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n7punk · 1 year ago

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"Roses & Thorns" Fic Notes

Roses & Thorns is finally done! It really slowed down there at the end as my life got busy, but I had a lot of fun with it. No playlist this time since I was mostly listening to random stuff as I felt like it.

Epilogue Life:

Catra moves to Bright Moon so Adora can keep cheerleading, which she does professionally until her mid-thirties before switching to cheer coaching for middle schoolers. As mentioned in the epilogue, they get married two years after the show. One day they looked at how much of the tapestry they had done and were both suddenly like, oh, I’m ready to be married. Within a few months they had everything thrown together for the wedding. Someone working with their wedding planner leaked news of their wedding to the press, which is what led DT to digging around and finding their date, but aside from a few tabloid stories like Former Bachelorette Couple Tie the Knot and a carefully curated Instagram post on Catra’s page, the public doesn’t learn much about it. They mostly get added as a statistic to the show’s wikipedia page as a successful relationship that made it to marriage and is still together. Catra slowly transitions into more all-encompassing graphic design work until she follows through on her speculation from Fantasy Suites and starts working with a charity dedicated to providing equipment to hybrid children and schools. She still does other work on the side sometimes, but she’s happy with the direction her career has gone, and she keeps up a sparse public Instagram to make some posts promoting her work — pre- and post-charity shift — and to flaunt the life and relationship that she really can’t believe she has now. Adora’s old Instagram is still up and public but she abandoned it and only uses a private one now because she really just wanted to leave the show behind. Adora and Catra go down as an odd and rare case in the franchise. The show never risks casting an ex again even though it would certainly go closer to the way they intended the next time. The casting directors insist that they knew the love story could work if given the right encouragement and that’s why they brought Catra in. Adora and Catra are always brought up in discussions of odd or adorable Bachelor couples, especially after they get married. They were also, yknow, the only queer couple to come from the show until Melendy’s season, so that made them stand out a lot too. Adora’s seasons did end up being as positive when it comes to representation as something like that can be and she’s proud of what she managed and what came of it in the end.

Chapter 1: Opening Ceremony

⦁ I was, like, really nervous to do this fic. I didn’t want to step on any toes but I really loved the idea so after sitting on it for a few months I decided fuck it, I’ll start writing it just to see if I like it. Once I realized it was definitely going to be a whole fic, I went poking around for socials and found petty_labelle’s permission statement and was like oh thank god XD Obviously some tropes don’t require credit to anyone (celebrity AUs, there was only one bed, etc), but this was a case of direct inspiration no matter how wildly different the fics were once you pass the word “bachelorette,” so I’m really glad they were down for it.

⦁ Speaking of, having to type bachelorette so many times might just have driven me insane. I hate spelling that word.

⦁ Usually the bachelor/ette is cast from the one of the fan favorites of the last season. So whatever girl the bachelor didn’t pick would become the next bachelorette, etc (it isn’t always that clear cut; sometimes it’s a girl that got sent home sooner or a girl from a season further back). In this case, there was an open casting call because none of the contestants from previous seasons who they knew/thought were sapphic were willing to either come back or come out, which is how Adora ended up on the show as a nobody to the franchise but a strong contender thanks to her prominent cheerleading career (and being hot. Let’s be honest it’s a third charisma, a third being willing to play ball, and a third being hot).

⦁ Finding out this show usually films in just 6-9 weeks was less surprising than it should have been but still insane. I thought it was three months since most seasons are 10-13 episodes (I think) (and also the fic that set this off was literally called 12 weeks) but I looked it up and. Nope. So I gave Adora like 7-8 weeks in the middle range. That shorter time range actually worked better for the fic, it’s just an insane premise for the real show. 90 Day Fiancee has more realistic expectations! Come on!

⦁ Okay, I know the women pull up to the mansion in a limo, but for some reason while writing it I thought it was all in different limos which doesn’t even make sense. Anyway, after I verified that I edited the language around it to make it more clear they were coming from the same car.

⦁ I also think the host is usually there to greet the women too, but it doesn’t matter how those greetings normally go in this case, because it was a unique moment and Hope was going to be there regardless so she could partially guide it.

⦁ I also have no idea if someone’s ex coming on the show has any precedent, but I’m saying for Etheria it’s a first.

⦁ “-a dashing magicat’s body” Listen, Glimmer is aware that Catra is hot.

⦁ When Glimmer asks “how could you not tell us” she isn’t meaning in a hurt “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me” way but in a “how did you hold that in?” kind of way.

⦁ Canned phrases I know from this show are “Can I steal you away?” (to get one-on-one time), “Here for the wrong/right reasons” (when someone is ‘suspected’ to only be there to get famous rather than get married), “I want to focus on us” (focusing on your relationship with the bachelor/ette instead of all the other contestants and drama getting in the way), and then something like “Trust the process” (you know, cult mindset cutting out questioning the establishment and contrived doctrines).

Chapter 2: Here of the Wrong Reasons

⦁ That first night at the cocktail party I imagine as being a lot like Princess Prom, with Adora trying to focus on getting to know all these new women and figure out who she has the best chances with but she keeps getting distracted by glimpses of Catra through the crowd. The other contestants didn’t know what to make of it, but the ones that overheard Catra was Adora’s ex told others until it spread through the crowd. The consensus among the women at first was this was a TV thing and they probably didn’t have to actually worry about Catra too much. That slowly changed.

⦁ Damn near every season DT goes undercover at the first cocktail party. One of the lead’s brothers did this as a bartender once and I think it would be an interesting way to gather a bit more info to further their storylines. Because of this, Adora barely saw them on the first night.

⦁ I went back and forth on how I was going to handle the other contestants: if they were going to be the other princesses, or largely a blank mass, or a more detailed cast of originals. I ended up somewhere between those last two. I also considered having the other characters from the show working on set, but when the idea for a watch party came to me (because I really wanted to show what people at home were seeing here and there), that cemented where the other characters would be and left me with OCs for the other women.

⦁ Names came from… All over. I hate coming up with them, so I did the lazy thing and scrolled through the characters list on Wiki Grayskull (I know, fuck Fandom [company], I’m sorry). Elmora is a minor character in the OG series. Veena was Grayskull’s queen in the He-man reboot I saw 5 minutes of in 2002. Serenia is a folk hero in the reboot (and the name of the constellation that helped them locate Darla). Swen is the (fake, but presumably real somewhere else given DTs impersonation tendencies) piano player from the Enchanted Grotto. Faith is a recurring Random OC Name in my fics and also just ironic. Melendy Britt was the VA for OG Adora and Catra. That one is honestly an homage since she voiced like a fourth of the women in the OG series.

⦁ Originally the fic was supposed to roll straight from the first chapter into the confrontation night, but that pacing seemed too sudden and I wanted to explore more of the TV side. Also, Adora needed a horse riding date and there wasn’t one anywhere in the other plans so I put it in here.

⦁ When the horse riding date idea came up I had to be like “wait… could Tali do this?” and that’s when I found out that prosthetic arms have come a lot farther than they were the last time I looked into them. Tali can absolutely go horse riding.

⦁ For years after the show, Adora will joke that being on it was worth it just for the horseback riding day, even when she’s literally holding hands with her wife.

⦁ Storm is the actual name of Catra’s horse in… the toys at least? I’m not actually sure if that made it on-screen in the filmation version but it’s from the OG canon regardless.

⦁ Catra did not intend to sabotage the horse date. At first. She was mad at Adora for bringing her somewhere she knew Catra would be scared, but said fear meant she fully intended to spend the entire date refusing to play ball. That lasted until she saw Adora and Serenia kissing, and especially how excited Adora looked, realizing that if she wasn’t going to play along Adora might turn to someone who was.

⦁ The horse debacle got cut so it looked like Swift Wind just bucked for no reason and it gave Tali and Adora a cute moment together. They could have made it into a whole thing, but once Catra won, they cut the interviews implying anything happened there. The other girls never really knew if anything happened, but the crew definitely did. They caught a little bit of it on camera (although not well), they goaded even more of it, and one of the staff retrieved the crop afterwards as the smoking gun.

⦁ The first group date of the week (horse riding) was mostly people Adora wanted to connect with, the second was production’s orchestration (the softball date that didn’t make it into the fic because Catra wasn’t on it), and then Erika got a one-on-one “because she hadn’t had time with Adora yet” (actually because she and Lauren were making out the night before and Catra was onto them, but only had a hunch, so she could look all jealous and spurned on camera when Erika got picked). Adora also gave Lauren a rose because 1) production told her she should and 2) she actually did want the resulting one-on-one time with Lauren to sus her out.

⦁ Glimmer eating popcorn with chopsticks was actually in chapter one but I was worried people were gonna call it stereotyping or something when I know people who do it IRL, and then I talked to them and they said it’s the superior method so I just stuck it in anyway. I eat popcorn with a spoon sometimes for the same reason, but chopsticks really are better if you can use them, my hands just shake too much to be reliable.

⦁ Melendy was one of the last girls to arrive at the mansion because production didn’t want to muddy the waters for Catra’s arrival. Catra assured them she and Adora were very serious for a long time before it broke bad and Adora would remember her immediately, but they wanted to get that moment of instant shock from Adora with her hopefully not even thinking about Catra’s existence and suddenly being faced with her. If Catra was telling the truth about how important they were to each other, even the sight of another magicat might have put her on Adora’s mind.

⦁ Melendy was supposed to be a potential rival, but in a less orchestrated way than Lauren where she was playing out a storyline at production’s direction. Melendy was an actual potential relationship they thought might stand a chance with Adora, and in that case Catra would have really hated her and it would have been great drama, but Catra could tell from the beginning that while Melendy would be sticking around for a while, she wasn’t exciting or challenging enough for Adora. Which is good, because production was absolutely right about the kind of rivalry they would have had and it would have made Catra look a lot worse than getting defensive over someone “cheating” on Adora.

⦁ I kind of assume bedroom locks are a no-go on reality shows in general because, well, what if they lock the camera out from some drama? But they’re also renting places like the mansion and it seems like those houses would Have Locks and they wouldn’t install different doorknobs just for the show. Idk, but I am saying that if they don’t usually have them they gave Catra and Lauren rooms with locks so they don’t actually kill each other. (Although, conversely, they put Catra and Melendy in the same room partially to up their drama — and partially so they only had to worry about one room that could accommodate magicats).

⦁ I’m not actually sure on the use of mic packs vs boom mics on reality TV. I know there’s pool/beach/bikini dates on the Bachelor though, which by necessity require a boom mic since you can’t put a mic pack on a bikini without pulling it off, so I’m leaning towards them usually using a boom unless a mic pack is required. Initially I had them using mic packs and throwing them out the window, but I decided that was just a little unnecessary.

⦁ I mentioned the window both because of that and as a hint towards how Catra saw Faith getting up to some business.

⦁ Catra looks uncomfortable not because she’s telling the truth, but because she’s finally confronting the fact that she doesn’t want Adora to send her home.

Chapter 3: Can I Steal You Away?

⦁ This and chapter 2 were supposed to be one as I said, but then it got reeeeeeally long, and cutting to the watch party meant reshowing — from the TV perspective — some stuff that had already happened, so it seemed a good place to cut them and use that as a “recap.”

⦁ The “we need to talk” was actually a dub-over that Adora recorded later and they just modified to sound muffled but still understandable. They kind of just barely picked up the “no cameras” part but the rest of the conversation was murmuring at best. Part of how Adora kept from getting in (much) trouble was giving them the voice over and just generally complying with all the fall out that came from it like interviews and reshoots.

⦁ The shots of Catra pacing were in fact reshoots, but that did happen, it was just behind a locked door first.

⦁ Catra was up in the room for close to an hour, only coming down when she thought she might be in danger of missing their chance to talk (or at least making it seem natural). She spent that time having a small crisis over how much she didn’t want Adora to stop chasing after her, even if she was doing it with suspicion.

⦁ I actually have no clue where the bachelor/ette stays when the girls are at the mansion, so I just kind of went, eh, guest house? I know they’re not allowed in the main house without a camera, but it seems like a hotel would be pretty far.

⦁ “I’m not an ***hole who can’t see my ex happy,” that is exactly what Catra told herself she was the whole time, but if she can lie to herself she certainly can lie to the camera.

⦁ The rose reshoot cut from the real footage at the moment Adora went off screen, then to the new footage of her walking up to the vase and selecting a rose, then to real but carefully cropped footage of Catra’s reaction so you can’t see the flower she’s really accepting, and then to a further back reshoot of Catra holding the rose as Adora redelivers her line. They used the initial audio and reactions where they could.

⦁ Melendy was nesting because she was anxious after the Very Weird night. There was also a part of her that said “well, if Adora and Catra patch things up, then I’m out” because she was used to things like this only “needing” one token magicat, but obviously Adora doesn’t feel like that. They did look a little similar in human eyes (IDK if the description of Melendy ended up staying in the fic, but: brown coat, dark brown hair, two yellow eyes, no stripes) so Melendy thought it might also be weird to Adora from that angle if she did end up rejecting Catra.

Chapter 4: Right Choices

⦁ I found out that strip dodgeball exists on the Bachelorette and went, yeah, so I can use that. People didn’t refuse to answer often so “Bare Your Soul” never got too racy, but some clothes did come off.

⦁ Tali just calls Jewel “queer” because he is gay, even though what he realized back in middle school was actually that he was trans. She wasn’t going to say that on television, though, because he wouldn’t want her to. He didn’t mind people knowing he was generally queer, though.

⦁ Glimmer’s comment about Veena not posting proves that she did follow Veena before that happened, because otherwise she would have no idea. She actually followed all of them from the moment she knew the casting but tried to resist the urge to do too much digging on them since the show had already wrapped shooting and her research could just end up taunting her with knowing someone is super wrong for Adora that she then had to watch go all the way to final three. And well… that still ended up happening in a way.

⦁ They did cut the exchange about how the show was crazy, but they did use Catra’s “I’m only here for you” audio for some promos which some eagle-eyed fans noticed was never actually in the show. I’m sure that’s not uncommon though.

⦁ Hope didn’t question Adora’s request for two reasons: 1) Adora actually asked to do it on camera rather than trying to sneak down for whatever it was, 2) if she stopped Adora to ask questions, Adora might think about what she was doing, and having someone in an emotional fugue state usually makes for better TV. Everybody could tell the vibes died as soon as Sylvia implied that she didn’t want to date a cheerleader so it was obvious that Adora was questioning something when she called her up.

⦁ I learned a lot about the show listening to that recap podcast (which covered a few seasons of the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise until… that summer), but it’s also been years since I’ve listened to it/it was canceled. I based most of the pacing for women getting eliminated and when hometowns and shit would happen off of the episode summaries for recent seasons I found online. I wasn’t worried about doing it exactly since this is Etheria and it varies between season (see: Clare running off with “her future husband” in episode four), but I didn’t want to do something wildly wrong either.

⦁ My general (not set in stone) idea for the show’s timing was week one was obviously introductions, week two was horseback riding, football, and Erika’s one-on-one, week three had the confrontation with Catra, week four had the coming out date (amongst others), week five had the Sylvia drama and cheerleading date, week six was the two-on-one, and week seven was hometowns. Week eight was fantasy suites, the women tell all happens (I don’t see a lot of people saying they like the wo/men tell all specials. There’s a reason I mostly left it out of the fic. It’s a boring rehash), and then week ten was the long-ass finale. I’ll be honest: the coming out and cheerleading date were supposed to be the same week but I think you’re not supposed to give the same person two dates in one episode. Showing that transitioning perspective from the viewership angle was important, though, so the whole Sylvia thing and an extra week got added in for it.

⦁ Melendy was actually still sharing a room with Catra during the night visit, they just kicked her out before Adora got there and no one brought it up until Adora was leaving and noticed the second bed.

⦁ No one says anything after Adora says she was letting the other girls sleep because she was admitted that Catra was staying without realizing. Now, this was incredibly obvious, but Catra still needed to process it.

⦁ Adora stayed awhile just cuddling and murmuring a bit to each other, but eventually she started feeling really tired and reluctantly left Catra’s arms for her own room.

⦁ Adora sent home Serenia, Elmora, Swen (mostly cut character, but she was supposed to be the main butch rep that season that Adora still kept when there was little chemistry was, again: representation!), & a rando I guess. I didn’t want to introduce twenty women’s names to keep track of, so I tried to come up with enough to have variety in the date composition without bogging things down or getting confusing. You can tell which ones you’re supposed to remember by the fact you could recognize their names going in lmao.

Chapter 5: The Dragon Slayer

⦁ Chapters four and five were also supposed to be one chapter, so I’m really following in 12 weeks’ footsteps with the two-part chapters LOL

⦁ Production was fine with Adora letting a bunch of girls go at once because it was dramatic and she was explicitly doing it to focus on the girls she felt better about (she had actually hung onto girls a bit more than they expected until then), but they couldn’t let both of Catra’s rivals go at once because then there would have been no conclusion to that plot at all and it would have felt really weird from a TV perspective, so they put their foot down on Faith.

⦁ The reason they planned for Catra and Melendy originally, though, was that they did expect Faith to be gone already. Adora cut so many girls at once they had to pick their battles, so they decided to keep the biggest villain rather than worry about the rest of it. If Catra and Faith went on a date together, it would have been fireworks, but at that point it would have been obvious who was going home. Catra and Melendy, on the other hand, would be two girls who were final four material, so people Actually Invested In Adora’s relationships would have been highly invested in the date.

⦁ Originally, Adora went into this chapter with Serenia still on her roster too (she stuck by the rules and let her keep her rose) and Catra, unaware of what had happened between them, included her on the list of girls she gave Adora, in the same category as Melendy. Adora then worried about Catra giving her four names, implying she was ready for Adora to send her home, but Adora couldn’t help offering a rose to Catra anyway, and she was obviously happy to accept. This whole exchange still happens, just with a little less weight since Catra going to hometowns was obvious with only four non-cheaters left. However, last chapter got more dramatic in exchange with Adora taking her rose back from Serenia and seeming to invest in Catra emotionally instead, and I just thought it made more sense for Catra to intend to go through hometowns to really get her message out there before going home.

⦁ Lou (the vineyard owner) is named after Lou Scheimer, a VA for a lot of the male characters on the original She-ra, namely Swift Wind and Light Hope (who was like a sentient beam of light. Listen, just go with it).

⦁ Catra’s allergic to grapes in this because I randomly give her cat allergies when I feel like it and I recently remembered cats and dogs are Kind of allergic to grapes where sometimes One is okay and other times even that is toxic so it’s best to not. Absolutely make sure they never get a hold of a second one, though, and in general you should protect grapes from them.

⦁ Okay, in general, I think the girls are responsible for their own wardrobes, but I do think production probably intervenes here and there, and in Catra’s case she kept wearing suits and the like. For this specific date, DT dropped a hint that she should show up in something ravishing, so Catra borrowed a dress Melendy was saving for Fantasy Suites because she wanted to make it harder to mic her so she could try to get some whispers to Adora. Since they were dropping back home first, Melendy could swap for something new and didn’t mind the loan knowing exactly what Catra was going up against since she told her the night before and Melendy was also mad at Faith for it.

⦁ The “losing focus” comment was both a play on the canned phrase previously mentioned and a reference just for me and my friend.

⦁ Production, in general, was trying to get the clout of a queer season while changing as little as possible, which is a bad call for several reasons, but part of that meant making sure all the women were conventionally attractive and dressed in the way viewers had come to expect. They had all of Three butches on the season, Catra qualifying as one of the soft butches who put her foot down and wore a suit or similar in almost every episode. Adora didn’t mind wearing a dress most of the time even if it wasn’t her usual, but she also insisted on wearing pants sometimes as part of her representation thing (and also just being authentically herself).

⦁ Okay, so villains on the show often end up with a “nemesis” (or just a self-appointed good guy) who eventually warns the lead about their bad behavior. This is the dragon slayer: they don’t win, but they provide a character role and help the lead with things that they wouldn’t know otherwise because production certainly isn’t telling them. This season plays the jealous ex angle at first (for its own drama as they originally intended, and to try to make Catra’s behavior “understandable” once she turns over a new leaf) but as her feud with Lauren grows, Catra starts to seem like the dragon slayer, especially once Adora goes to her for advice on what to do with the other girls. People read that one of two ways: the way the watch party did, or the “oh, they’re not feeling the romance coming back so Adora is going to her for advice like you would with a friend.” This date coming up seems to reinforce the dragon-slayer narrative, but it’s the rare case where telling on someone works out. It helps that what she was telling on wasn’t just something like a hunch about someone wanting to get famous.

⦁ “All this because Catra got horny” Mermista you should see the stuff that happened in other universes because of that. This is nothing.

⦁ I did googling on the spelling of mic as a verb and mostly I got a lot of people with loud — incorrect — opinions. And by incorrect opinions, I mean people saying “it should be this, ‘mic’d’ is stupid,” which is completely missing the point. Language and spelling is not about what “should” be, mic is the accepted term used in the industry. Niche words like this come up all the time and it’s the people who invent those words and use them day in and day out that decide what those words mean and how they’re spelled, not loudmouths on Reddit. Because of all that though, I couldn’t find a consensus. I had to phrase it as “mic’d” though because that’s what the industry says. The people filming wouldn’t have phrased it another way (another suggestion from people on forums online) so I had to find a way to spell it. Consensus seemed to be either mic’d or miked, but the latter does Not look right, so I ended up settling on mic’d.

Chapter 6: Hometowns

⦁ Adora and Teela really had a more kinda “big sister” relationship, but they were both only children and Adora had no concept of family, not to mention they were on a show all about finding romance, so they were kind blinded to it. On the hometown date, they didn’t really talk that much about marriage despite production prompting them around it because they were kind of subconsciously blocking that and also having so much fun together they didn’t question it. Adora wanted to spend time with Teela and thought she was super cool, Teela had a lot of fun and wanted to show Adora all the cool things she experienced and open her up to a new lifestyle she was clearly enamored with, and no one questioned that further because they were getting the gushing confessionals they wanted. Teela’s parents saw such a small cross-section of them they just saw them having fun together and didn’t second-guess it.

⦁ By the time of Catra’s hometown, production had figured out that Catra was going to be final two (even though Adora hadn’t). Adora hadn’t even fully processed that Catra was going to Fantasy Suites with her since Melendy got cut. Production knew they really had to humanize her, which had been a slow shift in narrative behind the scenes the more it became clear Adora was actually giving Catra a chance now, but this was when the scramble happened. They were lining up their editors and ready to get Catra anything she needed for her hometown, even if it ended up untraditional. This was their mold-breaking season, after all, and even though they followed the formula pretty well for most of it, there were some big moments, and this ended up being one of them.

⦁ I’m like 99% sure volunteer dates have been done on the show before when the star was an activist or something but I can’t think of any examples so I can’t back that up. Either way, it’s definitely not common, but it was Catra trying to get a positive message out there, like she talks about in her Fantasy Suite.

⦁ Adora weird texts were because she needed Glimmer to at least be open to being in Catra’s corner considering the bombshell they were going to get later.

⦁ Usually hometowns are for sussing out 1) if someone is being real with you because what their families are like and what they say around them tells you a lot, 2) if they’re ready for marriage (it seems like every season there’s someone in the family who tells the lead their child/sibling/nibling/etc isn’t ready for marriage or doesn’t seem like themselves around them), and 3) if you’re really in love. Sometimes people do get left dramatically mid-hometown (like the one in season 19 where the bachelorette realized she wasn’t ready to meet his family when she got there and left him on the street to VISIT THEM ALONE comes to mind oh my god. Like she wasn’t wrong to not lead him on but that sucks. I found out about this after writing the Melendy shit btw lmao) but usually someone is only cut at the end.

⦁ I didn’t include Tali’s hometown, even though it could have included some good angst, because 1) I really wanted to end on that line about disappearing into the trees, 2) all the internal debate Adora had during it was just a Less Aware™️ version of the angst from the Final Rose chapter so it felt repetitive. I know that made it “more obvious” who Adora was going to choose but… if you didn’t know that from chapter one I can’t help you.

Chapter 7: Fantasy Suites

⦁ The conversation during the watch party speculating about the order the show was using for the girls is kind of the prelude to them picking up the subtext in chapter 9.

⦁ The mentions of their final dinner tie into a cut scene I might post separately, but then I came up with new context which is my actual in-universe explanation: their first date didn’t involve dinner. However, there was a family restaurant the football team would go to for victory dinners sometimes, dragging some of the cheerleaders along, and of course wherever Adora went Catra did too, so they had eaten there before, just never on their own.

⦁ It wasn’t until I was editing this scene that I realized you might not know what the date cards are if you hadn’t watched the show but like. I was too lazy to add an explainer lmao. I’ll do it here though: basically the host (or the lead) gives out date cards every week with a little ~teaser title~ on it and the list of names for the people going on in (for instance “Bare Your Soul”). Kinda punny/foreshadowing names like that come up. For Fantasy Suites, it’s basically a card inviting them to go up to the Fantasy Suite together.

⦁ I was picturing a specific hotel in Thailand for their resort, but I don’t know what this hotel is or when or how I saw it. I remember seeing video touring the whole thing at some point though. Anyway it quite literally backed onto the forest with monkeys running all over and stuff. I don’t know what the technical difference between forest and jungle is but my brain says if there’s monkeys and a bazillion percent humidity it’s probably a jungle.

Chapter 8: Interlude

⦁ The reason Light Hope is the host and not DT is two-fold: 1) I cast Hope for the host/producer role because of her manipulative role in canon, before my brain caught up with the fact that hey, this is reality TV, why isn’t DT here? And 2) the in-canon reason is DT needs to manage all these story lines, which means they are the one that needs to be available off camera at all times to prod someone at just the right moment or manage things to create dramatic moments, and they have more opportunity for that if they aren’t the one hosting. I did consider having them be the host of just the Wo/Men Tell All special, but tbh Adora would have accidentally blurted out spoilers if DT was around to goad them so it had to go this way lmao.

⦁ I watched a bunch of Bachelor/ette anouncements on YouTube (again, having never seen the show, recaps usually sum it up as “[the host] announces [x] is our new Bachelor/ette”) and wow there is no consistency to them. Almost every single one was a little different and set up differently, but a common model was “Your new bachelor/ette, [x]” followed by applause as they walk out in evening wear, so I went with that but added in a bit like the contestants normally do when coming out of the limo because that felt fitting both with the franchise and with the fact that this was Adora’s introduction to the franchise. In the announcements I saw, not once did they use a last name because everybody watching already new who “Joey” or whoever was from watching the season, but again, Adora was brand new to the franchise, so a full name and bit made sense for her.

⦁ Deena was one of my “potential names” that I didn’t end up using/needing, but it was some… IDK, Twiglet or NPC or something in the original. The real reason I picked it is because I has used “Dee” as a random generic background character name before (for those curious: it was in OTOS’s sequel, BYLM).

⦁ I know the show has discussed stuff that happened on Instagram and shit repeatedly so I decided they would probably be willing to acknowledge things that happened “off camera” if they were important and alluded to in the show like the cheating.

⦁ A lot of people were speculating on who the “other two” on the camping trip were but the real reason it was a four-bed cabin is I’ve never seen a three bed cabin XD The ones at the park near me are all four-bed in the sense they all have two bunk beds lol. It were just Adora, Teela, and Catra.

Chapter 9:

⦁ I don’t remember if I ever said this in the fic at this point, but Catra has short hair in this one because she gave herself a dyke cut after coming out to rub it into Weaver’s face.

⦁ Adora was picking up on the vibes and griping about it, but Catra said she wasn’t bothered and then climbed in Adora’s lap to “distract her.” And yeah she was too distracted for Glimmer’s next text lol.

Chapter 10:

⦁ There was voice over as Adora went through the ropes and their meanings both explaining some details on what they meant (since the concept is familiar, but in a mostly abstract way, to mainstream audiences). The narration talked about how important the tradition was to Catra and how Adora could never take her this far and not look over the meanings. It made it kind of ambiguous whether she was legitimately considering the ropes or just showcasing this thing that was important to her once-best friend.

⦁ Adora looks at the camera after Hope mentions keeping Melendy because she’s thinking about Melendy (potentially, she would totally understand if she wasn’t) watching along at home and what she would want to say to her that she didn’t get to before.

⦁ Hope’s “sometimes you follow your heart” line is 100% canned and something she regularly regurgitates from a script when the moment calls for it. In this moment, however, the follow-up was a quiet disapproval for picking Catra. Hope was never going to directly interfere with Adora’s final choice — it seemed obvious that Adora had to decide independently or the relationship was going to blow up fast and make them look worse than Adora picking the “wrong” option for their preferred narrative — but she still didn’t want Adora to pick Catra, so she has occasionally let slip something to that effect in private conversations off camera. Usually not to Adora, but Adora has long figured out what production actually wanted out of the season.

⦁ The camera suddenly cut to Adora and Tali after Tali mentioned Catra because Hope twitched from someone spoiling her show (even if like, come on, everyone knew Adora was going to ask Catra Something and Catra would say yes). There quietly controlling her inner rage was something Adora could detect after working with her for so long, which is also why Adora was giggly (well, that and relief). That’s also why Hope was so aggressive jumping back into the conversation, because she was trying to take control of it again.

⦁ Adora looked more serious/neutral because she had her whole speech prepared about the things they needed to work on and the fact this was, in essence, conditional, so she was gearing herself up for that and didn’t want Catra to think that she was ignoring everything she had planned to do.

Chapter 11:

⦁ I went back and forth on Catra’s phrasing following the “Rebuild with me?” because Catra’s response doesn’t work as well from Glimmer’s perspective, but it’s so important for her to respond like that because it’s Adora saying “Rebuild and try with me” and Catra saying “Yes, I want to change” so I kept it.

⦁ Adora told Catra about the whole ropes debacle that night and Catra was both annoyed — at production, and sy how much the delay made her worry — and found it funny. After Catra pulled her into the limo following the proposal, they went back to the hotel, packed up, and Catra joined her in her suite again that night before they had to fly back home at 4AM. They did some catching up and making out but mostly they just held each other and were Done.

⦁ Okay so they haven’t told their therapist how the show ended, it’s just incredibly obvious. They’ve told her they can’t legally tell her anything that happened until after the corresponding episode has aired, but then they’re going to therapy to build a healthy relationship together and work through past obstacles like Catra’s jealousy and Adora leaving her behind and expecting Catra to follow her along — especially since that’s kind of still happening, only for better reasons now and when they can both be more mature about it — so it’s kind of really obvious what the end result was lmao. Their therapist watched two episodes for context but with how heavily edited it is, it wasn’t actually that helpful.

⦁ I never brought up their jobs because… they weren’t working for months lmao, but Adora works for Angella as he day job so she could get the time off and at the start of the fic Catra is a graphic — and website, to some degree — designer primarily working for Entrapta’s robotics business, though she does work on the side for other clients.

⦁ Glimmer’s ambush wasn’t actually coordinated, Perfuma just saw it happening at a volume that seemed calm and quietly assisted letting it play out. She wants them all to have healthy relationships now, but she wants to protect her friend too.

⦁ This final chapter took so long despite being written before I even posted chapter 9 because I knew something was missing from it but I’m so busy I’m kind of creatively stalled out so I couldn’t really pinpoint what vibe was off. It turned out to be a rehaul of the confrontation and adding in the party scene to have a bit more closure on that angle since it felt like Glimmer accepted it too quick for her. It allowed circling around on the marriage aspect before the final scene too. It ended up making this the longest chapter of the fic though.

⦁ Melendy… deserves a break. She left Adora’s season knowing she had to focus on her own happiness and getting to a good place with her family. After her parents drove Adora away, she had a fight with them about them preferring to ruin her happiness over it coming from something they didn’t approve of. Things were really tense with them for a while but they started trying to work on being more open so Melendy would be comfortable sharing her life with them even if it didn’t go how they wanted. When Melendy had a few awkward dates that didn’t work out and then eventually decided to go on the show again, they were hopeful that they wouldn’t have to confront any of it further since she was going on a man’s season. Obviously that didn’t work out, and it was upon meeting the bachelor and him being a lot less concerned with things like Melendy’s ear positioning that made them face themselves a bit more given how parallel the situation was to how they met Adora. Melendy sat them down and had a really long talk before her season about how she was going to have guys and girls on it and they had to be prepared to meet and support both in the finale or be prepared not to be there at all. They tried to open themselves up to it more. Melendy was really excited about being the bachelorette and having one last shot at happiness. Despite being near all the manufacturing of the show twice now, she believed in the love story still, and she was the kind of person who liked structure around dating. It was easy back when she was in school, but once it was down to meeting random strangers out in the world and on dating apps, she struggled with it a lot more, so she really thought the show could bring her happiness if she gave it one last chance as the lead. It did, btw. Her final three were Duke, one of the fighting girls, and another girl who was kind of a surprise to her but things suddenly started to heat up with her near the end. Duke pulled an Idiot and basically eliminated himself when one of the producers talked him into going to her after their Fantasy Suite and telling her on camera that he wasn’t comfortable with her sleeping with the other girls. Melendy was seriously considering him and might have been willing to decide on him and make that concession if he brought it up in the privacy of the Fantasy Suite, preferably before they had sex so she could really consider the whole picture without a fucking camera on her. It felt manipulative — probably because he was manipulated into doing it when a producer caught him stewing over the upcoming dates — so she told him she wasn’t making that promise and they parted ways really tensely. He basically knew he was going home when the next girl stayed the night with Melendy. There wasn’t any dramatic early exit, which gave him and some of the viewers hope, but it was an eventuality when she gave the roses to the other two girls. Her parents were disappointed, but they’d prepared themselves for this situation and were a lot more open than they had been with Adora. They ended up endorsing the surprise contestant — half because she seemed really sweet, and half because she was a magicat — and Melendy was thrilled to make that decision with her parents’ support. She wanted to be proposed to, so the girls went with it, and though Melendy personally would have been happy either way, the surprise girl passed her parents’ final test when she brought ropes rather than the ring the other girl picked out (which, to be fair, she did knowing Melendy was okay with it since she was unsure about the rope thing in general and asked Melendy about it). They have a much more whirlwind married in nine months kind of relationship the producors are really looking for, but luckily it worked out for them too.

Original Outline:

This fic was originally a lot shorter. Basically, I had a few big moments and then not more plan of what (if anything) would go in between. The original idea was the limo entrance, cocktail party confrontation, the coming out Bare Your Soul date, a later addition of the vineyard date, Catra’s hometown, and then Catra’s fantasy suite, the ropes, and the proposal.

Originally, it was a lot more ambiguous how Catra was feeling about Adora until the Fantasy SUite. She was a lot cooler to her throughout it and they didn’t get stuff like the soft moment late at night in Bright Moon that they ended up with. In the original outline, Catra’s plan was a bit more manipulative, with her original (conscious) idea being to try to make sure Adora got her heartbroken however she could, even if that meant luring her in again and breaking her heart at the end herself. That lasted about five seconds, and as I thought about the idea I realized that wasn’t really how I was picturing the intent or function of Catra’s plan, but it did mean I lost the line of “The plan was to break your heart on national television.” I did my best to get something close because I loved that line.

Catra was also supposed to be a lot more cagey after the reveal because she held onto her plan for longer and thus had a harder time sorting out the actual feelings she buried beneath it, so she couldn’t say what she did for the show and what she did for her plan or when she stopped trying to hurt Adora, but when the plan softened, so did the fallout from it too. The show was then supposed to roll right into the ring/rope selection with Adora’s time with the final girl specifically not shown but its absence making it clear she didn’t make up her mind regardless of what happened in the Fantasy Suite, but it needed more fleshing out by the time I reached there in the story, especially since I knew who the other girl was at that point. The fic was supposed to basically end with the proposal, but I couldn’t have stopped there once I reached it and it wouldn’t have been the right call anyway lol.

Upcoming:

I might have more meta coming for this (see: cut scene mentioned above) but aside from that I’ve got some ideas competing and a low creative pool at the moment so I’m not sure which fic will be next. I’ve got some fun ideas and some specific ass weird ones.

#r&t #fic notes #ficmeta

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nausikaaa · 2 years ago

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WIP Wednesday

nobody has tagged me yet, but i got a spurt of inspiration last night and wrote some more of my post-Troy wip, so here's some more Hermione and Pyrrhus (called Neoptolemus in this scene), my favourite dysfunctional couple.

“What happened last night?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you show?”

“You made it perfectly clear you didn’t want to see me.” He replied with a dismissive shrug.

“No I didn-” I halted. Well. I supposed he was right, I didn’t want to see him. I shook my head. “This isn’t about what we want.” I said instead. “It’s about duty. We are expected to-”

“Apologies, my lady,” he snarled, “but I’ve had enough experience with expectations to know I want no more part in fulfilling them.”

“You will call me by my name when we are in public.” I hissed, looking around for eavesdroppers. Though we appeared to be alone, anyone raised in a palace should know that walls have ears.

Neoptolemus’s expression shifted, from rage to resignation in a matter of moments. “I will do whatever I must to appease you in public, but I won’t bend my own principles to yours, just because they are yours.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I told you, I’ve had enough of following expectations. I grew up under them, went to war because of them. All it ever amounts to is feeling inadequate. I would rather our marriage be one of bitter compromise than outright resentment.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Did he think I did not have expectations placed upon me, too? The son of Greece’s greatest warrior, a slip of a boy, and the daughter of Greece’s most beautiful woman, the spit of her father. What a pair we made.

i've written about Pyrrhus and Hermione's deal before here, this scene is set the day after the wedding in that snippet, after Pyrrhus left Hermione waiting all night for him to show up at her room for the final step of their union. they clearly have a rough start, but actually end up having a very loving and co-operative relationship... at least until Pyrrhus is murdered. spoilers.

since i've made playlists for all my characters now, this scene's corresponding song is I Know It's Over by The Smiths. Sad veiled bride, please be happy. Handsome groom, give her room, etc etc.

i tag @ileadacharmedlife @martsonmars @imagineacoolusername @confused-bi-queer @ic3-que3n @forabeatofadrum @tea-brigade @bazzybelle @aroace-genderfluid-sheep @theearlgreymage @aristocratic-otter @facewithoutheart @otherpeoplesheartachept-2 @whogaveyoupermission @shemakesmeforget and @letraspal

#untitled post troy project #wip wednesday #Spotify

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truckermelissa · 1 year ago

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If you see a conservative saying this, just be aware, that they are lying to you. Wholesale. This is why they use weasel words when they say these things. Always watch for these words when talking with conservatives. "Many" "Most" "Millions of" etc. These are weasel words, and they use them because they know they cannot quantify a single word they said. The reality is, if there are conservatives who are "fine with gay people" they are an extreme minority going back decades right up to the present day, so small a minority to be politically invalid, and that's what counts here. Unlike conservatives, I actually know Queer History, I'm 41-years-old, and I have a VERY good memory. Let's go through the catalouge of Conservatives in the last 40 or so years. 1980s: As the HIV pandemic was raging though the queer community conservatives were perfectly content callously watching it slowly and painfully kill 100s of thosuands of people. The deaths reached nearly 20,000 in the US in 1992 alone. They called it "god's retribution", nothing quite like "Christian Love" indeed.

President Ronald Reagan didn't say a single word nor lift a finger to do anything about it. Finally in 1987, after pressure from epidemiologists and queer rights groups, he created a commission. Led by a one Admiral (ret.) James David Watkins.

Now the Admiral here was a big fan of witch hunts within the military to dishonorably discharge anyone suspected of homosexuality. So that basically is all you need to know about him. Even his half-hearted attempts at doing something, anything at all, were completely ignored by the Reagan and later Bush Sr. administrations if you can believe it. Mind you, the Reagan/Bush administrations desire to do nothing at all about the AIDS pandemic not only worsened the pandemic, but had utterly no basis whatsoever in science, medicine, or sociology, it was pure Christian Conservative ideology. Nothing else. 1990s:

As the AIDS pandemic continued to burn though the population, the conversation began to shift by the early 1990s. In 1993 Bill Clinton and a hostile Congress were butting heads over a number of things, mostly related to the deficit left by the Reagan Administration. One of the talking points of the day was Gays in the Military.

Conservatives unilaterally wanted the military to go on witch hunts and dishonorably discharge all LGBTQ service personnel. They claimed it would destroy the military to let us serve. To which I have one question: Hey conservatives, how's that working out? It's been 12 years since LGBTQ were allowed to openly serve. Has the military collapsed yet you fucking idiots? Or were you lying as fucking usual? Anyway, Bill Clinton managed to piss off the Left and the Right (yes, the Left was fighting for gay rights in the 1990s) by introducing "Don't Ask; Don't Tell" in 1993. This would be policy for 18 years. Indeed, I was in the US Navy from 2000-2011, and am well aware of Don't Ask; Don't Tell, posters like this were common as were slurs from the chain of command.

Additionally, conservatives at the time were arguing that LGBTQ people should not be able to adopt and should they somehow have biological children, should be taken away from them. Funny how that came full circle huh? If your noticing a trend here, then you are paying attention. Much of the conservative horse shit is recycled over and over again.

Keep in mind, Trump did the same thing in 2020. I would LOVE for Conservative LGBTQ to circle that square, but I digress.

Now, it wouldn't be until the Obama Administration in 2011 that Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be repealed and gays allowed to serve openly, to much fierce resistance from........CONSERVATIVES!

2000s: Bush Jr. is president, trade towers are rubble, and we are engaged in what would become a 20-year long campaign of conquest on the other side of the planet. Bush backed a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage.

Additionally, Bush defended gay sex bans.

That's right, gay sex, much less marriage, was illegal in much of the country until 2003, something that would come to an end, much to the chagrin of conservatives, in Texas v. Lawrence. This isn't ancient history, this was 20 years ago, on similar grounds of Roe v. Wade, which is why CONSERVATIVE judges in the Supreme Court want to "revisit" it. Conservatives want to make gay sex illegal again.

2010s: As stated earlier, in 2011 Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed by Obama. Additionally in 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges was ruled making gay marriage legal across the country. Indeed prior to this some states came up with the 2nd-class citizen status of "civil unions" while others outright banned gay marraige in any form. I'll let you guess what states those were and if they were red or blue states. (Hint: It wasn't Blue States) But Obergefell passes and DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is ruled unconstitutional. Boy were conservatives pissed about this.

LGBTQ rights were fought for and won not because of, but in SPITE of conservatives. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying, stupid, a propagandist, or any combination thereof. While Democrats could be criticized for their general inaction, and even at times complicit behavior, it was not they who were driving the fight against our rights. It is, has always been, and continues to be CONSERVATIVES. So if there's this chunk of conservatives who are allegedly fine with LGBTQ people, they are politically irrelevant within conservative politics. So irrelevant as not even worthy of consideration, and at worst, they do not exist. Never forget it.

#politics #trans rights #gay rights #lgbtq rights #conservative #conservatism #republicans #gop #liberals #democrats #republicans are fascists #yes all republicans

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navarice · 1 year ago

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A Box of Pictures in Ma's Attic

//@desi-lgbt-fest // Day 18 Fest Submission

Sometimes when I look back at my childhood photos I wonder how such a sweet little girl could ever become someone like me. It’s not a feeling that’s purely negative, though. It’s just a thought. I see the little me holding dolls and hugging her family and then I wonder just when did I stop feeling the joy of existing and start worrying about the space I occupy in this world. Every person stands at their own crossroads, yet mine feels like standing right in the middle of a roundabout of identities. A Muslim girl that isn’t particularly devout, a Bengali who’s lived in America more than her own homeland, the eldest daughter that disappoints her family more than makes them proud, a fraud in her educational institution and workplace, a fat girl (really that’s just the reality of it), just a general person who is easier to let go of then to hold on to. Most importantly, however, a person who doesn’t understand all these identities she grapples with.

When I do ponder on this, I remember that little girl in the picture, so sweet and so innocent, somehow knew back then that something about her was different from what she has known her whole life so far. There was never a dawning horror or a sudden shift of the universe, but something more quiet and sure…almost as if it was just a truth born within her. Now, innate acceptance is different from the reality of seeing it. Truth be told, learning about the queer community at 11 years old was absolutely overwhelming. Queer culture in 2014 was far from the progressive as it is today, and the passing of the Marriage Equality Act began a sort of Rennaissance of new identities, definitions, and cultures. Yeah…quite overwhelming.

Eleven-year-old me didn’t know what to do with all of it. Neopronouns? Nonbinary? Genderqueer? Asexual? All I know is that I like to kiss girls sometimes. Maybe I liked boys too, but the more I get to know boys my age the less I like them to be honest. The more I learned new things, the more questions I had, and the more I felt like a failure because I didn’t understand it right away. The quiet acceptance was gone, instead replaced with new verbiage and cultural politics. Absurdly, I wondered if I was even doing this gay thing right. Should I be thinking about defying societal norms and change my pronouns? Should I hate sex? Love it? Should I discard my religion and Bengali identity because it is not as progressive and denies my existence? For the first time in my life, I began to question myself.

The best thing about being gay in the early 2010s is that you can shove yourself back in the closet as many times as you want since being open about it was so new. And that’s exactly what I did. Up until my senior year of high school, I didn’t bother thinking about any of it (other than consuming an insane amount of gay content because hey a girl’s gotta have an outlet somewhere). Perhaps it was a blessing rather than a curse that the pandemic made us experts in introspection because the next round of reformation felt akin to psychological warfare on my younger self.

I look at the younger photo of me and I look at the me right now and wonder how, after all that, I still come back to a full circle to the place I once was: quiet and innate acceptance. I am not out to my family (I tried with my mom but that was a complete disaster). It doesn’t really mix well with me being Muslim-Bengali. However, I am out to myself. In other words, I gave up caring about definitions and what should or should not be, instead focusing on the painful, joyful, simple existence I lead, making a difference when I can wherever I can. I am still on that roundabout of identities, continuously faced with unprecedented uncertainties, but now, I take that little girl’s hand, and we face the future forward together.

#I DID IT Y'ALL #I'VE BEEN SO SWAMPED W STUFF THAT I'VE ONLY DONE TWO SUBMISSIONS NOOO #but honestly this was a really good prompt #i just wish i could write something better than what is essentially a diary entry #but eh it is what it is #desi lgbt fest 2023 #hope this resonates w at least one person so I feel validated tehee

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stabbynunchuckss · 1 year ago

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I noticed that this doesn't have an image description here, and I found one on the Reddit link, so here:

[Image Description: An LGBallT ball of Gilbert Baker's 8 stripe rainbow flag: "Hi friends! As pride month just ended, I've been seeing a lot of posts about what July should be."

A trans ball, a bi ball, and a lesbian ball come onto the picture. They are all motion-blurred and their eyes are closed and angry. Trans is holding a pitchfork, Lesbian has a torch, and Bi has a sword. They yell "QUEER WRATH MONTH!!!" while the rainbow ball watches.

The rainbow ball says "Gotta say, I love the enthusiasm, but July already has something..." The trans, lesbian, and bi balls open their eyes and the motion blur decreases. They look at the rainbow ball. Bi says "does that mean no more sword?" Rainbow says "Yes." in big text. Bi says "awe damn..." in little text.

The rainbow ball turns into a ball with the disability pride flag. The disability flag is a black flag with five parallel zig-zagged stripes, one blue, one yellow, one white, one red, and one green. The disability ball says "July is disability pride month!" with yellow stars around it.

Trans, Lesbian, and Bi look in awe. Lesbian has put the torch away and says "oooh!", Trans has lowered their pitchfork and says "wow", Bi has lowered their sword and says "What flag is that?"

Disability ball says "I'm glad you asked! This is the disability pride flag! It was made by a disabled woman named Ann Migall after an ableist massacre in Japan in 2016. It was made in 2019."

Disability ball continues: "In Migall's words, the black is for mourning those who have faced Ableist violence, and for rebellion and protest. The zigzags represent how disabled people navigate barriers and are creative while doing so. They represent breaking free from authority and control.

"The different colors of the stripes are for different kinds of disabilities; mental illness, intellectual and developmental disability, invisible and undiagnosed disabilities, physical disabilities, and sensory disabilities. The stripes are parallel to show solidarity within the Disabled community."

Trans and lesbian look on in awe and say "nice".

Bi looks at their sword. Bi says "that is very cool Disability, but I do now have a sword and a lot of rage so if there's not a wrath month, what should I do?" Disability says "Very good question, bi! Simple! Use that energy to be an ally to your Disabled friends! Did you know that Disabled people don't have marriage equality in most parts of the world? Get mad about that! Disabled people make up an estimated 26% of the world's population, we are the largest minority yet most public spaces are inaccessible! Most don't even know about our pride month! (Not to mention the rampant ableism in the queer community...)"

The comic shifts back to trans, lesbian, and bi. They are motion-blurred again and their eyes are angry. They have raised their weapons once again. Trans says "No marriage rights?! Here we go again!" Lesbian says "I'm angry again." Bi yells "Disability Rights!"

End ID]

Are you sad that June is over and you don't have a pride month anymore? Fear not, friends! There's a different pride month just beginning! lgballt

#only figured out about halfway through that i could use google lens to copy and paste this #so i wrote half of that out myself #disability pride month

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loveriotss · 3 months ago

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I have a special request if you’re up for it

imagine the reader is Shoto’s best friend and has a very powerful Quirk, so Endeavor tries to arrange a quirk marriage, but the reader’s parents refuse. Skip to years later, Shoto and the reader are in a queer-platonic marriage and do have kids, but they’re all adopted.

please, and thank you

OUR HAPPY ENDING ⸻ shoto todoroki

SYNOPSIS — after endeavor tries to arrange a quirk marriage for his son shoto with you, a powerful quirk user, your parents refuse the union. years later, shoto and you are now happily married and have built a family through adoption, finding happiness and fulfillment on your own terms. INCLUDES — gn! reader, slight angst, fluff, one-shot, 2.2k words WARNINGS — endeavor being a bitch

main masterlist — mha masterlist ༊*·˚

the mahogany door creaked open, revealing the vast expanse of endeavor’s opulent office. his desk gleamed under the high ceiling lights. the light filtering through the high windows cast long shadows, adding an air of formality to the surroundings. the room was a monument to his relentless pursuit of perfection and determination to become number one: polished wood panels, black leather couches surrounding a table in between the room, framed certificates and trophies, each a symbol of his relentless pursuit to excellence.

with your parents by your side, you entered the room feeling tense. behind his desk stood endeavor, a towering figure of authority in a spotless uniform. his gaze was a mix of expectancy and sternness. standing beside him was shoto, who’s eyes met yours. you couldn’t discern what he was thinking but you didn’t have the time to figure it out either as shoto shot his eyes to the ground, almost as if he were guilty of something.

endeavor motioned for you and your parents to take a seat, his gesture seeming more as a command than an invitation as he and shoto took their seats across from you all. you looked at your best friend again, hoping to read his eyes once more but he seemed to keep his eyes purposely glued to the table in between the two of you instead. said table had cups of coffee, a few snacks and an ominous looking document on the side. you peered at it slightly, trying to figure out the contents of it before your mother nudged you slightly, making you quickly regain your posture.

“thank you for coming,” endeavor began, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “i appreciate your time today.”

endeavor’s sharp eyes moved from one person to the next before finally resting on you. your body felt rigid and your heartbeat quickened but you made sure to not break eye contact.

“what is this about, endeavor?” your father asked, his voice steady but edged with cautious anticipation. his posture was firm, hands clasped tightly in his lap.

endeavor leaned forward slightly. “it concerns your child and mine, shoto. as you know, shoto’s quirk is incredibly powerful, but its full potential could be enhanced through a strategic partnership.”

his eyes shot to you once more, “and your child..has an equally exceptional quirk. both theirs and shoto’s quirk together could produce remarkable results.”

you felt your heart plummet all the way down to your gut. you glance over to shoto, who has realized it too, his eyes widened at his father’s words in disbelief. surely he couldn't be suggesting...

your mother’s eyes narrowed, her expression a mix of confusion and suspicion. “partnership? what exactly are you proposing?”

“a quirk marriage,” endeavor said plainly. “your child’s abilities complement shoto’s in ways that could be highly advantageous. think of the possibilities — a union that could benefit both families and the society.”

you shifted in your seat, feeling a wave of discomfort. so you were right, he did want to propose a quirk marriage. the air around you felt suffocating, the idea alone of being arranged into a marriage based solely on quirk compatibility felt deeply intrusive. how heartless could endeavor be? you were certainly not in the dark of how he treated his kids based on their quirks and the horrible things that the entire family had to go through because of his selfishness. and now he wants you and shoto to go through the same thing?

you stared ahead and shoto didn’t look any better than you did. his face was broken out in cold sweat, his mouth slightly agape as he stared at the side of his father’s face.

“i’m not sure i understand. are you suggesting that we should get married simply because our quirks are compatible? could you remind me what era we are currently in?” you snarl at endeavor.

endeavor’s expression was unwavering. “this isn’t merely about personal preference or romantic inclinations. it is about creating the strongest possible legacy. your quirk is powerful, and with shoto’s, the potential for impact is significant. your bloodline could create extraordinary quirks along with ours.”

fury boiled from the depths of your body, you opened your mouth angrily to speak back but your father beat you to it.

“we refuse. you must be out of your mind if you think we would force our child into this business contract of a marriage.” your father’s expression remained stoic, but his eyes were fiercely sharp.

endeavor’s demeanor hardened slightly, though he maintained his composure. “refusal is..unwise. i strongly advise you to reconsider. think about the long-term benefits for everyone involved. this isn’t just a matter of personal choice but of contributing to the greater good. the potential benefits are too significant to overlook.”

shoto, who seemed to have regained his composure, finally spoke up. his voice was firm, though mixed with a hint of unease. “i don’t want this. i don't want the things that happened between you and mom to happen between me and y/n and i definitely do not want what happened to big brother touya to repeat. i want to be able to make my own choices about my future.”

endeavor’s gaze shifted to his son, his brows knitting together in frustration. “shoto, you must understand. this is about forging a path that will leave a lasting mark on the world. think about the legacy you two could build together.”

you took a deep breath, drawing strength from the support of your parents and the determination radiating from shoto. “shoto’s right. our lives aren’t pawns in some grand scheme. we both deserve the freedom to make our own choices and to shape our futures.”

your mother places her hand over yours, squeezing it reassuringly. “our choice is final, we will not agree to this arrangement. our child’s future is not to be dictated by silly things such as quirk compatibility. we will not allow it.” she says, her voice firm and unyielding.

the room fell into a heavy silence, the weight of the decision hanging heavy in the air. endeavor’s expression hardened, his eyes flashing with irritation. “i see. very well. i trust you will reconsider, but for now, we’ll end this discussion.”

and with that, you and your parents stood up to leave. shoto’s gaze met yours. there was a mix of gratitude and uncertainty in his eyes, but his stance was resolute. you give him a weak smile which he manages to return.

as you leave the office, the tension of the meeting slowly began to lift. your father placed an arm on your shoulder, offering you a smile as you all walked towards the exit.

years had passed since that tense meeting with endeavor. the memory of his proposal, so forceful and impersonal, had faded into the background of your life. the pressure and expectations from the past had given way to a different kind of relationship with you and your best friend shoto — one that was meaningful and uniquely yours.

shoto and you had formed a queer-platonic marriage, the bond you two had defied traditional definitions yet perfectly suited your needs and desires. it was a relationship built on deep emotional connection, mutual respect and an understanding that transcended conventional romance.

the decision to marry took a lot of thought and consideration. you both did not want to have a marriage that would please endeavor and his cruel ideas. you both knew that if you two had children of your own, no doubt the child would have an extraordinary combination of both quirks.

if this would have happened, endeavor would have surely gone and done something that would’ve ruined your peaceful lives. so you two had decided to adopt instead, and that was the best decision of your lives.

your home was a cozy and bustling space, filled with warmth and signs of daily life. the walls were adorned with family photos and colorful artwork created by your children. the entire place was a mix of comfort and creativity, a testament to the hard work and determination you and shoto had to build the life you have now.

the scent of freshly baked cookies wafted from the kitchen, mingling with the soft hum of a lullaby playing in the background. the melody was soothing, a calming presence in the midst of the household. you were busy preparing a late lunch for everyone, your movements practiced and fluid as you chopped vegetables and arranged sandwiches on a platter.

between your legs was you and shoto’s two year old daughter, hana, who you two had adopted just a few months ago. she had the most gorgeous brown locks paired with charming black eyes. she held onto the hem of your clothes, peering curiously at your actions, the lollipop in her hand practically forgotten.

you smile, looking down at her. “hi hana, wanna help me with lunch?” you ask her, patting her head softly. she nodded her head furiously as she held out both her hands for you. you pick her up, placing her on the counter and carefully keeping the lollipop away before she drops it. she looked at the food plattered, a sparkle in her eyes. you grin to yourself, happy to see that she’s finally out of her shell.

meanwhile in the living room, your three older kids were sprawled on the floor, focused on a particular task. there were building blocks scattered across the carpet with shoto in the corner who was engaged in an intricate game with them. they all were together, creating a structure with the blocks. a sprawling castle complete with towers and walls was taking shape under shoto’s patient guidance. his face was lit with a warm smile, a rare and treasured sight.

you watched from the kitchen, a smile appearing on your face too. you carefully placed hana on the floor again as you began laying out plates, glasses and utensils on the table.

you set it with the sandwiches, salads, a batch of cookies and two pitchers of juice and water. “lunch is ready!” you called out. the kids scrambled from the floor, excitement bubbling over as they eagerly took their seats. your seven year old twin boys are the first to plop down on the seats beside you, mouths practically watering at the sight of the lunch you had prepared for them. “did you two wash your hands before sitting down?” retorted your ten year old daughter as she raises her eyebrows at her little brothers who flash her a toothy grin before racing off to the bathroom.

“thank you mimiko” you say, gently caressing her hair as you place a few sandwiches on her plate. hana on the other hand was in shoto’s arms, babbling in broken language as he gently places her on a baby seat.

the boys, whose hands were now clean, sat on their chairs as they held out their plates for some of your sandwiches too. you serve them before finally placing sandwiches with a side of salad on you and your husband's plates. shoto busied himself by pouring cups of water and juices for everyone and cutting up pieces of bread for hana to enjoy.

now that all the kids had food on their plates, you and shoto finally sat down, your hands brushed against each other, a simple, affectionate gesture. you give each other a small smile before beginning your meal and starting up a light conversation.

“i can’t believe how fast they’re growing up,” you remarked, looking at your kids. they were a diverse group, each with their own background and story, but they were united by the love and care that you and shoto had given them. “it feels like just yesterday we were bringing them home for the first time.”

shoto nodded, his gaze softening as he looked at the children. “i know. they’ve brought so much joy into our lives. it’s hard to imagine what life was like before them.”

as lunch winded up, you and shoto decided to take the kids to the park, a favorite family outing. the sun cast a glow over the playground as the children ran ahead, their laughter ringing through the air, while you and shoto followed at a more leisurely pace, pushing hana's stroller along.

you both sat at a bench nearby, keeping an eye on the kids while also relaxing together, fingers interlocked. little hana had also seemed to wriggle her body out of the stroller and waddled off to play with her older siblings.

as the sun began to set and the park started to empty, you gathered the kids and walked back home, the day coming to a close.

the house was now silent, only a few shuffles and snores heard as you and shoto sat together in the balcony, the cool night breeze hitting your faces.

in the stillness, you turned to shoto, a smile playing on your lips. “you know, despite everything, i wouldn’t change a thing. this life we’ve built together—it’s exactly what i’ve always wanted.”

shoto’s gaze softened and he returned your smile. “i feel the same way y/n. we’ve created something truly special. it’s more than i could have ever imagined.” he gently grabs your hand, placing a small kiss on your knuckles before whispering. “this is our happy ending.”

NOTE — this was a longg fic to write but honestly i really enjoyed it! went a bit overboard with the timeskip but i think it's really sweet! i didn't give names to the boys so you guys can decide that! also can you guys tell i suck at giving titles 🧍.

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newpathwrites · 5 months ago

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Another queer excerpt from A Marriage of Convenience (from one of my favorite chapters) where Cyar’ika explains the nature of her and Din’s QPR-esque marriage to his nurse when he’s hospitalized for an injury - the same force-sensitive nurse who met them both once before years ago and had predicted a great love story in their future 😏. She’s already caught on to the fact that this relationship is sexless due to some awkwardness around nudity but assumes it must still be romantic.

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“I hate to say I told you so… but I told you so… little miss ‘I’m not built for romance’...”

The nurse took a seat next to you holding a cup of caf in her hand, probably on a break in her shift.

You laughed - of course she remembered her pestering all those years ago, predicting a great romance between you and Din. “You did tell me so… and you were mostly right.”

“Just mostly ? How do you figure?” she asked between sips of caf.

You shrugged. “Because it wasn’t exactly romance that we found together…”

“Oh, really?...” she replied dryly, clearly finding that statement unbelievable. “Just because your relationship is obviously not intimate… doesn’t mean it’s not romantic.” There she went again, acting as if she understood the nuances of your bond - and totally missing the mark…

“But that’s the thing,” you started, determined to educate this woman. “Our relationship is intimate in many ways, and in fact, that’s the part that changed after we took the marriage vows and I was allowed to know his face. The love and trust between us, though - that was there long before, and while it’s grown stronger over time, the nature of it is the same. It might look romantic to you, but it’s not… it’s something we don’t really have words to describe…”

“You are not platonic,” she scoffed good-naturedly, “if that’s what you’re trying to say…”

You shook your head. “We’re neither. We are best friends and family and life partners... And we will never write each other love letters or hold hands in the street or have a sexual relationship - because it’s just not how we are. But we are happy and stable and hope to enjoy each other’s company for the rest of our lives. Who cares if it’s not conventional?” You turned in your chair to fully face her, smirking lightly. “Certainly not me… ”

————————————————————

Ok, one more from the same chapter - here’s to found family, an incredibly important aspect of the queer experience for many:

Unbeknownst to you, your nurse-turned-friend was observing the exchange through the gap in the curtain, watching as you snuggled closer into Din’s uninjured side and he kissed the top of your head, settling into comfortable togetherness - what she now understood to be the hallmark of your relationship.

You two with your unconventional love story and your makeshift family of Mandalorians and former rebels and young Jedi had given her quite a lot to think about. And you had certainly crossed paths for a reason, even if she had yet to understand what it was.

The force did work in mysterious ways…

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#queerplatonic representation #queerplatonic relationship

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qnewsau · 5 months ago

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Enjoy Tina Bikki!

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/enjoy-tina-bikki/

Enjoy Tina Bikki!

Tina Bikki is a name that is iconic not only in the Brisbane and Sydney queer scenes, but more recently overseas as well.

She’s one of the most seasoned and successful queer performers Australia has to offer and is a testament to how a drag queen can make a successful career for themselves completely independently.

Tina Bikki was recently a contestant in Drag Arena International, an expansion of a well-established televised drag competition hosted in Thailand.

Drag Arena International featured contestants from Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia, with an exciting lineup of queens including Sydney’s own Jacqui St. Hyde and Sia Tequila.

Sydney’s own Maxi Shield was one of the judges and the show was part of the first ever Bangkok Pride, coinciding with the recent legalisation of same-sex marriage in Thailand.

Tina sat down for an exclusive interview with QNews before travelling to Thailand to tell us what the show is all about, and about her career as an artist over the last thirteen years.

How did you start doing drag?

It’s a blurry line because you sort of get around looking busted in the club before you get on the stage, right? It would probably be around 2011, so thirteen years ago. That was up in Brisbane.

Do you know what? I was really, really lucky, because QNews, funnily enough, used to do the scene pictures up in Queensland. You’d go out, and you’d be so fucking excited when someone would take a picture of you because you might end up in the magazine.

Back in 2012, I had been out in drag not that many times, and there was a drag competition on the Gold Coast. They were fishing around for baby queens, and they saw me in the QNews scene pictures a few times, and they were like ‘who is this bitch?’

So tthey then reached out and asked me to do this amateur comp, which I did (and won).

But it was a long one. It went for six months. And because it was a long one, people could really see the contestants, so I started picking up work after that.

I didn’t realise it but I already had performance experience in the sense that I’d done dance, I’d done a lot of theatre, so that was already in me. So all I had to do was learn the makeup and the hair and the cozzies and all that stuff.

What changes do you see in the drag scene today?

I feel like there’s been a shift now. Obviously there’s an economic crisis but drag is being really oversaturated. There’s a lot of drag on TV. But back then, people did drag because they were queer and performers first.

So drag came as the next step. It wasn’t like ‘I want to be a drag queen, so I’m gonna do that first and then become a performer’- because I don’t think everyone’s got that in them.

I think you should come into it as a performer first. I can buy a tradie outfit from Kmart today if I want but it doesn’t mean I can go out and fuckin’ build a fence.

When you’re a natural performer, charisma is something that speaks so much louder than anything else. I’ve seen really busted bitches turn my pussy out, because it’s obvious that this person is a performer.

You can learn to look the part pretty quickly now. I’m telling you a busted baby queen now looks okay: comparatively to back then when we were blocking our eyebrows with soap.

We weren’t doing bingo nights in straight clubs and brunches at the local café. And I’m not 900 years old. This isn’t like back in the 60s. This isn’t that long ago.

It’s crazy. It’s changed, it absolutely has changed.

How would you describe your drag to someone who’s never seen a spot from you before?

It’s tricky because I’m a career drag queen, so I do full time drag.

So for the most part you’ve got to do commercial drag and so you’ve got to do drag catered towards nightclub patrons. Which is ever changing.

I get off stage and people go “that’s so Tina” and I respond by saying I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about!

I like that I can be very sexual in my performances, but when I get the mic it’s like ‘holy shit that could be my uncle up there!’

Tell me about Drag Arena. What is the competition all about?

It’s quite brutal. In previous seasons, I would say 75% of the Drag Race Thailand competitors in have done this competition post Drag Race. So it’s pretty highly regarded over there.

It’s about lip-syncing and performance. It’s trying to steer away from the overproduced bullshit that we don’t actually do as part of the artistry. It’s showcasing what drag is today.

And it’s through a patron’s eye. Sometimes when you watch Drag Race you want to fast-forward to the lip-sync and the runway, whereas with Drag Arena that’s all it is.

It’s also good to have something else. We have so much pressure from ourselves and others to get on Drag Race, so I think this show can come and shake that up so drag isn’t being monopolised in the public eye. It’s fucken’ fierce mama!

This also isn’t something you send in audition tapes for. Everyone has to audition live, kind of like Australian Idol. They’ve got the judges panel on the day, and you just have to perform, right in front of them. I think that’s such a better casting method for a television show that’s talent based because anyone could lie about having talent and be very convincing.

They do lip-sync smackdowns against each other in front of a live crowd, in a club. There’s no studio. They want it really authentic. That also helps the performers, because they’ve got an audience and they’re in an environment that they’re used to.

When there’s a final two, the performers do their solo acts and the crowd has 15 minutes to vote who their favourite is, and that queen is the winner. It’s all very fast paced, and in the moment.

The other gorgeous thing about it is that every contestant wins prize money. They’re not doing this for free. They get compensated for their time like a paid gig.

What do you think the show will do for Australian drag?

I’m really excited to be doing this experience with three other sisters from Australia, and collectively we want to get there and represent Australia the best we can.

We want to give Australian drag the boost that it might not be getting from other Australian drag shows.

We’re going to be involved in Bangkok Pride, a history making event, which is fantastic!

We’re there not just to represent our drag in Australia but also our queerness. For me, I’m always looking for fabulous things to do in my career but I’ve always got the community in my head. How I can intertwine them, how I can speak for them.

I just really hope we can make this big and really put in the work after to really make sure we keep ourselves visible on the international stage.

-The winner of Drag Arena International 2024 was Taiwan’s YOLANDA.

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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mythvoiced · 5 months ago

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-. here lián-core (pt.1) hyello~ i'm working on inbox (there aren't a lot bc my inbox is busted and some of them are for rainy days heartus i intend to keep, but... i forgot how to write KLDSGJDFLH) but because i needed to spawn on dash--

I CHANGED HIS FC I'M SORRY DFGKLDJHG but look: here and here, like, he looks problematic which is exactly what lián is supposed to look like

sensible chuckle king, you will never not catch this man laughing or chuckling when the person in front of him wants him to

will literally stare at someone getting beat up while walking past the scene, will not stop

i need him to be the kind of character people will go 'gosh you're such a bastard but damn it if you aren't enjoyable to watch fuck shit up'

get ready to be lied to~!

fucks. that's it, that's... how do i put it... uhm... uh... he... well... so... he kind of...

he's one of those creepy motherfuckers who smiles if you slap him across the face

i cannot stress enough how much he enjoys people losing their cool

he needs attention, do not give it to him

i mean it, if you give him attention too often he won't want it anymore from you and will abandon you, i'm not joking

it's an issue, he wants attention from those he considers somewhat interesting and especially from those he figures aren't likely to give him attention, but it needs to be difficult to obtain, if it's too easy? nah

has developed a nasty dislike for straight women (i am so sorry)

if you sniff out astarion vibes you would not be too wrong (i just realized there are some, like, right after writing that last line)

no, haha, don't sacrifice yourself for me because you think i'm a sensitive and defenseless beauty haha it's gonna reveal to everyone how righteous you are but also that i'm a villain who's been manipulating you all along haha

he eats goody-two-shoes for breakfast and spits them out at lunch

in a world in which queer marriage was as granted as early as straight marriage, lián would get entire tv specials detailing how he'd black widowed 6 husbands before he got caught

if you punch him in the face and his nose starts bleeding he'll be so delighted

he's not a masochist, mind you, he just thinks provoking people is fun and if you hit him he's usually just right about whatever he's accusing you of (in his head, at least)

suddenly so very interested in toxicology haha (nobody tell his father)

it was very fricking obvious that there was foul play in his mother's death, she died of suffocation after all but hey! whatever~

bonus-core for liú shùn (劉順) a lil scholar kind of guy i wanted to make

all i have in mind for him is this visual of him standing somewhere in brown robes (or dark blue ones more likely i think) while holding a bunch of books and listening in to someone of a higher rank than himself say stupid things and he's just staring at this person and even though there's not a shift to his features you can tell he thinks whoever he's listening to is full of shit

very duty-bound, so to speak, honestly, he hangs onto that 'nope sorry gotta do my job' shit with white knuckles and a clenched jaw, okay, it's all he has!!!!!!!!!

to put it in some pop culture tropes perspective, he's the strict intellectual kind of character, yknow, the one someone else would want to try and get out of their shell except that he's actually respected for staying inside his shell (for now)

but fuck lián would fucking hate him, they're the same brand of useful except that lián has advantage on all charisma based rolls and shùn has advantage on all intelligence based rolls, they might be mortal enemies, actually

his family was likely well-off for a while, but then something happened!! and while they didn't fall into disgrace exactly they don't hold the same social status they used to have, it's probably a relatively minor shift considering they're still more privileged than others, but they bemoan it anyway

i'm thinking this guy could do it

will reject advances SO FAST!!! 'uhmmm??? no, sorry????? thank you, also your clothes are wrinkled, bye'

like he's got that rom-com potential of being held hostage by some villain more powerful than him but he hates how that some villain is running shit in their own abode so he just Fixes the entire household staff and the empire real quick

villain voice: STOP finding the errors in my tax returns i WANT them to be false!!!!!!

#;ooc #the smile;about #i cannot stress enough i've written a bunch of things and they feel and sound SO OFF #i'll post them anyway? because maybe my writing style is just changing and i need to get used to it #BUT HELLO~ and bye again i just jumpscared the dash to force you to look at my cute lil dash icon #also i was just reading something about stab wounds on pinterest and ye olde pinterest suggested i save it to chén's board #which is dsklgjSFDKGLASKLDGFH nice~#ANYWAYS gotta go back to doing some other things ♥ i wore my cute lil hat today HEHEHEHE~#without being mortally embarrassed by the supposed femininity of the lil bow on it which is CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

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dankusner · 6 months ago

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GM now means gay marriage

Unbeknownst to the queer-friendly auto giant, General Motors has already paved the way for legalizing same-sex matrimony

By DANIEL KUSNER | Jan. 16, 2009

DETROIT — We're immersed in a ne-queer revolution.

Across the U.S., our LGBT family has galvanized.

Recently in Dallas, we've seen angry protests against First Baptist Church, the Catholics’ California voters, Cinemark screenings of "Milk" and no-trannies-allowed bars.

We should be damn proud of our family.

And maybe this is the Melissa Etheridge Kool-Aid that's talking, but let's consider alternatives to angry rallies.

Perhaps we could harness our "label queen" superpowers and — without permission — seize control over GM's corporate queer image.

Every time you see a GM product — Cadillac, Chevy Saab, Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Saturn and Hummer — just say the words "gay marriage."

This week, General Motors invited me to attend the 2009 Detroit Auto Show.

Even though I was an auto show virgin, it was obvious that this year was seriously fucked up.

There was no getting around it: After jet-setting into Capitol Hill, GM's ass was still beet red from that bailout spanking.

Beneath the promising alternative-fuel veneer of their 2010-12 line, you could taste a hint of "We're scared shitless."

And in Detroit— a city that's been white-knuckling it for a long time — there's no shortage of economic fear.

GM's already earned some major queer props.

Their PR outreach has been courting the LGBT market since the dawn of Y2K.

And at the Motor City auto show, GM proudly rolled out their queer employees — designers, trend watchers, technical writers, marketing peeps: This global conglomerate hires some of the best and brightest queer minds.

And let's put it out there: Some auto companies (Porsche) still pretend gays aren't buying their cars.

What's new this year?

It's all about shifting away from the piston and toward the lithium-ion batteries.

Out of the 17 newbies, GM's launching two biggie hybrids: the 2010 Chevy Volt and the jaw-droppingly snazzy 2012 Cadillac Converj.

With it's low-sloping roofline, the five-door hatchback Volt (around $40,000), is Chevy's first plug-in hybrid.

The electric motor will power the car up for up to 40 miles.

The gas engine is a generator that kicks in and recharges the batteries when they're near empty.

When the Cadillac Converj rolled out, it was like Posh Spice just made a surprise entrance.

The unveiling was breathtaking.

The Converj (probably gonna hit the $100K mark) kinda looks like a CTS coupe.

But this hybrid is the epitome of sleek styling.

If someone asked Bobby Trendy, he'd say the Converj was, "Luxurious!"

What's gay marriage got to do with it?

My first real auto show experience was a breakfast powwow titled "Adapting to the State of Business'" where GM's diversity spokesper- son Roderick D. Gillum, talked about the auto giant's commitment to social responsibility.

He mentioned civil rights crusader and GM board member Leon Sullivan, who played such an integral part in the success of the anti-apartheid movement — the man who helped GM realize that voluntarily withdrawing from doing business with South Africa was a bold and phenomenal change.

And when apartheid finally crumbled, South Africa's rebirth ended not just racial discrimination, it abolished all discrimination, which gave same-sex couples the right to legally marry and enjoy the same full, equal marriage rights as their hetero brothers and sisters.

Yep, as fucked up as South Africa once was, their new constitutional bill of rights is light-years ahead of ours.

At GM's diversity powwow, This Writer asked if Sullivan's legacy in South Africa is still alive in the U.S., and if GM supported same-sex marriage rights in America?

A mild gay panic-attack erupted, and someone from the back of the room quickly trotted out GM's Corporate Equality Index rating and the fact the company offers benefits for same- sex partners.

As the Asians and African-Americans in the room scratched their heads, the Q&A sharply shifted direction and GM's social responsibility to same-sex marriage was purposefully left unanswered.

After that, this reporter started feeling like the gay "Roger & Me" dude of the Detroit Auto Show.

The marriage question just made people more nervous.

And the last thing I wanted to do was mess with a company that's trying so hard to get it right.

Initially, I wanted GM to publicly say that they support full, equal same-sex marriage rights in the U.S. — just like the gays they helped in South Africa.

However, during this crisis-management situation, GM can't afford to do anything so publicly risky.

But after three days, I couldn't let it go — all that gay protest anger was bubbling inside.

Who needs GM's permission?

Then it dawned on me.

GM has already helped make gay marriage a reality — in South Africa.

And for three days, everywhere I looked those initials hovered over me: GM.

Because of South Africa, GM supports gay marriage whether they realize it or not.

I don't need them to say it.

We can just usurp their approval by using the initials of their company — let's always remind them that they first did it in South Africa, and now they're going to help us in the U.S.

This is the deal: Every time you see a GM car, just say, "That's a gay marriage car."

Go ahead — flaunt the GM logo; place the words "gay marriage" beneath it.

Make the letters GM as ubiquitous as rainbow flags, pink triangles and HRC bumper stickers.

And if some- one says "General Motors," correct them and say, "Oh, you mean 'gay marriage."

On this journey for full, equal rights, GM has met us halfway.

Now let's just take advantage all of their corporate branding, their beautiful advertising and lovely fuel-efficient cars, and mold it into our new Gay Marriage brand.

During this corporate crisis, GM has no choice.

To say they don't support full equal marriage rights or that they disapprove of gays using their brand as a Pride marriage badge ….

Well, that would be grounds for a corporate divorce.

MEET GM'S TRANS PIONEER One of General Motors most valuable employees is Steven Hanses, pictured, a senior product-assembly-document processor, who's been with the company since 1984. This native Detroiter is out as transgender at work, but Hanses (also known as Thora Lars) doesn't "cross" at the office. He says some co-workers have met Thora outside of work, "And they have been remarkably good to me." Hanses also works on the board of GM Plus, the company's LGBT affinity group. Last year, he brought GM sponsorship to the Southern Comfort Conference, the largest transgender gathering in the country, which happens in September in Atlanta. At the 2008 conference, the GM logo was on SCC billboards, programs and on the sleeves and shoulders in the fishing competitions. You go, Thora!

GM'S PLUG-IN HOTTIES: The 2010 Chevy Volt, left, and the recently revealed 2012 Cadillac Converj concept.

GAYER THAN PINK INK One of GM's brightest queer superstars is the vivacious British import Christopher Webb, manager of GM's color trends. Does Webb look familiar? He appeared on "Project Runway 5," when the designers recycled Saturn car parts into fashion. And Webb's been to Dallas. He's the hotshot whom Mary Kay Inc. tapped to design the new shade of pink for Mary Kay's 2006 Cadillac. Webb's a brilliant walking encyclopedia — an expert about tinting, pigments, vacuumized flakes and hand-sprayed substrates. His passion for color is mesmerizing. I'd describe something as "looks silvery." Webb would say "liquid mercury" "gunmetal" or "chrome." Remember his name. Webb's this close to being the next Tim Gunn.

Memorial Service Honors the Life and Legacy of James A. Washington, Pioneer in Journalism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The family and friends of the late James Washington, former Publisher of the Dallas Weekly, will gather to celebrate his life and enduring legacy in recognition of his significant impact on the journalism industry.

Dallas, TX - May 1, 2024 - A heartfelt memorial service will be held at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas on Saturday, May 4, 2024, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, to honor the memory of James A. Washington, a respected figure in journalism and community advocacy.

Officiated by Reverend William White, the service welcomes the Dallas community and friends from around the globe to join in commemorating the remarkable life of James Washington.

Mr. Washington, former Publisher of the Dallas Weekly, touched the lives of many with his pioneering spirit and unwavering dedication to the field of journalism.

His passing on April 2, 2024, in Atlanta, GA, was deeply felt by all who knew him. Well-known as a trailblazer for the Black Press,

James’s legacy transcends borders, leaving an everlasting mark on the industry.

Throughout his career, Mr. Washington earned widespread acclaim and recognition, including the prestigious Legacy Award from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in 2019.

His commitment to championing Black businesses and fostering future leaders was evident in his stewardship of the Dallas Weekly, where he served as Publisher in 1985. Under his guidance, the publication became a beacon of journalistic excellence and a platform for aspiring writers and reporters.

Today, the Washington family continues James's legacy, with his son and daughter-in-law Patrick and Jess Washington leading the helm of the Dallas Weekly. Their dedication ensures that the vision lives on, inspiring generations of journalists to come.

For those wishing to pay tribute to James Washington, the memorial service offers an opportunity to share cherished memories and stories, reflecting on the joyous moments shared with a true legend.

In honor of James Washington's memory, the family kindly requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the James A. Washington Foundation, Inc.

Light refreshments will be served following the ceremony.

The formal repast will be exclusively for family members and close family friends.

About The Dallas Weekly

Since its establishment in 1954, the Dallas Weekly has served as a pivotal hub for the Black community in one of the nation's fastest-growing regions.

With an unbroken streak of publication spanning 70 years, the Dallas Weekly has solidified its position as the premier and most relied-upon voice within the African diaspora of North Texas. Today, the Dallas Weekly, affectionately known as the DW, stands as a dynamic multimedia entity, wielding influence not only on a national scale but also venturing into international discourse, particularly with the rising presence of Black immigrants. In addition to our award-winning traditional print edition, we have expanded our reach through a cutting-edge multimedia website, an engaging e-edition, a burgeoning community of social media followers, and the recent launch of our internet radio station. These diverse platforms underscore the Dallas Weekly's evolution into a distinctive niche brand operating on a multifaceted multimedia landscape. At the heart of our mission lies our commitment to delivering compelling content that resonates with our community and celebrates our rich culture. Memorial Service Location: Friendship-West Baptist Church 2020 W. Wheatland Rd Dallas, TX 75232

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gwopijon · 8 months ago

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THREE MONTHS LATER, Niemann says, Mulkey summoned her to the coach’s office. The player had been seen around Waco with a woman, and people had begun murmuring about her sexuality. “It’s not a good look,” Niemann says Mulkey told her. Baylor is the world’s largest Baptist university, and its policy still prohibits premarital sex and defines marriage as between a man and woman. Mulkey advised Niemann to be careful because the program would be watching. For months, Niemann had struggled with questions about her identity, slowly coming to grips with being queer, she says. The product of a conservative home in Houston, a graduate of a Christian school and now a player at Baylor, she found many of her feelings were in conflict with her surroundings. “I can’t talk to anyone,” she says now. “I couldn’t find a way to make things feel right.” She was thinking of transferring, Niemann says, and met with Mulkey and her parents about it. Mulkey was flabbergasted, the coach wrote in her memoir, adding that among Niemann’s reasons for wanting to leave Baylor was that Mulkey was sometimes too hard on players. “This is how I do what I do,” Niemann recalls the coach saying. “And if you can’t take it, maybe you should leave.” Niemann left. Later, she wrote that she “did not leave Baylor because coach Mulkey is homophobic.” The coach, Niemann wrote, was only expressing opinions that were the “dominant belief system” on campus. Mulkey wrote about Niemann in her memoir, suggesting that “unhappiness comes from within one’s soul” and that Niemann’s experience was an isolated case. Other players point out that hard coaching is a key driver of Mulkey’s success, even as her peers go softer amid the shifting power dynamics of college sports. For Mulkey, players say, that often extends to comments about players’ hairstyles, tattoos and makeup. “She hates my different hair colors,” former Bears guard DiDi Richards says. “ ‘Why is your hair purple?’ ‘Are you going to wear them two ponytails?’ If you would change the color, she’d go, ‘You and these damn colors.’ ” The comments came from a place of affection, Richards believes. They could get personal, too, though Richards says they show how Mulkey pushes players, physically and emotionally, in pursuit of wins. Mulkey’s attorneys described the comments as “good-natured banter, as often happens on and around the court.” A few months after Baylor’s first championship, Mulkey’s husband told her he felt neglected. They attended couples counseling, Mulkey would write, and she offered to leave coaching. Robertson nonetheless wanted to end their marriage. “I told Randy … that he better be sure,” Mulkey wrote, “because there was no turning back.” (Robertson did not respond to an email.) By this point, those in Mulkey’s orbit had learned that disloyalty could result in harsh consequences. Les Mulkey sent notes to his daughter, pleading for reconciliation, but Mulkey wrote that she returned them unread. After Reneau, the former Louisiana Tech president, sent Mulkey a message congratulating her on the national championship, Mulkey would say later, it sat unopened on her desk for years. “Talk to that man?” she told the Dallas Morning News in 2012. “That’s not who I am.”

AT BAYLOR, MULKEY IMPORTED a layer of trust by surrounding herself with past allies: Barmore, who came out of retirement to be an assistant coach; a longtime Louisiana Tech booster to oversee Baylor’s budget and travel; and a former Techsters team manager to handle recruiting.

Everything Mulkey did, at least as it related to basketball, worked: two Sweet 16s in five years and, in 2010, another Final Four. Texas kids dreamed of wearing the green and gold, and when Kelli Griffin was in seventh grade, she wrote a paper about someday leaving Houston to play for Kim Mulkey.

Griffin had come out in high school, but though she and Mulkey never explicitly discussed her sexuality while she was being recruited, Griffin says now that it was “obvious” and that she assumed Mulkey knew. She promised Griffin’s mother, Madine, that Baylor was a “family” and that she would protect Kelli.

Not long after Griffin arrived on campus, she says, Mulkey began asking why she dressed like a boy: baggy jeans, basketball shorts, sweats. A lady, Griffin says the coach told her, wears a dress. “Okay, this lady might not like gay people,” Griffin recalls thinking.

She considered transferring, but in 2008, one of Griffin’s friends and former AAU teammates committed to Baylor. Brittney Griner was a 6-foot-8 phenom and YouTube dunking sensation who, not long after reporting to campus, grabbed a rebound, glided the length of the court with the ball, then dunked it.

“Dang, Kim,” Barmore said in an interview. “I think we’ve got something here.”

Griner is gay, but she didn’t come out publicly until 2013, after her final game at Baylor. Still, whenever Mulkey sensed Griner was distracted or stressed, Mulkey blamed “girlfriend problems,” Griner later wrote, even if Griner wasn’t dating anyone. “She sounded like she was speaking a foreign language,” Griner wrote.

“Maybe she would have understood me better,” Griner wrote, “if I had shared more with her, but there was always a little bit of a disconnect with us, because I never really knew if Kim fully accepted me for who I am.”

Mulkey also called out players if they gained weight, instructing the team’s strength coach to conduct weigh-ins in front of the team, according to Griffin and another player. Players weren’t to bring non-basketball matters to Mulkey, they say, encouraged to confide in assistant coaches instead. And Niemann and multiple other former players say shame was a frequent tool in Mulkey’s coaching arsenal, whether during practice drills or in addresses to the team. Some of these former players spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation in the close-knit women’s basketball community.

Mulkey’s attorneys said the former players’ allegations were too vague to respond to.

Mulkey didn’t like the stars tattooed on Griner’s shoulders because, the player later wrote, they sent the “wrong message.” Griner pacified her coach by wearing a T-shirt under her jersey.

“It seemed like all she cared about was the image of the program as seen through the eyes of a very specific segment of the population,” Griner wrote. “Just once, I wanted her to stop worrying about what everyone else thought and stand by my side.”

In 2010, Griffin was the second-ranked Bears’ starting point guard. One night, Griffin says, an ex-girlfriend and Bears teammate showed up at Griffin’s home, and a fight broke out.

Griffin says she called Mulkey to report the incident, and the next morning, Mulkey announced that Griffin would be suspended indefinitely. The teammate, who Griffin wouldn’t identify to The Post because, she said, the teammate had not come out as gay, wasn’t punished, according to Griffin. In a separate interview, Griffin’s mom, Madine, also recalled that the other player wasn’t suspended.

Griffin says she confronted Mulkey to ask why she was being penalized and that Mulkey told her she was owed no explanation.

“I thought I did everything I was supposed to,” she says.

After The Post asked Mulkey’s representatives about these events, they provided a statement from the former player, Morghan Medlock, who was in a relationship with Griffin at the time. Medlock claimed Griffin was actually suspended for using marijuana.

In a phone interview the next day, Medlock reiterated that Mulkey “never knew” there had been an altercation between Griffin and Medlock. Griffin just stopped coming to practice, Medlock said. Medlock said she did not remember how she had learned the reason Griffin was suspended.

Medlock said she decided to give the statement after receiving a call this week from an individual who falsely claimed Griffin had identified Medlock to The Post.

“If my name never came up, I wouldn’t be on the phone with you right now,” she said. Medlock would not reveal who had contacted her and refused to say when she had last spoken with Mulkey.

“What difference does it make?” she said. “How I got the information, who I got it from, where I got it, that doesn’t matter.”

She then ended the call.

Griffin maintains that she was not suspended for drugs and that she didn’t use marijuana in college. The Baylor women’s basketball spokeswoman from 2010, who’s now retired, told The Post in a text message Wednesday that she was “not privy” to the reason for Griffin’s suspension. Baylor’s current spokesman declined to comment on this and other elements of this article.

Griffin says she told assistant coach Damion McKinney that she intended to transfer because, Griffin says, “I couldn't play for Kim anymore.” (McKinney did not respond to messages seeking comment.)

But transferring wouldn’t be easy. Long before the NCAA, in 2021, introduced the transfer portal, allowing players to come and go among schools without penalty, players generally needed to be released by one school before pursuing a transfer to another.

Four days after appearing in an exhibition game, the Baylor program released a statement to the media. It didn’t say Griffin intended to transfer.

It said she “quit.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/30/kim-mulkey-lsu-griner-reese/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzExNzcxMjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzEzMTUzNTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MTE3NzEyMDAsImp0aSI6IjJlZTBiNWQ2LTA4MWYtNDk3ZC04MWIwLWY3OWE0ZWIwMjgzMiIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9zcG9ydHMvMjAyNC8wMy8zMC9raW0tbXVsa2V5LWxzdS1ncmluZXItcmVlc2UvIn0.WlqpF2j7HkwrLsbUraMc3Vuuzb-cpTWaI4YGiD84XXM

#lsu #kim mulkey

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