#i know as a girl i should be identifying with the white dress here

[freebooter4ever]

listen to TATE nonstop - - - - > whoops i bought a ticket I shouldn't be wasting money on to their LA concert in august

[hellokittyballsack]

WAIT. DO U ALSO HC DRIX AS TRANSFEM. OR AM I. LOSING MY MIND.

I DO IN A WAY ? ITS COMPLEX SORRY

i dont like labels but i do refer to drix as she/her because i see her motherly love and gentle soul that she carries around on her sleeve. i love her sm... ARGHH also i love ur pfp

(im gonna use this opportunity to rant about labels since i was looking for an opportunity to share this somewhere NOT MAD AT U OR ANYTHING LOL TLDR: hairy balding cis men are beautiful women the way they are ♥️ masculinity can be feminine vice versa if you let it be🖖)

you can skip blue text and just read the green part, blue's more of a personal experience laadeedaa!!

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

with a lot of my fav cis male characters i tend to slowly start calling them she/her the more i love them, dont really know why but i think thats just me projecting since im a trans man so i cant really enjoy femininity authentically, yknow? (or the way i want to) ide get misgendered since the body i was born with is "female" or "feminine". 🍅 🍅 🍅

plus im almost certain if i was somehow flipped and born a cis man ide still end up transitioning(not medically but thats a personal thing) and then yearning for masculinity, simply because i hate how these bodies limit the perception people have of me. i want to be my own person, identify as me first, not to have my label define me or my identity for that matter bc identity is SO much more complex than just one word.

its like Ying Yang but sadly i cant ever be a true neutral because that would mean dressing androgynous which i cant do because me, dressing androgynous, would just be a boyish girl. and me dressing masculine would get the results of "being seen as androgynous" because of how my body is naturally. but is that fair at all? so the only thing i can do to be seen as masculine is to medically change my body? ☹️

and i dont want to be seen as androgynous either at all, i love my male identity, dont love what comes with it but love it. and want to be perceived as masculine, ..but being androgynous is the only way you can build up your identity on your own without someone viewing you with a gender filter on their glasses.(sorry for the shit metaphor) and after people find out whats in your pants they will immediately talk to you differently and that SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if i want to put on a dress that doesnt make me a woman or a feminine man, let me enjoy this dress, masculine-ly ‼️‼️🤲 PLEASE

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

(⚠️this isnt relative to the asked question as explained prior, use labels all you want guys but know its okay if someone doesnt use labels ect ect. just explaining the jist here quickly⚠️) sometimes people use labels to put others into boxes and focus on "whats womanly" / "whats manly" --- so its difficult to have people respect your identity while "breaking the rules" (their rules) of said identity. aswell as people focusing on the physical. (body and such) rather than finding beauty in feminine and masculine features you have without that lowering your validity of said identity. this being said that usually happens in heteronormative spaces BUT it occasionally slips in into the lgbtq community.

masculinity can be femininity vice versa, its not just black and white 🫂 body hair can be both for example, even in "masculine" areas, it still can be feminine. and that should go for any body part, clothes, action, interest or anything for that matter ♥️♥️

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

like with peter strahm from Saw (aswell as mark hoffman) thru months of writing scenarios between them and my brainrot i now see them as the most beautifully gorgeous women and that includes all their hairy appendages. that doesnt necessarily mean i headcanon them as transfem, i see their "male" bodies to be the peak of feminine beauty, as well as their masculinity. i mean that i dont "genderbend" them and turn them into cis women, and i dont add or take away from the original character, longer hair or a sudden change of clothes, or trans scars even though im trans myself and will probably end up with such scars (in a perfect world i would be seen as male with or without boobs) theyre perfect the way they are and i love them dearly oh so much ��🫂🫂🫂....(not saying its bad to do any of that, live your truth) i may draw them wearing dresses or lipstick time to time but thats not what defines their identity as women, who says theyre 100% only women either fuck it lets go full genderqueer!! theyll never be cis women yes, but thats not what my goal is at all. trans love everybody ♥️ transexual pride!! ♥️♥️(and even if you dont identify as trans but still arent cis ♥️♥️youre valid however you feel, whenever ⭐) But that doesnt mean i headcanon them as trans also, theyre them, and i want to see them shine, not being shadowed by a label or limited by one, that goes for Drix too. that doesnt mean im against such label, though theres really no way of explaining without it SOUNDING like i am, go fuckall with your headcanons imagination is free!!!! just labels arent for me AND THATS OKAY

theyre all my girls who are boys who are girls MUAH 💋

[wild-wombytch]

Motocultor 2024, Friday the 16th, Karaez, Poher (Kernev) and neighbouring cities and landscapes

(Too many passerby/friends in my other pics that could be identified, that's why I'm not posting much of the festival itself)

It was my first Motocultor. A friend kindly abducted me into going there. Honestly, great experience. If the organisation stays as it is, it is safe for women to go alone. There is a libfem association that was patrolling to ensure it. There were a lot of women (including in security and staff), it was quite accessible for people with physical disabilities. Toilets are clean and well thought. Everyone sleeps about everywhere on the festival undisturbed. There are many tasty vegan/vegetarian options in foods (and a good selection of Asian and African foods). You can dress however you want without being harassed (some women were in bras for comfort -yours included- and there were male travestites and they seemed to feel safe). Also, you can wash yourself/brush your teeth, fix your muddy shoes etc about 5min of walk outside of the fest (technically there is water on the fest but it's less crowded outside and actually made for that purpose (it's a sport's spot).

The vibe it gave was very libfem, so don't expect some activist radical lesbians everywhere, of course, or to not see bdsm stuff or performances of feminity. But it was still better than most festivals with a lot of very toxic macho males a lot of people don't feel safe around. They had stuff to protect your drinks and your ears. They had power banks. You have a market so if any of your clothes for some reason tear or whatever you can find some stuff. The light is well thought so there aren't dark isolated corners. The control of items at the entrance is good. You can have a cashless account you can add money to in advance as soon as you have your ticket, so you don't need physical money. You just need a credit card if you want to buy merch, but you can 100% come to the festival without credit cards or money anywhere else than in the bracelet they give you at the entrance. Also, Nazi symbols were explicitly banned in the rules THANKS FUCKING HELL. But according to the girls who were our tents neighbours, the other fest in this city, Les Vieilles Charrues, had some of those guys as well. Be careful for festivals in France in general (especially WOC), the people are becoming properly insane and violent these days. For the head up, as far as I know this is a far left separatist city, so people here are Bretons, not French. We unite in hatred of Paris.

The musics were a bit of everything. It depends of the days. We had Faun and Opeth at the same time, to give an idea. Some groups were rap/metal, other electro/metal, folk/metal, symphonic/metal and uh....well, just listen to Igorrr yourself, I can't explain it but it was fire and rhe female singer was fucking POSSESSED she was amazing and touching and funny as hell. We had punk on the Saturday, a good amount of female bands in comparison to other fests. Not just metalheads in the public, a lot of punks and other alt cultures as well. Booze was great (and unlike the previous fest I've been to where we got harassed by homophobic white supremacists, there was coffee and energy drinks, as it should).

Camping was crowded but had a good mentality. We had about twenty people cheering for us when we were trying to put the tent back in its bag. We asked for a Qeshua expert around and ended up at five people trying to wrap it up like idiots. Then -of course it was a woman 😭✨- Our Lady of Qeshua came out of thin air to our rescue and wrap that shit up on her own in about 30s, like a proper badass. I love you my sister in tent. Also we had the honour of witness a 4am dumpsters joust and the next day to talk with one of the dumpster warriors. So uh...maybe bring earplugs if you intend on actually sleeping. There is also the Makumba here, where it's purposely shitty and memeish old pop songs being played and remixed for people who are still alive and not dead-drunk after 2am. We did shitty dance. It was funny. Except I was tired, in sandals (because honestly fuck combat boots after one to many miles of walk and pogo) and it took about 2min for someone to spill his whole beer on my feet and for another dude crowd surfing in my back and falling from the sky on me (I'm fine, I believe he is?). The morning, if younre early you may miss the queue for a well-deserved watery coffee.

Honestly the ticket is expensive for my budget (now kinda dead because I shamefully admit I fell a bit for the capitalist evil. But I'm wealthier of sturdy leathers that will last a lifetime and supporting a lot of female owned businesses) but it ended up being a wonderful investment! 100% recommand (maybe 1-2 day for a start, because you need a medal if you survive to 4 days).

[zinniajones]

Michelle, Phillip, and Denise:

Below are the five topics related to transgender/gender identity issues our group has been discussing. As you know, Alliance Defending Freedom is seeking medical, biological, and/or psychological experts to research and write on these topics. We would like “white papers,” for lack of a better term, written on each topic. These papers should be empirically/data based, yet written in a manner that the general public can easily digest. Here is an example of the type of paper we have in mind. As I mentioned on our last call, topics 1, 2, and 3 are the most pressing. If there is any way to get papers completed on those topics by mid-November, that would be terrific. If they can get done earlier, even better.

Thank you in advance for your willingness to assist on this project, and to link us with others who may be able to assist as well. Please let me know if you have any questions.

1) Substantiate the psychological harm that can befall both sexes (but girls/women especially) by having their right to bodily privacy invaded by males. Can lead to fear; body image anxiety/complex; other long-term psychological harms.

2) Substantiate that it is normal during adolescence for children to go through a phase when they identify (to some degree) with the opposite sex. It is inappropriate (and could have psychological, medical, other harms?) to interpret this common stage as gender identity confusion that warrants treating a child as the opposite sex (in language, dress, appearance, etc), and pursuing more drastic measures like hormone therapy and genital change surgery.

3) Substantiate the physiological differences between males and females as they relate to sports. Explain that when transgender or gender identity confused boys are permitted to try out for girls’ sports teams that the girls are necessarily disadvantaged. We want to make the point that interpreting Title IX to include protections for “gender identity” will harm girls by allowing boys to displace girls on competitive sports teams.

4) For those who have undergone hormone therapy and genital change surgery, a paper that says they are no happier (and perhaps worse off if the research supports it) even though they took these drastic measures.

5) Biological/medical paper on the many differences (brain, anatomy, physiology, etc) between the sexes from the earliest stages of human development and moving forward. This would help substantiate the point that a person’s brain is not and cannot be hard-wired to be an opposite sex than the sex his or her chromosomes, DNA, and anatomy say he or she is.

– This paper could also deal with intersex and other anomalies and explain why these exceptions do not undermine the rule.

– This paper could also include the point that no matter how many hormones a person takes, and no matter if they have genital change surgery, they are still biologically, physiologically, etc their birth sex. For example, a transgender man will still go through menopause.

-ADF ordering up anti-trans arguments from the American College of Pediatricians

[eliasreznikoff]

**Attention** RVA Callout

Tw : alleged sexual assault // statutory rape // abuse // coercion // manipulation

We feel obligated to speak up so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else and so people can be aware if/when dealing with a serial rapist. This post is to call attention to the damage done by Elias Reznikoff // Zachary Wozniak, white, age 23. Photo of him below:

**REMOVED SO THE POST WON'T GET TAKEN DOWN FOR COPY RIGHT**

He’s been put on blast once before very publicly in his Texas hometown for raping a girl and fled to Richmond to hide in 2013. (link to past post/screen cap below)  In Texas he went by his birth name, Zachary Wozniak, though legally has changed it to Elias Reznikoff. He has also gone by Dan, Piotr, texas-reznikoff, afterschoolknifefight, sea#9316, zdwozniak, and elirezni in person and/or online. These various names are a continuous attempt to cover his tracks, just as he attempted to do from the callout in Texas. (He will accuse people of deadnaming him if they mention his past identities) During his time here in Richmond, for over four years, he has consistently repeated his abusive habits of sexual assault, manipulation and gaslighting/silencing of his past romantic/sexual partners. He is a danger to those who are in a relationship with him // engage in sex with him // minors.

Elias is a repeat abuser who targets POC (fetishisizing asian femme/female presenting people), Queers//Femmes, Women, Individuals coming from turbulent home, and Minors. His tactics generally start by targeting these more “vulnerable” individuals via dating apps/online and showcasing grand gestures of ‘romance’ (ex. asking to move away together), grooming them to see him as a shy/weak individual, then coercing people into sex (specifically unprotected sex), forcing sex on sleeping individuals, withholding information and gaslighting by using ‘savvy’ language  (i.e “ You are forcing me into sex I didn’t agree to by saying I have to use a condom”), emotional manipulation to gain power, isolating you from your friends, among other behaviors - the list could be exhaustive. On top of the active mechanisms of abuse he employs during the relationship, he refuses to return your personal belongings, keeping “trophies” of his previous relationships as a tool for reliving those relationships long after they have ended.

One of his largest threats is his demeanor/appearance upon first encounter. He isn’t a menacing person (fairly small in stature), charming, well-dressed, and quite knowledgeable on various topics/social justice issues. His seemingly charming personality and blanket of lies allows him to hide his true/past self to those around him. He continually leaves people who were or are apart of his life in the dark, leaving them to fill their own blanks on the person he actually is. He will often go in and out of therapy/medications as a way to convince current/past partner’s that he has “atoned for his sins”. These very intentional constructions of his self made identities/personalities, along with the romancing and grooming, are how he manipulates individuals to disregard red flags of emotional and sexual abuse.

We need to be able to identify the people in our circles who are preying on minors and our peers to be able to act before someone is assaulted, not after. As a community people are less safe engaging with him without knowing these are the behaviors he has continued to repeat for years and years (in secret) even after fleeing from a different state for his first publicized offense. It should also be known that he has a very small internet persona and often hides in the shadows (of okc, tinder, etc. but also favors the richmond music scene [was recently kicked out of a local rva shoegaze/dreampop band - has all of the equipment to start a band] and Ipanema). After this post, he could go into hiding once again- changing his identity (has previously changed his name, along with changing his hair color to yellow/platinum blonde/black to conceal himself. Along with physical changes he rarely shows his whole face online) and move to another part of the country to start a new life where no one knows of him. It is important to share this, so that hopefully no one else is abused and left in the dark by him. 

We want reformation and accountability from him, and hopefully, one day that will happen- but knowing his continuous pattern’s of abuse, the people in his life deserve to know and be made aware of the things he has been capable of for their own safety and so that they can make their own judgement call.

As unfavorable as these circumstances, all of us who have connected are there for anyone else who has been hurt or left in the dark by Elias. If you feel as if you might need closure or support please reach out! All of us have created a safe space where we support one another, we want to give you the space to be heard and validated so that hopefully you can get closure as well. You can message anytime, so please don’t hesitate to reach out - we are all here for you and we will listen to you!

*2023 Update*

Post was removed due to copyright as I'm sure the individual would prefer to hide this information from potential victims.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

The Slightly Humorous Story About How Straight People made me Queer.

Let’s be clear here, when I was in Korea, I was halfway tripped up on Korean dramas. Korean dramas which didn’t have kissing until much later in the series, and lots of small romantic gestures were on screen. From what I know, I liked cartoons and TV shows to block the noise from my parents arguing all of the time. I disliked the Japanese occupation drama that was popular at the time because it had loud guns in it. So I’ve always loved rom coms the most on television. They gave me comfort. I also watched Historicals with my aunties.

I had to figure this out on my own, by putting things together.

So when I came to the US (adopted), I had this really strong notion that went something like this...

I would get married, have kids, I didn’t know how. And then my husband would tragically die of natural causes or we’d get divorced or something of that sort and he’d disappear. And then I would have dogs and be a widow.

No straight person has a thought like this when they are five years old, and maybe it should have clued me in that people usually don’t kill off their spouses in their heads that maybe just maybe I was not straight.

I had bouts as a kid, too, of loving frilly pink things, then hating it, etc, though this got confused under all of the Second wave feminism my mom liked to shove on me, which often was white feminist and racist and oddly anti-LBTQIA.

I liked pink for a while, because it was girly, then converted to purple, because it felt more neutral, but then couldn’t identify with any color after that. Maybe this, too, was part of the harassment my mom had around colors, insisting that I wear black because it was “practical” but I couldn’t really perform gender that well. I would really, really try to conform to one gender, but then feel highly uncomfortable with it.

I wanted to learn girly things to know it, but I didn’t want to perform it. I wanted to do sports, and learn various types of things that were told to be gendered--but honestly, I saw it as kind of pointless to call wiffle ball a “Boys game” and girls “Cooking.” I never felt stable. I would flux and convert at turns a little, and I was comfortable with that. I didn’t see the point of gendered pronouns. WTH. I got constantly corrected on them for years probably because I couldn’t feel them in myself either. And the thing was, I liked dressing up in costumes, I didn’t care about the gender of the clothes. I also absolutely loved anything that played with gender roles and expectations. I was drawn to it.

I found myself drawn to queer books, though a lot of the romances I read were het, maybe as a remnant of watching too many het romances on television from very young and also because reading queer romances would have exposed me more.

At the same time straight kids would endlessly tease me for being a lesbian, gay, or something. And I was puzzled over sexual attraction and romantic attraction for myself. I thought people were lying in television shows--also maybe because of the gap between US television and Korean. US--two seconds, in bed. Korean 10/16 episodes in and you get a kiss. And for a kid that doesn’t feel primary sexual attraction, this was quite confusing--I didn’t know that kids could know their sexuality at five years old.

From the time I knew sexual attraction was a thing(TM), I was thinking, unlike the kids that teased me to be gay and lesbian. I was fine with “whatever” the most ace thing in the world. (Though if it was a woman in my head, I thought things like, well, if I’m attracted to women, well, the dying early thing won’t be in the cards. I’ll figure it out then.) I was fine being bisexual. As long as I could punch my schedule of having kids and a dog. (This is kinda ND to me... which might also be why I got bullied--besides being Asian. I didn’t think like most other kids and I was extremely precocious.)

At one point I was asked if the “Backstreet boys was hot” when I was nine and in a fit of NDness, probably, I watched their music videos to figure out *why* that person liked them, and I couldn’t figure it out at all. Totally went over my head. Was it a personality trait they had?

But nothing happened for a long ass time. And then aesthetic attraction happened. I thought aesthetic attraction was the same thing as sexual attraction for the longest ass time. It took me a long, long ass time to realize people actually do want to have sex upon looking at someone and saying “I’d do them.”

Even the kissing games like spin the bottle and dares, etc, I stayed out of with the thought of, “I don’t see the point if you don’t have feelings for each other.”

I also thought probably because of a steady digest of rom coms, Victorian romances, and so on, attraction would be this magical moment of floaty clouds, etc. But I found it extremely annoying in part and I wanted to distance myself from it. At other points I didn’t want to deal with it at all. And I was told it was the greatest thing in the world.

My friends asked why I didn’t date anyone and I answered with the most ND answer ever in my head. “I didn’t have a large enough pool of people to be attracted to.” The other thing I thought was, “There is no point of dating in Middle School and High School if you’re going to break up with people,” *cough* Grey-ace, maybe? Have a clue.

But I had no terms for this, or my kind of half-hearted attempts at presenting cis. Presenting fully as a woman and performing it was too much work in my head. And I know some women just don’t like makeup, and some nonbinary do, but putting the effort in to perform being a woman 24-7 felt like too much for me. I kept slipping every time I tried. I never quite felt comfortable in the gossip circles women do--it also might be because I was also extremely precocious and ND-ish that it was harder to fit in.

But straight people kept flagging me over and over trying to figure out why this or that was true. Why I had no attraction to anyone. Why I couldn’t perform womanhood, even though I knew how. The feedback from straight people told me over and over I was very queer. And I felt an attraction to queer culture, but I didn’t know how I slotted in and I couldn’t place it because the dominant labels were not me. But I didn’t feel straight either.

I semi-dated long distance a guy I felt romantic attraction to (after I got to know him for a while), but I didn’t feel sexual attraction to. In truth, I probably wasn’t that committed and the long distance hampered my ability to feel attraction since we separated in early stages.

I did finally date someone I had sex with, but I still don’t get why people love sex that much. My sex stance is sex indifferent most of the time, sometimes favorable, but rarely, so it was a meh moment for me. I liked sex for the intimacy, but sometimes I felt like it was kinda pointless. I did feel sexual attraction after knowing the person for a while. I’m not clear on my secondary sexual/romantic attraction orientation completely, though. It’s like trying to reach past a brick wall. I’m not against it being more omni/pan/bi still.

And the guy of the time was straight--also had this weird relationship with trans people where he kept harping on it. So I closeted my NBness really hard during that relationship, but I kept slipping and he kept on me for why I didn’t perform womanness correctly. lol Maybe I was also trying to get that man dies before I’m 80, but we have kids thing going too.

lol Queer people kept semi-kicking me out though I kind of had an attraction to queer people as in I think I’m one of you, but I don’t know how. So I struggled a lot to find the correct labels.

I wish I knew earlier that this was a thing, though, since I was destructive in some ways when I thought I was straight, but a little strange and trying to fit into the allosexual/alloromantic/cis box. I could have sorted it out faster and better and probably gotten past the grey-ace/aro wall by approaching it differently.

All straight people kept cluing me into the fact I was queer. It wasn’t queer people that told me, hey, you, you’re queer. It was 100% straight people--though they got the brand of queer wrong often. I just couldn’t perform their straightness to their standards no matter how hard I tried.

So no dog, no kids, but hella queer? I do have reptiles. But I do plan to eventually have dogs. The straights converted me to queer.

[vibrantpixels]

gosh, i wanted to be an author so bad when i was a kid. i went to delete my old abandoned email when i noticed the storage drive had a folder with all my book ideas and i want to share the most fleshed-out, non-fanfic, one here because i have nowhere else to post it and i want to immortalize it in some way. im sorry for the cringe but this is entirely for me

"Ofelia… (WHY I CHOSE MY OWN INTERNET NAME IDK)

…Is what they called her and she didn’t know why.

As she opened her eyes for what felt like the first time in her life, the brown-eyed girl was met with faces she couldn’t recognize but knew she should have. Ofelia, she heard called out over and over again in the background while tears of joy fell from the eyes of a middle-aged man sat at her bedside, who wore harsh laugh lines on both corners of his mouth and had splotches of blue, green, and purple staining the thin skin beneath his cloudy gray eyes; the tears dampening the cotton blue sheets that encompassed the girl’s fragile limbs. (I STILL LOVE RUN-ON SENTENCES)

Those eyes of his in which she saw pain, hopelessness, and fear; the color, lacking any saturation; so pale and unblemished that they would appear to fade into the white canvas surrounding the iris if it weren’t for the fine blue tint that outlined the gray. Those eyes that she intrinsically knew and brought her immediate comfort. Not the calling of her name, which should sound familiar, or the tight and welcoming embraces from her supposed “loved ones,” but the haunted eyes of a man who claimed to be her father.

While trying to piece together the broken fragments of her memory, the girl named Ofelia discovers terrible truths about herself and the world she lives in.

~PLOT~

Ofelia. No last name. Father is a visionary. (Can perceive future events in dreams or while in a trance) Government makes everyone who is a suspected visionary undergo rigorous testing. If they are found as a positive subject, the patient’s melanin is drained from their eyes (they turn pale gray) in order to be identified (naturally gray eyes do not exist for the purpose of this plot) in public. These people are protected at all times and are well respected in society (though they are strictly prohibited from discussing any visions with anyone but government officials in exchange for said protection), but can be targeted by border-hopping criminals (their intentions are to save the people from their corrupt government, but the government makes them the enemy and their people follow). Border-hoppers want to capture visionaries to prove to the other citizens that their future is bleak under their government’s rule. Subjects who test negative are not spared. These people are killed because the conditions in which they are treated and the tests they go through reveal too much about the corrupt ways of the government that they couldn’t risk letting them go free. Ofelia is a visionary and gets scary dreams often so her father requests for the tests to be performed on her (her father is one so it is common that children inherit this “gift”). When Ofelia takes the tests, she doesn’t take them seriously and fails, not knowing of the consequences. While waiting on death row (she does not know that she is awaiting her death), at the same time, her father is trying to convince the president to give his daughter another chance. Just as the president is about to agree, the room where the ‘negative’ visionaries are held until their death gets a tranquilizing vapor siphoned through the air vents, and they are all dragged out by the Border Hoppers. Ofelia begs to be taken back home, but she is knocked out. When she awakens, she meets a girl she once knew dressed in border-hopper-attire [WHATEVER THAT IS LOL, I CAN'T PICTURE IT]. Ofelia feels betrayed. The girl tells Ofelia what her government does to those that fail the test and that it was going to happen to her. Ofelia doesn’t believe her so they show her hidden security footage that the border-hoppers stole from the government building (they had an inside man; her father) and she cries. Her father shows up briefly to reassure her and ask her to help the border-hoppers destroy their government. She was the key. Ofelia only gets visions in her sleep, so she is sedated for most of the day, only conscious to eat and use the restroom. She almost gives up because she is so weak and tired from being under all the time. Then she encounters a boy, a boy she knew was still living on the other side. They were speaking through their visions but he was not found as a visionary yet. Together, they slowly reveal all of their government’s secrets and manage to tear down the wall that separated the two states. But it is not over yet.

FIRST OF ALL, I smell the Divergent trilogy influence as it was one of my favorite book series during this time (2014!!!! can u believe??!?!?) like killing all divergents and tris' mom being in on the whole shebang

Sprinkle in some divided nations specifically from the legend series by Marie Lu (god i loved those books; i bought champion and rebel years ago but have yet to read them :| )

And you see how I set up the idea for a sequel when i never even wrote a single chapter for this one????? i was CONFIDENT

if you read all this, im sorry

[tranquilpetrichor]

a crash course in everything ballet

hello! my lovely friend @sungbeam asked me to tell them about ballet, and well, there's way too much to say. this post is divided into sections for reference. like i said, there's a lot to learn about ballet, so this post will be quite broad in terms of topics and some things i say will be based on my own experience. i'll link other good places to look if you want to learn more! if i make any spelling mistakes, rip because i suck at putting accent marks correctly.

please remember i am not a professional but i have danced at a ballet school for about 15 years, and i draw on those experiences. i also identify as female, so a guy's experiences might be a little different than mine. also we're pretty much focusing on classical ballet here.

the origins of ballet

ballet originated in the italian renaissance courts of the 15th and 16th centuries.

it eventually spread to the court of louis xiv in france, so that's why ballet terms are french yay

the basic principles of ballet

aka the broad stuff you want to keep in mind

one is turnout - the legs rotate from the hip socket, and the feet follow.

in general, ballet calls for graceful lines

we also use port de bras - which literally means carriage of the arms (this is how you use your arms in ballet)

i'd say in general ettiquette is a large part of ballet (like curtsying to your teachers at the end of the class and such).

some basic steps of ballet

before we start with actual steps it's important to talk about the 5 basic positions, very cleverly named first, second, third, fourth and fifth position! (honestly we don't use third that much but just ignore that)

above shows how the feet are placed in each position, as well as corresponding arms.

if you don't know these, you won't get very far because harder steps often use these as a foundation/pass through the position.

OK on to some steps!

i don't wanna bore you for too long because ballet has many steps so please check out a post like this for more

plié - to bend. in demi plié the knees bend slightly but your heels stay on the floor, meanwhile in grand plié, the knees bend a lot more and in almost all positions your heels will naturally lift off of the floor.

tendu - tight/stretched. the working leg extends until only the tip of the toe touches the floor

releve - to rise. can be done on one foot or two, at the end the heel should be high enough so that all body weight is on the ball of the feet.

i can sit here and say how these steps should be done but i really suggest watching clips of the actual step

the ballet class experience

first up, what do we wear?

the exact dress code can be different per studio but generally from what i've seen, females wear a black leotard over pink tights and males wear a white shirt, black tights and sometimes a dance belt. (males and females both wear ballet slippers, although for us it's pink and the guys it's black)

or if it's a pointe class you'll see the girls with their pointe shoes on, more on those later

i'll be honest i didn't pay attention much to what guys wore until recently because i've only had about one in my classes consistently.

at my level, a lot of us wear street clothes such as sweatpants and jackets over our ballet stuff when we're cold (or just too lazy to take it off).

trashbag pants are quite a popular style.

for hair, it's up in a bun for girls

now for actual class stuff!

depending on what teacher i have, they either have us start at the barre or on the floor for warm-up stretches

alright maybe i should explain what a barre is

no, not like a bar with wine, a barre runs along the wall or there are portable barres, and you hold onto them for support

the point is that if you use the barre to find your balance, it'll help you when you don't have the barre with you anymore

barre consists of exercises like pliés, tendus, dégagés, frappés, etc

then there's centre (where there's no barre)

centre consists of combinations like adagio, tendus, pirouettes, petit allegro (little jumps) and grande allegro (big jumps).

we usually do stuff in small groups for centre, usually staying around the center of the room, going from the back to the front, or moving diagonally from one corner to another

last is usually a révérence, meant to wrap up class and show respect to the teacher (and piano accompanist if there is one)

the point of pointe

yes i had to make this stupid pun, anyways let's learn more about pointe shoes!

they are not just something you buy with no thought, you should be given approval by your teacher before getting pointe shoes.

in my opinion, people should be at least 11 before starting pointe technique because of the fact that the bones are still growing and hardening and it's good to be careful

regardless, receiving pointe shoes is a large milestone for dancers as it demonstrates that the dancer possesses a certain level of maturity

also i've gone to a professional pointe shoe fitter whenever i've needed to get new pointe shoes, don't buy shit off of wish.com like an idiot, that's how you get shoes that don't fit.

anyways let's get onto the anatomy of the shoe

usually dancers sew ribbons and elastic on themselves (each dancer does it somewhat differently due to personal preference)

let me just take this opportunity to say that contrary to popular belief, pointe shoes are not made of wood or metal LMAO

the outside is satin, the box is usually layers of fabric, cardboard and glue packed together, the shank is usually made out of cardboard layers and then the sole is a thin layer of leather.

an important aspect of being en pointe is being over the box (but not too over the box)

this blog post shows the difference between not being over your box and being over. in the top pic, see how the front of the platform is off the ground? that is considered not being over the box.

sometimes because of flaws in a dancer's technique they won't be over the box completely when they need to be, but it can also be due to the shoes being badly fit as well (as the post above states)

it's important for the shank to not be too stiff nor too soft, usually we bend the shoe when we initially get it to help "break in" the pair.

of course, the shank softens naturally the more we dance in the shoes, and when it's too soft we call a pair of pointe shoes "dead" and it's really not fun dancing in a dead pair

alright so you might wonder if it hurts?

well dancers do some stuff to mitigate the pain slightly.

we put certain things on our feet, like toe pads or even using toe tape so to protect from blisters

professionals do some crazy hacks on their pointe shoes lmao you wouldn't even believe it

now how long do these things last anyways?

i'm not a professional who goes to long rehearsals and does all the stuff they do, from what i've seen the girls at my studio can usually use one pair for months

meanwhile for professionals, depending on the pointe work they have to do the pair might only last a few hours

yea professional ballerinas tend to go through a lot of pairs per season

performances

preparing for a performance is fun but quite exhausting

for my studio, we do two productions per year (a spring show and a nutcracker)

after a cast list goes up, we start to work on the choreography, learning the steps and then cleaning once we know the steps

cleaning a dance basically means getting to a point where the steps are executed precisely

as we get closer to a performance we usually do entire scene rehearsals outside of class to get a greater sense of how our choreography fits into the whole production

there's usually one blocking rehearsal and one dress rehearsal and (edit: in) the theatre we use

blocking is just to get used to the space and what not

dress rehearsal is ran with costumes now that we've been able to practice a little on stage

also lemme talk about some stage terms to help people

did you know that part of the stage nearest to the audience used to be lower than the part further away (obviously most stages are not like that today)

so the part of the stage that would slope down is called downstage and the part that is at a higher elevation is upstage

and when someone says stage left and right that is from the dancer's perspective, facing the audience

the wings are offstage, used by dancers preparing to enter. props are also usually stored here

on performance days there's usually a class held before to warm up

during the actual show it's quite hectic backstage and whatnot

sometimes costumes are altered last minute

there are always stagehands moving stuff (we love them)

i remember girls with huge tutus would fold the sides up like tacos as they passed by people so that they'd be less of a nuisance

after all shows are done, the older dancers usually help take stuff down, for some productions since we bring the backdrops so we gotta help take them down lol

oh yea and we gotta untape the dance floor we bring

overall i would recommend watching dancers vlog their show experience, it's quite interesting to watch

is there a difference between what guys and girls do in ballet?

the answer is yes, although to be honest there are girls that can do what guys do and vice versa.

pointe is a technique largely used by females, although a common role where guys wear pointe shoes (for the jokes) is the stepsisters in cinderella.

some of the women are part of the corps de ballet, which are expected to act as one body (examples include the snow corps de ballet and the flower corps in nutcracker)

i think the guys are expected to be quite proficient with jumps (lmao the one guy in my level at my studio is always practicing his tour en l'air jumps)

a pas de deux is a dance for two, the guy usually lifts and supports the girl as and she turns and jumps and all that.

well-known ballets + the variations

variation - solo dance

the nutcracker is def well-known and a lot of companies perform it around christmas, i swear every ballerina has wanted to either be sugar plum (her variation and the pas de deux are pretty iconic) or clara when they were younger

a lot of people are familiar with swan lake and that’s prob the image that comes to mind when it comes to ballet (a swan). also search the dance of the little swans, my friends and i learned it and boy was it hard, we looked goofy as hell

the romeo and juliet ballet is also a classic, the source material is self-explanatory but since i don’t care much for shakespeare i won’t be saying much about it

i don’t think i can really make this list without talking about sleeping beauty, the rose adagio that aurora has to do takes a crazy amount of balance. also i really like the different variations the fairies do.

call me biased but the kitri act 1 variation from don 1 is so damn cool (another one of the classics!)

i also mentioned cinderella earlier! also a classic.

if you have reached the end of this, thank you for reading all that i have to say! drink water and stay healthy!

[primewritessmut]

20 - FREEZE

My psychiatrist collects Precious Moments figurines.

I never would have pegged him for it. He’s short and stocky with a shiny bald scalp, and he dresses in short-sleeved white button-ups paired with drab polyester ties.

A little boy balancing on the back of another boy like a cowboy on a horse. A little girl wearing yellow polka dot rain boots, splashing in a glazed porcelain puddle with a frog at her feet. An entire shelf of soppy, big-eyed children with their palms pressed together over their hearts, standing, kneeling, praying. Watching.

An entire schoolyard worth of kids stuck forever in twee poses.

There’s a hanging wall calendar from the NRA pinned behind his desk with a black thumbtack that looks like a key ripped from a typewriter. The ampersand. The calendar is open to a photo of four artfully arranged hand guns, the barrels all pointing at each other across the circle they make like that Spider-Man meme.

It’s terribly lit and the month written underneath the picture reads September.

“Your outreach coordinator called me,” he says gruffly, leaning back in his chair in a way that never fails to make me think that the entire thing is going to flip over backward. “She’s worried that you haven’t checked in.” There’s a pause long enough to choke on. “Why haven’t you checked in?”

I stare at the hand guns and try to identify what they are.

A Luger P-08 that looks like it was made for World War II.

A Smith & Wesson Model 1 that’s a clear recreation.

A Walth—

“You know,” he sighs gently, “this works a whole lot better if you talk to me.”

I freeze in my chair like prey being hunted. Or maybe like a small porcelain child entreating a god that doesn’t exist.

“Your boss said your work is exemplary. Your landlord reports that you’ve paid your rent on time every month since the eviction notice. These are the kinds of wins you should be sharing.”

I can feel his eyes boring into me. His eyes, and hundreds of little porcelain eyes, and the black holes of the gun barrels all watching. Eyes upon eyes upon eyes. Probably even some I can't see. Don't want to see.

“Is there something else going on?”

I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood but it doesn’t keep my eyes from dropping to the source of the problem. It’s such a human fucking reaction and it makes me feel human for just a second until I actually see what I’ve looked at.

If you asked me, I’d tell you that it happened yesterday.

But my arm tells a different story.

My left hand is black from the tips of my fingers to midway down my palm and, when I flip it over, I can see wisps of shadow snaking through my veins. Thicker toward my fingers and fading as it travels up my forearm. There’s darkness swimming in my veins all the way up to my elbow.

An inch below my wrist, someone drew a line in Sharpie and wrote 4 weeks. The writing looks like it’s been gone over more than once to keep it from disappearing. It might be my handwriting but I don’t remember writing it a first time let alone several times.

I curl my fingertips toward the palm of my hand and—

“I’m here to help you.”

My psychiatrist leans forward over his desk, pressing his forearms into it and giving me an approximation of concerned empathy. His desk isn’t glass but the top is lacquered and I can see fingerprints smeared across the top. I don’t know why I think about that.

“I think you should tell me what else is going on.”

I lift my eyes to his as I shove my hand into the pocket of my hoodie.

“My hand is cold,” I manage.

And I think it's the first time I've ever talked to him.

19 - SCANDAL || 21 - FRAGMENT

[snowverit]

Parian Doll Chapter 7

Chapter desc: first year: Quidditch tryouts Chapter words: 2.3k Fic desc: Regulus gets sorted into Gryffindor total words: 21k/?

Two students from last year's Quidditch team graduated. This means that regardless of the previous year's team, two students must be accepted in order to have a full team. 

I stand in the middle of the pitch, fully dressed in a tattered practice jersey. A dolphin could smell me on the other side of the world. (And dolphins cannot even smell.) The jersey reeks of previous players’ sweat; Maroon just dark enough to hide any explanation on where the smell comes from. It should be burned. 

Barty and Pandora sit in the rafters, alongside groups of Gryffindor students, eager to watch the tryouts commence, alongside Slytherin students, equally as eager to laugh when their enemies fall off their brooms. 

The Quidditch team captain scratches the back of her head and mumbles something to a group of upper years. Within the group, I can identify the Prewetts, a blonde girl who sat in Sirius’ train cart on our way to Hogwarts, Potter, and a rosy-faced boy who must be Bagman. They are the remains of the previous year's Quidditch team. 

I stand amongst students who are much taller than me and look far more confident than I do. I straighten my back and puff up my shoulders, yet still don’t look like I belong here. Sirius runs across the field, in a similarly tacky jersey as I have, and stumbles to my side. 

“What are you doing here?” Sirius smiles and pats my shoulder with a good natured grin, “Come to support your older brother?”  He moves his hand to mess up my hair, knuckle grinding into my scalp. 

“In your dreams.” I have to let out some of the breath I was using to hold my shoulders up to respond to him, “I am trying out for seeker.” His face drops. Without another word he lets me go and looks down to the ground. 

“Hey, Arct,” A new voice emerges.

Sirius and I both glare towards the voice's owner.  

Potter grimaces back at the two of us, “Don’t shoot the messenger, but…” 

-

“I can’t believe first years aren’t allowed to try out!” I stomp circles around my room. White hot rage surges through my veins. “I don’t know how, but this is all Sirius’ fault!” 

[starseekerdragon]

Something I haven't shared here...

Yeah I haven't posted stuff in a while, I apologize. I've made a post like this on Twitter, but in short form.

So...a couple months ago I went through a big body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria all in one day and night (for those who don't know, in 2020 I had breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy). I didn't share this right away cuz honestly I wasn't sure HOW to. Also I think I was afraid to as well...

Last month as I calmed down I started to process why I had that moment in time. Why I felt the way I did, about not just my body, but also my gender. I realized there was some specific things I've kept bottled up since middle school! One of those specific things was my gender. While I do accept I was born female, when puberty hit I started feeling...another feeling, inside? Something a bit more masculine. I mean for a while I was developing some male traits (some peach fuzz on my chin, jawline and the sides of my upper lip for example).

But this was the 90's, and sharing this thought during those times was a BIG no-no (also a no-no when living with a conservative christian family). So I bottled this up, as I felt it was "wrong" to feel like I'm also a bit masculine along with my feminine. That I'm a girl, so I should only think and feel like a girl, nothing else.

Until now. I want to let go of all that BS. I want to be more genuine with myself. I don't want to hold back anymore. So I did my research and discovered something called "Bigender" (not the same as Bisexual). Reading into it...make me break down in tears. It sounded EXACTLY like the identity I wanted to be but kept bottled up.

So now I'm identifying as Bigender. :) This feels right to me. I do believe this will help me in many ways too. Firstly helping heal my inner young teen who was struggling with their identity. And secondly I can stop looking at my body and thinking of as a "damaged woman." With a different view of myself now, I can see the mix of feminine and masculine of my body, and I can start the process of loving and accepting myself again.

Also I think I'm gonna get some more men's clothing. Back in 2018 my aunt and uncle were renewing their wedding vows and we were invited. I'm not a HUGE fan of dresses (it's rare I ever want to wear one), so I wore men's slacks, white shirt and a vest. Oooooohhh lemme tell you, seeing myself in the mirror gave me BIG TIME body euphoria! <3 I actually felt good looking! Sexy even, haha!

Oh, and when it comes to pronouns, I prefer she/them. I'm not entirely ready to use male pronouns, but I want to (past reasons have made things feel uncomfortably awkward for me when using he/him, but again, trying to heal that part of me).

So...yeah. Not sure who's gonna read this big ol' wall of text, but if you do, awesome! If you want the TLDR: I went through a big body/gender dysphoria, had some self reflection, realized I'm bigender. She/them.

[lily-of-rabanastre]

Ascilia—Chapter 09, Scene 01

Writing is getting difficult to focus on lately. Not feeling up to it. But have what I've finished thus far.

Walking the same path as they'd taken to reach the Studium several hours ago, Y'shtola and Ascilia took a sharp left turn. There they followed the path to yet another ostentatious edifice. But where the Studium was a place of learning, this one—Noumenon—was one of the world's greatest repositories of knowledge. And though Ascilia had been here on several occasions by now, every time she passed through its massive doors and gazed upon the thousand, thousand tomes held fast upon its many shelves, she couldn't help but feel in awe. "... To think the means I so tirelessly sought may actually exist but a few yalms away from where you found me napping," said Y'shtola, her voice little higher than a whisper. "If I had known of Alzadaal III and Vrtra's exploits sooner, I could well have saved myself days of research. Even a children's book might have pointed me in the right direction."

"It really does feel a touch like a hero's journey," Ascilia mused, matching her friend's hushed tones. "The heroine, uncovering a hidden clue, must return to where she began her adventure... but a children's book? That seems a bit hyperbolic..."

"To achieve the impossible, one must needs be flexible of mind and look beyond conventional wisdom," Y'shtola replied, glancing back over her shoulder with a bemused grin. "A lesson I'd already learned, but clearly hadn't taken to heart."

"True enough wisdom, I suppose," she whispered back, shrugging her shoulders. "So, where is this... 'Index Page'?"

Wordlessly, Y'shtola offered her hand. And as Ascilia took it within her own, her Archon friend guided her across the center catwalk. "We're looking for a mammet. I should be able to tell it apart from a Lalafell by its aether, but if you spot it first, do let me know."

"A mammet..."

Glancing about, Ascilia spotted several such automatons. Each was dressed in bright red clothes, and wore upon their bulbous mechanical heads a white wig. With no other discerning features among them, it seemed to her that deductive reasoning had served its purpose and so they'd have to question them one at a time. But then her gaze fell upon one in particular, standing aside from a suspicious looking wall jutting out from between the bookshelves.

"... Why don't we try that one over there?" she asked, pointing towards the mammet.

Looking over to where Ascilia directed her, Y'shtola narrowed her eyes. "... Hm. That would be the entrance to the restricted archives. For efficiency's sake, I suppose that makes sense..."

As the pair approached the aforementioned wall, the mammet she'd identified sprung to life, craning its head to look upon them. "Archon Y'shtola and Guest identified," it declared, its pale white eyes lighting up. "Follow me, if you would. Watch your step, and please note that the use of naked flames is discouraged."

The suspicious looking wall before them rumbled to life. As it slid open Ascilia half-expected it to reveal a hidden stairwell or lift. But instead the room beyond was empty of anything save for a device not unlike an aetheryte. The lower half of the device resembled a brazier, while a smooth transparent crystal filled with a pale blue light rested atop it.

"I've seen devices like these before," she said aloud, taking a moment to examine the crystalline lantern. "Way stones, the Ronkans called them. Or so claimed the history books one of my successors was fond of."

"One of your—" Y'shtola began, only to cut herself short with a soft gasp. "... Which... Minfilia would that have been?"

"Second to last," Ascilia replied, closing her eyes. Memories of the girls she'd shadowed over her hundred year odyssey resurfaced like pearlescent foam upon the sea. "She lived a longer life than most, and where most of her predecessors sought to fight the Sin Eater hordes directly, she believed the Oracle should serve in a supportive role instead."

[fox-moxin]

My Strange Dream, Champaign

Last nights dream was a trip..

It was a TV show, I think called "The Ch of Ch" and it opens with a shot of a woman who appears to washing laundry next to a door in a medieval setting, possibly in a monastery or castle of some sort. A lanky, pock faced fellow with a distinct lack of chin walks up to the door and says he'll go inside because he knows it bothers her to just use the wall. He then goes in and you can hear him urinating and the whole time gives a whiney speach tot he woman about how he knows she doesn't like him but he doesn't think it's fair since he's so handsome (A dubious claim at best) and says blaming it on his botulism isn't fair because it jsut makes him more moist and being moist should jsut make him MORE attractive and she really should appreciate him more. Finally he steps out of the room wishes her a good day and leaves, she smiles rather forcefully back and returns the well wishing.

Once he was gone she signals to her friend who has apparently been across the path, just behind the camera the whole time. This is a delicate looking young man with a whispy beard. A quick conversation reveals he is in fact a she and was waiting to make sure she could use the lavatory without anyone else in there so no one would notice. It would spoil years of work after all if everything was spoiled because they found out she was a girl and they were so close. While using the restroom though, somehow our heroine in disquise is spotted by a boy of about 12, she manages to escape though, before she is identified.

Having successfully escaped exposure she makes her way to a wooden post, a support pillar for the building they're in and opens a small hatch in the side. There we see a strange looking retro 60's telephone with a CRT monitor attached. She picks up the phone and it plays a sort of weird dystopian power point (Think Vaultech slideshow from Fallout) which gives a rather useless message of encouragement to keep up the good work and remember the importance of "THE PLAN" It also ends with a warning to be extra careful because "Champaign is there"

After this we do see Champaign who is making his way through another part of the building. People defer and get out of his way. He never speaks but he seems to be able to communicate what he wants through simple gestures and everyone is clearly terrified of him. Champaign is the weird part that I Really wanted to get down here so buckle up for this part, I'm gonna do my best here.

Champaign is portrayed by Three different actors. A boy of about 8, a Teenager, and an Arnold Schwarzenegger Impersonator. (That last part was distinct, it wasn't just a bodybuilder at peak condition, it was specifically an Arnold Schwarzenegger Impersonator) All three are dressed entirely in white, and have white powdered faces and makeup and all of them are wearing a powdered Wig, like a British judge. The boy was wearing a simple outfit of knee high boots and a patterned vest over a silk shirt. The Teenager was wearing an somewhat foppish suit that I'm pretty sure my brain is stealing from Hugh Laurie when he was the Prince of Wales in Black Adder, right down to carrying around a small cane, and the Arnold was wearing an almost clownish outfit of French Foppery and excessive makeup. It was too tight and seemed to be more about accentuating his musculature than anything else, straight up baring his midriff. He was also still carrying around the cane, which seemed comically small in his hands. But really made him weird is how the camera treats him.

The Camera shifts back and forth between the actors, in what seem like simple jump cuts. Sometimes going to other people first but other times back and forth between the three. They're never shown on screen together, and the camera angles seem to deliberately make it hard to tell exactly where he is standing in any given shot, using a lot of low angle shots that give him a sort of surreal quality. This all leads to a sort of weird set of possibilities to explain his nature.

1. His appearance is changed depending on who is perceiving him. Maybe literally, maybe it's jsut how people see him. This seems, unlikely, based on some of his actions, but it IS possible, maybe the most possible.

2. He is constantly shifting between the three forms and this takes the form of the jump cuts. This is certainly possible, although it means he's doing so essentially on camera and the effect is jarring and unsettling, which would have to be an intentional decision by the director.

3. All three people are actually there in the room at the same time, and they are, collectively the entity known as Champaign. This seems unlikely because the camera shots all SEEM to indicate that when it shifts from one actor to another, they're standing in the same spot, but the weird angles effect on his stance does not preclude the possibility. The strongest claim for this is that in one scene after being asked a question the Bodybuilder seems to look to his left, the camera switches to the teenager who looks to his right and nods, before switching back to the Bodybuilder, which indicates that maybe the forms are interacting with each other. But then again, even in wide shots they're never shown together, and even int he shot in question there doesn't seem to be enough space in the room for this to have been possible.

And that's all I remember.

[eliasreznikoff]

**Attention** RVA Callout

Tw : sexual assault // statutory rape // abuse // coercion // manipulation

We feel obligated to speak up so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else and so people can be aware if/when dealing with a serial rapist. This post is to call attention to the damage done by Elias Reznikoff // Zachary Wozniak, white, age 23. Photo of him below:

**REMOVED SO THE POST WON'T GET TAKEN DOWN FOR COPY RIGHT**

He’s been put on blast once before very publicly in his Texas hometown for raping a girl and fled to Richmond to hide in 2013. (link to past post/screen cap below)  In Texas he went by his birth name, Zachary Wozniak, though legally has changed it to Elias Reznikoff. He has also gone by Dan, Piotr, texas-reznikoff, afterschoolknifefight, sea#9316, zdwozniak, and elirezni in person and/or online. These various names are a continuous attempt to cover his tracks, just as he attempted to do from the callout in Texas. (He will accuse people of deadnaming him if they mention his past identities) During his time here in Richmond, for over four years, he has consistently repeated his abusive habits of sexual assault, manipulation and gaslighting/silencing of his past romantic/sexual partners. He is a danger to those who are in a relationship with him // engage in sex with him // minors.

Elias is a repeat abuser who targets POC (fetishisizing asian femme/female presenting people), Queers//Femmes, Women, Individuals coming from turbulent home, and Minors. His tactics generally start by targeting these more “vulnerable” individuals via dating apps/online and showcasing grand gestures of ‘romance’ (ex. asking to move away together), grooming them to see him as a shy/weak individual, then coercing people into sex (specifically unprotected sex), forcing sex on sleeping individuals, withholding information and gaslighting by using ‘savvy’ language  (i.e “ You are forcing me into sex I didn’t agree to by saying I have to use a condom”), emotional manipulation to gain power, isolating you from your friends, among other behaviors - the list could be exhaustive. On top of the active mechanisms of abuse he employs during the relationship, he refuses to return your personal belongings, keeping “trophies” of his previous relationships as a tool for reliving those relationships long after they have ended.

One of his largest threats is his demeanor/appearance upon first encounter. He isn’t a menacing person (fairly small in stature), charming, well-dressed, and quite knowledgeable on various topics/social justice issues. His seemingly charming personality and blanket of lies allows him to hide his true/past self to those around him. He continually leaves people who were or are apart of his life in the dark, leaving them to fill their own blanks on the person he actually is. He will often go in and out of therapy/medications as a way to convince current/past partner’s that he has “atoned for his sins”. These very intentional constructions of his self made identities/personalities, along with the romancing and grooming, are how he manipulates individuals to disregard red flags of emotional and sexual abuse.

We need to be able to identify the people in our circles who are preying on minors and our peers to be able to act before someone is assaulted, not after. As a community people are less safe engaging with him without knowing these are the behaviors he has continued to repeat for years and years (in secret) even after fleeing from a different state for his first publicized offense. It should also be known that he has a very small internet persona and often hides in the shadows (of okc, tinder, etc. but also favors the richmond music scene [was recently kicked out of a local rva shoegaze/dreampop band - has all of the equipment to start a band] and Ipanema). After this post, he could go into hiding once again- changing his identity (has previously changed his name, along with changing his hair color to yellow/platinum blonde/black to conceal himself. Along with physical changes he rarely shows his whole face online) and move to another part of the country to start a new life where no one knows of him. It is important to share this, so that hopefully no one else is abused and left in the dark by him. 

We want reformation and accountability from him, and hopefully, one day that will happen- but knowing his continuous pattern’s of abuse, the people in his life deserve to know and be made aware of the things he has been capable of for their own safety and so that they can make their own judgement call.

As unfavorable as these circumstances, all of us who have connected are there for anyone else who has been hurt or left in the dark by Elias. If you feel as if you might need closure or support please reach out! All of us have created a safe space where we support one another, we want to give you the space to be heard and validated so that hopefully you can get closure as well. You can message anytime, so please don’t hesitate to reach out - we are all here for you and we will listen to you!

Here is the link to the 2013 callout post:

[infiniteglitterfall]

Howdy, I don’t know who to send this to but can you debunk this clowns claim that Jughead was a homophobic caricature and therefore can’t be ace? This post has bother me for years: rabbittiddy(.)tumblr(.)com/post/157508044328/missvoltairine-acesarelgbtgranny

i fucking bet! let's see, i think I saw a good debunking of that....

i'm gonna end up doing one myself while i look for it, aren't i

Some of these focus on him being aro. But it's sort of a stand-in, in the comics, for him being both aro and ace. Anyway, I tried to pick stuff that highlighted the fact that Jughead wasn't a woman-hating gay-coded 'confirmed bachelor.' He was a romance-hating, often touch-averse, ace-coded 'confirmed bachelor.'

There are plenty of examples of the former, throughout popular media, during the first 75 years of Archie Comics. The queer-coding for them is completely different. The only similarity is that both types were often shown as recoiling from even the idea of relationships with women.

Some of the queer-coding for gay men included high voices, limp wrists, being an interior designer -- "feminine" attributes." Or:

"‘friend of Dorothy’, coloured handkerchiefs, or soft, pastel, violet clothing. Because film at the time was black and white, colour coding was either referred to, or often the handkerchief would be ‘perfumed.’ "In The Maltese Falcon (1941) a character sends in his business card and Sam Spade’s secretary notes it smells of 'gardenias.' A few minutes later, Spade smells the man’s handkerchief and doesn’t say anything but does raise an eyebrow high, clearly telling the audience ‘this fellow is queer.’.

"Otto Preminger’s Laura overtly coded Waldo Lydecker as queer: shooting him in a bathtub with plenty of suggestion he was interested in McPherson; playing up his impeccably dressed dandy-ness; clearly portraying him as the sharp-tongued gay-best-friend type."

By contrast, Jughead was never portrayed as anything but a clever, independent, slightly self-centered high school guy with a high metabolism and a passion for hamburgers. There was no winking at the audience. There were no gay in-jokes. There were no hints, in any decade, that maybe there was "a reason" he didn't like girls. That maybe he was just closeted.

And notably, when the series introduced a gay character, they did NOT go for Jughead. They had to invent a completely new person.

If they had ever been hinting that Jughead was gay, he would have been the obvious choice. It would have raised a lot of questions, and probably a lot of concerns, for them to introduce Kevin Keller instead -- or, at least, for them to introduce him and not imply that he and Jughead were going to end up together.

Honestly, the true test for any of these bigots who claim Jughead is gay should be, "Can you really picture him with Kevin Keller?"

Instead, mainstream pieces at the time said things like, "Jughead came out as asexual which explains why he’s never seemed interested in anything except for cheeseburgers."

Here are some good examples from older canon:

"Twelve Cent Archie references a story from Jughead 119 (April 1965) in which a machine built to identify Jughead’s perfect romantic partner inevitably self-destructs due to the impossible nature of its task."

"And though he wasn't a 'confirmed aro/ace' in the original comics and a few issues tried to explain away his behaviors with random back stories, over the course of hundreds of issues it was made obvious he preferred food to woman and constantly avoided romantic interactions and relationships and loathed such endeavours."

"What is it about aromanticism that makes showrunners pretend we don’t exist and fellow aces turn their faces when we say we do? What’s so bad about saying no to love that an aromantic asexual character is allowed to say he doesn’t like sex on TV, but not to say he doesn’t like romance? What is the difference? Why is it here where everyone draws the line? Why is it okay to not feel sexual attraction in this case, but not okay to not feel romantic attraction?

"I will tell you why. I’m not available to anyone. Neither is Raphael and Jughead, and lots and lots of aroaces, some of us not even as queerplatonic partners. There aren’t love stories to be told about us or sold about us. If Jughead and Raphael are made ace and aro, their ships sink, unless their fans are okay with queerplatonic relationships and most aren’t. For many people, for most people, if you take the romance out of someone, that someone loses its meaning, its interesting aspect. That’s how focused on romance our society is. Ships can survive without sex, but in a society so focused in romance that it can’t even comprehend queerplatonic relationships, they can’t survive without romantic love.

"There is also the little matter of we aroaces being considered too weird, too different. Cis allo straight people can’t relate to us the way they can relate to you, alloromantic aces. After all, romance is universal, right? Except it isn’t. And if we are in the picture, we are reminding everyone of that, and some people just don’t like that, don’t like us."

[image transcription: a page titled "Archie in The Look of Love - script: frank doyle; pencilling - dan decarlo jr; inking - jim decarlo." Archie and Jughead are walking down the street, and have the following conversation over several panels. Archie: "Got a question for you, Jug! Do you believe in love at first sight?... Jug? Did you hear me?" Jughead: "I heard something! But I'm sure you didn't say what it sounded like you said!" Archie: "I asked if you believed in love at first sight!" Jughead, to the reader: "He did! Did you hear? He actually asked that question of ME!"]

[image transcription: the second page of the comic continues their conversation. Archie: "Stop talking to them and answer my question!! Do you believe in love at first sight?" Jughead: "Not hardly! Twelfth, maybe, or forty-eighth... or more likely, nine hundred and sixth! What's with you, Arch? You know girls are not my thing!" Archie: "I wasn't thinking of girls!" Jughead, his hat flying off in shock: "WHAT!?" Archie, hearts flying around his head: "With me it's that little red convertible in Bedell's auto showroom!" Jughead: "Oh! - Love for inanimate objects! Now you're in my ballpark!!"

[last three panels. Jughead: "Y'know how those surfer guys travel the world, looking for the perfect wave?" Archie: "I saw the pic! But who--" Jughead, head surrounded by many, many little pink hearts: "Exactly! I search for the perfect burger! Now that'd be my love at first sight!"]

[an old panel in which a shocked crowd of high school students is hearing Jughead's voice, over the loudspeaker, saying: "I am in no way a romantic! I stand by my ways as a lover of food only! The only girls I like are Swiss Miss, Mrs. Butterworth, Little Debbie and Sara Lee!"]

AHA YEP I HAVE FINALLY FOUND THE POST I WAS THINKING ABOUT!

[jughead and archie are coming out of a movie theater. jughead says, "That's what I dig in a movie - a happy ending!...The girl didn't get the boy!" Archie reacts with heterosexual surprise and confusion/]

[ot3]

Okay, we once again have an overwhelming victor. So lets get into it.

I expect disagreement on some of these but hear me out.

YURI ENTHUSIASTS -

Phoenix: Now this may seem strange to some people but I've always in my head viewed Phoenix as a shoujo manga enjoyer and I feel it would be very easy for him to accidentally pick up a yuri or two without realizing based on the cover and have it awaken something in him. Essentially the inverted version of a teen girl realizing she's not straight by getting into yaoi. He likes cute drawings of girls and sappy but fraught romances.

Lana: dyke

Adrian: dyke

Franziska: also a dyke but i don't think she's as in touch with it as the other two are and is coming at it more from the misandry angle. She rationalizes it that she likes yuri because she is not interested in foolish men and their petty squabbles which is true.

Susato: over identifying with the cross dressing princely female leads

Sholmes: i fully admit i have no objective grounds on which to rationalize this one it just feels right to me.

YAOI ENTHUSIASTS -

Ema: When I was talking about teen girls realizing theyre not straight by getting into yaoi that's what's going on with ema.

Maya: presented as a fujoshi in certain extracanonical materials and i support this take enthusiastically.

Mia: she's just here to objectify men. I think a lot of BL is too twinky for her though.

Kristoph: Doesn't care about women's stories.

Asougi: Also here to objectify men

Oldbag: Now you may want to peg her as terminally het, which is true, but she's one of those women who is so terminally het that the idea of the fictional men she finds fuckable having female love interests completely puts her off, since they're not her. would be going absolutely hogwild on kindle unlimited erotica if she knew how to do that

HET ENTHUSIASTS -

Gumshoe: I just think he's a man whose media interests are pretty mainstream and by default that means he is exposed almost exclusively to hetero arcs

Iris: We all know what she and phoenix were like when they were together lets be real

Pearl: Pearl is into ROMANCES romances. hallmark style. what if an unrealistically perfect and hunky dude fell for the down to earth everywoman who really loved him

Klaiver: klavier's taste in wish fulfillment romance media is exactly the same as pearl's but from the opposite point of view. a beautiful friendship could bloom here.

Justine: I just think she's into really high drama network tv, prestige tv, telenovelas and soaps, etc. Feels right

Greg: Definitely has old man media tastes and is into black and white golden age hollywood films

GEN ENTHUSIASTS -

Edgeworth: I know a lot of people see edgeworth as being into steel samurai yaoi but that's not my vision. I think edgeworth's feelings around romance and sexuality are fraught and having to think about that during the little time in his life he takes to fucking chill out for once his NOT his idea of a good time. i think the reason he likes tokusatsu in particular is because it is so free of the trappings of adult life that are so stressful to him in the real world.

Kay: She likes heist movies and action movies and ninja movies and shonen anime and sentai stuff and doesn't care whether or not anyones kissing during them.

Apollo: Just doesn't really give a shit about romance in general i think. it doesn't narratively compel him. he's more interested in cool worldbuilding and platonic character interaction

Trucy: She's fine with romance in media but it's not her main draw. shes watching magical girl anime and other various shit where tweens save the world with the power of friendship. i think overall she's mostly into adventure/fantasy stuff

Lang: also into the action and heists movies kay is into and they should really just go watch the new fast and furious together. likes procedurals too.

Iris: She's writin them mystery novels bayybeeeee!!

DOES NOT RECREATIONALLY ENJOY MEDIA -

I just think none of these guys are particularly big readers or watchers of things. like they'll do it incidentally but narrative media just isnt particularly big on their priority list

democratically selected posting was a good idea. let's do another. comment with your post ideas and i'll make a poll out of them to see what we're Posting about today