#queer time

[teaboot]

Love describing myself as a "chick".

Like. "Woman" ain't it. Too much pressure. Don't fit right. "Girl"? Closer, but also wrong. Too small. "Dude"? Much better. Sort of oblong, a lil sloppy, but it'll do. "Sir" is preferred on formal occasions. "Ma'am" is wrong. "Miss" is wrong. "Young lady"? No. Absolutely not. "Bro"? Yes. "Guy"? Eh, I'll take it.

But "Chick". Chick, I like.

Casual. Informal. Languid. Audacious. "He's a chick". Good. Strong. Powerful. "She's a guy". "He's pretty". "She's handsome".

Girl in a dude way. Dude in a chick way.

Feels good. Feels organic

[queer-bi-cliche]

Ashton being both titan of blood and full of dunamis is queer culture and it makes my want to cry

Titan of blood aka we were always here

Dunamis power aka we will be here in any timeline

Queer time is different. More messy. I'm currently going through puberty again, for example. I find strength in my trans and queer progenitors, because without them I wouldn't have been here.

I feel so fucking seen. So loved. So powerful. Angry and righteous. The most resilient and softest person. I fucking love this punk rock.

[fashioninpaper]

I occasionally look at runway collections to see what are the current fashion atrends. I came across Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s SS25 show. He said he was exploring the concept of “queer time”:

“how it shapes our expectations and social obligations to look in a certain way during the day and at different times of our lives… Aesthetics uniforms or pyjamas were deconstructed and assembled back together through the lens of the brand’s queer post-punk signature style.”

I think he succeeded with the deconstruction aspect, I’ll let you decide whether you like it or not. But I wonder how many hours each model practiced in the mirror to achieve those perfect haute and angry expression on the runway.

Although I think this model really succeeds in selling the swagger. She looks like she’s actually enjoying herself.

[folxlorepod]

Queer Time: themes in Folxlore

Queer time is a nebulous term that sometimes describes time with the same fluidity that we do queer identity, and sometimes refers to the phenomenon of queer people missing out on traditional ‘adulthood’ milestones. It can describe the ‘second teenagehood’ a lot of queer people experience once they feel comfortable enough expressing themselves to an extent they didn’t in their actual teenage years, or the tendency of queer people to fill in their lives with friendships, housing situations, lifestyle choices and methods of parenthood that don’t fit with the timeline of traditional, non-queer lives. It’s also the main focus and narrative device of season 2 of Folxlore.

In season 1, we chose to use an old and well-loved (in the way one might say well-loved about a worn down sofa) narrative device: found footage. We wanted to see how we could stretch this trope to fit our queer stories, how it could serve us rather than limit us. We even neatly tied the season up with a reason why the listener was being presented with this particular found footage! I don’t think we always succeeded in innovating within or avoiding the traps of the trope, but I do think we wrote some pretty cool episodes and made up new ways of using this narrative device: the sentient CCTV cameras, the use of audio image description as an access aid to present a blog with an increasingly anxious narrator. We had a lot of fun with it!

In season 2, we are dropping the focus on found footage. It was never something that we wanted to restrict the show too: our pilot episodes don’t use the narrative device, and we feel pretty happy about letting each season stand alone (after all, Folxlore is an anthology: one with an overarching narrative, but we still take the anthology aspect pretty serious). When we were having early chats about themes for season 2 with the writers team, a couple came up: one was that of choice, now that the residents of our favourite haunted building have been transported into a strange, terrifying, beautiful world. Do you stay and make something good out of the odd and repulsive world full of possibility, or do you return to the familiar, even if it is bad? This choice feels incredibly queer to me: it represents (found) family, the contrast between old and new traditions, and jumping into the unknown of what it is to live a queer life, when all you know at the start is that it won’t be like what you have been promised.

A theme that came up much later in the process, when we were already throwing episode ideas back and forth, was queer time. We realised we wanted to expand the time over which the season took place. We also realised nearly every idea we had had related to time in one way or another. Perhaps it’s the influence of the pandemic, of the endless stretching and contracting of time that happens during a traumatic event (with the way we ended season 1, we definitely set ourselves up for something reminiscent of the abrupt change to life we all experienced, although we tried our hardest to hone in on what makes the story in season 2 unique: it was never meant to be nor is a metaphor for the pandemic.)

And more interestingly, in a similar way to how we used found footage in season 1, queer time is often not the focus of the episodes, but rather a narrative device that helps us tell the story. I’m incredibly excited about all the different ways in which time plays a role in how we tell the different stories in season 2. It mimics the different things queer time can mean to different people, how time shapes us as queers, and how queers shape time, too. Time can be horrific: the melancholy of living a queer life, and the heavy weight of our futures. It can be beautiful too: the joy of ignoring the hands on the clock and setting your own pace; staying up too late talking to online friends in different timezones; the agelessness of queer love and lust, the hope in queer history and queer futures. I love queers. I love queers in the now, in the past, and I love the possibilities we represent. I hope we did this concept justice in season 2, in all its beauty, in all its horror.

[grey29]

When you’re a teenage dirtbag who only eats hot pockets but you’re 21 and literally have a degree in thinking and can have a discussion about the queer theory that explains why you’re being a teenage dirtbag at 21.

[aruemon]

cause it’s the funniest response to damn near everything.

Why are you lgbtq+? wrong answers only GO

[haberdashing]

specific parameters:

when exactly your teenage self gets this information is up to you, so long as they're your teenage self at the time.

your teenage self will learn the message and that it comes from you, their future self.

if it's something objectively true/false, they'll know it's true; if it's more subjective, they'll know you believe it's true based on your knowledge of the future; if it's advice, they'll know it's given in good faith based on your future life.

you need to decide NOW. no looking things up beforehand. (no sharing the winning lottery numbers unless you happen to have some memorized!)

you can combine things if they're really just parts of one big statement. so "You're genderfluid and your name is Adrian" is fine, but "move to California and invest in Facebook" isn't.

if your statement fits multiple categories, pick the one you think is the best overall fit.

[punk-pangolins]

no "other/see results" option bc JUST CHOOSE ONE

YOU TOO, GENDER-CONFORMERS,

EVERYONE!

[anarkittyy]

Posted @withregram • @symbiosity When Zalando first approached me to curate their Pride campaign, I immediately thought of the concept of time. Conversations with queer friends and family over the past year highlighted our complex relationship with time—some of us feel like we don’t have enough, while others feel behind, hitting milestones later or struggling to keep up with cis-het peers. With this project, I aimed to celebrate this unique relationship with time and question what a “normal” timeline is and who defines it. It was about highlighting our individual journeys and the courage it takes to go against the mainstream.

Bell Hooks said, “Queer not as being who you’re having sex with; but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

[academicallygroves]

This photoshop features a photo of Swift during the Speak Now Tour and the Eras Tour with lyrics to the song "Mean" across both images.

speak now week day 5: create something that celebrates individuality and standing up for yourself.

and all you’re ever gonna be is mean

[book51ut]

Review of Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Esteban Muñoz

This book was excellent. It argued that we must be constantly striving towards a queer utopia. that doesn’t discount the queer past or queer present, but that queerness itself exists outside of straight time in some version of future that is never truly attainable but instead a mindset and a way of living. He also focused on queer art as a means of proving this thesis. He strongly criticized assimilationist gay rights movements and claimed that they are feeding into “straight time,” capitalism, and heteronormative ways of thinking. He cited Bloch and Adorno heavily which was a very interesting choice.

I think my biggest criticism of this work was how dense and academic it was. I think we should absolutely have queer studies within academia , but writing like this, so densely and convoluted, to me, is embodying the idea of straight time. Things can be said in easier ways, you’re just choosing not to do so. I also think that people would be more willing to engage with dense philosophical material if it was presented in a readable way that wasn’t just academics sucking each other off.

[vevasap]

Time Theory

I don’t want to get married

I can't have kids

I don’t desire an increase in social status

I’ve no designs on amassing wealth

I’ve no need to own property

I’ve no need to own things

All of the ways

in which we chart life's progression

in this capitalist hellscape

I’ve no desire for.

I desire to make people happy

I desire to learn more

I desire to feel comfortable in myself

that is all,

so how old does that make me?

[bbspiinchh]

🌿rusalochky🌿

[bluestonewings]

ACES!!! Look at this Scientific American article!!! It makes me genuinely so happy to read. We’re making it!!!!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexuality-is-finally-breaking-free-from-medical-stigma/

[novelconcepts]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.