#but the queer question was the cheapest of all

[hussyknee]

17/12/23 this masterlist has been completely revamped with free access to all material. It will be updated and edited periodically so please click on my username and reblog the current version directly from me if you're able.

14/8/24 reboosting this post with How to Help Palestine updated. Please scroll to the bottom to donate or boost the links.

The Big Damn List Of Stuff They Said You Didn't Know

(Yes, it's a lot. Just choose your preferred medium and then pick one.)

Podcasts

Backgrounders and Quick Facts

Interactive Maps

Teach-Out Resources

Reading Material (free)

Films and Documentaries (free)

Non-Governmental Organizations

Social Media

How You Can Help <- URGENT!!!

Podcasts

Cocktails & Capitalism: The Story of Palestine Part 1, Part 3

It Could Happen Here: The Cheapest Land is Bought with Blood, Part 2, The Balfour Declaration

Citations Needed: Media narratives and consent manufacturing around Israel-Palestine and the Gaza Siege

The Deprogram: Free Palestine, ft. decolonizatepalestine.com.

Backgrounders and Quick Facts

The Palestine Academy: Palestine 101

Institute for Middle East Understanding: Explainers and Quick Facts

Interactive Maps

Visualizing Palestine

Teach-Out Resources

1) Cambridge UCU and Pal Society

Palestine 101

Intro to Palestine Film + Art + Literature

Resources for Organising and Facilitating)

2) The Jadaliya YouTube Channel of the Arab Studies Institute

Gaza in Context Teach-in series

War on Palestine podcast

Updates and Discussions of news with co-editors Noura Erakat and Mouin Rabbani.

3) The Palestine Directory

History (virtual tours, digital archives, The Palestine Oral History Project, Documenting Palestine, Queering Palestine)

Cultural History (Palestine Open Maps, Overdue Books Zine, Palestine Poster Project)

Contemporary Voices in the Arts

Get Involved: NGOs and campaigns to help and support.

3) PalQuest Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question.

4) The Palestine Remix by Al Jazeera

Books and Articles

Free reading material

My Gdrive of Palestine/Decolonization Literature (nearly all the books recommended below + books from other recommended lists)

Five free eBooks by Verso

Three Free eBooks on Palestine by Haymarket

LGBT Activist Scott Long's Google Drive of Palestine Freedom Struggle Resources

Recommended Reading List

Academic Books

Edward Said (1979) The Question of Palestine, Random House

Ilan Pappé (2002)(ed) The Israel/Palestine Question, Routledge

Ilan Pappé (2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, OneWorld Publications

Ilan Pappé (2011) The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, Yale University Press

Ilan Pappé (2015) The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, Verso Books

Ilan Pappé (2017) The Biggest Prison On Earth: A History Of The Occupied Territories, OneWorld Publications

Ilan Pappé (2022) A History of Modern Palestine, Cambridge University Press

Rosemary Sayigh (2007) The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Bloomsbury

Andrew Ross (2019) Stone Men: the Palestinians who Built Israel, Verso Books

Rashid Khalidi (2020) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917–2017

Ariella Azoulay (2011) From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, Pluto Press

Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir (2012) The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, Stanford University Press.

Jeff Halper (2010) An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Pluto Press

Jeff Halper (2015) War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification

Jeff Halper (2021) Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State, Pluto Press

Anthony Loewenstein (2023) The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the Technology of Occupation around the World

Noura Erakat (2019) Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, Stanford University Press

Neve Gordon (2008) Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press

Joseph Massad (2006) The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, Routledge

Memoirs

Edward Said (1986) After the Last Sky: Palestine Lives, Columbia University PEdward Saidress

Edward Said (2000) Out of Place; A Memoir, First Vintage Books

Mourid Barghouti (2005) I saw Ramallah, Bloomsbury

Hatim Kanaaneh (2008) A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel, Pluto Press

Raja Shehadeh (2008) Palestinian Walks: Into a Vanishing Landscape, Profile Books

Ghada Karmi (2009) In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, Verso Books

Vittorio Arrigoni (2010) Gaza Stay Human, Kube Publishing

Ramzy Baroud (2010) My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story, Pluto Press

Izzeldin Abuelaish (2011) I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, Bloomsbury

Atef Abu Saif (2015) The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary, Beacon Press

Anthologies

Voices from Gaza - Insaniyyat (The Society of Palestinian Anthropologists)

Letters From Gaza • Protean Magazine

Salma Khadra Jayyusi (1992) Anthology of Modern Palestinian Literature, Columbia University Press

ASHTAR Theatre (2010) The Gaza Monologues

Refaat Alreer (ed) (2014) Gaza Writes Back, Just World Books

Refaat Alreer, Laila El-Haddad (eds) (2015) Gaza Unsilenced, Just World Books

Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke (eds)(2015) Palestine Speaks: Narrative of Life under Occupation, Verso Books

Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing (eds) (2022) Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, Haymarket Books

Short Story Collections

Ghassan Kanafani, Hilary Kilpatrick (trans) (1968) Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories, Lynne Rienner Publishers

Ghassan Kanafani, Barbara Harlow, Karen E. Riley (trans) (2000) Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, Lynne Rienner Publishers

Atef Abu Saif (2014) The Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction, Comma Press

Samira Azzam, Ranya Abdelrahman (trans) (2022) Out Of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam

Sonia Sulaiman (2023) Muneera and the Moon; Stories Inspired by Palestinian Folklore

Essay Collections

Edward W. Said (2000) Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Harvard University Press

Salim Tamari (2008) Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture, University of California Press

Fatma Kassem (2011) Palestinian Women: Narratives, histories and gendered memory, Bloombsbury

Ramzy Baroud (2019) These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, Clarity Press

Novels

Sahar Khalifeh (1976) Wild Thorns, Saqi Books

Liyana Badr (1993) A Balcony over the Fakihani, Interlink Books

Hala Alyan (2017) Salt Houses, Harper Books

Susan Abulhawa (2011) Mornings in Jenin, Bloomsbury

Susan Abulhawa (2020) Against the Loveless World, Bloomsbury

Graphic novels

Joe Sacco (2001) Palestine

Joe Sacco (2010) Footnotes in Gaza

Naji al-Ali (2009) A Child in Palestine, Verso Books

Mohammad Sabaaneh (2021) Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine, Street Noise Book*

Poetry

Fady Joudah (2008) The Earth in the Attic, Sheridan Books,

Ghassan Zaqtan, Fady Joudah (trans) (2012) Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me and Other Poems, Yale University Press

Hala Alyan (2013) Atrium: Poems, Three Rooms Press*

Mohammed El-Kurd (2021) Rifqa, Haymarket Books

Mosab Abu Toha (2022) Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, City Lights Publishers

Tawfiq Zayyad (2023) We Are Here to Stay, Smokestack Books*

The Works of Mahmoud Darwish

Poems

Rafeef Ziadah (2011) We Teach Life, Sir

Nasser Rabah (2022) In the Endless War

Refaat Alareer (2011) If I Must Die

Hiba Abu Nada (2023) I Grant You Refuge/ Not Just Passing

[All books except the ones starred are available in my gdrive. I'm adding more each day. But please try and buy whatever you're able or borrow from the library. Most should be available in the discounted Free Palestine Reading List by Pluto Press, Verso and Haymarket Books.]

Human Rights Reports & Documents

Information on current International Court of Justice case on ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’

UN Commission of Inquiry Report 2022

UN Special Rapporteur Report on Apartheid 2022

Amnesty International Report on Apartheid 2022

Human Rights Watch Report on Apartheid 2021

Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ 2009 (‘The Goldstone Report’)

Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, International Court of Justice, 9 July 2004

Films

Documentaries

Jenin, Jenin (2003) dir. Mohammed Bakri

Massacre (2005) dir. Monica Borgmann, Lokman Slim, Hermann Theissen

Slingshot HipHop (2008) dir. Jackie Reem Salloum

Waltz with Bashir (2008) dir. Ari Folman † (also on Amazon Prime)

Tears of Gaza (2010) dir. Vibeke Løkkeberg (also on Amazon Prime)

5 Broken Cameras (2011) dir. Emad Burnat (also on Amazon Prime)

The Gatekeepers (2012) dir. Dror Moreh (also on Amazon Prime)

The Great Book Robbery (2012) | Al Jazeera English

Al Nakba (2013) | Al Jazeera (5-episode docu-series)

The Village Under the Forest (2013) dir. Mark J. Kaplan

Where Should The Birds Fly (2013) dir. Fida Qishta

Naila and the Uprising (2017) (also on Amazon Prime)

GAZA (2019) dir. Andrew McConnell and Garry Keane

Gaza Fights For Freedom (2019) dir. Abby Martin

Little Palestine: Diary Of A Siege (2021) dir. Abdallah Al Khatib 

Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story (2021) | Al Jazeera World Documentary

Gaza Fights Back (2021) | MintPress News Original Documentary | dir. Dan Cohen

Innocence (2022) dir. Guy Davidi

Short Films

Fatenah (2009) dir. Ahmad Habash

Gaza-London (2009) dir. Dina Hamdan

Condom Lead (2013) dir. Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser

OBAIDA (2019) | Defence for Children Palestine

Theatrical Films

Divine Intervention (2002) | dir. Elia Suleiman (also on Netflix)

Paradise Now (2005) dir Hany Abu-Assad (also on Amazon Prime)

Lemon Tree (2008) (choose auto translate for English subs) (also on Amazon Prime)

It Must Be Heaven (2009) | dir. Elia Suleiman †

The Promise (2010) mini-series dir. Peter Kosminsky (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Habibi (2011)* dir. Susan Youssef

Omar (2013)* dir. Hany Abu-Assad †

3000 Nights (2015)* dir. Mai Masri

Foxtrot (2017) dir. Samuel Maoz (also on Amazon Prime)

The Time that Remains (2019) dir. Elia Suleiman †

Gaza Mon Amour (2020) dir. Tarzan Nasser, Arab Nasser †

The Viewing Booth (2020) dir. Ra'anan Alexandrowicz (on Amazon Prime and Apple TV)

Farha (2021)* | dir. Darin J. Sallam

Palestine Film Institute Archive

All links are for free viewing. The ones marked with a star (*) can be found on Netflix, while the ones marked † can be downloaded for free from my Mega account.

If you find Guy Davidi's Innocence anywhere please let me know, I can't find it for streaming or download even to rent or buy.

In 2018, BDS urged Netflix to dump Fauda, a series created by former members of IOF death squads that legitimizes and promotes racist violence and war crimes, to no avail. Please warn others to not give this series any views. BDS has not called for a boycott of Netflix. ]

NGOs

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor

UNRWA

Palestine Defence for Children International

Palestinian Feminist Collective

Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Institute for Palestine Studies

Al Haq

Artists for Palestine

The Palestine Museum

Jewish Currents

B’Tselem

DAWN

Social Media

Palestnians on Tumblr

@el-shab-hussein

@killyfromblame

@apollos-olives

@fairuzfan

@palipunk

@sar-soor

@nabulsi

@wearenotjustnumbers2

@90-ghost

@tamarrud

@northgazaupdates

Allies and advocates (not Palestinian)

@bloglikeanegyptian beautiful posts that read like op-eds

@vyorei daily news roundups

@luthienne resistance through prose

@decolonize-the-left scoop on the US political plans and impacts

@feluka

@anneemay

(Please don't expect any of these blogs to be completely devoted to Palestine allyship; they do post regularly about it but they're still personal blogs and post whatever else they feel like. Do not harrass them.)

Gaza journalists

Motaz Azaiza IG: @motaz_azaiza | Twitter: @azaizamotaz9 | TikTok: _motaz.azaiza (left Gaza as of Jan 23)

Bisan Owda IG and TikTok: wizard_bisan1 | Twitter: @wizardbisan

Saleh Aljafarawi IG: @saleh_aljafarawi | Twitter: @S_Aljafarawi | TikTok: @saleh_aljafarawi97

Plestia Alaqad IG: @byplestia | TikTok: @plestiaaqad (left Gaza)

Wael Al-Dahdouh IG: @wael_eldahdouh | Twitter: @WaelDahdouh (left Gaza as of Jan 13)

Hind Khoudary IG: @hindkhoudary | Twitter: @Hind_Gaza

Ismail Jood IG and TikTok: @ismail.jood (announced end of coverage on Jan 25)

Yara Eid IG: @eid_yara | Twitter: @yaraeid_

Eye on Palestine IG: @eye.on.palestine | Twitter: @EyeonPalestine | TikTok: @eyes.on.palestine

Muhammad Shehada Twitter: @muhammadshehad2

(Edit: even though some journos have evacuated, the footage up to the end of their reporting is up on their social media, and they're also doing urgent fundraisers to get their families and friends to safety. Please donate or share their posts.)

News organisations

The Electronic Intifada Twitter: @intifada | IG: @electronicintifada

Quds News Network Twitter and Telegram: @QudsNen | IG: @qudsn (Arabic)

Times of Gaza IG: @timesofgaza | Twitter: @Timesofgaza | Telegram: @TIMESOFGAZA

The Palestine Chronicle Twitter: @PalestineChron | IG: @palestinechron | @palestinechronicle

Al-Jazeera Twitter: @AJEnglish | IG and TikTok: @aljazeeraenglish, @ajplus

Middle East Eye IG and TikTok: @middleeasteye | Twitter: @MiddleEastEye

Democracy Now Twitter and IG: @democracynow TikTok: @democracynow.org

Mondoweiss IG and TikTok: @mondoweiss | Twitter: @Mondoweiss

The Intercept Twitter and IG: @theintercept

MintPress Twitter: @MintPressNews | IG: mintpress

Novara Media Twitter and IG: @novaramedia

Truthout Twitter and IG: @truthout

Palestnians on Other Social Media

Mouin Rabbani: Middle East analyst specializing in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian affairs. Twitter: @MouinRabbani

Noura Erakat: Legal scholar, human rights attorney, specialising in Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Twitter: @4noura | IG: @nouraerakat | (http://www.nouraerakat.com/)

Hebh Jamal: Journalist in Germany. IG and Twitter: @hebh_jamal

Ghada Sasa: PhD candidate in International Relations, green colonialism, and Islam in Canada. Twitter: @sasa_ghada | IG: @ghadasasa48

Taleed El Sabawi: Assistant professor of law and researcher in public health. Twitter: @el_sabawi | IG

Lexi Alexander: Filmmaker and activist. Twitter: @LexiAlex | IG: @lexialexander1

Mariam Barghouti: Writer, blogger, researcher, and journalist. Twitter: @MariamBarghouti | IG: @mariambarghouti

Rasha Abdulhadi: Queer poet, author and cultural organizer. Twitter: @rashaabdulhadi

Mohammed el-Kurd: Writer and activist from Jerusalem. IG: @mohammedelkurd | Twitter: @m7mdkurd

Ramy Abdu: Founder and Chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Twitter: @RamyAbdu

Subhi: Founder of The Palestine Academy website. IG: @sbeih.jpg |TikTok @iamsbeih | Twitter: @iamsbeih

Allies

Lowkey (Kareem Dennis): Rapper, activist, video and podcast host for MintPress. Twitter: @LowkeyOnline IG: @lowkeyonline

Francesca Albanese: UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories. Twitter: @FranceskAlbs

Sana Saeed: Journalist and media critic, host and senior producer at Al-Jazeera Plus. IG: @sanaface | Twitter: @SanaSaeed

Shailja Patel: Poet, playwright, activist, founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice. Twitter: @shailjapatel

Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores: Researcher in curriculum studies, decolonial theory, social movements. Twitter: @Jairo_I_Funez

Jack Dodson: Journalist and Filmmaker. Twitter: @JackDodson IG: @jdodson4

Imani Barbarin: Writer, public speaker, and disability rights activist. IG: @crutches_and_spice | Twitter: @Imani_Barbarin | TikTok: @crutches_and_spice

Jewish Allies

Katie Halper: US comedian, writer, filmmaker, podcaster, and political commentator. IG and Twitter: @kthalps

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: Associate Professor of Physics and Core Faculty Member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Twitter: @IBJIYONGI | (https://chanda.science/)

Amanda Gelender: Writer. Twitter: @agelender | (https://agelender.medium.com/)

Yoav Litvin: Jerusalem-born Writer and Photographer. IG and Twitter: @nookyelur | (yoavlitvin.com)

Alana Lentin: Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University. Twitter: @alanalentin

Gideon Levy: anti-Zionist Israeli journalist and activist. Twitter: @gideonlevy

‼️How You Can Help Palestine‼️

Click for Palestine (Please reblog!!)

Masterlist of donation links by @sulfurcosmos (Please reblog!!)

Water for Gaza: Donate directly to the Gaza Municipality

Operation Olive Branch Linktree for vetted fundraisers, donations and political action resources. TikTok and Instagram: @operationolivebranch | Twitter: @OPOliveBranch

Gazafunds (vetted and spotlighted GFMs)

The Butterfly Effect Project (spreadsheet of vetted GFMs)

Spreadsheet of Gaza fundraisers vetted by @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi

If any links are broken let me know. Or pull up the current post to check whether it's fixed.

Political action to pressure the Harris campaign to stop arming Israel (for US citizens): Uncommitted Movement (TikTok: @uncommittedmvmt) (Please reblog!!)

"Knowledge is Israel's worst enemy. Awareness is Israel's most hated and feared foe. That's why Israel bombs a university: it wants to kill openness and determination to refuse living under injustice and racism."

— Dr. Refaat Alareer, (martyred Dec 6, 2023)

From River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

-----

Edit 1: took the first video down because turns out the animator is a terf and it links to her blog. Really sorry for any distress.

Edit 2: All recommended readings + Haymarket recommendations + essential decolonization texts have been uploaded to my linked gdrive. I will adding more periodically. Please do buy or check them out from the library if possible, but this post was made for and by poor and gatekept Global South bitches like me.

Some have complained about the memes being disrespectful. You're actually legally obligated to make fun of Israeli propaganda and Zionists. I don't make the rules.

Edit 3: "The river to the sea" does not mean the expulsion of Jews from Palestine. Believing that is genocide apologia.

Edit 4: Gazans have specifically asked us to put every effort into pushing for a ceasefire instead of donations. "Raising humanitarian aid" is a grift Western governments are pushing right now to deflect from the fact that they're sending billions to Israel to keep carpet bombing Gazans. As long as the blockades are still in place there will never be enough aid for two million people. (UPDATE: PLEASE DONATE to the Gazan's GoFundMe fundraisers to help them buy food and get out of Rafah into Egypt. E-SIMs, food and medical supplies are also essential. Please donate to the orgs linked in the How You Can Help. Go on the strikes. DO NOT STOP PROTESTING.)

Edit 5: Google drive link for academic books folder has been fixed. Also have added a ton of resources to all the other folders so please check them out.

Edit 6: Added interactive maps, Jadaliya channel, and masterlists of donation links and protest support and of factsheets.

The twitter accounts I reposted as it was given to me and I just now realized it had too many Israeli voices and almost none of the Palestinians I'm following, so it's being edited. (Update: done!) also removed sources like Jewish Voices of Peace and Breaking the Silence that do good work but have come under fair criticism from Palestinians.

Edit 7: Complete reformatting

Edit 8: Complete revamping of the social media section. It now reflects my own following list.

Edit 9: removed some more problematic people from the allies list. Remember that the 2SS is a grift that's used to normalize violence and occupation, kids. Supporting the one-state solution is lowest possible bar for allyship. It's "Free Palestine" not "Free half of Palestine and hope Israel doesn't go right back to killing them".

Edit 10: added The Palestine Directory + Al Jazeera documentary + Addameer. This "100 links per post" thing sucks.

Edit 11: more documentaries and films

Edit 12: reformatted reading list

Edit 13: had to remove @palipunk's masterlist to add another podcast. It's their pinned post and has more resources Palestinian culture and crafts if you want to check it out

Edit 14 6th May '24: I've stopped updating this masterlist so some things, like journalists still left in Gaza and how to support the student protests are missing. I've had to take a step back and am no longer able to track these things down on my own, and I've hit the '100 links per post' limit, but if you can leave suggestions for updates along with links in either the replies or my asks I will try and add them.

Edit 15 10th August: added to Palestinian allies list and reworked the Help for Palestine section. There's been a racist harrassment campaign against the Palestinian Tumblrs that vetted the Gaza fundraisers based off one mistake made by a Gazan who doesn't understand English. If you're an ally, shut that shit down. Even if you donate to a scam GFM, you're only out some coffee money; if everyone stops donating to all the GFMs in fear of scams, those families die.

[blushweddinggowns]

Eddie sighed as he turned to the bartender, “Can I have the cheapest beer you got? But you only let me have one?”

The guy nodded at him, passing one over with a sympathetic smile, “Designated driver?”

“Something like that,” Eddie said, his eyes wandering back to the dance floor. At least the two of them were having fun, giggling and twirling each other around. They were cute together, always were. No one could make Steve smile like Robin could, a fact that Eddie was just going to have to accept.

He sipped his beer as he watched them, smiling to himself a little at how happy they looked. Until someone was tapping on his shoulder. Eddie glanced up, surprised to see a guy standing there. He looked… good. J.Crew-esque with a bright smile.

“You don’t really look like the type to come in here,” He said, taking the bar stool next to him.

Eddie gave him a once over, deciding to be quick about not leading him on. He shrugged,  “I’m not, but the people I love are.”

The guy nodded along, his eyes trailing to the dance floor. Eddie followed the line of it, frowning when he realized he was looking right at Steve. Robin was in the middle of dipping him, both of them laughing. Eddie swallowed as he looked at them, watching the shine of the bright, colorful dance light cross over his face. He looked gorgeous, relaxed and giggly as he went to return the favor to her. Though now that Eddie was looking around he was realized he wasn’t the only one staring.

“Speaking of that,” The guy went on, “What’s the deal with the guy you came in with?”

Eddie’s frown only deepened at the question, “Who, Steve?”

“Is that his name?” The stranger asked, obviously interested. 

At least he had good taste, Eddie had to give him that. Even if the question had his eye twitching, “Yeah, that’s his name.”

"So is he single or is the blonde a permanent fixture?" He asked. 

Eddie snorted, “She’s a permanent fixture, all right. But she’s queer as a three-dollar bill, so not much to worry about there.”

That was the wrong answer if the excited look on his face was any indicator. 

“You know what kind of drink he likes?” He asked, already motioning for the bartender. 

Eddie swallowed, the sick feeling coming back. The worst part is that he could see it. Steve with someone like this. Handsome, self-assured, confident. Actually comfortable in their own skin. He couldn’t help but think they would look good together. 

The thought just wasn’t enough to stop Eddie from blurting, “Of course I do. He’s my boyfriend after all.” 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, why did he just say that? Eddie bit the inside of his cheek at the stupid lie. At how easily it had rolled off his tongue. 

“Oh yeah?” He asked, disappointment coloring his voice. 

Eddie had ample time to correct himself, to say my bad. He’s my best friend. That was a slip of the tongue. To say anything else.  

He doesn’t.

No, not when the anxiety he had firmly nestled in the pit of his stomach finally started to soften. Besides, Eddie liked how disheartened he looked. 

He liked it enough to keep lying his ass off. He took another sip of his beer, feigning casual, “Hard to tell since the two of them have been hanging off each other all night. But yeah, he’s mine.”

He hadn’t expected for those words to feel so good.  

The guy sighed, “Well, good for you man. He’s a looker, I doubt I’m the only one who had my eyes on him.”

“He has that effect on people,” Eddie said, his eyes trailing around the room. Watching every face that was looking Steve’s way. He hated it on them just as much as he did on the stranger next to him. 

Fuck it, he was already in this deep. He might as well keep it going.

“Feel free to spread the word,” Eddie added as the guy stepped away, “It will save me some time.”

“Will do,” He sighed again before walking off, setting his sights on someone else. 

The bartender chuckled as he wandered off, clearly eavesdropping in, “You want me to spread the word too? I’ve already got four guys who are looking to buy him a drink when he gets off the floor.”

Eddie was barely surprised. 

“Spread it like wildfire,” He said easily, his eyes going straight back to Steve.

Part of him had expected some guilt when people started looking his way. Whispering to each other while Eddie glared at anyone who even looked like they wanted to get to Steve. He knew he could cut an intimidating figure when he wanted to. The way he dressed usually did most of the heavy lifting, but he didn’t doubt how harshly his expressions were coming off. It also helped that every last guy who came to saddle up to the bartender to try and get a drink going for Steve walked away disappointed once he pointed a thumb towards Eddie’s direction. It definitely earned him a disproportionate tip, despite the fact the Eddie was internally freaking the fuck out.

He didn’t feel guilty, but he felt… possessive. Offended almost that people didn't just assume he was taken. Something that he didn’t know how to rationalize. But that didn’t stop him from trying. 

from the latest chapter of this fic

[queerwhohatesithere]

alright guys!!! it’s fucking happening! i’m getting bottom surgery!!!

but i need help. please consider helping your local queer trans boy get the dick of his dreams. (or reblogging, that helps loads too)

link to my go fund me: https://gofund.me/8057d839

cashapp: $chamomileflowers

vemno: wisteria_flowers

more about me and my surgery!!!

so my name is chamomile, i’m 21 years old, trans masc, poly, genderfluid. i’ve wanted bottom surgery for YEARS, i had my consult last year, when 2025 seemed ages away. now it’s EIGHT MONTHS. i need help. i’m scrambling to figure out logistics with finances, with flights, with getting my mom or partner to be my caretaker. i’m stressed. but i need this to happen. i should’ve made a go fund me a long time ago, but i was stressed about not knowing the exact amount. dr. chen and safa’s office has been great so far, but one critique i’ve heard is about communication. they seem to think i know more than i do, so i’ve had to ask a lot of follow up questions. as such, they thought i’d known about my date for almost a year, when i just fully realized. they had vaguely said something in march, but i hadn’t noticed a calendar invite they sent me for march 10th, 2025. it looked like just any other invite.

i have cigna insurance, they will cover 20% after i meet my deductible. i don’t know that i can meet that by the time the year turns over.

in all honesty, i probably need a lot more than 50k. but i’m not sure i can even get half of that.

financial factors are: the hospital, procedure, and anesthesia, which cigna should cover. they list covering phalloplasty and i need to ask them specifically about my plan and if getting vagina-preserving phalloplasty is any different. travel costs, so flights/ubers. hotel cost, it might be cheaper than an air bnb and potentially cleaner, cheapest ones i’ve seen still average to about $100 a night. and i have to stay at least four weeks after my surgery. adding to that that i’m asking off work for a month, and i won’t have pto.

so i really need help. if you read all this, i love you, have a great day. please please reblog or share this!! i would really appreciate it! i want this to happen very badly. i’m so excited and i don’t want to have come this far just to fall flat. thank you again

[the-cimmerians]

a storytime story. Not my story, it's my friend's, but she doesn't go here so I'm sharing for her. We'll call her Mara. Mara is a high-femme, lovely queer girl from a wealthy family in the southern US, but when I met her she'd been living in California for many years, chugging through her postgraduate education in Women's Studies. She rarely went home, because being at home was always a bit of a fraught experience: not unendurable (because to most heteronormative casual viewers the radiant queerness of a high-femme is pretty much indistinguishable from a quirky beauty queen waiting for the right football quarterback to sweep her off her feet), but still--not the most fun. Yet every once in a while, Mara would have a fit of 'dutiful daughter'-itis, and go home to mend some fences and keep some peace.

Mara's mother had often asked her to come with her to philanthropic events, but Mara had always said no. On this trip, however, Mara's mother had purchased a full table as an event sponsor, and she cajoled Mara into going with her. For those of you who haven't ever attended such an event, they are all different, and yet terrifyingly all the same (and I say this not as an attendee, but as an event-runner for various nonprofits; an event-runner who, fair warning, hates everything about these events, and this part of nonprofit work). There is some form of lower-calorie food (chicken or fish on greens with a very light citrus-fruit dressing is de rigeur, along with some sort of fruit-based airy parfait served in the smallest and most elegant glasses imaginable for dessert), usually an emcee (occasionally entertaining, but always inoffensive to the assembled guests), sometimes speakers (high-profile or famous women on a local or national level depending on the 'get' of the organization in question, or extremely well-spoken young people or teens for youth-serving organizations--with the youth in question being very carefully coached), and an 'ask'--the fundraising portion of the event, where the wealthy attendees compete with the rest of their friends and enemies in the social scene to be the most gracious and beneficent person in the room.

And there is gossip. So much gossip.

Poor Mara knew enough to expect some of this (mostly due to listening to me complain bitterly about how awful these events are), but there were aspects for which she was completely unprepared. Her mother had filled her sponsorship table with all of her closest friends, and the 'social hour' before the event started in earnest was a haze of white wine and a constant stream of excessively perfumed women dressed in full southern socialite chic, coming by the table to air-kiss cheeks and say how it's been ages since they've seen each other and what a darling ensemble, where on earth did you get it? and who does your hair now?--you must tell me, it's simply scrumptious--you look incredible, we really must do lunch some time soon--

...and the moment the woman or women in question moved on, the table, as a whole, in excited, urgent-whispered voices, would drag the everloving fuck out of every single lady they'd just been gushing over.

"Did you see how botched her last lift was? I hardly recognized her--I'm surprised she recognized me, with her eyes yanked back like that--" "so terrible, but she did go to the cheapest surgeon in town--husband has money troubles, you know--"

"Didn't expect to see her here, but I suppose you have to go somewhere to show off that large a collection of paste jewels--" "oh, stop, you wicked girl! But you're right, of course--and she gives herself such airs, like we don't all know--"

"Poor dear looks exhausted--apparently keeping up with her pool boy isn't easy at her age--" "Can't say that I blame her; that Carlos, have you seen him? Of course, she's hardly his only client. I've been dying for a pool, but my Henry just won't--"

"Quite a plucky little attitude for someone whose husband just left her for his twenty-two year old secretary--" "And after she put him through college and law school--I heard she's not even going to get to keep the house. She really should have sprung for a better lawyer--"

"I can't believe she still thinks she can fit into that dress, with all the weight she's packed on--" "Truly grotesque--just ghastly! Seems like last summer at the fat farm didn't do her as much good as one would have hoped--"

::giggle:: ::giggle:: ::giggle::

Mara was horrified, sitting there with a bland, polite smile frozen on her face, with her white gloves and vintage pillbox hat and charming little clutch bag, her seamed stockings and her kitten heels and her classic red lipstick and pin-curls (because in true unquenchable femme spirit, she had taken this occasion as an opportunity for dress-up, an opportunity for fun and play and sexy whimsy--a Gene-Tierney-does-pin-up-girl kind of vibe), utterly unable to see how to extricate herself from this terrible situation.

Another woman glided away from the table, coyly waving heavily-beringed fingers. "Yes, Darling," Mara's mother said, coyly waving back. "See you soon! Kiss-kiss! Love to Laurent!" She sat down and hissed to the cabal at the table: "Ha! Her husband just gave her an STD."

The woman to Mara's left leaned forward excitedly. "Really? Two-door or four-door?--wait, if it was the latest Aston Martin, I'm going to literally perish of envy--"

And that was the tipping point--Mara fled. Walked until she found a suitably divey coffee shop. Had a coffee and a slice of peach pie, and flirted with a soft Butch waitress until the world seemed less dire.

[king-casino]

Care to commission a queer, disabled artist? Well now's your chance!

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So.... I'm trying to save up for a laptop so that I can do remote jobs. Something that will help me get started with earning my own money. That brings me to my commissions!! I have a whole website which i semi-regularly update with new art. Even the cheapest comm helps. I'll even share my cashapp in case you just want to donate anything, even if it's as simple as $1. If you can't or don't wanna buy or donate, that's totally fine and understand, all I ask is that you consider reblogging this.

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Cashapp: $kingcasino12

Commission website

Feel free to DM me if you want to commission me, or if you have any questions!!!

[angelofbenignmalevolence]

For thunderpride asks: 10 and Havoc + F :) thank youuu!

Thanks for the ask! I'm going to apologize in advance because my ridiculous self can't write a short reply to anything XD XD XD Full answer under the read more because it's a little on the lengthy side.

10) Describe an angsty moment for a favourite queer ship

So this question had me hemming and hawing. But I've decided to go with a ship that I have toyed with in my head but that I have never seen anyone else write (primarily because the characters never interact in the show lol). You're gonna get a little happy story (i'm sorry, I can't help myself and it's gonna be sketchy and unbeta'd) before the angst comes, so bear with me.

So for a little bit of background information, this guy right here:

This gentleman is known by (presumably) his surname. He is only ever referred to as Kinnear. We see him in the episodes Skyhook, Impact, Weather or Not, and Bolt from the Blue. He works for Langstrom Fischler, who we know is a complete and utter idiot. But Kinnear seems smart, working initially as a researcher and later as an engineer. Why would someone with the kind of brain and level head that he seems to have work for someone who has no concept of safety?

Because he doesn't have another option.

Edan Kinnear was happily engaged before everything went sideways. He had met his fiance when he was in college.

He'd just come back from an engineering competition and was riding the high of their team's victory at the competition. The whole team went out for celebratory drinks. Most of the team invited their boyfriends and girlfriends along. Kinnear didn't have one of those, but he was well liked by all of the team and considered a part of the family. They also knew he was horribly shy when it came to the whole dating thing. The whole crowd was loud and rowdy and they all had a few too many drinks. One of his buddies made a bar bet with him, that he had ten minutes to get someone, anyone to buy him a drink, and he would win double if it was accompanied by a kiss.

Kinnear couldn't back out and still keep his head held high. So his shy ass looked around the bar and tried to find the most likely way to win some money. And in the back corner he found someone sitting alone. Not just anyone, though. He found one of the star athletes for their school. Lochlyn Rutherford, if he remembered correctly. One of the handsomest guys in school and one notorious for not entangling himself with romances. He was the only one already separated from the pack though, and Edan needed to not have to shell out the money for a lost bet.

So off to the back corner he went, sitting down at the table across from the athlete, who raised an eyebrow, the only change to his sullen expression.

"Do have a seat, won't you?" he remarked dryly as he took a drink.

"Look, I'm going to cut to the chase. You don't know me-"

"I do, Kinnear." This stopped him in his tracks. Lochlyn Rutherford knew who he was? He shook his head.

"Ok...so...maybe you do know me," he said. "I'm going to cut right to the chase. My buddies at the bar made a bet that I couldn't get someone to buy me a drink in the next ten minutes. If I can't get someone to buy me a drink, I'm out $150 to pay out to all of them."

"And all you need is someone to buy you a drink?" Lochlyn looked skeptical.

"That's all I need. I don't need to go double or nothing," he said. "I just need to not pay $150." He looked over his shoulder slightly to see his entire crew was watching. "Look, if you buy me the drink, I'll give you half the winnings." Lochlyn seemed to consider the offer a moment.

"What's the double or nothing criteria?" he asked. Kinnear's face reddened.

"Er...you'd have to kiss me," Kinnear said. Lochlyn let out a snort but got to his feet.

"What's your drink?" he asked. Kinnear gave a bright smile.

"Whatever the cheapest beer is," he said. He didn't care. He was over the moon that he wasn't going to have to pay up. Lochlyn went over to the bar and grabbed the drinks, setting the beer down in front of Kinnear. He looked up to tell him thank you when he felt Lochlyn's lips against his own, his hand coming down on the chair behind him as he gave Kinnear the soundest kiss he had ever received in his life. When he moved back, Kinnear's eyes were wide and he struggled for a response.

"I like the sound of $150 better than $75."

And that was how Kinnear had met his fiance. They'd graduated and Lochlyn had gone into the military, using his smarts as well as his strength to become one of the best engineers in his unit. They'd been together four years before Lochlyn had proposed. They were engaged another three years before things fell apart.

They told him it had been an accident. That something horrible had happened but, so sorry, military personnel and all. The project was highly classified. Something had gone horribly wrong and Lochlyn wasn't going to be coming home. They told him that his body hadn't been found after the accident. That there would be nothing for him to bury.

Kinnear was devastated. On top of it all, his brother and his wife were involved in a car wreck and neither one had made it out alive. He had lost his fiance, his brother, and his sister in law. He was a grieving man and he was all of a sudden the guardian of his young niece. He had to do something for money. He couldn't let his brother down. So he took the highest paying job he could find that he met the qualifications for: researcher and engineering personnel for Langstrom Fischler, a man who had more money than he knew what to do with.

The money allowed him to live comfortably and to take care of his niece so she wanted for nothing. His holiday bonus even ensured he could give his fiance a nice funeral. Kinnear had been the only person left in Lochlyn's life after he left his family and never looked back. So he had a headstone erected in the cemetery nearest where they had been living together.

Here Lies Lochlyn Rutherford Loving Fiance, A beacon of a brighter future "The Mechanic"

F) At what age do they figure out their identity?

So my thoughts on Havoc's sexuality are colored a little bit by several of the headcanons that concurrently run rampant through my brain. And I think the one I settle on most often for her is a little on the darker side (nothing too dark, but a little on the cynical side).

I think that Havoc figures out her identity long before she finds the words to label it. Havoc comes from want. She wants more than she has. She wants food on her plate, enough to satiate the hunger for more that burns inside of her. She wants her technology, enough for her to ensure no one can take from her what is hers. She wants safety, a safe place to rest her head, to feel protected, to allow her to protect others. These are what Havoc desires above all else.

For her, the sex was always more about what it got her in return: shelter, an advantage, an experience. She never did anything she wasn't comfortable with, and she was strong enough to make sure that anyone that tried anything she didn't want didn't make the mistake of doing it a second time.

She always thought that the fact that she didn't care about what was in someone's pants made her bi- or pan-sexual, and that's what she told people because the reality was a bit more complicated than that. Sexuality is intrinsically connected to the attraction one feels, but for her, sex was never about the attraction. Men, women, non-binary, genderfluid, none of it meant anything to her. She learned from living a life of not enough that sometimes sex, it's just a means to an end. She's never cruel about it, but she isn't one to form attachments like that. Feelings don't come easy for her.

But oh, when she does find those feelings, when she finds a deep connection with someone and learns about every little part of them, the dark secrets and the brightest joys, the sound of their laugh and the taste of their sadness, that's when she blossoms. She finds the attraction that lacked in her previous sexual relationships. She finds the most fragile parts in her person to be the most beautiful and she wants more than anything to be let in to those fragile parts of her partner. She finds her attraction in the deep, emotional connection to her partner. And it's much later, long after she discovers this, that she learns the word "demisexual" and decides this fits her quite nicely.

So the tl;dr is I don't think she figures out her identity until into her late twenties or thirties.

--

Thank you for putting up with this super long reply! Hope this answered your question!

If there are other questions you want to see answered, take a look at the question list linked below and I would love to answer more!

[girldragongizzard]

Chapter 12: Nightmare

I remember that Wentin doesn’t feed on fear. It feeds on agreement. Specifically, agreement with it.

And the cheapest, easiest way it can get a bone deep agreement with someone is by terrifying and chasing them in a dream. They agree it’s scary and agree to run from it, and it agrees to chase them.

But other agreements work.

So, it’s not just going to be in the place I fear most, as it told me it would be. It’s going to be there when I agree that I need to see it.

But I don’t want to see Wentin for more training. Though I could probably use that. I don’t particularly like its form of training, and I’m not looking to get better at doing things myself. I’ve got plenty of time to learn new things.

I want to find Ptarmigan.

And I suspect that the local pre-eminent primordial nightmare can maybe help me get a line on the whereabouts of the Artist of Nightmares.

So what I need to figure out is where the place that I fear the most is, so I can go there and call it out.

And do I actually need to go there? Or just induce a dream about it?

And then, do I need to agree to more training for it to show up? Or can it agree with me about something else?

The fact that it feeds on agreement is really unnerving to me, by the way. There’s something extra predatory about that.

I sit alone on my roof in the middle of the day just thinking about this. Puzzling over it.

I wonder.

Is there a fear that I’ve been avoiding thinking about all this time?

Every time I’ve faced a challenge and tackled it like the dragon I think I am, without taking the time to really think about it, have I been just following my instincts? Or have I been avoiding something?

I think I’m asking myself this question because I know there’s an answer to it.

What have I been avoiding?

—

In my memories, I only have my true name now, Meghan Estragon Draconis. In my memories, it’s what my parents, my teachers, my friends, and my assailants have always called me.

The only time my deadname enters my life anymore is when some bureaucratic hiccup or a person who hasn’t been updated brings it up. And then it’s gone from my memory moments later.

Wow, my family reunions are going to be really interesting now.

—

“Hey, Meghan, you fucking queer,” Jessie spits at me, leaning into my face.

I reach up to wipe his spittle from my cheek and chin, but he grabs my hand and throws it away from me and down, my arm swinging to hit my own thigh.

“When are you gonna learn to stop existing?” he sneers. “How am I gonna teach that to you, huh? When you’re so fucking dense?”

The others laugh and cackle.

I don’t remember their names. I barely even recognize their faces. I just know I see them with Jessie wherever he goes. And I know Jessie because he’s the one who comes at me first. He’s always the one to lead the attacks. He makes sure he’s known.

In my head, I’m tearing them all apart right now. Blood everywhere. Entrails hanging from the lamps that dot the awning posts all around the school campus. Dragging bits of bodies up to the roof to be consumed so that they can bother nobody else again. An example to others. Food.

It’s such an idle daydream. Soothing because it can never be real, and the consequences will never happen. So I can visualize it with impunity.

If I was actually a dragon and did that, I’d be hunted down so fast. In order to avoid death by gunshot, trap, or any number of other things the authorities of the humans would have in store for a man-eating animal like me, I have to play a game of escalation, imagining tougher armor, a larger and larger size, sharper claws, hotter fire. And it gets ridiculous fast.

It’s best to acknowledge this is fantasy and just roll with it, and let it happen in my head so I can relax and take whatever blows are coming my way.

In the end, with every encounter like this, I become a martyr for a cause that nobody else knows or cares about. Me. And I endure it.

I squint.

It’s kind of weird and nasty that a group of boys is picking on a girl like this in broad daylight, right before school.

Isn’t there some kind of code about that? Where the girls pick on the girls, and the boys pick on the boys?

And then my gut explodes with the bruised ache of being impacted with a fist, and I double over.

—

I know now that girls sometimes do get ganged up on by boys, and the worst can happen, and the consequences of that are often infuriatingly light, if existent at all. But back then we had our illusions. Our ignorance.

But my memories are changing, too. Not just my name, but what I am.

Is that, like my headlong dive into fighting back as a dragon, part of avoiding my greatest fear?

I find myself asking, am I afraid that I’m fake? That I’m not really what I say I am? Or am I more afraid that it doesn’t actually matter what I am, they’re still going to come after me anyway?

And if it doesn’t matter what I actually am, if they treat me like I’m something I’m not and never have been, then am I effectively that thing anyway?

I’m not a man. I know I’m not. I have physiological and metaphysical proof of that now.

But I am, definitely, I think, acting like I’m afraid I’ll still be seen as one.

Because, if I’m not a man, but I’m treated like one, what’s the difference?

I don’t have the offending anatomy anymore. Despite the bullying, the presence of that part of my body actually always hurt me more.

But thinking about all this gives me memories of it, and I feel sick to my pelvis and my stomach, as if I’ve been kicked in both places.

I feel human, and weak.

Just from the memories.

And I’m rumbling in defiance of it.

I think.

I want to be seen as a person so that I have the rights and joys of a person. But I don’t want to be seen as a person, because then I can be hurt as a person by other people who don’t respect those rights.

And on this planet, person is also synonymous with human. And I was never human. I was just mistaken for one.

I’m afraid of being seen as human, of maybe really actually being human, because it means I have the responsibilities of being human. And so I follow my draconic instincts.

I think I’ve done a pretty good job of pulling back on that reflex most of the time.

But there it is.

I can try to pull that fear apart later, address it when I have the time, safety, and energy to address it, and unpack all the bullshit that’s wrapped up in it. Maybe in a counseling session or two.

Right now, though, I need to pinpoint the location, the place where that fear resides the most.

What place represents it?

What place triggers it?

What place contains all the tells and signals and feedback that informs me of how I’m seen and how I’m going to be treated?

The human face.

When I realize that, I feel like my gizzard ties itself into a knot, and I know I’m right.

—

I’m four again.

My mom has been showing me pictures of her family, including baby pictures of her and her siblings. And she’s been pointing out how their features all look so similar, and where they look different. She’s been trying to teach me something about heredity and just how to recognize people we know.

“What do I look like?” I ask.

“Why don’t you go into the bathroom and look in the mirror?” she suggests.

“The mirror?” I ask.

“Yeah. You know, the mirror. It shows your reflection, so you can see yourself. You’ve used it before, silly,” she says.

I don’t remember it, actually. But it sounds pretty fun! If I can see myself in the mirror, that would be really neat.

So, I get up and run to the bathroom, and Mom follows and helps me with the stool so I can get up on it and see more clearly over the counter.

But what I see in the mirror is the monster that chases me in my dreams, and I scream.

—

“It is just so droll, Meghan,” Wentin screeches. “It’s delightful how you got here anyway, despite being so off.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Remember that dream I had where I could talk to the world’s dragons without words? I'm doing that now with Wentin.

We’re in my parents’ old bathroom, just the two of us, with its big wall sized mirror, guacamole green porcelain fixtures, and strange tiny floral print wallpaper. And I’m not a small child. I’m my grown self, as I am today. And Wentin is still in the mirror, instead of my own reflection.

I think I must have fallen asleep and in the midst of the nightmare I’ve taken control and made it lucid. Or Wentin did.

In any case, I’m calm and collected now. I feel determined. Probably because this is what I set out to do.

“It’s not the face or the mirror you fear the most, Darling,” it says. “It’s your own memories. Where we are right now. You came here to test your mirror theory and it worked anyway. I love it!”

“Oh, OK,” I say, genuinely not really caring at this point. I think Wentin is splitting hairs needlessly. But I’m here on my own business. “I need your help.”

“You're not going to question this?” it looks hurt and incredulous.

“I don't actually care about what I fear right now,” I tell it, puffing myself up. “That’s just the hoop you required for me to meet with you. And now I'm here, and paying attention to you, I don't need to think about that anymore. I need you to help me.”

“In what way?” it asks.

“Can you locate Ptarmigan? Or get her to come to us somehow?”

“Oh, I don’t think I can do that,” it replies.

“Could you try? I’m at a loss.”

“I cooouuulddd…” it says. “But I think I would need something in return, such as another training session with you.”

I sigh,”Don’t you feed on agreement? Couldn’t you just agree to help me?”

“You have it backward,” it groans. “Me agreeing with you would be like reversing the polarity. Energy would flow from me to you. You have to agree with me, in order for me to feed.”

“So, you really are predatory,” I exclaim.

“Of course I am! How could I be anything else? My dear Meghan, what do I even look like to you?” Wentin croons. “And you’ve known me for how long? How many hunts have we had? I feel disappointed.”

“I don’t think I’m OK with you,” I find myself stating.

“I’ve never asked you to be.”

“That’s… not reassuring.”

“Oh, come now. Have I not taught you well? Do you not have the reflexes you’ve needed to survive? Are you not currently free of Säure’s stomach acids? Or have I become mistaken as we speak?”

“Don’t do that.” I feel almost like I’m a different person when my thoughts are unimpeded by the need to try to remember English, and then to type it. I feel like I’m in more control, and it’s easier for my impatience with Wentin to express itself. “What are you trying to do by saying that?”

“I’d like to make you run, to flee,” it answers. “Agree to flee and we may yet find your Ptarmigan.”

I huff and sit down on my haunches. And then I lift my left foreclaw and nibble at it, pretending to remove remaining flecks of my last shed.

“You are no fun.”

“Wentin,” I say, looking back up at it. “Can we make a different agreement this time? Please?”

“I’ve just told you that I cannot work that way,” it says. “It is a matter of my own survival.”

The more that I listen to it, the less sympathy I have for this thing, even if it did drive me to realize some important things about myself. Even if it did attack Säure. And when I think back on the roles it’s played in my life, from my childhood nightmares to the early shenanigans and doubts about my Discord server and the network I was building there, I am seeing it as nothing but a force of chaos driven by its own hunger.

What’s the difference between feeding on coerced agreement and feeding on fear? In practicality, it’s the same thing.

Should I even bargain with Wentin, as I was prepared to do? To aim it at Säure again? 

Because that is really what I was intending here. I was going to tell Wentin that it could afford a small loss by agreeing with me in order to set up Säure for a long string of recurring nightmares it could milk for ages.

And even though Säure personally hasn’t done me all that much harm, I could write an entire book about why he still deserves it. Why it would be just a tiny portion of the coercion his weight as a billionaire has imposed on the world. Heck, even just locally. And I’m not even the most well equipped person to write that. I’m pretty sure there’s an independent library full of books covering that theory and history on the corner of Maple and Terrace, right here in Fairport.

But do I really want to be the one that wields this weapon?

I feel like in my journaling, I really haven’t made the case for it. Or even for fighting the enemy I’m facing. I feel like I’ve been leaning on the case of self defense, preventative measures, icky feelings, slim evidence that he’s a white supremacist, and just the fact that he’s a billionaire.

And, when I originally set out to find Ptarmigan to get her help, I really wasn’t anticipating that I’d be mulling the ethics of doing business with Wentin. But here I am.

I’m tempted, but repulsed while sitting in the clarity of just having turned a nightmare into something lucid.

Then I have a weird thought. An impulse turned into an idea. And it’s so compelling to me that I can’t help but lean well into it.

“Wentin,” I say.

“Yes?” it squeals with eager anticipation.

“Run,” I tell it.

“What?”

I rise up and put my claws on the bathroom countertop and then sink them into the formica and wood, letting the materials creak with the slow increase in pressure I apply. And I lean forward and open my mouth, breathing into my fire sacks as I lean toward the mirror, both eyes locked on Wentin’s.

“You’re a kind of bullshit,” say. “And as Rhoda’s queen I have been imbued with the power to be done with bullshit. Run.”

It backs up a couple of short steps, head turned slightly sideways, “You can’t do this.”

“Yes I can. You’ve scared me into lucidity, and now I’m in control,” I tell it.

“You are.”

“Run.”

“Run?”

“Flee.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I will roast you and eat you in pieces.”

And it bolts.

And that’s when the hunt begins, with the shattering of glass and the creaking of the sudden dark woods of my old nightmares that begin to surround us.

Wentin’s tufted tail dances just before my nose as I huff and gallop through the snow and mud, jaw cracked open to catch the air as I run through it.

—

Maybe I ultimately failed at my goal to avoid using coercion in my quest to quell Säure.

By instilling terror into Wentin and chasing it, I’ve only turned things around, and done what it’s been doing to me.

But it feels right.

And I’m pretty sure it’s going to get the attention of Ptarmigan, with a nightmare experiencing a nightmare.

Not that there’ve never been other people to do this with nightmares turned lucid. I’m sure it’s an ancient tradition, older than civilization. Wentin’s probably experienced this before, itself. It sure does know how to flee.

But for a while I was the center of Ptarmigan’s attention, being the original focal point of Rhoda’s storm. And I’m wagering that maybe I still have at least some of it.

—

Wentin knows what I’m doing, and it’s been through this before on both sides. It knows how to turn this around. It even cheered me when I turned it around the last time.

But it keeps running. Effortless running through the black trunks of the winter forest, its tail always just out of reach.

It told me that I need to agree with it, but it keeps running.

The chase goes on, and it’s not working.

Ptarmigan is nowhere to be seen.

I’m beginning to question myself and what I’m doing, and I guess I slow down to do it.

Wentin gets further and further away.

And when I notice this, I stop. I actually feel kind of tired, despite the fact that it’s a dream under my control.

I’m not really sure what I should do, and I’m considering waking up, when Wentin stops itself and turns to look at me.

It’s panting.

Its open mouth and showing of teeth is a threat and a challenge, but its relaxed posture and moderately sized pupils tell me it is comfortable where it is and with our relationship. The panting is for its breath, mostly. Heat regulation and oxygen intake, if that even matters in this dream world.

And then, when it sees me watching, its eyes dilate and its mouth closes for a moment. And then it’s bowing. Shoulders down, haunches high, forelegs out front, it yips and bounces. First to its left, then to its right, like a dog excited to catch a ball.

“Chase me!” it calls without sound, and then bounces a few steps further away.

Then it scampers forward and repeats the dance.

The yip becomes a bark and a whine.

I get it.

Now if I chase it, I’m agreeing with it, and it gets what it needs. And then, whatever it does, whether it keeps running, or drops to the ground in resignation and exhaustion, or turns to fight me, if I react accordingly, I am still agreeing with it.

And I could ignore it. I could refuse. I could turn it around again somehow, do the opposite of what it’s asking of me. But I’ve already done that.

This could go on forever, back and forth.

I could just wake up and be done with this dream. But then, later, when I fall asleep or delve into my memories to look at my old face again, Wentin could be waiting for me to start this all over. It also knows how to find me in the waking world. A lot of people do.

There’s no real end to it. There never was. We’ve always been chasing each other.

But this time, it has offered me a bargain.

If I agree with it today, it will try to lead me to Ptarmigan.

I imitate its bow, like a playful wolf reciprocating, and it jerks and twitches and jumps away.

And we’re off again, flying through the woods, propelled by claws in the snow.

And Wentin’s spooky whistling fills the air with glee.

[wirewitchviolet]

All the seriously queer stuff in the back half of Sailor Moon

In case it wasn't obvious when I released a little mini-RPG a few months ago where you basically play as the villains, I've been gradually making my way through the entire run of Sailor Moon for the past year or so. Specifically I'm watching the 2014 Viz dub that covers all 200 episodes, trying to be as faithful as they can with it. It's been a really interesting experience, since I absolutely watched the old DiC dub back in the day, saw a fansub of one of the movies around the same time, and heard plenty of things about the missing seasons (particularly the infamous "cousins" thing from the Cloverway dub) over the years, and now I have all the context. And the context gets really shockingly overtly queer, turns out!

So first, let's just all get on the same page with the English language localizations of Sailor Moon over the years. Back in the 90s, Sailor Moon aired… well everywhere, with the English language version being a dub from DiC, which I will go to my grave defending as probably the best dub of anything I can think of. Fantastic casting all around, changes to the soundtrack that were actually for the better (keeping all the melodies but recording new versions that… aren't optimized to sound show-perfect when recreated by the cheapest sound generators one can shove in a toy, plus some original songs shoved into a few episodes). They did make some edits/cuts, but pretty minor ones, especially compared to the complete reworkings most anime of the era went through when coming to American TV, and I'm still not used to Luna not being prissy and British here.

That dub only lasted up through the second season. Past that, there was a dub of seasons 3 and 4 from Cloverway, which had some really questionable performances, and is where the infamous "they're cousins" bit came in. This also aired on TV in some places, but didn't have nearly the same omnipresent distribution as the DiC seasons (… and now I'm feeling old as I ponder whether to explain how local TV affiliates did their own thing back in the broadcast days). Then in the early 2000s there was a DVD release from Pioneer with cut/uncut versions of everything, apparently, which may or may not have recycled those dubs. I don't really have the energy to track that down, specifically. Anyway all the rights expired, gathered dust forever, then Viz picked it up and did this new faithful localization, and it took me about a decade to spot it on a streaming service.

So we've got 5 seasons, 200 episodes total, and a hell of a lot of formulaic structuring here. Every season (or half a season) we've got some main villain with an evil plan we may or may not get any details on, and some small number of underlings who then take their 5-10 episode long turns pursuing their goal in a way that inevitably generates monsters of the week, and meanwhile every season we have another conflict on the good guy side where someone is trying to locate some special person and ignoring the 50 or so obvious signs which main cast member it is while the audience gets frustrated. Oh and each individual episode has the same rigid structure of everyone getting caught up in some wacky teen trend, then there's a monster, they transform and fight a bit to no real end, then Sailor Moon gets around to using a finisher because that's literally the only thing actually capable of ending a fight. Honestly it's less "formulaic TV writing" and more like some sort of daily meditation. No way in hell I'd be able to sit through all of it if I had to look at the screen the whole time. This is background viewing while I work. Oh and I'm assuming everyone has at least enough passing familiarity to understand that if I say the name of a planet I'm talking about a teenage girl who's the reincarnation of some sorta magical girl/sentai squad member.

Season 1 has pretty gay vibes in places, but MOSTLY there's plausible deniability for all of it. We spend about half the season just establishing the characters of Moon Mercury and Mars, then quickly bringing in Jupiter and playing it up like a big shocking reveal for Venus. There's also a bunch of relationship drama between Moon, Tuxedo Mask, and the guy who runs the local arcade that she has a crush on and spends a while thinking is actually Tuxedo Mask instead of his actual identity of uh… a college-aged guy we're saying is the destined love interest of this 14-year old girl he's frankly pretty abusive towards. So, a lot of straight nonsense there. Meanwhile the evil queen's got these 4 generals, two of them are plainly dating, and no matter how you slice it, that's pretty overtly queer, but there's a valid argument to have over how we actually should slice it.

I was aware at the time that the DiC dub just ran with Zoicite here being a woman, making this a straight relationship, and I kinda figured they did a bit of tweaking and editing to hide that this was actually one of those bishonen types who were popular at the time who happened to be gay. Honestly though, watching it through a modern lens, it is REALLY hard to not just see a woman here, even when we're throwing he/him pronouns around. Like, if I'm handling a new dub, I'm just going to say Zoicite is a trans girl, who I'm at least headcanoning as being out for years, on HRT, and at that point where she can put on a suit designed for a man and nah that's a woman wearing a suit. Kinda just wraps around and makes me appreciate the old dub's handling more than the new one.

Season 2 (or R) doesn't really give us anything to work with, if I'm honest. There's probably some gals-being-pals energy amongst the main cast here and there. That's kind of always low-key present, especially with Jupiter, who has the whole big tough girl who wears long skirts thing sorta gay energy, and I want to say she ends up going to a dance with Mercury somewhere early on because one of them can't find a date otherwise.

But, we've got this filler arc with two dark elves in a tree who just kinda both hit on everyone of the opposite gender while the main cast sits in a holding pattern, then we get a proper villain squad not really getting enough spotlight time to have much of anything going on, and this whole weird thing where Moon and Mask's annoying toddler comes back from the future to… brainwash Moon's parents into thinking she's their daughter, and then she gets turned into an evil adult, and there's this whole bit about her having some sort of grim reaper/time guardian as a nanny (this is Pluto, the outer planets really have different things going on)… but again, mostly straight/cis flavored nonsense.

Then suddenly here comes season 3 (or S, pronounced "Super" which makes things real confusing), from a director who would later go on to create Utena, and in addition to just being the single best season of the series for a number of other reasons, everyone is canonically into girls now! It's shockingly overt about establishing that too, and reiterating the point several times.

It all gets started with Uranus and Neptune showing up. We kind of have this three faction conflict this season, where there's a proper main villain and squad of monster making minions, but then there's also this overtly queer power couple whose goal is basically to check out the "pure hearts" monsters of the week keep ripping out of people because they need to check them for these three macguffins they need to… reform the holy grail of all things to give to their leader they're too oblivious to know is actually Moon.

More importantly though, aside from making it abundantly clear that these two are banging every night, they have this very open relationship where Neptune is more than cool with Uranus hooking up with any given girl she's inclined to, and/or grabbing gals for threeways. And like, this isn't me taking a broad interpretation of things, it's weird how directly they just come out and say this. The other thing we have going on is that Uranus is just, like, the butchest of the butch.

Literally everyone just assumes she's a guy when they first meet, and quite a few people go into serious denial when corrected on the matter. And she kinda tends to react to all the misgendering with the sort of bemused nonchalance that makes it pretty easy to read her as actually being nonbinary. I swear there's an episode where she clarifies she's not a guy with that particular sort of emphasis suggesting that doesn't necessarily narrow things down to just "girl," too. And apparently Crystal actually DOES bite the bullet and flat out state she's nonbinary (or at least "both male and female"). That's cool, but there is no way in hell I'm going to sit through Crystal.

Anyway, point is, everybody wants to hook up with Uranus. Everyone. There's a whole episode where the power couple straight up takes Jupiter out on a date, the rest start gossiping about her being out on a date with two girls, everyone starts off shocked, then someone clarifies who it's with and everyone's like "oh, well yeah then I'd take them up on that too," with a little extra push back from Mars before she gets called out as trying to stay in the closet when she's clearly got a stash of photos of hot girls in suits.

This of course really makes me wonder about that Cloverleaf dub and why they went with that whole "cousins" thing to avoid addressing the overt queerness here, instead of taking the same approach DiC did of just making Uranus a guy. This would technically introduce the problem of having a guy in a miniskirt for fight scenes, but, eh, that'd be easier to edit around than you'd think. Uranus generally enters a fight scene pre-transformed firing an attack off from offscreen, arguing with the core cast a little, and leaving. Attacks are stock animation you can drop in anywhere, so that much is easy enough to chop out or replace with Neptune's attack. I don't know how one would even begin to cut around all the overt gay stuff though.

Nothing especially queer going on with the evil side of things. The villains are kind of amazing but too career oriented for relationships. I guess just for the sake of giving full context for the seasons most people haven't seen and fill in the obvious hole in the roster I can mention the eventual deal that the little goth girl Chibi-Usa spends the season hanging out with turns out to be the main villain's daughter, Sailor Saturn, and kind of the antichrist? Like I said, the outer planets aren't just cast expansions, they really have their own stuff going on. She also dies and reincarnates, doing so the long way where she sits the next season out being just a baby, which once again begs the question of whether when everyone dies at the end of the first season they just kinda magically come back to life with missing memories just as a temporary thing for a filler arc to play with or they really dd all reincarnate and have new families a decade and change later. Weird that that never got firmly pinned down.

Anyway though season 4 (AKA Super S, which is pronounced "Supers" and now you see why I prefer just numbers)… sucks and you should skip it. No sense of stakes, no real character work, non-threatening villain, shockingly dull monster designs, no outer planets, an ending that just drags on for what feels like forever and has no payoff. The only things it has in its favor are the inherent absurdity that people are wondering if Chibi-Usa is like full-on dating Pegasus (yes, the horse) and Fish's Eye.

So we have two different miniboss squads this season, the latter of which is a quartet of permanent-child acrobats working for the impressively titled if boring in practice Dead Moon Circus, preceded by three animals-turned-into-humans-by-a-witch with a weird What-you-originally-were's Eye naming scheme. Two of them are just dull slutty guys, but Fish's Eye is plainly and overtly a trans woman, and gets something of an arc about being willing to give up her own humanity for the greater good. It's a shame she's stuck in the practically unwatchable season, but at least she's on the REALLY short list of major villains who gets to have a happy ending. Usually even when someone has a nice redemption arc with the power of love and friendship they still get bumped off by another villain.

Different localizations have done different things with her. Some go "crossdressing gay guy" some just say she's a woman and leave her transness out of it. The 2014 localizaton is pretty unambiguous about though, so, that's really nice. Casting could be better, but still.

Then finally we come to season 5 (Sailor Stars), which I think is even more queer than season 3 was, which is really saying something, and was also directed by someone who would go on to helm another girly show with a serious case of The Genders, Ouran High School Host Club. Structurally it's a bit weird, because the first few episodes are just straight up taking a mulligan on the terrible finale of season 4, this time with the outers in (Saturn hyper-ages back to her standard 10 or whatever and gets a bunch of inexplicable knowledge and memories which is cool but never really paid off), the main villain doing something, and as a shocking rarity for the series, this whole mini-arc where characters are broken into pairs of one inner one outer and get to bounce off each other in a way the series frustratingly usually never does.

More importantly though, at least for this post's purposes, basically the first scene of the season is Uranus and Neptune having a flirty exchange ending with something along the lines of "let's save the pillow talk for when we're actually in bed together later tonight," which sort of sets the tone for just how blatantly these two are talking about their extremely active sex life in no uncertain terms, out in public. Some of the other characters are a bit weirded out by their complete lack of filter, but hey whatever.

The real proper start of the season though has our core cast finally starting high school, once again reminding us that everyone is at LEAST 4 years younger than everything about their designs, interests, and handling of responsibilities would indicate. This also reminds us how deeply creepy the Moon/Tuxedo Mask relationship is, but fortunately he hops a plain to America and is straight up out this season, and as an added bonus Chibi-Moon finally goes back to the future. Before you get too excited she IS shortly replaced with an even younger, barely verbal new mystery gremlin called Chibi-Chibi whose existence nobody can account for, but at least she's actually cute and not akin to the baby from Dinosaurs. More importantly though, as the girls enter high school they end up in a class with the titular Sailor Stars, AKA The Three Lights, AKA Fighter Maker and Healer, a popular boy band who are also a new mysterious set of Sailors with what I assume are intentionally quite confusing gender shenanigans in play.

Normally, they are hot lanky boys, boastful about their masculinity to the point of it bordering on misogyny, but also super super femme, with earings, hair down to their ankles, and very noticeably female VAs in both Japanese and English. Then when there's a fight they're very plainly hot lanky girls in bikinis and one of them has an attack shouting "Star Gentle Uterus!" before hitting a monster with a glob of liquid to a disgusted reaction. And their transformation sequences (and bikinis, and some shirtless scenes) make it absolutely crystal clear that yeah there is some magical reconfiguring of their bodies when making the switch. The show pointedly avoids elaborating on what the deal is past that in terms of which they form they started with/feel more comfortable in/why they switch it up/etc. which would normally frustrate me as one of those Schroedinger's Queer Rep situations, but I very much get the impression that we're going for intentional confusion and ambiguity in service to a general message that if you're into someone you shouldn't have hangups about their gender or what it says about your own sexuality and just kind of accept your feelings and them as a person and I am pretty OK with that.

The cast is too. Mercury Mars Jupiter Venus and for good measure Luna all kinda spent the entire season fixating on how to hook up with any/all of The Three Lights, meanwhile at basically any moment there isn't a fight scene or some plot exposition happening, Fighter is VERY ACTIVELY pursuing Moon in a sexual fashion, with pretty overtly stated tension before damn near every commercial break over whether this is going to be the scene where Sailor Moon gets absolutely railed by this maybe-genderfluid pop star from another world. And I have to just say as a brief aside that while we obviously never go there, I kinda wish we did? Tuxedo Mask is WAY too old to be dating someone Moon's age, even if we do the thing where we just add 4 to everyone's stated age. Plus he kinda treats her like absolute garbage for the whole show, and even when they're in a more wholesome mode the whole thing feels toxic and messed up. Meanwhile Fighter here is literally the same age, clearly into her, and beyond the one character flaw, an actual decent person. Though again, really damn forward. Still beats the hell out of the guy in college dating a middle schooler, and kinda flirting with his own prepubescent future-daughter.

There's also this huge confrontational thing between Fighter and Uranus, where it's slightly unclear if Uranus is being protective of Moon, violently jealous because Neptune is totally and surprisingly overtly open to hooking up with anyone from this boy band too, or just kinda trying to defend her position as the hot androgynous badass who swept into town with the intent of hooking up with every girl in the zip code eventually. Meanwhile Fighter thinks Uranus is a kind of toxic macho dude and really questions the whole "she's not a guy" thing, which is, you know, interesting. Pluto never really weighs in on this because… Pluto kinda lives outside of time and space and has maybe 8 minutes of real screen time in the entirety of the show.

Past that, we've got a bunch of other gay stuff too! We're back to cranking the general queer energy of the core cast up past the point of plausible deniability with regards to each other and a random girl trying to pass along a love letter with some confusion as to who it's for. It also bears mention that when the full deal of the new characters and their gender flipping comes to light, Jupiter makes an active point of making it clear that she is still 100% down and like, hey, I already knew you were the least conflicted of the bunch about how bi you all are, but I appreciate the active refutation of transphobia is still cool. We've got an honestly adorable pair of villains where one is frankly such a bimbo she's completely incapable of doing the evil general thing on her own or preparing her own food, and her hyper-competent girlfriend helping her out while also having to come up with cover stories because they're supposed to be pitted against each other. They'd definitely get a nice happy ending in one of the even numbered seasons, especially once it's made clear that they're very much being coerced into the evil stuff/taking things down from the inside, but… yeah this season ends up going super dark.

I don't want to totally get into how absolutely pitch dark the big 8-part series finale gets and spoil the hell out of it since if it wasn't clear, the odd numbered seasons are all really good stuff you should watch on your own, plus this one has a bunch of genuine twists, but I have to get into some of it in my mission of explaining how gay it all is. Consider yourself warned.

As happens kind of a lot in Sailor Moon finales, the bulk of the season 1 cast gets killed off once the main villain steps in to start getting her hands dirty, but here it's early enough on in the arc for Moon to really process it and give it the weight that maybe it'll actually stick this time. In particular of course she's worked up about Tuxedo Mask turning out to have died off camera at the start of the season (the impression to that point being that he's too distracted with a trip to America to check his messages or maybe just straight up ghosted her), but then almost as broken up over losing Mars, because yeah, those two in particular actually end up with a surprising amount of low key romantic tension between them by the end of things.

Then once it's time to get the outer planets off the table, all four of them end up in a no-win situation against the villain, who does that villain thing of of offering them a choice of just being killed and having their souls ripped out to be made into new stars (this is kind of her whole thing, see), OR if anyone's up for it, they can switch sides, still get their souls ripped out to be made into stars, but given funky magic bracelets that allow them to stay alive, just, you know, corrupted by evil and acting as her new villain squad. It's actually established right before the last one gets vaporized that all her original henchgals are in fact the Sailors of other planets she forced into the same deal just before the last one gets vaporized for failure, making it that much tragic in retrospect that the cute competence-disparity couple didn't make it.

Anyway, Uranus and Neptune actually take the deal. Like, zero hesitation. Part of it is eventually explained as Uranus having enough faith that she's too into her girlfriend to be fully corrupted and might get a chance to sucker punch the villain with her own soul extractors (which she IS it just doesn't work), and failing that Moon'll probably swing some kinda deus machina (which is an admittedly safe bet, honestly). But another part of it really is just "yeah screw it, if I still get to be with my girlfriend I'll take being evil over being dead" and they really do go through with it and promptly murder their oldest friend and a very young girl. Don't let anyone tell you Sailor Moon is one of those power of love and friendship always triumphs sorta shows. I don't know that the power of love and friendship even ties the scoreboard if we tally things up over the whole series. Oh and the final final final showdown has a nude Sailor Moon with angel wings just trying to hug it out with the main villain, which I guess could also maybe be read as a bit queer.

So yeah. Sailor Moon. When you don't have a puritanical edit, it's queer as hell. Everyone's bi or non-binary-and-sapphic. Several different flavors of trans rep. Goes out on a note of not getting hung up on gender. All of this in a roughly 30 year old series now, aimed at young impressionable girls. … actually for that matter it's also a show aimed at girls with really powerfully horny monster girl designs all over the place. Possibly relevant.

Oh yeah, and maybe consider throwing me some money via Patreon? I can't actually cover next month's rent as things stand.

[the-cunt-of-montecristo]

I'm Italian, white, holder of an European Union passport. My wife is a mixed-ethnicity Brazilian, holder of a Brazilian passport.

The first time I met her I flew to Brazil with Delta Air Lines. I paid a 14 dollars fee for an ESTA visa, even if all I would do on USAmerican soil would be spending 6 hours inside an airport waiting for my connection. The tickets were the cheapest I've paid for out of my 4 flights between our countries.

When my wife came to Italy, she couldn't fly Delta, because the ESTA visa isn't available to LatAm citizens. She would have had to submit a visa request, for a non-refundable fee of 160 USAmerican dollars, with no guarantee of result. She flew with a different company, for a higher price (in USA dollars) than I had paid, despite my currency being significantly stronger than hers.

I can't make the maths of how much more expensive the exact same travel route has been for my wife, but I think you get the idea.

When I travelled to Brazil, all I had was a passport and a plane ticket. When my wife travelled to Italy, she needed a signed letter of invitation and a bank document that legally vinculated me to providing financially for her.

Both times I entered Brazil I was cheerfully greeted, had my passport stamped, and within 30 seconds I was allowed on national soil without so much as a question about the purpose of my visit; when my wife first entered Italy, she was stopped by unidentified airport staff, had her luggage and personal purse emptied and checked, was asked the purpose of her visit, whether she had a job, whether she was going to attempt to sell the Brazilian items she had brought to me as gifts, and had to show her return ticket as proof she actually held one.

For various reasons, we both overstayed our visas during different visits to one another's home countries. When my wife was leaving Italy for Brazil with an expired visa, despite holding the justification paperwork, she was detained and yelled at by multiple cops in front of the rest of the queued travellers, and threatened with a ban from travelling in EU countries; when I left Brazil for Italy with an expired visa, I got a discreet reminder to keep a copy of my visa extension request on hand next time I travelled to Brazil, and within 5 minutes I was on my way to the plane, no one around me being the wiser.

When in Brazil, a colonized country, my skintone and my European identity granted me a completely different treatment than that my wife, also queer, also a woman, also (less) fat, also mentally disabled. It isn't just because I am white, although that is always part of it; it is because I am European.

I don't know how Italy fits in relation to the imperial core; I don't know if it counts as part of it or adjacent to it, and I do know that within Europe there are other rules and classes and tiers of citizenship that grant or preclude benefits; what I know for sure is that the moment you shift your perspective away from the niche you occupy in your microcosm, it is simply impossible remain unaware of this inherent privilege.

honestly gotta say deeply fucking sickening how americans will weaponize their minority status to attack people from the global south who dare to posit the idea that maybe just maybe americans in general do in fact benefit from imperialism and have substantial advantages over people from said global south regardless of race in much of the world

[fugitoidkry]

Having the target of the 'allegedly' criticism against him saying 'it is homophobic what the fuck is wrong with you people' when said character is depicted as an abuser and only him saying that, takes all the credibility of his words that it was, in fact, fucked up especially when in contrast you have all the other characters cheering up and being happy because the narrative seems to approve that outing as a way of vengeance is justified because he deserves it for being a piece of shit.

[cowboycunt]

hiii welcome to my fic rec masterlist. see my other posts too if you like (horror original trueform queer)

housekeeping first. i've bolded my favorite ones in each category. i tried not to replicate categories i've made a seperate rec list for, however there are definitely some duplicate fics. if you have any questions about the categories or the fics themselves, feel free to send an ask. that being said, it's been a while since i've read a few of these but what can you do. anyways yea heed the author's warnings and minors don't click on that one category please.

all time favorite fics: empty spaces in between the lines & settle.

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classics (imo)

so says the sword ~ the cost of a thing ~ tell me about the dream ~ on drowning ~ the dean winchester beat sheet ~ four letter word for intercourse ~ psalm 40:2 ~ the cheapest room in the house

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post-canon (ish)

on labor ~ and what'll you do now, my darling young one? ~ now, baby, i'm sure ~ fenario ~ hold onto your voice, hold onto your breath ~ swimming with the fish pond fish ~ give me a reason to carry on ~ built to roam ~ command me to be well ~ aching in the absence of you ~ take the bones, begin anew ~ bellvue ~ blackwater lakes ~ stay ~ sometimes you'll find that i'm out of my mind ~ reach your hand inside me and touch my very soul

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cas-centric

sufficient for thee ~ looking for a creation myth ~ by your ancient names ~ athathema ~ this was your child ~ the sun on his face ~ shade ~ what's in a name? ~ killing time ~ it's such a mystery (the way you know me) ~ the anatomy of flightless birds

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extra lore

you can keep holding on ~ flight ~ forgotten ~ all things shining ~ down to agincourt

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mostly sex but also makes you think

riptides ~ wavelength-gasm ~ i wanna get outside (of me) ~ you see me in the lovely garden tending ~ of our house ~ dying to let you know ~ tell your man ~ this is religion ~ want you to know

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specific mental health issues

use cinderblocks to build a staircase ~ peace comes upon me (and it leaves me weak) ~ aftermath after aftermath ~ empty spaces ~ leave the stones unturned

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short one shots

death of a salesman ~ easy, gentle kiss ~ saw you hiding in the ivy ~ clouds in the sky of my soul ~ i spread forth my hands unto thee ~ patching up an angel ~ it's gettin' old ~ of goats and lasagna ~ magnetic north

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endverse cas or godstiel (aka angst and gun fellatio)

epilogue ~ with a taste of your lips ~ heaven help the fool who falls in love ~ this is my gun (there are many like it, but this one's mine)

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bonuses which i dont know how to organize yet but are very much worth a read

honey-baked ~ stories are made of mistakes ~ remaining grace ~ canticles ~ plain language ~ my week ~ the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up ~ am i a man, or am i a muppet? ~ in my eyes (you're second to none)* ~ the tunnel of love ~ penny & pound

[absolutebl]

Why do you think it is that Thailand is getting more explicit with their sexual interactions? There's a lot more tongue kissing; there was that rape scene in KP that was as explicit as the sex in Queer As Folk, and there was New grabbing Zee's crotch in Kinky Pie(I haven't seen ep 10 yet so please no spoilers if there's explicit sex in that one). What's up with that?

Why do I think Thailand is getting more explicit in their BL?

I'd blame TharnType, (and then Why R U?) it was evidently clear from that it's what international viewers want and many indie houses (to distinguish themselves from GMMTV in particular) are gunning for the mature rating and audience these days.

Honestly, KP was always going to be high heat it goes with the mafia theme. (TRADITION! Tradition!) And if you go back to like 90′s yakuza yaoi - also super rapey. (Not excuses here, it is what it is, dub con, non con, and so forth. I do not wish to get into a debate about KP, that sex scene last week squicked me tf out for many reasons but the first aspect was vomit breath and I’m sorry I am never gonna get over it. We all have our baggage.) 

Back to the question: 

Thailand has always served the market, it’s how they became the juggernaut they are. 

I mean, we used to say “ratings don’t lie,” now it’s like “ad revenue and streaming subs and YT eyeballs don’t lie.” Cutie Pie is a SENSATION and KP is certainly getting a ton of bandwidth. 

Production studios/houses always do this thing where they’re like “why you successful, little show?” 

Which is code for: What elements can we cherry pick and then reproduce to continue the trend? Then they only pick the cheapest ones and forget about everything important. 

It’s like focusing only on archetypes, tropes, and setting but forgetting the whole narrative structure (story, themes, messages, script, etc...). Which is kinda how many Thai BL pulps in particular have become these shows loosely held together by nothing but tropes. (I’m looking at YOU Tuxedo.) 

For a long time Thailand was like: school setting (CHECK), faen fatal, CHECK, kiss or two, CHECK. And so forth. 

Right now many Thai houses have decided to put high heat on that check list, and take some of the other items off. 

There’s another factor. 

I’ve talked about this before, but I think the talent is super cheap in Thailand (as opposed to say, Korea) and the hits to reputation for playing gay seem less severe (although other issues arise, see sasaeng shippers). As BL has become so ubiquitous over the last 5 years, it’s almost like a right of passage for Thai actors to do BL, again, as opposed to the much more conservative and homophobic social structures of some other BL producing countries (also places where BL is still marginalized). 

Which is a long way of saying: 

I bet it’s cheap to pay boys to kiss in Thailand. So when studios are pricing out production costs and they want to get lots of eyeballs out the other end (which many production houses do) they might put high heat into the budget. 

Before you ask, I don’t know for sure in Thailand specifically but here (USA) and in many other film industries nudity clauses and intimacy restrictions in actor contracts literally mean the more kisses the more it costs, and more than kissing can get very very expensive. Also, many actors reserve rights around having a say in their body doubles for the nude scenes - and yes they sure do pick “prettier”. * 

Image is EVERYTHING.  

I know I know, here I am, RUINING YOUR enjoyment again. But you did ask ME the question. 

Carry on! 

* which is not to say there aren’t actors so who will do this themselves, but like doing your own stunts, it can be risky. 

[t4tstarvingdog]

As someone who’s read a lot of destiel fics over the years, which fics are so good they changed you in some (big/small) way?

ohhh this is a marvelous ask! so much to think about! that said, my memory is sucky at the best of times so this might be a short list.

1. twist and shout.

yeah yeah yeah, i know! thee classic destiel fic years ago… but the thing was, i read it at a time in my life when i was really struggling to see any redemption in being gay. i hadn’t even begun to question if *i* was queer yet, let alone my gender or anything past that. at that point in my life i was a cishet kid raised in an extremely homophobic environment, and here was a fic that showed these two people — these two men — so entirely human, so entirely in love. each chapter changed me individually, and even the ending hurt in an aching, caring way. yeah, i read it way before it was healthy for me to, and it was bad for me in a few ways for how young i was paired with how sheltered i had been, but it also touched a part of me that i didn’t even know existed at the time. saying that love existed, and that even when it hurts it can be beautiful. not trying to wax poetic, and i haven’t read it in a few years, but it did affect me pretty deeply and i’ll always think of it fondly. (also the one time i made my older sibling cry just by describing the story as a hetero romance)

2. the usual by thatoneguy35 on wattpad.

i don’t know if it ever got finished but it was so cute at the time and i still think about the kiss in the snow <3 the domesticity and simplicity… i can’t even describe it, or why it meant so much to me, but i do adore it. i might search it out again actually.

3. cheapest room in the house by biggaybenny (aka skepticalfrog)

another (more recent) absolute CLASSIC. deals with the depth and layers of dean without a lot of the gaudiness in his history some people include, if that makes sense. skrog’s characters are so human, in their joy and their pain and their lives. castiel is allowed anger and dean’s grief is so real, and on top of that it has one of the best depictions of jack and dean’s relationship in a way that honestly fucked me up in a good way. ALSO the way it acknowledges the complicated way you can love your father even when it’s fucked up… it’s written so lovingly and portrays queerness as something important, but also something that doesn’t need to be taken So Seriously that all humour is sucked out. also i am personally someone who enjoys eating mashed potatoes with my hands That Scene is delightful to me.

4. untitled fic by my irl friend

so at the time that i started reading more spn fic, i got one of my friends to actually watch the show. she ended up writing a super sweet fic in a scrappy notebook and had me read it and basically beta it. the fic itself didn’t impact me so much as the warm intimacy that came with her watching my face so intently as i read over the pages, the way i got to see the characters through her eyes, her fondness for the show. it was so much fun and had the most scrumptious twist when it started getting close to the end. she never finished it but it was so much fun to read through it with her :)

5. the bluebells blush when they sing by fleeceframe (aka tasteslikevelvet)

read this a week or so ago and it gave me the most glorious night of feeling something holy in being trans and queer. the way she handles gender and gender expression, the way she just. Understands cas and dean’s relationship… also such a genuine cas pov!!!!!!!! it switches between them in a seamless and marvelously done way, and it is just simply. one of the loveliest fics i’ve ever read.

6. oh my darling by @pinknatural

a HUGE reason i am currently working on my peach fic. the love and the subtle ways of showing it, the simple task of caring for other people… it makes me feel insane in the best of ways. i think about it whenever i eat an orange or a cutie and it makes me smile <3 also…… cas <3

there are so many more that i think about regularly, and that have impacted me deeply, but if i could remember and list them all then we’d be here for a very long time. here’s some of the ones off the top of my head though, and if you haven’t read them i hope you do!!!!

[thatsjustsupergirl]

rewatching 6x11 for podcast prep so let’s have some fun this beat is sick

no really, the score for this magic battle is great i love it

we had originally planned to do an episode about all the series references to harry potter over the hiatus and now i’m so very sad we didn’t bECAUSE,,,,,,

mxy is laying out this ye olde folktale like we’re about to get deathly hallow’d

anyway then we get some speedy setup for the main question of the season, which is: what ultimately gives us power— our abilities or what we choose to do with them?

fun fact this concept was also relevant to kara’s arc in season 3 when she was stuck in her mind palace and that was also a harry potter nod [x]

you all have no idea how many unprompted musical interludes we cut from our show but mxy attempting to sing his exposition here truly sparked joy

Every time they mention that Nyxly’s brother is named “Jared,” my brain immediately cuts to this SNL sketch:

who are you, nyxly?

ANYWAY,

we’re also going to search for horcruxes i guess because there are seven totems but apparently they can be anything so i really hope they go for a visual gag like the pieces of eight from pirates of the caribbean world’s end because those were literal pocket litter

hey neat mxy explaining this whole blood requirement for magic that will definitely not be relevant again later in this episode 😈🧙🏻

and then, what’s this? a golden child and a scapegoat? surely that’s not a thing that happens in families with narcissistic parents and we are in no way being set up for more foil character stuff 👀

oh nia, your mom was right about the level of screw-up you did, but also your hair looks amazing

also the show has been going hard on Into the Woods motifs since 6x09 and here we have a cool subversion of Your Fault in which everyone feels overly responsible for what’s happened instead of trying to deflect the blame onto each other

a song that is, delightfully, interrupted by the Witch so she can gloat about how they’re all going to be squashed flat by a giant so i mean. giant cat works?

awww, this whole storyline with brainy and nia was so good we love healthy communication

also, the scene with nia and kara??? HEART EYES

hey look it’s those two friends who thought that using the most romantic line in "titanic" to seal their bond was somehow not even a little bit gay but this episode written by queer people knows exactly how gay it was and i just think that’s beautiful

i have been joking for literally three years about how they’ve been using elements of Wicked in this series and it’s always been tied to lena, so i am fucking rolling with laughter at this having a sudden and unexpected payoff

okay so that scene with kara jumping back afraid @ the phantom zone projector was was such a good reveal of how very Not Okay she is (and how not okay alex is either), and then her determination to Fix Everything even though she can’t is another part of that :(

really loving nyxly being like SOCIAL DISTANCING! with every zap of magic at her minion pal

was a cat the cheapest render they could get??? like. don’t get me wrong it’s so damn chaotic and weird and a way nyxly would get under kara’s skin but also it screams "i am conserving my budget"

nia has such fun mix of both kara and alex’s worst self-sacrificing qualities; also we love brainy using his unfortunate family legacy powers for good

nyxly is out here looking like a female jack sparrow and i so want this now

andrea like "the unknown is always scarier than the truth" tHIS IS ALSO RELEVANT TO INTO THE WOODS so i’m glad we’re leaning into all the witch stories all at once

speaking of which, they have held out for so long on doing a typically dramatic adoption-oriented storyline about birth parents and i’m frankly so glad they just went all in on making it as ridiculously campy as silver banshee’s origin story in season one i am hERE FOR IT

bonus points for the super 90s Practical Magic vibe to all the "lena’s mom" images and also for you have your mother’s eyes but to the extreme

nyxly @ mxy like

i really loved the conclusion to mxy’s arc that they put in this episode??? he’s so touched that they all want to help him and then he decides to help them in return even though it comes at great personal cost we love to see this continued depiction of kara’s legacy as a hero and that it’s really her compassion and willingness to Hope that are the winning factors

also, nia. my beautiful daughter. please hire me to interpret your dreams because i’m pretty sure you’re seeing a hint that you need lena to destroy that orb

[carrionxcamille]

Ribs of Friendship | Cam, Adam, Cece, & Winn

Timing: Happy hour, June 1st Location: Dell’s Tavern Parties: Camille, Adam- @https://walker-journal.tumblr.com/, Cece- https://thebickedwitchoftherest.tumblr.com/, Winn- https://packsbeforesnacks.tumblr.com/ Summary: An unlikely group get absolutely blasted! At the Sports Bar and get to know eachother over crude jokes and ribs. Just another Totally Normal day in White Crest.

Camille pretty much had a job, finally. Which meant she’d be able to start saving up for a deposit on a flat and could get out of the shitty motel with the vampire neighbors. A reliable supply of hot water, a proper kitchen, her own bedsheets. It was going to be amazing. First, though, she was going to do something spiteful and petty. Jace was going to rot in a prison cell for the rest of his life. There was a Sox game showing this afternoon at a place called Dell’s Tavern — they were baseball, that was all she knew — Camille was going to drink beer, eat ribs, and watch the game. Even though Jace didn’t even know she was alive and would have no idea she was spending her afternoon doing three of his favorite things, it was going to be very satisfying.

She’d been so excited she had even straightened her hair and put on a little makeup for the occasion. Sitting at a stool on the bar with a cool bottle of their cheapest beer waiting for her ribs, Camille was as happy as she’d been in weeks.

“Hey there.” 

Adam sidled into a chair next to Camille. A Sox baseball cap was perched precariously on a mop of the unruly brown hair. Wearing a sleeveless t-shirt with a suggestively shaped pair of baseballs under the phrase, “I’d Hit That,” and a much loved pair of worn jeans, the young man fit in well with the crowd. A lazily jocular edge to his smile hinted that Adam might’ve been pre-gaming well before the first pitch had actually been thrown.  “Enjoying the game?” Adam asked, despite his brown eyes following the soft lines of Camille’s oval face down past her lithe shoulderline, far more intently then anything having to do with baseball. 

Sports bars had to be one of Cece’s favorite places. Not because she enjoyed sports, but because she enjoyed the environment inside of them. The camaraderie, the excessive drinking, the excited energy of the place. Hell, Cece even enjoyed a good bar fight every now and again. She had convinced Winn to go out with her for the night, ensuring him that it was totally his responsibility to pay for the drinks. 

They met up outside of Dell’s. “Looking good, Runaway. I think ditching town gave you some street cred. You’re really nailing that Ponyboy look.” She patted his shoulder endearingly and opened the door into the bar. “How many drinks do you need to tell me about that whole shitshow?”

The only use Winn had for baseball was for metaphors, and even then, they were all played out. But everyone up north crowded around for Sox games, and Winn felt an obligation to go out and mingle (though, really, Cece didn’t have to convince him to drink). Ponyboy? “Took you more for a cowboy gal, Cec. But we’ll find you a nice ponyboy. Ain’t gonna be me, but don’t you worry.” It occurred to Winn, belatedly, she might not be referring to that kind of ponyboy, but he’d take the L. She might get a laugh out of it.

As they walked into Dell’s — where Winn was half-sure he was gaining regular status despite his relative sobriety compared to the rest of the barflys — Winn caught sight of Adam in his element: flirting with a woman who was older than him. (Though, even queer as a three dollar bill as Winn was, he could admit Adam had taste.) “I can tell you ‘bout part of the shitshow,” he said to Cece, “but I think it’ll be much more fun to push ourselves into that shitshow.” Was he about to badly wingman a straight Hunter for a laugh? Absolutely. If Adam couldn’t stick a landing, he didn’t get to stick it in. “C’mon,” he said, hand pushing on Cece’s back as he guided them to the disaster-waiting-to-happen.

It was a long time since Camille had gotten much male attention. Being married to a guy like Jace didn’t exactly do wonders for your self esteem — she knew she wasn’t ugly, but feeling attractive and wanted was markedly different from just acknowledging that you had a pretty face. This kid who sidled up to her at the bar — and wasted absolutely no time letting his eyes wander from her face to her breasts — was what, mid twenties? Sharp jaw, muscular arms. The crude t-shirt was enough of a shock to her system to get her mouth working — almost. “Uh—” Eloquent. “Me? Yeah. I mean, I don’t— y’know, I don’t really follow baseball but it’s— Yeah. It’s good.”

Christ, thankgod his face was nothing like Jace’s, or she might have some heartbreaking flashback to their younger years. His smile had always taken up practically his whole face back then. Camille sipped her beer, trying to process what was happening — what, was he just overly friendly? There were plenty of hot young girls around to chat up. In fact another one just walked in. What was happening? “What about you?” 

Broad shoulders shrugged at the question as Adam’s face beamed in a faintly flushed sunbeam smile. “Happy, Horny, Healthy, the usual,” he assured Camile, before putting one arm on the bar and leaning forward toward her a little. “Hey… so babe,” the young man’s smile and tone softened into a manner of conspiratorial intimacy. Adam’s bottom lip brushed against his upper teeth speculatively as his dark jasper eyes submerged below Camile’s neckline before eventually raising to meet her gaze again. “Maybe you’d be up for…”

“Yo Winn! Oui disaster nipples! Over here! 

The moment was broken instantly as Adam caught sight of someone he knew from the crowd, the footballer’s free arm waving insistently to catch the newcomers attention across the crowd.

“First off, I don’t think you and I are on the same page about Ponyboy at all.” Cece squinted, not sure she even wanted to know at this point. Not until she had more alcohol in her. “Second, I’m equal opportunity. People are lining the streets to get to me. I’m just disinterested.” With a shrug, she eyed the pair across the bar that she assumed Winn was pointing too. “You’re totally changing the subject. But why is Prom King flirting with that grown-ass woman? I’m guessing you know one of them?” As if on cue, the boy started waving his arms in their direction. Bingo. Of course Winn knew the hot jock. 

Cece pushed through the crowd to get to the two, eyeing the both of them suspiciously as she got up to them. She had no idea who either of them were, but was trying to assess the situation here. Did the woman need an out or was she welcoming of the company sidled up next to her? Cece offered a knowing smile to the woman before turning towards the guy. “Excuse me, sir. Don’t you have a science lab or high school playoffs coming up? Can I see some ID?”

“Yeah, I know him. But ixnay on the eavinglay ‘round him, alright? Promise I’ll tell you later,” Winn said. Given Adam’s attempted distance, Winn was almost surprised to see the other man wave. Delighted, but surprised. He sidled in next the other man, wrapping a loose arm around Adam’s shoulder and giving him a shake. Winn spoke loudly, turning the charm and cheese up to their maximum. “Aw, c’mon, Cece. Can’t you see he knows what he’s doin’? He’s shootin’ his shot! And who knows, maybe this lovely lady across from me digs the,” he snorted, remembering Adam’s own term for him that first night, “fuckable boybander vibe.” 

“Winn Woods,” he said, reaching around and in front of Adam to the woman to offer his hand for a shake. “I’m Adam’s gay best,” werewolf, “friend. I can tell you all sorts of,” fake, “secrets about the guy, before you make your decision. And if you pour your drink in his lap, I’ll be there like a real bro to towel him off.” He smirked, winking from behind Adam’s sight at Cece and the other woman. “And Cece, babe, I know you don’t know sports, but playoffs would’ve been, like, a month ago or more.” 

Oh god, that smile. That was Jace all over. The sight of it had made Camille melt, once upon a time. Admittedly it was not ineffective now, she felt her own lips curling up at the corners in a reciprocal smile. She blinked, surprised by the statement — he was… horny? Did people just admit to that these days? What was she meant to say? Luckily, there wasn’t much time for her to worry about what kind of response to offer because he barrelled forward, and she didn’t lean back when he leaned forward.

Would it be so terrible? To flirt a little with some handsome fool at a bar? Now that would really piss Jace off. She wanted to know what she might be up for. Again, though, her chances were dashed when he noticed a couple of friends. Camille shot the woman a wide eyed but bemused glance, trying and failing to stifle a laugh at her quip. He was young, of course, though to Camille the girl did not look much older, and neither did the other man. “Fuckable boybander vibe,” she repeated as she shook Winn’s hand, amused by how accurate of a descriptor it was. 

Very quickly she had all their names — how useful — and almost entirely forgot to introduce herself, lost in trying to keep up with everything Winn was saying. “Camilla W— uh—” Actually, yeah, she didn’t want to stick with Watkins. “Dugar.” Better. She could say Watkins had been her married name, if pressed. “Nice to meet you. All. Not the worst vibe, for the record.” She shot Adam a quick grin, really having no idea what else to do — very out of practice with the flirting. “I can — sorry, if you guys came to hang out I can go sit somewhere else, I don’t want to be in your way.”

“Sure.” Adam made reaching around behind to his back pocket into an excuse to brush an arm close to Camille. He retrieved his wallet and held it out for Cece’s pursal, the contents indicating that he’d turned twenty two on this past January 14th. “I’m legal,” he said absently while leaning forward with his I.D into a none-too-subtle pretense to give the blonde bombshell a once over...and then a second over...and around the third over seeming to remember that evolved homo-sapiens engaged in conversation sometimes. “But if you still want to drag me outta here, rough me up a bit…” He looked up into Cece’s green eyes with a submissive puppyish expression. “Definitely wouldn’t complain.” 

The hunter let out a long whistle at Winn’s statements, the bird-song lilt hinting at a life spent outdoors. “Towelin’ me off...” Adam replied in a thickly affected Tennessee drawl, “when y’ talk all hot and purty like that Mr. Lee,” he continued with a soft playful punch at the man-hip now blocking his way to the ladies. “... why, it nearly flips me ass-up.” 

However Camile’s protestation snapped Adam out of the banter. “Woah, woah Camilla.” He leaned back with both elbows behind him on the bar, craning his neck past Winn. “You’re the star of this party. You been in White Crest long?” 

Ah, the elusive bromance. A tale as old as time and a relationship with weirdly sexual undertones. Cece loved a good bromance. Winn cozied up in the chair next to Adam while Cece still stood between Camille and Adam’s seats. She had to admit, Adam at least had the charming thing going for him. Cece couldn’t decide between rolling her eyes at the dude or flirting with him. “You’re cute.” Cece reached out to pat him on the shoulder. “Make sure to treat me right in your dreams.” 

Apparently, Camille got the wrong idea that the three of them had come to hang out. “I agree with Troy Bolton here. We’re all in this together now. It wouldn’t be any fun without you.” She assured Camille that Adam was right and she should stay with the group. 

Confident that he was alright, Cece found the stool next to Camille and flagged down the bartender. She ordered beer for herself, pointing at the others. “Put in your orders. First round’s on pretty boy over there. Well, the farthest pretty boy,” she said, pointing past Adam at Winn. 

“Mmm, awright, sweetheart,” Winn grumbled, jokingly, into Adam’s ear, letting out an exaggerated groan when the other man ‘punched’ him. He had to admit he was mildly impressed at Adam’s quick turn from joking to… well, about as genuine as Winn was sure the boy could be in public. As Adam tipped his head back, Winn plucked the hat off of his head, throwing it, backwards, onto his own sweep of hair, ruffling Adam’s affectionately. Gotta give the boy a little more tousle if he was hopin’ to impress two women in front of him.

“They’re right,” he said, evenly. “We didn’t come here for this mess,” meaning Adam, “we came here for this mess.” He threw a thumb back at the taps. “And as my darling Cece has pointed out, I’m buyin’. Owe her, taken some of Adam’s for free… and haven’t seen you ‘round these parts, so I figure I’m payin’ it forward.” 

When Cece got the bartender, Winn rolled his eyes. “Beer, Cec? And here I thought you were a classy woman.” Then again, Winn told the bartender to get him ‘whatever,’ so he wasn’t picky or nothin’. Turning his attention to Camille, he smiled, “Picked a wild time to come into town, if you’re new here. I’d promise that the ocean wasn’t always black, but… that would imply that somethin’ wasn’t usually going down. And that,” he said, laughing, “would be the biggest lie I ever told.”

Camille was really having to focus to keep up. Three people was not really a crowd but it felt like it to her, especially with them all chattering away and asking questions. The way they all bounced off each-other made her miss her old friends. By the time she’d died Camille hadn’t really been close with anyone- trying to keep your crumbling marriage a secret could have that effect- but there were a few people from work she’d had this kind of easy back and forth with. She was unsurprised when Adam blatantly checked out the other girl of the group- that was young guys for you, attention span of a goldfish- and she was sure whatever appeal she might’ve held moments ago was now forgotten.

Still if they wanted here to stay… Well, there was no harm right? They were young and loud and here to drink and probably weren’t going to ask anything too invasive. She’d come here to have fun, a group would probably help with that. And more beer definitely would. Camille shuddered at the mention of the black ocean, “um, I’ll just have another one of these.” She told the bartender, lifting up her near empty bottle and draining the last of it. “Got here just over a month ago actually, in the midst of all that mad stuff with the, uh, mimes.” 

God this place was fucking nuts. “Grew up in Bangor though, so I was always hearing crazy stories.” Now she was one of them, she supposed. “Didn’t expect eyeballs out of my damn taps though, I gotta say that one really threw me.” 

“Yeah, fish eyes are used as bait a lot,” Adam said in an amiable baritone that could convey steady normalcy even if a very building they sat in was engulfed in flame. “They do it all the time in Cook’s Bay,” he claimed while making an order of his own. “Fucking crazy that a bunch of bait would get yeeted into the harbor same time as the big oil spill, its friggen Deep Water Horizon all over again. Hope all the fishing crews get compensated once a lawsuit gets through y’know?” 

Like many Hunters, Adam was charged with the preservation of the supernatural world’s secrecy, a delicate balance between making sure that humans were safe from supernatural threats and ensuring that paranormal communities were safe from the witch hunts and hysteria of ages past. A lifetime of assuring people that everything was perfectly normal even as Spawn rampaged through graveyards, churning rips in space-time disgorged eldritch horrors, and children went ‘missing’ in Trow dens had cultivated a warm soothing mien that invited everyone else around him to buy into the banal lie. 

Everything was fine. What a terrible oil spill. Wolves can’t be people. That’s crazy! 

“What made you decide to come to White Crest, Camilla?” 

Either Adam was crazy off his ass or he was purposefully moving away from the conversation of the eyeballs. With Camille’s back turned to her, Cece shot Winn a suspicious glance as if to convery, Who is this dude? He did a pretty good job trying to normalize the whole eyeballs coming out of water pipes though, so if nothing else he was either good at making up falsehoods or way too invested in explaining the supernatural away. 

“How does anyone end up in White Crest?” Cece interjected, accepting her drink from the bartender and taking a gulp of it before continuing, “A bit of bad luck and a dash of poor decision making.” Cece flipped Winn off, “For the record this beer was on special tonight. That’s hella classy.”

“You’d have to be on somethin’ to take that case,” Winn grumbled, and then, because it probably was a smart idea to lie to Camille, “I’m sure the fishers will fight the town for lettin’ off-shore drilling go on like that.” Winn reached around Adam as Camille’s eyes were on the game for a moment and twirled his finger at Cece, an implicit Just go with it. Regardless of the hard-to-explainability of White Crest this week, they couldn’t really lead with “Hi, we’re a witch, a werewolf, and a Hunter, how’re you today?”

“Don’t have to go on the cheap just ‘cause I’m paying, y’all, by all means break the bank.” There was a part of Winn that hated flashing money around, but that part was easily combated by the part of him that hated drinking cheap shit. And the beer on special was cheap shit. He tilted his head at Cece for a moment, considering, and ordered her another drink, something nicer (and, frankly, more alcoholic).

Fish eyes. Right. Camille sighed, aiming an annoyed glance at the sigil on the back of her hand. There was a time when she’d have rationalized it away like that, too. But then she’d come back from the dead and it was hard to ignore that the world was full of strange and terrifying things like re-animated corpses and whatever problem had eyeballs coming out of taps. Maybe their cluelessness was a good thing, she needed some normal in her life. “Right, fish eyes. No wonder it stinks so bad, crazy.”

She nearly choked on the first sip of her new drink when Cece made her comment, grabbing for a napkin to cover her mouth while she cleared her throat and recovered. “I hope not too much poor decision making. I—suddenly needed a new place, but I didn’t want it to be in Bangor because that felt like a step back.” Camille twisted the napkin up in her hands, but despite the tension to her body there was a smile on her face, “I just left my husband.” It was the first time she’d said that out loud, and even if the way they’d take the statement—a divorce—wasn’t totally right, it was close enough. 

A plate of ribs was set down in-front of her and she laughed a little, remembering why she’d come here in the first place. “Ribs, beer, and sports were three of his favorite things. I saw that this place was showing the game and figured I’d come here to spite him.”

“So you're free...niiiice,” was apparently Adam’s sole take away from Camille’s confession. His dark eyes followed the banter between Cece and Winn, letting the resident werewolf dude reach around him to make some random gesture. Winn made a twirling motion at Cece, which Adam didn’t understand the context of. 

Nevertheless, while Winn was doing that, Adam made his own addendum of sticking a finger in his mouth in slow suggestive rhythms for Cece’s edification, before gesturing with his head towards Winn and Camille before making the fingers of one hand frantically hump the other fist. This was concluded with the footballer making a heart to Cece, followed by two thumbs up. 

Confident that this pantomimed proposal of a foursome definitely helped whatever Winn had been trying to say, Adam turned his attention back to Camille as her food arrived. 

“I dunno, poor decisions can be... fun sometimes,” assured Adam with an innocent choirboy smile as he made progress on the drink that’d arrived for him. 

Clearly, Winn wanted Cece to roll with the mundane excuse. She wasn’t going to fight it. She had moved here for a regular life after all. That had all gone to hell in a prada purse about a month into it, but the idea had really been pure. She didn’t plan on ruining that for anyone else. Especially someone as seemingly innocent as Camille. The poor girl had no idea what she had gotten wrapped up in. Winn, Cece, and assumingly Adam weren’t crazy in the supernatural sense, but in a bar? Havoc could ensue. And Camille seemed to not only be caught in the middle of it, but had the spotlight shown down on her. 

Cece stared back at Adam as he… what the hell was he doing? Fingering his mouth? Cece held a confused look on her face before returning the gesture, using her middle finger in its place. He finished off with suggesting a foursome between the group. Admittedly, the company around was pretty attractive. Cece wasn’t denying Adam’s looks, the dude was hella hot. She was even starting to warm up to the guy. Definitely didn’t mean she planned on sleeping with him. “I think I like you Adam, just haven’t decided why yet.”

“Leaving your husband is just about the smartest reason I’ve ever heard someone move to White Crest for and I will drink to that.” The bartender dropped off the second drink that Winn had ordered for her and she winked over at Winn in appreciation, “Thanks babe! In fact, I'll double drink to that.” She raised both glasses and took turns taking a large drink from each. “Well, we need the ribs, then. If we’re going to do this right and really stick it to him.”

Winn listened with a counselor’s patience to Camille’s reasons for moving to White Crest. Something, maybe the way Camille was holding herself, made Winn cock his head. Her heart wasn’t beating faster — at least, not more than could be explained by proximity to Adam’s… everything. And speaking of Adam…

What was he doing? Winn wouldn’t deny mild interest in the way Adam’s mouth wrapped around a finger, and Winn wasn’t… opposed to sleeping outside of his usual range? So long as someone was fucking him with something, he could get off to a blank piece of paper if he tried hard enough. He smirked, rolling his eyes in Cece’s direction as she flipped him off. Good for her. Adam could use the blow to his ego, even if Winn was still half-sure part of his bravado was fake as hell.

But back to the more important company, “I agree with Cece. You’ve got a head start on us, Cam — is it alright if I call you Cam? Before you make any poor decisions, you’ve got to let us help you make a poor decision!” Wait, no. Adam would get the wrong idea. “Buyin’ you a lot of ribs, I mean.”

There was, admittedly, something almost attractive about the crude gestures Adam was making. In a college frat boy sense. He was hot enough to get away with doing stupid stuff. Camille exchanged glances with Winn and Cece. “I know I’ve been out of the loop for a while, but am I supposed to understand what he’s trying to say with all the-” She imitated one ofthe gestures poorly, and that was enough to snap the pieces together in her head. “Oh! Oh- yeah. No, yeah. I get it now. Wow- that’s- hm.”  She shook her head, dispelling the notion entirely. She hadn’t had sex in years, and it’d certainly never been that freaky. “I think I need to warm up a bit before making a decision that poor.”

She slid the plate of ribs a little ways along the bar so the others could grab one if they wanted, “uh- yeah. Cam is fine.” It was closer to her own name, in fairness. She laughed, raising a rib in a mock cheers, “well then, to my ex husband being miserable forever, and making poor decisions.” She gulped down a little beer then took a bite from the rib, grinning.

Adam raised his glass high and let out a loud woop that drew a few glances before the gaming-watching bustle returned to its collective inertia. “To Cam! May her ex get ulcers that make him piss blood in loneliness and may she forget his prick-ass forever!” With that merry invocation of divine justice, Adam added yet more alcohol to his system. 

“So,” Adam pointed to Cece and Winn with his free-hand, purposefully choosing to spare Cam the spotlight for a little bit. “What’ve you crazy hot kids been up to?” 

Cece liked this group, and it totally wasn’t just because of the beer and ribs. Well, it totally wasn’t any more than like half because of the beer and ribs. Camille led the charge, stealing Cece’s heart with an impromptu cheers using her ribs. Damn, Cece loved a good emotional cheers. Adam chimed in with his own addition to the roasting of Camille’s douche of an ex. “Dark, dude. I can drink to that.” Cece grinned, raising one of her glasses and finishing off the beer. She slid the empty glass across the bar and found the drink Winn had ordered for her as a chaser. “Get too into defamation and we may end up hexing the dude.” And if Camille gave Cece anymore reason to, then those hexes may just end up ringing true. 

“Winn here was just taking me out for a night on the town. He owes me.” The two hadn’t really discussed how Winn owed her exactly. The conversation about her tracking his whereabouts hadn’t naturally come up in conversation. “I make him pay a membership fee for my friendship.”

Winn nearly choked on his drink at Adam’s toast, masking his laughter by raising his glass to the rest of the group’s. “Hear, ah, hear?” he tried, voice coming out hoarse from the liquor burning at his throat. He shot Cece a glance that he hoped communicated ‘Don’t hex anybody without Cam’s permission.’ Though, given she was already on her second drink, he figured it would be forgotten by the time it came to actually hex the prick. (If hexes were, like, a real thing?)

“I definitely owe her,” he agreed, rolling his eyes at Adam’s ‘crazy hot kids’ comment. They were both older than him. Like, definitely more emotionally evolved. No matter Winn’s suspicions about Adam’s whole… deal. “I’m truly lucky for her friendship. I need the good karma that pickin’ her drunk ass off the floor nets me.” He gulped down more of his drink, winking across at Cece. “And don’t y’all have, like, a giant television at the house?” he said, nudging Adam. “Your moose brothers not want to watch the Sox? Too busy puttin’ up their socks on doorknobs?” This time, his wink was directed at Cam.

Though it was again a little more crude than the sort of company Camille was used to, she had to say she did not take any issue with Adam’s toast, going as far as to clink her own beer bottle against his before taking a swig. If only she could forget him, wouldn’t that be nice. Her gaze shot to Cece when she mentioned hexing, wondering if she actually meant it, if Cam wasn’t the only one here who knew about the weird supernatural side to White Crest. She even opened her mouth to ask, and then realized they were probably in mixed company and she didn’t want to come off as crazy, so just took another bite out of the rib in her hand.

Perhaps if she got the girl alone some time she could ask about it. In the bathroom or something, girls went to the bathroom in groups right? Yeah. “Oh god, socks on doorknobs?” Camille laughed, shaking her head. “People still really do that? I miss college.” Jace had done the whole frat thing of course, and she’d been in a sorority too, she could remember how damn near impossible it was to get time alone together. “That’s why you came here all on your lonesome, huh?” She teased, nudging Adam’s arm, “got something to prove to your frat pals.” 

“Yes we still do that,” assured the guy who lived in a house where socks and kinds of things were put on various types of knobs. “And I’m with a client actually,” Adam protested at Winn and Camille’s insinuations of being a randy stag goodnaturedly. “I’m here if they needs me,” 

Adam nodded to a figure seated directly across the bar from him on a couch. The ‘client’ was dressed in a full jacket with gloves, hood, hat, and sunglasses despite the heat, no skin showing. Gloved fingers, six on each hand, drummed absently on the client’s knees as their gaze drifted across the crowd in the manner of someone overwhelmed but nevertheless content to observe the jovial chaos in silence. 

“But at sundown I can be with whoever wants me,” Adam noted with a smirk to Camille before purposefully diverting the conversation away from his client. “So, you’re here now. Found work yet?” 

Two drinks in and Cece wasn’t mad about the company she had found herself in tonight. She wanted to argue Winn’s point about her drunk ass, but considering they met when he helped get her drunk ass home one night, she decided against it. Clearly he wasn’t letting her live that one down anytime soon. At least until Cece returned the favor. Problem was, she never turned down a drink. She may not leave the place stumbling off her ass but she was rarely sober enough to be the responsible one in a group. 

Adam had clients, huh? Cece could only assume it was a sex thing. At least until Adam pointed the client out and Cece shot them a strange look, “Hmm. That’s a weird kink.” She muttered. She caught that bartender’s attention and tapped at her empty glass, smiling when he nodded his confirmation that he had received the message. “I dig the whole serial killer vibes they put off. Very Jack the Ripper.” Cece took a drink from her new glass and listened as Cam dished more details about her life.

Client? Winn looked at the figure Adam had nodded to, considering the other man’s word choice. Sundown. In the loud thrum of the bar, it was hard to hear whether or not the client had a heartbeat, if Adam was helping out someone in the way he’d helped Lucas. For all the younger man talked about conflicts of interest, he had… far more supernatural friends than particular enemies, Winn felt. But now wasn’t the time to argue with Adam over his calling in life — especially not in public. Adam hadn’t talked to Cam for any reason other than his babe senses, Winn was sure. Otherwise, why would he have attempted to cover up the town’s… weirdness.

Cece was already on her third drink, so Winn felt he had to up the ante. Neither of them were driving home, right? Unlike the night they’d met, Winn could, you know, call a damn Uber. He motioned the bartender as he came back with Cece’s next drink, mumbling “Strong.” with a wink to the, admittedly pretty, man. Was Winn (probably) hanging out with a bunch of straight folks? Yes. Did that mean he couldn’t distract himself from the whole… Noah situation? Absolutely not.

Okay, Camille had a hell of a lot of questions about that client. Not that she had any right to ask them, or really any desire to know the answers — there was probably nothing good to be said about a guy dressed like that. Who kept their gloves on inside? Well, people who wanted to hide their hands. She tugged at the sleeve of her shirt to tug it down over that ugly sigil, and wondered if she should become a gloves person too. She hadn’t been here long, so it wouldn't be hard to establish them as part of her style. Cam forgot about the guy happily enough when Adam diverted attention back to her. “So the spell is broken at midnight? Would that make you Cinderella or the fairy godmother?” she teased, taking a drink. “Day manager at that theme park. Cryptic— no, Cryptid Corner.” Cam shrugged. “Not exactly the dream, but it pays better than being a shop assistant or something. I mean I just got it and I’m still on, like, a trial period, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. What about you two?” She gestured towards Cece and Winn. “Now that we know Adam works as a full time weirdo watcher.”

“They’re from outta town,” was the only detail Adam supplied in explanation of his client’s nature to those gathered. He definitely wasn’t inclined to explain just how much of an understatement that was. But thus far the “guest” to this dimension had abided by the deal to not absorb anyone’s biomass, which was mean that Adam could spend his evening flirting and generally get his boorish man-child act on instead of lowering White Crest’s tourist cred by filling a sightseer full of holes. 

“I mean… I can put on slippers and wings if that’s what you’re into,” he assured Camille with an easy smile. “Cryptid Corner… Is that the one with the mothman and all that?” he asked before the questions turned to Cece and Winn.

“I’d actually be quite interested in you in slippers and wings.” Cece shrugged, taking a drink from her ridiculously strong drink. She knew she had Winn to blame for that. But as long as she didn’t have to drive home tonight, she didn’t really care how much she drank. “Yeah, I think so. Supposed to have all those weird attractions. I think I talked to the owner of that place once.” Cece remembered chatting about the amusement park. It seemed like her scene, terrifying and exhilarating. Though she hadn’t had the chance to get out there yet. “Guess I’ll really have to check it out now that I have a friend that works there.”

“I work for the Medical Examiner’s office.” Cece explained, “I’m a toxicologist. Which is just a fancy word to say that I test urine and blood I collect from dead people.” Cece joked. She turned to Winn, suddenly realizing that she didn’t actually know what the hell he did. Aside from modeling in a past life.  

“There’s an amusement park in town?” Winn said, wondering aloud. “Jeez, for Smalltown, USA, this place sure does have everythin’.” Weird attractions? Weird for White Crest? Christ, what kind of horror show was Cam working at?

“Oh, me?” Well, this was awkward. What did he do? Oh Christ, did Winn have hobbies? Friends that weren’t werewolves or… well, Hunters? “Um, it’s the off-season, but I coach the high school team. For hockey.” He scrambled through his brain, searching for something, anything. “I modeled?” Wait, shit, not that. “Um, in Europe mostly.” Worse, somehow. Winn could almost feel the smirks building on Adam and Cece’s faces. “I got kicked out of school today, so I’m, uh, a bit… loose, with the job-slash-life-thing, right now.” He downed his entire drink in one gulp, gesturing to the bartender to get him another drink, now. Please.

“Only if you can actually wave a magic wand and change my life.” Camille muttered in response to Adam’s quip, swivelling a little on her stool to order another beer. She should be careful really, because she didn’t know this guy and her tolerance wasn’t what it had been in college. But screw it. If anyone could go through what she had and not crave being a little bit drunk, then they were probably nuts to begin with. “Yeah.” She perked up again with a new bottle in her hand. “Yeah, mothman and all that shit, terrible uniforms. Don’t get too hyped up about visiting, it’s nothing special.”

Dead people? Ah, shit. “So do you, uh— do you know Regan?” She toyed nervously with a lock of hair, hoping to god this wasn’t some strange set up because the doctor had spilled her secrets. She didn’t seem like the gossip type, but still. “I— met her. While I was out for a walk a few days ago.” That was fine, this was a small town, people were friendly enough to introduce themselves. Kicked out of school? Camille’s concerned teacher instinct kicked in, and she leaned across a little to get a better look at Winn. He didn’t seem lazy or like a troublemaker or anything — true her expertise was in much younger kids, but there might still be something she could do. “What happened? Did they give you a fair chance before kicking you out? Temporary expulsions? Reports, guidance counselor?” 

Resisting the urge to answer Camile’s quip with the insistence that his ‘wand’ was indeed magic and could change lives, Adam continued drinking but briefly frowned in thought at the mentions of a Medical Examiner led on into Regan being brought up. While it was always possible that this was a completely different ME office with a different Regan, Adam had a suspicion that this Dr. Regan Kavanagh, the world’s most confusing hunter-dating Banshee materialist.

Winn dropped the fact that he was a male model in Europe, causing Adam to decide that he wasn’t nearly intoxicated enough and order another drink. Sex-canyon V-line wolfmen coaching high school hockey like it was one of those sappy sports movies wasn’t something he wanted to process sober. 

Cece’s eyes narrowed towards Winn. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the college to her yet. Not enough alcohol yet, clearly. Luckily, Cam seemed to have asked the questions for the group. Not that Cece thought it was her business to get involved in Winn’s personal life. But she was a big fan of a little chaos every now and again. She could storm the campus and make a few heads spin. For funsies. 

“Oh, you met my boss then.” Cece smirked, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Bucket of fun isn’t she?” From the looks of it, more people knew about the Doc than Cece thought. Apparently, despite Cece’s assumptions, the woman was pretty popular in town. But if Regan referred to any of these people as a friend before breaking down and accepting Cece’s friendship Cece wears going to dive off a bridge. “I love that girl to death, but she takes life a bit too seriously for my tastes.” Cece followed suit with Winn, downing her new drink in one gulp and raising the empty glass towards him in triumph. “Hell yeah! That’s the kind of energy I’m looking for tonight! Guys, I think we’re going to have some fun.”

“I am not drunk enough to talk about Regan Kavanagh nor my educational drama,” Winn said in his smoothest, most honeyed voice. “And we’ve got all the time in the world for me to come clean. So long as you don’t clean out my wallet.” He winked, slapping Adam on the back again. “I’m sure the golden boy and I can show y’all ladies a nice time. Though not that nice, eh Adam?” He elbowed the other man, trying to direct the conversation off of him — and Regan for that matter.R

After all, he hadn’t spoken to Regan since they’d sent that CVS on 3rd to a hell dimension. The less Winn thought about that, the better. Oh yeah, he was going to get blasted tonight. He deserved it. No one was driving home, they were pissing off an Uber driver with four different locations, loud chatter, and absolutely no filter like God and Stonewall intended. He may be the only queer person here, tonight, but it was Pride Month and he knew how to work a party, even in the straightest possible place. First thing? “Bartender!” he called, loud and long and stupid, “I need, uhhhhh, a drink for every percentage point you want me to tip you.” Hell yeah. Time to get stupid.

[iammikedee]

What is a binder? Why do trans people use them? Which binder is right for me?

Hello! This post is not only for trans folk researching binders, but for anyone who has ever wondered what the hell we’re talking about when we say “binders.” We aren’t talking about the ones with three rings (although who doesn’t love a good three-ring binder amirite?) We’re talking about a piece of fabric that we wear in order to flatten our chests.

First of all, anyone can use binders, not just trans guys. Nonbinary folk often use them. Cosplayers use them. Even women can use them. Anyone who needs a flatter chest can use a binder. They are however extremely helpful to transgender men who have not had top surgery/don’t want top surgery, but still want a flat chest. Here are some questions I’ve been asked, and haphazard answers:

What does a binder look like? Like a shirt. Some of them function like muscle shirts and go all the way down to your waist (like a tank top) and others are more like crop tops and don’t go past your belly. Some binders are just stretchable fabric you slip over your head. Others have metal claps. Sometimes the clasps are on the side, and sometimes you can pull the binder over your shoulders like a backpack and it clasps in front. Sometimes binders don’t even have straps. 

Does it hurt to wear one? It doesn’t really “hurt,” per se, but they get uncomfortable after a while. It’s important to find one that makes you look the way you want to look without completely hindering your ability to breathe. It took me a long time before I figured out which binders really fit and which didn’t. That said, if you’re wearing a binder with clasps or seams, they do like to dig into your skin after a while.

Where do you buy them? Online. Unfortunately you can’t just go to Target or Walmart and buy one (yet. Hopefully that changes with the times.) If you’re operating on a strict budget, I recommend browsing Amazon. I also recommend Underworks and GC2B.

How much do they cost?  Depends on where you get one. The cheapest one I’ve bought is about $20, and the most expensive is more around $40-50. Keep in mind that I don’t have a lot of money. If you have the means, you can get much better quality binders.

How do I know what the “right” binder is? Dude I don’t even know what the right binder is lol. It’s a struggle every trans guy I’ve known has faced. Unfortunately the only way to find the “right” one is by trying them out. Go with whatever you think looks comfortable and is within your price range. If it doesn’t work, send it back and try again. It is not a fun process :(

Are they dangerous to wear for a long time? They can be, yeah. You need to let your chest breathe, even if it’s dysphoric. Wearing binders excessively can cause problems with your skin, posture, muscles, breathing, all sorts of fun stuff. 

Other tips:

If you’re non-Asian and you’re shopping at an Asian store, you’re gonna want to order a binder at least 2 sizes larger. 

Take off your binder when you sleep. 

Get a looser binder for exercising. I know it doesn’t feel good not to be as flat as you want to be, but please know that exercising builds toward improving your body, and part of your ideal body is your lungs! 

DON’T BIND WITH TAPE, EVER!

You can use your binder as a slingshot to fling your packer across the room whenever you want!

Binder Critique Time!

“BaronHong Plus Size Chest Binder Cotton Vest Tank Tops for Tomboy Lesbian.” Yeah, that’s really what it’s called, and yeah, it’s an awful name. You can find it on Amazon. But it’s my favorite binder. It’s essentially a normal tank top with another layer of fabric inside meant to compress your chest. The inner-fabric is adjustable with a series of metal clasps on the side. The clasps are covered by a strip of material and they don’t dig into my skin. The binder portion makes me flatter than any other binder I’ve owned, while the shirt part is breezy. Comes in black, gray and white, $17.99.

“Underworks Econo High Power Chest Binder Top.” This is my second favorite binder. It binds very evenly, but doesn’t make me completely flat. It is a very comfortable binder however and I own two for working out and hanging out at home. There are no clasps, just comfortable, stretchable fabric. This one is a half-binder, meaning it’s not a full-length shirt. Comes in black, (Caucasian) nude, and white, $19.99.

“TOKYO-T Chest Binder for Women Cosplay.” Another great name, right? Sarcasm aside, this one you wear like a backpack by pulling it over your shoulders and clasping it in the front. All in all it makes my chest pretty flat. That said, this binder doesn’t quite contain the very top of my chest. A couple of the clasps have bent as well. Not super good quality, but flattening. Comes in white, black, and beige, $20.99. 

“GC2B Nude Collection.” GC2B is a great company to order from. They’re very pro-trans and queer affirming. I have a couple binders from their nude collection and they are the most comfortable ones I own, hands down. Unfortunately they don’t work with my body type; if you’re a little chubby and your chest is bigger, it might spill out the sides of the binder. The part that actually compresses your chest doesn’t stretch all the way around and the arm holes made your chest-fat spill out. I still wear one of these around the house sometimes, but you can see the fat-spillage if I wear a tight enough shirt. These binders do work for a lot of people though, and they’re one of the only places that sell nude binders for people of color. They come in half-binders ($33) and full binders ($35). 

“BaronHong Tomboy Trans Lesbian Cotton Chest Binder Plus Size Short Tank Top.” It’s funny because this is the same company that makes my favorite binder (listed above) but this one is, in my opinion, the worst. This one is a half-binder. The material that compresses your chest doesn’t cover everything so fat spills out of the top and creates a weird bulge. There are clasps up the side and they’re more uncomfortable than any other binder I’ve used. The bottom of the binder likes to try and roll up, too. Do not recommend. Comes in black, and some other colors I don’t care about because it’s literally the worst. $19.99. 

Those are just the binders I have tried. I strongly recommend doing your own research if you’re buying one. And remember, I’m chubby. If you’re skinny, then binders that didn’t work for me might work for you!

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to reach out. Peace!