#here we see a tamara in her natural habitat

[baconcolacan]

tam holding tori by the scruff while she's being a love-struck loser for her girlfriend is kinda funny

They've been dating for months

Lesbians in the void

[foomatic]

It’s been two weeks since ClexaCon

and I think I’m finally collected enough to write about my experience. I have to break it down into highlights, or else we’ll be here all day, lol.

I was extremely grateful to be asked to be part of the team this year. You have no idea the amount of planning that goes into ClexaCon. You think you know, but you really don’t. It’s a testament to the drive and tenacity of the Con directors that ClexaCon is what it is. They learned a lot from 2017 and having a bigger team certainly helped navigate all the major and minor details of running a convention that in its second year has doubled in size.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me on Thursday was the way everyone showed up for the two pre-con events we had planned: speed friending and the pool takeover. People were spilling out into the casino during the speed friending event, it was insane. And put a couple of inflatable rainbow unicorns in a pool and suddenly you have a queer pool party in full swing complete with awesome weather and every type of queer under the sun. It was such a gay oasis that one of the lifeguards pulled me aside (I had a staff badge on) to ask me what event was this for, because never had he seen so many queer women at the Tropicana pool. The best way I could explain ClexaCon was, “It’s like Comicon, but for queer women and allies.”  He was pleasantly surprised and thought the whole thing was pretty cool.

I averaged 3 hours of sleep each night during the con.  Call time was around 7:30 AM, and we didn’t get done until 8 or 9PM.  There was very little downtime, and I think for each day my first meal, besides coffee in the morning, came around 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  My first meal on Friday was courtesy of @weasal and @gramjams when I finally had a moment to see them on the vendor floor.  They fed me beer, because obviously they love me.  The hours were long, but at the end of every night, my friends and I managed to gather and decompress and reconnect after having a crazy day.  it was much different than last year.  Pretty much all of us had something going on during the con, so there were no opportunities for us to hang out and just enjoy ourselves as a group.  We had gotten a two bedroom suite, so it was ample space for all of us to chill, relax, and a have a few drinks together.  We made that time, late at night, to be together, even though we knew we had to get up hella early the next morning.  And I’m glad we did, because we are such a tight-knit Kru, and it was hard not being able to spend the time with each other. @rialize , @puregloryandgore @colesmcgee @blakeyyang @second-stringer @metriosity @bnnxp @pandabearsnsquids y’all are the best homies ever.  Also there’s more of us but they’re not all on tumblr, but they’re important tooooo.

Having the opportunity to film the guests backstage while they watched my vids made every sacrifice I made during the con worth it.  I almost felt removed from myself during those moments, like I was so zoned in and focused on getting the shot that I couldn’t let myself really enjoy what was unfolding behind my eyes.  I was hyped, don’t get me wrong, but subdued because when I was working behind the scenes during the times when the guests are away from the craziness of the con, I didn’t want to encroach on their moment of peace and start fangirling.  That’s the trade-off.  But seeing Isabella Gomez, Gloria Kellett, and Mike Royce shed tears watching my ODAAT vid; watching Dom tear up watching I’m On Fire and Kat placing a comforting arm around her waist; watching Emily, Tamara, Dom, and Kat crack jokes and smile during “Raise a Little Hell”; seeing Nafessa absolutely rock out to Run This Town watching herself kick ass on screen . . . these are fandom moments that I never even dreamed of because they were so out there and so unlikely to happen.  But happen they did and man I don’t think I’ll ever come down off that high.  Other fav BTS highlights:  Sarah Shahi calling me out for wearing a WayHaught shirt to the Shoot Panel, and also dragging a fan backstage with us; seeing the pure joy on Nafessa’s face as we walked through the convention hall; filming Chyler Leigh as the crowd sang her happy birthday.

My fav con story, however, happened on Saturday.  Around 3 PM the directors had ordered a massive Kentucky Fried Chicken meal for staff, and kept the food in the AV room.  Staff filtered into the room in a rush to quickly eat and get back on the floor, so you can imagine what it must have looked like in there when they were done.  KFC Armageddon.  We were too busy to really clean up, so we just left the mess there for the end of the night, to clean up before we left.  Around 5:30, there’s a knock on the door, and Lisa opens it to find Isabella Gomez and Gloria Kellett standing outside.  We both froze and had a deer in headlights look, but apparently they were there to talk a staff member and wanted to come inside. Inside the room full of chicken bones, dirty napkins, and half eaten coleslaw and mashed potatoes.  The room REEKED of KFC.  We mumbled something about having to clean up before they could come in but they said they didn’t mind and wanted to see us in our “natural habitat” so Lisa let them in while @blakeyyang and I quickly tried to clean up the mess.  They were so nice and gracious.  Isabella was doing something with her phone (IG story or something) and Gloria smiled and asked how our day was going.  They were really chill about being in there, so I took a chance and asked if I could get a photo with them, and they were so cool about it.  I mentioned that I had made their panel video, and thanked them for ODAAT.  Nothing but smiles from them, at the end of a really long day.

Saturday night was crazy (honestly was anything not crazy at this point during the con?).  I left the AV room at 7PM to go to Cocktails for Change to film, left there at 8:30PM to help set up Ascension, finally got up to the room at 10:00PM for a quick shower and bite to eat and was back down at Ascension by 11:00PM.  Filmed, drank, danced, went back up to our suite around 3 AM and don't remember anything after that except waking up the next morning in my PJs passed out on the floor next to my bed. Wild.

I don’t remember Sunday much.  I did get my Kat and Dom photo op, they are such lovely ladies.  I think at one point I was staring blankly at a computer screen, too tired to move or function.  I was also feeling sad that it was over.  There was a great deal of time tidying up and getting all our stuff organized for the movers the next day.  By the time I left the AV room they had already torn down the Main Stage Panel room; it was as if we were never there.  The vendor hall was full of bare tables, and I just stood there and took it in for a moment, to really let it sink in what we accomplished in those three days.  That night we all just chilled and reminisced about all the things we enjoyed that weekend.

A friend and I shared a birthday on Monday.  We kicked off the celebration by sleeping in until 10:30, then we visited the con floor one last time to make sure everything was loaded out properly, then we all went to Shake Shack and spent our first day outside in the sun since we had arrived there on Wednesday.  It was glorious.  We followed that with Dinner at Wicked Spoon and ended the night with a ride in the High Roller.

I feel like I haven't emotionally processed what the weekend meant to me, even now, two weeks later.  Sometimes my heart feels so full thinking about it, that I want to cry.  There is something to be said about being with your community, and knowing there is a tacit understanding and love for everyone there, even if you don't know who they are, because they are you, and you are them.  I'm thankful for all of you who showed up, who believed in us our second year and helped make it a success.  You guys made it all possible.

I also want to shout out to @bnnxp who is an amazing photographer and took a lot of the photos on this post.  See you in London, then ClexaCon 2019!

[aion-rsa]

Lovecraft Country: What Ruby’s Hillary Davenport Transformation Means

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Lovecraft Country.

We first meet the body that’ll come to be known as Hillary Davenport in “Whitey’s on the Moon”, the second episode of Lovecraft Country. The woman, Dell (Jamie Neumann), guards Ardham’s village jail food storage with two aggressive hounds, while waxing poetic about those meddling “Blacks.” We only see her for a brief few minutes but her disdain for Tic, Leti, and George is clear. The next time we see her in episode 5, she’s waking up in William Braithwhite’s bed, scared, and confused. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t recognize herself. She’s Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku).

At some point in the night, William (Jordan Patrick Smith) dosed Ruby with a magical potion that allows her to transform into a white woman. The transformation is purely physical, and utterly painful—”like being unmade”—so she retains all of her memories and all of the baggage she carries around as a Black woman. What is first a frightening literal out-of-body experience for Ruby, becomes an exploration of identity and a chance to walk in someone else’s shoes.

When Ruby first gains access to Whiteness, she wants to assimilate into it. She spends a day in white spaces, surrounded by white people, completely unassailed. This, for her, is the epitome of white existence, peace. In her white form, she takes on the identity of Hillary Davenport. Hillary applies for a position Ruby has been continually denied, and not only is she hired on the spot, she’s offered a higher position. The pain of transformation is worth the access being Hillary gives Ruby.

Ruby takes to her position with ease. She is comfortable in it, because she knows she deserves it. Even if she knows Hillary didn’t get it for that reason. Whiteness serves her in that body, so she forgives the harm it perpetuates. Hillary does not treat Tamara, the only other Black employee at Marshall Fields, with a modicum of kindness. And she doesn’t use her newfound power to make life easier for Tamara, or the next Black girl.

But being Hillary Davenport also gives Ruby a peak behind the curtain. When she’s kiki-ing with the white girls at work about Tamara, they make casual disparaging comments about all Black folks. Ruby is fine with the idea of making fun of Tamara, who she views as someone undeserving of her position (she only has a 7th grade education, after all) but is triggered when that same language is used to make blanket anti-Black statements. It’s maybe the first time Ruby fully realizes that to white folks, there are no “good ones.”

Those same women then express a desire to go to the southside, like an urban “safari” where they can gawk at coloreds in their natural habitat. After a particularly nasty blow up at Tamara, Hillary volunteers her to bring all of them, including their male boss Paul, to the southside. Paul eventually attempts to assault Tamara, which Ruby witnesses. Ruby is disillusioned, and she is furious.

White folks are able to occupy Black spaces in the Southside and participate in Black culture —food and music, particularly— then shrug it off when it no longer serves them. They can vacation to the Black part of town, but Black folks can’t do the same in theirs. They can trespass, and  transgress against Black bodies with no repercussion. Ruby allows the Hillary shell to slide off of her, perhaps fed up with the double alienation of being a white person in a Black space and a Black person in a White body.

The first time Ruby emerges from her white body, she is literally cut out of it by William. She’s both the newborn and the mutilated uterus that housed it, ripped, and ripped from. It should be noted here that William, who has likely been Christina for at least the time Ruby has known him, does not do this delicately. While the opposite is true about the shoggoth Christina delivers in Ardham, which she gently pulled from the cow’s womb.

William tells Ruby the transformations will get easier, and they do, but each time, her body rips itself apart. It’s not just her skin, it’s muscle and bone, it’s all the structures that shape a person. Hillary is smaller than Ruby, her eyes are blue, the metamorphosis happens at a cellular level and every time Ruby transforms, she feels all of it. This is testament to how big the divide is between the Black and white experience, one would literally rather unravel time and again, be unmade, just to experience Whiteness.

Christina tells Ruby that William’s invitation is not about being a white woman, but about “doing whatever the fuck you want.” Hillary Davenport is Ruby’s way of performing Whiteness, of blending into it, but pantomiming Whiteness does nothing to challenge Whiteness. The power Ruby has at her disposal is bigger than what she can gain as a white woman, the power is in what she can use Whiteness to gain for herself.

A common thread in Lovecraft Country is the idea of using the master’s tools. Tic wants to learn the language of Adam so he can use that magic against the Braithwhites, to protect his own. Montrose uses violence to inhibit Tic’s ability to do so, another tool of his oppressors. “It’s this. It’s the devil’s tools, it’s corrupting all of us.” Leti tells Tic. “Look what your father did to protect you.” The Freeman men want to burn down the house from inside it, but there is no way to do that without getting burned.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Ruby is able to shed her white skin, and with it, remove the part of her that gets too close to the flame. And there is a wicked delight in the fact that Dell is racist and would (or does) abhor her visage being used by a Black woman. Ruby, as Hillary, is able to trespass into white spaces, and transgress against white folk, and walk away from it unscathed—the same way they are able to. Ruby’s revenge on Paul is but a morsel of what she is capable of, and of what she can get away with cloaked in the power and anonymity of Whiteness.

Ruby, like Tic, sees magic as a tool for self-empowerment, and she played nice long enough to know that that isn’t the way to utilize the power she was given. Hillary Davenport is Ruby’s tool, and with it, she can become a power player in Lovecraft Country.

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