#i'm the only queer person on my moms side of the family

[soft--dogs]

sorry sorry sorry commissions are behind again, this whole fucking month has been one thing after another. my grandma has been in the hospital since yesterday, she's ok for now but she's had health problems for a while now and the doctors never seem to know what's going on :/ anyway just wanted to say i'm here and still working and everything, i might just be like a week or two behind schedule for a bit >w<

[rs-hawk]

So just saw your post about not voting for trump. Good post. He's not a white nationalist though. Real white nationalists respect indigenous people. Place for every race and all that. He's just the run of the mill politician who says what he thinks will give him the most voters. Anyway, you'd probably be better treated by a white nationalist government lol.

This has been sitting in my ask box for like a month but just... Damn. This is wild.

You're telling me that I, a queer mixed Indigenous AFAB person who technically can be considered disabled, am respected by... White Supremacists? White Supremacists want me dead. I live in Texas. I come in contact with White Supremacists literally on a near daily basis.

They are the first ones to throw slurs at me. They are the first to say I should go back to my own country (and then say Reservation when I say that this is my country). They are the first ones to literally throw things at me at my day job. I have had people who I know for a fact are literally, LITERALLY, in the KKK, come into my job and ask why someone like me is working up front in a public establishment.

Again, I am mixed race. White Supremacists often either hate me off the bat because they know I'm mixed or see me as a minority and me simply existing in the same space as them is an affront. However, when they think I'm full White (as I am Italian and have been told I pass as Italian), and then find out I'm mixed it's so much worse. They take it as I lied to them. I had one customer at work a few years ago that we kind of flirted, and he was talking about taking me out when my job slowed down. I mentioned something off handedly about turquoise jewelry a few visits later, and he asked if I was "Indian". When I said yes, a total 180. He started accusing me of lying to him, saying I wanted to taint his blood line, blah blah blah.

Here's what you need to understand, sticking up for White Supremacists is just as fucked as being one. White Supremacists don't respect Indigenous Peoples. They want us gone. They want us somewhere they never have to see us. Reservations are not something we got out of respect. We have Reservations because we were forced to and it was all we were allowed. This is my ancestral land, and they still think I should be forced to live in another state because the government decided over a century ago (as the Nation I'm registered with was one of the last to be forced onto a Reservation) because they want to live here, in America, on traditional land, without wanting to see us.

White Supremacists don't respect us or any minorities. They want us out of their face. "A place for all races" just means out of their face or in what they consider in our place. A White Supremacist government is what created Reservations in the first place. A White Supremacist government is what forced my great grandmother's grandfather to be born on the side of the road during the march to the Reservation.

I am a firm believer that America is a Melting Pot. I am mixed race. I am proud of every aspect of who I am. I can list every ethnicity/race I am as I and my family are firm believers in knowing where you come from. As a child, my mom would quiz me on what I was and what side of my family it came from. It is important to know who and what you are. I have no issue with people being proud of who they are. There is no issue with wanting to only date/marry inside your culture imo. I don't have a problem with that. What is a problem is that White Supremacists (which is what I was calling Trump in my previous post) don't do that. They think they are better than other races. They don't want to even interact with other races. They. Are. Racist. And so is Trump. He called on the Proud Boys, a known White Supremacist group. Be serious.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for telling my grandparents not to show up to my wedding?

so, my (FTX28) fiancé S (FTM27) and i are trying to sort out the guest list for our wedding. i've personally opted to not invite my extended family, simply because i've got a billion fucking aunts and uncles on my mom's, dad's, and bio-dad's sides, and all of them have at least two kids, so if i invite any i have to invite all and that's suddenly an extra ~50 people, and there's friends i'd rather have there anyway. so i want to just invite my parents, siblings, and grandparents.

this is tricky mostly because this is going to be a very queer event, both because my fiancé and i are both queer, and because a significant number of our friends that we're inviting are also queer. while i'm confident my parents and my dad's parents won't cause a scene while there, or make S or any of our friends feel unsafe at the wedding, i can't say the same for my bio-dad's parents (T and J from here on out).

T is an asshole and i fully expect him to be rude, if not openly hostile, towards people S and i care about. i don't think J would be hostile, but i do think she would be insensitive at best. i'd honestly prefer to not invite them at all, but J has been trying to maintain and repair her relationship with me for the past 10 years, and i'd feel bad not extending her an invite at all, especially since she already knows i'm getting married.

so what i want to do is plainly tell J, before i send out invites, that this is a secular queer wedding, and that if that, myself (she and T haven't seen me or pictures of me since i started HRT), S, or any of our guests are going to make her or T uncomfortable, that i'd rather they not attend, because i'm not going to abide by them making the man i love or any of my friends feel unsafe. S and other people i've asked assure me this is the best course of action, but i worry that it might be an asshole move.

WIBTA for telling her to only come if she and T can behave themselves?

What are these acronyms?

[ceasarslegion]

Uncle story?

Oh boy!

So the first thing i need to say about my uncle is that he is an idiot. Terminally stupid and also the most self-righteous bastard I've ever met. Truly deadly combo.

I must also start by clarifying that this is not the same openly gay uncle who is a Scottish lord and ran for mayor of a small Saskatchewan town because he was bored and won and then showed up to all the official things in a top hat. That is technically my great uncle and on my dad's side. We must not smear that uncle's name due to confusing him with my mom's brother who is too stupid to realize how stupid he is and thinks the fact that no one can understand what the fuck he's ever talking about is a sign of intelligence.

So my uncle is openly gay. And he lives in the UK as a dual dutch-canadian citizen. He is engaged to an Israeli man (do not discourse on this post. I mention his nationality to highlight something else I will mention. Just some guy who doesn't even live there is not responsible for a certain conflict going on). He also grew up in Dubai but family went back to Canada for a spell around when he entered high school. He works as a travel agent last time I checked, but he can never hold down a job for more than a few months without getting fired so who knows at this point.

You're with me, yes? Gay, immigrant, fiance from another country, grew up in the gulf?

This motherfucker. Said he would vote for Trump if he were american and that brexit was a good idea. And is anti-immigration. And thinks feminism is cancer. And once tried to convince my mom that men across the UK were being arrested for "stare-rape" which is apparently when you just look at a woman in public and she can then claim you raped her with your eyes. And thinks pride is pedophilic. And thinks bisexuality is just people who want to be special and can't pick a side. And the only person he's still on speaking terms with in my immediate family is my grandma who is just as toxic as he is stupid.

My dad once said, word for word, while a few drags into a blunt: "if I ever see [uncle] again, I'm going to beat the shit out of him for what he said about my son." I don't know what exactly happened to get him kicked out of my parents apartment when they cut ties with him during a visit, but I know it was a screaming match over something to do with me. I had long moved out at that point so I wasn't there to see it. And this is coming from the mouth of the same guy from my red bull and snickers post, my dad is not a violent or scary guy and I've never seen him lay a hand on anybody.

My uncle and I used to be really close when I was a kid because he's a very artistic person, and I was too. We were the two creatives in the family. Also as a queer kid who didn't know he was trans yet I was naturally drawn to queer masculine influences. This fell apart pretty quickly when I started like, growing into my own person instead of a carbon copy of the people around me. He was steadily becoming dumber and dumber to me but it really came to a head in 2016

So trump wins the US election. I am still living in Abu Dhabi at this point and I had just graduated high school in June of that year. My boss is American. She is devastated and says she's going home early that day because she needs a few hours to process what's gonna happen now. At my desk I make a Facebook post saying that if any of the americans I knew refused to vote over your own self-righteous bs that I don't want to talk to you again because you clearly cared more about having the moral high ground than sucking it up for the people who trump will go on to hurt. This post is a big hit among my Arab majority peers.

This goes on without incident. 3 months later my uncle comments a big essay on it sucking trumps dick and saying some pseudo-qanon shit about Hillary Clinton. I respond citing actual sources and hit him where it hurts: Mike pence's then-plan to divert AIDS research funding into conversion therapy.

I go back to work (I am at work when the response happens too). About an hour later my phone buzzes on my desk. I open it to an essay twice the size in my messenger DMs from him crytyping about how I've changed and turned into such a whiny SJW, how I'm no longer the same person i was when I was 11 (damn I hope so), how I'm such a bully now (YOU CAME ONTO *MY* POST 3 MONTHS LATER???), and uh, no word of a lie, that he can't be racist because he dated a black man in high school. I. I never mentioned race in the post or my response to him. He brought that up on his own.

I ended up calling him out on it by replying to his public comment with "hey if you're gonna cry about how you're not racist in my inbox for pages and pages on end like that because someone said you were being stupid at least do it in the same place you were flaunting your idiocy, damn."

We didn't talk for a good couple years after that. And then something came up and we talked again for a bit, I don't remember exactly what anymore but we had to interact in person for it. I was willing to be civil, he started by doing the equivalent of crossing his arms and pouting until I said sorry for how mean I was to such a sensitive little muffin on the internet. Very mature guy I'm related to here isn't he. Insane how he's the uncle and I'm the nephew huh

This lasted for a good 2 weeks. Because the pokemon sun and moon leaks happened and I showed him the character models for red and blue and joked that they looked like a newlywed couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Pokemon was one of the few things we could still agree on at this point, so i was trying to bridge a gap with a family member with it. Thinking that he would appreciate the joke as a gay man.

He exploded at me. Like full on screaming exploded at me over that. He yelled about how homophobic I was, that i had no right to call myself queer because I hadn't been sexually assaulted or threatened to be murdered (HE HASNT EITHER??? LIKE HE VERY MUCH HASNT 😭😭😭 also you are making a LOT of assumptions about the life of someone you made NO effort to be a part of despite him giving you every olive branch you could possibly grab), that it was insulting to every gay person in the world to say that the best representation we deserved was pokemon (THATS NOT WHAT I SAID??? Also what's wrong with a gay pokemon character 😭 how is that insulting 😭😭) and that I had no idea what it was like to suffer for my identity. He said this while I was living in a place where queer people got executed for being moral degenerates btw.

Something in me snapped that day and I responded with "oh tell me more about how hard your life was in your dubai villa with an in-ground pool and a hired nanny. I'll truly never suffer as much as you have. Tell me more about how you threw the first brick at stonewall."

My parents had to stop themselves from laughing at that response and steered me out before my uncle could explode even more, and I never talked to him again.

[beanghostprincess]

Late to valentines day, but consider queer platonic strawhats.

Luffy, upon hearing about Valentine's Day ((Makino would likely have told him a bit about it as a child, but it got forgotten amidst the trees and critters and love and family and also trauma of living ten years in the woods with criminals and bandits as his company)) goes absolutely APESHIT. A day devoted to LOVE?? HECK YEAH SIGN HIM UP!!!! HE LOVES HIS FRIENDS SO MUCH!!!

Robin, Ussop, Chopper and he all settle across the deck and make crafts. Luffy is very much more focused than usual, both bc Hands Moving, Colors and Glitter Good, and also bc this is IMPORTANT so he's doing his absolute best.

He makes a card for every person on his crew. He also makes stuff for his friends all over, addressed to them by name. He can't send them, not really, because it's hard to remember the addresses (Nami helps with some of those), so the ones he can't send properly (Shanks, Buggy, Boa, etc) he throws into the ocean.

((There's a quiet moment after nightfall when he's sitting on the figurehead, holding a card he worked Extra Hard On. It's addressed to Ace, and Luffy isn't one to really... be sad. He tries not to be. He's worried about seeming weak.

The crew definitely caught on, though. Nami steps up to him, puts a hand on his shoulder. Tugs him back to the deck. She leads him by hand towards the center, where the other's are waiting. Franky is beaming.

He made a little lantern like device. It has a little pocket, and it floats up and up and up, "all the way to the heavens," he exclaims proudly. Nami mentions sending a letter to Bellemere. Chopper has one for Hiriluk. Ussop has one for his mom, Sanji for his own, Zoro to Kuina, Robin to Saul, Brook to the Rumbars, Franky to Tom. Jimbei carries a few, but merely smiles softly at Luffy.

He tries not to cry as they all load up their letters, but he feels better when the only response people have to the wetness on his face is a brief touch or side hug.

It's bittersweet, but somehow he feels better than he has in a very long time.

And with his crew around him, supportive and still there, still staying.... well, Luffy didn't think he could love them any harder. Full of surprises, the lot of them.

Late to Valentine's Day too, don't worry 🫶 And I consider Queer Platonic Strawhats every day of my life actually-

This is,,, So beautiful,,, I'm sure Luffy would absolutely love Valentine's Day to celebrate his love for his friends. Maybe Nami and Sanji tell him that's not exactly how it works, because it's supposed to be romantic, but when he asks them "Why, though?" they don't really, uhh, have an answer for that. So turns out their captain is right and they can use this day to celebrate all types of love!

I adore the idea of Luffy writing letters and cards and throwing them into the sea if he can't send them. It's just beautiful. Maybe in a bottle, pirate style. Maybe fate helps him and somehow those letters end up with the correct people. Who knows?

Also, Luffy would be extra clingy the whole day and Sanji would make a huge dinner for everybody. They'd have so much fun and Luffy would just,, Take a moment to look at all of them being happy for a second and he'd go "Now this is what being a pirate should be!" and it makes me really emotional.

Not to mention the Ace thing,, All of them sending their letters to their dead loved ones in the sky? Do you want to make me cry??? Because you're making me cry.

They're precious to me.

[bisexualpositivity]

If you haven't come out to anyone, why not? Is there a reason?

"I have not come out to my family other than my mom and sister. I’m not entirely sure of the reason. I suppose I’m just scared."

"My family is conservative."

"IRL, I have only come out to my family and one of my classmates who's also queer, and I'm a little more discreet in public. On the Internet, I'm more open, but that's kind of its own world."

"I will never come out to my parents. It will cause too much hurt on both sides."

"I’ve come out to myself, and I have mentioned it on places where I know there isn’t family or anyone I know personally. I imagine one of three things happening should I come out to people I do know: an anticlimax, like just a collective shrug (when it’s a colossal deal for me); I never hear the end of it, especially with my family, like that’s all anyone can talk about anymore with me; or no one will get it, like they won’t understand me when I say that I’m pansexual and I kind of don’t want to be anything when it comes to my gender because I know I’m not a man and the concept of femininity flies right over my head."

— Multiple anonymous users, Pride 2024: Who We Are 🌈(survey)

[bengiyo]

Moonlight Chicken Ep 6 Stray Thoughts

Yesterday we focused on broken love from one person changing and the other staying the same. Wen and Alan built a romance out of college that Wen eventually grew beyond. Heart lost his hearing and learned a new way to speak, but his parents didn't go through the difficulty of learning to speak. As a result, everyone suffered, but the performances were spectacular.

Jim and Wen are going to make me revive the #they are literally always flirting tag. Still, I'm glad Wen clarified again that Jim didn't cause him to fall out of love with Alan.

Chapter 6: The Walk to Forget and Forgive

I had hoped that Wen's presence would enable Jim and Li Ming to speak to each other properly, but it's going to take time.

Sui Pornnapa is a good actress, y'all. Don't get too caught up in looking for villains to miss a good performance. The way she carries her unease about Li Ming before sitting down with him to realize that he really cares about her son. Because Fourth has such a joyous face, you can't help but feel her own pain and embarrassment that this boy knows things about her son she's never realized.

Okay, the note under the door was cute. You knew Heart was going to recognize the handwriting even if he didn't catch the tone of the message. Gemini, y'all. He's got great instincts about physically embodying his characters.

Saleng seems like he's on the side of whoever melts the ice prison Jim has locked himself within.

Earth and Mix have phenomenal chemistry. You can feel the easy desire between them, and the restraint never feels like internalized homophobia. Instead, it always feels exactly like an age gap tinged with a sense of responsibility.

You know, I had a feeling Beam had died. Something about the way Jim's grief felt like it was in stasis said that Beam died before they could reconcile or get closure.

In my feelings about older queers. We don't deal with this in BL often, but if you have older queer friends you'll be able to ask them about what it's like when one of us dies. Sometimes you have to rush to the apartment and remove all the gay content so their families don't know. Sometimes the families will refuse to tell us anything. It's a special kind of loneliness to not be able to mourn with people because they refuse to love everything about someone you care about and shun you.

Curious why Jim is determined to get the loan from this bank.

Holy shit, Khaotung. I have replayed his facial expressions as Jim finally crushes his hopes five times. You can see his wide eyed hope as he musters all of his bravery to ask directly, and then has to suppress his deep disappointment even as he can't withhold the tears. He even has to try to set his own feelings aside over the title deed.

I like cutting immediately to Saleng. I'm glad Gaipa still has that connection.

Love that Wen is determined to put a door in Jim's wall.

In my feelongs about how our Facebook pages become memorials.

This entire scene with Beam's girlfriend was so captivating. This is the kind of mess I expected from Aof. Two people loved a man and it made them both feel lesser. Then he died suddenly. No one can ever get closure with him, and instead must choose to live. I like seeing people near 40, because they have had time and realize the other isn't an enemy.

"People only go to the beach to get hot or get healed." I see you, Aof.

Oh, I think Heart is the first person to call Li Ming smart in this show.

Heart and Li Ming really are just so adorable.

I think I will accept the camera angle for their kiss because it's their first, and much of their dynamic feels private. Also, not sure I like Jim's dismay at witnessing it.

Alan wearing both of their rings as he goes on a bender says a lot about what his intentions were.

Lookwa gets to play Fourth's mom twice! Also wtf, Jim. I'm choosing not to read too much into a GMMTV preview.

[bogunicorn]

Rambly thoughts about DA Absolution under the read more.

Imagine my relief when fucking Rezaren didn't get woobied as someone doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Like, fandom is fandom and he's a skinny white guy with magic so I'm sure there will be some fuckshit if fandom really takes to this show. But I'm weirdly grateful that we as the audience weren't expected to have sympathy for that specific devil.

Also, maybe I'm just jaded because of the sheer amount of movies and shows that are like "this antagonist would be 100% in the right, so we made them do some atrocities so you won't side with them", but it's also a strange relief that the character who does do shitty things for sympathetic reasons isn't the most oppressed character around, for once. It's Hira, whose anger and trauma are clearly justified and validated by the narrative, but also isn't entirely removed from her background as a Tevinter noble, even a disgraced one. Burning down an entire country - the bad and the good - is a position of pretty intense entitlement that she holds onto even after having what seem to be pretty genuine feelings for a formerly enslaved person. The difference between Miriam and the thousands of enslaved elves still living in Tevinter is chance, and Hira is clearly comfortable siccing Meredith on everyone regardless of status just for the association.

I love that Hira lived (no fridged lesbians!), I love that Roland and Lacklon kissed on screen instead of being implied (bc it's so common to have explicitly queer women but not men in the same work), I love that the villains weren't comically evil but instead rather mundanely so. I really like that "we're not family and you're actually the bad guy" was a genuine shock to Rezaren.

I think it was a good, if brief, glimpse into Tevinter. I'm fascinated by the idea of the Tevinter Circles using Harrowings; it definitely seems like a final exam or a prestige sort of thing? I wonder if they're a requirement for graduation or something optional? They seem private; maybe I have to look at the scene again but the only bodies at Rezaren's Harrowing looked to be his mom's and Neb's.

Also! Pavus namedrop! I was hoping we'd actually see Dorian in the show, but having that little bit of information about his ancestry is neat, too.

[etherealspacejelly]

In response to your post about how it's a shame to be transmasc and have nice tits:

I'm transneutral and I have the most Jessica Rabbit body figure if she weren't as tall. And like... it's nice in a way. Like yeah if I'm trying to present fem, I'm sexy as fuck, but on a day to day basis I'm trying to look andro or masc but NO my bazonkers and tiny waist and HUGE ass hips have my body signaling "female" no matter how much I bind or dress in men's/baggy clothes and it's like 😭😭😭😭😭 I love you body but why do you have to be so stereotypically feminine?

And the worst part?????

I'm/literally/ the only AFAB person in my family with such an exaggerated body type. On both sides. My genes wanted so badly to make me happy for my AGAB but unfortunately I am NOT my AGAB and I'd have preferred my mom's body type.

THIS IS SO REAL OF YOU ANON!! i have wider hips and bigger tits than my mum. i would be so sexy and cool if i was a cis woman. but No. i am transmasc and i cant pass properly no matter what i do because my hips and tits always show. thank you for this queer solidarity, may we both someday reach a point where we can be comfortable in our bodies the majority of the time

[bluedalliances]

Heyyyyyyy, could u rec some nb/queer steddie?

Hell yes! Here are some of my favorite wibbly wobbly gendery wimey fics bc I need someone who will yell with me about them. Also, I'll leave the @ of the people who wrote them (at least the ones I could find), so you can follow them.

she likes the boys in the band (i'm her all time favorite) by @formosusiniquis

Oh, boi this fic. I spent a whole night reading because it was just that good. I regret nothing.

So, Steve and Robin go to see Corroded Coffin at the hideout and somehow fall for Eddie and Chrissy. Oh, also, Steve and Robin can read each other's minds. Ft. she/her/he/him Robin and Steve, HOH Steve, flirty Chrissy, Eddie dedicating songs to Steve and making DnD NPCs based on him, and Chrissy as Steve's cousin. Just, so so so lovely.

50k | Rated T

Also by them, since I couldn't choose between two fics I adore:

if you like this you might also like: me

This is a one shot where Steve works in a library and starts exchanging notes with Eddie, who leaves comments on Steve's recommendations. Not only is soft and amazingly written, but the books they reference are amazing at making the narrative move, I even added the ones I didn't know to my TBR. Gender is not heavily discussed or central here, but that's something I personally enjoy so, yeah. 9k | Rated T

Just like Holy Mary by @hellabifurious

A slice-of-life-ish, established relationship, found family fic where Steve explores gender and everything he was taught about being a man. Ft. Nail polish, makeovers, girl's nights, gender discussions, Steve being very, very loved.

28k | Rated T

took you for a working boy by pukner

Where Eddie tells Steve he's gay and, for some reason, that breaks Steve's heart. Ft. The end of the world, radio host Eddie, mutual crush, gender crisis, nb Stevie, just lots of wonderful stuff.

43k | Rated M

I've seen lots of recs for this one and it's really wonderful, another great fic from the same writer ft genderqueer Steve is: off the beaten path (ongoing series)

the queer kids of hawkins series by @locallmann

I've seen people talking about the first book in this series, L is for linoleum (and nothing else), but not so much for the second one, lady stardust, and it's amazing.

On how the older queer kids in Hawkins find each other, their identities, and love. Ft. Trans Eddie, NB Stevie, side ronance, queer solidarity, mom friend Steve, rocky horror as bonding, it has everything. Also, wonderfully tagged, everything you need to know is right there.

36k + 6k | Rated M and T

sit on my lap (tell me what you want) by kaleinope

Where Steve invites Eddie to spend Christmas on a cabin, and he realizes maybe his crush is not really unrequited. Ft. side Buckingham, game night, stolen sweaters, sweet and not angsty misunderstanding.

11k | Rated E | Do not have unprotected sex, children

Espresso Never Tasted so Sweet (Until I Stole it from Your Lips) by SerpentSunrise

Modern au where Steve is a barista and has a crush on one of the regulars. Here, again, gender is not a central theme. Ft. Steve being a little scared of putting himself out, tease Eddie, and lovely references to Icarus. So so good.

The author also has an ongoing work with trans Eddie, where Steve is touch starved. Check it out!

4k | Rated T

take it easy on me by the wonderful @tak-cajaz

Au where Steve is a kindergarten teacher and has a crush on Max's dad. It's a shame he's married. (No, he's not, don't worry). Ft. Supportive Robin, flirty Eddie, absolute sunshine Chrissy and cute kids. Also, misunderstandings, mutual pinning, overthinking and soft encounters.

Honestly, I'd rec everything by Kat, their writing is amazing and heartwarming, I always love every word on her fics. Check their work <3

8k | Rated T

My Favorite Form of Loving by indelicate

This is the first work in their Steddie dads series. It's Steve and Eddie's kid first day at preschool and they support each other through the anxiety of letting her go, it's really, really sweet. Ft. Trans Eddie, accepting enough community, soft dads steddie, dio references and a strong girl.

3k | Rated T

I hope you enjoy these, if you want more just let me know <3

[wheeloffortune-design]

Hmmm ok so I’m from Perú here, but is not necessary for a Latino to have a Hispanic name, my family are immigrants so we have all kind of mash-ups. Like example:

Asian (first name) and second name is María xdd, all that kind of stuff

Or maybe a nickname could work too.

Example

Someone named Enrique can be referred as “Quique” , “Quico”, “Henry”, etc

So I just saw this, and you're totally right, but I'll take the opportunity to talk about how I name characters, if it's alright with you.

This ask refers to a post I made where I complained how hard it was to name your latino gay romantic lead when all the names in baby names lists are people from your family tree (and said family is probably gonna read the book and ask why you pick great uncle's name for your gay porn.)

I know I don't have to give them typically latin names. Myself, I'm named out of something my mom saw in a dream, so it would be pretty hypocritical.

But at some point in my writing process I decided that I would have to make my own representation myself, and vowed to make all my protagonists Chilean-Québécois. And for some diversity, then can be Chilean-Ontarians. And they're all gonna be queer, but that's a given.

I may be slightly exagerating, but you get the intention behind it.

So, parallelly, something our unconscious minds do, when given no information about a character, is to imagine the default. And, where I live, the default is white, male, cisgender, straight, abled, thin, etc. I thought I was spared from that, until I read a novel that only revealed 3/4 in that the protagonist was Black. I had to sit down and rethink about how I perceived the world.

It was certainly a choice from the author, and also the cover art, to not describe or show the protagonist as Black from the start. I'm intrigued with that choice, I think I know where that can come from, but I'm tempted to do the exact opposite. Our goals are the same- more diversity in litterature, I'm just going to take a more direct way, at the surprise of no one.

So, I write a book. Here's the public presented with a new character. Maybe the cover didn't show him, but I have control over the words used to describe him. With the same care I use to describe skin (té con leche), a certain type of hair (curled, thick, strong), a certain kind of body (round face, broad shouldered, strong arms of a baker, soft middle with the strong core of the hardworker). And I'll add in pieces of what I know- great eyebrows, amazing eyelashes, moles everywhere.

And I know the white normativity (is that the word? i should be sleeping, words are already in bed) is so strong that people can even keep imagining a white person despite all that. So I give them no choice. I will give my character a name that sounds latino, so they can't escape it. I will give him three first names and two surnames like any of us.

Now, we arrive at the more technical side of it. I'm on the babynamer lists, on typical latin names for boys, et oh dear. Number 1 was my father's name. Number 2 is my brother's. The followings are all cousins, uncles. I'm also putting a lot of them aside for future kids.

I think I'm gonna go with Mateo. It has all the qualities I look for in a protagonist name: simple, memorable, sounds spanish without having a letter like j that just gets butchered by other people, wouldn't sound weird in a romantic or smutty scene, none of my cousins have it. The sounds are nice, it's different enough from the other main character and pairs well together. Mateo and Darius.

(Darius has been named after the Persian emperor, because I want to write a typical LOTR fantasy but with gay romance, but also my skin crawled at the idea of ther another fantasy book set in medieval white europe. My first book is in ancient Egypt for a reason.)

I have a lot of things I think about when chosing the name of a character, I'll post about it some more later if it interests some people.

[kick-a-long]

spoilers for cockoo and why it is one of the best movies of the last 15 years.

disclaimer: im cis and the main actress hunter is trans, also tw sexual violence definitely/kinda??

this movie is sooo fucking good technically, writing wise, good looking, emotional, ethically complex and both personally and socially meaningful. not a misstep to be found. if you can handle spooky scary movies i definitely recommend it.

I'm not going into great detail, but the thing i like about it the most is that it is a total marriage of feminist anxiety and queer (especially trans) anxiety.

my favorite thing that I haven't seen anyone talk about is that while hunter is a trans woman, the character she plays is (in my mind) kept ambiguously queer. she might be a trans woman, trans man, non-binary, or a cis lesbian. all we know is that she is some form of queer, attracted to woman and is treated like a woman who has failed at womanhood. the setting is the 80s which is brilliant because it side steps all the formal conversations around pronouns and respecting identity, it implies there are no hormone therapies to get or operations or any way that gretchen can earn womanhood or manhood with her outer appearance/gender performance. what's left is the single implication that in some way Gretchen has failed at womanhood. it makes it clear that Gretchen might be any letter of the alphabet but regardless of which one she IS being pushed out of her own home for being the wrong type of woman, not even just for being lgbt. she's in survival mode, in a foreign country, totally isolated and continually attacked for/from finding anyone like her, dealing with grief/the loss of her emotional family, not there by choice, not there because she did anything wrong, and not afraid of being proactive to fix that situation.

the cockoo is the perfect monster for her. It's the type of femininity that looms over her as well as all woman (even her hyper feminine step mom.) it non-consentually impregnates the right type of woman, in a non-sexual procedure. It's heterosexual and performing femininity well, and controls who has children with whom like a male institution but it is a biologically female animal. it implants it's eggs, not sperm, it dresses and looks like a traditional (even antiquated) version of a woman. it's the grandma 1950s pre-feminist femininity that haunts us. so it acts as both a symbol of patriarchy like it's acting in lock step with conservative heterosexual men's values and as the specter of conservative femininity that could be terf or could just be conservative femininity generally. it even covers it's hair (in a non religious way) and wears demure cloths, solely focused on other woman's reproduction, while being ungodly powerful yet controlled by patronizing men. even it's monster power is to repeat time, literally stop people progressing by force, a literal power that conservatives want to go back in time and freeze us all there. It's so fucking smart!!

the resolution is EVEN MORE SMART!

the film points out how fucking weird all this shit is, and then makes an actual active choice to say, "fuck it, solidarity against all this violent and nonsensical philosophical bullshit!" it takes the deeply humanistic option of "i'm a freak that didn't ask to be born this way, you're a freak that didn't ask to be born this way, all these systems and gender roles are fucking you as much as me lets band together and figure out what the fuck we can do to change all this!" they only escape by using each other as shields. the girl born of hyperconservativity who doesn't want to live that life, protects gretchen against conservative patriarchy/violence while gretchen's atypical but humanistic femininity protects alma's typical girlhood femininity against ultra leftist/violent deconstruction of femininity. and then they run off with a hot lesbian who has a car. perfect!

the movie is so wonderful because it is the first film that i've seen which communicates not just the pragmatism of focusing on all woman's (any kind of woman: straight and any type of LGBTQIA+) shared interests so we can all work together to build each other up, protect each other, get each other to some place safe, but also how much more sane that is. put the violence on the horrible ideas and not vengeance against the people who uphold them, because while the ideas seem impossible to defeat, part of defeating them is facing them without becoming overwhelmed and just not listening! because they are fucking weird and self defeating, again brilliant!

there's a million more things to say but you have to see it. it's as close to perfect as any movie I've seen. i love it.

please please see it. even if you don't want to think it's a fucking fun popcorn movie and an incredibly thrilling ride.

[asurrogateblog]

Sweet! :D Are there any other characters important to the story, aside from the band, you'd like to talk about?

ooh okay!

as usual I am wholly incapable of providing a short answer.

The most interesting side characters to talk about are from Cal's part of the story (basically the epilogue, see the last slide it does require that context)*

*sidenote: I do have side-characters for the "real story" obviously, but one of the points I want to make in the story is how the main cast is so myopically self-obsessed that they don't fully process the consequences of their actions outside of the circle of the three of them until it's way too late. so as a result everyone else is a little less developed (it's on the to-do list

ANYWAY. so as mentioned in the powerpoint, Cal in the present-day owns a little record/instrument shop. And speaking meta-textually, she REFUSES to get involved in an actual plot. I have a few ideas I'm playing around with for where to take her character but usually it's like "yah I'm not doing that." given this stand-off I've resorted to a more slice-of-life style of things. I guess she deserves that. arguably. a lot of philosophical questions there about whether you're responsible for the actions of the people you used to be.

so when I was thinking of her shop, I started thinking about the neighborhood around it. and I asked myself "who would be the funniest person/people to move in next door?"

Meet Arti and Ray! They're lesbian married, they're re-opening the old bar next door, and they just happen to be Clarion Call super fans. They even have matching tattoos and their bar is called Puzzlemaster after the Clarion album. In the CC universe they're definitely on tumblr making "rpf is fine" memes with photos of Roy and Nelson.

Facts about Arti:

Mellow (read: quietly chaotic), observant, creative

Trying to finish her degree in film studies on the side. Dreams of making really unsettling avant-garde horror movies.

Introduced to CC by her mom. She doesn't really talk to her family anymore (....it's complicated), but she kept the love of the music. Nelsongirl.

genuinely really enjoys bartending; mixology master

Facts about Ray:

Energetic, competitive, loud

Works part-time at a daycare to supplement their income; loves kids, should honestly be a gym teacher

Born in the Phillpines; moved to California (bay area) as a kid

Introduced to CC by their cousins. godsend for "teenager struggling to fit in who doesn't realize they're queer yet". Roy stan.

The premise for them is analogous to this: imagine, anon, that one day you're chatting with the old woman who lives next door and it strikes you that she looks a lot like John Lennon. Now consider exactly what would it take for you to go from "haha weird" to "oh my god, I think John Lennon is still alive and an old woman and also my neighbor". And beyond that, what would it take for you to actually accuse her of this.

As they get to know each other, this is the game of psychological chess going on between Cal and Arti & Ray (of course, they'd probably think that she's secretly Izzy Riles.... which she is, but that's only a third of the story).

So that's a little introduction to them! They're a lighter and sillier part of the story and I like them a lot

(I have to stop here. I have to make myself)

[coastalwind]

1, 4-6, 11, 13, 19, 20, 25

1- Which labels do you use?

I don't really like the term labels I prefer identity, I'm a cisgender gay man

4- Are you "out" to your family and friends?

kinda. all my friends know i'm gay. I never came out to my immediate family, I just kind of stopped pretending, same with my dad's side of the family. I'm still not out to my mom's side of the family, and I don't think I'll ever be. Maybe after my grandparents pass away, but I don't really see it happening ever, really

5- Are you "out" publicly?

pretty much, yeah

6- do you wish you came out sooner? Later? Was it the right time?

it was the right time for me, but it could've happened sooner lol. most of my friends to this day are my friends from middle/high school, i came out to them when we were starting college. nowadays only one of us remains straight.

11- Favorite (or just one you love) piece of LGBT media?

you know what, I really love Jongens! it's a dutch movie directed by Mischa Kamp and it's really good!

13- Do you choose to reclaim slurs? Why or why not?

yes, but i never really thought about it as "reclaiming slurs"

if kissing boys makes me a fag than that's what i am, what about it? you, know?

19- Do you feel safe and accepted in your local community?

uhh kind of a nuanced answer... on my personal social bubble (my family, friends, events i go to and places i frequent) i do. in my city as a whole, it depends. certain areas creep me out so i just don't go there, i live in a relatively safe place but there are certain establishments (my barber for example, or other more male dominated places) where i try to hide my queerness. I'm confident enough to go on dates on public places without being afraid of kissing or anything like that, but shit happens so you gotta stay alert you know

20- Do you feel like you "fit in" with the queer/Pride community overall?

honestly i feel like it's just such a vast and diverse community that everyone can find a "niche" where they "fit in", so yes i do

25- What queer discourse frustrates you the most?

I think maybe all of them? idk sometimes it feels pointless to have all these arguments over and over again when in reality homophobes don't care. they see us all as the same and won't stop hating you cause you're x and not y, we should spend time and effort working on that instead of debating over which pride flag is more progressive

send me pride asks!!

[thevoidstaredback]

CW: Mentions/Implications of Transphobia, Religion, Aphobia

I do end up telling at everyone, btw. I'm a bit pissed off near the end.

I'm a bit pissed off still...

I think the main reason I haven't come out to my parents as AroAce is because they're both very conservative Christans (LDS). They grew up that way, and they raised me that way. While they're open minded about a lot of things, they're close minded about a lot of things, too.

Both are very family oriented, my mother moreso than my father. They both want me and my sisters to get married and have kids and I don't know how to break it to them that I don't want that.

I've tried telling them without coming out. "The best I can offer are cats." or "I'm not interested in relationships." or the one I've been saying since I was in my single digits "I'm gonna be the crazy cat lady. I can't do that if I have other people I have to take care of."

(Honestly, that last one shoulda been my first clue. How the hell did I not know until senior year of hs?)

Both parents have brushed me off or ignored me completely. On several occasions. My aunts have all done the same. Some friends have done the same. All with varying excuses that I've already mentioned here before (and on TilTok).

I think the worst part is that they're both a bit transphobic, my father moreso than my mother. Mom is a bit more open minded (at least that I've noticed). She's a bit confused, but does her best to understand. Dad is a lot less so. He's actively watching things that are transphobic in nature or in passing, though I think he's realized that shit makes me uncomfortable, so he doesn't listen to it when I'm around. Only when he thinks I can't hear. (Doesn't work very well. I've got crazy good hearing and he watches with his speakers on full blast)

I'm not trans, but I have friends who are. My thought process is, if they can't accept that people are sometimes born in the wrong body, how will they ever accept someone stepping way back from what they were raised on?

Okay, I know those two things probably to connect in the way that I'm trying to convey, but I- I don't know how to explain it?

How do I convince people that I don't fall into the norms they were raised in when they can't even accept the norms that have been since the time of gods?

Does that make better sense?

The Queer Community has been around since humans started to walk the Earth. How does one explain this to people without things going to absolute shit?

I think I've gotten a bit off topic...

How does one tell their parents (who have been dreaming about their children having children to the point of "cursing" us with triplets) that getting married or having kids is not in their plans?

How does one get past the years of (what I can only label some kind of manipulation attempts) convincing that having kids and getting married will be the best thing to ever happen?

As I'm sure my fellow Aspecs can relate or attest to, it's extremely hard to tell a heteronormative society that you don't quite fall in with them. It's equally as hard to tell s homonormative group that you don't quite fit in with them, either.

On all sides, we're being pushed and pulled to fall in love and have families and have romances and have sex and all of these things! I think the reason we (at least from what little I've seen) feel so lonely is because we have little to no support. People on all sides are telling us we're wrong. People who are supposed to be on our team are telling us we're wrong.

Do you know how much that hurts?

Straight friends, gay friends, trans friends, queer friends, even fellow Aspecs have all told me some version of "You just haven't met your perfect person yet."

Fuck you.

Fuck whoever has ever said that in their life.

Fuck whoever has said that to someone who trusted them.

That line, and any line like it, is harmful.

I'm sorry you can't look past your rose coloured glasses to see the world. I'm sorry you can't pull your head outta your partner's(s) ass long enough to realize that not everyone is like you.

Yeah, I'm yelling at all of you. No discrimination here.

....

I really did go off topic...

I guess I really needed all that off my chest...

Regardless, I don't take any of it back.

[newageauthor]

This season of Sex Education was so so so so important to me for so many reasons

Aimee's healing journey and her learning everything she loves about herself and what she needs to do to see the other side. I have always loved Aimee and saw so much of myself in her so seeing her grow so independently and her and Maeve have such a rich friendship.... it is the most pleasing thing to see

Maeve's mom funeral had me ugly sobbing. It is always so intense when you see your own emotions being shot at your face. I don't have a mom. She was neglectful and never present. I have no idea how I'm gonna feel when she dies. So Maeve's eulogy of "A mom can be a pretty shitty parent.....I hate her for everything she has done to me but I miss her with every cell of my being." (I'm paraphrasing here) struck me in the gut and I sobbed. I felt so seen it was scary. (And don't even get me started in the conversation she had with Jean oh my god a dream for people with mommy issues)

ERIC EFFIONG'S RELIGIOUS JOURNEY IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. With how prevalent religious trauma is within the LGTBQIA+ community it is no surprise how many queer people downright hat3 Christianity and it can make a lot of other people feel like they cannot be Christian because if they are then they our outright disrespecting the shame and pain their queer family had to go through and still is going through. So Eric learning that you can be Christian and Gay at the same time is so precious to me. It is also so important how they showed how personal of a journey getting baptized is and you should only do it when you are 100% ready. I am so HAPPY that Eric is going to become a Pastor because the world needs more queer pastors