#fags.. the lot of them

[llithiaskyla]

they're so queer who wrote this comic because they HAD to have known...

[adrianicsea]

i’m too old to beef about it with the majority younger people who use it but To Me the toothpaste flag feels very derivative and disingenuous and like… idk the idea of taking the newly adopted sunset lesbian flag and being like “make it blue and now it’s for boys” feels a little shortsighted to me. like if it’s the flag that GENUINELY feels like home to you, i’m not gonna tell anyone to stop, but i feel like there should at least be an acknowledgment of the toothpaste flag’s origins and why it might not resonate (or even actively rankle) with some gays, particularly older ones.

[musashi]

is the eminem cosplayer from breaking bad actually a bisexual trans man or has tumblr mislead me about this show again

HFDKLJGHDFGDF ok i want to answer this genuinely and in earnest because a lot of tumblr sees the memes and i think might internalize some ideas that breaking bad deserves ridicule for being like, a show that middle aged men like, so i actually want to say this for anyone who might have even the slightest interest in the actual story--

jesse is literally homophobic in canon but has been adopted as a transmasc icon because even though he is a cishet man, a lot of his traditionally masculine bravado resonates with trans men who had that period of conforming to ideas of toxic masculinity in an attempt to feel secure in their gender. this is something men of all gender alignments often deal with, but for trans men it can hit twofold, as they obvious have more at stake in "proving" their manhood.

furthermore, jesse is not the hypermasculine facade he presents. he is sensitive, open-hearted, protective in ways that are more nurturing than combative. jesse does not stone-faced background noise the traumatic things he goes through in brba, he cries openly and breaks down often, in ways that even just the 'i see breaking bad memes' crowd knows because those scenes are often made fun of, bolstered by aaron paul's emmy-winning performance and the sheer amounts of raw emotion he puts into them:

the villain of breaking bad is toxic masculinity. full stop. it is not subtle, it is present throughout. jesse is meant to be one of walter's narrative foils and this is the biggest place they clash--walter is insistent on being hard and masculine and never letting his image or personal pride falter, but jesse cannot do that. jesse emulates an idea of masculinity to protect himself but when pushed to his limit this idea crumbles and he allows his true colours to show without shame--what he is is gentle. he is not hard, he is not destructive, he is not a killer. every crime he commits and every life he takes, he takes with tears in his eyes. he literally cannot find it in his heart to hurt even an insect.

jesse pinkman is not a trans icon without reason, even though he is a cis man. jesse is a trans icon because he is introduced as someone who wears toxic masculinity like armor, desperate to prove to not only the world but to himself that he is strong and worthy of his place in society. and while i will not say the things that happen to him in the series are deserved in ANY sense of the word (he is a victim--plain and simple) they do serve a function--teaching him to shed that ideal for himself and be who he really is. and who he really is, is a big brother with an open heart, who cries easily and loves wholly, who likes woodworking and comic books and making art, who just wants someone to tell him that he has done a good job.

tl;dr: no, jesse pinkman is not trans. but he is ours.

[homestuckconfession]

the concept of the slur replacement project feels a bit like historical revisionism? especially considering how much i see people recommend it as the recommended way of reading homestuck. it's sanitizing down the more unpalatable bits of homestuck to make it seem more friendly and wholesome (which seems incredibly common among homestuck fans in general, especially among those who like to pretend the epilogues never happened, which is a whole other discussion i won't get into rn), and that just feels weird. not to mention the execution of it is very poor in general. the "future arachnids grip" joke is funny actually, and the change they made to make it "later arachnids grip" not only makes it a weaker joke (as it was initially a play on how the concept of gayness isn't really a thing to trolls), but also introduces an inconsistency in the writing, as it only does this change for vriska, drawing more attention to it. there's also a fucking... random bit where iirc for one line they replace a mention of bill cosby with... gnomeo and juliet? i think? which is not only a baffling decision that they don't, but is technically introducing an anachronism because that movie didn't come out until 2011. the writing they used to replace things in general just doesn't feel very homestuck-y, and it always feels clunky and awkward.

.

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

rough Hedgehog's Dilemma doodles from last night's studio time.

The top one is repurposed work from an old tabletop game that never got off the ground, the other two are referenced from pinterest +imagination

I think that top one is where some of the lost visual elements from the tarot piece are gonna go... probably going to end up being the next big piece.

[theygender]

Accidentally dressed too masc when I went to the salon and the hair stylist gave me a cis guy mullet 😭

[blood-choke]

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

[yourfavesaysfag]

The Adversary from Slay the Princess?

The Adversary from Slay the Princess says fag!

[tadpal]

the worst part of living in the north east for the better part of my life is that i speak almost exactly in the local dialogue but still with my shitty american accent. fag and poof just means a smoke!!! im not homophobic im nicotine dependent!!! please just give me a cig!!!!

[basaltbutch]

DOG VEST DOG VEST DOG VEST DOG VEST DOG

[I.D. A photo of a denim vest taken so you can see the entirety of the outside. It is slowly being taken over entirely by dog-related patches. The biggest one is one that takes up the entirety of the back and features a dog walking, staring at the viewer, surrounded by red and underneath a crescent moon. Other patches include "Bite the hand that feeds" , a transsexual pawprint, "Patron saint of one way journeys" , and a pocket labeled "Treats" with a dog bone on it. End I.D.]

[sharpth1ng]

Idk why but I love calling billy and Stu the F slur in my head as a fellow F slur that is

As a fellow faggot I also love to call them faggots. It's a wonderful word honestly. Fills me with joy when I use it for myself.

Also they deserve it.

[satanfemme]

the way all the rough edges have been forcibly sanded off the word "queer" in lgbt circles is so strange cause now people will look at ancient figures who would be considered trans by modern standards, but declare the word "trans" has too much modern baggage attached and we should instead call them something more neutral like queer. like ok. but if someone 1000 years in the future called me a word that, in their language, basically means weird-guy, I think I would find baggage attached, personally. nothing against people who self-identify with the word but yk.

[milflewis]

every now and then i remember this one priest that used to do mass at my home parish who would often get gay and english mixed up and end up saying things like. the gays stole our lands for 700 hundred years and tried to kill us off. or like. english ppl talk with their hands too much. licherally the only time church was fun

[egg-emperor]

why does it take Dr Deep as someone they can see as fitting into common stereotypes for some to call a version of Eggman gay when regular Eggman has been right here being PRIME big strong handsome fat leather daddy bear material the whole goddamn time :P

[beau-rebloga-coisas]

I think the main difference I notice between the average USAmerica leftist and Brazilian leftist can be attributed to the fact that Brazil had a dictatorship, that was fought with tooth and nails to get rid of, and past that we got universal healthcare and voting rights again. I wish I could say all of Latin America is like this since so many of us had dictatorships but I don't know that many people from other countries (if you're latino please tell me), i think the average brazilian leftist understands there's no worth on peacefully resisting and if you want something, you need to fight or you'll be take and killed, or silenced, or "suicided". I note in a lot of (mainly white) USAmerican leftists that they wait for the change to be made for them instead of going like "wait, I can be a catalyst for changes" even if they're small.

[prudereality]

i think a big thing that has always stumped me abt being in friendships is the common conception that like. okay this may be more prevalent in cishet romantic relationships compared to queer romantic relationships but. the common thread that u can’t tell ur partner everything. u can’t trust them to love u if u tell them the bad stuff. u have to have someone other than ur partner who can “handle ur ugly” so to speak

which is so silly to me like? why Shouldn’t i tell my partner everything. i’m in this relationship for the long haul baby park that ass and open ur ears it’s story time about the Tale Of Me. also like i live with my partner. i’m not driving to someone who may or may not give me the time of day depending on how they feel at that moment when i have someone i’d much rather be around? like i kiss this person for a Reason? also circling back to the someone i’d rather be around comment i have noticed (and/or ignored) for years how i’m consistently exhausted after seeing a friend for longer than . an hour. but i want my partner in my skin. i want to share thoughts with this person. i want to mix our blood and fuse our bones and i CANNOT say the same for most if not all other people i know