life as stated by the Great Mirthful Messiahs. You’re not entirely sure that they really do speak through you, but your readings are scary-accurate, and not only does it mean that you’ve made more friends, but you’ve made a fuck tonne of money, too. You’re more fond of practicing with your friends, or on your own, sneaking what you can beneath your lusus’ snout; so far, he hasn’t seemed to question the candle collection you have, or the alter with the Faygo bottlecaps, or the cards, or pendulum made from a grubbone you got from one of your customers. Actually, he hasn’t noticed much of anything? You’re hesitant to go TOO far, but you do like pushing at what you can get away with every now and then. 

On top of that, you love to draw - mostly as a form of worship, but also just for fun with your juggabros. You send drawings back and forth, even though you’ve never been able to meet them, and it’s pretty fun! You hope one day that you can get them to your favourite hangout spot to cause a little chaos - which usually means trashing the violetbloods’ rich boy shit and stealing things you know they’re too proud to tattle about. You don’t... always remember doing those things? But you definitely remember the amount of violetbloods that give you nasty glares whenever you walk past. It’s okay, though. You have a rifle and you’re not afraid to use it.

Beyond that, though, you’re... kind of lonely. There’s nobody that you really consider a friend around you, and when your friends do visit you, it’s only every few months. Having all those customers and the nasty violetbloods hanging around is great, sure, but... sometimes you wish you could move your hive closer inland to be near your juggabros. You could, you guess. But then where would your lusus go?

Your lusus is kind of ridiculously huge. You really couldn’t miss him even on the horizon, his giant form standing stark against the two moons. Not that he spends a whole lot of time above the water, though. He pretty much only comes back to get fed and throw a fit if he sees any of your purpleblood customers hanging around. 

- Symbol/guardian/chumhandle as if you were a Homestuck kid (+lore)

Your symbol is a and your guardian is your big bro! Your chumhandle is augmentedTemptation.

You and your older bro kick it in a sweet lil bottom-floor apartment. It’s kinda dingy, kinda shitty, but it’s the best he can afford and you’re not really one to complain when you know how hard he works just to keep the leaky roof over your head. It’s got everything you want out of a home, anyway; separate bedrooms, tiny bathroom, sweet hangout pad that doubles as a kitchen (which you’ve got a curtain draped over so that it looks like they’re two rooms) - it’s pretty neat. It’s also got a fire escape out the back and easy access to the lobby doors that’re easy to pick, so you figure it’s kinda home. 

You absolutely fucking love to play paintball. You’ve got a painball gun that you maybe stole from the store once, and a couple pellets you’ve been buying for cheap online whenever you have the money. You don’t... actually have anyone to play with, but hey, cop cars make a great target. It feeds into your general need for chaos, which isn’t limited to - but has involved - petty theft, breaking into cars, and spray painting defametory phrases against racists and homophobes on billboards. You’ve never actually been caught. Okay, you got caught once, but you’re really good at crying. You’re pretty sure your bro doesn’t know about that.

You like to practice witchy shit in your spare time. You’ve got altars set up for your patrons, and a candle collection that you really don’t know that you’re ever gonna burn through. Plus, incense! Your bro kind of hates the smell, but you just crack open a window and it’s like he doesn’t even know. You’ve also got a pretty fair collection of crystals, but that’s more because people just keep giving them to you? It’s wild what they’ve thought were just normal rocks, and you’re pretty sure some of your collection could sell for a pretty buck, but they make way better offerings. 

Of course, you also love to talk to your friends online. You have a bunch! You’re pretty easy to get on with, you think, so you end up just kinda collecting people into one giant group of friends that never stops growing. You share art, play games, chat, make them worried sick when you do dumb shit - it’s great. 

Sometimes at dusk you like to go up to the roof of the apartment block you and your bro live in and stand right on the edge. It’s so high up you can see around for miles, and everything below you looks like a speck of dust beneath your feet. The stars twinkle above you in the darkening sky, just barely visible, and you think, every now and then, that you are very, very small. 

- A FNAF animatronic design and name

You’re a broken down animatronic, probably one of the earliest of your kind. Maybe even a prototype? Nobody really remembers anymore. You’ve just kind of always been there, at the back of the store, half a body and more coherent than people expect you to be, but never fully quite there. Your head lulls back and forth, your arms moving sluggishly, and in order to get around, you drag yourself across the floor.

You can speak, but not by much. It’s glitchy and switched out more often than not, absolutely terrifying to hear in the dark - but you’re a pretty sweet soul, all things considered. The few who’ve been brave enough to slip back behind the old, abandoned doors, past the cobwebs and through the narrow halls, who haven’t run at the first sight of you, tell tales of a sweet carcass who seemed more scared of being found than anything else. 

There are a couple kids who routinely come back to visit you. They like to give you things they’ve found outside the pizzaria, mostly coins and old dice and things that smell sweet to try and cover up how musty you are. 

You’ve never hurt a soul the entire time you’ve been there, but your reputation has been built on the whispers of kids who’ve seen the rotting maw of your muzzle, the glint of your endoskeleton and the shine of your eyes in the dark. They call you Thing - as if giving you a name will make you come to life. 

The ones that know you better call you Peppi. 

- A BNHA Quirk and hero title

Your Quirk is Corroding Touch. Despite its name, and how terrifying it sounds, your quirk is pretty simple! Anything you touch wastes away, and you can control how far along its own personal timeline it decays through. For instance, you could touch a flower and have it start wilting, and stop there on its timeline - or you could have it waste away to a point that it decays completely and turns to mush. 

The drawback here is that what you’re doing is essentially speeding up a natural process. Things that don’t waste away without outside forces - such as rocks through erosion - won’t be affected by your quirk. Things that live very long lives before decaying - such as turtles - will take up a lot more of your time to speed them through their natural timeline. Finally, you can’t reverse what you’ve done. Once you’ve sped it through its natural timeline, there’s no going back; another quirk will have to undo the effects.

Of course, it also means that if you plant an oak seed, instead of waiting hundreds of years for it to grow into an oak tree, you can just use your quirk to speed up the process. So it’s a good-bad thing!

Your hero title is the Wasteful Hero: Corrosion. You’re a sort of last-resort hero, and you don’t like being in the limelight. Your quirk is dangerous if not handled correctly, so you work on a team with another hero who has a counter-effective quirk to yours (essentially Hyper Growth!). A lot of civillians are scared of you, but that’s okay. You know that what you do is important, and that your ranking doesn’t matter so long as you’re saving lives.

You are a little bitter, though, that your partner is several ranks ahead of you.

[empoweringworldofmpj]

Episode Transcript:

(provided by: http://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/episode-11-johnson-wicker/)

I’m Eric Marcus.  Welcome to the second season of Making Gay History.

In this episode you’ll meet two very different heroes of the LGBTQ civil rights movement.  People I’d never expected to find in the same room.  

Beginning in the early 1960s, Randy Wicker promoted the then radical idea that homosexuals should be accepted because they were nice middle class people. Just like everyone else. Randy led the first public protest against anti-gay discrimination in 1964 dressed in a coat and tie.  

Marsha P. Johnson was Randy’s public relations nightmare—a self-described drag queen hustler with a drug problem and mental health issues best known for her role in the 1969 Stonewall uprising.  

My plan was to interview Randy at his Art Deco lamp shop just a few blocks west of the Stonewall Inn. But Randy had other ideas. He suggested we go to his place across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, where I could talk with Marsha, as well. I had no idea they were roommates.  

When we get to Randy’s modest apartment, Marsha’s in the kitchen making dinner. After a few minutes, she walks into the living room. She drapes herself in a chair like a cat in slow motion and absentmindedly starts sorting through her shoulder bag. A frosted wig comes to the surface and then disappears and then comes back to the surface again.  

Before I can get the wires to the lapel mics untangled, Randy is talking a mile a minute. He’s throwing off so much nervous energy that I wish to myself they’d offered me something stronger to drink than water.  

I ask them both to sit still for a second so I can clip the mics to their collars. I go back to my chair, reach across to the cocktail table to my tape recorder, and press record.

———

Randy:  Marsha’s the only one, she’s the only one everyone agrees was at the Stonewall riots. There were a lot of other people, but everyone agrees that Marsha was there, so…

Marsha:  The way I winded up being at Stonewall that night, I was having a party uptown. And we were all out there and Miss Sylvia Rivera and them were over in the park having a cocktail.

I was uptown and didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire.  And it was a raid already. The riots had already started.  And they said the police went in there and set the place on fire.  They said the police set it on fire because they originally wanted the Stonewall to close, so they had several raids.  And there was this, uh, Tiffany and, oh, this other drag queen that used to work there in the coat check room and then they had all these bartenders.  And the night before the Stonewall riots started, before they closed the bar, we were all there and we all had to line up against the wall and they was all searching us.

Eric:  The police were?

Marsha:  Yeah, they searched every single body that came there.  Because, uh, the place was supposed to be closed, and they opened anyway. ‘Cause every time the police came, what they would do, they would take the money from the coat check room and take the money from the bar.  So if they heard the police were coming, they would take all the money and hide it up under the bar in these boxes, out of the register.  And, you know, and sometimes they would hide like under the floor or something?  So when the police got in all they got was the bartender’s tips.

Eric:  Who went to the Stonewall?

Marsha:  Well, uh, at first it was just a gay men’s bar.  And they didn’t allow no, uh, women in.  And then they started allowing women in.  And then they let the drag queens in.  I was one of the first drag queens to go to that place.  ‘Cause when we first heard about this…  and then they had these drag queens workin’ there.  They didn’t never arrested anybody at the Stonewall.  All they did was line us up and tell us to get out.

Randy:  Were you one of those that got in the chorus lines and kicked their heels up at the police, like, like Ziegfeld Folly girls or Rockettes?

Marsha:  Oh, no.  No, we were too busy throwing over cars and screaming in the middle of the street, ‘cause we were so upset ‘cause they closed that place.

Eric:  What were you screaming in the street?

Marsha:  Huh?

Eric:  What did you say to the police?

Marsha:  We just were saying, no more police brutality and, oh, we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.  Oh, there was a lot of little chants we used to do in those days.

Eric:  Randy, were you at Stonewall then as well?  Did you know Marsha?

Randy:  No, no, I met Marsha, Marsha moved in here about eight years ago.  I had met Marsha in 1973 as an Advocate reporter.  The GAA people had freed her.  It was, they locked up our gay sister, Marsha Johnson, but they went into the mental hospital and they snuck her out in an elevator and they ran out the door.  Now the reason they…she was in the mental hospital is she took LSD and was sitting in the middle of either Houston Street or…

Marsha:  There was no LSD…

Randy:  …pulling the sun…

Marsha:   What do you call that, umm?

Randy and Eric:  Mescaline?

Marsha:  No, what’s that other fierce stuff?

Randy:  Bella donna?

Marsha:  Uh, uh.  Purple… purple passion or something?

Randy:  But, anyway she was sitting in the middle and pulling the sun to the earth, but fortunately before the world ended and the sun hit the earth the paddy wagon from Bellevue came and took Marsha away to the mental ward and that’s how she ended up getting on SSI as a mental case, because they obviously saw, you know, she had a history of prostitution going back to ’62.  And I had met Marsha.  

I mean, when I did this article, this story, my impression of Marsha was that she was sweet, but you know, a little bit spacey.  So when this boy I met at the Gaiety and he said… I said would you ever go to the Village?  “Oh, yeah, I go to the Village and I run around with Marsha.”  And he was a nice white boy and I said, “I don’t know that, you know, Marsha’s the kind of person that, you know, you should really be hanging out with.”

Well, to make a long story, this boy became like my adopted son.  But he moved in, I guess, in January.  And one…  it was ten degrees and he said, you know, he said, “Marsha, you know, she’s out there, she doesn’t have any place to sleep.  She didn’t mind sleeping on the floor.  Couldn’t she come home and sleep on the rug?”  And I said, “Willy,” I said, “are you absolutely sure she’s not gonna’ rip us off?”  You know, I mean, I don’t…you know…  And he said, “No, no she won’t rip us off.”

Well, Marsha came in, I guess, in ’79 or ’80 and began sleeping on the rug here. You know, I mean, I got to know here and like her and she became… And I’m a big Marsha fan now.  It was so funny, ‘cause, I mean, I counseled Willy that Marsha wasn’t the kind of person you want to get involved with and run around with, you know.

Eric:  And you’ve lived together now for eight years.

Randy:  Yeah, yeah.

Eric:  Now were there lots of people hurt at the Stonewall that night during the riots?

Marsha:  They weren’t hurt at the Stonewall.  They were hurt on the streets outside of the Stonewall ‘cause people were throwing bottles and the police were out there with those clubs and things and their helmets on, the riot helmets.

Eric:  Were you afraid of being arrested?

Marsha:  Oh, no, because I’d been going to jail for like ten years before the Stonewall I was going to jail ‘cause I was, I was originally up on 42nd Street.  And every time we’d go, you know, like going out to hustle all the time they would just get us and tell us we were under arrest.

Randy:  Drag queen hooker.

Marsha:  Yeah, they’d say, “All yous drag queens under arrest, so we, you know, it was just for wearing a little bit of makeup down 42nd Street.

Eric:  Who were the kinds of people you met up on 42nd Street when you were hustling up there.

Marsha:  Oh, this was all these queens from Harlem, from the Bronx.  A lot of them are dead now. I mean, I hardly ever see anybody from those days. But these were like queens from the Bronx and Brooklyn, from New Jersey, where I’m from.  I’m from Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Randy:  See, I, I, Stonewall, I don’t want… I shouldn’t start on this note, but it puts me in the worst light, because by the time Stonewall happened I was running my button shop in the East Village and for all the years of Mattachine and you see the pictures of me on TV, I’m wearing a suit and tie and I had spent ten years of my life going around telling people homosexuals looked just like everybody else.  We didn’t all wear makeup and wear dresses and have falsetto voices and molest kids and were Communists and all this.  

And all of a sudden Stonewall broke out and there were reports in the press of chorus lines of queens kicking up their heels at the cops like Rockettes, you know, “We are the Stonewall girls, and you know, fuck you police.”  And this, I thought, you know, it was like Jesse Jackson used to say, rocks through windows don’t open doors. I felt this… I was horrified.  I mean, the last thing to me that I thought at the time we’re setting back the gay liberation movement twenty years, because I mean all these TV shows and all this work that we had done to try to establish legitimacy of the gay movement that we were nice middle class people like everybody else and, you know, adjusted and all that.  And suddenly there was all this, what I considered, riffraff.  And I gave a speech, I was asked to speak, I was asked to speak at the Electric Circus, which was a major, which was a major…  Marsha, you just got me.  Where are you going?  What are you doing?

Marsha:  It’s Carmen, wagging.

Randy:  Oh, she’s outside?

Marsha:  Yeah, c’mon sweetie.

[When Marsha gets up she forgets about the microphone and it pulls off her shirt. Eric and Randy search for the microphone’s foam cover.]

Randy:  Watch out.  God, you’re so dumb.

Marsha:  You think so?

Eric:  Okay, you were saying about Stonewall…

Randy:  Yeah, I was saying I was running my shop in East Village, the button shop, the big hippie shop, and when this happened I was horrified because it was civil disorder.  Somewhere I saw a picture from the Stonewall and it had a big sign up from the Mattachine Society, which was one of my base groups.  It said the Mattachine Society asked citizens to obey poli… to not obey the police, but to respect law and order, to act in a lawful manner.  In other words, the Mattachine itself was basically a conservative organization and they had a…  

They asked me to speak at the Electric Circus and I got up and said that I did not think that the way to win public acceptance was to go out and form chorus lines of drag queens kicking your feet up at the police.  And I was just beginning to speak and one of the bouncers at the Electric Circus found out that it was a gay thing, that the guy up there talking was gay and somebody standing next to him, he said to them, “Are you one of them?” And the guy said yes and he began beating the hell out of him.  And this riot broke out in the Electric Circus.  And I remember driving him home, because the kid was only about twenty-one or twenty-two years old.  And he said, “All I know is that I’ve been in this movement for three days and I’ve been beaten up three times.  I mean, he had a black eye and, you know, a puffed up face…

Marsha:  Oh, how terrible.

Randy:  …and, you know, no serious damage, but the thing was that you were dealing with a new thing.  And it shows that what my generation did, we built the ideology, you know.  Are we sick? Aren’t we sick?  What are the scientific facts?  How we’ve been brainwashed by society?  We put together, like, you know, Lenin… I mean, Karl Marx wrote the book.  That’s what we did.  But it literally took Stonewall, and here I was considered the first militant and a visionary leader of the gay movement, to not even realize when the revolution, if you want to call it this, this thing that I thought would never happen, that a small nuclei of people would become a mass social movement was occurring—I was against it.  Now I’m very happy Stonewall happened.  I’m very happy the way things worked out.

Eric:  Now you mentioned an organization that Marsha, you were involved with.  What was the name?

Marsha:  Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries with Miss Sylvia Rivera.

Randy:  STAR.

Eric:  What was that group about?  What was it for?

Marsha:  Ah, it was a group for transvestites.

Randy:  It was a bunch of…

Marsha:  Men and women transvestites…

Randy:  It was a bunch of flakey, fucked up transvestites living in a hovel and a slum somewhere calling themselves revolutionaries.  That’s what it was in my opinion.  Now Marsha has a different idea.

Eric:  What’s your opinion?

Marsha:  Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries started out as a very good group.  It was after Stonewall, they started, they started at GAA.  Mama Jean DeVente, who used to be the marshal for all the parades.  She was the one that talked Sylvia Rivera into leaving GAA, ‘cause Sylvia Rivera who was the president of STAR was a member of GAA, and start a group of her own. And so she started Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.  And she asked me would I come be the vice president of that organization.

Randy:  They had an apartment, they didn’t have the money to keep up the rent and they began fighting over who was using drugs or who was paying rent or who was taking whose makeup.  And, I mean, it got to be pretty low life and pretty ugly…

Marsha:  No, the building was owned by Michael Umbers, who was in jail.  And didn’t Michael Umbers, when he went to jail, the city took over the building and they had everybody thrown out. But originally the rent was paid to Michael Umbers who went to jail, and Bubbles Rose Lee, Bubbles Rose Lee, who was secretary to STAR, she had all kinds of things [?] around the building and stuff, you know.  So the city just came and closed the building down.

———

The dream of STAR House was to provide a safe place for street kids, but those kids were just a little younger than Marsha and Sylvia, who were in their early twenties and still had to hustle to survive.    

Marsha died in July 1992. Her body was found floating in the Hudson River near the piers on the western edge of Greenwich Village. She was forty-six. The New York City Medical Examiner ruled her death a suicide, but Marsha’s friends believed she was beaten to death or accidentally fell in the river. They lobbied for a new investigation and twenty years after Marsha’s death, the District Attorney’s office agreed to reopen the case.

To learn more about Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker, please visit makinggayhistory.com. That’s where you can listen to all our previous episodes and also find photos and really interesting background information on each of the people we feature.

I’ve got a few key people to thank for making this podcast possible. Thank you to

our executive producer, Sara Burningham, and our co-producer Jenna Weiss-Berman.  Thanks also to our audio engineer Casey Holford, our webmaster Jonathan Dozier-Ezell, our social media advisor Will Coley, and our head of research, Zachary Seltzer. Our theme music was composed by Fritz Myers.  

A special thank you to Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, the men behind the LGBT History Instagram account who have so generously spread the word about Making Gay History. Be sure to follow them @LGBT_History. I learn something new from them every day.

Making Gay History is a co-production of Pineapple Street Media, with assistance from the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division.  

Season Two of this podcast is made possible with support from the Ford Foundation, which is on the front lines of social change worldwide.

And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe to Making Gay History on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So long.  Until next time.

###

[blackguard]

SHOWTIME

     The garish figure, Kamoshida, I think, looms over the beaten student, asserting his imagined superiority over him, before spitting on him.  “...Hmph.  Where’d your energy from earlier go?”  The guard hauls the student up as he groans in pain, only to throw him across the cobbled floor to a patch adjacent to where he previously laid.  “A peasant like you isn’t worth beating.  I’ll have you killed right now.”

     My eyes open wide with shock as the reality of the situation becomes painfully apparent.  He wasn’t lying at all.  He’ll kill Sakamoto without a moment of hesitation.  Without even thinking, a feeble protest erupts from my throat.

     “Stop it!”

     “Hm...?”  Over his shoulder, the king’s glowing, golden eyes turn to me, before he turns and advances on me.  “What...?  Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know who I am.”  Leering down to my level, the light from his eyes reflects in my glasses as I attempt to meet his gaze with some manner of courage.

     “That look in your eyes irritates me!”  He delivers a swift kick to my gut for my small act of defiance, knocking me to the floor and the wind out of me.  “Hold him there,” he says, addressing his guards once more.  “After the peasant, it’s his turn to die.”

     In a last ditch effort, I spring to my feet and dash toward the hideous monarch, but the knights at my side are too quick.  Their hands seize my shoulders and pin me in place as the execution proceeds unimpeded.

     “No... No, I don’t wanna die!”  The other student faces his own mortality as the disgusting king laughs over him.

     This is bullshit.

     I’m not a criminal.  I shouldn’t be on probation.  All I did was help that woman, so why...  Why is all this happening?

     We were just trying trying to find our way to school, but then we wound in up in this weird castle.  Then those freaky knight monsters captured us and now they’re going to kill us.  I only met him a few minutes ago and now Sakamoto’s going to be killed in front of my eyes.  I can’t even do anything about it.   Besides, I know I’m going next.

     Someone innocent is going to die right in front of me and I can’t do a damn thing to stop it.  It’s not fair.  It shouldn’t have to be like this!  All I wanted to do was help people, but I can’t even save someone right in front of me!  What kind of fucked up life is this!?

     My vision seems to dim as everything is covered in a sheet of midnight.  An unfamiliar voice echoes through my mind as a lone fluorescent butterfly drifts past me.  In my panic, all I can manage is to stare at it, transfixed by its cerulean glow.  “This is truly an unjust game...  Your chances of winning are almost none.  But if my voice is reaching you, there may yet be a possibility open to you...”

     There’s...  There’s still a chance...?  Even in a situation this hopeless, I could still turn it around?  But how?!  What could I possibly do that could save him here?

     All too quickly, the butterfly vanishes and I’m thrown right back into the nightmare I had such a slight reprieve from.  As my perception drifts back to reality, my desperation reaches its peak.  In my mind, something cracks.  Splinters.  Shatters.  Like a baseball through a wall of glass, who I’ve been, who I am, who I will be; it all comes tumbling down.

     That’s when I hear him.

     “What’s the matter...?  Are you simply going to watch?”  I hear another voice-  No, that’s not right.  It’s unmistakably my voice, but it sounds altogether unlike me.  Confident, suave, vengeful; he sounds like some bizarre idealization of who I want to be.  “Are you forsaking him to save yourself?”  The voice chastises me for my cowardice with words like knives carving through bone and flesh.  I can’t lie.  I know there was a chance to abandon this other guy.  He even tried to make one for me.  I knew I could have, part of me might have even wanted to, but I still wanted to save him if I could.

     “Death awaits him if you do nothing.  Was your previous decision a mistake then?”  The voice rises in fury as the memory of that night assaults me once more.

     It was dark and there was some drunk trying to force himself on a lady.  I could hear it from down the block.  As someone who grew up watching superheroes, how could I not try to help her?  All I did was push him away from her, but he managed to get the cops to arrest me and charge me with assault.  Even that poor woman ended up turning against me.  In what just and fair world does doing the right thing turn out so blatantly wrong?  Was it a mistake to-

     “It wasn’t.”

     Before I can even finish my contemplation, the answer cuts through, eliminating the shred of doubt left within me.  It wasn’t a mistake.  Helping people isn’t a mistake.  It never will be.  My dream isn’t a mistake!

     The knight lifts the other boy by the throat off his feet and levels his sword at his head.  With renewed fervor, I struggle against the guards holding me, pushing myself off the wall every time they slam me back into it.

     “Very well...  I have heeded your resolve.”  The voice speaks again as a wave of pain radiates through me to my core.  Everything in me is alight with immolating flame and drowning in absolute darkness simultaneously.  Tears and sweat stream down my face with little to distinguish the two.  A series of tortured howls emanate from me in the vain hope that they might somehow ease my suffering.  Death feels both inevitable and too sweet a release as my struggle against my captors turns from an attempt at escape to mad flailing in the throws of agony.

     “Vow to me.  I am thou, thou art I...”  The voice continues on, almost pleased with my pain, as it details a contract I fail to comprehend.  “Thou who art willing to perform all sacrilegious acts for thine own justice!  Call upon my name, and release thy rage!”  I scream skyward as the voice continues its instructions.  “Show the strength of will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to hell itself!”

     Like a man caught in the rapids, I finally surrender to the anguish and let it consume me, accepting the voice’s words as gospel.  The metaphorical crash against the rocks never comes.  The pain doesn’t subside, so much as I become accustomed to it, as a river’s current.

     Evidently tired of watching his victim squirm, the garish fop grows impatient and points viciously at the young man hanging in mid-air.  “Execute him!”

     In a calm, even voice, I respond.  “I will stop you.”

     Kamoshida turns back to me in shock, his eyes wide and his voice sharp with offense.  “What was that...?”  The other knight mercifully drops Sakamoto from his clutches, the younger man gasping for breath while managing to stay on his feet.  “You desire to be killed that much...?  Fine!”

     With a nod of his head, the knight on my left bashes my skull with his steel banded shield, knocking my pitiable, but nonfunctional glasses from my person.  In no time at all, two of the knights pin my throat to the wall between their crossed spears as the third readies his sword to lop off my head.  My fellow student, beaten and broken, can only watch in horror as my execution is carried out.

     Before the deathblow can be struck however, my limp body comes to life once more.  As my eyes snap open, a wave of invisible force emanates out from me, pushing back my captors.  When the wind subsides, I’m startled to find something’s taken the place of my eyewear.  Reaching up to my face, I find a strange avian mask has somehow affixed itself to my face.  Instinctually, a desperate need to remove it takes hold of me.  I feel my skin begin to strain as I pull harder and harder against the mask.  Even so, I don’t stop.  I can’t stop.  If I stop now, then it was all for nothing!

     This isn’t who I am.  This isn’t my real face.  The sheepish transfer student beaten down by life, that isn’t me at all!

     With an awful wet rip and a cry of misery, I tear the false visage from myself as my own blood coats my face.  The pain I’m in is beyond description and would only worsen if I opened my eyes.  Blinding myself with my own gore might just might be enough to kill me from shock.

     But for some reason, I’m not worried about that.  I open my eyes regardless of the obvious consequences, only to find my vision more clear than ever before.  A wicked grin splinters across my face as I feel a welcome heat surge up within me.  Without any greater warning, tongues of blue flame erupt from my face and feet, spreading to quickly consume my entire person.  For some reason, it doesn’t hurt at all.

     The same voice from before cackles menacingly, apparently having achieved his goal.  After overlaying my form, the body of fire floats upwards off me as I find myself clothed in an outlandish outfit almost shamefully to my liking.  Impossible chains dangle off the immolated figure as it hovers above me, gradually twisting and distorting into that of a suited and winged devil, and fall naturally into my grasp.  With a chuckle, I whip them outward and the creature lets flow another gust of wind from his great feathered limbs.  Both the knights and Kamoshida are thrown across the room, impacting the walls viciously.  The false king scampers away in terror as Sakomoto stares up at me in awe.

     “Wha...  What the...?”  He voices half a question I already know the answer to.

     What is he?  What am I?  We’re one in the same.  The scales were imbalanced and so I’ve come to even them.  I’m the Wild Card.  I’m the Trickster.  I’m-  Well, why don’t you take it from here?

     “I am the pillager of twilight--’Arsene’!”