#makes one less queer to hate crime :D

[eldritchnebula]

Maybe if I ask really nicely it'll happen.

So like. When is the Tennessee Governor gonna tell the LGBT+ community April Fools about the anti-drag bill. Someone needs to teach him about what pranks are and aren't funny smh

[spacetrashpile]

so everything i know abt dc (very little) has come from my mutuals' posts (mostly yours) and i wanted to say congrats on your special guy's return!!! but also i had a few questions! kid eternity's previous iterations were all boys right? is this the debut of a new one or has she been around a while? at first i thought they may have made her trans but then i realized how unlikely that was for a long-standing character, even a minor one. what's her backstory? does her canon coincide with any previous versions? (i'm vaguely recalling a post of yours with 4 versions of this character over the years.)

i'm probably never gonna read any of the comics myself but i think she seems really cool and i really like hearing about comic character lore, so if you're up for an infodump i'd love to hear it :D

HI THANK YOU I'M ECSTATIC. YOU'VE ALSO ACTIVATED MY AUTISM TRAP CARD WITH THE TRANS THING. AND ALSO THE OTHER STUFF BUT THE TRANS THING SPECIFICALLY.

So you are correct, all the previous Kid Eternity incarnations have been guys! And yes, there have been a couple versions of him across the years (four or five, depending on who you ask/how we're drawing lines). This is the opener image I made for my "all Kid Eternity appearances" spreadsheet (still a WIP) that I made, and I feel like that helps give a quick reference for him. (It's not full opacity, but unfortunately I no longer have the original file and can't change that.)

So, this new Kid Eternity seems to be an entirely new iteration of the character. One, she's got a new costume (though it's riffing heavily on the 90s/early 2000s version of the character), and two, everyone is pretty sure she's a girl, which is insanely exciting for me specifically. This JSA issue, which came out today, is her first appearance ever, and that page I've posted like twice now is her only appearance in the actual issue, since it happens right at the end. As such, we have no idea what her deal is, or how she lines up with Kid's past appearances. However, that means it's time to speculate wildly!

A quick note about the trans thing- you're right that making any longstanding character trans would be kinda crazy for DC, even a character like Kid who's had less than 100 appearances under DC's ownership, but if it was going to happen to anyone, I could see it happening here. One, Kid is wildly minor. Like I said, less than 100 appearances while under DC's copyright, and when you add in the comics from when he was owned by Quality Comics, he still doesn't cross the 200 appearances line. So while making a character that's existed since the 1940s trans would be kinda crazy, if you're gonna pick any character to do it to, you may as well pick one that everyone forgot existed back in the 90s.

Furthermore, Kid is a character who's played a lot with concepts of gender and sexuality. You'll notice that the two pictures in the middle of the above image feature Kid with long hair (and in the costume closest to the kid we saw in the new JSA), for one, but the second image is a cover from Kid's third solo, which was published under the Vertigo imprint. Vertigo was an imprint that DC started back in the 90s that focused on publishing adult content that wasn't necessarily suitable for DC's primary audience. This means stuff like sex, nudity, drug use, etc. but it also means a lot of queer characters and story lines were published under this imprint. Just to name a few, John Constantine/Hellblazer, the Doom Patrol, and Sandman are pretty famously queer characters/groups, and they were some of Vertigo's big names back in the 90s.

Kid is never explicitly trans in his Vertigo run, and no actual trans characters ever appear to my memory, but they do play with his gender just a bit (particularly, in my opinion, in issue 9, "Hysteria Knows No Gender", but it's not much, just a fun possible read). The comic also deals very heavily with homophobia and hate crimes in some of the last few issues, and don't shy away from the idea of queerness at all. (Genuinely, issues 10-12 of this comic are harrowing reads. Issue 10 deals with violence against women while issues 11 and 12 deal with homophobia and my god are they heavy.)

Also a point that has less to do with Kid and more with the comic itself, but still something worth bringin up- this is happening in JSA (2024), and the JSA has made a couple longstanding and/or much more important characters (in the grand scheme of things) queer in the past! Notably, Todd Rice (obsidian) (first appearance 1983) was revealed to be gay in 2006 and Alan Scott (the first green lantern) (first appearance 1940) was revealed to be gay within like, the last 5 years. Still no trans retcons to my knowledge (though I'm not super up to date on the JSA, so if I may be missing some important stuff), but that's still pretty notable in my opinion.

ALL OF THIS IS TO SAY that while Kid has never been trans before, this Kid being trans genuinely doesn't feel out of the question to me. I'm not gonna get my hopes up or anything, but hey, wouldn't it be cool???

Anyways, the other questions you asked! Like I said, we ultimately know nothing about this version of Kid Eternity right now, except what she looks like, and that she's in Hell (par for the course for Kid, to be quite honest.) Judging from which comic she features in and what her costume looks like, however, I think I can solidly say that the backstory they'll be drawing on is the 90s era backstory, so I'll give a quick rundown of that!

Kid's initial backstory, from the 1940s, boils down to this: Kid was a child on a sailing ship that ran afoul of a Nazi sub during WW2. Kid and the rest of the crew, including his grandfather, died and went to a place called "Eternity" (legally distinct Heaven). Upon their arrival, however, it was found that Kid had arrived about 60 years before his time. In return for the mistake, he is sent back to earth with new powers and a spiritual guardian from Eternity, Mr. Keeper. These new powers allow him to shout the word "Eternity" and call on any historical, mythological, or fictional characters and summon their ghosts to help him solve problems. The fictional characters fall by the wayside after a certain point because of copy right concerns, I imagine, but I have to bring it up because it's always comical. Shout out to the time he summoned Jean Valjean to talk a thief out of stealing a loaf of bread and when that didn't work he summoned Javert and then Javert and Valjean beat each other up until he sent them back.

The 90s backstory, which is introduced by Grant Morrison in a horror mini series, builds on this backstory with a few retcons. Most notably, Kid never actually went to "Eternity" or any sort of heaven. Instead, he went to hell, where he was picked up by a staple of the DC magical mythos called the Lords of Chaos (which are exactly as bad as they sound), specifically by the one who paraded himself as Mr. Keeper. He was lied to about what happened to him when he died, about what was happening to him upon his arrival in Hell, and was strung along to do the Lords of Chaos' bidding for decades before he was able to free himself in a really complicated series of retcons and dumb writing choices across about 20 comics written and released over about two decades so we won't get into the weeds of that part.

The Lords of Chaos are opposed by a group called the Lords of Order (who could've guessed!) who are very important to the Justice Society, primarily to Dr. Fate, a key member, because Dr. Fate is a Lord of Order possessing/manifesting through a human person (and a helmet). Not only that, but this new Kid has appeared in JSA volume 2. The first JSA came out in 1999, and y'know who appears (and dies but that's less important) in the first issue of that comic: 90s Kid Eternity! It's a part of this whole plot regarding agents of the Lords of Chaos and Order, and since the current plot of this comic has a lot to do with Dr. Fate, I imagine that Kid is being pulled from that original JSA comic to be introduced as a potential foil to the current Dr. Fate (a young man who seems to be close in age to this version of Kid) and/or as another wrinkle in the Everything that's going on.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY! We really don't know much yet, but Kid Eternity is literally one of my nichest favorite characters of all time, and I am beyond ecstatic to see them running around again (fun fact, post New 52 reboot in 2011, Kid has had a whole thirteen appearances, and 6 of those appearances weren't even in the mainline universe. It was dire out here!)

[nocompromise-noregrets]

💖🍖🌈🍩❌ dealers choice please? <3

oooh thank you! and I'm sorry it's taken me a couple of days...now, let's see. Which ones haven't I done so far? *ponders* y'know what, I'm going to do Two of a Kind, because I deserve a treat. :D I know hardly anyone cares about my disastrous boys but I do and I'm going to make that everyone's problem. XDDDDD

💖 [Heart] What is your favorite moment in this WIP? It's hard to say but I think it's probably the moment in chapter 15 of Hal Peacock's Life Is Perfectly Fine As It Is, Thank You when Jack, at the absolute end of his tether, accidentally-on-purpose spills Hal's second-most closely-guarded secret in front of the people he's keeping it secret from, and in the process completely accidentally spills his own second-most closely-guarded secret in front of the person he's keeping it secret from (Hal, in other words). The chapter summary is In which Jack lobs a grenade into Hal’s personal life, but manages to get himself caught in the blast. and it really really is exactly that dramatic. Idiots. :D

🍖 [Meat] How many fictional people were harmed in the making of this WIP? Three, I think - Hal, Jack, and Lawrie (Hal's partner in guitar-related crime who spends the first few chapters in rehab and then the next few not getting on spectacularly well with his boyfriend as a result).

🌈 [Rainbow] If at the beginning of your WIP the characters knew about the end, would they kill you to stop you from writing it? Oh, absolutely. Jack has made many, many attempts on my life over the years. :D He's more or less resigned to it at this point but that's only because we've managed to get him to a much better place as a result of the story.

🍩 [Donut] What's the weirdest thing someone eats in your WIP? What's the best thing? Food doesn't get mentioned very much, probably because it's not all that important to me and I'd rather just get on with the story, I can't be bothered with wasting time describing what everyone's eating, but Jack has a very entertaining voyage of discovery with relation to mulled wine towards the end of part 3. There's a barbecue in the current final chapter of that part, which I haven't got to yet, but nothing particularly weird gets eaten there either. Jack does, however, absolutely pull Christmas dinner out of the bag, despite never having actually done Christmas before.

❌ [Cross] What would your WIP get cancelled on Twitter for? ahahahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh my god, literally everything about it. Hal and Jack spent their teenage years on the street earning their living from sex work, Jack is a CSA survivor, there is drug use and irresponsible, (possibly unprotected, I can't remember) sex and a lot of swearing and both of them existing in close proximity to a kid (Hal has a daughter) and Jack is utterly obnoxious, antisocial and very poorly adjusted; neither of them are dealing with their trauma very well at all; there's a drag queen and mention of kink at Pride in some of the later ficlets, a lot of antisocial punk rock n' roll, almost everyone is queer (Hal's band is described more than once as 'the gayest band in the North'), Hal is bi/pan, Jack's demi/ace and has no idea until one of the later ficlets, Hal's bass player is a lesbian Black woman in a rock band, there's an aroace character, Hal's ex (the kid's mother) is biracial although it hasn't actually come up yet (her father is Ugandan Asian, I think, although I haven't quite figured it all out yet, and her mother's parents were of the Windrush generation), it's originally loosely inspired by real people, I could genuinely go on all day. Twitter would hate it. On the other hand, if that sounds like something anyone here might be interested in, the whole series is here. :D :D :D

wheeee thank you for asking! anyone else want to ask me any questions about any of my WIPs? (especially more questions about Two of a Kind actually, because I really enjoyed this :D :D :D )

[alberto-balsalm]

Hey, you!

Is the legislature of your state in the process of outlawing your existence? Do you want to move, but can’t afford to live in any of the big gay meccas? Consider...

~~~Upstate New York~~~

Yes, this undervalued part of the state features:

Queer-friendly state laws, including the 2019 Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) ᵃ

Right-wing state politicians usually steamrolled by a large downstate Democratic political base ᵇ

Cheap-ass costs of living compared to everywhere else you’re considering

More queer people than you think

A variety of charming small-to-medium sized cities, each with their own culture and quirky local foods ᶜ

A wide collection of natural parks, including the nation’s largest state park (Adirondack Park)

Within driving distance of various major metropolitan areas (also there’s Amtrak, and the MTA goes as far north as Poughkeepsie)

Not constantly on fire like the West Coast

Abundant water resources due to the Great Lakes and Adirondacks

Weather isn’t as bad as you’ve heard ᵈ

Fewer natural disasters than most of the country ᵉ

Shares land and water borders with Canada, in case the entire country goes to hell in 2024

Ask your local upstater today!

(Footnotes after the cut.)

a. Laws, of course, don’t help you if nobody enforces them, so don’t move to one of the rural counties with a MAGA sheriff who thinks hate crimes don’t exist. Rural areas here aren’t much worse than anywhere else, at least.

b. Upstate NY apologizes for its Republican federal representatives. Especially Elise Stefanik. Christ, what an asshole.

c. No steamed hams, though.

d. Like the two previous bullets, you can thank global warming. Proximity to the Great Lakes is expected to moderate the effects of global warming somewhat, except that it’ll probably make lake effect snow more common. Besides, if you're coming from Montana or the Dakotas, it's probably an improvement.

e. Blizzards happen, but the worst blizzard barely compares to a typical category 4 or 5 hurricane. The historic Buffalo blizzard last year killed 43 people in NY, which is less than half of Hurricane Harvey, and nowhere near what Katrina did. Buffalo gets hit much worse than the rest of the state.

[pashterlengkap]

Woman threatened businesses with violence in the wake of the Club Q shooting. She got arrested.

A 40-year-old woman named Sharon Robinson has been arrested and charged in connection to threats made against Colorado LGBTQ+ businesses in the city of Denver and the county of Glendale. Robinson allegedly made threatening calls in the weeks following the Club Q massacre which killed five people and injured at least 22 others. --- Related Stories Lauren Boebert says LGBTQ+ people are “degenerates” in calling for North Face boycott She is upset about a drag queen’s wholesome Instagram video announcing a Pride event for The North Face. --- In her calls, she used anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, threatened to “shoot your bar up,” and said, “You’re gonna be shot up like Club Q,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported. Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you. A grand jury indicted Robinson, finding that she “intentionally selected her victims because of their actual and perceived sexual orientation,” the DOJ added. Such targeting could cause her to face hate crime charges which also carry higher sentences. Robinson appeared in court on Wednesday and was released on a $50,000 bond, Chicago Public Radio News reported, and will be prosecuted in Colorado. She is barred from traveling outside of New York City and Long Island except to Colorado for court. The Club Q shooting occurred in the early morning hours of November 20, 2022 in the city of Colorado Springs, home to Focus on the Family, one of the nation’s oldest anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Anti-LGBTQ+ right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder, and others alternately denied responsibility for fomenting hatred against queer people and said that LGBTQ+ people caused the shooting by allegedly supporting non-existent “child genital mutilation.” The suspected shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, faces more than 300 charges. Aldrich’s lawyers say that they identify as nonbinary and use they/them pronouns. They planned the attack in advance, prosecutors said, making a map of Club Q and visiting the club at least six times prior to the attack. The suspected shooter was taken down by a military veteran less than a minute after the shooting began. One patron stomped on the suspect with her high heel shoes while the veteran held him down. Detective Rebecca Joines testified that Aldrich ran a neo-Nazi website featuring a white supremacist training video glorifying mass shootings, and posting an image of a Pride parade with a rifle scope on it. They also used anti-LGBTQ+ and racist slurs while gaming.  After the shooting, President Joe Biden (D) sent a letter to the bar’s owners expressing his “deepest condolences” and stating the need for “a ban on assault weapons” and “other common-sense gun safety measures.��� Six months later, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed four new gun control bills into law. Club Q announced that it would reopen in fall 2023 with enhanced security measures. Survivors of the shooting say they feel hope for the community as it continues to heal from the violence. http://dlvr.it/SphDW9

[songforten]

yeah yknow what ok i'll bite. with or without context, this post is extremely fucking racist. i didn't include the rest of it because i did not want anyone to harass anybody, and of all people, i know VERY well that posting publicly about someone you disagree with WILL get both them and you harassed. instead i made a somewhat catty post about a take that made me mad on my personal blog with no expectation of likes or reblogs, and in fact got far more attention than i ever intended. had i known this many people would see this post, i probably would have been a bit less vague. g-d forbid someone makes a post on the internet without fully explaining themself and all of the context every fucking time. anyway. sure, i'll talk about it in context. because the rest of this post doesn't change my opinion at all.

this post starts out by decrying christopher eccleston as a terrible person who hates fans and is really really mean to them, which is categorically untrue. nor is he "disdainful" about the show as a whole. he is open about his struggles with mental health, an eating disorder, and a bad environment on set during his time on the show, which he has every right to be. i personally have never heard of him being anything but lovely to fans, if a little blunt sometimes, but i think that's more just him as a person being kind of blunt. which i really don't think is a crime.

the post then accuses him of "downplaying" an accusation of sexual assault and insulting the woman who accused him and insinuates that he did assault her. this is, well, to put it in your words, classic shit stirring. it took what he said out of context to make him seem like a horrible person. what this comment is actually referring to is an interview eccleston did in january where he talked about the importance of intimacy coordinators on set when sex scenes are being filmed, and about one experience he had with an unnamed actress who accused him of inappropriately groping her during the scene in front of literally everybody on set, and that it's the most betrayed he's ever felt by another actor. at no point does he call her a bitch. he says he would rather put his hands in a blender than touch her or anybody else inappropriately like that. so far this post has framed chris eccleston as a horrible human being for practically no reason. can't wait to see what's next, i bet this will be a really meaningful take on misogyny in fandom.

next up we get a paragraph of good things jodie whittaker has done contrasted with a straw man hater who hates whittaker and wants her to fail and writes rape threats about her -- an EXTREMELY serious accusation here thrown out really nonchalantly in order to make the strawman hater seem even worse. not saying that's never happened, i'm sure it has, but i would hazard a guess that most people who talk about liking eccleston and gatwa are, for the most part, not the same people who act that vitriolic towards whittaker. gatwa and eccleston? those are two actors that are NEVER criticized on false standards by people with very obvious actual motivation for disliking them. the working class politically involved notherner who very adamantly and loudly stands up for the worker's rights of both himself and others in the industry, and the queer black refugee who is very open and unapologetic about these things. never.

this is sarcasm. op chose THE most loaded pair of actors they possibly could have to compare, and i can't imagine why they did that. the people who like eccleston and especially gatwa in the role as the doctor are not the same people who hated that the doctor was a woman.

the final part of the post, and the part i included in my own, again, admittedly catty post made out of frustration, opens by censoring ncuti gatwa's name, which i understand is #hater culture or whatever, but like. in this instance? is horrifically fucking racist. it then insinuates that he's a bad person (?) for jokingly calling the doctor slutty, which.... do you not see that this is a really bad way to treat an openly queer actor. when queer people are called groomers for existing on a daily basis. and on top of that, it flat out accuses him of not taking the role seriously. i cannot imagine what would make someone think this, having watched gatwa in the role. what about him makes them think he doesn't take it seriously? is it the way he talks? the way he acts in interviews? because in that case i don't think you have a problem with how he treats the character. i think you have a problem with him.

i like jodie whittaker. i think she is a fantastically talented actress when given the chance to be (seriously, go watch her antigone if you haven't. funnily enough chris eccleston is in it too.) on top of that she seems like a lovely human being with enthusiasm for her work and love for fans pouring out of her, and i really really admire that about her. i don't think any actor needs to have encyclopedic knowledge of the show in order to play the doctor, because that's ridiculous. they're actors. their job is to act. it's a WRITER'S job to give them material to act with, and that's a job i think chibnall failed miserably at. with a good writer, someone can join the show with absolutely no knowledge of it and do incredibly well, such as, famously, catherine tate. who, last i checked, is also a woman. (interestingly, matt smith had also not watched the show before being cast, but he's not mentioned here.) it's not and has never been whittaker’s fault i don't like the era, and i have never said otherwise. nor has anyone in my social circle.

my post isn't saying it's bad to talk about the misogyny jodie experienced. it's saying that dragging down two other actors, who are already criticized under false pretenses all the time, FOR NO FUCKING REASON to make her look better is bad. being racist towards ncuti gatwa in order to make the misogyny directed towards jodie whittaker seem worse... is bad. big fucking whoop. this post was racist towards ncuti gatwa, which you admitted. your problem is that you seem to be willing to forgive that racism in order to listen to what this person has to say about misogyny, when i would argue that being racist makes me discard the opinion of the post entirely. because they were being fucking racist. to which all i can say is:

you have put a lot of words in my mouth that i did not say, and i don't appreciate it. at no point did i accuse people who like thirteen of inherently being racist. when i say "chibnall fans", as i often do on this blog, i mean people who lick the man's boots and think he's g-d's gift to television and can do no wrong.

i am not trying to "pit fans against each other" -- i am pointing out a pattern of racism that is extremely common in every fan space on the internet, and, as i've noticed over the last five years, often goes practically completely unchecked by people who are hardcore fans of the chibnall era. and a lot of those fans will take ANY excuse to raise up their favorites, even at the expense of being outwardly racist. notice i said often. not all. if you like both thirteen and fifteen and you are not saying this kind of racist garbage in order to make your favorite look good, and none of your friends or the people you follow are saying this shit, then congratulations. this post isn't about you.

on top of that the idea of "profit" is laughable. i could not give less of a shit about the number of notes i get. do you really think if i wanted social capital, i would be posting on tumblr about doctor who. get real.

sorry for taking the original post out of context, since the rest of it makes it so much better and DEFINITELY not way worse. (sorry, sarcasm again. including the context does make it worse actually.) i apologize for being a little flippant on my tumblr post. i should have remembered the number one rule and not accused anybody of pissing on the poor.

chibnall fans when they get a chance to be racist to the young queer black man who took the role after their cishet white woman fav left

[kakashihasibs]

Okay so I'm answering this with a screenshot so i can block you if i need to later. no offense bud but i kinda doubt the "/genq"-ness of your question.

The irrational thought was my neighbor was paying any attention to the presence or lack of presence of a dick. My neighbor doesn't give a shit if i have a bulge or not. He's a nice guy and he's gay too! :D plus he was busy hugging Leia bc he's one of Leia's most favorite people.

BUT! Surprise surprise! it's not wholly irrational bc /if/ my neighbor does notice (and he was an asshole) it could endanger me. Small little things like that can be noticed (however unlikely) and someone might clock me. And that's really the root of that thought. I'm always worried someone is going to clock me and act on it.

But the root of your question really seems like a "why dont you pray the queer away and you'll be so much happier"

Sure if i could just therapy/pray away being queer (both trans and ace/gay!) I would deal with a lot less worry. I wouldn't have to worry about my parents rejecting me or a cop seeing my ID and hate criming me. I wouldn't have been hate crimed or have gotten corrective rape threats. if only i did as my doctor told me and go to therapy to realize my beauty as a woman so i wont break my poor mother's heart. (Yes a doctor literally told me this. Nearly killed myself afterwards bc it was just such a helpful and thoughtful thing to say /sarcasm 🙄)

Bottom surgery, like any surgery is dangerous, but it is not uniquely dangerous. My surgeon has a LOT of experience and is very skilled. I'm not worried about it anymore than i was worried about top surgery (which for the record top surgery was life SAVING).

But like bud why do anything if there is a "safer alternative?" Why go rock climbing when it's so dangerous? Why drive to see family when driving is so dangerous? Why get tattoos or piercings!? There's risk!

Why get a major surgery that will greatly increase your life satisfaction instead of going through traumatizing conversion therapy? Geez bud idk 🤷‍♂️ maybe i enjoy making my body mine. Maybe i dont want to or have to be satisfied with what other people say i should be, look like, act like.

Maybe i just think I'll look hot with a dick. Maybe i just want to feel safer in public places. Maybe maybe maybe. I have a million and one reasons for wanting what i want and no amount of fear mongering or concern trolling will deter me.

The universe saw fit to give me myself and i will create a self that is home. Full of as much art and scars as it takes to do that.

---

Edit to reply/add (bc i dont want to make this rebloggable):

While you are correct about this, it took several years of therapy and navigating medical politics, i actually purposely avoid making an argument/point based in medical necessity.

The closest i get to mentioning medical necessity is when i say "surgery that will greatly increase [my] life satisfaction"

Bc mainly if it is merely a problem of medical necessity/treatment then anon's point has a stronger leg to stand on. If i need medical intervention then /why not/ try conversion therapy 1st? Both are "medical interventions" after all and conversion therapy is cheaper and appears less risky.*

Instead my point is based in bodily autonomy. That bottom surgery is my choice and my risk to take on. That regardless of medical necessity, I have chosen to get bottom surgery and that's all the reason there needs to be.

I mentioned possible reasons i might have, e.g., safety, comfort, aesthetics, but i dont name one over the other. My reasons are mine and not for someone else's scrutiny.

Anon and others might not be able to understand why i would chose to get a "dangerous surgery" but they dont need to. They only need to know it is what i have chosen for myself.

*The actual efficacy of conversion therapy is like nonexistent. It doesn't work. It makes people miserable and suicidal. But, there are people (including anon it seems) who think it works and that's why I'm forced to treat it as a "possible" solution. Arguing against conversion therapy would be a different kind of argument than the one i made here.

[highonchocolate]

One More Cup of Coffee

ML Secret Santa for @togetherwekill! Happy Holidays :D

@mlsecretsanta

—-

The Queer Cafe: A Safe Space for LGBTQ+ People. All are welcome! 

Spoiler stared down at the cafe from her perch on a nearby rooftop. Black Bat crouched beside her, silent and still as ever, her only movement the flutter of her cape in the wind. The little shop was located in Amusement Mile, just on the outskirts of Crime Alley. Quite an interesting location for a cafe.

Logically, since it posed no threat, they should have moved on in their patrol route a while ago, but something was keeping her rooted to the spot. As cliche as it sounds, it was as if the Universe wanted her to go inside. 

Looking over at her partner, Spoiler indicated the still-open shop. “Wanna check it out? Patrol’s slow tonight.” 

Black Bat paused for a moment, considering the question, before nodding once. “Fast.”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll make it fast.” She jumped down from the building, landing in front of the door in a flash of purple. Black Bat followed, a silent shadow beside her.

She pulled open the door, and the heavenly scent of baked goods and coffee hit her nose. “Oh my gosh,” She moaned longingly. “That smells amazing.” She quickly walked (not ran, good vigilantes don’t run when they smell delicious food) inside, hand clasped around Black Bat’s to drag her in as well. The cheery jingle of the bell above the door chimed once, twice, and the two baristas at the counter looked up at the noise. One was male, with black hair frosted a light teal at the tips, and the other was female, with blond hair and blue eyes. “I don’t understand why I can’t be on the morning shift with Nettie and Kagami!” The blonde one was complaining as they approached the counter.

“Chloé, we all know that if you were in the morning shift, you would be cranky as hell because you had to get up at six. Don’t even try and deny it.” The man laughed. “Besides, you just want to be with your girlfriend while she works.” 

“..Maybe.” The girl, Chloé, grumbled in reply, crossing her arms petulantly.

Noticing Spoiler and Black Bat, they immediately stopped chatting and turned to the counter. 

“Hello. How may I help you?” The blue haired man smiled as they approached. His eyes were unnaturally teal, and they seemed to flash as they made eye contact. He radiated tranquillity, as opposed to Chloé, who seemed to have a loud, crackling energy that demanded your attention, and tugged at you until you noticed her presence. 

“Hey, uh, Luka.” Spoiler squinted at his name tag. “Could I get a cup of coffee, with cream and sugar?” 

“Sure.” He turned away to prepare her order, humming softly as he worked.

“What would you like?” Chloé turned to face Black Bat, a customer service smile plastered on her face.

Black Bat said nothing, opting to remain quiet in the face of this stranger, sizing her up and analyzing her body language to get a read on her character. 

At her silence, Chloé’s smile turned a bit more real, electric blue eyes softening as she pointed to a sign next to the display case.

All our employees are fluent in ASL, French, and English. Let us know if you speak a different language! 

Black Bat scanned it briefly, before nodding once and lifting her hands to sign. ‘Black coffee, please.’ 

‘No cream or sugar?’ Chloé signed back.

‘Sugar, no cream.’

‘Okay, You can head down there and wait,’ she indicated the other end of the counter, ‘your order will be completed shortly.’

“Thank you.” Spoiler spoke, cringing at how her words broke the calm silence that had come with their nonverbal conversation.

Chloé gave her a small smile. “You’re welcome.” 

—-

They were silent as they grappled back home. When they had showered and  eaten, Stephanie turned to Cass who was curled up beside her one the couch. “What’d you think of that cafe?” She asked quietly, running her fingers through dark hair, still damp and smelling faintly of flowers from her earlier shower. 

Cass hummed thoughtfully, head resting on Steph’s shoulder. “Safe. Trustworthy.” She paused. “Go back in the morning?” 

Steph smiled down at her. “Yeah, I’d like that. Maybe they have waffles.” She said hopefully, wiggling excitedly at the thought.

Cass laughed quietly, turning her head and pressing a quick kiss to her shoulder. Standing, she offered a hand and pulled Steph up. “Bedtime.”

“Yeah, I can get behind that.” She yawned, swatting away the blond strands of hair hanging in her face. “Lead the way, babe.” 

—-

They woke up a few hours later, cuddled together in a mess of limbs underneath the warm blanket. Yawning, Cass gently untangled herself from Steph’s grip, before heading into the bathroom to brush her teeth. 

By the time she walked back out in black tights and a matching sweatshirt, Steph was awake, blonde hair a tangled mess on her head.  She snuggled deeper into her blanket as Cass approached, stubbornly keeping her eyes shut. Cass’ lips quirked into a smile at her adorably grumpy look. 

“Come.” She kissed her nose gently, “Going to cafe.” 

Steph grumbled out a sleepy reply, eyes finally opening. 

“Gimme,” She yawned, “Fifteen minutes, Cass.” Another yawn. “And then we can go.” 

Cass beamed down at her, giving her another kiss-on the cheek this time- before heading downstairs.

True to her word, Stephanie came downstairs fifteen minutes later, clad in warm black leggings and a white top, purple cardigan thrown around her shoulders.

“Let’s go!” She grinned, earlier tiredness replaced with her usual vibrant energy. 

Cass smiled back, already straddling her sleek black motorcycle. Seeing her girlfriend’s ride, Steph immediately hopped onto her matching purple bike, revving the engine and following behind as they weaved through the busy streets.

They stopped in front of the familiar storefront, the charming sign proudly declaring it was ‘Open for Business’

The bell above the door once again heralded their arrival with a loud chime. This time there were two women at the counter. They could have been mistaken for twins with their matching heads of raven hair, if it wasn’t for their different colored eyes and facial structure. Interestingly, when one of them shifted, her sleeve moved, revealing a hexagonal tattoo on her inner wrist. Cass immediately noticed it, nudging Steph softly in the side, and she immediately committed its whorls and lines to memory. Thankfully it didn’t seem to match any of the gang symbols she knew of, which was a relief. The food here was so good she’d hate to have to fight the owners in some turf war next week or something.

“Hello!” The one with the tattoo grinned at them, otherworldly sapphire eyes gleaming. What was it with these people and their strange eyes? “What would you like today?” 

“Coffee, cream with no sugar.” Cass said, spine straight, gaze unwavering. Assessing. The other woman didn’t even flinch in the face of her stare, choosing to smile, even as a pink flush crept over her cheeks. Her name tag read Marinette.

“Of course! Would you like anything else?”

“Bagel, please.” 

“Okay.” Some hair had fallen out of her messy bun, and she tucked it behind her ear as she turned to Steph. “What would you like?” 

“Uh, do you have waffles?” Steph blurted out, feeling embarrassed for no reason. 

“We do! Would you like any toppings?”

“Um, just whipped cream and chocolate syrup, if you don’t mind.” She fought the urge to fidget. 

Why was she getting so nervous?! It wasn’t her first time meeting a pretty girl! Besides, she already had a girlfriend.

‘But Cass said she would be open to three, remember?’ A traitorous voice whispered in her mind. 

She squashed it down. Marinette probably wasn’t even interested in her, much less the two of them.

“No problem. Do you want a drink with that or is water good?”

“Water’s fine, thank you.”

“And can I have a name for your order?”  

“Oh, it’s Stephanie. Stephanie Brown.”

Marinette smiled, “Your order will be out in a few minutes. Feel free to take a seat in the meantime!”

She walked over to a vacant table with two seats and plopped down in one, allowing her head to thunk down on the table with a groan. She heard Cass slide into the seat across from her, and felt her warm hand grip her own. “Was pretty.” Cass said quietly, noticing her blush. “Maybe…?”

She allowed the question to hang in the air as Steph lifted her head to look over at her. “Those eyes,” she said reverently. “I think I’m in love.” 

Cass shot her an answering grin, answering the unspoken question hovering over their heads. Yes, She seemed to say. I would be okay with both of you. 

“You sure?” Steph breathed out hopefully. After all, she had been the one to suggest the idea of a third in the first place. 

“Yes.” She nodded firmly. Anything else they were going to say was cut off by the arrival of their food. 

“Here you go!” Marinette smiled cheerily, setting two plates down. 

“Thank you, this looks amazing!” Stephanie told her enthusiastically, the warm scent of just baked waffles rising to her nose, mixing pleasantly with the smells of bagels and coffee.

“Smells good. Thank you.” Cass smiled up at her, watching as she flushed from their compliments.

“Oh, thank you! Enjoy!” She smoothed down her skirt and walked back to the counter with a smile.

—-

Before Steph knew it, they were going to that little cafe nearly every day, and although she tried to deny it, she knew it was because they both had the smallest crush on a certain ravenette. But Marinette clearly did not like their presence, if the way she would turn red (flushed or angry?) and begin to stutter or ramble whenever they were within ten feet of each other was any indication. 

She also seemed to get more worked up whenever they stopped by, seeing as she once dropped an entire plate of tiramisu when they walked in through the door. Not to mention all the other times it happened, whether it was dumping a batch of flour over her head, or spilling coffee on her apron, but it only served to make her that much sweeter in their eyes.

Of course, Adrien, another barista with blond hair and a forest green gaze, was quick to reassure the both of them that Marinette was a hopeless bisexual disaster, and she would always turn fire engine red and trip over her words (and feet) whenever she had a crush on someone.

After that, it was easy for them to ask her out.

“Hey Steph, hey Cass!” She laughed nervously. “What can I get you for today?”

Cass, straight to the point as always, stepped forward and looked her in the eyes. “Your number.” 

It was comical how fast her face turned red. “What?”

“Could we get your number, Mari?” Steph repeated, refusing to waver.

“I didn’t think you were interested-uh are you sure?” She spluttered.

“Yes,” They said in unison, ignoring how Adrien was cheering in the background.

“Oh wow, um okay, sure!” She tucked her hair behind her ears nervously, grabbing a pink sticky note and scribbling down a set of numbers in looping cursive.

“Thanks Mari,” Steph grinned, “We’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Oh! Um, yeah!” She waved as they walked out of the store. And continued waving, a lovestruck grin on her face.

“Bug, you can put your hand down now,” Adrien laughed.

“Oh my god Adrien!” She let her head drop into her palms, “That was a disaster! On a scale from ‘you’ll be fine’ to ‘never show your face in public again,’ how bad was it?”

“I think it was pretty good, considering they’re both coming back tomorrow, and they asked you for your number,” He said, wiggling his eyebrows at her suggestively. “Is there some romance in our Mari’s future?”

“Wait, were they both flirting with me?!” She shrieked, suddenly jolting up from her slumped position. “Was that them asking me on a date?!”

“How would I know? Romance is over my head.” He shrugged. “Ask Chloé if you need help with that kinda thing.”

“Oh my god,” She groaned, sliding down in her seat. “I’m hopeless.” 

“Hopelessly in love!”

—-

Soon enough, the two of them were regulars at the little cafe, in both their civilian and vigilante lives.

Cass would spend hours listening t o Luka’s music, the two of them communicating in a language only they seemed to understand. 

Stephanie and Chloé also grew close, their loud personalities and similar temperaments often prompting people to ask if they were twins, or sisters. 

Spoiler and Adrien hit it off as well, joking back and forth with each other as he prepared her order at ungodly hours of the morning, sunshine smile ever present.

Kagami and Black Bat, as unlikely a pairing as it seemed, also bonded over fighting styles, and their shared determination to get things done.

Group movie nights, random get togethers, spontaneous trips to the mall, soon the two of them couldn’t imagine life without the crazy group of five that had somehow become such a major part of their lives.

—-

And one winter night, as they cuddled together on Cass’ couch, Marinette told them of nineteen gods, bound to jewelry, and how time and time again heroes rose to protect the world. She spoke of a temple burned to ash, a sacred duty passed down from Master to Apprentice, and a tale of a corrupted brooch and how a man's undying love for his wife drove him to darkness. 

And after she finished her tale, silver tears glistening on her cheeks from the memories she had relived, Steph and Cass pulled her closer, clutching her tightly; and recounted their stories to her, whispering to her of swinging through the city at night, watching from the shadows high above, and battling in the name of justice.

As she snuggled deeper into her girlfriends’ warm embrace, Stephanie couldn’t help but be grateful for the small pull of fate that had led her into a coffee shop at two in the morning. 

Nothing could possibly ruin this.

Until her phone chimed with texts from Dick, Alfred, Bruce, and Tim asking her what, exactly, she thought she was doing, and why she was in a random apartment near Crime Alley. 

So that’s what they forgot...

[forestlion]

Harry Styles x Reader, Enemies to Enemies (FIC)

TW: language

"Hey, ugly", multi millionaire Harry Styles calls out to me. His luscious brown hair shines unwashedly and greasily in the sunlight that's beaming down on us. The last traces of what should have been curls are brushed back, revealing his forehead and a widow's peak, which is less widow's peak and more receding hairline. His face is also thusly revealed to me in its entirety. For a short moment I wonder if it's dirty, before I realize that his struggle beard (that a 14-year old boy would not be jealous of) just makes it look that way. His skin seems strangely doughy, his facial proportions look as if a middle schooler had tried to approximate a generic human face in pottery class and succeeded by giving him exactly zero defining features.

Thatcher-enthusiast Harry Styles carries himself with the ill-advised confidence of someone who has been told he's good-looking his entire life, simply because he is a white skinny man from the UK, who only calls women "slags" when he is drunk or in the boys' locker room or when he gets rejected.

I glance at him shyly as he steps closer to me.

"I know you are but what am I?", I ask him with a polite smile, blushing and giggling.

Monarchy-supporter and all around rich country club boy who has lost all semblance of normality Harry Styles stares at me with his murky pond water colored orbs. I quickly sack him in the face with my handy butter sock, knocking him to the ground. His gender- and sexuality-defying androgynous pink suit gets dirty, much to his brexitesque dismay.

I laugh boarishly and stomp my feet, looking down at the pathetic MIKA-wannabe. Like a moldy little bug he lies there on his back, squirmes and writhes and yowls with his dull voice that has to push and reach and beg for every single unsupported note that leaves his mouth, strained vocal cords suffering in the process.

"Wait until my sexy female cis woman model girlfriend hears about this!", straggot Harry Styles yelps desperately, arms flailing helplessly like he's trying to turn into one of his luxury private jets to fly himself off and away to the Maledives or some other country colonized and destroyed by Britain.

"You can't beat me up!", he screams, "that would be a hate crime, as I am gay-adjacent. Gay for the aesthetic! I support all you f*gs and d*kes by taking your sweet sweet pink money and shoving it into my panamanian bank account!"

I clobber him once more with my sock full of butter. He who ended toxic masculinity by wearing a necklace starts crying crocodile tears.

"Please, fat bitch, leave me be! Just because I would never touch or kiss a man and find even the thought of it repulsive... doesn't mean I am not at least an ally. I get really horny when two girlies with big badonkers get it on! That's feminist of me!", David Bowie's rectal slime boy whines. "Is it not enough to hold up a rainbow flag, queer bait and never speak on the issue? Is it not enough to hint at something that is not there, just so you all can put up wrongly placed hopes? I am a real person with real feelings and real needs for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent... god... it is not easy being a straight white guy..."

Pinkmoney Styles sighs. "I want to go back to my McMansion."

I let out a huff. "You wish, money bags. The only place you're going is to the 2013/14 Larry Hell Dimension!", I shout and with another swing of my butter sock, Harry "None Direction" Styles vanishes through a portal.

I snicker evilly. "RIP Baroness Thatcher .x", I whisper.

[jub-jubmcfuggleworth]

.

So, on the topic of trans women sharing bathrooms with cis women.

Here’s the thing, people are scared of people with d*cks. Rightfully so. I in fact had a s*x crime comitted against me by a man. Now I’m scared of men/people with d*cks. I don’t hate them, though, which is like, the problem with most people’s views on this topic. Like you can be scared of trans people, I guess. But for fucks sake... why do you hate them. Anyway— Thousands and thousands of other people have been victims of s*xu*l *ss*ult done by a man/someone with a d*ck, too. And they’re rightfully scared. Even if they actually haven’t ever experienced the crime, there’s the fear of it happening to them.

I see people super against the fact the community is trying to get the right for trans people to be in their bathroom that corresponds with the gender they’re transitioning to. And this mainly would affect people born female, the main victims of s*x crimes.

Picture this:

- Trans man walks into the men’s room. There’s that fear of “what if they find out— what are they going to do?”

- Trans man walks into women’s room. Maybe he feels a bit safer here, knowing nobody would probably *ssa*lt him, but what about the women?

- Trans woman walks into the women’s restroom. Maybe the cis women just see her as a man, though that’s not what she is. She has a d*ck, and that’s scary, still.

- Trans woman walks into men’s room. Now she is the victim. The men give her catcalls. She is unsafe.

- And for those who don’t identify as either of the listed genders? They either have to choose, and feel awful/unsafe with either option, or just hold it.

And in all these cases, they are afraid of men, the main offender of s*x crimes.

So what can you do when you either feel uncomfortable in one place or make others feel uncomfortable in the other?

You see, I think to achieve the best incorporation is to rip away the concept of gendered bathrooms completely.

Not to make this serious post seem a little silly— the concept of this is far from a joke. We need to make everyone feel welcomed, and we need to make everyone feel safe at the same time.

“Women’s restroom” should be changed to “sit-down restrooms” or, if you’d like it humorous, “take a sit”

“Men’s restroom” should be changed to “stand-up restrooms” or, another option, “stand-up peemedians”

Make it fun, make it spicy, whatever. But make it safe and inclusive. It’s 2020. Society has ignored queer people for way way too long. Make it so that there’s no discrimination and less of a chance for s*x crimes to take place. Hell, put a penis scanner to make sure, I don’t know.

And add a third bathroom for those out of the categories of “men” and “women” if needed. But since the bathrooms aren’t gendered, I think that takes care of that.

[rogueswitch]

some platonic f/o headcanons

I wanted to write out some headcanons for my platonic f/os that are the members of DedSec. i’ll chuck most of it under a cut because it will probably be long

Marcus Holloway

He met Sam through online gaming a few years before they got wrapped up with DedSec. He does less gaming now but still keeps up on big AAA titles.

While Marcus was always had an affinity for computers and hacking, it didn’t really flourish until he was falsely accused of a crime.

a bisexual disaster

maybe has a crush on Sitara? tbh he would probably want to smooch all of DedSec

likes old kung fu and kitschy action movies

he’s probably also a weeb

likes amateur photography. he will often randomly take pictures of his friends and even when its at weird times he finds a way to make the photos look nice

very bad at not making impulse decisions

he calls his grandmother every week and tries to visit her when he can

he hates energy drinks but will drink them anyway because of the caffeine 

Sitara Dhawan

she has family that lives in India who she tries to visit every year

she can speak Hindu fluently

she still enjoys wearing fashionable headscarves as a cultural practice even though she is not particularly religious. she is still pretty connected to her Indian heritage

KICKS ASS at karaoke and ddr. dances as a hobby and exercise

also enjoys free running and skateboarding

has an online shop selling her original art pieces. also does spray paint murals to hide hate speech and racist graffiti

has most definitely borrowed climbing gear from Horatio to put her and DedSec’s tags on places otherwise pretty unreachable

she has had a rough relationship with Sam and has a hard time fully trusting them due to various circumstances

not sure what she is but i don’t think she is straight or cis. probably just calls herself ‘queer’ but otherwise it’s not too bothersome to her.

she was the one who did some of Wrench’s more complex tattoos

really likes fancy teas and baking cheesecake

Horatio Carlin 

doesn't die. nope, fuck you ubisoft he’s not dead

despite the fact that its a corporate job, he actually likes his job at Nudle and tries to make positive changes there (both through bureaucratic and less-then-legal means)

DJ’s as a side hobby and will take DJ jobs for free for things like weddings, birthdays, etc. just to be nice

he’s a coffee snob and a foodie, he also takes nutrition and healthy eating seriously

he’s also a rock climber

not big on fashion, just likes to be comfortable

he loves Christmas and the holiday season. he wouldn’t be caught dead not hosting some kind of thanksgiving meal for his friends. He has a collection of ugly holiday sweaters and has gifted each DedSec member at least 1. sometimes more.

favorite food is sushi

he and Sam call one another by their screen names; Sam calling him ‘Ratio’ while he calls them ‘Were’ (a shortened version of their alias). He also gets along really well with Sam because they both have a ton of similar likes and hobbies.

He is the only one in DedSec that is straight and cis

loves d&d

he has a beanie baby on his desk and will talk to it to help solve issues with his code, à la rubber duck debugging

Josh Sauchak

he’s autistic! he enjoys textural stimming and likes tangle toys and scratching soft fabrics.

he also likes the worms on a string/squirmles and has one that stays at his workstation. their name is Button and they are pink.

he enjoys ASMR but only some triggers and so long as they aren’t too repetitive. 

he likes painting d&d miniatures and set pieces with Horatio. he’s gotten pretty good at it.

Josh is aro/ace and he does not really care about gender. he identifies as masculine and calls himself a guy, but he doesn’t necessarily identify with traditional ‘maleness’. because of this, he uses both he/him and they/them pronouns.

he's Jewish!

his favorite food is chili, though he doesn’t like it spicy

his sweatshirt is old and has gotten quite a few holes in it over the years. Josh taught himself to sew so he could elongate the lifespan of his favorite clothes

Josh takes pride in building his robots/drones and will almost always refuse help even if he is stuck on something. he takes part in robot battles

Raymond Kenney

he is the dad of the group and has to remind himself that the rest of DedSec are still barely adults and don’t have a ton of experience. he often needs to be the one to call them out on their bullshit when they are having interpersonal problems.

he’s a master at pranks, though he only does minor pranks on the DedSec crew

he’s an artist and creates scrap metal sculptures in his spare time

he enjoys a good cigar every now and again, though it is infrequent

he really hates social media

but he really likes bad meme shirts and Hawaiian shirts

he still keeps in touch with Aiden Pearce

he speaks like 5 different languages

[rotationalsymmetry]

My twitter experiences vary between “random mishmash of politicians, advocacy orgs, and random queer people that I happen to follow” plus the occasional “catching up on one specific user, just that one” so I was doing the latter just now, and the last time I’d done that was in late October, so I got to do a re-run of the election in reverse. Things ... could have gone a lot worse for the US than they did. Being a stressball from Tuesday through Saturday morning wasn’t great, and I’m sure it was a lot worse for some other people than it was for me, but it’s still much better than what could have happened. One thing to consider about activism, is that: skills learned on one campaign can often easily transfer to a new one. The momentum built up by the “silence = death” AIDS activism carried into lgbtq+ rights, most notably marriage equality (but also non-discrimination laws in employment, the military, adoption, etc.) And while to a large degree trans rights were sidelined in the initial push in the 2000′s, the trans rights movement has been growing and it now has dramatically more mainstream acceptance and recognition than it used to. (And there’s backlash. There’s always backlash.) People who were activated by this election cycle, may well stay active and turn their attention to other campaigns. Some of them are going to stay in electoral politics -- senate and house races, governor races, local races and state legislature races -- and some are going to find other ways to be active.* The Black Lives Matter fight continues. There will be waves -- especially there will be waves of, sometimes the protests get coverage and sometimes they don’t. “Police defunding” is on the table, and there’s going to be hundreds of local fights to see how far we can get. And there’s backlash. This is going to need a whole lot of sustained attention over time. And as long as police are arresting people for protesting, there will be a need for bail fund money, and as long as the police keep injuring protesters there’ll be fundraisers that need supporting. Biden has publicly gone on the record opposing police defunding. However, this could be a thing he “evolves” on if there’s enough public pressure, and even if he doesn’t actively interfere with defunding on state/local levels that’ll be a huge improvement over the last administration. Police are not primarily funded on the national level. There’s a scary rise in alt right stuff. And that’s hard to fight, because it’s to a large degree decentralized -- one person does a hate crime, it gets treated as an individual bad apple thing, the effect is still terrorism. I don’t really know what to do about it, but one thing is to pay attention and to call things what they are. There’s ICE. Biden’s been making noise about reuniting families, which is good, and restoring DACA, which is good. I’d like to see it go a lot farther. Open Borders isn’t a mainstream movement yet -- it seems somewhat more fringe than UBI right now, and UBI is still pretty fringe, but I think it could become mainstream with enough pushing. I think on the left that should be our clear end goal: no restriction on immigration whatsoever.** No human being is illegal. Student loan forgiveness and free public education, or at least reasonable half-measures on these things, are things it looks like we can reasonably expect out of the Biden administration. I’m getting the impression that full on single payer is not, but we can keep talking about it and building public support. We’re a lot closer than we were. And, Biden has made some serious promises to the disabled community, including an end to the SSI marriage penalty, which could be huge -- disability rights tend to be overlooked by most people and not considered mainstream, so it’s really helpful to have abled allies paying attention to this issue and being willing to make phone calls etc. Biden thinks the coronavirus exists and that it’s possible and desirable to prevent its spread, and he’s got a better attitude towards supporting people who are struggling financially due to the pandemic than the last guy did. This is a good thing. Ditto for climate change -- he’s made some noise about reducing fossil fuel emissions and signing on to carbon emissions treaties, and these are good things -- not enough goodness knows, but an improvement. Energy companies tend to be major players in politics, so it’s unclear how far we’ll actually get on this issue; how much public pressure there is could be a huge factor. It’s much too late to stop global warming -- it’s already started -- but what the US does now can have a huge effect on how much global warming we get over the next decades. More global warming = more natural disasters, which pretty much always hit marginalized people harder (including/especially marginalized people outside of the US) -- environmentalism isn’t some elitist white thing, it’s actually a huge frikkin deal for racial justice, anti-colonialism etc as well. (For all that, yes, there’s huge racial blind spots within the environmental movement, sometimes specific things the environmental movement does harm poc esp indigenous people, and white leaders from first world countries get too much attention while poc and people from third world countries get too little.) I think the fight against corporate power isn’t being named as such often enough on here. There’s a lot of talk about billionaires, and yeah, I’m not a huge fan of billionaires existing. But even if Bezos only had a few hundred million dollars, even if he had under a million dollars!, Amazon would still have too much power. Uber and Lyft have too much power -- look at how Prop 22 in California went, that’s terrifying. And it doesn’t matter how much either of their CEO’s personally makes. I’d like to see a bit less talk about billionaires and a bit more talk about corporations -- because when corporate boards of directors have a legal obligation to maximize profits regardless of the wellbeing of people or the planet, that’s the problem, not specific people. And politicians don’t mainly get their campaign money from individual billionaires (I don’t think) so much as from corporations -- that’s the primary way that money is skewing US democracy, through corporate donations. This isn’t a D&D game and our enemies are (usually) not specific people, they’re institutions and systems. *maybe that’s overly optimistic -- maybe it’s a lot easier for campaigns to start in the streets and end up with lobbying and election campaigns than vice versa. But. I know an awful lot of people who do both. They’re not really opposing strategies. They’re complementary, always have been. **OK, given that there’s a pandemic going on, no restrictions on immigration except under extreme public safety circumstances. But for most of this crisis, the US has been exporting the virus more than the US has been importing it. There’s a book btw (called “open borders”) illustrated by the SMBC guy, which, it’s very much not a leftist book, but that makes it good for handing around to people who aren’t leftists.

[signoraviolettavalery]

strategist-scientia replied to your post “I know Carina is bringing Malex into the light and I am infinitely...”

Kinda scared now tbh because Carina said "Yes" when someone suggested that Michael is probably reminded of Jesse Manes's hand in causing the deaths of his people whenever he looks at Alex. ������

I hope it’s ok that I use your response as the jumping-off point for some meta, because I’ve been wanting to write this since i saw Carina’s tweets, and the inevitable Malex panicking that ensued. There’s a couple tweets about Michael’s headspace that she made that I want to get into, as I consider where Michael’s character will go next season and what that might mean for Malex. 

Now, my immediate response to this is: Yes?? Good?? Carina is saying Michael is going to have a character arc next season, and this is a good thing. Characters need arcs, and frankly, I’ve been frustrated that most of his “arc” this season has just been taking care of other people. Equally frankly, I’m glad that this will be the arc, because Michael is completely traumatized right now. He not only lost his family right after finding them, but he’s witnessed the genocide of his race. I’m glad the show is going to deal with that instead of sweep it under the rug. That’s what Michael s a character deserves. And I know it sucks to put queer characters through trauma and misery and suffering, because it seems like that’s the only thing they ever get to experience in narratives. But in a well-written story, you can’t shield your characters from the world and have nothing bad ever happen to them. There need to be low points in order for there to be development, as long as there are high points. 

The other tweet that people have been worrying about is this one, about how Michael will react to Alex and how their relationship will changed, based on the fact that Alex’s family is responsible for literally all of the suffering of Michael’s: 

This is where people start worrying that Malex will crash and burn, or that Michael will blame Alex for what happened even though it’s not actually Alex’s fault. 

So, first of all, I’m going to point out the obvious: it doesn’t sound like English is this person’s first language (which isn’t a dig at them, but just the observation that there may be a language/communication barrier here). Carina’s “yes” is vague af, and twitter is a really shitty medium to sort-of-but-not-really hint at character motivations and what’s coming. 

Moving on from that, my  thoughts are that Michael isn’t going to outright blame Alex - after all, Alex didn’t do anything. In fact, Alex has literally shut down project Shepard and blackmailed his father to protect Michael, and if Michael knows about project shepard he knows this. Logically, he understands this. But I do think that Michael will pull away from Alex - just as he’ll pull away from Max, Isobel, Maria, and even Liz. He’s going to need space, and he might get self-destructive in all his relationships, not just the one with Alex, because he’s going to blame himself for what happened. It’ll be difficult to watch, but I think that Alex, who himself has extensive experience sabotaging his own relationship as a result of fear and trauma, will understand where he’s coming from and try to help. 

I do also think Michael will have a hard time with Alex specifically. Again, it’s not that he’ll blame Alex, because he clearly didn’t blame Alex for his hand, if his desire to rekindle a relationship ten years later is any indication. But Alex will be a living, breathing reminder of the Manes legacy, which has taken literally everything from Michael, starting with his hand and ending with his family. It’s going to get complicated, because just last episode, Michael was telling Max that he believes that there’s no place for him here (on Earth) - something that Jesse made him believe, and something of which his hand serves as a reminder. And now he has even more proof, painful, heartrending, visceral proof, that there is no place for him on this planet, in the sense that humanity as a whole does not accept him for what he is. And the Manes legacy is largely responsible for this. 

But. The irony is that while the Manes family has destroyed his family, his life, his home, and his hope, Alex has been all of those things for him. Alex offered him a home when he had none. Alex told him “you’re my family.” Alex, as Michael said in 1x11, made him believe there’s is a place for him here on earth. Home can be a person, and Alex has been his. 

And I think Michael will realize that. If Liz can get over the fact that Max covered up her sister’s murder and was responsible for her family suffering hate crimes for ten years, then Michael can get over Alex having a legacy that he has completely and utterly rejected. But it will take time, because trauma isn’t rational, and because Alex did enlist in the military and become a “Manes man” before he ultimately chose Michael. So Michael will have to reconcile those two things - what Alex’s family took from him, and the fact that Alex himself gave back all those things to him. Honestly, I think it’s going to be the culmination of the arc that they’ve been planting the seeds of this season - that home can be a person. Michael Vlamis also hinted that Micheal probably won’t be deciding whether to leave the planet this season, so perhaps this will be a decision he’ll have to make next season. Alex will give him the spaceship piece and set him free, understanding that Michael has never felt like he belongs on Earth and that now he feels like he belongs even less, and that his family is responsible for it. And Michael will have to realize that despite Alex’s legacy, which he has outright rejected, Alex is his home. 

It’ll be a long journey, but I honestly think it’ll be fine in the end. Think of it this way: ships, just like characters, need arcs. I know we all say we’d happily watch an entire season of them just cuddling in bed, but come on. None of us actually would. We’d like an actual story. That’s why we tuned in. We want to see characters facing challenges and overcoming them. And yes, just like with queer characters, we don’t want queer pairings to just keep suffering endlessly. But we do want them to have actual, meaningful storylines. And what Carina is hinting at above sounds like an actual storyline. It’s Michael working through legitimate trauma instead of sweeping it under the rug, and Alex learning to live with the legacy of his family. If done well, this is a good storyline. The alternative is either no storyline, or contrived relationship drama, and no one wants that. Remember when, on The Vampire Diaries, Damon and Elena finally got together and the writers had to come up with a dozen reasons to break them up (the sire bond, Katherine possessing Elena, Damon temporarily dying and Elena erasing her memories of him and about a dozen other “plots’)? We really, really don’t want that. We want an actual arc. 

Of course, how much you believe Carina and the writers will do justice to this arc depends on how much you trust them to actually meaningfully write it, and that’s up to each viewer to decide on their own. Based on my own personal experience, I think it’ll be fine, because whatever the various flaws of season 1 of Roswell (and they definitely exist), the emotional beats have rung true to me. I understand why characters behave the way they do, their fears, their traumas, and their progress (with some exceptions). So, I think we’ll be fine. 

Part of the reason I’m so confident is because every other time we panicked because of a tweet, a promo, or a promo photo, we turned out to be pretty wrong to panic. Let’s recap: 

1x09 This is the OG throwback episode, and when Shiri leaked that photo of Michael and Maria naked in the desert, we panicked. We thought Michael and Maria would have a full-blown romance and Michael would leave behind Alex and forget about him, or that Maria would sleep with Michael while knowing about Alex, or any number of worst-case scenarios. 

What actually happened: Alex ended things, with finality. Previously, he’d walked away - and we’re led to believe he’s done this multiple times, which means that he’s also come back multiple times, because to walk away again, he had to come back first. But now, for the first time ever in ten years, probably, he said “we’re definitely over.” The love of Michael’s life broke his fucking heart by making him believe they could never have a future together, and Michael’s response was literal suicidal ideation. That line about “I’m just wishing a meteor would strike me down and end my suffering”? That’s suicidal ideation, y’all. 

So yeah, he hooked up with Maria because he needed comfort and a connection with someone - but one that he was 100% certain wouldn’t get romantically complicated and messy. He picked Maria because he had a connection with her but thought there wasn’t a chance in the world that she’d catch feelings. 

And then Alex came back to him and he took him back and bared his fucking soul and revealed every single one of his deepest secrets. 

1x11 This was the UFO emporium re-opening episode, and everybody panicked that Michael and Maria would talk and kiss and/or hook up in the place of Malex’s first kiss. Come on, guys. Like, I get panic, but this was a bit much. 

What happened instead: Michael misses Maria, who was pretty much his only friend, and tries to get back onto the same page they were (flirty banter that meant nothing), but which is pretty hard to do once you’ve slept together. Michael believes he and Alex are completely over, and....he skips the Emporium reopening (probably because it’s too painful). Then, Maria, the person he pretty much considers his only friend, gets roofied and possessed by an alien serial killer. So yeah, he’s concerned, and he watches over her, because Michael Guerin is, at heart, a protector who takes care of people, and frankly, if he wasn’t worried about Maria, I’d like him slightly less as a person. Maria drunkenly indicates potential feelings for him, which he shows absolutely no indication of actually reciprocating (he looks concerned and frustrated at best). 

1x12 We all thought Malex was going to break up in this episode, despite the fact that they were already broken up and Michael thought they were “over.” We knew there was a tear-inducing Malex moment and we listened to Tyler’s song and I saw no end of posts going around saying Malex was going to break up. 

What happened instead: Alex confessed his love for Michael, called Michael family, stayed by him in the face of literal certain death, and physically and emotionally supported him during a moment of devastating heartbreak. 

So yes, I get the worry. I especially get the worry because apparently The Magicians fucked over their queer viewers just last night. Believe me, I understand, and I’m not a person to have faith easily. I’ve been through Supernatural fandom and the great Destiel queerbait that was season 8. I’ve been through Sherlock fandom and The Johnlock Conspiracy of seasons 3/4. I am intimately familiar with the nonsense shows pull on queer viewers, and I understand the context in which queer viewers are wary of trusting and investing emotionally. I’m a queer viewer as well, and I get it. I really do. But my personal experience of Roswell has been one of the fandom panicking (because we’ve been burned so many times), followed by us getting literal fanfiction on our screens, with actual love confessions and words like “cosmic” and all the tropes. So in this particular case, I choose to trust, because thus far, I think the show has done well by Malex for the most part, and because so far, almost all of our worries have turned out to be for nothing. And I’m also excited for Malex to have meaningful storylines and things to work through. 

That’s my two cents. Thanks for letting me ramble. Feel free to reblog if you think we could stand to spread some positivity. 

[arcticdementor]

Well before Sigmund Freud formalized the idea of “projectionism”—the defense of one’s own shortcomings and sins by attributing them to others—it was a common theme in classical literature and the New Testament: the ridiculing of the mole on someone else’s nose to hide one’s own boil.

The term projection more or less sums up much of the woke identity politics movement, in which obsessions with racial privilege and tribal exceptionalism are justified by accusing others of just such bias.

…

In some sense, today’s hip new racists have adopted the ideology of Lester Maddox and not Martin Luther King, Jr. Segregation, not integration, is the new racist mantra—by dorm, by theme house, by caucus, by safe space, by graduation ceremony.

…

The logic of the tribe leads to sectarian warfare, not harmony. We see just that when Asians revolt against black and Latino preferences in college admissions. Feminists push back against the endemic misogyny of rap music that is given an intersectional pass to demean women and freely employ the n-word. There is sometimes less, not greater, tolerance for unapologetic homosexuality in supposedly hyper-macho Latino culture. Doctrinaire Islam makes few concessions for the Muslim convert to Christianity; he is still an infidel to be shunned, even killed.

…

Smollett, himself half-white, accused an innocent large segment of the U.S. population as racist without any worry of the consequences from such false charges. And rightly so: Smollett has faced little pushback, remains in the news, and believes that no one ultimately will dare to charge him as a racist who committed a hate-crime.

The Covington Catholic fiasco illustrated the same modus operandi. Native American activist Nathan Phillips sought media exposure and careerist advantage by deliberately confronting a group of young Catholic students on the National Mall. Phillips hoped the resulting staged optics would show privileged, male, young, white Christians with red MAGA hats haranguing a wizened Native American elder and Vietnam veteran.

…

Most of the media bought his ruse and have retreated to the usual fallback defense for faked racist accusations: in a racist America, the charges could in theory have been true, and therefore that they were demonstrably not true this time means little.

…

The new racism is epidemic among those in the so-called squad, the self-referenced nickname for four media-obsessed, first-term congressional representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who without their daily charges of bias largely would be unknown back-benchers laboring away in obscurity.

Take Pressley’s recent formulation of the new racism at a recent Netroots Nation conference:

If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don’t even show up because we need you to represent that voice.

In sum, Pressley just outlined the classic anti-Enlightenment mindset: we are all permanent captives of our superficial race, religion, and sexual orientation. We must at all times think, act, and speak in such tribal fashion—and do so monolithically and collectively, in adopting the party line as set down by such elites as those like Pressley herself.

Blacks who oppose affirmative action, or Muslims who recognize Israel, or “queers” whose sexual preferences are incidental, not essential to their personas are thus declared not authentic and thus not to be welcomed by Pressley into the new racialist Democratic Party.

In practical terms, Pressley assumes that whites, reportedly about 70 percent of the population, tune her logic out. That is, they should never take her own racist advice and vote en masse according to their superficial shared skin color. If they did, the 55 percent of actual voters who are white in her otherwise minority-majority congressional district might never have elected someone who, according to her own rationale, is not part of their own tribe.

…

No matter. There is no exemption from being charged with racism for old, rich, white, and liberal females like Pelosi. In the new racist cosmology, the multimillionaire Pelosi can never escape her white privilege. One element of the new racism is thus Jacobinism—the idea that the circle of racists always widens until the racists devour one another with charges that everyone but themselves is insufficiently racially woke.

Smollett taught us that is was not enough for a gay man to be attacked by homophobes, or a liberal crusader to be attacked by right-wing Trumpers, or a black man to be attacked by white racists. In the ever-spiraling rules of woke racism, only a gay, left-wing, and black victim can win singular revolutionary authority—and only when invented Trump fanatics scream racial taunts and routinely patrol the liberal neighborhoods of Chicago nightly armed with bleach and nooses.

On matters of immigration, it is no longer enough to endorse the old bipartisan compromises on border security and amnesties or to see the problem as one of illegality. No longer is it sufficient to advocate making DACA the law of the land and extending amnesty to the “dreamers.” Now instead the border has become for some presidential candidates an existential racial question of bringing in millions of supposedly “nonwhite” rather than just illegal immigrants—and in public photo ops escorting them as they illegally cross the border—providing them with amnesty, legal residency, sanctuary from immigration enforcement, and free health care, while calling anyone a “racist” who complains that such caravan immigration is not diverse, legal, measured or meritocratic.

[noctem-novelle]

This February, celebrate Black History Month with Black authors!

Culture is important, whether it’s your own to celebrate or someone else’s that you can learn about and appreciate. In the last few years, we’ve seen a steady increase in people of colour, LGBT communities, non-Christian religions, and non-European cultures represented in young adult and middle-grade fiction. While this is a great improvement and definitely a step in the right direction, people of colour are still underrepresented. We can do more to make sure that authors of colour are seen and heard. The following list, while by no means exhaustive, is a selection of excellent YA and MG novels written by Black authors*. This month, take some time to explore their stories.

*This list appears in no particular order and is not intended to be read as though any one book is superior to another.

1. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Young Adult)

When sixteen-year-old Starr Carter witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, she must decide whether to lie low or to join the protesters who seek justice for Khalil. A touching, timely, and often raw story about a girl who finds herself when she feels most lost, it’s no wonder this book has spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

2. Riding Chance by Christine Kendall (Young Adult)

Based on Philadelphia’s Work to Ride program, this novel follows a young man who gets into some trouble at school and winds up doing community service at the Chamounix Stables in Fairmount Park. There, he learns to play polo, an intense sport that teaches perseverance and focus. This book really hit home for me, having spent most of my childhood at polo matches with WTR. In real life, Work to Ride provides underprivileged children and teenagers in Philadelphia with constructive extracurricular activities, peer mentorship, and even college enrollment assistance. To learn more about Work to Ride, check our their website or Facebook page!

3. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann (Young Adult/New Adult)

Let’s talk about the amazing QPoC rep in this book! Alice, who is asexual and biromantic, is determined to spend her post-breakup summer on a tv binge. She definitely does not intend to fall for her co-worker, Takumi. Whoops. This book is a mostly-fluffy slow-burn romance, full of nerdy pop-culture references. If you remember tumblr circa 2011, this book is for you.

4. Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes (Middle Grade)

Garvey’s father has always wanted him to be an athlete, but Garvey is just not interested. When his only friend convinces him to join their school chorus, Garvey finds confidence and a new way to communicate to his distant dad. Told in verse, this is a heartfelt novel about one boy’s transformation through music.

5. American Street by Ibi Zoboi (Young Adult)

In her debut novel, Ibi Zoboi draws on her experience as a Haitian immigrant to tell the story of Fabiola, a young woman whose mother is detained by U.S. Immigration when they emigrate from Port-au-Prince to Detroit. This book explores the cost of the “American dream” with a mix of family drama, romance, and a hint of magical realism.

6. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (Young Adult)

Xiomara feels both invisible and too visible in a world that doesn’t want to hear her but is happy to objectify her. To express herself and to find some relief from her religious mother’s strict expectations, she turns to slam poetry. This novel-in-verse includes romance, wavering faith, and feminism.

7. Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (Young Adult)

This powerful novel features a young woman who is determined to make it out of her impoverished neighbourhood. Jade’s mother taught her to take every opportunity she’s offered, so every day she takes the bus across town to a private school where there are plenty of opportunities, even if she doesn’t quite fit in. But some opportunities are less welcome than others, like the chance to join a mentorship program for “at-risk” girls. Sick of being singled out as someone who needs help, Jade hopes to find some autonomy and to stay true to herself.

8. Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert (Young Adult)

Suzette is home in Los Angeles for the summer and she isn’t sure she ever wants to go back to boarding school. Between supporting her bipolar brother, Lionel, and trying not to think about her clandestine relationship with her roommate, she’s got a pretty full plate. Unfortunately, she’s also falling for the same girl that Lionel likes. When Lionel’s mental illness sends him spiraling, Suzette must face her past to help him. This family features a blended family, Black Jewish characters, and a queer woman of colour.

9. Courage by Barbara Binns (Middle Grade)

T’Shawn has done his best to help out since his father’s death, but life gets complicated when his brother Lamont comes home from a stint in prison. T’Shawn finds peace on the diving board, and earns a scholarship to join a prestigious team at a local swim club. But when the neighbourhood crime rate starts to rise, T starts to think that he and Lamont may never put their pieces back together.

10. Monster by Walter Dean Myers (Young Adult)

A murdered drugstore clerk, a trial, and a young man in crisis. Monster is the story of Steve Harmon, amateur filmmaker and alleged murderer. To cope with the trial, Steve writes down the proceedings as if it were a film script, but as he tries to tell his own story, the truth starts to feel a little hazy. This one has also been adapted as a graphic novel.

11. All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds (Young Adult)

Rashad wasn’t stealing, but people sure seem to think he was. After he drops a bag of chips and a police officer beats him for it, Rashad is stuck in a hospital bed while the nation debates his character. Meanwhile, Quinn, a white boy who witnessed the beating, comes to learn that racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement.

12. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Young Adult)

Sunny is an albino girl living in Nigeria. Her skin tone often makes her an outsider, but she soon finds herself drawn into a community of magic users called Leopard People. Together with her new friends, Sunny is tasked with tracking down a killer known for maiming children.

13. The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Middle Grade)

Amira is finally twelve and hopes to start school, but her life is turned upside down when the Janjaweed militia attacks her Sudanese village and her family must make the long and difficult journey to a refugee camp. Life at the camp is hard, but when an aid worker gives her a pencil and paper, Amira’s world begins to expand.

14. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Middle Grade)

Delphine Gaither and her two younger sisters travel from Brooklyn to Oakland to spend the summer with a mother they barely know. Imagine their surprise when she sends them to a Black Panther summer camp. Set in 1968, this historical fiction novel explores family dynamics and the importance of sisterhood.

15. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (Middle Grade)

In powerfully emotional poetry, Woodson tells the story of her childhood and what it was like to grow up Black in the 1960s and 70s. This novel-in-verse won the National Book Award and the Coretta Scott King Award.

16. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (Middle Grade)

Between the depression and threats from the night riders, the Logan family has had a tough year. Cassie doesn’t see why her family’s land is so important, but as she becomes more aware of the way their white neighbours treat them, she soon comes to understand that the family’s strength comes from having their own place in the world. This book tackles the ugly reality of racism in the deep south from the perspective of a precocious nine-year-old. It can be hard to stomach at times, but I think that just makes it more important.

17. Zora and Me by Victoria Bond & T.R. Simon (Middle Grade)

Part historical fiction and part small-town mystery, this fictional imagining of Zora Neale Hurston’s early days sees the author as a young girl, exercising her skills as a storyteller. When one of Zora’s tales seems to come true and a man winds up dead, she and her friend Carrie find that things in their little town are not as peaceful as they appear.

18. Blended by Sharon M. Draper (Middle Grade)

Every since her parents’ divorce, Isabella has felt torn in two. Two houses, two families, two races. Switching between her parents, also means switching between two different identities. How can she ever feel whole when she’s constantly split in half? This book examines the life of a biracial girl, and doesn’t shy away from addressing exoticism and the (PG) fetishisation of mixed-race people.

19. Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America edited by Ibi Zoboi (Young Adult)

This contemporary anthology delves into the many-faceted lives of Black teens in the United States. Popular authors from a wide variety of backgrounds have contributed their voices to show that being young and Black in America is not just one singular experience, but a constellation.

20. The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson (Middle Grade)

A hidden letter and a summer mystery are what await Candace when she pokes through an old box in the attic. With the help of her neighbour, Brandon, she deciphers the letter’s clues in the hopes of discovering a forgotten fortune. This book is perfect for readers who like a good puzzle.

[scifimagpie]

Solidarity and Other Dreams

One of the most subtle and painful things about the internet age - perhaps any age - is finding out that someone you admire has acted in a far less-than-admirable way. Reconciling that with continued affection can be tricky. For example, I've heard some mega-questionable things about Amanda Palmer, wife of Neil Gaiman - who has been thoroughly castigated ad nauseam in public and private. And so it goes for many celebrities and important figures around the general Leftist/leftist/liberal community. You can probably think of someone you like who's done or said something insensitive, ableist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, misogynist, or otherwise disappointing. Someone who didn't take a strong enough stance, or too strong a stance, or said something that made your skin crawl.

Have I been this person? Probably. I try to hunt down and deal with my own mistakes, relying on the trauma-survivor skills of micro-self analysis. I count my sins and errors and mistakes like pre-reformation Scrooge with his money. I do not forget or forgive myself. This is not necessarily a character strength, either, nor something I recommend to others.

And of course, many of us do that with others.

But recently, after ditching a friendship that was bad for me, I went to my "blocked users" list on Facebook and really had a look at this. I remembered most people on it. Some were casually encountered, but some had become friends - who had, at one point or another, said something I really, really didn't like.

And I considered...is it really worth keeping someone blocked if you can't remember the exact nature of their infraction?

What makes someone unsafe?

I've seen my share of panicky, touchy arguments on Facebook, including one where an activist I looked up to accused someone else of "gaslighting" them for having a different opinion about interpretations of a Steven Universe character's race. I've been in those arguments, too. (Not that one in particular, but similar situations.)

Part of the problem for those of us on the left is that calls for solidarity usually result in a backlash of people saying, "we have to work with those we don't like? But that means supporting abusers!" Well - sometimes it doesn't. It's tricky to talk about abuse, because those of us who've survived it in various ways tend to be extremely gun-shy - sometimes excessively or even unhealthily so.

And in the moment, it can be hard to tell if someone's comments about, say, a given woman or actress represent their feelings about All Of Womanity, or anything else.

Do we tolerate mistakes?

This is such a tricky problem. Obviously, as a white woman - even a queer, plump, neurodivergent, partially disabled one - I have a giant swath of privilege that affects how I'm coming at things. I'm cisgender, and I'm white, and even femme - all things that can, in certain circumstances, give me a free pass that would not be afforded to others. Obviously, kyriarchy - hierarchies and power that exist outside of patriarchy - is a thing that exists. Dealing with it sucks. Some people get forgiven for their screw-ups a lot more readily than others, and the people forgiven are usually white. The people who don't get away with things are usually black, or other people of colour; men also tend to get away with more than women. BUT - there are also times when we have to question whether conflicts or errors are as important as the general need to fight for our rights. And perhaps we need to be more honest about how dangerous or not-dangerous specific people are.

As one of my found-family siblings, Iskara, put it,

The left are collectivists and the right are individualists. We know this. But you can't use those traits to compete with others who have the same trait, you're pretty equal. So to establish a hierarchy within their respective groups, they use the opposite approach. The left will attack individuals who are below them to prove that they are the wokest. The right will attack entire groups of people who don't have the right values as individuals. Therefore, the right is willing to unite with people it disagrees with because those disagreements are part of the life of an individualist, but collectively they hate this other group more and they have that in common. Meanwhile the left is trying to figure out which single persons belong in or out of the collective which makes us far more likely to attack our allies over trivial matters, because we consider the purity of the person beside us to be a reflection on our own purity.

The hidden rules

The thing is - and trying to put this politely is difficult - white people who are queer tend to engage in this purity-testing a lot more often than others. Black people and people of colour, and those with multiple intersections of disability, are already used to forgiving others a lot or gritting their teeth and bearing things. As members of a visible majority in North America, we feel confident in our ability to reject others and replace them as need be. We're inherently comfortable, a lot of the time, in the belief that someone else will come around and fill the empty seat, because there are just so many white and queer people. This can be less true for transgender people, but the squabbles I've seen online suggest that the sense of white social complacency is still basically applicable.

This is not to excuse myself. When I was a teenager, and even in my early twenties, it seemed a lot more important to be strict about whom I interacted with, within the left, and how they perceived things. As much as micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions both matter, and as much as both can grind us down - those of us with the emotional resources and privilege to do so need to be aware of our padding. (That's not just a pun on my own weight, but hey! I can't resist a punchline.)

Forgiveness and calling in

Since our family expanded to a third person, our housemate and queer-platonic partner Kit, we've had a lot more small discussions about being offended and annoyed. Honestly, instead of making fights or tension worse, it tends to disperse them. Anyone who lives with someone else will be familiar with the struggle of doing dishes, making food, handling laundry, cleaning the house, dealing with work duties, and arranging transportation. But being clear yet tactful about one's feelings can handle conflict far better, and keep it from becoming "a thing."

The same is true of our long-running D&D group and some of my various friend groups. Learning to filter my communication to people, talk to them after the rush of emotions, and avoiding that ever-so-tempting duel of witticisms that is the Facebook philosophical fight, have all been really good for both myself and the people around me.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves - what are we trying to accomplish? If the answer to that is "protection of people's human rights," then the only people really worth kicking out are trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), sex-work exclusionary radical feminists (SWERFs), and people who have exhibited a pattern of abuse without repentance.

Everyone else? Well, maybe we need to be honest about our hurt feelings, cool off a bit, and try to talk stuff out in private.

Does that mean we need to forgive abusers?

Ooof. Even with a counselling degree and many years of sad-violin life experience, I don't know if I'm equipped to answer this one. Apart from saying, "it's a case-by-case basis, but worry about the people who aren't just rude, but really dangerous," I'm not sure what to recommend.

Maybe we just need to stop sanctifying and demonizing people, and present them - both celebrities and individuals - as complex people with tokens on both the good and bad sides of the scale.

I do think that there are cases where people can reform. I hate to be mealy-mouthed or seem indecisive, but if internal politics were easy to handle, the left wouldn't be falling apart like an improperly-chilled gelatin dessert.

Ultimately, all I can recommend are emotional self-validation, politeness, patience, and forgiveness with each other. We are stronger together, and since we, in multiple countries, have to fight to maintain our very existence, we need to defend each other's existence.

Maybe this means forgiving someone you're still mad at. Maybe this means going to apologize to someone. But with actual far-right activists, neo-nationalists, anti-choice activists, and violent racists and transphobes in the streets, and more active and internationally validated than ever, we simply can't afford the ephemeral and impossible luxury of complete ideological purity.

Does this mean allying with people we disagree with? Well, as long as they're not advocating for killing us...maybe yes. But again, my tired and beleaguered siblings and family, those of us who are white need to do the work on this. Reach out to others. Offer comfort. Give forgiveness - after you're done being mad. Sleep on things.

Nobody else is going to fight for our lives.

***Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime, housemate, and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. The mailing list * Books on Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram *  Facebook * Tumblr * Blog