#queer expression st pete

[transfloridaresources]

Hey, I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for making this blog. It means more than I could possibly tell you to see support that isn't just "move out", because so many of us just simply can't, or even if we can we don't want to. I shouldn't be expected to uproot my entire life because of other people's bigotry.

Things are getting worse here, and I'm scared. My mom told the doctor that my period was normal last time we went to the doctor, and refused to elaborate. She said that she didn't want specific information about my cycle on file, in case I went on puberty blockers for any reason. My school canceled the Scholastic book fair, because it's a charter school and they were scared of getting on DeSantis' radar. There's uncertainty over if we'll have a psychology course back by the time I reach the age to take it.

Even on a less political front, gay and trans are making a massive resurgence in terms used for bullying. I'm clinging on to my silly little microlabels like a lifeline, because even though it hurts to know that nobody outside of our community is going to know about them, at least that means they aren't going to be slung back in my face like a bullet.

It's really scary, and seeing how people are actually making efforts to combat this means more than you could ever know. It gives me hope that I can stick it out, and make my state a place where the kids younger than me can grow up safely and happily. Seeing adults openly wearing pride pins even in the midst of everything makes me feel safer with them than can be put into words. I hope that by the time I'm an adult and have control over my own life I can be that person for someone, but I also really hope I can help make it a world where that's not needed. And seeing that there's people here that care about us gives me hope that we can accomplish that.

Much love, a queer kid living in central Florida <3

Hello there, wonderful anon & thank you so much for reaching out 🫂💖 It is so meaningful to hear things like this and I'm so grateful that you took the time to write this message. I know so much seems bleak rn, but your message made me think about the world I grew up in when I was a kid / teen. I didn't even really know trans people existed. Queer people barely existed, either. There was no mainstream celebrity for any of those identities and social media didn't exist. I know it feels absolutely terrifying to see this happening now and wondering where you'll go and what life you'll have, but trust me - we'll always be here. We're targeted so much now because people are afraid of change and because these systems of oppression need a constant mark to aim hatred at in order to function. But we're louder than ever now and there's people like you who exist now who are aware of our existences and aware of themselves more than we ever used to have. That's powerful. That gives me hope for the future. YOU give me hope for the future. I look at you the same as you look at us who are older and you inspire me as well. I know this is painful and I know you're scared but know that you're not alone and you never will be. Remember that even if certain laws are passed and attempts to silence information and truth occur - there are still always ways to access that information and keep it alive. These TFR accounts look to BIPOC lives because those are the groups already living under so much oppression who can teach the most about persistence and resilience. Read about other social movements, look to past leaders, look to current events like the people in Gaza right now. Even through tragedy, the spirit of resilience remains. It's still possible to find happiness and fulfillment and build a life somehow. We are not at the mercy of any of this, we just need to learn how to best adapt & keep moving. It's not easy and it's not fair but it is doable. You will have a beautiful life and trans people will always exist. We are still thriving here. Florida (& the south in general) will always have a strong LGBT community no matter what. Let me drop a few links for you or anyone who might need them. CampOUT Florida is a week long summer camp in July for LGBT youth, located around Ocala. Queer Expression St. Pete finally got a permanent home & routinely offers a safe space for LGBT families & youth, especially. If you are struggling and need someone to talk to, Trans Lifeline and Thrive Lifeline both offer peer to peer support (meaning anyone on the other side is also LGBT and/or other identities as well) & also will not involve police / involuntary psych holds. They have a variety of options to communicate with them for support & Thrive even has a trans discord server for anyone 16+! We are also working on a discord server for trans Floridians, which should be available soon, and will have a dedicated channel for teens only (with support as needed from queer & trans adult moderators from a variety of racial backgrounds & who have professional experience working with children / youth). These are just a few things that exist as well. More and more are out there and will also soon be created in the face of increasing pressure on our community. We keep us safe 💖 You are loved, you have value, you have community, you have family, you have a future!

[aemiron-main-backup]

//post backup//

HELL YEAHHHH AND SERIOUSLY THE PARALLELS ARE INSANE I DEF RECOMMEND WATCHING IT BC. THERES SO MUCH. and hell yeah!!! good luck LMAO it’s. an absolute fucking ride.  im also uh. sitting here thinking about the st peter-mike parallels and how young pete townshend happens to look quite a lot like finn/mike and has a very similar sense of style to mike to the point where i wouldnt be surprised if they intentionally looked at him for costuming. 

mike also had a guitar in his bedroom. not only is pete a guitarist but he’s one of THE guitarists of all time in terms of influence. ever wonder why doc martens got popular? it’s very very largely because of pete townshend. the who were very much considered to be counter-culture AND had a lot of themes of eternal youth/eternal teenagers/eternal childhood in their work, much like we see in ST (baba o riley by the who is actually the song used in the st3 trailer and will has ‘my generation’, a song about dying young and about youth in general on his official playlist).

i don’t think it’s a stretch at ALL that the stylists would’ve looked to pete for style inspiration for Mike, especially considering that pete is also queer AND has all of those counter-culture and rebellious themes tied to him and was very much a symbol of it at his time. like there’s also a ton of themes regarding the who in terms of what mike is dealing with and repression and catharsis and finally expressing oneself and even right down to mike’s family dynamic.

like the line ‘i don’t need to be forgiven’ from baba o riley haunts me in terms of mike and just in terms of karen and the whole wheeler dynamic and karen cheating on ted and Everything. and it even ties into the metal stuff in s4 because while the who was not a metal band by any stretch, their bassist, john entwistle, is credited as to having invented/really popularized the death metal growl in ‘boris the spider,’ and the band as a whole inspired a bunch of musicians of various genres and was considered to be an early punk band/absolutely paved the way for punk and they were one of the first rock bands to really crash the boundaries of how loud a rock band could be with the volume and distortion and feedback,  pete would frequently smash his guitar on stage, keith moon (their drummer) set up an unplanned explosion inside of his drums on national television, their live performances were very chaotic and just. ARGH. 

The entire band and their music is very very much about teenage frustration and angst and queercoding and trying to conform with society but then rejecting conformity and dealing with a nuclear family and political frustration (aids crisis and satanic panic in st) and those are all things we see with mike in s4. i cannot stress enough how much it makes SENSE for them to do a nod to pete intentionally with mike’s styling and how it wouldnt be the first time they’ve included stuff about the who, even if we ignore the tommy parallels. 

this is an insane stretch moment FR but it’s worth noting that the guy who wrote the majority of Tommy, Pete Townshend (full name peter) wrote a lot of it based on his own life/experiences so in many cases, “Tommy” is actually “Peter”

stretching is not only okay but encouraged in this house. also i desperately need to watch that movie now if the parallels are getting even more intense holy FUCK

like i meant to watch it and i kinda forgor but now it’s something in neon flashing red in my brain and i might watch it tomorrow if not tonight

[shark-myths]

Way Down South

FOB has more than one song where the idea of running away from your life and yourself appears in the form of crossing the Southern border. Below the cut, I’ll present a queer reading of this recurring theme. Spoilers for the MANIA tour below.

I Don’t Care, 2008:

Erase myself and let go

Start it over again in Mexico

These friends, they don't love you

They just love the hotel suites, now

Here, Pete’s unhappiness is on display. He feels not like himself, he feels unseen and invisible by the people surrounding him. Notably, Folie-era tracks are pretty much the only time Pete has written angrily about friendship instead of writing about it as the most important, life-saving thing, a theme that has appeared since their first album. It reflects his complicated emotional state (the self-described drug store cowboy doing his damnedest not to survive his 27th year) and his turbulent relationship with the press at that time, with the celebrity life he found himself abruptly entered into. A lot of this numb voicelessness is present and painful in the promotional stuff he was doing in LA (alone) for Folie, like Fresh Only Bakery. The meaning is clear: he wants to get out. He wants to be someone else. As he told Out magazine in 2008, “Some days I wake up and I couldn’t be bothered at all. Some days you Google yourself and you can’t eat.”

 Caffeine Cold, 2013:

Now I smell like cigarettes cause I love to breathe your smoke

I smell like alcohol cause I drink to believe in more

I have 3 drinks before I even start to count

I think I'm gonna move way down south

 I HAVE EVERY FEELING ABOUT THIS SONG. “I smell like alcohol because I drink to believe in more” is incredibly evocative of the performance of queerness between him and Patrick during the aforementioned Era of Sadness—it sounds like getting drunk enough that you make yourself believe it means something. This lyric fits very well with the assumptions of Tryst Theory, especially the way they both had to pretend what they were doing meant nothing—that it was a one night stand, over and over and over again…

And here the lyric about moving down south is linked up with feeling monstrous (#relatable bisexual feelings) by the context of the song, and posed in the chorus almost a solution to the problem of the previous 3 lines. The problem of, how do I keep living this way? Drunk and as close to the flames as I can get without burning. How much longer will I care enough to stop myself from burning?

 Expensive Mistakes, 2017:

Don’t you know / there’s nothing more cruel than to be loved by everybody but you…

If I could get my shit together I’m gonna run away and never see any of you again Never see any of you again

Don’t you know / I hate all my friends, I miss the days when I pretended with you…

I trimmed together two verses to highlight what I think the song is expressing up there. Firstly, if we follow my previous shouty theory that Mania is a time-traveling album, drifting back through their eras and forward again (in the most PETERICKY MANNER POSSIBLE), this song is clearly located in the Folie era. The lines about hating his friends and himself, the feeling of isolation, the sonic elements of the song, and lyrics later in the song about self-medicating all point to 2008.

The lyrics pretty explicitly say how difficult it is to be apart from the person you love, to not be loved in return; they say how much he wants to go back and play pretend, a concept that comes up in other songs and supports Tryst Theory like wildfire. We have the bit about running away from his life and its hollowness and the legitimate horrors of the way the press treated him in 2008. But here’s the real reason this song is on here, the real reason I’m writing this post:

When they played the song in St Louis on the 2nd night of the tour, Pete introduced it by saying, “This is a song for those times when you just want to run away to Mexico.”

 Okay, here’s the final thing I want to present. In Out magazine in 2008, when discussing the rumor that Ashlee is just a beard, we have this:

‘But then he gets quiet, staring out over the hotel pool, and his voice is full of empathy. “I couldn’t imagine living a double life for this long,” he says. “(A) you would just get caught so bad. And (B), I would be in a car in that swimming pool right now. How do you not just do drugs and live in South America? It would make you crazy.”’

The desire to run away down south, then, is a cipher for this particular feeling: for the feeling he’s leading a double life, in love with his best friend, absolutely fucking suffering while locked in a cage match with his own queerness, speared upon intense body dysphoria (also discussed in the same interview—this is a great issue of Out, guys) and what he sadly describes as his “relentless heterosexual drive.” Pete once told NPR he wished he was gay. (That’s what I used to think-say-believe, when I was buried so deeply in the closet of compulsory heterosexuality and body dysphoria that even I thought I was tragically heterosexual. Just sayin’.)

Tune in ??? for more lyrics meta

[aemiron-main]

HELL YEAHHHH AND SERIOUSLY THE PARALLELS ARE INSANE I DEF RECOMMEND WATCHING IT BC. THERES SO MUCH. and hell yeah!!! good luck LMAO it’s. an absolute fucking ride.  im also uh. sitting here thinking about the st peter-mike parallels and how young pete townshend happens to look quite a lot like finn/mike and has a very similar sense of style to mike to the point where i wouldnt be surprised if they intentionally looked at him for costuming. 

mike also had a guitar in his bedroom. not only is pete a guitarist but he’s one of THE guitarists of all time in terms of influence. ever wonder why doc martens got popular? it’s very very largely because of pete townshend. the who were very much considered to be counter-culture AND had a lot of themes of eternal youth/eternal teenagers/eternal childhood in their work, much like we see in ST (baba o riley by the who is actually the song used in the st3 trailer and will has ‘my generation’, a song about dying young and about youth in general on his official playlist). i don’t think it’s a stretch at ALL that the stylists would’ve looked to pete for style inspiration for Mike, especially considering that pete is also queer AND has all of those counter-culture and rebellious themes tied to him and was very much a symbol of it at his time. like there’s also a ton of themes regarding the who in terms of what mike is dealing with and repression and catharsis and finally expressing oneself and even right down to mike’s family dynamic. like the line ‘i don’t need to be forgiven’ from baba o riley haunts me in terms of mike and just in terms of karen and the whole wheeler dynamic and karen cheating on ted and Everything. and it even ties into the metal stuff in s4 because while the who was not a metal band by any stretch, their bassist, john entwistle, is credited as to having invented/really popularized the death metal growl in ‘boris the spider,’ and the band as a whole inspired a bunch of musicians of various genres and was considered to be an early punk band/absolutely paved the way for punk and they were one of the first rock bands to really crash the boundaries of how loud a rock band could be with the volume and distortion and feedback,  pete would frequently smash his guitar on stage, keith moon (their drummer) set up an unplanned explosion inside of his drums on national television, their live performances were very chaotic and just. ARGH.  The entire band and their music is very very much about teenage frustration and angst and queercoding and trying to conform with society but then rejecting conformity and dealing with a nuclear family and political frustration (aids crisis and satanic panic in st) and those are all things we see with mike in s4. i cannot stress enough how much it makes SENSE for them to do a nod to pete intentionally with mike’s styling and how it wouldnt be the first time they’ve included stuff about the who, even if we ignore the tommy parallels. 

this is an insane stretch moment FR but it’s worth noting that the guy who wrote the majority of Tommy, Pete Townshend (full name peter) wrote a lot of it based on his own life/experiences so in many cases, “Tommy” is actually “Peter”

stretching is not only okay but encouraged in this house. also i desperately need to watch that movie now if the parallels are getting even more intense holy FUCK

like i meant to watch it and i kinda forgor but now it’s something in neon flashing red in my brain and i might watch it tomorrow if not tonight