#but me and like a couple other trans kids knew like we all knew but didn’t know at the same time

[neotrances]

thinking about that made me a lil emotional i just went and checked on some of the girls i was friends with and highschool instas and seeing them live as they are and thriving makes me so happy

[anamericangirl]

What's telling to me about how sick people can be is that Trump was nearly killed, someone in the crowd WAS killed, multiple other shots went out, the whole thing was a terrifying event that everyone in the world should be able to agree was scary And yet I see the media on the left trying to spin this "Well this is to be expected, he's so radical and so fascist that of course someone tried to kill him" and "#YOUMISSED" is trending on Twitter Mask is fucking off and I'm done hitting Anon when I send asks to you, these people have truly shown they have no empathy, no sympathy, and are bloodthirsty. People get shot up in a school and their first thought is "This is why we need to ban guns" and "This is because of ultra-MAGA"

Some unhinged motherfucker actually attempts to kill the former president and kills someone in the crowd and the left turns it into a fucking hashtag and an opportunity to try to blame it on Trump even though he's the one that got shot at.

The left are fucking deranged, and I know better than most because I used to be ON the left. I shaved half my head, I had blue hair, I lived with liberal pedophiles (literally) in Ohio for 2 years who wore diapers around the house and bitched about Elon Musk and Trump every fucking day. I know these people are psychopaths and now they have finally just outright announced to the world how sick they are.

Even fucking Biden tried to call the hospital Trump was at to ask if he was okay, EVEN DARTH FUCKING BRANDON CARED ABOUT TRUMP and yet these Twitterlibs and liberal media fuckwads are just jumping on the opportunity to go "Aww man #YouMissed, you fired 5 shots how come you couldn't get him, you fucked up, omg"

For fuck sake hate the man all you want but SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL HIM AND AN INNOCENT PERSON'S BRAIN GOT REMOVED FROM THEIR HEAD, FOR FUCK SAKE HAVE AT LEAST A MODICUM OF SYMPATHY FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE YOU FUCKING SAVAGES.

If this doesn't turn people away from the democrat party then nothing will. Trump was not the only victim of this shooting. A couple of people were injured, an innocent person was killed and still the only thing we hear from leftists is annoyance that the shooter missed.

And while we are rightly angry at the spins the msm is putting on this assassination attempt, they have to put that spin on it or eat their words for the last 8 years. They've been characterizing Trump as a fascist tyrannical dictator since 2016. They've spun him to be Hitler 2.0 telling everyone he's a threat to democracy and leading people to believe he's a threat to their very lives. The "trans genocide" and "kids in cages" the "don't say gay" bill all that nonsense is always, always linked back to Trump and if they turn around now and condemn this attempt on his life what would that say about them? Either they will have to expose themselves as the liars and propagandists they are or they will have to be seen as being sympathetic towards literally Hitler. And narrative is more important to them than anything.

Which explains why they were trying to avoid reporting what happened like the plague. The headlines I saw in the aftermath, after we already knew Trump had actually been hit by the bullet were things like "Trump escorted offstage after gun shots were heard." "Loud popping noise heard at Trump rally." And other variations of that headline. And still leftists don't question why after Trump was shot every single mainstream media outlet had the same headline and they all avoided saying Trump had been shot or an assassination attempt had been made.

They can’t come out and say this was wrong because it will mean they will have to admit to something even worse: that they were wrong.

But of course the people currently in office can't come out and condone the shooting. That would look very bad. So yeah, it's good that Biden stood up there and said the right words and made an effort to contact Trump but how convenient that this happened a mere couple of weeks after the democratic party has abandoned and turned on Biden so his words and condemnation will be buried and ignored and mean nothing.

For the last 8 years, though, Joe Biden and every other democrat in office, paired with the media, have been villainizing Trump for his rhetoric. Everything bad thing that happened was directly the fault of Trump because of his "dangerous rhetoric." But the rhetoric they've employed against Trump and all conservatives since that time has been the worst fearmongering and slander I've ever seen so they are directly to blame for this shooting because of their rhetoric. No more "rules for thee but not for me." They have to live in the world they made.

Leftism, as I'm sure you've seen first hand what with your experience of being one and living in that environment, is no longer about what you support, it's just about who you hate. And every sane person still aligned with them is waking up. The mask has been slipping for years and most of us were able to see who they really were way before it fully fell off but there is no mask now. They're not even trying to hide it.

They have the ideas they pretend to support when told to, but all leftists are only united by one thing: hate.

Their heroes are criminals like Michael Brown, George Floyd and Trayvon Martin. And they hate police until they shoot and kill Ashli Babbitt who's only crime was being a Trump supporter at the capitol on January 6.

They still bemoan the killing of a pedophile, wife beater and injury of a career criminal who were shot because they tried to murder a child while villainizing the child they tried to kill because he successfully defended himself against their attack.

To this day they spin their violent riots as "mostly peaceful protests" while the January 6 protest was a "violent insurrection."

The rapes and murder on October 7 were a justified response to "occupation" but anything Israel does is "genocide."

During covid they freaked out about "public health" and wanted everyone vaxxed and masked to "save lives" but when Trump got covid they all immediately wanted it to kill him.

When a white boy shoots up a school it’s an example of how evil white people and right wing gun nuts are but when a trans person shot children at a Christian elementary school the main focus of leftists, all the way up to the White House, was the danger the trans community would allegedly be in from right wing retaliatory violence and how “hateful Christian rhetoric” was responsible for the shooting.

And none of this has anything to do with the values they claim to adhere to. All of their positions on every single issue come down to who it is they hate the most of the people involved. So their "values” change by the second.

So the violence, depravity and dangerous rhetoric is pretty much 100% on their side but watch them try and spin this assassination on Trump as Trump's own fault. And watch leftists just unquestioningly go with it or just try to distract people with more fear mongering about Project 2025 or something else stupid like that.

The only thing that bothers them about this shooting, other than the fact that the shooter "missed', is that this has pretty much guaranteed Trump is going to win the election. And of course they can't stand that after all they've done to try and make sure that doesn't happen.

[viquipo]

No bc I'm so mad rn I usually post my rants on ig stories but I need the tumblrites to tell me if I'm crazy or what. Jwcc/ct spoilers WHATEVER

First of all I want to preface this by saying that this is just my opinion on the matter, I'm not saying your headcanons are "wrong" or whatever tf, it's a kids cartoon where they unironically use terms like "fam". You can play with the characters however you'd like.

That being said, this is why TO ME it does not makes sense for Ben to be anything other than gay. Again, if you think he's bi or straight or anything else that's cool. I'm also leaning towards the opinion that he does actually have a girlfriend. I don't think the shows gonna pull a 180 on it because, realistically, 2 queer characters is already a lot for a DreamWorks kids show. As much as I'd like it not to be.

But, since the beginning, Ben has been very clearly coded as exclusively into men to me. Before finally going into it, I remind everyone on here that I'm a lesbian. I have felt an affinity with his character specifically for the experience of only liking the same gender. I might be totally projecting.

Ok, so.

1. The arc Ben goes through during the show is yes, one of self discovery, but also one of self acceptance. He changes a lot from the start of s1, but he also comes to terms with stuff himself or other people didn't like about him. He doesn't throw the dork pouch away or tells Kenji to keep it, the first thing he does when he takes it back from Kenji is put on hand sanitizer. He is covered in dirt, he's not afraid of filth anymore, but he still does that action because it's part of who he is as a person. He also becomes very unashamed at the things he does. He went from being embarrassed of his carob bars to eating grubs in front of people who he knows think it's gross. He knows himself as he is and he accepts it. To me (and to lots of other people) this works very well as a gay metaphor, and pairs up pretty nicely with the whole "jungle boy? Jungle MAN" arc being a trans metaphor. But how does this make Ben uniquely into men?

Well, it doesn't. But I think this next one does.

2. Enter Yasmina. She's pretty, she's smart, athletic, funny, all that good stuff. I'm not saying that means every wlm character should automatically be into her, but it certainly helps. Now forgive me if I don't remember specific episodes/seasons, but we all remember that episode where Ben convinces himself that Yaz is in love with him for some reason. When he "rejects" her, he says : "I'm just now starting to find myself". That's cool, cause I'm pretty sure Ben's " finding himself " personality wise was over and done a couple of seasons ago. To me, that is a really good hint at him dealing with his gayness.

3. He's also the first person Yasmina talks to about her feelings for Sammy. Now, in this particular context, the options for Yaz to talk to were Darius, Brooklynn, or Ben. It would initially seem to make more sense for her to confide in Brooklynn, since the two of them are far closer than her and Ben, and it also wouldn't be the first time she brings up Sammy as a romantic interest for Yaz (see: everyone tweaking abt that one line back in like s2). So why does Yasmina, a very private and reserved person, choose Ben to talk to about her same sex crush? She has probably gathered from the previous conversation that Ben relates to her struggle in a unique way in which Brooklynn just can't. Ben seems very receptive of what Yaz is saying ("feelings, am I right?") and it seems like he REALLY gets where she's coming from.

4. This is one I don't see talked about a lot, and maybe it's just cause I'm too out of the loop with the fandom, but I want to examine it as well. It's when Ben decides to not actually stay on the island. Everyone (except Sammy) already knew he wasn't going to stay in the end, but still didn't force him out. I think this is especially clear in a line Darius says when they reunite on the boat that goes something like "you needed to figure it out on your own" *smile hand on shoulder combo*. No explanation needed I think

I am diagnosed with autism did you guys know what

[deramin2]

Essek constantly gushing about his partner but pointedly not giving his name hits me so hard in the feels.

Two formative childhood experiences for me:

ONE

I was severely, mercilessly bullied as a child at every school I went to even if they're was no overlap of kids, and authority figures either ignored me or directly told me it was my fault. I was socially toxic. Any other kid who publicly associated with me was also targeted for harassment. I was best friends with a girl around the corner but because I was a couple years younger (in itself an invitation for bullying) and a parish, we could never let anyone know we were friends.

I've been told I should be upset at her for this, but it wasn't her fault. It was the other children who made it a fact that she would be harmed by publicly being my friend. She didn't make those rules, we were both just honest that it existed and there was nothing we could do to change that. The best we could do to survive was at least protect her. And that benefited me by actually having a friend.

So if we talked about each other it was"my friend." No names. No acknowledging we knew each other in public. No introductions to other friends. Keeping that divide up was necessary to survival. I had a couple friends on the same freak level as we and we were in fact targeted with additional harassment to get to the other person. It was a legitimate threat to live with. At some point I just stopped thinking it was ever necessary to reveal who my friends or family are unless it's both explicitly relevant and necessary.

TWO

I learned to use the internet in the late 1990s when anonymity was considered a best practice. Don't give out your age, sex, location, or other identifying information. You don't know who is on the other side of that screen or what they will do to you if they know. Sperate your online and offline worlds to protect yourself.

This helped reinforce experience one because clearly adults also acted like those kids and this just normal human behavior no one will ever put a stop to that you need to be on guard for at all times. Build in air gaps so if one of you is compromised it's harder for the perpetrator to get to other people you care about. Defending them through anonymity is a way of showing you love them.

Also since some family are searchable through have state government jobs that right-wing nut jobs chips target them for, I wanted to make sure they couldn't be connected to me as a queer trans disabled person active online. In case something I said led to them being targeted.

(This is correct advice, even though it flies in the face of modern online conventions. There are tons of malicious people on three internet who will target you and anyone you love if they decide to hurt you.)

RESULT

By default, I refer to people by their relationship to me, not their name. My friend, my partner, my parent, my family, someone I know, etc. Often I avoid gendering them to make it even harder to identify them. I have to consciously consider if the person I'm talking to has any reason to know my associate's name. Blacklist everyone, then whitelist exceptions.

I do this even if both people know each other because the specific association feels dangerous. Better to be viewed as acquaintances than a meaningful relationship that changes how either of us could be viewed. It's not even really a judgement on thinking the person is untrustworthy, I just don't want to spend any extra energy thinking about it. It doesn't even feel relevant because my relationship to this person fellas like it conveys more information that actually matters.

ESSEK

Essek knows both he and Caleb are being targeted by powerful people who have shown they will target loved ones to get to them. Additionally, tensions between the Empire and Dynasty are still high and it could very easily compromise how their own sides view them if it's known that they're romantically entangled with someone from the other side. It could also blow each other's cover and make their meeting places more vulnerable to attack. Especially if their enemies know they could hit both of them at once.

It's genuinely dangerous for their connection to be known, so they don't name names. It's not even a matter of whether Bell's Hells would intentionally misuse that information, but what they also could just let slip to the wrong person. It's not really worth the risk when "my partner" is all the information they actually need to understand him.

My guess is that Essek said "Bren" is hiss partner because they already know a Bren sent them to Astrid. And since Caleb no longer uses the name Bren it would be much harder to connect them. It would have caused more questions, more prying, and more risk to give no name for his partner when directly pressed. So he gives a truthful but less dangerous answer. The anonymity is an act of love.

[gor3sigil]

About being a freak, queer, trans etc.

In all the years I've spent going back and forth with my gender, being sure one day and unsure the next about how I wanted to present, if I wanted to be more fem or masc, if I wanted to be neither of them, there's one thing that I never wished: I never wished to be born cis.

There's something so magical in being trans. To me it's like a never ending childlike wonder of myself and others. I see my body as a white canvas I can do anything with and as a playground for me to explore and find secrets at every turn. It's shedding so many times that I had hundreds of silhouettes and I'm not even 30. It's seeing the most deepest and honest smiles when you hang out with your peers, and they're fully themselves and you are fully yourself even if it's just for one moment.

Being trans is being more naked than ever. My understanding of my own flesh at its core like I'm dissecting it once a year is so whole and complete. Noticing the patterns, the intricate map of my skin, how it grows and stretch with every change even well before HRT as I was practicing new poses and expressions and clothes.

I don't see myself as a flower, I see myself as a whole garden, with bees and critters everywhere, bursting with life in the warmth of the sun under a sky as blue as the cleanest seas.

Regarding the way others see me, mind you, I always was, and I mean ALWAYS, all my life, seen as a freak.

Try to picture this, even tnough you maybe can because this is the story of a whole bunch of us: growing up as a goth, queer and undiagnosed autistic girl, in a little shitty town, the last child of a family of disabled and neurodivergent folks that everyone saw as a family of, well, freaks. The teachers at school knew your brother who was bullied, and your sister who always caused troubles. They don’t know which of these paths you’re going to take but they sure as hell don’t like you. And the only other queer kids you know are a couple of girls who’d chugg down vodka before class in middle school because they were not accepted at home and bullied during recess.

My first queer relationship, also in middle school, was the typical “I loved her to the moon and back but she only wanted to experiment” and it tore down my soul. It took me years to recover from this. I think that, apart from my longest relationship to date, I never put that much of myself into someone I loved. But she was just goofing around and I mean, fair, we were kids, but man did it hurt. I resented her for years after. Now I just hope she’s happy and doing the job she always dreamed of doing.

Anyways, all that to say that I was used to being seen as an outcast. I hated that for years and tried and tried again and again to fit in. It doesn’t work. Because this in not the answer. Remember when I said that my family members were always all disabled ? My father espacially was physically disabled (and probably also autistic but undiagnosed), and he’s still to this day one of the most ableist person I’ve ever met. He knew his kids weren’t “normal”. He fought tooth and nails for us to fit in. Because that’s how he survived. But despite it all, it never worked. Because you can’t force your way into society’s standards.

I never felt more free than when I just gave up trying to. If I was going to be seen as weird anyways, might as well go all the way. Dress as I please, date who I wanted (another story for another time but it didn’t go as planned), enjoy the shit I enjoyed, unapologetically. And guess what ? It stopped the bullying. Because I gained confidence in myself and most of all, pride. I grew proud of being an outcast, so much so that people just started to be like “well, they’re like that anyways” and left me the fuck alone.

I’m rambling lmao but I think it’s important to be aware that nobody will live your life for you. Being your weird self, it’s so hard, butn so rewarding. More rewarding than anything. You’ll start making new relationships based on you TRUE self, you’ll go all the way for your passions, and trust me, you’ll be more free than anyone who bent themselves to fit in the mold and still need to painfully stretch their limbs everyday to keep the act on.

I know that sometimes it’s something you have to do to survive, and that’s perfectly okay. But don’t forget to keep your true self close and to let them out from time to time, okay ? Water down your inner garden. That’s the only way you will truly live.

[braveasnouns]

sweet tooth sexuality headcanons and headcanons in general pretty plewse(i’m starved for content)

hi hi! I too am content starved!!

I have SO many things to say about this show and this ship, I had to narrow my list down for this post so I’ll probably post even more hcs and random thoughts soon! I am keeping some for future fics tho hehe

I apologize that I don’t have too many Sexuality hcs!

- To me, Bear and Tiger are both lesbians! the way they both dress honestly makes so much sense for the 2010s era of queer fashion that they would have access to from before the crumble (if we’re assuming this show is set in the present, which I do for ease ). Bear wears a ring on her thumb! this is a symbol of lesbianism too and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a carabiner on Tigers hip either. to me they both already knew they were lesbians and I think they were together before the show started, but of course were estranged throughout.

- I think that the Animal Army was pretty queer in general! I can definitely see some of them being in relationships and some being trans that we didn’t get to explore! I also lowkey think that if that weren’t the case they would be having babies and stuff because WHO is teaching these orphaned teenagers anything about their bodies? yeah…

- Becky coming back from everything that happened in season 3 and not only getting to see the kids, but seeing Tiger there too and finally, finally feeling safe for one of the first times in her life. all of them coming out of fight mode and slowly learning what it is to heal, what relationships look like when there isn’t something dangerous looming over their heads. figuring out who they really are in a way they could never do before.

- I think that Becky remembers more about her childhood before her parents passed then she says, but keeps it to herself because internally she feels like everything she puts out into the world is taken away.

- I imagine Wendy (when she’s a little older) coming to Becky and asking her for advice and about Becky’s feelings for Tiger, trying to figure out her own feelings for Gus! this is so cute to me because I assume the couples both met around the same age. and Becky feeling so proud and like she won at big sister when it works out for them!!

- Tigerbear having little signals and mannerisms that no one else would understand leftover from when they needed to communicate without words in a fight. a certain whistle/noise or hand motion that seems like absolutely nothing but says exactly what it needs to for them.

- Tigerbear play-fighting in the woods in yellowstone, like a game of tag but they legitimately use fighting techniques and take each other down frequently. all the kids always wanting to join so they tone it back when playing with them, but absolutely and lovingly hunt each other down when it’s just them two. they would also kiss when they catch each other, yes this is true they told me!

- playing off of that, I think within their new, more calm lifestyle they both get the zoomies from time to time and absolutely have to run around to get it out of their systems, their bodies are too used to the chase lol. Jepp probably looks at them both like they’re insane when they willingly run a mile, but appreciates it because it usually gets all of the kids pretty tired too.

- at some point when they had time off in animal army HQ they most definitely gave each other stick and poke tattoos, i’m not *exactly* sure where or what they were, but i know in my heart that it happened.

- keeping the rest of the animal armies memories alive through stories and songs, making a book full of them like Katniss and Peeta did after the war in mockingjay.

[fiddlepot]

I believe my biggest reason for being so attached to houseki no kuni is because it helped me in a dangerous time. In 2022, I went on a vacation to Tulum, Mexico, originally intended for 5 days.

This is a long post, so bear with me.

It was, for those 5 days, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Clear skies, white sand, beautiful sunrises and sunsets—a sea breeze. Wonderful food. It was hard to believe I was there.

The very first thing we did was explore ruins. I forgot from which civilization. It was my first time seeing so many iguanas out in the open, actually. These are the clearest pictures I've taken—at the time I was working with an old galaxy s10+, so anything zoomed in was unclear and crunchy looking.

I actually had originally gotten into the series right before going on vacation—it was a hard time for me that year. I was, to put it lightly, depressed due to a loss, or I think at the time two losses—I suffered earlier that year. My trust had been shattered and I lost a potential addition to my family. So, with nothing much else to do, I took it upon myself to look into the anime. And I ended up watching it on prime video, but I never finished. I hoped to do so in our down time, but found I had no access to the platform I began it on.

I was immediately infatuated with the storytelling, music, and adapted CGI, for all my usual qualms with it. And quickly, I searched for the soundtrack and listened to both it and Kyoumen no Nami by YURiKA throughout my trip. The song still gives me such an association to this day, especially of the sunrises and sunsets I'd take pictures of every day for those 5 days—if I woke up early. It was paradise, the best few days (at the time) of my life.

Until we went to the airport to leave, of course.

I was a minor around this time, so I had traveled with my mom. Especially well needed after a falling out we had. We were told, after waking up super early to leave, that we couldn't due to an issue with her travel papers as an immigrant. It was complicated. But in layman's terms, we were stuck.

And then began our real journey.

I will save you the whole story. But we stayed in 3 different hotels, the first of which I finally allocated some time to reading the manga in. We stayed there for seven days. And of course, in spirit, I remember listening to the soundtrack as I read. It was a beautiful but grim story. I cried myself to sleep thinking about how bittersweet the near ending was. I also want to note I had come out as NB to my mom that night as well. Didn't go very nice, as is true of many other trans kids of my time especially. So reading essentially became my escapism. And to the friends I talked to in that time, I talked about houseki like my life would end if I stopped.

The final hotel we stayed in was the one we remained stranded in for the majority of those 3 1/2 weeks. I refused to leave the room. There was a pool outside, but I was reluctant to go—we were being hidden, and couldn't so much as go to the Walgreens down the street lest we get kidnapped. Cartel was a prominent threat by the border, for how lavish the city was.

We were essentially in waiting. In waiting for more paperwork, for our case to be made, and for us to be allowed back. Mind you, I am a US citizen.

In that time, I did what I knew to do best: I disassociated. Retired to the internet. My mom even got frustrated with my lack of visible fear. I'd been yelled at over it. It was a conflict for days. I tried to remember the first couple of days we were there. And the association between the soundtrack alone and those sunrises kept me at bay, from choosing to see how threatened we really were.

Then, the day I left had come.

It was a long drive. One I had to stay the night at a family friend's friend's house for before we could fly home from Texas (the day we finally were able to cross the border). I met a kitten there, and she was the friendliest to me any cat has ever been. Even in the initial 5 days, the neighborhood cat used to claw at my hair—long braids. This one played and followed me around, and I fed and played with her in turn. I still remember distinctly that she was gray and tabby looking, but skinny and jumpy.

The evening we took our final plane, I took one last picture, still listening to the music of the soundtrack. I still believe it was my most beautiful one. An ethereal conclusion to a collection of breathtaking sights, a cloud bigger than any I had ever seen, towering over the airport. That day, we had gotten a couple of souvenirs. And on September 17th (my mother's birthday), a little after 12am, I was home.

Quite frankly, I still have the association between my stay in Mexico and the HnK soundtrack to this day. It's a memory embedded in me because of the way I had gotten into it—and for all the shit that happened, It's an association that makes me want to go back. Because it IS a soundtrack meant to represent something beautiful, and the composers do that job to absolute perfection.

[prententiousjackal]

Been mourning the wedding I could never have.

There were no Mormon weddings on TV so I modeled my future temple wedding off of other christian weddings. I thought temples would be similar on the inside to church-houses, that there'd be a chapel to wed in, husband and wife would exchange personal vows or use something similar to the conventional christian cookie cutter vows only without the "death till we part" rhetoric because temple marriage would be forever. I thought there'd be chapel's worth amount of people attending. I thought the bride could wear a nice flowing dress and the groom could wear a black suit.

Knowing that temple weddings were supposed to be indoors, kids can't attend and that temple weddings were supposed to be for marriage forever were the only major differences I knew of at first.

I remember as a kid getting angry at the show Caillou for a wedding episode where some couple had their wedding outdoors and Caillou was allowed to attend despite being a little kid. I'd watch Spiderman 2 and shame Peter Parker for suggesting Mary Jane be married outdoors.

Then I went on Temple Open Houses and saw pictures of the sealing room to realize it was nothing like a chapel. But the infinity mirror was cool and I readjusted my expectations, but still sometimes forgetting and gravitating toward that chapel wedding image.

Then I went to temples for baptisms for the dead a few times. I hated it. I was so ill prepared. I felt scared to ask questions in fear of breaking some holy silence. I'd get confused on where the group was. It was very disorienting. And I didn't get to see any part of the temple that I didn't need to see for what I was doing. I didn't want to feel unprepared again and curiosity got the best of me so I found explanations of the rest of the temple online. And it all too ridiculous and different from what I imagined.

I feel like I was raised in a totally different religion that's been taken away from me. People want to convert to this brand new religion of the temple that was nothing like what I wanted. My dreams of nice suits and dresses are broken. It's such a betrayal.

People really expect me to pay 10% of my income for this? Tithing didn't seem like much as a kid when you didn't actually have to care about money, but now I realize how much it is. The temple is the most expensive wedding venue, even individual invitees need to pay for entry, it has a low occupancy so not many people could attend anyway and it's absolutely butt ugly. Not worth it. 0/10

I feel like I can't love someone. Not just because I'm a shy friendless anti-social wreck. But also because I don't want to face the expectations of temple marriage and I don't want my partner to be made to feel like they're driving a wedge between my and my family. I wouldn't want them to be preached to and blamed for not wanting a temple marriage either. Sometimes I wonder if it'd be easier to become partners with a man or a trans person than with a cis-woman. It'd burn bridges so quick. No one would expect us to get married in the stupid temple.

Had all these thoughts stuck in my head in an incoherent song. I imagine it starting out like something solemn you'd hear at a wedding before turning into pop music. So I got some cheesy lyrics with the most boring rhyme schemes and some songs I'd steal and mix melodies from, in my mind.

I thought I’d be married in a suit Surrounded by everyone I knew She’d be wearing a dress so white As I stared down that endless hall into her eyes ... But now I know it can not happen I think I was raised in a different faith Now they’re trying to convert me to a new religion Never thought this would be my fate ... Can you see me in a suit kneeling at the altar? I thought my faith would never falter. ... Misleading photos in magazines, But not a single wedding on TV. Thought the temple walls was just a canopy, But now I know what I wasn’t supposed to see. ... Brooches of flowers, reduced down to leaves. Rainbows of colors, now just white and green. ... My chapel shrunk into a tiny chamber. My entry list saw friends as strangers. ... If there’s such a thing as a life hereafter. You don’t need a building to be together forever.

[painfullymeta]

Warning: I'm Gonna Be Earnest Now

I am deep in my feels right at the moment so I am actually making a post of my own on this, the deep in my feels hellsite.

I am late GenX.  (Not quite what gets called Xennial IMO but definitely in what gets called the Oregon Trail (Micro)Generation.)  And for all you young whippersnappers, you have to understand "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” ( - L. P. Hartley)

I am old enough to remember when AIDS was named GRID.  ("Gay-related immune deficiency.”)  I am old enough to remember ACT-UP, the Reagans’ abandonment, “If I die of AIDS just leave me on the steps of the FDA”, all those things that tired older people on tumblr try to remind people of when the TERFs come around to tell us to stop saying “queer” as if Queer Nation was a goddamn hallucination I had when I was a kid.

On the last day of high school, after the last exam, when none of us would have to ever see each other again if we so chose – that was the day that one of my friends, someone I had eaten lunch near every day since partway through freshman year, said to me “I have something to tell you.  I’m gay.”  And then he followed it up with “Is that okay?”

I hugged him.  He broke my goddamn heart and I hugged him.  "Is that okay," he asked me. Is it okay to be who I am, near you.

I was in college before I met someone who identified herself as a lesbian — and I went to a women’s college until I lost my shit and dropped out, and I expect that if I hadn’t done that I might have gone longer.

(Of course at the same time as I was clueless and not meaningfully connected with any sort of queer culture I somehow wound up with a friendgroup who, if we got bored and couldn’t come up with anything else to do, would watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show together.  This is what we did instead of going to Homecoming.)

By 2000, I was vaguely aware of trans things existing, and in fact met my first trans person while at Brighton Pride that year, though we didn’t really speak (I was there as the guest of some people in his extended social group) and I was vaguely confused and too awkward to try to do more than ‘observe and try not to fuck this up’.  I met a nonbinary person for the first time around then as well, and zie was the only one I knew of for nearly a decade.

By the mid-oughts I was with it enough to ask someone what pronouns she wanted me to use for her before sharing something about her on a message board.

(I am also old enough to have spent time on multiple message boards.  I’m old enough to resent the internet going through the world wide web instead of email and usenet actually.)

Sometime in the early oughts I guess I was at the subcommittee hearing in the Boston State House that was discussing, among other things, whether we might consider possibly condescending to allow same-sex couples to marry.  I was even going to testify!  (Please be impressed with my early twenties autistic ass I was terrified.)  There was a guy there - a senator on the committee - who was asking every person who came up if they were going to force his church to marry the gays.  Catholic, y’know, this being Massachusetts.  I revised my speech in my head to note that if we weren’t forcing the Catholic churches to marry divorcees yet he didn’t need to worry about it.

(Then my nose decided to haemhorrage all over my entire life and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding so rather than testify while looking like an entire murder victim I went home.)

I was in my thirties when pregnancy-induced dysphoria made me start seriously thinking about my own sense of gender.

I was in my forties before I bought a binder.

I am from another fucking planet.  (The past is a foreign country.)

I know kids - multiple kids - who knew enough to identify as lesbians at an age younger than I think I knew that word.  (And I am one of those humans of freakish and unreasonable vocabulary and always have been.)

I crack jokes with one of my kids about the Queer Kids Stairs at their school, because that’s where the GSA kids hang out together after activities get out.  (While GSAs were around while I was a kid, they started in Massachusetts according to Wikipedia and that is not where I was when I was a kid, and to my best recollection I didn’t hear about them existing at all until I was an adult.)

I live in a world where my social circles include queer people of my generation, of older generations, of younger generations, and oh my gods, I look at the kids and my heart tries to explode.

My oldest knows more than one trans kid.  More than one *affirmed* trans kid.  (And we’ve talked a bit about the social dynamics that might make it more likely for the trans boys to be out than the trans girls, even now.)

And I’m writing this because of one of those trans boys, who is in the Coming of Age group at our church, and who is, apparently, in his credo, citing that thing I’ve seen on the tumblrs more than once, about how being trans means being a participant in the holy, divine process of creation, coming into being as himself.

And guys?

I’m not from the same planet as that kid.

Because I’m in my forties and I don’t even know what I’m creating.  And I’m terrified.

And here’s this kid coming out there with that as a core statement of belief that he’s prepared to stand up in front of, as the phrase goes ‘God and everyone’, to claim.

(I need to remember to talk to him about how in my Craft tradition there’s a canonically transmasc god.)

I know I’ve got at least two teenagers reading me and I just.  Y’all got this.  I know it’s hard and the world is scary and it’s fucking coming for us all but you are amazing and I am so full of inarticulate alexithymic feelings about all of you. The ones I know and the ones I don't.

We've come a long way from "Is that okay?" and you heal my broken heart.

[seanofbeankeep]

I grew up during section 28 in uk. It started around the time I was a baby and lasted until my late teens before they removed it. Cultural impact isn’t talked about enough to all of us and as individuals.

What this law meant was teachers mentioning queer people or even stopping anti-queer bullying by telling children ‘there’s nothing wrong with being gay or trans’ could land them in jail. The law was in terms used at the time ‘it’s illegal to promote homosexuality to children’. As queer youth you never knew this law existed until it was revoked and everyone talked about it.

When it came into law from thatcher government it shut down a lot of lgbt youth groups in schools, banned books in schools, no lgbt context in history, science or sex education. Only the discrimination thrived in this environment. Anything positive was destroyed.

Many of us who grew up. You go through that toddler phase of ‘everything is mine’ to that growing up phase of discovering your likes and dislikes. Very quickly if you’re a queer child you learnt that what you like is stigmatised, ridiculed, or attacked. Adults ‘correct’ you, other children laugh at you, tv shows portray you as a figure to mock or predatory. Lesbian couple in friends at the time was definitely portrayed to make fun of Ross and portray one lesbian as aggressive. Or also you have feeling about yourself and the world you cannot contextualise because you’re blocked from learning about it fully in a positive way.

Like I definitely said things that now would be called clearly bisexual, poly, non-binary/trans masc. but at the time I had no idea this was queer. I was systematically taught to repress or fear those feelings. For other queer people it was the same. Some kids got outed and due to discrimination became homeless or self harmed. Online groups were not fully formed as they are now or hard to find for me. Many of us even with accepting ourselves later in life, still deal with inbuilt internalised Queerphobia about ourselves. Because we were taught to hate and fear ourselves.

With lifting of section 28 it’s hard not to see how positive it’s been to young and old queer people. We’ve expressing ourselves more, developing and evolving how we define ourselves. Getting more rights. Not forced to ignore or block out bad representation in our fav shows, but seeing and demanding better positive representation. Or more variety of what being queer means to different people.

Fear though is section 28 and what created it is coming back. The first law came about an over a children’s book (only sold at queer friendly book shops) that depicted two dads raising their daughter. Conversation and representation that had only recently come back. Backlash is hitting hard. Some days it’s feel like we can survive it and others fear of next generation living through again what we went through

[emmersreads]

My Top 5 Best Books of 2023

Scrolling through bookstagram's endless reels of folks bemoaning the state of readerly types - new publications are disposable crap, everyone else is reading too much, etc - it might seem like 2023 was a terrible year for books. But, of all my longlists, this one was the longest, and the one I had the most trouble cutting down to only six. I read 119 books in 2023 (you can read my round-up of my five worst here), and here are my five favourites. Every single one of these books deserves to top your tbr for 2024.

Read the post on my blog!

Honourable Mention: Yellowface - R. F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang has figured out how to use irony and its a good look on her. Kuang’s political messaging is great — I particularly enjoyed her depiction of the publishing industry’s white fragility as deeply stupid — but we already knew that. I would expect nothing less from the author of Babel. The think that elevates Yellowface in particular is Kuang’s self-awareness in depicting Athena, the Asian writer whose novel the protagonist steals, as a talented literary wunderkind, but also as frustrating and not necessarily innocent in the problem of who is allow to tell ethically-loaded stories. I’m definitely looking forwards to her next project.

Fifth Place: Small Worlds - Caleb Azumah Nelson

This is the diverse romance novel you’ve been looking for. This is the inspiring hopepunk novel you’ve been looking for. This is the insightful and emotional coming-of-age novel you’ve been looking for. Small Worlds is all the more comforting and heart-warming because it is primarily about persistence and joy in the face of crushing personal failure and devastating systemic violence. Caleb Azumh Nelson’s motif of relationships in which both partners must break up in order to become the kind of people who can be in a long-term relationship with each other is a kind of romance arc I unexpectedly love. This entry in particular gets extra credit for its incredibly good audiobook adaptation. The audiobook is narrated by the author, whose southeast London accent and obvious emotional connection to novel make it the ideal way to read.

Fourth Place: Breasts and Eggs - Mieko Kawakami

After a couple of truly miserable memoirs this year I declared that I simply did not want to hear writers talk about motherhood. I spoke too soon because then I read this. Breasts and Eggs is in incredible reflection on being a woman that has something to offer if you love being a woman, if you hate it, or if you feel ambivalent about it. I don’t like children and can’t imagine ever wanting one — to the point that I find the endless angsting about the conflict between writing and motherhood faintly nauseating — but I found that this was the first book about being a mother that had something interesting to say even for people who never want to be mothers. Kawakami’s novel-in-translation has (for the anglophone reader) a sense of strangeness both in form and content. The book’s approach to gender and family is often intimately familiar, but just as often introduces a perspective that is deeply strange to a western reader, provoking us to think about our own assumptions about the importance of family. I particularly liked the scene in which protagonist Natsu visits a bath house and encounters a woman in a relationship with a trans man in the female section of the bath. Natsu struggles through a long thought process of whether she ought to be offended or not. Would she be similarly offended if she encountered cis lesbian PDA?

Third Place: Penance - Eliza Clark

For me, Penance was intensely personal, like looking back on my own teenagerhood. I also grew up as a deeply strange child, something that was immediately recognized by the other children. That feeling of somehow being a different species from other kids, not doing anything right and not understanding how it is wrong, is something that this novel absolutely nails. That might be a strange association for a true crime story about a horrible schoolgirl murder. This is the dramatic extension of what could happen to five people who were once very lonely little girls, and I think reading too much into the ‘how could they do something like this?’ of it all is missing the forest for the trees and playing into the true crime gaze that the book criticizes. Clark is interested both in true crime that dehumanizes its subject matter, and true crime the aspires to humanize and platform them. Is it any more ethical to demand access to someone’s life out of love?

Second Place: He Who Drowned the World - Shelley Parker-Chan

Shelley Parker-Chan’s The Radiant Emperor duology is the best queer fantasy series out there. Period. He Who Drowned the World takes its engagement with gender and sexuality to another level. At least for me, there is something much more meaningful and impactful to the theme of gender as something performed in spite of difficulties, distrust, and lack of acknowledgement. Parker-Chan understands that gender is often unpleasant or even hateful. This isn’t a book for a brave new utopia where every bra fits on the first try, it’s for the present, where the wrong bra gives you a fibrous lump. If She Who Became the Sun was Zhu embracing her gender, the sequel is about Ouyang’s often deeply upsetting ability to accept his. His hatred of any femininity, first and foremost his own, isn’t an easy read, but I found there was something incredibly resonant in it to my own ambivalent feelings towards femininity. No one else depicts self-hatred this well.

First Place: Chain-Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

As soon as I finished Chain-Gang All-Stars I knew it would be my book of the year. I read a lot of great books but this blew every single one of them out the water. It is Gladiator by way of The Shawshank Redemption by way of professional wrestling. It’s the scifi sequel to The New Jim Crow and Ava DuVernay’s 13th. It’s the best love story of the year. Chain-Gang All-Stars is an exploration of the humanity of inmates, who, in this world, are objectified both due to their involvement in the criminal justice system (as in ours) and from the gaze of sports and reality entertainment. It’s hard to decide which aspect of this book is most technically impressive. I usually don’t like when a political novel tries to comment on too many different issues, but this book deftly balances deep and effective discussions on a huge range of topics. I especially appreciated its engagement with an inmates’ personal feelings of guilt and culpability within a carceral system that doesn’t care at all about remediating the harm they have caused. This deft political messaging is combined with an insightful depiction of the ambivalent success of professional athletes, multidimensional characters, and a touching romance. My favourite part of the book was how effectively it traps the reader. I understand and agree with all the condemnations of the exploitation inherent to entertainment in watching primarily BIPOC athletes destroy their health (this is about wrestling but also boxing and American football), but I still found myself thinking about just how incredible this book would be as a TV series. The use of complicity as a theme is unparalleled.

[is-the-fire-real]

judío por elección (part 3)

(part 1. part 2. part 2.5.)

"I think," I told my wife the other day, "we're gonna have to use the mikvehs for women."

They made a face--a nose-wrinkly sneer, equal parts anger and tired.

"It's about what I expected," I said.

"Yeah," they said, "but still."

One of the reasons my wife and I chose to convert at this moment is because we want children, and we're about to take that step. As adults, we have both been far too smart for church. They were mainstream Protestant, I was Mormon. They stopped attending. I got my baptism revoked (a real thing that really happened, I have the paperwork and everything).

The one community we've had for the past couple of decades has been the LGBTQ community. We both assumed that queers meant it when they talked about protecting queer and trans children, as well as the children of queers and transes. So we ignored all the microaggressions, hints, signs and omens that we weren't welcome. We told people how impossible it was for us to have kids. They'd cluck their tongues and offer sympathy and support, but only so long as our problems were structured in a way they cared about. In a way that theoretically reflected their own oppression.

Our tales of how we couldn't adopt, do IVF, or "simply" have unprotected sex with a total stranger who wanted no parental rights were restructured as being about institutional homo/transphobia. A cautionary tale. Proof that the listener's antinatalism was justified, for see what befalls those foolish fags who actually, ew!, WANT to breed!

"You guys are dinks! That must be nice," said an asexual friend of mine. She had to explain to me what dink meant. I was privately appalled that someone who knew for a fact we desperately wanted children would talk about how great it was that we were double income... no kids.

No kids.

There's nothing you can tell me about human reproduction that I haven't thought of. My wife and I have put more thought into this than any hundred couples you can name. We have both done therapy, research, and soulful self-examination in the name of Not Passing On The Trauma. I was girled as a child, and so I know all the work necessary for being a parent. We've tested each other for years with "What if the kid's a jock? What if they really like Marvel movies? What if they want to go to church?" kind of questions, and all of the answers we give amount to something like this:

Parentage is the only relationship where the other person in the relationship is supposed to move away from you. Always, they're moving away, and that's how you know you've done it right. The child begins inside someone's body, and they end up their own human person, and that's as it should be. If you perceive being a parent as having a relationship with a really cool person, then you're going to have a good relationship with them. If you want an adorable creature to pour all your unmet needs into, get a fish tank.

Anyway. In the last year, my wife and I have started letting folks know we are taking serious steps to have a child. I'm not getting specific on the details online, because my child will deserve to have their privacy and I don't want to divulge their journey as though it's mine.

But slowly, one by one, as they were told of this intent, all the queer and trans folks we know withdrew from our social circle.

"I'll just pick up a trans kid from the adoption agency if I want one." "I've always thought of fostering queer kids." "Why can't you just custom-build a child genetically with IVF?" "Won't you be angry if the child isn't really, y'know, YOURS?"

As though having a child is a matter of indulging my own selfish whims. As though any fostering or adoption agency has ever been open and happy to let queer or trans folks walk right in and customize who they're willing to foster or adopt. These reactions are, to be frank, cruel and brutal, and they center what should be good news on the recipient's own anger at their own parents. I don't mind providing you support, but it's fucked up how my sharing good news keeps turning into other people demanding support.

It leaves my wife and I feeling like maybe this whole Friendship and Community thing is actually one-way.

"Maybe you keep running into people who are toxic or self-centered," one might suggest, "and that's not the whole community!" And... sure, that's possible. It's possible that the dozens of queer and trans folks I've met are not representative of the community to which they belong. But it's also possible that this hypothetical one is demanding that I offer compassion and understanding to folks who completely refuse to offer it in return, who will argue that expecting them to be compassionate or kind makes relationships "transactional" and something-something capitalist pigs.

The only people we've met who were queers and who were also enthusiastic for us to have children are, like us, rural folks who are not exactly Part Of The Community. They don't go to clubs or surf the internet--there's no signal at their house, and anyway, they're too tired after breaking their backs doing farm labor (or being disabled) to drive for two hours to drink with strangers.

Anyhow. This response has thrown a lot of things in relief for me. I don't want to be around people who despise my child in advance, or me for having them, and I don't care if those who despise me are right or left, cishet or in the community. I don't have time for people who hate me.

I want my child to feel welcome among a community, a group who will embrace them and teach them and make them feel like they're a part of a greater story than one I can tell them by myself.

When we told A we would have to skip a Jewish community event because we were getting IVF, he called us almost in tears. He was happy. He talked about how a community without children is dead. He reassured us that while our children won't be born Jewish, given when we'll get dunked, they will be as soon as possible. That our children will be adored and taught to be sephardim from the beginning. And he insisted that he would pay for the bris, if the child needs one.

This guy I've known less than six months did more to make us feel welcome and safe than folks I've known for decades.

But. But.

The Spanish Jewish community has not recovered from the expulsion in 1492. Then, it's estimated that despite multiple massacres wrought by both Muslims and Christians, the Jewish population was at 100,000. Nowadays, it's somewhere between 13,000 to 50,000, depending on how you count. Accordingly, there are, to my knowledge, three mikvehs in the entirety of Spain.

The one we will have to use is operated by an Orthodox community. I am still pre-everything and my wife does not think medical transition will help them. Hence my telling my wife we'll have to use the women's mikveh. And I've come to slowly realize that in all likelihood no one will give me a bris or a substitute shedding of blood.

And... well. I get it. I'm coming into someone else's house. I need to follow their rules. I am not in a position to shop around. It's not like there's a surfeit of choice for either of us.

So I tell myself this is necessary as a sacrifice for the child. And I tell myself I won't ever tell them about this.

But it would be nice if there were a community where I could tell somebody.

[just-antithings]

(Big of a long one, sorry)

I just came across another one of those "if you put your Hogwarts houses in your bio you're a terf" posts, and in the tags one of the people was talking about how they had a Gryffindor tshirt that was their favourite thing to wear which they just threw away because they'd rather never have such a thing touch them again. Fair enough, what anyone is comfortable with in their personal life is none of my business. But it did remind me of something similar that happened with me.

I own a perfectly good Fantastic Beasts t-shirt. It's the kind that has a simple design and good enough material to last YEARS. I did, of course, buy it before I knew about all this JKR business. Then couple of years ago I was faced with the fact that I own some HP merch and the dilemma of whether or not I should throw it away. This surprisingly came down to a moment where I properly understood and defined my own politics to myself.

At the same time that I had some people in my circles insisting on these performative measures, I was also learning about fast fashion and the very real impacts of clothing trends on the environment. After reading up on it enough and seeing the gross appropriation of "thrifting", it became obvious that the solution is to "reduce" waste, to stop buying more clothes than you need, to stop throwing away perfectly good clothes, to stitch up clothing that needs mending instead of replacing it, etc. The best clothing for the environment is the one already in your closet. That idea. Was I going to make an exception in this case and throw away this t-shirt because someone might think me a class traitor for it, even though whether I keep it or discard it doesn't actually change the support JKR doe or doesn't have anymore? On the one hand it was just one tshirt and it would keep me safe from my peers in those liberal circles. On the other hand it made me feel shame like i had never felt before. It reminded me of every other performative thing I've done in the name of activism and how little it has amounted to. I'm the kind of person who still has my wardrobe from five years ago almost intact with very few changes. Wasteful consumption has a very real cost and I don't do that anymore, so when it came down to tossing that tshirt out it ended up meaning more than it should have. I kept the tshirt. It's still in great shape, it's gonna last many years more as well and save me that much more consumption waste.

What if i had given it away? Would some random person who hasn't ever heard of the JKR drama (consider: I'm not from the West) suddenly become a Terf by wearing it? Would it keep HP and JKR relevant because some person who hardly even knows HP is now wearing a second hand tshirt from someone? When I went to another trans friend's house, who has been there for the community every single day, who has worked hard at the ground levels to create safe spaces for queer people, who has advocated for trans rights in our country, and when i saw their HP merch, what kind of an asshole would I be to call them out on it or say that I suddenly don't trust them because they made a reference to some book we all read as kids? In that moment, sitting with that friend, I also realised how far removed our day-to-day lives actually are from what was considered activism in online spaces. The latter can be great when it's about spreading information and having discussions. But something that reeks that much of simply a performance? Idk, I don't think people talking about HP in their daily lives or wearing an old Gryffindor tshirt or reblogging a gif has as much power over the queer struggle as people here seem to think. It's getting a bit annoying how because I see more posts talking about HP just to tell people who are engaging with it to die than i see actual posts by people just talking about the book. I think the former are the ones actually keeping it more relevant than it is

.

[joannes-journal]

Hollow Grove - Entry #2

CW: Death Mention, Sleep Deprived MOD w/ Grammarly as Beta Reader

Note: Hollow Grove is part of @h0ll0w-gr0v3, I highly recommend following that account if you're here.

=+=+=+=+=

Trinity and Dakota huddled up into my torso, their breaths almost perfectly in sync. Waves of sunlight threaded in through the curtains. I woke up later than I meant to, with my phone ringing. I didn't recognize the number, and neither did Jackie. The only thing we recognized was the area code.

I pressed the phone up to my ear, "Hello?"

The voice on the other end startled me, "Uhm.. Hello! My name is Raven, I just wanted to say I understand your problems in a way." Who the hell was this? I need to stop giving my number out to random hunters. "You and your children are allowed at the national park called Hollow Grove anytime! Free of cost!"

The name of the park sounded familiar, "Hollow Grove, huh? I might've heard of it somewhere…what kind of…wildlife…does the park have?" Dancing around the topic of the paranormal, I questioned Raven.

"We have wolves, deer, birds, and definitely some squirrels! Also, many bugs around the place- I wouldn't mind giving you a tour if you'd like." Right, no sane person would admit if they had a monster on their doorstep. Glimpsing at some maps Jackie and I had strewn around the kitchen, I saw one with national parks. Sure enough, Hollow Grove was up there with a star beside it, indicating that other hunters had mentioned it before. I had let Raven know I'd drive over alone before hanging up.

"JACKIE! I'M GOING OUT! DON'T WAIT UP!" I hollered out to the kitchen as I rolled out of bed. My bag already had a notebook and a camera, and the map I had been using was sitting in the car. The kitchen smelled of coffee; I poured myself a cup. "I got a call from Hollow Grove…I'm driving out, you need to watch the kids." My tastebuds recoiled at the taste of the bitter coffee; we hadn't bought more creamer or sugar yet.

Jackie tilted her head. Her dog, a little red duck dog, trotted past and into the living room. "Hollow Grove? That park with all those deaths? Careful out there, I heard some weird shit's been going on out there."

I shrugged on my coat and opened the door, "Which is why I'm going."

The trans am rumbled to a stop, the smell of smoke amongst the trees thicker than the oatmeal Jackie was eating earlier. It almost caused me to get to coughing but seeing a park ranger stopped me. They were making me wish I didn't drop out of college for that sack-of-shit husband.

Hollow Grove was beautiful, with its towering trees and wolves. Raven always had birds landing on her head and shoulders. I wanted to see the infamous graveyard first; death always seemed to cause strange happenings. I could start there.

The cool October breeze whipped my hair around. I went to tie it back while Raven explained when the graveyard started. As we walked, the smell of smoke got worse. I choked back a cough; my eyes began to water. A bluejay landed on Raven's head, reminding me of a guy I knew in college. He and his friends were a bit younger than me, and I only knew them because one of them had a student film they were working on.

We continued talking, and then things started getting out of hand. I didn't realize anyone had snuck up on us, but two strangers butted in seeming cryptic. One of them was focused on Raven, tilting their head at them, letting a Cheshire cat-like grin take over their features. The other, I couldn't put my finger on. He seemed like an oddball (in a good way).

Despite the hiccup, Raven kept talking. Then I heard the elk-like call in the distance. DISC0RD? I didn't realize I said its name out loud, and Raven was familiar with the name. My neck popped as I whipped my head around (I had been trying to pop it all morning anyway), and I stared. Should I investigate? But I don't want to risk the kids…

I had left the park a couple of hours ago, telling Raven I was heading home. Truth be told, I was walking through one of the nearby neighborhoods, trying to find the chaos. One of the houses got loud, screaming and fighting. The pungent smell of smoke seared my nostrils, stronger here than at the park. I put my ear up to the door; something in there sounded demonic, and the aura of the property was…evil.

I knocked.

=+=+=+=+=

[haloslips]

lots of ramblings about gratitude, grief, my mom, etc below. consider this a friendlocked lj entry that i'm letting anyone read

been thinking since my mom died a lot about gratitude - how grateful i am to have had that weekend with her in july, that the last days i had with her were the best days we ever had; how grateful i am that she didn't suffer for very long; for the outpouring of love and support from friends and strangers alike. it's opened up my heart to being grateful for so much more than that, too - grateful for the sunshine even as the days are short; grateful for safe travels; grateful when a good song comes up in a playlist. outrageously grateful for the album angel in realtime. by gang of youths.

i feel at this point like i skipped the grief entirely. there haven't been a lot of moments in the last three months that i've felt especially... sad? i think about my mom a lot, i think about the fact that i'll never talk to her again, but for the most part i feel at peace with it. i'm sure there will be moments in the future that ARE sad, and there have been moments already that way, but not many. instead i'm filled with this endless capacity for light.

for the past few years at least i've always looked for the bright side and it feels easier than ever now, like if there is some hole in me from loss it can only be filled with good.

i do expect that to shift with time, but when i think about it, i grieved her a long time while she was still alive and well. i did not really get along with my mom in life. as i've been saying in polite company, i challenged her. as i've learned in her death, despite having 3 kids before me, i was the first kid she ever really raised.

we fought a lot. we didn't know how to talk to each other. when i was 12, aware of my own not-straightness, my best friend's sister married a woman, and my mom said she wouldn't go to her kids wedding if it was a same-sex wedding. when i came out to my mom as bi at 19, drunk on apple martinis in a bar with her, she got up and left. when i was 28 and happier than i'd ever been in my life and she found out i was trans (on accident) she wrote me a long email about how i couldn't let the sadness in me make me believe something like that.

i loved my mom a lot, and i was so desperate to have a mom who was also my friend, who treated me like a human being and not her owned property, who respected me. i know she loved me, and i always knew she loved me, but especially after she wrote me that email when she found out i was trans... i spent a lot of time talking to my best friend and my therapist about if i would ever have a relationship with her that felt good. we talked about how much i could forgive, how much i needed her to reciprocate.

sometime in may or june i was on the phone with her while going for a walk (this is something i know i'll miss) and i don't remember how it came up but i told her that i'd been using he/him pronouns pretty exclusively for the past few years, and i remember her taking it... well. she took it well. i remember thinking that maybe there was hope for our relationship.

after she died, my step dad told me that the two of them had in the past couple of days before it happened had a serious conversation about how my mom could accept me as her son, how she'd been working through it and was ready. i believe him. i'm sad i'll never have her in my life as someone who'd finally worked out how to love me right, how to care for me well, but mostly i'm grateful she reached that point at all.

i wish my mom was still alive. i do. but i am filled with all the light she didn't get to shine yet.

[itneedsmoregays]

Hello, I wanted to ask you a question about cupioromanticisim. I'm also autistic and lately I have been thinking I may be somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum. I'm a trans-lesbian woman, and I have yet to ever date or even kiss someone. I haven't ever had a crush before either. How did you realize you were cupioromantic?

Well in my case, it was quite a few things.

In late 2021, my eldest brother and his girlfriend had been together for a good couple of years and my other brother had just started dating a girl as well. And there I was, single. I was beginning to wonder whether something was wrong with me. Why I didn't seem to click with anyone. I considered the possibility I may be aromantic but thought "No, that can't be it. I still like the idea of falling in love, I don't hate romance at all. So why can't I just do it? It's so easy for them! Have I just not found the right one yet?"

It wasn't until JaidenAnimations posted her video on coming out as aroace that things changed. I watched it and then scrolled down to the comments where people were sharing their own stories on coming out as aromantic or asexual.

One comment said that they liked the thought of being in a relationship but weren't interested in actually being in one. And someone replied to them: "Oh, there's a term for that. It's called 'cupioromantic'."

I was utterly stunned. That literally described how I was feeling to a T.

So I did some more research on that microlabel and ruminated on it for about a month just to be sure. And I finally realised that I’d always liked romance and the idea of a romantic relationship, but the thought of actually being in one, let alone going on a date with anyone, had never interested me.

It made a lot more sense to me, especially thinking back to my childhood. There was a kid I was very good friends with in primary school. We hung out on the playground at lunch, I went over to their house, invited them to my birthday parties, etc. They were really into horses and Harry Potter (before any of us knew how awful Rowling was), but it was our love of Thomas the Tank Engine that really made us close.

Near the end of our final year of primary school when we were due to go to different secondary schools after it finished, I thought I'd fallen in love with them. And I thought to myself: "They deserve a grand romantic gesture before we possibly never see each other again! That's how they do it in the movies so I must do that too!". So on the last day when the school had a Year 6 disco, I pulled them to the side away from everyone, told them I loved them and kissed them. But even then, it didn't feel as spectacular or magical as I thought it would; it was more of an awkward "Oh. I... guess we're a thing now." And looking back, they looked like they found that kiss pretty awkward too. Still we tried to maintain our relationship and stay in touch through email, but eventually broke up and lost touch after nearly two years.

Looking back at that, it became clear to me that I was more interested in the idea of being in a relationship. Thinking I knew how romance worked and not realising there was a lot more to it than just kissing and saying "I love you".

So one month after seeing that video and thinking hard, I lay on my bed looking at the ceiling and whispered to myself, as a test, "I'm cupioromantic".

And a happy chill ran through me. I wasn't broken. There was a label that accurately described me, and hearing it from my mouth felt so right.

So, yeah, that's pretty much it. I liked romance and the idea of being in love, but never actually felt interested in seeking it out. I figured out that part of myself thanks to JaidenAnimations (and @lily-orchard posting that video) and I'm a lot happier now. Hope this helps you.