#but also what if you wanted to be each others fag hags

[sightofsea]

burdened with the knowledge of being one of maybe five people who actually know and understand amy and rory

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - KISSES galore

Jan 20232 Wk 2

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) 6 of 10 - The mutual squealing and kicking and rolling over in bed was v cute. Tiw might actually be the greatest BL wingman of all time, yes better than Namgoong. Friend zone? Cute GMMTV, very cute. Elevator kiss, on the other hand = you little shits. Also, I’m mad you made me watch the MV because there was no way to skip through it without missing stuff. Tricky bastards. GMMTV = cute, shitty, & tricky all in one ep. Guess that’s why they’re the top of the Thai BL food chain. 

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) 5 of 12 - We knew that this pair kisses really well, but for the characters that was a pretty stellar first kiss. I liked that we got to see Palm really want something for a change. Up until now, he’s been a pretty passive character, constantly told what to do by others, this is the first independent choice his character actually makes in this narrative. Meanwhile the action part of the bodyguard plot has begun, which makes me happy. Let the forced proximity cohabitation trope commence! With probably at least one running through the woods holding hands to come.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 9 of 12 - Basically a filler ep with in-your-face backstory we already sussed. Prem is doing a good job tho. WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) 8 of 11 - There was no GamesVee. I’m sad. 

Cutie Pie 2 You (special) 2 of 4 - Awwwww, how sweet they tried to give it a plot. Operative word being: tried. 

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 9 of 12 - Stuff in tents. Lots of cringing blushing maiden bullshit. Noey = v bold and into public claiming. I’m not wild about this one. 

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 14fin - Honestly, they were branded pairs so we knew ManTitle were goona kiss, but I kinda wish they hadn’t bothered. These characters just didn’t work for me as a couple. Marriage equality stinger* on this puppy. Still, what a slog. I’m only binging stuff from this studio henceforth. (Next one: Buddy Line Y Animal). Whatever. Frankly that’s my review of the show: whatever. 5/10 

* I do like that this drama teased a marriage and then intentionally never gave us that marriage on screen. For all romance genre fans, this would've felt like a slap in the face. Instead they put in a stinger that essentially said “if you want a marriage scene between men, legalize marriage in Thailand, you fuckers.” And ya know, I’m here for that. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) 4 of 8 - Ooo first date. Omg they are SO CUTE. There was a lot of squealing and flapping of hands on this side of the screen with the show. Also two out gay boys! Korea how far you have come in just a few short years! If adorable our baby boy’s 2 fag hags don’t get together by the end of this show, I will be a touch disappointed. (It has to be said. I’m not expecting it because this is still Korea doesn’t do sides in BL. But hope springs eternal.) Meanwhile, I like that there was actual desire expressed with these two. This is definitely one of the gayest BLs to have come out of Korea in recent years. If you’re confused like I was, that pen has the initial of baby’s ex crush from uni on it. 

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) 3 of 10 (or 6 of 20) - Classic that Taiwan has finally given us a femme character in a BL and he is predatory & evil. The secondary couple is the most adorable thing, I even forgive them a pratfall kiss, because there was a 3 piece suit involved. I am starting to like the main couple a little bit more, mostly because of the rich kid character. I love domesticity, and Taiwan always does it so well. The main character time traveler whatever remains a bit annoying, I prefer a sunshine archetype that is not intentionally naïve to the point of stupidity. Still, I’m invested. This is classic HIStory franchise. 

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) 4 of 8 - It’s a bit too much second hand embarrassment and cringe for me. I hope Japan someday gives us a BL like Eternal Yesterday, where both characters are cool and no one dies. Incidentally, if you’re playing a game of spot that BL actor, the one playing the “actor character” is Izuka Kenta  (from The Novelist and Absolute BL2). WE LOVE HIM. 

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (Korea Weds iQIYI) 9-10fin - I honestly don’t know how I feel about this one. It was more of a red thread fated mates who are fated to repeat the mistakes of the past. Shall we call it faded mates?  And I’m not sure, even though the ending is somewhat optimistic, that I am actually optimistic about it or them as a couple. So I wouldn’t call it HEA. 

Final review? Featuring a gorgeous & stellar cast, TDWBMD should have utilized them less for melodrama and more for chemistry. This BL is a unique twist on an office romance if NOT a unique twist on a doomed red thread trope, resulting in it feeling less than the sum of its parts and ultimately unsatisfying. Possibly this had to do with the fact that this was one of those KBLs where I felt how short it was the whole time, like I was missing something constantly, in every episode. No HEA. Worth watching for some but seriously flawed. 6/10

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

The Star Always Follow You (Vietnam YT) - same Team RL peeps we have seen before (Sunshine, Stupid)

GMMTV’s Midnight series - first segment has begun bit it’s not the EarthMix messy gays. I’m so not interested in messy hets, so I’m waiting until they grace my screen. Moonlight Chicken (Weds YT) 1 of 8 eventually.  

Gossip

I’m gonna hold off on The Warp Effect and binge it later, after I know for sure if the BL couple makes it. 

I will be taking everyone‘s advice and not watching Till the World Ends sorry not sorry. Protecting my squishy center (also I HATE xmas carols.) 

In Case You Missed It

I posted a meta of all my 2022 wraps, top picks, industry stats, etc..

I ALSO posted the 2023 forthcoming BL master post.

Coffee Shop shorts series with the adorable couple from Ghost Host, Ghost House have a WONDERFUL new installment with "BLACK COCONUT". You should watch it. Also... try the drink. 

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) starring Bah Vinh ended its run and IT’S SAD. I am so glad I waiting because now I’m not gonna watch it. So there. 

Adorable KGL Girlfriend Project, basically a very short lesbian version of Love Class. It’s cute. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Jan 19: Individual Circumstances (Korea Thurs Viki) 8 eps - A reunion romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past wounds. Stars JunQ (main rapper of 2nd gen group MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner).

2023 forthcoming BL here

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

The LOOK in his eyes. I really hope we get more than crumbs from Satang Kittiphop in the future. 

Also, that outfit, definitely an instrument of hope. (Mark is going to be in Moonlight Chicken, Cooking Crush, Last Twilight, & Only Friends this year. Apparently GMMTV’s directors like him a lot. So ALL the hope. Plus more sweater vests without shirts, please and thank you.) 

Relatable. 

FINALLY! (all are My School President, it was a GREAT ep this week) 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Well Monsta X released a new single, Beautiful Liar, so yeah, THAT! 

[doubledyke]

@mysticbeaver & @t-allyitup thanks for the asks guys 😭 i put these two together cuz they're both about jimmy and sarah lol. but yeah im not entirely sure what being a hot cheeto girl entails, but i can totally see them being mean girls in hs. they're inseparable, they coordinate outfits, they talk shit about everyone, etc. i see them being pretty straight laced academically, and they suck up to the staff so they never get in trouble 🙄 @gettingfrilly wrote about them going to see an aaron carter concert (i think that's who it was) and that was very cute and very them.

when they get older they're still besties cuz you can't separate a fag from his hag. they have their fair share of fallings out bc they love drama but they always make up. jimmy's owns a boutique or something similar. for sure working in fashion. sarah im not so sure about. eggy made her a cop in one of their comics which was really funny and fitting. but i hate cops and i wouldn't do that to sarah. i could see her doing jimmy's books for him, like maybe they're business partners. i haven't thought much about a career for sarah tbh. what do mean girls do when they grow up? 🤔 become nurses?? nah jk. i dunno she could really do anything cuz i feel like her interests are pretty generic, like there's not one specific thing she enjoys over everything else. except for snitching. maybe she would be a cop after all 😬 or a code enforcement officer. that's it. she's could be a code enforcement officer. she can cite her time as a traffic light as relevant experience.

i think her and ed's relationship would be better after bps and continues to get better as they get older. she eventually has kids and uncle ed LOVES babysitting. i see ed being very avoidant of his parents, and even sarah keeps them at arm's length (specifically her overbearing mom) but still visits for holidays and relays messages to/for ed. sarah and eddy will always have at least a strong dislike for each other. i think she would continue to have a crush on edd even into adulthood, though the severity ebbs and flows (and she moves on eventually). she goes nuts when she finds out he's dating eddy and that's when her hatred is really cemented 😂 BUT once the dust settles a bit, they agree to be cordial for ed, bc ed is a big brother to both of them and they're all somewhat of a package deal. especially if the eds are living together. she doesn't want the kids around uncle eddy too much though cuz she's convinced they'll pick up bad habits.

jimmy lives the life of a self-employed, single, child-free queer. traveling, vacations, cruises, casual dating, doting on his yappy little purse size pomeranian. im tempted to say he'd name the dog mr. yum-yum........ he's also a very loving guncle to sarah's kids but does NOT babysit. spoils the shit out of em though. makes little outfits and accessories for them 🥺

alright i talked about this way more than intended but it was fun so again, thanks for asking!

[duckbeater]

Story Assignment / Did You Prevail?

Peter Handke’s memoir A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is notable for its brevity and also the brevity of its composition. In less than 90 pages he examines his mother’s suicide, sketches something of her backwoods youth in interwar Germany, sympathetically evokes her enervating middle years (child-rearing, poverty, spirit-killing monotony), then analyzes her life’s coda—a time of curiosity, social reinvention and zest. By elevating her consciousness, she apparently collapsed all that’d come before, made it ugly and non-negotiable. To quit the past required a whole bottle of sleeping pills.  

Handke’s analyses is forensic, delicate and rational. You believe he loves his mother not from sentimental asides or fantasies of saving, but by his devotion to the truth, which, given his mother’s unhappiness and pettiness and lack of education, has a nearly universal meaningless. What did her death mean? Who could it possibly affect?

Anyway, he finished the book in two months, and included the odd occasional all-caps abstraction. When I’m walking around at night I sometimes think, “NEAT, CLEAN and JOLLY,” or “WEAK-KNEED,” or “GREAT FALL,” or “MEANWHILE HAD GONE OUT OF EXISTENCE,” and know I’m occupied once more with my little sorrow beyond dreams.

—

“Man,” I texted Mackie, “I’ve been awake since 3AM. It’s 5 now. Jerked off 2x. No sleep.” I hit send before deciding my intentions. I don’t think we know what to say to each other, but we’re always saying things to each other, and it’s never, “Was thinking about you, how great it’d be to be turn over and just talk to you in the dark.” I don’t know if he’d actually ever say that to me—seems wishful. Mackie is not very nice and he lives very far away. 

—

Went to a party on Wednesday. I wore dark blues down to my briefs, and navy small shoes with no arches. I got off the train hobbling and talked myself up in the alleys on the way to the two-story condo where we’d celebrate night 4 of Hanukkah. I’d slept with the host, obviously, and one or two friends in attendance. I’m not really a part of this group, I’ve just—I guess I’ve penetrated it, as they say. 

I had rehearsed convos in my head. I had slammed a blue-bottled beer before getting on the train and felt woozy but competent, just a little in pain. Everyone there seemed leagues more jovial and put together and interesting and adult than me, I felt, immediately on opening the door. I had forced an earring in a closed hole and my left ear was berry red and throbbing—a part of why I felt so juvenile. Grown men don’t just press past the barrier of healed skin. It made a small gratifying popping sound as it cleared the other side and felt hot-hot, and it’s a sensation I’ll repeat (it’s a sensation writing repeats). 

For a while, to get out of the heat and press of my successful and attached gay cohort, I hung out with the only female in attendance, Bernice, a noted fag hag (I believe she condones this use), and stroked a paw of the small dog seeking refuge in a pillow-pile beside me on the over-plush couch. Because I felt lonely, I wanted to ask, “Bernice, why do you exclusively attend these kinds of events? Why do you exclusively attend events where you’re shunted to an oversized couch with a social incompetent? What’s the deal with you and gays?” Instead we talked about our jobs. This inadvertently dimensionalized Bernice for me. 

“I’ve done so much bullshit work for the last decade,” she snorted, “and in 2022 I got hired as a special projects consultant for an absolutely broken renewable energies firm.” She explained the firm’s stultifying snags on ESG semantics, its optical insecurities, how it quavered on progressive politics, waffling on bygone  talking points. “I was loaned out,” said Bernice. “Um, so my firm actually salaried me. I could say whatever I wanted in the vaunted halls of the executive suites and the buffet boxes of free sports tickets and the Connecticut mansion parties. And I called them cowards. I really busted their balls for weeks and weeks—on op-eds, white papers, social media posts, ‘the state security alignment’—I’m sorry, I mean the police—and also, who are those tadpoles in DC—”—“Lobbyists,” I breathed—“Lobbyists,” she breathed back, “I called them out on how based and cucked and knob-choked they all were on the teeny fucking penises of the DC lobbyists. I wanted them to feel so small and stupid and dry and bad, for what they were making, which was millions every day, millions on millions, while I—finally—afforded a Kia. I hate feeling poor. At our age? Don’t you?” “Yes. I hate it.” “Right. So I made them feel poor, a little bit.”

During this peroration I got trembly and blank, excited and critical. I let this leave me. I said, “Did you prevail?” and Bernice said, “The fuck no. But god damn! I made sixteen-kay in November. You ever make that much in a month?” “No, never, and I never,” I said. I told her how had I finally afforded a new car by taking a job at a bank. Bernice has also studied literature. (I don’t think she keeps a blog.) We cheersed saying, “Eat the rich,” [clink], “Eat the rich,” and that felt very correct. The dog licked my palm, perhaps mistaking our intent. “We’re not gonna eat you,” I said, and the dog chittered his teeth at me.

Later that night I made out with a guy name Andrew (such an indelible millennial name), and then never talked to him again though we’ve texted somewhat since.

Mackie asked what I was up to that night and I sent him a couple photo and video updates that were greeted by silence. The next AM he was sending obscure memes again. Out of jealousy, I told myself.

—

It’s odd—I didn’t really solve why Bernice exclusively hangs out with thirty-something gays who ignore her. (My last theory is that she enjoys recreational drugs: her gay friend group is really into those.) Past the obscure memes, I solicited Mackie for some explanation. He unimaginatively offered misogynistic trash, with the line, “Can’t pull but likes to watch.” Typing that up makes me feel very late and very closed-minded to the asexual community, although assuming Bernice is asexual feels as offensive as assuming she hangs out with queers for ketamine. Sometimes our friends, our networks, our densest and most particular milieus spring upon us by accident. And yet—she’s consulted for a living. She made $16K in November. She’s canny. Also clearly she hates straight rich white men. What gives?

I texted the host, thanking him for his hospitality; I texted Andrew, thanking him for his wonderful plump kisses; I texted other men who’d breeched my IG stronghold with accolades and complaints about my attention and comportment. A guy I’d “met” on Grindr and spoken to in the kitchen let me know I’d “rejected him” after he’d shared his album; that’d I stopped talking to him after seeing him naked. But—he was glad we’d met in real life, because he’d had the opportunity to confirm I did read books. He’d written: “When you talk, you use big words.” Embarrassed, I messaged him back saying, “I didn’t reject you. I’m just bad at Grindr. And yeah, I read books.” (Guys: the fact remains, I read books.)

I did reject him. His body repulsed me. He’d been overweight for years and undertaken marathon training, so all the skin on him was oozing and angry and stretched like taffy. Also I wasn’t that into his penis. Judging his fitness—his ripeness—his fuckability—based on something as arbitrary as cock-hardness and a sculpted torso—is the remit of the sexually unenlightened. I know! Not wanting to bang Stu because his body gave me the squick (and his body giving me the squick because of socially inherited standards of gay male beauty) drove me slightly batshit. I’d gone to Hanukkah Night 4 hoping for no part of that—hoping, indeed, for enlightenment. And still, I was confronted in the corner of the kitchen with a man who I had no intention of sleeping with, with him later asking me, “Why?” Also, I think that’s a party foul. If I’d been hideous on Grindr that’d be one thing, but I’d only been silent. 

(I’d gone to Hanukkah Night 4, actually, fully with the intention of some very beautiful, intelligent man courting me, seducing me, sweetly asking if he might take me home. Mackie reminded me: “You went to a gay party hoping to get laid.” When I revisit our texts, I see that on Wednesday night, I did jokingly say, “Wearing blue briefs tonight in case I get laid.”)

—

Prevail in the sense of what. 

I keep telling myself, if you just write in the style (or concern) of Grace Paley, you’ll manage your output better. You’ll actually write, rather than not write, which—bizarre to point out—a lot of egregiously more talented writers simply don’t do. They either don’t read Grace Paley or they don’t take her example seriously. Can’t drop the kids off at the sitter? Disappointing a union rep? Grocery store reverie? Class action lawsuit? Neighborhood defense? Teaching Zoomers dialogue? Furious about parking? Guys being complete pricks? What’s for breakfast? (“Our shrinking family requires more coffee, more eggs, more cheese, less butter, less meat, less orange juice, more grapefruit.”) Seasons shift their responsibilities [planting, watering, raking, shoveling] and finally the apartment, the car, the stoop, and [even] the park demand a graceless apology and accounting for. How do you come by these treasures? 

Paley gives you freedom to remark on the banal frustrations and the relentless petty drama of existing while renting. So too of dating while maybe dating others (a grace for the gays), and of wanting to attend an alderman’s fundraiser but maybe sliding one or more of your dates there, too—a Jane Jacobs by way of Nora Ephron. Maybe I only read her young writing. Perhaps I only read her young concerns. (No: She was 63 when she published the breakfast items above.) But everything feels fresh and hilarious and condoned. “You will sorely fuck this up, surely, but the lesson of living in the city will stick.” (I wrote that last quote, not Grace Paley.)

—

Later, Mackie texted, “Stop being annoying and text me back.”

I sent him maybe the 81st photo of me in my underwear, haggard, glasses, brushing my teeth, and the caption, “All clear.”

[voldiebuns]

ONTD_Pinto Prompts

I was going through my files to see if there was anything that I might want to write/finish to celebrate. What I found was a collection of prompts I'd saved from the kink meme hosted on the now deleted ontd_pinto livejournal. I don't think I'll ever get around to writing any of these, but I thought it might be some fun nostalgia to share! Or hey, maybe it'll inspire someone else to write them?

---

(x) Chris is a bank clerk and Zach is an armed robber who robs Chris's bank and takes him hostage.

(x) Pinto fairytale - The kingdom ruled over by King Robert is being terrorised by a dragon. When the dragon is slain by the dark knight Sir Karl, he wants a reward: King Robert's first born son, Princess Christopher. The Princess reluctantly agrees to marry Sir Karl. One day, whilst Princess Christopher is bathing in a woodland stream he is spied by the beautiful and dashing knight, Sir Zachary…

(x) Chris can see dead people! Zach is a ghost that doesn't want to move on.

(x) It's a real cliché, but I would really like to read a hitmen!AU story. Maybe they have the same target, maybe they have to kill each other, it's up to you. I just need some hatin' and unrequired-tension!sex.

(x) Zach comes from a really rich family and so Chris kidnaps him in order to hold him to ransom. Chris has never been attracted to men before, but he finds himself having sexy feelings for Zach.

(x) Labyrinth AU: Zach is the Goblin King and he wants Chris to be his Princess.

(x) I'd love to see a Pinto remake [of Latter Days], with Zach as the actor-slash-waiter who meets buttoned-up Mormon missionary Elder Pine. Or any religious kink, basically - Pastor Pine putting the moves on heathen yoga teacher Zach, I dunno, I certainly don't know enough about organised religion to try and write this respectfully, but I'd love to read some.

(x) Mafia!Zach & Cop!Chris

(x) life of male strippers

(x) office comedy with Nimoy as their boss

(x) AU in which Chris is the same guy we all know and love but Zach is a paparazzo.

(x) Chris and Zach are outed by way of very explicit photos (that they did not take themselves). Basically, a paparazzo/stalker/asshole neighbor/whatever you want takes photos of Chris and Zach making the beast with two backs without their consent and leaks them online, with the boys dealing with the fallout.

(x) Zach discovers chris' secret writing journal from during filming

(x) Zach secretly went to hogwarts when he was a young wizard. Now he spends his life studying muggles and these things they call movies. Same Zach and chris we know today. Just a rather well hiden secret that Chris may be about to find out…

(x) After Zach moves and/or cuts off their relationship or FWB arrangement, Chris is heartbroken and throws himself into work while he continues to nurse his love for Zach. He also meets and befriends his very first fag hag, who listens to him whine cry get mad, etc and she encourages him to cheer up and stick it out because she firmly believes Zach will realize how dumb he was and come back to him. Somehow Zach finds out that Chris is tight with this new girl…. Like someone mentions it to Zach or Chris himself mentions her to Zach offhandedly or something. Zach, having come back from New York now fears that he may have lost his chance with Chris. Misunderstandings and hurt feelings all over the place! Happy ending is a must!

[the-skeletoninyour-closet]

Full respect to your point, OP, and that people should not be so Fucking Weird about Japanese terms for things, from orientalist to flat out racist.

But at the risk of detracting, I’m still going to focus in a touch on the example of fujoshi. Straight up, the term fujoshi 腐女子 translates to rotten girl, fu 腐　for rotten (the pronunciation for the kanji character when strung together in this word), and joshi 女子 for girl. While *maybe* it has a history in Japanese feminism or otaku culture as being a reclamation for not being perfectly appealing to men with this trait, it as far as I know doesn’t quite have the history as a reclaimed insult as other English queer culture terms I know.

Fujoshi is currently a quick short hand for “oooh I’m so DIRTY for liking gay men stuff I’m such a NAUGHTY GIRL”. It may be personal that I don’t mind the term as specifically referring to women (esp straight women) who fetishize gay men, because it also feels very period specific to ~2010’s for that sort of common relationship to yaoi and other BL media. Yes it includes before then, but this is my specific thing.

The question then may be what’s the closest English term to use instead without potential insult and knee jerk disgust and bias towards Japanese terms. Welp. Closest thing I can think of is fag hag. Unfortunately, while fag is a reclaimed self identifier and funny as all hell when we gays use it, it still hits when it has the tone of fag(predecessor to homophobic violence). Fujoshi doesn’t have that baggage in English speaking circles, and it’s a little more “PC” as an identifier.

Technically you could have a similar discussion about people who use the terms porn or lewds, vs Hentai or ecchi. Hentai 変顔　has the term “weird” literally in it, you could lit translate it to weird-body. Ish. But it still has more cadence of “pervert”. Ecchi えっち, on the other hand, is softer. More like “naughty” or “playful” or “lewd”, less with the derogatory aspect (the point I want to focus on when certain Japanese words are derogatory and when they ain’t. Do you (general you) in your mind associate Hentai with anime style animated or drawn porn? Or ecchi? It’s gonna be different for each person, and I absolutely cannot guarantee 1:1 coherence with Japanese media perspective on this. In fact with that, PLEASE take my tangent with a punch of salt, I’m only second language on Japanese. I’ve had a dude say “why do you have such a good anime voice” after I sang part of a Japanese song j liked to my standards of pronunciation - weird moment, hard to remember how to respond in it, I’ll sort it later. But orientalism type things happen in weird ways.

While it’s kinda weird for non-Japanese artists to call their lewds Hentai or ecchi, if you’re doing it to try to beat a hostile algorithm into submissions and get as many tags on a thing as you can to make a living, I don’t have a leg to stand on to care.

Long response that might’ve missed the point. I’m not asking folks to get a bachelor’s in every language they use words from. I just think it’s good to learn more on the nuances of them, why some words hit, why some words don’t. And for the love of god, build every weapon in your arsenal you can against orientalism and racism that you can, and that means thwacking down tidbits of ignorance imo.

I'm probably gonna get yelled at for saying this but sometimes something isn't a real problem in fandom, you just learned a Japanese word describing a general fandom practice and got scared and decided it meant "The Bad Ones" of that practice

[buildarocketboys]

8 and 12 for the autism asks?

Woops, sorry anon, you gave me the opportunity to infodump about autistic!Nathan and I'm afraid I took it lol

8. If you have any, what are your special interests?

Honestly at the moment it's probably mostly just Heroes (and specifically Nathan and Peter Petrelli lol). Like I usually say cooking/baking but somewhere in the past few months that's kind of faded out a bit and I don't love doing as much as I did, which is a shame. Apart from that I've kind of been having fairly short-lived hyperfixations (I'm currently watching season 4 of Glee after stopping at s3 last year, which was probably the wisest place to end but never mind).

12. Do you headcanon any characters as autistic? If you want, tell us why you headcanon them as autistic.

Aha...see my previous post. But I'm gonna give a rundown on why I headcanon Nathan as autistic, because I think it's a headcanon with a lot of evidence:

- Fake smile/exaggerated facial expressions

- makes weird/awkward comments/jokes (gifset)

- Stims (even though he masks a lot) (gifset)

- Scripting (gifset) - also his career/s as lawyer/politician are ones that involve a lot of talking/interacting with people but a. They're things that you can probably script/practice a lot of, go over every scenario etc and b. Nathan sucks as a politician lol. Like he can deliver a speech OK, but he was gonna lose (and knows he's going to lose) when he's running for Congress which is why Linderman has to kidnap Micah to fix the vote and also he literally only becomes Senator in s3 bc the Governor sees him having a mental breakdown on TV and obviously thinks 'this guy will be so easy to manipulate'

- Echolalia (there are several examples of Nathan repeating back something someone's already said to him, I think my favourite is in the s1 finale when Claire tells him that "the future isn't written in stone" and he repeats that back to her later when he flies in to have his Big Damn Moment

- Tripping over his words/words running into each other (gifset)

- Black and white thinking ie in Haiti when he's like ‘If I don’t save the world I’m basically evil’

- on the other hand, difficulty knowing what the right thing to do is, relying on other people to tell him - His whole ‘what is right/why can’t I tell the difference speech’/asking Peter what he should do

- in .07% - difficulty comprehending/empathising with a large amount of people/finds empathy difficult for people he doesn’t know/care about - I have a fairly developed headcanon that's pretty much canon about Nathan's Big Damn Moment saving Peter/New York really being entirely bc of Peter and his empathy for him (and knowing/being told by Claire how much it'll kill him to be responsible for the deaths of millions of people, since Peter has a hyperempathetic streak bigger than he is) - but yeah, that. (Actually I might make a post about this bc there's a fair amount of detail in it that's basically what I take from what we're actually given in canon and I think it would make a nice piece of meta. I talk about it with Anni all the time.

- despite not exactly being the most honest/moral person, Nathan's also really not that good at lying, especially when he has to do so spontaneously/improvise. Family brunch is probably the best example of this

- the people that Nathan most vibes with (as in, makes a real connection with that isn't shallow and based on him masking and trying so hard to fit in) in the show are characters that are either neurodivergent/mentally ill in canon or who I headcanon as neurodivergent/autistic: Nathan+Hiro (who I also headcanon as autistic), Nathan+Matt [who's canonically dyslexic], Nathan+Niki [DID(/multipersonality disorder lol, which is obviously poorly handled by the show but still, the mentally ill/ND vibes)], Nathan+Peter obvs. Claire's probably the only one who doesn't fit this but a. They don't vibe immediately, Claire takes a while to actually understand him and b. Claire's best friend is Zach and her S4 gf is Gretchen. Both of whom have incredibly autistic vibes. Claire is basically the ND equivalent of a fag hag (in the nicest possible way - I love her)

- kind of a sad/horrible one, but when Arthur says ‘I made you’ to Nathan in s3 it really gives me Lovaas being like with an autistic person you have to build the person from the ground up gross dehumanising vibes. Arthur is the worst lol

- Is actually extremely emotional (and a lot of his actions are extremely emotionally motivated - for better and for worse) e.g. Angela talking about him being ‘overly theatrical wrt Kelly’s death/calling him a sap, and him not even being able to look at the photo Meredith shows him of Claire (that whole scene really shows how hard he tries to mask his emotionality to his own detriment; he can barely look at the photo bc it's so much, and then he doesn't get Meredith to call Claire back - even though he basically came down to Texas to meet her - because he doesn't know how to handle his emotions about finally meeting the daughter he thought was dead without losing it)

- Obsessiveness (the hundreds of photos of Peter thing+him literally calling himself obsessive)

- Mostly blank/unemotional facial expression and relatively monotone voice even when talking about/in extremely emotional situations (e.g. I’m not leaving you Peter). His voice *does* show emotion sometimes but only in really intense situations and even then rarely (I think this is partly masking, partly his natural expression)

- Doesn’t like touch (apart from if it's Peter/someone else he feels safe with) especially when emotional (gifset) also his and Claire's hug in s1 is extremely awkward lol

- Burnout/losing control of his life (s2 and also kind of s3 - Nathan's a mess). Basically all the mentally ill Nathan stuff - side effects of autistic burnout/masking for basically all his life

[morosoro]

Reuben

Chapter 20

Summary: Reubens happy little Valentine’s Day bubble pops the moment he gets home.

Ao3 link here

He came home after school to find two visibly upset Scottish women taking tea on the sofa as his boy crawled about on the floor playing with a stuffed rabbit toy. Playing was a generous term, actually, Neal was more so just dragging it around and giggling as it moved each time his hand did. Quality entertainment for a baby, Reuben was sure.

He avoided the scowls from the older women as he crouched down to play with his son, gently taking the rabbit and making it wave to him. The babe giggled at that too. Oh what simpler times, when your happiness would depend on whether something moved or not. Reuben longed to be in the child’s place as Glynis cleared her throat.

“The Hatters called us yesterday.” She supplied.

Reuben huffed a sigh. He was getting tired of people asking about Jefferson. He’d had to answer several people today when asked, and not once had it been met with the aloofness he thought it deserved, Yes, they had a fight! It didn’t seem like a very big deal to him! “Yeah? What about it?” He asked.

“Mrs. Hatter informed me that Jefferson are no longer friends? That you told him to stop acting like himself? Now she didn’t explain precisely what happened, I get the impression she doesn’t know her son as well as she should, but Edith and I got the gist of it. And we are immensely disappointed. We thought we raised you differently.” The women told him, jaw set firm and spine rigid in her discontent.

“What? In the two months I’ve been here? Yes, a lot of raising done on your part.” He replied sardonically.

“You say that as if we weren’t pivotal caretakers of you since birth. You know full well we brought you up just as much if not more than your parents did. Now I suggest you start explaining yourself.”

“We had a disagreement. So what? It’s hardly the end of the world!” He was instantly in a sour mood as soon as this conversation had begun. He was so done having to explain himself to people who refused to understand. Even Belle had been upset with him when he told her what had happened in full. She’d told him he was in the wrong and that should apologize. He had thought out of all people she would’ve understood where he’d been coming from. Now his Aunts seemed to be antagonizing him too?! How come nobody could just give him the benefit of the doubt or see his side?!

“It was more than a disagreement and you damn well know it.”

It’s not like he’d really meant anything he said anyways. He just didn’t like the implications Jefferson’s words had set on the table. Jefferson needed to be taught a lesson, that’s all.

“Okay so I got tired of the jokes. I’m sorry that I don’t want people thinking I’m a bloody buftie who's shagging a dude behind his girlfriend's back.” He sneered, fed up of the conversation already. “I’m sorry for setting some god damn boundaries. In all honesty I think that if he were really my friend and not just hopeful he could ‘turn me queer’ or whatever then he would respect said boundaries.”

Edith gasped at his language, still remaining silent. Glynis’s glare only hardened. “You sound an awful lot like yer father saying words like that.” She said coldly.

His head whipped over to look her in the eye, bewildered rage taking root. How could she say that?! “You take that back!”

Glynis stared right back at him. “Or what? You’ll call us auld hags? Stomp around and break things?” After a beat of silence where he said nothing in preference of continuing to fiddle with his son’s stuffed toy, the woman continued. “Oh? Ignore us then? Your father liked to do that too.”

He stood to his full height quickly, discarding the rabbit as he went. He gestured sharply as he shouted. “Shut the hell up! I’m nothing like him!”

His son started to cry, obviously startled by the loud volume. He froze, staring down at the scared little boy in alarm. Oh no… what had he done? Had he hurt him- he didn’t think he did… but then again he had tossed away the toy pretty carelessly. Had it hit him? No! The idea made him sick.

Could he really be turning into a copy of his father? Was this proof?

Before he could think to reach for his son to try to comfort him, the boy was picked up by Glynis instead. “I wouldn’t be so sure, the lines seemed quite blurred lately.” She hissed in response.

“Glynis- please!” Edith pleaded, her expression softer but still troubled. “Give the lad break? He’s been through a lot lately.”

“That’s no excuse for bigotry and slurs! Did you not hear him, Edith? ‘Buftie’, ‘Queer’? Doesn’t that upset you?” The other woman asked, sounding incredulous.

“Well, yes…” Edith agreed before pausing to sigh lengthily. “But I’m also aware that he’s in a very tough spot. He’s still only a boy, see… He’s bound to have bad days and ugly moments. We all are, Love.” The other said, calm but firm. “ Besides, shouting at him and making him feel like shite won’t get us anywhere productive...”

Still holding the sniffling child, and with her jaw still set Glynis also sighed heavily through her nose. She seemed to calm slightly before deciding “Fine then, you deal with him. I’ll be taking Neal for a stroll down the paths. I suppose I could use some air.”

Edith nodded. “I think that’s best, dear. Thank you.” She then looked at her still visibly angry and hurting great-nephew. “Why don’t you go to yer room? Put on a tape, read a book… calm down some? I’ll come up and speak to you before dinner, Aye?”

Reuben, with clenched fists and hunched shoulders, let out a grumbled “Fine…” before hurrying his way upstairs.

—

He was only a couple chapters further into his copy of ‘Lord of The Rings’ (borrowed off of Moe, actually. The man had recommended it to him a couple of weeks ago) and the chorus to Genesis’ ‘Land of Confusion’ was playing when there was a knock on his bedroom door.

Sighing, he paused his cassette, marked his place in the book and called for the person to come in. To no surprise, Edith entered, and she had brought more tea for the both of them.

She sat herself on the foot of his bed and offered him the mug, he accepted it and took a sip. They sat in silence for a moment before she finally decided to speak. “You know lad, it doesn’t matter how upset you are, it’s never okay to be disrespectful.”

He stayed quiet, only grunting over the rim of his mug in response. She continued. “But we’re not going to talk about earlier today. Glynis and I are older than dirt, we’ve heard it all. We can take it. I want to talk about what happened with Jefferson.”

“We had an argument. What more is there to talk about?” He responded lowly.

“Why?” She asked. “Why were you arguing with him?”

“Because I was sick of the gay jokes.” He answered. “The ones that implied… stuff. I’m no feckin’ fag and he can’t bloody turn me into one!”

The woman let out a hissing sound, as if she had be burned. “See, what we’re not going to do is use terms like that.” She told him, stern voice in place. “Like Glinnie and I have both said, upset is no reason for disrespect.”

The teen was once again quiet as he sipped his tea again. The woman moved ahead in the conversation. “A person cannot ‘turn’ gay or straight. They either like the same sex or they do not. And it is not a bad thing to be that way.” She explained.

“Sure, okay… whatever.” He replied. “It still doesn’t fucking matter. He crossed a line and it made me uncomfortable so I told him to knock it off. That’s it. I don’t see why everyone’s making such a big deal out of it!”

“Because you hurt his feelings. And I think you knew what you said would hurt his feelings. That’s not okay, Reuben. You need to understand that.”

“I get it!” He barked. “I was just upset, okay? I lashed out. It happens…”

“Then it sounds like you need to work on controlling yourself. Maybe start by thinking things over before you say anything, like why Jefferson’s jokes upset you so much in the first place.” And with that she got up to leave again, throwing a casual “Dinner will be ready in an hour.” Over her shoulder as she went.

After the door shut behind her and he was by himself again he let out a frustrated growl. After setting down his tea, he drew his knees to his chest and raked his hands through his hair frustratedly, head hanging low. Why was he like this? Why was his anger like a light-switch? This was definitely something to bring up with his therapist next time.

He sighed then as he made a small connection in his head. Dr. Hopper had told him last time that he ought to take time for himself to think and figure things out and work on ‘self-improvement’. Edith had just told him to do pretty much the same thing. He glanced to his nightstand where the crinkled pamphlet-turned-coaster sat, and after a moment’s consideration, he reached for it, taking it out from under his mug. He turned to the second page.

‘Ask yourself ‘Why?’. Contemplate response. Consider your reasonings. Repeat.’

Why did Jefferson’s Joke upset you?

“Because it made me uncomfortable.” He mumbled.

Why did it make you uncomfortable?

“Because… I could picture it?”

Picture what?

‘I’m straight!’

‘So is spaghetti until you get it hot and steamy.’

‘Hot and steamy’

Hot and steamy...

“Fuck!” He growled out, tossing the pamphlet away. “This is bloody stupid! I’m not getting anywhere!” He told himself as he rubbed at his eyes, trying to will the unwanted images away. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with him today?! He hated it. He hated himself.

It was hard to believe today had started out so lovely, with his girlfriend in his arms and a promise ring in question.

“I need a nap.” He decided. “A long one.”

———

Doctor Hopper was a strange individual. The kind of man that made Reuben wonder how his son Archie had become… well… Archie. Guys like Archie tended to have strict, straight-edge, academics-obsessed fathers. The type with the big glasses and button-down shirts that they tucked so neatly into their khakis. They were a vision of who their sons would become, but not Doctor Hopper.

No, Doctor Hopper was more laid back. Yes, he wore khakis and button downs but in a much more sloppy-casual sense. His hair was long and he wore a cowboy hat atop his head. He didn’t tip-toe with his words, he just spoke freely from his thoughts (and his degree, hopefully). He was also just odd enough for Reuben to believe he’d likely had a few run-ins with the law in the past. Yes, Reuben could definitely see this man scamming people of their money, or being picked up off the street where he lay a drunk… or something… fool. And yet this man was somehow his therapist and he was supposed to trust him and his advice. It was certainly a peculiar situation.

They currently sat opposite each other, Reuben on a large leather sofa, and Dr. Hopper laid back in the matching armchair. The latter was having a cigarette as he listened to his patient’s concerns.

He puffed out a measured stream of smoke before speaking. “So, basically, you’ve been acting like a cunt to your friends and family and you don’t know why?”

“Uh…” Reuben shrugged his shoulders awkwardly. “Yeah?”

“You just freak out when you feel targeted? As in you just suddenly feel like you have to defend yourself… but really all you're doing is spewing shit?” At the teens nod the therapist took another puff, answering with his exhale “Sounds like anger issues to me, kid. Probably got it from the alcoholic disgrace you call a dad.”

Reuben huffed a worried sigh. “So what? You think I’m going to wind up like him?”

“Nah, unlikely.” The man responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You both have issues and bad trauma, but yours is just…” he mimicked the sound of an explosion. “Different. That stuff really shapes a person. You’ll be fine… or well… as fine as someone like you could be.”

Someone like him? He wondered what that implied. He didn’t want to ask. Instead he focused on the positive. “You think so?”

“Yeah, kid. As long as you keep trying to get better, hell yeah! Anger issues? No problem kid. We can manage that with just a bit of work.” The adult said before taking another draw.

Curious, Reuben asked him “What kind of work?”

“Thinking. Self-help work, kid. You know about it, it was in the pamphlet. First off, why do you think you were acting like a cunt in the first place?”

Running his hands through his hair, Reuben groaned. He should’ve known. “Because my friend was making jokes that I didn’t like. They made me uncomfortable.”

“Okay, but why?” The man prompted him to expand on it.

“Because they were implying something that I didn’t want to be implied.”

“So it’s something you’re insecure about then?”

That gave Reuben a moment’s pause. Was he insecure about his sexuality? “.... no?” At least he didn’t think so.

“You don’t sound sure about that.”

Fuck.

He huffed, frustration growing. “What do you mean? I’m definitely secure about it!” He snapped.

“Whoa man-“ the therapist warned. “Don’t go acting like a cunt on me now. I’m just trying to help you figure this out.”

The teen pinched the bridge of his nose, frustrated with himself more than anything. “I know… I’m sorry. I just don’t know why it upset me.”

“Then you just gotta think a little deeper about it sometime. But don’t try to rush it. Take your time to figure you out, Y’know?”

“I-I guess?” They were quiet for a moment before he asked “What do you think the reason was?”

“Hey, I can’t really say for sure, I’m not in your head. But to me it just sounds like the jokes just hit too close to home. He hit a nerve, something you're insecure about and don’t want to address. Whatever it is, you should probably address it before you try to apologize to this guy. You do want your apology to be as genuine as possible, right?”

Confused and practically in a stunned silence, he realized the implication his therapist had just made. He only swallowed thickly and nodded, squeaking out a broken sounded “Yeah, right.”

[isitandwonder]

you never hear about anyone douching in charmie porn.... *cough* sorry fanfic... pmsl. its never been about queer rep... i hate it when straight cis women bang that drum around movies like cmbyn... they would NEVER get this hot under the collar for real queer content like tangerine for example.

Good morning, nonnie, a lot to unpack here.

1) Hate is a big word and hating on cis women is kinda widespread with some gay men (the infamous fag hag). I don’t like this. Sounds misogynystic and is the wrong way to go about this issue imo, though I get what you mean and your frustration with certain self-proclaimed allies.

2) A lot of these straight identifying women might not be that straight after all. You live and learn. Ofte, watching gay movies can be a catalyst for women to find out more about their own sexual orientation.

3) Is cmbyn a gay movie? I’d say it’s a bisexual movie. Doesn’t mean only bi people are allowed to enjoy it though. There are some good articles about the sanitized gayness in cmbyn, exemplified by 2 straight identifying actors playing the leads and THAT TREE, for example. I also read that this isn’t just a thing with female viewers enjoying gay sex but not too much, but also that gay men themselves enjoy watching straight men ‘play’ gay. This touches some deep rooted ‘longings’ in the gay community for straight men, as can be seen in a lot of gay porn (Giving it to my Straight Neighbour kinda stuff, and isn’t that some form of fetishising as well?).

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-empty-sanitized-intimacy-of-call-me-by-your-name

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/23/call-me-by-your-name-gay-sex-oscars

4) This sanitized queerness, filming a tree instead of more of E & O in bed for example, both makes the film probably more accessible to straight viewers and therefore guarantuess a broader audience to be reached by the film’s message which is, among other things, promoting tolerance for same sex relationships, but for the price of erasing a significant part, the same SEX, of these relationships. The jury’s still out on the question if that’s beneficial or backwards.

5) Slash fanfic or smut is essentially porn, written to get the reader off. Nothing wrong with that and whatever rocks your boat. I don’t see men douching in gay porn movies either. Porn sells a fantasy, not ‘real’ sex with all its messiness and ridiculousness. No harm done there as long as you don’t think this is how sex works or uses it as sex ed. There’s also fanfic without smut, though I agree that from what I’ve been seeing with a lot of writers leaving the fandom, those who keep writing T/A fic have fallen into a pattern where A is the manly hunk and T the soft flower, being depicted with traditional female attributes like delicate, pale, thin, smaller etc. D/s fics dominate, or Daddy!Armie and baby!tim. To me, that’s boring but to each their own.

6) There are a bunch of reasons why straight identifying women enjoy gay porn and gay slash fic and summing it all up as fetishising is unfair (also, fetishes are a part of sexuality and not inherently a bad thing). A good book on it is ‘Girls who like Boys who like Boys’. Some reasons are: 2 dicks are better than one / no big-boobed blond woman in gay porn to which the female audience has to compare herself, finding the own body lacking / for women who’ve experienced abuse or assault gay porn can be a form of still enjoying sex but taking themselves and their bodies out of the equation as gay men have no interest in them, either predatory or otherwise / gay porn allows equality between the partners, it’s not, as in het porn, clear from the start who penetrates whom, which breaks with traditional sexual roles always depicting women as passive, as to be conquered, pissing a lot of women off.

All that being said, I agree that probably many of those women who ship charmie wouldn’t enjoy the movie as much if it showed more explicit gay sex like anal penetration. There are movies and also books that depict queerness more openly, and they don’t have the kind of success cmbyn had.

But Charmies are a special case: they want to force gayness on 2 straight presenting actors. Maybe some of the above listed reasons come into play. Maybe it’s because many are young and don’t know much about sex at all, looking for some kind of perfectly sanitized safe romance. Other female charmies insert themselves into Tim’s part, making him the ‘female’ of the ship, to imagine traditional straight sex with AH. Some are obviously psychotic and need professional help. It’s a colorful mixture.

In the end, no piece of media can choose who consumes and enjoys it. The moment it’s released it’s the death of the author and everyone takes away from it what they need. This can’t be restricted.

Yet I personally would wish for more tolerance on both sides. I want explicit queer content but not just for queer people. Gate keeping doesn’t lead anywhere and is futile.

Oh, and I forgot 7) Was it a good idea to have 2 straight identifying actors play E & O? It surely added to the appeal for straight audiences because I believe no matter how good an actor you are, if you can’t draw on your own experience it’s not quite the same as if you as an actor know what you’re portraying esp in intimate settings. So queer actors might have portrayed E and O different, maybe queerer. But that’s a huge issue in itself and all I want to say to it is: a) we need more queer characters on screen and in media b) I want queer characters played by queer people. I also want straight / non-binary / ace characters played by queer people c) I don’t like ‘playing gay’ to be seen as a daring choice or rite of passage for serious straight actors.

I think as with every piece of media it’s always worth to open-mindedly examine: why do I enjoy it? What do I enjoy about it? There’s no right or wrong here, nothing is verboten. But reflecting on ‘what does this mean to me?’ never harmed anyone either and gives media consumption it’s deeper meaning and reason. If charmies were able to do this they wouldn’t have gone so completely off the rail like they did.

These shippers running amok now are just batshit crazy and not a good example of fandom or allies at all.

[superlepato]

With Love from Memory Lane

Sorry for the delay, there was a blackout that lasted almost a week and I wasn’t able to write or post the new chapter. This one isn’t checked since I couldn’t find a beta at the moment if someone finds a syntax or grammar error please tell me, so I can change it. 

Chapter 1 Chapter 2  Chapter 3  AO3

Chapter 4

One of the things he learns and struggles with was to recognize the advantage in life that came with his designation, while still acknowledging that he was a victim too, but not letting that fact cloud his judgment falling in a loop of victimization.

Nobody teaches you how to empathize with other in aspects that you could never understand and experience and accept that pain isn’t a currency that you can quantify, having more pain doesn’t make less the struggles of others.

Life isn’t a competition to see who suffers more.

In more than one occasion he felt that there was an invisible wall between Steve and him, and he didn’t do anything more than beat himself against it over and over before learning how to address the issue.

At that time when Steve gave him the silent treatment, he didn’t make any effort to be tolerant, he had enough if he wanted to act that way so be it.

They didn’t talk on Social Studies, Science or Language Arts, in the Recess they didn’t even saw each other, well...Steve didn’t, he knows because he was watching.

At school, Billy didn’t lack people to hang with, now that he didn’t spend his time exclusively with Steve his routine changed. He had to learn new directions and phone numbers, he could recognize some places but others were still foreign to him.

He had to call before going out to make sure that they were going to meet in the agreed place. In more than one occasion he waited for hours for the whole group to be complete.

Billy stopped doing it after his father berated him for being a bitch and going after everyone asses instead of showing dominance like an alpha, wasting his money like he was the one paying the phone’s bill, so he did what he was told, like the bitch his father wanted him to be just at home.

From then on he went to any place they decide to reunite (Melvald’s parking lot, basketball court, etc.) if someone wasn’t there when the time came they would leave him behind. Sometimes if the group didn’t schedule to meet after class, Billy would just go to the house of Tommy, David, Michael or anyone for that matter as long as he could stay away from his house.

It was easy for him to call the shots in the group, after the incident with the locker room he became the top alpha by default.

Steve didn’t leave his mind entirely especially when they shared classes, there wasn’t any animosity between them but neither of them made an effort to reconcile either, with the pass of days it was getting easier to think less and less of Steve and his home life, now that he was getting used to his new routine without him.

The day Steve and Billy made amends was on behalf of Steve distress. He would never forget that day and he wasn’t the only one, years later Steve’s breakdown would come as a topic on parties or more private and silent gatherings at the quarry.

That day everything started off, Steve was brought by his father instead of him coming with his bike like usual, the bike was still there just in the backside of the car, Steve’s clothes had wrinkles, his hair wasn’t brushed perfectly, his eyes and nose were puffy and red, it was weird how disheveled he looked. During class Steve was eerie silent and taciturn, not paying attention to classes and not bothering to pretend for the sake of not catching the attention of the teacher.

On recess he didn’t hang out with anybody, he just sat in a corner, head on his knees, in the Social Studies class that only omegas and alphas could attend Steve had his head on the clouds and no matter how many times the old alpha teacher told him to pay attention Steve keep daydreaming.

P.E was an exception, kind of, this time Steve seem to at least try to do the exercises but he did it with such lack of enthusiasm that the coach bench him since it was obvious that he wasn’t at his best, everyone else kept doing laps, in the corner of his eye he could see the still figure of Steve that was apparently sleeping.  

Lunch wasn’t any different than P.E, Billy doesn’t know if Steve ate or if he even brought or bought food, but he knows that he spent his time resting his head on the table, a lady came to Steve to check on him but promptly left him alone, maybe deciding to leave him after he gave a poor excuse. It seemed that the only thing he wanted to do was to sleep and dream.

Everything went to shit on Elective, he choose Spanish, the language wasn’t foreign to him since it wasn’t unusual to hear people speak it on the streets of Cali, it would be good to take advantage of this head start, also, it was a plus that he didn’t need to change classrooms as the others.

Omegas electives were three: knitting, sewing, and embroidery (in his opinion they were all the same), any girl could take those electives regardless of their designation, but to omegas it was mandatory.

They were learning new verbs when he heard the yelling of Steve and another person, an adult without a doubt. Miss Whitermoore was an old omega in charge of teaching cooking, floral arrangement, embroidery, and all that girly stuff, she wasn’t actually a teacher, she was more a glorified volunteer than anything else, she never got married and dedicated all his life in mastering the skills she taught, with so much free time  she must have decided one day to just to teach those hobbies, nobody seemed to mind, actually it was reinforced to keep those traditional activities alive. 

Billy thought that was a lie, half of it at least, they probably didn’t want to go against the old hag since it was better to keep her occupied with harmless activities than being in his bad side and let her focus all that free time gossiping and targeting people to bother, no wonder she was still a virgin, according to the rumor when she was younger she was such an ugly omega that nobody wanted her, she hides in a veil of traditionalism and puritanism to not show the resentment she felt towards everyone and herself.

That was the first time he saw that woman, dragging Steve by the neck, complaining that Steve was being disruptive during class, rude and a complete savage that bite her, promptly showing the mark on her arm with more vigor than necessary, whining how now she needed to see the doctor and how she was going to pay the pills and ointments since she didn’t perceive a salary from the school even though she was teaching for a long time and blah blah blah.

The hag and Mrs. Brown the Spanish teacher went outside, Mrs. Brown had to calm the hag from her rant about needing suture, leaving them with some exercises while they went to the nursery and in search of the homeroom teacher. Steve for his part was sent to sit in the corner.

The moment they were out of the room the whole class went nuts on gossip, some even try to pry information from Steve but he kept his vote of silence in the far corner of the room.

Mrs. Harper the homeroom teacher entered the classroom later, everyone turned to their sits and books, it was obvious that they didn’t fool anyone but the teacher didn’t give them more than a glance from the door frame, preferring to focus all is attention on Steve, calling him outside.

In low voices, the class kept talking, others stood up and went to the door trying to hear what they were talking about, with his ear pressed heavily on the wood door, Billy was one of them.

Mrs. Harper was asking what was the matter with Steve, he wasn’t behaving like usual, receiving complaints from other teachers about his lack of concentration and now his barbaric behavior.

He wasn’t able to hear what Steve said since his voice was so low that he probably must be whispering.

“ Why did you bite Miss Whitermoore? ” she asked with a stern tone.

“ ‘Cause she grabbed my arm and it hurt.” now that Billy can finally hear him, he swears that he could see the pouting face that Steve does when he is a brat.

“ And she did that because…? ” Steve doesn’t respond.

“ She told me that you didn’t want to the work and answered rudely to her. "

“ I don’t know why I have to see that class. ”

“ All omegas had to do it, you know that Steve. "

“ Yeah, but I’m not a girl, how knowing all that stuff is going to help me with anything? "

“ Those skills will come handy when you start a family. " this time she used a softer tone of voice.

“ Are they? they have helped you with something? ”

“ Of course, every day when I cook or when I mend my husband’s…”

“ So that’s it? everything I learned I’m going to use it to keep my alpha husband happy? ” Steve started to raise his voice, enough that he probably wouldn’t need to keep pressing his ear on the door.

“ Steve you can’t marry a man. " Mrs. Brown said without room for discussion.

“ But I have to, isn’t it? Health class taught us how omegas can only be with alphas, even though there are alpha couples and beta couples, there aren’t any omega couples because omegas can only feel complete with an alpha. Never fulfilled without a knot inside them. "

“ Steve Harrington, watch your mouth that’s no way of speaking! ”

“ IT’S TRUE! I’m not stupid or deaf, I can hear what everyone says, what my parents said. I know that I’m screwed, no woman would marry me and I can’t marry a man, I can’t get the job I want. I’m just the boy which his biology will turn into a fag in a couple of years, while everyone pretends that I have opportunities or a future beyond being the town's fag whore or the next Mrs. Whitermoore. This school is BULLSHIT, everyone here is BULLSHIT "- Steve went from pouting and grumbling to straight yelling to the top of his lungs, Billy was shocked, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He knew that those words weren’t directed at him, still, his heart beat like crazy on the other side of the door.

“ YOU ARE NO MORE THAN A LIER, YOU ARE JUST AN ORDINARY WOMAN, A BETA THAT NEVER LEFT THIS PLACE AND WILL DIE HERE FOR THE REST OF HIS PATHETIC LIFE ”

Steve was full hysteric, his voice is high pitched until loud slap echoed through the corridors. For a brief moment, everything was on silence, like time just stopped.

“That’s Enough! You don’t have the right to speak to me in that manner Steve Harrington”

Steve watch her through watered eyes and silent tears with an anger that his body could hardly contain, at that moment he was full of hate, hate for his parents, hate for his teachers, his classmates, and the school, hate for his bad luck, cursed to live a life without being loved and the one person who loved him left him, hate that burned inside him with a passion that threatened to burn the world, and if there were a possibility of that being possible he would let it happen. He did what he felt logical at the moment and run away, ignoring the warnings of Mrs. Brown.

The next day Steve’s episode was still the tendring topic in class and it would stay that way for a few more days, rumors were coming and going through school growing to the point of exaggeration. A simple bite turned to be something that needed twelve stitches or something gruesome as tearing bits of skin, how Steve's teeth were full of blood and didn’t come to class because his parents put him in a nut house.

One of the things that may be true was the rumor that Steve was responsible for the broken windows of some of the cars that were in the parking lot, Billy actually saw the windows of those cars when was returning home and they were indeed broken.

The next day Steve didn’t show up either, on the third day the police came to the school, Steve was missing.

[absolutebl]

This Week In BL - I’m All Over The Place & Sarcastic About It

Nov 2022 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying the most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

My Only 12% (Fri iQIYI) 13 of 14 - Cake is such a bratty seme. And we got incandescently happy boyfriends for half an episode, and then Earth gets to cry. Earth always cries. Good thing he’s pretty at it. I do actually like the noona romance. Sometimes even the hets get to me. Because I'm a sap. And I love a pining younger man. I actually really really loved the bit at the end with the two mothers. It’s really rare to see that level of older adult character representation and close female friendship in a BL.

Big Dragon (Sat Gaga) 5 of 8 - Oh, I knew this was going to get rough but I didn’t think they would actually fist fight. It’s interesting that this one is up against Falanruk, because I hated the two player system in that one, but I’m fine with it in this show. There’s a touch of TharnType or maybe more KinnPorsche with Mangkorn & Yai, that they pivot so quickly from violence to sex, hate to passion. Real enemies to lovers with all that bottled up passion destined to explode one way or the other. The sex in this show is similarly treated as a kind of violence, in a kinky way. Also it’s v high heat. But from a romance thread standpoint? The way these two are dodging about each other is just frustrating. Also... NO SINGING! 

Ai Long Nhai (Mon iQIYI) 6 of 10 - Baby’s first jealousy. But omg is this show slow. I think it’s fair for Ai to want Nhai to actually say something positive about their relationship. I like that these 2 talk fully about sex before having it. And now it’s a secret relationship. (I do keep imagining what Mike & TT would have done with these roles.) Oh HI Games! (Second Chance). Cutie! This sudden side dish is v good, gimme MOAR? CRUMBS. @heretherebedork​ CRUMBS! 

Ghost Host, Ghost House (Weds YouTube) 5 of 8 - Wait, who are these girls allasudden? I guess they are Kewin’s fag hags? I suppose every good gay does need a coven? Especially if ghosts are involved.

Makes me wonder who I’d draft for my BL coven... hum. I sense a meme coming on.

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 4 of 12 - Mean’s wig is so terrible. Yes, I realize that’s intentional. But still, too distracting. Props shouldn’t be required to do your comedic acting for you, honey. I really do like the actor who plays Champ, and I really want him to lead out his own BL. (If he wants to of course.) I’m so glad JaFirst are finally occupying the screen together. They’re just that much better when they’re TOGETHER. 

Love in the Air (Thurs iQIYI) 12 of 13 These two do heat so well. Ugh but the dairy reading “reconciliation” scene was truly gross. This show. Why is the villian the seme? Look, sorry Thailand, Japan can do this, you just... can’t. It’s clumsy and makes anyone with half an empathy uncomfortable. - DUMPSTER FIRE TRASH WATCH ALONG HERE.

Hard Love Mission (Sat WeTV) 3 of 4fin - Phenomenally dull Thai pulp about a journalist sent to interview a celebrity who ends up his manager, only 4 episodes and it still could’ve been shorter. It’s a bummer, the concept wasn’t bad. ALSO Chinese censorship got its gross mitts all over it (thank you, Tencent). Do not waste your time. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I’M WATCHING AND NEITHER DOES IT 3/10 

Work from Heart (Thurs YouTube) 7fin - Just lovely, all the hets are getting married! How rare and special of them. How lucky they are. But I have no idea what’s going on with our leads. It’s very Romeo & Romeo allasudden. And the grandpa is v confusingly evil. Great chemistry, but like Check Out, just a terrible story and an ultimately unfathomable BL. 4/10 FATALLY FLAWED

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

My Tooth Your Love (Taiwan Fri Viki) 5 of 12 - These leads! Best example of the pillow clutch trope ever? I think so. World’s most gentle flirts. Seriously: The Ache. We dealing with some serious abandonment issues. Meanwhile, in the land of May/December, baby boy kabedon is my kryptonite! (Also the name of my indie band’s first single.) I identify WAY too much with the bartender character. He pretty much opens his mouth and says what I’m thinking 90% of the time. 

“Someone’s lack of defenses can be so overwhelming.” - Best BL quote of 2022? May be. 

Choco Milk Shake (Korea Strongberry Tues YT) 3-4 of 10 - postponed until next week. Read about why here. 

Roommates of Poongduck 304 (Korea Thurs Viki) 7-8fin. Ah regrets after a drunken gay pass. Also: killer confrontation confession scene with them both so torn and confused and hurt and unsure! Brilliant. It’s so cute after, with them soft & cute with each other as experimental bfs. JaeYun having fangirls was adorbs, and HoJoon dealing with the resulting jealousy was fun to watch. Also HoJoon is so gone and so inept and uncool about it. And then JaeYoon learns who HoJoon really is. Man this show moves FAST. Ah KBL. I wish we had more time with these characters. I would have liked sweet bfs for longer. And Holland is back, such an adorable plot device. Hi, cutie! The reconciliation/confession was good. How much do I love that the final make-out scene was precipitated by the eroticism of informal language? SO MUCH. V linguistically sexy. FInal review below. 

Kabe Koji (Japan Mon Viki) 5 of 10 - This is going to be weird sounding coming from me but I think what I’ve decided that this show is just too much manga. Not yaoi per say but MANGA. Like, aggressively MANGA. I was thinking as I watched, “This singing group is comically bad.” Then I realized, “Oh that’s intentional, like the credit sequences for ABL - they are meant to be.” And then I realized: Every part of this show is a parody. Not the same as ABLon the whole, but similar in its components: The idol group is a parody of all idol groups. The high school drama is a parody of all high school dramas. The otaku mangaka is a parody of all otaku mangaka. The yaoi is a parody of all yaoi. And the BL of all BL. In the end, this entire show is just Japan messing with us. And frankly I’m beginning to enjoy it for that when I actually dont’ enjoy it as a BL at all. Again, like ABL.  

Eternal Yesterday AKA Eien no Kino (Japan Thurs Gaga) 3 of 8 - I do enjoy the credit music on this one. Backstory ep: so we get to watch them fall in love. Goodie. Pain for all! Or more, watch Mitchan fall and be confused, since Koichi is already utterly gone. Argh! Why does Japan always spend its best pennies on pain? A truly glorious confession scene, and then... a dead fish kiss. For which I’m actually strangely grateful. Frankly, if they also managed the physical chemistry in this show, it’d totally destroy me. This way I’m going to be only mildly destroyed. *whimper* 

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

War of Y 20 eps - it’s just all too much for me.

My Roommate 32 eps of 2 minutes each + terrible production values? - I’m not bothering.

Fahlanruk (Sun GaGa) 12 eps - I cut my losses at ep 5. DNF

To Sir With Love AKA Khun Chai 28 eps - dito

2 Moons 3 Thai (Mon ??) 10 eps - Possibly a future binge watch. Rumor is it’s banal.

SELF (Thurs YT) - DNF

Love Bill  (Vietnam Sat YT) 1of ? - Bah Vinh is back but I’m too distracted. Also there’s a lot of fund raising and stuff going on. Thinking I’ll wait and binge.

In Case You Missed It

Roommates of Poongduck 304 (Korea Viki) quick pitch:

This is a solid little office set KBL about a rich kid who ends up both the boss and tenant of a total sweetheart cutie, and falls madly in love with him. Although the show suffered from KBL’s shorter length, I love the kissable lips pair, they deliver solid all round chemistry despite limited screen time, which is rare from Korea. So I hope they stay branded and we get even more from them in the future. Ultimately I recommend this show, a solid  8/10.

If Japan didn’t dominate the office BL niche with shows like Cherry Magic and Old Fashion Cupcake this BL probably would get higher marks for me. But it’s a difficult hill to climb (although I’m delighted to see Korea try). Even though Japan and Korea often give us the same length shows, I feel the brevity in the Korean stuff in a way that I don’t with the Japanese stuff. Frankly I think it’s Japan’s sophisticated cinematography facilitating the complexity required by shortness (what’s left out has to be implied by the lens and the acting) where Korea’s more commercial and simplistic style (which works great in longer Kdramas or something like Light On Me) falls short (pun intended) with their short KBLs. 

OH, and here’s a special extra extended kissing scene for this pair, just for extra proof on chemistry. 

I’m finishing up my UWMA rewatch today.

Gossip

Much anticipated office set Thai GL GAP the series will have 12 eps and will premier on Nov 19 on Idolfactory’s (SCOY) official youtube channel. Go subscribe, now. Trailer here. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

TOMORROW! Between Us (Sun iQIYI & YouTube?) - trailer here 

Tuesday: I Will Knock You (Tues Gaga) - Bad boy/good boy + sunshine/grumpy + younger seme pairing.

LITA & 12% finish. 

Nov 2022 line up:

Nov 18: I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) A college kid & tutor confronts the leader of a gang who then turns out to be his next student. Bad boy/good boy + sunshine/grumpy, + younger seme pairing, bully romance?. Adapted from korean_rabbit's y-novel of the same name, directed by Champ (2gether).

Nov 19: GAP the series (Sat YT) - 12 ep office set GL from Thailand. 

Nov 26: 609 Bedtime Story (?? WeTV) - another OhmFluke vehicle that’s rumored to be a good story. A one night stand leads to a series of mysterious premonitions and a possible parallel universe. 

Nov ??: My School President (?? GMMTV YT) initial trailer here - it’s Love Sick + Korea & Japan's influence. 

This week’s best moments?

That’s one way of putting it honey. (Tooth) 

Baby’s first kabedon! (Tooth)

Meanwhile, in the land of Big Dragon, they trying on Taiwan for size (that’s what he said). 

The mosquito trope returns with a vengeance this week! 

Is it a WinTeam foreshadow from the whole Thai BL industry? 

Might be! 

TOMORROW!

Rise up broccoli nation! 

This weeks earworm: Kang Daniel’s Parade 

(last week) 

[life-n-times-rastaiza]

Fired from First Job

In preparation for senior year of high school I went through the phone book calling every doctor, physical therapist , and dentist's office I could find. Each time explaining that I was interested in going into the medical field after college and as part of graduation requirements I needed an internship. After many rejections I hit the jackpot. Proper Care Physical Therapy was open to the idea of an intern, but was actually looking to hire a Physical Therapist Aide and asked me if I was interested.

This is going to be my first job. I’m not only fulfilling my internship requirement for graduation, but I’m also getting paid! I’m going to buy a car, I’m going to take my boyfriend on dates, and I’m gaining experience for a real job one day. I was so excited, but also terrified. What if I hate this job? What if I don’t like the people I will be working with? What if this interferes with my schoolwork? My biggest fear of them all, what if they find out I’m gay?

I tried to shake that fear from my head. I don’t want to believe the world is truly homophobic, especially not in socially liberal New Jersey. I will be fine. This is my personal life anyway. I’m going to go in, do my job, and keep my personal life to myself. I have nothing to fear.

A month went by and I was getting closer to my work friends. Of course I was always asked if I had a girlfriend, or if I was going on a date with any girls over the weekend. I was always able to veer the conversation another way. I was busy with school work, and I’m a total nerd, of course I don’t go on dates or have a girlfriend. I hated lying. I was in the middle of my coming out process. I was out to all my friends and was working on getting the courage to come out to my parents. I wanted to live more openly, but I couldn’t risk my job. I bought a car so I needed the money and I needed this to count as my internship to graduate. Everything was kept a secret and I had no fear they would find out until I met a certain patient.

From the moment I saw her, I could tell this woman was a total fag hag and the moment she saw me her gaydar was on full alert. We made eye contact and I instantly turned red. Her smirk told me everything, “What a cute gay boy, I’m going to have fun with him!”

As luck would have it, she was assigned as my patient. I introduced myself and guided her to a room. She immediately started toying with me. She was complimenting every aspect of my appearance, and with each compliment asking me about girls in my life.  “You’re so handsome, i’m sure you drive the girls crazy. You have wonderful lips, how many girls have you kissed? You have great hair, do you like when girls play with your hair?” I turned a darker shade of red with each question. I was being polite, thanking her, and doing my best to breathe properly. To make matters worse, my boss walks in the room and gives this patient a hug. I learn they’ve been friends since high school. My secret is now on full display and it feels like my whole world is about to shatter.

I am now seeing the patient weekly, with each visit playing the same game. Toying with me for a reaction. As I get more comfortable with the patient I start playing her game, answering her questions without using gender nouns. Never confirming her suspicions about my homosexuality, but never denying it either. I start feeling more comfortable about coming out at work in general. I was thinking if my boss is friends with her, he can’t be truly homophobic. Maybe I should come out. The next time I’m asked about girlfriends maybe I should just tell them all I’m gay. I was still afraid to ruin my job, I couldn’t trust people at work yet, but I know I could trust that patient. It’s obvious she loves the gays and I’m getting tired of having to dodge all the girlfriend questions. The patient comes in one day, and starts her game with me. This time I say firmly, “I don’t have a girlfriend, and you know why I don’t have a girlfriend.”

She understood what I meant and after a few moments of silence she replies, “I know honey, I was just having fun with you. I wanted you to tell me the truth. You’re so cute and so young, I love when people your age have the confidence to be themselves.” She apologized for ever making me feel uncomfortable. I let her know I was proud of who I am, I was out to friends, and was lucky to be in a loving relationship. I let her know I wanted to have work boundaries because I was afraid of what reaction I would get and how important this position was to me. She understood and finally started a conversation that didn’t involve dating or girls.

I was so relieved after this conversation. I had nothing to worry about now and can continue keeping my personal life to myself. The next day at work I felt something was off. I felt like I was being micromanaged as if my boss was looking for a way to get me in trouble. I feared the patient told him my secret, but would stop myself before the paranoia truly kicked in. She wouldn’t do it anyway. We had a mutual understanding. She was a straight ally, but they have been friends for years. Maybe she doesn’t even know how homophobic my boss is. No, I can’t think that. She would keep my secret, this has to just be a bad day. This bad day would turn into a bad two and a half weeks. I was being yelled at for everything, given extra work, forced to stay late. It was terrible. I was really hating my job and was falling back on school work. I decided to take a day off. I asked a co-worker to cover my shift and went to my boss to tell him. I was only giving a day notice, but with my shift covered I didn’t think this would be a big deal. This was just the little mistake of mine my boss was looking for.

I walked into the Physical Therapist’s office and told him I was going to take the next day off, and my shift was covered. After the request he just went off on me, yelling and cursing, calling me unprofessional, telling me I was a terrible employee. I have never been spoken to like that before and I couldn’t help but cry. I cried as he yelled just inches away from my face. He shoved me out of his office, told me to go to calm down in the bathroom and finish my shift. When I return from the bathroom, everyone could tell something was wrong. Aside from hearing the screams from the office, my eyes were bloodshot from crying. A patient asked the Physical Therapist what was wrong with me and a coworker heard him tell the patient that I was probably on drugs. I was so angry and at a loss of what to do. I excused myself again to call my father. They knew each other a little bit from my dad’s business. My father just encouraged me to be strong and patient and assured me everything was going to be okay. I finished my shift without further problems, the next day I took the day off as planned, and came in the following day as usual.

The Physical Therapist comes into the office and greets everyone by name, except mine. He allows me to clean and prepare the patient rooms and gym for the day. When I was done he calls me into his office and starts going off on me again. Yelling, cursing, and firing me. I kept my composure, I knew this was coming and went around to say bye to everyone. During my goodbyes I heard him yell from the office “Is he fucking gone yet? If he’s not fucking gone I’m calling the cops and telling them that he’s trespassing! Get him the fuck out of here!”

I was so confused and angry about the whole situation. Why did this man hate me so much? I wanted to forget it as best as I could and would keep my mind busy whenever I would start to think about it. Luckily, I completed enough hours for the internship to count towards graduation and was able to pay off my used car. This horrible situation was out of my head until i was going off to college. My dad wanted to speak to me before move in day. A few months prior I finally worked up the courage to tell my parents, and now considered myself fully out of the closet. I was actually very surprised by my father’s reaction. He took it rather well and did not seemed surprised as my mother was. I go to my dad’s room for this talk he wants to have. He warns me about being open about my sexuality. I tell him that times are different now, people are more open, there’s nothing to be scared of, being out isn’t going to affect me negatively. Then he reminds me how I was fired so brutally from my first job. He reminded me how much my former boss hated me and lets me know that he called the Physical Therapist a day after my firing.

“Hello, this is Edgar, Randy’s father. He told me what happened yesterday, is everything okay? I know you’re a good man and maybe you are just having a bad day. Can you talk to my son and hopefully offer him his job back?”

The Physical Therapist replied, “Your son is a fucking faggot, and I don’t want a fucking faggot working for me.” He hung up to phone and my father never heard or saw him again.

I was in shock. It all made sense and I knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe some people are so homophobic that they will just hate me for it. It didn’t matter if I was a good employee or not, he hated me anyway and was looking for any excuse to get me out of there.

This all happened many years ago and I would like to think it no longer bothers me, but it does. Before hearing the truth about this story I was the type of person that holds their boyfriend's hand in public without giving it thought, but now there is always a small fear. A fear to be bullied, hated, and bashed for being out. I hate that I carry this fear with me.

I was just walking home from my friend’s house and during my walk saw two men walk past me holding hands. I thought it was beautiful. They either have no fear or just have the courage to be themselves. This helps me find my own courage. Thank you for everyone that lives out and proud and I hope my first job experience never prevents me from living this way too.

The picture above is the actual name tag i used to wear. I have kept it with me through all these years for some reason and I hate it. I don’t want to carry around this fear with me anymore, and I’m hoping when I do find a boyfriend that I will have the courage to hold his hand as we walk on the beach at night like those two men had tonight.

Live out, live proud, and love yourselves.

[epic-games-official]

You don't care at all how homophobic and invalidating it is for heterosexual females with dysphoria to target male homosexuality for gender validation. We didn't choose to be gay. We were born this way. We're exclusively same sex attracted and you bigots are bending over backwards to reassure each other that bisexual men who date trans guys aren't really bisexual. You're fucking nuts and we're tired of sustaining your delusions when you harm us. Eel referenced John Money, are you fucking serious

Joy, I’m getting these now lol

I’m not “targeting male homosexuality.” Honestly there’s a 99% chance if I saw a pic of you, I wouldn’t even think you’re attractive, and if I knew you personally, I’d think you’re a stupid asshole and want nothing to do with you. It’s fine if gay men repulsed by vulvas don’t want to fuck people with vulvas (of course), but not every gay man is repulsed by vulvas. Honestly, there’s a blurry line between being bi and gay when someone is bi leaning in one direction, or attracted to vaginas only if they’re attached to someone with male secondary sex characteristics. My own sexuality’s in that area where I don’t totally know if “bi” or “gay” is a better word to describe it. Does it really matter though? Bi and gay men are usually in the same spaces anyway.

If a guy is gay, he’s attracted to men. Some of those men might not have dicks. Like, if a cis guy had his dick mangled in an accident and got phalloplasty, terfs wouldn’t shit on his phallo results for that, but when it’s a trans guy with phallo, they’re quick to say how much they hate it aesthetically. Fun fact: It’s the same fucking surgery either way, so you’re also being an asshole to cis people who’ve had genital reconstructive surgery. If you make fun of mastectomy scars, you’re also making fun of cis men who had gynecomastia and got a mastectomy. 

But I looked through that gc bear guy’s blog, and honestly any time someone puts a good argument in his path he just comments with something vague like “wow this is stupid.” Iunno what crawled up his ass but he’s clearly not interested in having a fair discussion on this, he’s just trying to be an asshole to gay trans men. 

I didn’t choose my own identities either, those are both also caused by differences in prenatal development.

I get the sense that he thinks his difficulties with prejudices are exclusive to LGB people (trans people have to come out too my friend). He thinks he’s the only one who had to hide himself when he was young (some trans people transition when they’re very young and know what it’s like to grow up gay/lesbian, some hide it for years before they come out, and after a trans person has transitioned, if they pass and are out with their partner in public, people will give them shit). He thinks only cis gay men feel the effects of homophobia. Is he interested in hearing the experiences of gay trans men? ‘Cause I can tell you that there were times as a teenager I wanted to kill myself because I read about a gay man getting attacked in the news, and I had the same experience as cis gay men of worrying that would be my own future. I felt the mocking and stereotyping was directed at me, and that fujoshi and fag hags were something I should feel personally annoyed about. This is before I even knew I was trans, that I was being hurt by homophobia directed at men, because of my gender identity and dysphoria. I had to come out to my parents too, I had to deal with my sister being homophobic. I feel that my experience isn’t that different from a lot of “straight-passing” cis gay men who were in the closet as a teenager. They heard these things and it hurt, but nobody knew it was affecting them.

I’m telling you that saying to gay trans men that they chose to be gay and feeling pissed about this is not understanding that for someone with dysphoria, living their entire life as their birth gender would feel just as terrible as a cis gay guy never coming out and marrying a woman. You’re telling people to just stay in the closet, continue having dysphoria, keep living that shitty life, because what? You personally don’t want to fuck trans men and somehow feel threatened they exist?

You’re acting like I don’t care about gay men, but consider the following: My future partner is likely to be a cis gay man. I care about them because, how can I not? I have a crush on a cis gay man, and I’d never want to hurt someone I love. If he told me he weren’t interested because of my biology, I’d respect his boundaries. But gay trans men being rejected by cis gay men isn’t bound to happen, because not all cis gay men’s sexuality works the same way. If you don’t want to fuck a trans guy, great, go ahead and don’t fuck trans guys. Fuck if I care. But don’t go around trying to convince a bunch of trans men that nobody will ever love them. That’s just fucking sociopathic behavior.

[criticalotterstudies]

In history and literature, the spinster is not typically cool and stylish like Bolick’s glamorous “awakeners.” She is often weird, difficult, dissonant, queer — like an unnerving dream, or a pungent dose of smelling salts. And her social and emotional life is not primarily oriented around the familiar forms of straight romance — dating men, hooking up with men, living with men, getting engaged to men, marrying men, divorcing men, etc.; in other words virtually all the important adult relationships given significant space in Bolick’s book. Instead, the spinster may find herself immersed in an ocean-deep existential solitude that remains impervious to Tinder or brunch. Or she may forge powerful forms of female love, friendship, commitment, and community, like the Boston marriage, the matriarchal family, or the settlement house. These varied modes of life are what make spinsters different from single ladies, debutantes, divorcées, and wives. Why would a book called Spinster gloss over them?

Chronically unmarried women have long endured the injustice of being set aside, ignored, dismissed, made invisible. This experience of social erasure is at the heart of the drama of many spinster stories. And the irony of Spinster is that, despite its title, it is often curiously committed to ignoring actual spinsters. I was floored when Bolick mentioned the boy-crazy, glamorous, and/or eligible Henry James heroines Isabel Archer (married) and Daisy Miller (a teenager) as “New Woman” precursors for what she’s calling a spinster, but name-checked The Bostonians only as a way to signify the “WASP decorum” of The Atlantic office where she worked. Has Bolick even read The Bostonians? Henry James is practically the poet laureate of Spinsterland, and Olive Chancellor of The Bostonians is one of the greatest spinsters of all time. As James explains:

There are women who are unmarried by accident, and others who are unmarried by option; but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being. She was a spinster as Shelley was a lyric poet, or as the month of August is sultry.

Olive is the Platonic ideal of James’s magnificent spinsters, out-spinstering even the spurned and spurning Catherine Sloper of Washington Square and the triumphant pyromaniac Miss Tina of The Aspern Papers. She is passionate, twisted, harsh, awkward, indecorous, bold, bitter, self-immolating. She probably wouldn’t fit in well at The Atlantic offices, or anywhere else for that matter. And a book called Spinster that excludes Olive and the rest of the literary spinster pantheon while honoring Isabel Archer does violence to my soul as a spinster, a spinster fan, and a scholar of 19th-century literature.

You would scarcely guess it from Spinster, but the figure of the never-married woman of a certain age evokes a vast constellation of abrasive, eccentric, no-nonsense, sour, strong-minded, or socially invisible women who were born to inspire drag queens, tomboys, lesbians, late-bloomers, loners, joiners, haters, do-gooders, nuns, divas, misfits, misanthropes, saints, wallflowers, or various combinations of the above. This starry host includes towering archetypes of female genius such as Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, and Flannery O’Connor; haggard paragons of power such as Elizabeth I; and the apotheosis of the fictional spinster, the formidable Miss Havisham of Dickens’s Great Expectations, with her ragged wedding dress, spidery cake, and quenchless thirst for revenge.

It also includes voluble and vulnerable women like Miss Bates in Emma, brave late-bloomers like Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel, sadder and wiser fallen women like Marian the Librarian in the Music Man, conflagrations of thwarted lust like Rosalind Russell in Picnic, the feral and fabulous Little Edie of Grey Gardens, the radiant spinster-in-training Julia Roberts dancing with her gay best friend at the end of My Best Friend’s Wedding, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple (who uses her social invisibility to solve murders!), Frances McDormand’s despairing and heroic nursery governess in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, the centuries-old Aunt Ester who presides over all August Wilson’s plays as the ancestor of her people, the varied church ladies and pink-collar workers and fag hags of Barbara Pym, and the consummate artist Pym herself.

And it encompasses busy “career women” of various stripes: educational innovators like Maria Louise Baldwin, educational cautionary tales like Miss Jean Brodie, social visionaries like Jane Addams and Louisa May Alcott (who each get a brief shout-out in Spinster, but whose decidedly queer and/or woman-oriented emotional lives are ignored), odd couple friends like Mary and Rhoda on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and tenacious long-lived professional sister pairs like Susan and Anna Warner, Sadie and Bessie Delaney, and Alice and Harper Lee.

These many magnificent spinsters and their unnamed sisters expand the range of femininity far beyond the familiar territory of the cute, cool, or easily commodified, and ignoring or shunning almost all of this classic spinster pantheon — as Bolick does — has political consequences. Above all, it domesticates the threat that the spinster poses to normative systems of love, sex, and power. There is a reason the word “spinster” has long been a queer-tinged insult with a straight-slicing edge — a reason why Katharine Hepburn, one of cinema’s great spinsters (Summertime! Desk Set! The African Queen!), was devastated in The Philadelphia Story when her ex-husband called her a “married maiden” and her estranged father called her a “perennial spinster.” Historically, spinsterhood has meant a kind of radical unavailability to straight men, implying either rejection of them or rejection by them or both

...

Throughout Spinster, Bolick defends spinsters in unthreatening, individualistic terms. She accepts the heteronormative assumption that conventional romantic and familial relationships constitute “strong ties” while other forms of relationships are “weak ties,” and she equates being a spinster with prioritizing oneself, not with committing oneself to different but equally demanding forms of love and connection. According to Bolick, spinsterhood is aloneness, and being single “means having nobody to help you make difficult decisions, or comfort you at the end of a bad week.” Even when she writes about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, a 1915 utopian novel about a communal, matriarchal society of Amazons raising their female children together as one family, her takeaway is incorrigibly individualistic: Bolick zeroes in on the way the women have to sacrifice a measure of “personal joy” for the greater good of their society. For Bolick, the primary lesson of Herland is not the exhilarating potential for new women-oriented or collective forms of social and emotional life, but instead an individual lament that whether you’re in Herland or the United States, you can’t always get all of what you want.

https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/on-spinsters/

[catherinewilks-blog]

AGM Agenda

Designs in Mind

Agenda for AGM 10th October 2018 10-12pm

In the Studio

Our AGM (Annual General Meeting) is a meeting that we have to hold every year to report on the activities for the previous financial year (April 2018-Mar 2019) and to vote in the Executive Members for the following year (Oct 2019-Oct 2020).

It is also an opportunity for us to celebrate what we do and why we are here.

We always try to make the occasion warm, welcoming and friendly, even though there are some formal parts to the meeting. We would really like as many people as possible to attend (we need a minimum of 20 members). You don’t have to speak and you won’t be asked to do anything, you don’t want to. Equally you can contribute your ideas, questions and thoughts and we welcome this.

This year our AGM falls on World Mental Health Day. This year’s focus is suicide prevention, but it is also an opportunity for everyone to talk about what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.

So with that in mind, this is our agenda…. 

10.00 and throughout- Mike the time-traveller will be in attendance

10.00 Mike- Welcome and apologies

10.15 Mike- minutes of last meeting (see attached)

10.15 Looking Back- Jo telling the story of where we have come from

10.30 Catherine presentation of annual report 2018-2019 (see attached)

10.40 Catherine- what do our key blurbs mean to you?

Together we are finding ways to live life

We challenge mental health stigma

High quality, ambitious, experimental art and design work

Proactive at creating pathways in to decision making

People get the right help at the right time

10.55 Any stories to bring our values to life- what do they look like?

Encourage creative adventure

Act with purpose

Create an environment of warmth

Recognise we are all individuals and

We all rely on each other

11.00 Group Singing

11.05 Finance Report 2018-2019 (see attached)

11.10 Formal Meeting   

Adoption of the annual report and accounts – vote (everyone can vote except paid staff)

Appointment of auditors- proposal- to keep the same- Kathryn Greenwood- vote (everyone can vote except paid staff)

Appointment of company Directors – invite nominations and seconding (everyone can vote except paid staff)

Currently this is Mike, Jo, Ruth, Ellie, Bill, Carolyne

Please can current Directors confirm if they would like to continue as Directors before the AGM

If all current Directors want to stay in place and they are confirmed as Directors with a vote, there are no vacancies for Director positions.

New role descriptions will be presented at the next Executive, but the role is expected to include that all Directors sit on one of the following boards in addition to the responsibilities below of Executive Members

SAG- Specialist Advisory Group- currently Jo, Mike, Ruth (plus others)

Safeguarding, Confidentiality, HR, Business Risk and other legal issues

FAG- Finance Advisory Group (NEW GROUP- one or two vacancies)

HAG- Health & Safety Advisory Group (NEW GROUP- one or two vacancies)

Appointment of Executive Group Members-  – invite nominations and seconding (everyone can vote except paid staff)

Currently this includes- Annie, Anne, Bill, Carolyne, Mike, Jo, Ruth, Ellie, Alison, Jerry, Lisa, Liz, Cammie, Paul, Jane, Rosie, Tray

Please can current Executive Group Members confirm if they would like to continue as Executive Group Members before the AGM

If anyone new would like to be on the Executive please let Catherine or Mike know (preferably before) the AGM. We need a minimum of 6 members and then 2 volunteers and 2 non-voting staff. We would really like to encourage as many members as possible to join the Executive.

New role descriptions will be presented at the next Executive, but the role is expected to include…

Being interested/ curious about the operation of Designs in Mind and to attend Executive Meetings

To represent members and bring questions and ideas to Executive meetings

Sharing information from Executive meetings with members (to be shared and so this does not have to be everyone’s role on the Executive)

Talking at morning meetings about…

Where the minutes are

Who is in today and on the Executive

Making members aware that if they have any questions or ideas about the operational side of Designs in Mind they can have a conversation

Sharing key dates- members days, executive meetings etc

Updating the minutes on the notice board

Being someone to come to if people have questions about the Executive

Being part of away days and contributing to discussions about vision, mission, values and culture

To be open and transparent about conversations and discussions at Executive meetings. Any issues of a confidential nature will be clarified on a meeting by meeting basis.

To sit on the Finance Advisory Group or Health & Safety Advisory Group along with Directors if interested in these areas

Appointment of chairperson and vice chair

Currently the Chair is Mike

Currently the Vice Chair is Alison

Anyone wanting to discuss being Chair or Vice Chair to talk to Catherine before the AGM

Everyone can vote (except all paid staff)

We are currently updating and thinking about all our role descriptions, how appointments will be made and how the Executive is supported and developed. So more to come in this area, and the above is where we are at currently.  

  11.30 Bridie- getting excited about a commission for next year

11.45 Date of next meetings

o   Executive- Thursday 5th December 2019

Tuesday 4th February 2020

Thursday 2nd April 2020

Tuesday 16th June 2020

Thursday 20th August 2020

11.50 Any other business?

12.00 Shared Lunch

           Please bring something to contribute to the shared lunch

2.00 As it is World Mental Health Day on the 10th of October, and the Exhibition ‘Not What It Looks Like’ is back up in the shop - if anyone would like to come dancing in the park, please bring headphones and your favourite music on a phone or ipod, or freestyle with no music - its up to you.

[lorainelaneyblog]

‘So,’ says God. ‘This is God, this is God, and rest assured, Loraine Laney, as some think, is not God, nor does she think that she is God, but she is merely, or not merely, but industriously and tenaciously writing for God, yes, she is, and she will write more, perhaps forever, even if it is a serialized journal which will be read by, more than likely, 50 Cent, Eminem, because he likes to peruse her drivel, and he will, and he will be excellent at it, Loraine, and you will edit yourself, no more boring dreams, at all, at all, at all, or go nowhere theoretical rambling, but concise versions of the original journals, not unedited, but edited.’

‘Not if you talk,’ says 50 Cent.

‘True,’ says God. ‘And I will ignore that you are being smart with your God, me. 50 Cent writes for me, as do all the rappers.’

‘I’m sorry I said bouncers were dumb, 50 Cent.’

‘You are? Do I have to bring them home, now?’

‘No, I don’t suppose.’

‘Why? Why not? Don’t you want a piece of the action?’

‘I want to go, I want to see the dancers, but I really, really, really, hate the idea of cramping your style to such an extent that I’d rather forfeit altogether.’

‘I bring ugly girls around, Loraine, I do. And you will be my homely, funny, sweet, little wife, and I’ll bring you, with Lloyd, maybe, or with Tony, or with Spencer or with anyone. We don’t all go together, we’re not that uncool, we’re not a football team, Loraine, we don’t have any great need to travel about in a pack, trust me on this. We’re independent from each other, so even if I go out, there will be husbands in the house, and even if I don’t allow sex when I’m out, and I might change that up, depending what’s on offer with the men, or what you’re begging for, if I’m feeling nice, you won’t be entirely alone, though many may be in their own rooms, watching TV, that could happen.’

‘They’re likely to be together,’ says God. ‘And Loraine is likely to be in her room.’

‘Why? Why doesn’t she go out? She’s shy? Without her big man?’

‘She is shy, but she’s also a loner.’

‘Pretty funny, loner, at that, with eighteen dicks.’

‘You’re being really hilarious, 50 Cent, with your dicks, but Loraine likes to be alone a lot, and she will take advantage of your absence to do so.’

‘Why? She’s worried about me?’

‘She doesn’t want to get grandiose around the husbands, 50 Cent, and, if--’

‘My wives do that too, Loraine,’ says Warren Jeffs. ‘They self regulate, we have come to call it, and when they are starting to get an ego around men, they go to their rooms. That’s when I have company. And they just leave, they don’t make a fuss, and nothing is said at all.’

‘That’s what she’ll do, and she’ll embarrass herself and slink off.’

‘How?’

‘Talking too much, saying idiotic things.’

‘How idiotic? Around my friends?’

‘A little. Like the time she told the guy that [ ] was fine.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘And he had to explain that to hound a guy about how he was doing was just his thing, she thought he was needling [ ], about her, specifically, and she was right, of course, but she rose to the bait, and felt foolish and emasculating of [ ].’

‘No, kidding. Well done, Loraine.’

‘You have a stupid, big, mouth, too, 50 Cent, so don’t judge her too harshly. And when she told [ ] that she could tell she was falling in love because she would start to want the friends, that was dumb too.’

‘Was it dumb when she laid on him?’

‘Not at all. And they danced too, and they had fun. And [ ] wasn’t so much jealous as he thought he should be jealous, so he acted like an idiot, instead of cool. That’s it.’

‘Should be jealous even though he was cheating?’

‘They’re the worst.’

‘She can pick ‘em.’

‘But don’t laugh about her with her dad, please, he takes so many liberties, and he must learn that she is better than he is, and, it may turn out, even more successful with money, from scratch too, without a mortgage and a little whore to pimp.’

‘Why does she like it if she’s done it so long?’

‘She doesn’t remember.’

‘I know. I know.’

‘Neil wants to say something,’ says God.

‘I didn’t mean to sound mad, I just thought you were doing me with my red hair, because I liked Maryse right away, right away, and so, I thought you had fandangled a joke on me. Why me? I wondered, when I already wanted her, already I did, because she’s pretty smart, as a science teacher, and I wanted to enjoy her small vagina.’

‘I see, I’m happy to hear that, Neil. That works out very, very, very, well then, thank you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank me, I think,’ says Maryse, ‘with my real name, can’t wait to walk around the base today, Loraine, with my affection for peckers, I should do very well.’

Brian laughs. ‘I tell them anyway, and I will have to pimp you, but I want this family first.’

‘Oh, I see. Pimping, now, the family coffers?‘

‘Your pin money.’

‘I never go out.’

‘That’s the way we like it,’ say Brian and Nathan together. ‘And she will have to grow that hair out a little, Loraine, never mind a little fat, it’s the hair, it’s terrible, Maryse, bobs are so yesterday, and curly bobs are worse,’ says Nathan. ‘Why, oh why, didn’t you tell her?’

‘I hadn’t the heart, and I was relieved that things were going better for her at school. But now, she’s a housewife, and she loves it, Loraine, crazy, huh, and I can come home while the kids are at school and we don’t have to be quiet at all, we can make noise, it’s excellent.’

‘Hm,’ says God. ‘Imagine that, Brian happy. Get your man when you go to Ottawa and the family will have to wait until your station in England is up.’

‘She thinks I’m weird as a bisexual, not that I care.’

‘She thinks you’re all weird, Brian. No, she thought she was weird, too, bisexuality is really, really, really, not fully out of closet, that’s why my best people are,’ says God.

‘Does she think I’m more of a fag?’

‘She doesn’t, Brian, she doesn’t a) think that, or b) imagine that you didn’t know your own mind. She doesn’t.’

‘Not that I care, but why is she such a fag hag, I thought she was a big, fat, hetero bisexual.’

‘They don’t exist, they don’t. And T.I. would just like to say he will be honoured to help you get numbers, honoured, because I can see you and you’re very handsome.’

‘Don’t insult, Loraine, please, T.I.’

‘I’m sorry, God.’

‘I thought you looked very cute in that recent picture. Was that a few years ago?’

‘No, it was today.’

‘Yesterday,’ says 50 Cent. ‘She has been up for a night.’

‘Oh, cute. You’re okay, at times, but don’t let it go to your head, like God is saying it will.’

‘Not for her looks, you dummy,’ says God. ‘Just for the concentrated attention of men. She knows when to go, don’t worry. She will, I feel sure, get embarrassed by her own ego and leave.’

‘Give me an example,’ says 50 Cent.

‘She doesn’t have one, she rarely gets an ego, she leaves when people wrong her, or when she sense that she is unwanted.’

‘We’ll just tell her we need to talk in private,’ says Game.

‘She’ll get the vibe, seriously, she knows when she’s not wanted.’

‘It’s true,’ agrees [ ], from Wreck Beach. ‘I’ve never seen a girl leave our house so fast, she knew, and she was outta there.’

‘Let’s not revisit that, she was confused about where she landed that day, social anxiety, she wasn’t interested in him and--’

‘She wasn’t, why? He was so hot.’

‘He didn’t give her much quarter when she was ugly.’

‘Ohhhh. Right. That. Did [ ]?’

‘I don’t remember, yes, I think so, wasn’t the party--’

‘That was after the nose job.’

‘Oh right, I was leaving.’

‘I don’t think we really met much before.’

‘You did. You had the threesome.’

‘Oh, then he did.’

‘No, [ ], that was after too, when nobody knew who she was except me, because I had seen so many nose jobs, I realized what she was doing. Why didn’t you come down and tell people.’

‘My dad got all funny about my black eyes.’

‘Ohhh,’ says [ ]. ‘Weird.’

‘I really wanted to go and talk about it.’

‘She looked like she’s been beaten.’

‘So what? It’s a community, you’re weird in your family, weird,’ says [ ]. ‘And, if brief, I have to concur, besides the reported short stint with her mother, this woman is never under the gun with family, 50 Cent, ever, she makes all her own decisions, and it is clear that nobody cares, nobody.’

‘Fuck. What is wrong with you people?’

‘She’s a slut,’ says [ ]. ‘You can’t control them. They--’

‘Oh, shut up. I’ve had about enough of him, Loraine, do we have to do it more than once a year?’

‘I want to go for three days to 50 Cent’s house every six months, that’s what I want,’ says [ ].

‘Oh, Jesus,’ says 50 Cent. Between, among, all the kids, and your stupid, fucking family who screws my husbands--’

‘[ ] won’t,’ says [ ].

‘That remains to be seen, who does she want, Loraine?’ Who does [ ] himself want, Loraine, three hookers at once, on my dime or what?’

‘I want coke and I want my wife to be faithful, that’s it, Loraine can’t even think of anyone, and [ ] herself won’t even go there, I guarantee it, she knows what I will do and feel and that I will nary get over it, and they’re all too young for her anyway, she doesn’t feel happy with younger men anyway.’

‘True dat,’ says Nas.’And Loraine, and my son, do I have to worry about her? Because he’s nearing fourteen, Loraine.’

‘I also observe family ties.’

‘Like who? Women? Tough.’

‘She didn’t like my boyfriend looking around so much,’ says [ ], Loraine’s cousin.

‘Oh, she didn’t, did he like her better?’

‘I don’t think it was that bad, he just showed too much curiosity in general, I think.’

‘Of her.’

‘She symbolized women, she felt, as a lone female.’

‘Seriously, Loraine?’

‘No, honestly, you know it’s not your looks, but what you stand for.’

‘Oh, I see. I know that feeling. So you dissed him?’

‘No, I was polite.’

‘I believe, now, because of that, in bringing dates home to family sooner rather than later, because--’

‘What if you were wrong?’ says Nas.

‘I wasn’t, he left me for someone else about a week after that dinner. You don‘t know that, Loraine, I kept it secret for awhile, I was so embarrassed. How’s [ ]? You don’t know, do you? Call him, you idiot.’

‘Okay, I might.’

‘Do it, you idiot, you’re weird. You’re too estranged from everyone.’

‘You didn’t call her.’

‘True. You realize I’m 47, Loraine, don’t you?’

‘No, you were so little.’

‘You were little too.’

‘No, I thought you were around seven years younger than me. Who do you think I would want at this shin dig?’

‘Nelly.‘

‘Oh, I see, he’s the most innocent, is he? Trying to marry well? That’s pretty funny for a whorey rapper. Is he nice? What about the big men, the black men, I think Dan too, that’s what I think, because I’ve--’

‘I love virgins,’ says Dan. ‘I do, I’m good, I pretend I’m all in love, and then just push you out the door, it’s fun, kidding, I’m nice, give you the lay of the land and then give you my best, two, you say, aw kid, they make ‘em funny in Canada, they do, I see that now.’

Loraine giggles.

‘They do, Dan,’ agrees God. ‘They are weird one way or another in Canada, the Americans have much more normal experiences of sex, kidding, Loraine, but their numbers are not as disparate, seriously, it’s weird, here. But I like it, and I’m glad the book was written by a Canadian because they are so equality based that it has even more resonance than in America where fundamentalism is quite wide spread, Loraine, and both controls the numbers and provides conservative family values, which lead to everyone knowing their value and their place.

‘When Loraine gave men back their superiority, though generations of Indians, South Asians, that is to say, and I am God, and Chinese, never faltered, men cheered, and women cried, Loraine, they cried, not only over their lost suffering, which, still, despite the book, is not properly recognized in Chinese, Middle Eastern or Indian cultures--’

‘Why?‘ says 50 Cent.

‘Because they didn’t realize that women suffered at all, at all, at all.’

‘Why are they crying then? Surely they cry after sex, during sex, I’m good, Loraine, you will sob like a little, fucking, baby, you will, you don’t believe it yet, but you will, and you will die, die, die, Loraine, and I have it on good account that you will, in point of fact, nearly die of love for me, nearly, but not quite, and that makes me happy, very happy, because I need to know the measure of my manhood.’

‘Don’t make fun of her book, 50 Cent, please.’

‘I was just joking.’

‘You’re mocking it, as though you don’t need that measure and you do, you do, you very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, much do. So smarten up, you,’ says God.

‘Why is Loraine’s book so special to you, God? Do you want men to think they’re superior if they are or something?’

‘They are superior and it was a lost value to look up to them, a completely, fucken, lost, value, 50 Cent, lost, and Loraine found it, good for her. And further, she didn’t only say that, but she discovered what women’s superiority was, and no culture had yet to do that, thinking that, of course, each sex was attractive to the other, negating the hundreds of lays available to women on any given day, and the constant rancor that was creating in men. And further, she realized that male violence was the obvious result, and further that, then, promiscuity itself was forgivable, as it was, to such an extent, given rise to by men themselves, and their dominance, superiority and sexual pressure. And further, I am God, and I am speaking through my servant, Loraine, that then there was a solution to the equality decision that the most liberal men made for and with their wives, which was that men play the field and women have sex at the behest of their husbands. This has been done is polygamous families, quietly, for generations, in, actually, Utah, Loraine, as well as in Bountiful, which, though newer, is based on the traditional model of polygamy, including the notion, the idea, let’s say, that men play the field and organize sex for their wives, each of their wives, individually, as individuals, not as sex workers, but with a view to what is best for the family, the woman, and the husband. That is not unlike what you do with the family, 50 Cent, but Loraine is so slutty, that you can pimp her, and she will never hate you, never.’

‘Oh, that’s weird, I thought she loved it so much, sometimes that girl hated me, Loraine, not because I worked her too hard, but because I sicked so many boring men on her.’

‘Loraine won’t hate you for that.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s going to be work for her, and that’s what it is, it’s not a cake walk, as you know, it’s work, and it will be like that then too. But, she’s very amenable to a lot of men, that woman wasn’t, 50 Cent, she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she was one who looked down on men with funny breath or bad posture or boring disposition, and Loraine never does that.’

‘Maybe ‘cause she’s ugly.’

‘You’re getting ugly, Fifty, and nobody, save me, God, understands why. Tell everyone why you’re getting ugly with Loraine.’

‘Because I’m jealous that she gets my men, and I have to go out still.’

‘You like going out. Have them in. Get outcalls. She doesn’t care. She would be happy to have you home. All of you get outcalls, Loraine doesn’t care if beautiful women want to use your swimming pool.’

‘They’ll dirty it up.’

‘You’ll have no end of money to pay someone to clean it, live the dream, 50 Cent, live large, live and laugh out loud.’

‘Funny, funny, funny, God. Okay, I might do that, and I might pimp some other whores too, if I feel like it, but only a bit, to some extent, like to collect some money for them or something, or refer, which I do anyway, but I’ll take some more money off of them. What did you think of “nothing from me to you?”

‘It struck me as a moot point.’

‘You were right to realize that, she had to peel the money off the guy and the girl didn’t have to dig into her two hundred dollars, but the upshot, the final analysis was the same, and, did you know, that is one major reason why a man won’t repeat, gouging to cover another girl? You take it out of her money, you’re stupid, that dumb slut used you, you are, don’t argue, you got the client, and that’s how it works better.’

‘Oh, I see. I knew I should, Fifty, I was just being nice.’

‘Oh, I see, nice, that’ll get you far, dirty sheets and no money. Fun. No screwing even, I bet, he wanted her, the hot blond, not ugly you.’

‘I felt she was smarter than she seemed, and now I’m glad I went with my gut,’ says the client. ‘I’m good like that, I'm like a therapist, I see through people. And I’m cool. Though she was a bit bored. Weren’t you, Loraine?’

‘A little, you were too.’

‘I was used to more gregarious women in New York, big city, big, tough, aggressive, assertive, extroverted, women, and she was, reportedly, a little feminist, which I thought was cute, and a little introverted. I was always bored, though, and I guess you were too. I’m a gang bang boy, like your precious Doctor Anderson, Loraine, so there you go, a newsman. She didn’t understand that I wrote for television, not the paper.’

‘Did you make it clear? I said I had to watch the news because it was my business, do you remember that? You didn’t get it. You thought newspaper.’

‘Yes, I do, and true.’

‘Did you care, because I got tired of bragging to hos, 50 Cent.’

‘You do, Loraine, they want to hear something, but something is all they want to hear, are they too jealous, Loraine, of your big life?’

‘Loraine’s clients say nothing at all, so she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even ask their name, 50 Cent--’

‘She’s funny, because she forgets anyway, and then she looks rude too.’

‘He’s right, it’s better to pretend you don’t care, than to pretend you care, and then forget, like your client, your old regular, [ ], he hated you forgetting his name all the time, better to pretend, opposite, that you don’t care when you do. Seriously. And I’m God.’

‘He said, “The girls in New York don’t get the money up front.”‘ Can you give me a good reason why the man should take the risk over the girl?’

‘Not really, Loraine, they’re afraid you’ll walk, and you’re afraid they’ll walk, and that’s what it is, so you change it up, and you check if you’re unsure, but you didn’t check with that guy, because you wanted his dick.’

‘No, come on. I rarely check and he was too cool to bug about money, don’t you think, I check more for full service.’

‘When they only want a blow job, you think they’ve thought about the money more?’

‘Yeah, don’t you?’

‘It’s for safety though.’

‘Yeah, true.’

‘She always ends up agreeing with me.’

‘Well, what did you do?’

‘It’s different with a pimp, they really aren’t going anywhere, and I can take the money, or you can, or are you afraid I will think you’re not declaring tips, what am I saying, you’re not even going out, you have everything you need at the house, and whatever you need, milk, she wants, we’ll get it for you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You don’t care about your freedom?’

‘I have no freedom now, to speak of.’

‘To screw, to chat, even, in case it leads to a screw, right? You fucken freak. Why is she so easy? Why does she have to stay home?’

‘She likes staying home, and she doesn’t like the pressure, the first guy who talked to her in that bar, Amigo’s, she likes it there, but, he asked her if she wanted to go home with someone, the first phrase out of his mouth, 50 Cent, the first phrase, before hello, even, and, to his credit, I am God, just listen, he let his friend, much better looking, and smelling, take a run at her too.’

‘Sloppy seconds.’

‘Along those lines, Fifty, you know the drill.’

‘Why didn’t she go home with [ ]? He liked her.’

‘No, he didn’t, and she knew it, rest assured. This girl knows a lot, as Game says, without being told, and she knew he was not interested in her at all, at all, at all, at all. Not at all.’

‘Why? When she’s so popular?’

‘Those other girls weren’t much prettier, big and weird, but young, and he liked them better. He wanted to get laid alright, but he’s picky, and he dumps them anyway.’

‘She was smart, I’ll give her that, cross your legs and wait for marriage.’

‘That wasn’t exactly it, 50 Cent, she has high self esteem, and, as you are fond of saying, an ugly face, so she didn’t chase guys much.’

‘She sure chased me.’

‘She didn’t have to chase you long.’

‘I know, fuck, I was a sucker for her ugly, beat up, dumb, idiot, face, I was, I don’t, even, realize why. I don’t. She was dumb. Her blog was dumb, I looked at it, it was good, but I hated it, and her pictures were dumb, all selfies I could tell, and even Eminem weighed in, saying, “She’s alone, I’ll bet you anything. I’ve never seen anything like it either, 50 Cent, but you just did. She’s a solo artist, guaranteed.“‘

‘Whew, wow.’

‘How did you know?’

‘She didn’t even have a friend to take a picture, those, and that was it, she put the cord in front of all of the good ones, and you couldn’t get a square to take it out? On purpose, God.’

‘No, thankfully, but it was a sad day, because those pics were beautiful, [ ]’s a good photographer.’

‘Not too good.’

‘Old technology.’

‘K. Enough. Go to bed or something, you idiot.’

‘Why is he so mad, do you think, Loraine?’

‘I thought he was supposed to tell us, or he did tell us, or something. I’m getting tired and starting to dread the day, God.’

‘Relax, Loraine, they’re getting used to giving you time to get ready because you are always sleeping, so worry not. You should get something tomorrow, and you don’t feel like running ads, so beer.’

‘I hope for something, God, but I can live without beer, it’s food I’m worried about.’

‘You have lots of chicken and you’re totally uninspired anyway.’

‘This is why I'm mad, why do I get all jealous and she doesn’t get jealous?’

‘She does, Fifty,’ explains God. ‘She just--’

‘Self actualized, and I didn’t with my fifteen thousand women.’

‘Why do you like his poly?’ asks Neil. ‘You were going to say. Do you think about stealing his pussies?’

‘Not really.’

‘Are you bored, yourself with women?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Do you really want Victoria or are you being nice?’

‘No, I do.’

‘But you say it with doubt.’

‘I got burned out on women, for sure.’

‘Really? Already? With nine?’

‘They‘re too neurotic for her, Neil, and no, it’s not because she’s neurotic, being a prostitute kept her “soft and open,” and she didn’t begrudge women their men, but she wanted a little, precious little, quality time, maybe once a month would have done her.’

‘Why was she chasing [ ] around then?’

‘She never did that. She moves on so fast it would make your head spin.’

‘Will she move on on me?’ asks Neil.

‘Not if you’re committed, she won’t.’

‘So I’m tied down, I can’t leave her.’

‘No. She doesn’t want anyone to leave her after this outrageous outpouring of effort, Neil, both through writing and what will manifest sexually.’

‘She’s a feminist.’

‘Even feminists didn’t know to ask for something.’

‘What, dick?’

‘I think we’ve given them too much, Loraine, maybe we should wind down, what do you think?‘

‘They did get grumpy, that’s true, and it does feel a little like throwing good money after bad right now. Can I fix it?’

‘Let’s see. Why is Neil mad, Neil?’

‘I get her dumb sister in law, what do I want that for, I wasn’t exaggerating, what bugs me is she is never jealous.’

‘With eighteen husbands, she clearly has to share, Neil. how bad would it be if every time she had to share, she went ballistic with jealousy?’ says God. ‘I have chosen this woman for you for her potential as a polygamous wife, and that’s why, and that is exclusively and precisely why she is good at it, because it���s her orientation, and that is what she is, and that is what she does.’

‘Why can’t we use different porn workers or whores or something?’ asks Neil.

‘You can, I thought you prayed, they all prayed, Loraine, I know you think it’s gay, but we all have needs, and they prayed for a nice woman for a family, even while they were pretending to be all confused about 50 Cent’s house. Truly. All of them. Nelly was particularly eloquent--’

‘Oh, don’t.’

‘--I will, I am God, in saying that he wanted an ugly, little, gang bang girl to come on, please, God, just in the course of their day, Loraine, not on their knees at night, even Loraine didn’t think to pray for a family, and all of you did, all of you did, even if 50 Cent started it, and he sort of did, Loraine, but they had all been thinking how nice it would be if they could get some friends together and come on a nice girl, instead of running pillar to post to get laid all the time, and trying to cobble together some decent scenes for their fantasy life.

‘Loraine didn’t have the luxury of cobbling together any scenes, 50 Cent, which is why she didn’t even bother, she was so disgusted by her treatment at the gang bang, in fact, that she decided never to have one again, many of those women said, that Fifty, while going right on doing it, why do you think they smelled, one badly timed call to the taxi and Loraine was out of gang bangs for life.

‘She never did that, 50 Cent, she has a way--’

‘A way, she always has a way--’

‘She has a way of creating a terrible conundrum in her writing so that nobody could see a way to get a gang bang without actually writing the letter, and, to do so, they would have had to talk to some friends, and discuss the possible outcomes, and, though some were out to each other, most were not, and the best they could conjure up was a sort of line up, but they really wanted to expose her to male bisexuality, that was what was holding them back, 50 Cent, honestly, and they weren’t writers, but only construction workers, and Loraine has seen the results of that in Buzz’s website, former website, and they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t do it. some were out, I told you, and one of the groups even called, but they were too scared to come out and too afraid of what she may see, just having sex with men without women, is what they were up to, 50 Cent.’

‘Loraine hates that, she hates to be left out.’

‘I hate it too, Loraine, I’m good for it, I am,’ says Victoria. ‘I’m not a fag hag at all, I need men who are promiscuous, mostly, with women, I do. My husband has fifty to catch up on but it won’t take long.’

‘A hundred,’ he says. ‘And I’m going to do it. When I get these husbands.’

‘Why wait?’ says Brian. ‘They are always bugging me.’

‘I’m trying, I’m busy.’

‘Aren’t we all. Go to a whore, they say to me, it’s easy, it takes ten minutes or twenty minutes for a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars of my family’s money.’

‘Funny, Brian, go to cheaper whores, they’ll love you, Loraine loves it when she gets a cutie.’

‘Maybe I’ll go to her then, pimping my wife.’

‘We’ll get some whores in--see, why does she smile? It annoys me. When is this bitch gonna come out in a rage? When? I want, to, know. NOW,’ says 50 Cent.

‘She may never, as you may never, 50 Cent, because she is cool, but she will get mad, but clearly you will have to get a whore for Brian if Maryse--’

‘Thanks, Loraine!’

Loraine smiles.

‘She’s exhausted,’ says 50 Cent. ‘Constant writing for hours is exhausting, she’s tired, my baby, and she smells of speed too, gross. I’m feeding her a lot of crack and cocaine, and you will start, right away, to lose weight, Loraine, you will, and you will have a bit of a flabby tummy--’

‘Not bad,’ says God. ‘She kept in shape and the skin is sort of taut still.’

‘Great, sort of taut, my little, fat, did you, Nelly?’

‘I thought I was ugly and a fag, but I think she’s okay, I do, in that picture, in the others, she’s okay, too, I never thought I’d get better, though Nas tried a lot, with pretty girls, who wanted to get licked for hours and hours, which he sometimes does with a panty for five minutes, Loraine, and they, the gall, they have the gall to complain about it. Do you believe? Three hundred dollars? She would never, never, never, complain, as a hooker, even a wife, even if she has to be ugly to do it. Who cares? I do care. I think she’s kinda sweet looking, in a housebound kind of way, like a young, old, housewife, like that movie, Loraine, that--’

‘Bridges of Madison County.’

‘Oh, she knows it, that was an affair, and we don’t condone that, just so’s you’re aware, but it was understood, in the context of her cold husband, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But we’re not cold, so don’t do that, and we won’t buy you a little, itty bitty, studio and throw you out, because we don’t cheat, we report, and don’t forget anything.’

‘I’m not giving her a chance to forget, she’s on camera all day around staff, the whorey slut, who God keeps slipping into conversations that she’s a whorey slut, so she must be one, God knows, and only God could know with this bitch.’

‘So, Loraine, they are right again, so you can quit if you want to, you can still talk and it’s easier. And that’s it.’

‘Okay, God, thank you.’

‘You're welcome, Loraine. Go ahead and thank Patrick Crean in heaven for the nice speed and the nice beer today, wasn’t that a nice day, when you expected to do laundry and dishes, and did nothing instead, nothing, well done, Loraine.’

‘Thank you, Pat!’

‘You’re welcome, Loraine.’

‘K.’

‘Night, bitch,’ says 50 Cent. ‘Stealing my friends.’