#seeing as achilles being gay and in love with a man is a huge thing for his character

[meraki-yao]

Is this a safe place? I sort of want to get something off my chest, but I have to do it anon because I’m scared. I’m a straight girl and a huge rwrb fan, and thus also a big fan of TZP and Nick. Lately I’m feeling more and more alienated in most of the fandom and I’m afraid I’m the problem? It’s just all this talk about topping and bottoming and what that means for how the characters are perceived that I absolutely do not get? Is it empowering in some way I’m not getting, because if not the feminist in me is sort of appalled.

It’s more or less the idea that bottoming is a little humiliating in a way that needs to be made jokes about that is bothering me. Like the bottom is always a little pathetic or desperate (like how women have historically been portrayed), and we should snicker when the top (or anyone) publicly «calls them out» for bottoming? Obviously not everyone does this but I see it more and more? And when it was just in fics and art I kept my mouth shut because I think that should be a free space, but now I see it in how the actors are talked about too. Like Alex is the top so TZP is made out to be hypermasculine and Henry was the bottom so Nick is either babied or made fun of? It’s bad for both imo. Why can’t tzp be babygirl sometimes and the focus be on his soft sides? All I see is talk about his body and how everyone wants him to top them. And then there’s Nick and how people are saying they are uncomfortable watching him act as a top in M&G, saying he will always be a bottom and that he is a slut etc. If it was an actress or female characters getting that treatment I would riot. And I guess I am a bit now in my cowardly anon way. Am I alone in feeling frustrated about this? Is it bad that I am? Please help me understand if I’m in the wrong.

Thank you for reaching out to me. As long as you’re respectful and not hurtful, you’re welcome here.

Actually, I’ve kind of wanted to write an essay on gay sex and the perception of gender in same-sex couples for a while now! So this might sound kind of academic, bear with me.

Preface: I identify as a straight cis girl, but I’ve been consuming both western and Asian queer media, both fiction and real person for years. This is my understanding of the matter, and I’m trying to be as sensitive and empathetic as I can be, but please note at the end of the day, I am not directly part of the queer community, therefore there may be certain things I miss, or a queer person will tell you otherwise. Also literally all my knowledge of sex comes from the internet, because Chinese culture literally does not talk about this at all. I gave my sister the talk instead of our parents. So please take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Also gonna talk about sex in an academic manner, but it’s still sex, so here’s your nsfw warning!

Ok here we go:

The power dynamic in sex position is fundamentally biological: the penetrator controls the pace and intensity of the act, thus is the active participant; the penetrated is in turn the passive. This is just the mechanics of the act: The penetrated, be it the woman in a straight couple or the bottom in a gay couple is put in the more vulnerable position, therefore the top, as the active participant is perceive as having more power, while the bottom as the passive participant is perceived as having less power.

And there are historical records of this perception: in ancient Greece, there was a common romantic dynamic called pederasty, a romantic and sexual relationship between an older man (the erastes/ to love) who acts as the active, dominant participant, aka the top, and a younger boy/ a teenager (the eromenos/ beloved) who acts as the passive, submissive participant, aka the bottom. It is speculated that this is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. This practice was understood as educative, as a means for the older man to teach the younger “how to be more manly as to grow up into a man”. THAT BEING SAID BY TODAY’S STANDARDS THIS IS PEDOPHILA AND DEFINITELY NOT OKAY. On top of that, the perception of being gay in ancient Rome is “it’s okay if you’re gay, as long as you’re the top”. My point is this power imbalance when it comes to same-sex relationships has existed for a very, very long time.

But the thing is a lot of things have advanced in the past centuries, and the perception of sex and gender is one of them.

So firstly in terms of sex, people are much more flexible in terms of the power dynamics, which is where terms like “switch” (can be either top or bottom), “power bottom” (the penetrated controls the pace and intensity of the act) , “service top” (the penetrator focused on their partner’s needs and wishes instead of their own) and the whole BDSM category (which I’m personally not informed about or interested in). So I would say we’re mostly past the point of humiliating bottoms or perceiving bottoms as inherently weak, and use bottom more in terms of the mechanics.

That being said, the power being more balanced does not immediately take away the gender perception of the dynamic.

Since when comparing a gay couple’s sex act with a straight couple’s sex act, the woman has to be in a penetrated position as per biology and anatomy (at least traditionally speaking), the association drawn between the bottom and the woman becomes easy to make. In fact in China, all bottoms, regardless of gender/sexuality, are referred to with female terms, like “wife”, “princess”, “queen” etc. So bottoms tend to be feminized, or at least viewed as more effeminate. Again, this has changed and made more flexible/free in modern times, but this trend is still present.

But when it comes to applying the terms on the boys, something involved is also the audience’s own perception and understanding of gender representation. “Babygirl” is more referring to the “cute” kind of attractiveness than actually babying him, which with given material, tends to apply more to the perception and presentation of Nick than Taylor. That being said I have seen Taylor/Alex being referred to babygirl as well. It’s a little rare but it’s present. I wouldn’t really say Taylor’s hypermasculine either, but in relatively, his style and manners lean more towards the masculine side of the spectrum. But again it’s a matter of perception. Are the gendered terms used on the boys affected by the dynamic of their characters? To some degree, yes. But it’s also sometimes a genuine commentary on their own style as themselves.

As for Geroge, I personally haven’t seen those comments, but the problem with the comments lies in associating George with Nick as an individual and Henry as an individual: as in, they’re not treating George as George, they’re treating George as Nick, which might be why they have such comments. That being said, this is a piece of media, so each to their own.

I think the last thing I’m gonna say to end this is that please remember that this is all subjective perception. If you see something different, then that’s just what you see. Try seeing someone else’s perspective, and if you tried and it didn’t work, then let it be. You’re not in the wrong, it’s ok that you’re frustrated, but at least I don’t think the situation is as harmful as you might see it to be. These types of comments often are throwaway thoughts, so there’s also the question on how serious a comment is.

Hope this helped! Feel free to shoot me another ask if you still have questions.

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Great Books About Gender Identity

Seeing some posts about how new-adult romance novels popularized by BookTok don't show genuine queer experience and largely tokenize queer characters. And look, the prose of these books is ass too. One of my reading interests is how themes of gender/masculinity/femininity interact with other elements in a novel, and with the culture from which the novel was written. I've read a lot of great books on the topic!

As a disclaimer, most of these books don't have explicit queer representation. I read a lot of old books where that wasn't a thing you could openly write about, but you could write about cultural perceptions of masculinity/femininity (a lotta people still didn't like this, but like, you usually weren't stoned for it), which is where modern queer theory and identity comes from! So if you want to feel understood by a novel, here are my book recs on gender, in no particular order:

The Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin: a series of children's fantasy novels that build the foundation for modern children's and YA fantasy (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, some Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, etc.). Men and women's roles in society and relations with magic are a major theme in the series, and while no character is queer (though there's a reference late in the series about witches living together), characters are always bound or freed by the gender they express. Also, all the characters are black, which was unheard of at the time of the first book's publication (1968) and is frankly still unheard of today. And it's just a fun read!

The work of Virginia Woolf: My favorite author and one of the largest players in what we today call gender studies. Highly recommend Orlando, where the titular character changes inexplicably from a man to a woman halfway through the novel (it's tempting to call them "the first trans character," but the label feels disingenuous. Transsexuality as we know it didn't exist then, and Orlando didn't choose or want to switch genders. It just happened to them); A Room of One's Own, Woolf's essay on life as a woman author; and The Waves, a book less about gender identity and more about wholistic identity.

The work of Kate Chopin: Chopin is a huge player in starting the feminist literary movement of the 20th century, influencing the work of many authors on this list. If you can stomach Victorian prose, Chopin is for you!

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: Plath's novel is written from an intimately feminine perspective and wrestles with questions of mental illness from such a perspective. A must-read.

The work of Oscar Wilde: Thrown in jail for a bit for likely being at least a little gay, Wilde's writing frequently riffs on and critiques gendered social customs. Highly recommend The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, and definitely other stuff of his I haven't read yet.

The work of Madeline Miller: I think Circe is the only "BookTok book" I've read that I thought was good, and boy is it fantastic. Its ideas of gender feel a bit cliche or elementary at times (Circe sometimes reads like an "empowered girlboss" stereotype), but how it plays with this identity at the same time it plays with Circe's identity in her family and pantheon make this book special. And Miller really is a delightful prose stylist. Galatea is also pretty good, and I haven't read Song of Achilles yet.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham: based on Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Cunningham reprises Woolf's themes for a book set in the 90s! Great read, and another master of the craft.

The poetry of Sappho: The popular conception of Sappho is that she's this girlboss prodigal lesbian in a patriarchal society, which isn't true. There's definitely some truth there, but it's much more nuanced, and certainly Sappho couldn't conceive of the labels we put on her today and those labels' connotations. In any case, her poetry is some of the first, if not the first, love poetry from a feminine perspective.

Any piece of literature about slavery/colonialism written by a woman: This is a broad category, but the intersection of femininity and race is a broad topic which many writers fall into. You really can't go wrong here. My recs are Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, Zora Neale Hurston, Oroonoko by Aphra Bein, and Jean Toomer. I still need to read Gwendolyn Brooks, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker.

The work of Shakespeare: You can't go wrong here. Obviously not explicitly queer, but many of his plays deal with cultural gender perceptions and, of course, crossdressing! Twelfth Night is probably his strongest play on this front, but The Winter's Tale and Measure for Measure are both great here, and most of his plays have at least a little commentary on the gender front.

Leave other recs in the comments/rts! :)

[canmom]

Animation Night 161: Barry JC Purves

Good evening everyone!! I have completed my pilgrimage to Animation City. The last Annecy posts should be dropping tomorrow, all being well.

But! Tonight can be something of a preview!

The very last thing I did at Annecy was to drop into a collection for stop motion animator Barry JC Purves, who received a lifetime achievement award this festival. He totally wasn't on my radar which is a huge oversight because he's been making gay old short films for longer than I've been alive! l became a fan immediately lmao

As it happened, Barry Purves was there at the screening and afterwards took the time to chat with a small group of us, to give advice on animation, talk about his work, and generally be very encouraging. Here I am next to him holding the puppet Toddie from his film No Ordinary Joe (apologies for the shit picture quality, I didn't realise how dirty my lens was)

And here's the puppet up close:

So who is this guy, what's his story? Well, the way he told it, he started out in acting, but felt there were a lot of talented actors around. Around that time he saw stop motion films, and started to think he could bring a lot more performance and emotion than people were doing at the time. This must have been around 1989, when he made his first film Next, a speedrun of the works of Shakespeare performed by a puppet of the Bard...

Theatre would be a recurring theme throughout just about all his personal works. Screen Play (1992) depicts a kabuki play...

while Rigoletto (1993) does opera.

I joined the screening just in time for the end of Rigoletto; the first one I got to see in full was Achilles (1995), which depicts the story of Achilles and Patroclus from the Iliad in the style of ancient Greek theatre.

I loved this one. The characters move in a fascinatingly theatrical way, holding extended poses, is a trademark of Purves, who disagrees with the doctrine of realism in animation and emphasises readability above all; the staging is excellent; there is a lot of gay sex. I have no idea how the puppets were made - they're startlingly flexible for all the muscle detail. Barry said when I mentioned about it that he hadn't set out to tell a 'gay story' as such, rather was mainly trying to be faithful to the original story. I admire a lot his confidence in getting this on TV when I was like 2, but he said people never gave him a lot of trouble for content, just funding...

Gilbert and Sullivan (1998) and Hamilton Mattress (2001) were not included in the session at Annecy. The first continues the biographical theme, the second is about showbiz. I hope I can track them down at some point!

Plume was the next one we saw, and this one was great, a wordless film in which a winged man falls to earth and finds himself confronted by weird little monster guys hungry for feathers. This one was really cool, but I can't find it online.

Tchaikovsky – an Elegy presents a puppet of Tchaikovsky moving on a small set to a voiceover of various quotes from his letters over the course of his life and a medley of his music. Apparently they only had the budget for two minutes of orchestral music, the rest solo piano, but this limitation becomes a strength as those two minutes are deployed very effectively. I'll admit, I don't know a ton about Tchaikovsky, but the chosen quotes were affecting and intriguing, and there is incredible attention to detail in the animation - when Tchaikovsky plays piano in the air, the finger movements are apparently noticeably accurate to the music if you're a piano player.

Speaking of pianos, someone asked about the puppet and apparently the puppet of Tchaikovsky now sits on his piano in the house where he composed... memory fails, one of his famous pieces, maybe Swan Lake.

The last film is about a historical figure who I knew nothing about, but completely intrigued. Joe Carstairs was... in modern terms somewhere in the zone between butch lesbian and trans guy, an aristocrat's child who became a record setting motorboat racer in the 20s and also ruled a small island for a while (bc ig you could just do a colonialism back then if you were rich enough lmao). He (I'm gonna go with 'he' pronouns) had a very specific eccentricity, going around everywhere with a doll called Lord Tod Wadley or Toddie, a gift from his girlfriend Ruth Baldwin. Apparently Carstairs regarded as his closest confidante and only person he could trust. So the film is presented as a dialogue between Carstairs (played by real human being Lindsay Duncan) and Toddy (stop motion animated and composited in), as they reminisce about their life together. It was a very cool way to learn about a fascinating historical figure - apparently the inspiration was the biography The Queen of Whale Cay by Kate Summerscale, which he encouraged me to read after the screening - I'll write about it if I do!

And he's not done. Apparently he's been looking for funding for a feature length animated film that would be a murder mystery styled after the bird masks of the commedia del'arte. It sounds sick as hell and I would really love for it to get made.

Barry was incredibly fun to talk to, really encouraging to all of us and gave fascinating answers to every question. I really hope I can meet him again at the next Annecy and chat for longer. It honestly makes me really happy to know there was such a talented independent animator in the UK making such personally expressive, mature, and also gay as hell animated films before I was around. Hope I can follow in his footsteps one day.

Apologies for the late start today - I was trying to fly to join family in Portugal but my flight got cancelled at the last minute and I'm only just back from the airport, gonna have to do it all again tomorrow ><

but in the meantime, let me share a little taste of Annecy!!! Animation Night 161 will be beginning in about 15 minutes, 23:45 UK time, at twitch.tv/canmom, and I'll start the films at midnight. Would love to see you there!!

[swiftfootedachilles]

achilles! pls talk to me about early gallavich with trans mickey and enby ian, your thoughts are always such a delight <3

YAAAAYYY SOMEBODY WHO CARES ABOUT T4T GALLAVICH!!!!!🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

honestly - staying within canon as much as possible - i think nb ian would be essentially the same. he feels content enough with being considered a boy that he never considered any alternatives. he doesnt really learn about genders outside the binary until he dates trevor, and it takes a lot of dismantling internalized cisheteronormativity to fully realize himself

when he and mady start hanging out, he tries the whole "im gay on queer" facade for a few days but it falls apart pretty quickly when he and mandy get high and she convinces him to let her do his makeup. he loves baking with debbie no matter how many offensive things lip yells from the living room. he even kinda likes when fiona and vee and getting ready for a night out and they ask him what he thinks of their outfits

after he and mickey start banging and kinda becoming friends, he asks mickey questions about how he knew he was a guy, how be knew he was gay, etc. and its definitely eye-opening to him. he cant explain why, but it makes him super uncomfortable when transphobes say "youre fucking a trans guy so youre essentially straight" like being gay is just such a huge part of what makes ian ian. he doesnt figure it out for years, but its because being gay is inherent to his gender. being gay isnt just being a guy who fucks guys (though thats definitely the best part). its informs not just how be interacts with other men but how he views himself. his feelings are comparable to that of lesbians and dykes whose genders are simply "lesbian" or "dyke." theres a culture that surrounds it and complicates ones relationship with gender. hes a queer, a pansy, a fag. hes gay!!!

especially after dating trevor, ian sees gender as very performative and becomes somewhat gender-apathetic. he doesnt feel dysphoria and is still comfortable being viewed as a man and calling himself one. but he doesnt have strong ties to maleness like mickey does. mickey knows hes a man. he feels like his body is disconnected to his mind, he hates being viewed as anything other than male, he is very dedicated to the social performance of masculinity. where he gets upset about "not passing enough" if someone asks his pronouns, ian loves when someone asks him and doesnt immediately assume he primarily or only uses he/him. he loves dressing up nice to go to the gay bar (aka show off mickey) and people say "girl i love your outfit so much" "she is the moment!" it just makes him feel warm and sunny inside. he lets franny horribly paint his nails and get lipstick all over his face. he has deep philosophy conversations with liam about gender, sexuality, race, and societal expectations for all 3. he lets mickey introduce him as "spouse" to strangers. he gives mickey second hand embarrassment by referring to his dick in the third person as "she." ian is just vibing and living her best life!!!!

[navree]

sometimes i sit and think about that trojan war retelling that decided to make achilles a trans woman or that lady who wrote an odyssey retelling and then said she never read the odyssey or anything written by madeline miller and i know that my quest to gatekeep greek mythology is a righteous one

[ceabu]

Okay, I'm a little too busy to type up a full analysis of "It's Alright", but I had this analysis here already typed up from a while ago, so here you are:

Okay so an animatic by BunnyTriesToAnimate YT got me listening to Gang of Youth’s “Achilles, Come Down” and thinking about all the Gamzee vibes it holds, so here is my half-rambling half-organized essay:

Why “Achilles, Come Down” has Soft Pale Gamkar Vibes:

You’re scaring us / And all of us / Some of us love you / Achilles, it’s not much but there’s proof

Gamzee terrifies everyone with the violence and general instability; not everyone loves him after his actions but Karkat still chooses to calm him rather than kill him

The lines “You crazy assed cosmonaut” and “The self is not so weightless / Nor whole and unbroken” are giving me strong Sopored Gamzee vibes

Hurt and grieve but don’t suffer alone / Engage with the pain as a motive

Gamzee grieving Tavros + Gamzee’s Abandonment Issues (“don’t suffer alone”)

Tonight of all nights / See how the most dangerous thing is to love / How you will heal and rise above

“The most dangerous thing is to love” giving me huge “Gamzee putting stock in people who abandon him (Goatdad) or don’t reciprocate (Tavros, initially)” vibes, AKA Gamzee’s Abandonment Issues; but that’s not to say Gamzee can’t rise above that hurt and get better.

And then the voice encouraging Achillies to jump can be likened to the voices Gamzee was hearing in withdrawal, with lines like “No audience could ever love you // You crave the applause” being so poignantly GAI.

And then lines like “your act is a ruse” or “Don’t listen to what you’ve consumed” have a sort of double meaning that applies to both Sopored and Withdrawal Gamzee; the sedated state he’s in when on the sopor isn’t really him, but neither is the murderous and unstable subjugglator struggling through withdrawal and a litany of other issues; Gamzee needs to stop poisoning himself on sopor and letting it cloud his mind, but he also needs to not listen to the voices telling him to murderize and subjugglate. And then “Just put down the bottle” also has a sort of double meaning to it—put down the sopor, put down the club.

“It’s chaos, confusion / And wholly unworthy / Of feeding and wholly untrue” being in reference to the voices and withdrawal and ICP video.

And then the next few verses, about not seeing any meaning in life, but one should grasp onto one anyway, because it’s more courageous to fight through and overcome , all ring of certain key aspects of Gamzee’s story—using sopor (and repression in general) to deal with the shitty situation with Goatdad, only for that to turn into an addiction and rot his pan into “conjecture and gloom”; being calmed down by Karkat being the “bells [ringing] deep in the soul.”

And then “Throw yourself… a triumph” just reeks of Gamzee daring to be more than his blood, more than the murderous rage that killed Equius and Nepeta, more than the pan-addled sopor addict who was too sedated/high to actually process what was happening around him.

Now, at this point, after a full 450 words of analysis, you might be wondering how, exactly, this is strictly related to Gamkar. Though this whole analysis is subjective, the major theme of the song is Achilles being talked down from the edge—which reeks of moirallegiance. Hence, Pale Gamkar. I end this overwrought analysis with this:

What vibes do you get from this song?

okay first of all.......that animatic really hurt lol like i actually felt really down after that ( can u guess the fucking reason aodishoasdgh )

but oh man u really had this laying around huh

i cant really add anything lmao other than yes i agree 100% with this

ur half-rambling half-organized essay was beautifully worded and if i were the teacher i would give u A+ ( u give letters as grades in america right?? asdohasd ) WITH SHINY STARS ALL AROUND

thank u for sharing this with me anon ( u 3 u ) mwah

[hms-chill]

Hii! I see you've read RWRB (which means you obviously have impeccable taste) and was wondering if you could recommend any more LGBTQ+ books? Thank you!!

OH MY GOD I HAVE SO MANY!! It really depends on what genre you’re interested in and what you like; I’ll sort of try to break it down that way (and not just rec every gay book I’ve ever read lmao)

General fiction:

 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz is about two Mexican boys growing up in El Paso in the late 1980s and the writing style is absolutely incredible. It was the first Gay Book(tm) I remember and I spent months of 2012-2013 trying to find a copy and it was 100% worth it.

Simon Vs. the Homo Sapien Agenda by Becky Albertalli. We know it, we love it, I wanted to include it anyway.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee is a historical fiction (leaning on fantasy) romp about a boy in the 18th century going on his grand tour with the best friend he’s in love with; the sequel stars his aro/ace sister. Bi lead, Black gay love interest, and a sequel about the importance of girl friendships.

I’m on page four of Gail Wilhelm’s Torchlight to Valhalla but I love the writing style and the fact that it’s a lesbian book from 1938 that apparently ends happily almost made me cry so there’s that.

anything by Virginia Woolf, but especially Orlando, which is a love letter to her girlfriend.

Soft Place to Fall by Ba Tortuga is a fun gay cowboy romance; it’s dumb and sappy and predictable and fantastic.

Sci-Fi / Fantasy

THIS IS WHERE I THRIVE this is my wheelhouse so sorry if I get carried away lol

anything by Sarah Gailey. Their Upright Women Wanted is about queer librarian spies in a futuristic wild west. The American Hippo series (River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow) is about queer hippo wranglers in an alternate 19th century. Magic for Liars is a murder mystery set in a magic school, perfect if you’re trying to ditch She Who Must Not Be Named but still want your fun magic school itch scratched.

Nottingham by Anna Burke is a lesbian retelling of Robin Hood; I’m still working through it but I’m pretty sure all the merry men are queer women and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas is absolutely fantastic; it’s got an entirely Latinx cast with a trans lead and a ghost love interest; 15/10 almost made me cry.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo has that casual queer rep that I absolutely adore. Like yeah sometimes you need a book about Being Queer but sometimes you also need a heist where the badass gunslinger casually goes “oh yeah not just girls” and steals a tank, you know?

This is very I’m A Child Of The Late 90s/ Early 2000s but Tamora Pierce was huge for me growing up. She clearly stuffed as many queer characters into her world as publishers would let her, and recently she’s confirmed fan theories about even more queerness (ace/aro characters, trans readings, etc) in her work.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness was published in 1969 and treats gender as a fluid thing; I haven’t read it yet but it’s on my bedside table and I’m very excited to get to it.

Poetry

all of it straight people don’t get poems

Badger Clark was a gay cowboy poet; I love his stuff so much. “The Westerner” made me absolutely feral and “Others” gutted me.

Wilfred Owen is best known for his work about WWI, but “Maundy Thursday” and “How Do I Love Thee” are absolutely incredible.

Whitman wrote poems about being gay and was one of the more iconic queer voices of the 19th century, at least in literary circles.

Byron was an icon and also incredibly queer.

Sappho is the iconic one; Anne Carson’s translation of her work (If Not, Winter) is fantastic and the one I’d personally recommend.

Classics

If you’re down to read between the lines do I have some books for you

Stoker was gay (and wrote thirsty letters to Whitman), and no one can convince me that Dracula is a straight book. Arthur and Quincey were dating thank you for coming to my TEDx talk.

The Iliad is long and complex but also Achilles and Patroclus wanted their ashes mixed when they died (fellas...)

anything by Wilde but especially A Portrait of Dorian Gray.

Les Miserables has a character who “admired, loved, and venerated” another man, and who “took great care not to believe in anything” but said other man (fellas...). There’s also an entire page about how the lead has never felt any form of love other than familial (fellas... is it aro to spend a whole page talking about how you’ve never loved anyone).

I haven’t read Moby Dick but I know there’s like three pages about how much the narrator loves his crewmate (fellas...)

Nonfiction

A lot of people are scared of nonfic but I’m gonna let you in on a secret: you don’t have to read the whole book. Pick and choose chapters that interest you, put it down for a year, whatever. Nonfic’ll be there for you.

Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson is a look into his parents’ open relationship and his mother’s relationship with Virginia Woolf; it’s a gorgeous exploration of the various ways that love and marriage can be flexible and it changed how I look at relationships.

A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski is a good intro to queer history.

We Are Everywhere by Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown is a great look at the Stonewall Era and the time after especially, and it’s full of incredible pictures. They also run @/lgbt_history on insta and 10/10 for that.

Love and Resistance: Out of the Closet and Into the Stonewall Era by Jason Baumann is fantastic too; it’s got pictures and short descriptions of what’s happening in them. Maybe not a first place, but if you know the general scope of the queer rights movement it’s a fantastic thing (or if you don’t and you’re ready to google lmao).

My Dear Boy or anything else by Rictor Norton is incredible. My Dear Boy is a collection of gay love letters; he’s also got books on queer culture in 18th century London and queering the Gothic. You can find a lot of his stuff online here and My Dear Boy specifically here.

If you want more/ something more specific, don’t hesitate!! I work in a library and I’m always finding new gay stuff and I love it.

[skinks]

hi!!! what are your favourite movies? like actually good ones but also any trashy comfort movies? is IT (2017) one of them?

Hello!! IT (2017) IS ABSOLUTELY ONE OF THEM oh man, thank you for this, I love talking about movies!!!! This is possibly the most difficult question you could have asked me. Apologies for how absolutely off the rails this got, I just... love movies so much lmao

I’ve said this before, but opening night of IT ch1 was the best cinema experience I’ve ever had, I’m so glad I got to see it with a fully packed audience who were all laughing and screaming together the whole way through. I’m a huge fan of... everything ch1 was doing, the 80s nostalgia, the summer-coming-of-age themes, the solid ghost train funhouse JOY of the Pennywise performance and scares, the washed-out cinematography, the tiny background details to make everything that much more eerie, the kids’ ACTING?!

Like, a lot of the time I find child actors can be really awkward and stilted to watch, but I remember leaving the cinema really impressed by JDG and Sophia Lillis in particular. I liked that they were all allowed to be little shitheads with potty mouths, it felt like a callback to 80s movies like The Lost Boys or Stand By Me. The whole thing worked to make me really care about what happened to the kids (even if I do still have issues with how they handled Mike. I understand even ch1 had limitations with juggling so many characters, but still). I saw it another 2 times in the cinema and have rewatched it at least, I dunno, 7-10 more times since then?

Add to all of that the retroactive CANON R+E baby pining subplot? I just love it, as if that wasn’t obvious by now given my Whole Blog. It’s a really special movie to me!

Anyway!! Ok, the main handful of movies I rewatch all the fucking time are:

Back to the Future, The Lost Boys, Pride and Prejudice (2005), Jaws, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Ocean’s 11, POTC 1, The Dark Knight, Inception, Die Hard, LOTR trilogy, Snatch, The Nice Guys, Logan Lucky, Mad Max Fury Road, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Billy Elliot, Dirty Dancing, Tomb Raider (2018)...

Those are the easily consumable ones that I’ve seen so many times I don’t really have to concentrate or think about them, but I really love them and unfortunately often KEEP rewatching them instead of new stuff. It would take too long to go into why I love all these movies so much because I could write the same amount as I already did for ITCH1, and everyone already knows why those movies are good, so, lol.

I think I’m gonna have to subdivide and categorise this whole post because there are too many separate criteria for... goOD MOVIES, AUUHH 😩

Okay so first off, HORROR MOVIES? I’m especially in love with Re-Animator (1985) and its sequel Bride of Re-Animator, they’re such good examples of camp and batshit 80s practical effects, and also EXTREMELY funny. I’m actually just gonna post my list of my fave horror movies that I do actually keep on my phone at all times lmao. These are in no particular order:

Wholeheartedly recommend every one of these. I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was watching Hereditary in the cinema, hoo boy. Mother! by Aronofsky is one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had (and I actually saw it on the same day I saw IT ch1 for the first time!! That was a fun day)

Psycho (1960) and The Fly from 1986 should also be on there but I couldn’t fit them in the screenshot.

I’m a HUGE fan of a ton of martial arts movies too, like Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer, Ip Man, The Raid movies, John Wick 3 is my fave of the trilogy, Drive from 1997 with Mark Dacascos is incredible, SPL 2, Ong-Bak, Operation Condor, Project A, Iron Monkey, and Zatoichi (2003) are some favourites.

My favourite Tarantino is Reservoir Dogs, fave Coen brothers are Raising Arizona, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and O Brother Where Art Thou. Love some old-timey colour correction and weird offbeat dialogue. I also love Goodfellas!!! And Donnie Brasco! And The Firm, I’m so easy for any good crime/law/gangster/heist procedural like that, especially if they’re from the 80s or 90s in a super dated way.

Fave Disney movie is Tarzan, favourite Ghibli movies are Spirited Away and Lupin III. I remember watching Spirited Away during a thunderstorm one time and it being.... god! Transcendent! Favourite Pixar movie is The Incredibles (the first one. ALSO the documentary “The Pixar Story” is great and well worth a watch, it’s very comforting for some reason) and my favourite Dreamworks movies are HTTYD1 and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron.

I tend to watch more anime movies than tv shows, so stuff like Akira, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Journey to Agartha, and my ultimate fave anime is Sword of the Stranger (2008). The climactic fight in that movie is fucking stunning and should be counted in “bests fights” lists right alongside anything live action

Also if we’re talking animated movies another hearty favourite is Rango, and a Belgian stop-motion (which at one time I considered my favourite movie ever) called Panique Au Village (2009) which is one of the funniest movies ever made imo.

As for TRASHY movies, I’m not sure if that’s the right word for how I feel about these ones but.. dumb/silly/slightly guilty pleasure movies? Ones that I feel need some kind of justification lmfao

Troy - something u must know about me is that I’m a giant slut for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, so if a movie smashes historical and mythological nonsense together with fun costumes and sword fights, I’m gonna enjoy myself. Even if they should have made Achilles and Patroclus gay. Other movies in this vein are King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and Immortals (2011)

Gods of Egypt - I know all the reasons this movie is whitewashed bullshit. But it was already bullshit with giant Anubis mecha and giant snakes and bad acting and ridiculous CGI and frankly I had a blast at the cinema (my friend who I forced to come with me did not have a blast. Sorry H***)

Avatar - yes, the one with the big blue people. This movie gets a lot of flack nowadays but I really do enjoy it just for the spectacle. The full CGI world technology was so new at the time and I love to wallow in the visuals and daydream about riding a cool dragon around in the jungle

George of the Jungle - I’ll defend this movie to the death ok this movie shaped me as a person, it is fucking hilarious and Brendan Fraser is the himbo to end all himbos. It’s perfect. The song Dela is perfect. I still want to write a reddie AU about it. It’s one of the best movies ever made and I’m not being ironic

Set It Up - I KNOW this is a dumb Netflix original romcom but consider this; it was funny and the leads had great chemistry. I got butterflies. I once watched it and then literally immediately set it back to the start so I could watch it again

The Brady Bunch Movie - when people talk about great satires or parodies you will see them bring up the same movies over and over again, Blazing Saddles, This Is Spinal Tap etc, but they never talk about The Brady Bunch Movie from 1995 for some reason, which they should. It is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen and every time i watch it somehow it gets funnier

Some more general favourites that I do still love but don’t rewatch as often, and don’t wanna go into more detail about are:

Moon (2009), Crna Mačka Beli Mačor, The Sixth Sense, Parasite, The Handmaiden, Tremors, Wet Hot American Summer, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt For the Wilderpeople, The Secret of My Success (I love kitschy 80s movies, is that obvious by now), The Green Mile, When Harry Met Sally, Rear Window, The Odd Couple, Breaking Away, Pan’s Labyrinth, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Eagle, Gladiator, The Artist, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, Call Me By Your Name, Master and Commander, Pacific Rim, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Legend (1985), Emma. (2020), Flash Gordon, Trolljegeren, Hross í Oss, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, WarGames, District 9, Ajeossi (2010), Tracks (2013), Sightseers, Mud (2012), Pitch Black, Four Lions, Shaun of the Dead, Starship Troopers, The Truman Show, Withnail & I....... Jesus Christ ok I need to stop

NOTABLE EXTREME FAVOURITES that I didn’t include in the regular rewatch list because they’re too heavy/not as well known/require more attention.:

Thin Red Line (1998), Badlands (1973) both dir. Terrence Malick

Malick’s brand of dreamy impressionistic filmmaking is something I find really appealing, both of these movies are gorgeous and unusual and poignant and, in the case of Thin Red Line at least, have a lot of things to say about a lot of rough subjects. I don’t totally understand all those things sometimes, but a theme with a lot of my favourite movies is that I’ll be more likely to love something long-term if it raises unanswered questions, or is surreal/esoteric etc. Plus the cinematography is incredible, and I wish there was a way to get Jim Caviezel’s narration from The Thin Red Line as an audiobook because it’s very poetic and soothing.

Let the Bullets Fly (2010) dir. Jiang Wen

This movie is WILD, it’s so much fun. It’s sprawling and intricate and epic and smart and really fucking funny, it! Has! Everything! A gang of very tolerant outlaws!! Jiang Wen’s beautiful broad chest!!! Chow Yun Fat absolutely DECIMATING the scenery, and the two of them outsmarting each other in order to gain control of a small Chinese town!!! Plus it’s long, but it packs so much nonsense and intrigue that it goes by really fast. Wow what a flick

A Field in England (2013) dir. Ben Wheatley

I know I included this in my horror list but aaaaahhh ahhhh Wheatley is one of my favourite directors (he also made Sightseers, and is directing the Tomb Raider sequel which makes me absolutely rabid.) This is a surreal black-and-white psychological horror black comedy set in the English Civil War about some deserters who may or may not meet the Devil in a field. People eat mushrooms. It’s bonkers. I love being blasted in the face with imagery that I don’t understand

Mandy (2018) dir. Panos Cosmatos

Speaking of being blasted in the face!!!!! This movie... I saw it in the cinema and I can’t even begin to explain the experience, but I’ll try. My favourite review site described it like this:

“...somewhere between a prog album cover come to life and a metal album cover come to life, and subscribes to both genre's artistic tendency towards maximalism: what it ends up being is basically naught else but two glorious hours of being pounded by bold colors...”

So, prog and metal are my two favourite genres of music. This movie opens with the quote “When I die, bury me deep, lay two speakers at my feet, put some headphones on my head and rock and roll me when I'm dead.” and then a King Crimson song, it is SURREAL to the nth degree, it’s violent and bizarre and Nic Cage forges a giant silver axe to destroy demonic bikers and there is a CHAINSAW DUEL. A galaxy swirls above a quarry. Multiple animated horror nightmare sequences. At one point a man says “you exude a cosmic darkness” and releases a live tiger. At another point Cage says, in a digitally deepened voice, “The psychotic drowns where the mystic swims. You’re drowning. I’m swimming.” and I haven’t stopped thinking about it for two years

Paper Moon (1973) dir. Peter Bogdanovich

Really fantastic movie set in the Great Depression (and also in black & white) about a conman and a little kid who may or may not be his daughter, running cons across the Midwest. It’s beautifully shot, so sharp and sweet and the progression of their dynamic is really well done because they’re played by an IRL father and daughter. Tatum O’Neal was NINE YEARS OLD and she’s so amazing in this movie she’s actually the youngest person to win a competitive category Oscar. I keep trying to get people to watch this fbdjfjdbf it’s wonderful

Alpha (2018) dir. Albert Hughes

THIS MOVIE IS A VICTIM OF BAD MARKETING ok, the trailers made it look like some twee crappy sentimental Boy And His Dog Adventure, plus it had voiceovers in American-accented english? That’s a total disservice to one of the coolest things about this film; the fact that they got a linguist to construct an entirely original Neolithic language that all the characters speak for the entire runtime. And yes, it is eventually a Boy And His Wolf adventure, but it’s COOL and fairly brutal, and it has some really incredible cinematography. The landscapes are so strange and barren and alien, you really get the sense that this is an ancient world we no longer have any connection to. And it’s also about like, the birth of dog & human companionship sooo it’s perfect.

Free Solo (2018) dir. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

The Free Climbing Documentary. I loved climbing as a kid, I love outdoor sports, and I love movies that elicit a physical reaction in me, whether that’s horny, scared, real laughter, overwhelming shivers, or in the case of Free Solo - HORRIBLE SWEATING TENSION. Like, I knew about Alex Honnold beforehand because of this adventure film festival I go to every year and I followed him on IG so obviously I knew he lived, but the actual climb itself was torture. My hands sweat every time I see it!! It’s incredible, such a cool look into generally what the human body can do, and more specifically, why Honnold’s psychology and life means he’s so well suited to free soloing. It’s such an exercise in getting to know an individual and get invested in them, before they attempt something very potentially fatal.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee

I can’t even talk about this. When I was around 13 I snuck downstairs to watch this on TV at 11pm in secret, and my life was forever changed. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t seen Brokeback at the age I did. I seriously can’t talk about this or I’ll write an even longer essay than this already is

God’s Own Country (2017) dir. Francis Lee

The antidote to Brokeback Mountain, I’m so glad I managed to see this one in the cinema too. It makes me cry every time, as someone who’s spent years working on a cold British farm with sheep it was very realistic, which is expected since Lee grew up on a farm in Yorkshire. I love that this movie isn’t really about being closeted, but about being so emotionally repressed and self-loathing that the main character finds it so hard to accept love. Or that he deserves to be loved. The cinnamontographies.... lordt... but also the intimacy and sex scenes are fucking searing wow who hasn’t seen this movie by now. 10 stars. 20 stars!!!

Tomboy (2011) dir. Céline Sciamma

I saw this years ago but I’ve never forgotten it, it cut so deep. It’s from the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and it’s about a gnc kid struggling with gender and misogyny and homophobia in a really raw, scrappy way, it reminded me very much of my own... childhood... ahh the central performance is amazing for such a young age. I haven’t seen Portrait yet but I feel like if you went nuts for that, you should definitely check this out, it’s lovely.

Donnie Darko (2001) dir. Richard Kelly

EVERY TIME I WATCH THIS MOVIE I UNDERSTAND LESS AND LESS and that’s what I love so much about it. I love surreal movies, I love time-fuckery and stuff about altered perception etc etc and Donnie Darko scratches all my itches. I wish I could find a way to figure out an IT AU for it, because I know it would work! Somehow! Plus it’s got the subdued 80s nostalgia and I found it at an age when I was really starting to explore movies and music and the soundtrack FUCKS.

Offside (2006) dir. Jafar Panahi

I wish more people knew about this!!! It’s an Iranian film about a disparate group of women and girls who are football fans and want to watch Iran’s qualifying match for the World Cup, but women aren’t allowed into the stadium, so they all get thrown into the Stadium Jail together? They don’t know each other beforehand, but it’s about their changing relationships with each other and the guards and just, their defiance alongside hearing the match from the outside and WOW it’s so lively. Great dialogue and very funny, and such a different kind of story from anything you usually see from Hollywood.

The Fall (2006) dir. Tarsem Singh

This movie... I guess it’s the ideal. This is the platonic ideal of a film for me, it has fantasy, magical realism, glorious visuals, amazing score and costumes and production design and a really interesting, heartbreaking relationship at the core of it. I don’t know why so many of my favourite films feature incredibly raw performances by child actors but this is another one, Catinca Untaru barely knew any English and improvised so much because of that, and it’s fascinating to watch! Also the dynamic with Lee Pace is one of my favourites, where a kid forms a friendship with a guardian figure who isn’t their parent, but the guardian grows to really care for them by the end. It’s like Paper Moon in that sense. What is there to even say about this movie, it’s pure magic joy tempered and countered by genuine gutwrenching emotional conflict in the real world, it’s also ABOUT old moviemaking, in a way, and it’s stunning to look at!

Mad Max Fury Road (2015) dir. George Miller

I know I included this in my “most rewatched” section but it deserves its own thing. We all know why this movie is fucking incredible. I remember clutching my armrests in the cinema and feeling like my skeleton was being blasted back into the seat behind me and tbh that is the high I’m constantly chasing when I go to see any movie. What a fucking gift this film is

Théo et Hugo dans le Même Bateau (2016) dir. Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau

I only found this movie last year and it became an instant favourite. Initially I was just curious because I’d never seen a movie with unsimulated sex before, but it’s so much more than the 18 minute gay sex club orgy it opens with. No, not more than, AS WELL AS. The orgy is important because this movie is so candid and frank about sex and HIV treatment in the modern day, it was eye-opening. Another thing that really got me is that I’d never seen a real-time film before. It’s literally an hour and a half in the lives of these two men, their intense connection and conversation and conflict in the middle of the night in Paris, with some really nice night photography and just!!! Wow!!! AMAZING CHEMISTRY between the actors. This is such a gem if you’re comfortable with explicit sexual content.

Ok. This is already over 3k but film is obviously one of my ridiculous passions and I can and do talk about it for hours. I’ve been reading magazines about it for years, listening to podcasts and reading review blogs and recently, watching video essays on YouTube because the whole process is so interesting to me and I want to learn more!!

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of valuing form over narrative. The idea that story can often come second to the deeper physical experience and emotional reaction that’s created by using ALL the elements of filmmaking and not just The Story, y’know? Whether that’s editing, shot composition, colour, the sound mix, the actors, how it should all be used to heighten the emotional state the script wants you to feel. And so, I think for a few years now this approach has been influencing the types of films I really, really love.

I think I love surreality and mind-bending magical realism in films specifically because the filmmakers have to use all those different tools to convey things that can be way too metaphysical for just... a script? I’m always chasing that physical response; if a movie can make me stop thinking “I wonder what it was like to set up that shot” and instead overwhelm that suspension of disbelief, if I can be terrified or woozy or crying for whatever reason, that’s what I’m looking for. That’s why I watch so many fuckin movies, and why I’ll always remember nights like seeing IT (2017) for giving me another favourite.

Thank you again for this question, I didn’t mean to go so overboard. Also there’s no way to do a readmore on tumblr mobile so apologies to anyone’s dashboard 😬

[iphisesque]

Yes rant about an italian book no one has ever heard of. I love to learn more and now im so curious too haha. Pls endulge me here lol

Happy to indulge you and the others who asked about it ❤️

The book in question is "Il morso della vipera" by Alice Basso, an author whose previous book series I adore and who definitely did not disappoint me with this novel! It is a mystery novel set in 1935 Turin, right during the fascist Ventennio, and it follows a young woman named Anita who decides to work for a while before getting married, gets hired as a typist in a small detective story publishing house and inadvertently stumbles upon an unsolved murder dating back to WWI alongside her editor/coworker/translator/boss.

Now, there are a lot of characters who are either purposefully queer-coded (and not made explicit because you know, fascist regime going on) or subtextually indicated as gay: the one character I'm sure was purposefully written as a closeted lesbian is our queen Candida, Anita's old school teacher and dear friend who smokes cigars, wears pants, has a secret stash of banned books and is repeatedly said to have never married and have no interest in doing so, often advising Anita and her friend Clara to focus on being the intelligent women they are and maintaining their intellect instead of marrying off to some fascist and bearing six children for him. Anita mentions many times what an influence and inspiration Candida is to her and Clara, and just as many times she mentions how she pointedly refuses to conform to societal norms, as a working, unmarried woman in her 40s-50s who loves to read and have intellectual discussions and surround herself with other like-minded women; all of this to me reads very clearly as a lesbian mentor figure who is simply not out to the main character, and I do hope to see her either come out in some way or find a lover of the same gender in the later books, though of course she wouldn't need to do so to be a lesbian icon.

Now, the rest of this post is more just me projecting and reaching a lot, but I also feel like Clara, Anita's friend, was strongly hinted at to be a lesbian: she is often compared to Candida, as she is also an intellectual bookworm and a working woman with no particular interest in men (this is said to be reciprocated, as she is not exactly attractive, something even she points out and relishes in, as it "keeps ill-intentioned boys at bay"), to the point that while reading the book I was dreadfully anticipating the reveal of a sexual relationship between Clara and Candida à la "Life of Adèle", which luckily never happened.

As for the men, there's a specific scene in this book that sent my gay radar FLYING, and that is chapters 10-11: a bit of context with extremely mild spoilers is that in this chapter Anita, who was previously convinced that her aforementioned editor/coworker/etc Sebastiano was a devout fascist, walks by the publishing house and therein finds Sebastiano and another man talking, reading poetry and semi-openly insulting the regime (which makes sense for them to do in context, they're not like yelling "fuck fascists" at a busy street). We find out that Sebastiano and the other man, the Italian-American Julian, are colleagues and very dear friends, who know everything about each other and trust each other with everything, from original poetry and detective stories to risky political opinions to intimate thoughts, and they're both trying to elude the regime into thinking they're the perfect ideal of the virile fascist man for various reasons, with Sebastiano even being engaged to the daughter of a local fascist leader.

Of course, two men being close friends does not necessarily mean they're gay, but I think the story would have been extremely enriched by them having/having had a relationship (Sebastiano later has a flirtationship with Anita I really like, so I could see him as bisexual): imagine if, aside from Sebastiano's stated motives of acting like a perfect fascist to protect his communist father and be able to publish his stories, he was also keeping up that pretence and overcompensating to hide his same-sex attraction and his affair with a man! That immediately raises the stakes of it all, adding tension to the story that goes beyond "if the facade falls the publishing house gets shut down", and with the way the scene is written it's a change easily made: in canon Anita sees them talking from the window, Sebastiano crying (a moment she literally describes as him looking like Achilles, known gay) and Julian consoling him, they hug and insult fascists and lightly banter as they pop open a bottle of cognac, she gets caught spying by Julian and Sebastiano spills the beans.

It would be easy and a huge plot twist if instead of hugging by the window they kissed and Anita saw, and Sebastiano wouldn't even have to spell out that they're in a relationship, which could leave Anita wondering about his real motivation and about what other things he's hiding from her! It's such a missed opportunity in my opinion, though of course it would be quite a risky move, making your male love interest/co-protagonist bisexual.

That is IT, thank you for coming to my TEDtalk about the gay subtext of this book ❤️

[queensgaybeach1d]

What video did louis film in a gay bar? Is there proof?

Hey Honeybear,

My apologies for answering this late. Louis filmed Miss You in a Gay Bar, that is definitely what I think. There is proof of that, but there is also debate. That is why I love him! I thought no one would ever ask. Thank you for this moment!!

First I would like to play a little game. It is called ‘spot the triangles’. There are tons of triangles in the music video. A (pink) triangle is a symbol for gay people. In gay bars you can see that a lot. It is beautiful. 

1. This triangle behind Louis at 2:24

2. Here we have to pink triangle. This triangle comes back a few times in the video. This one is at 2:33. 

Then he shows up again at 2:46 behind Louis. They make a beautiful team.

The triangle has a twin brother. Both pink triangles, symbol of the gay community, appear at 2:54 again.

Behind this guy out lovely triangle appears too at 2:59.

Then, at the end of the music video you can see Louis alone and in the background you can see two triangles. A few seconds after that Louis beautiful soft face is in the music video and behind him you can see a hq pink triangle. That absolutely says something. Not to mention, the word ‘Style’ written on something. 

You can also see the circle a couple of times. An inverted pink triangle surrounded by a green circle, as used to symbolize alliance with gay rights and spaces free from homophobia.

Now, a few antis do not want to believe the triangle is important to him. Which is weird because guess three times who has a triangle tattooed on his Achilles heel at the end of December 2012/ early 2013? Louis William Tomlinson. 

I still remember the day of the 1D This is us Premiere. Louis showed his triangle tattoo and it was perfect. Then, Harry ‘extra’ Styles tweeted this:

Guess what Louis has on his ankles? A triangle. What can we tell about a man with a triangle on his ankle? He’s gay.

Still, there are some people who think he just likes the shape of the triangle and not the ties to the Gay community or that he does not even know what it means. Believe me, he does. After tons of fans going crazy when he showed the triangle to us there is no way he does not know the meaning to it. Some of you might not have experienced those days, but it means a lot to me and other larries. 

Some people deny it is for the homosexual/ LGBTQ community. That is reaching, because we have tons of other moments in which he clearly hints at being into guys and not into girls at all. I will talk about this in another masterpost if you do not mind ;)

Almost everyone knows the pink triangle as a Gay symbol, if not LGBTQ symbol. 

1. It is even in Lady Gaga’s Born This Way music video. We know the song is about everything but heterosexuality. 

2. Various celebrities have it tattooed on their arm, it does not always mean people are gay, but when it comes to Louis I absolutely think he screams I AM GAY with that tattoo. (We have a lot of stuff to back that up). Nick Grimshaw has it too.

This is a scene from a gay movie called Handsome Devil it is an amazing movie. There is this scene in which a male rugby player goes to a gay bar and look what we see; Two bright pink triangles.

One yellow triangle in the middle of the room:

This is to show you guys how everyone actually knows that a triangle in a bar means it is a gay bar. Especially those bright triangles on the walls. It is the same as in Louis’ music video. A friend of my cousin is gay and he goes to these clubs all the time. He even stated that in those clubs a triangle is always on display. If I have other proof of it being a gay bar I will definitely add it to this post, no worries!

Louis has worn triangles for a long long long time. This one is from back in May 2012.  It is a plain white shirt with a HUGE UPSIDE DOWN triangle on it. You can wear a normal triangle and I’d be like ‘ok’ but an upside down triangle for a guy who got it tattooed is a HUGE thing. How loud and clear does someone have to be? He DEFINITELY knew what the sign meant back in 2012. He got it tattooed less that a year later. 

This one is also from 2012. It is a triangle with a colorful rainbow pattern. It is the one with the eye, he wears those too. 

2017

2018

 Thank you so much for this ask, I loved every single second of it! Have a gorgeous week, baby!

[twosidesofhorror]

My take on... Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

To combine a creepy, half-burned up elderly man from Europe, an extreme case of discrimination from the ideology of the SS during World War 2, an Egyptian mystical curse or spell that is still active after one’s death, a 30th anniversary of a mass killing spree and… puppets?

The movie is about a guy named Edgar who gets a divorce and is invited by his mom to stay at her and his dads house for the time being. He works in a comic bookstore with his best friend Markowitz, where he sells and draws comics. While being is his hometown he meets this girl from high school again named Ashley and they start to date. Besides from the kissing and (apparently) lots of sexy time you see nothing of this relationship. He is trying to find ways to get money so he can get a place of his own. Being back at his childhood home he scouts through old boxes and drawers to feel sorry for himself and be melodramatic. He finds an odd-looking doll which used to be his brother’s, before he sadly passed away. Now, as soon as he grabs the doll and starts to turn it over and upside down, a knife comes right out of the dolls hand and slices his inner arm. But that is not all. As soon as he turns it around again and stares into those hollow eyes, a hook comes out of his other hand. He finds out his brother found this doll at a camp he went to and had never any real attachment to it, so Edgar tries to find a place to sell it. He finds out there is an auction for these kinds of dolls at an 30th anniversary of the infamous Toulon-murders. Because that is something worth celebration, obviously.

The three of them (Edgar, Markowitz and Ashley) decide to go there and see what it is all about, and to try to sell the doll. They check into a hotel to stay for a couple days. On the second day they get a tour off the house where Mr. Toulon tortured and murdered people, and where he made his infamous dolls. Here everyone finds out that dear Mr. Toulon was a dedicated Nazi-lover and fanatic. His grave, a gorgeous mausoleum with weird looking spikes, which Edgar is so kind to point out, is also on this land. When they get back to the hotel all hell breaks loose in a rapid motion. First, several people report their dolls missing and stolen. While this is being discusses and investigated with the local police the first murders take place. These are some weird ass murders where the victims are chosen based on the “racial purity” ideology of the SS. We see a man and a prostitute getting stabbed during sex, a gay man getting his throat sliced right after he finishes talking to his mom, a lazy-ass fat and disgusting man gets his head chopped off while peeing (after which he pees on his own head, lovely), a sleeping, pregnant lady getting her belly ripped open because a puppet entered via her backdoor and goes off with her unborn child. One puppet rips open a poor, old man’s back and decides to take over his body completely. Just to name a few. And all these murders and commotion seem to happen so fast it almost look surreal. Now, I can withstand gore and weird ways of slicing bodies up or stabbing people in sensitive places like the eyes, but what I can and will not accept in any movie is when someone’s ankles are being sliced, right through the Achilles heel. I hoped the scene in Hostel was the one and only time I had to see that, but unfortunately, no. No, they had to get that in during the sex-scene. Thank you very much.  

After more deaths and more hysteria all the hotel guests are asked to assemble in the lobby, where everybody decides to freak the fuck out after the power goes out. Thrice. Because that’s what’s really scary off course. They dare to just run for it and hope for the best. All I can say is that hope wasn’t on their side that evening. The surviving smarty-panties decide to take cover in the kitchen. After realizing these puppets are notorious Nazi’s, they try to use their dear friend Markowitz, who happens to be a Jew, as bait and just shoot these guys senseless. The only problem is that there might be around 40+ puppets who are possessed, and tiny, and super strong and stealthy, and work together and punch holes and get to your unborn child through your rectum and what not. So, what could possibly go wrong, right?

One of the funniest moments where I had to slap myself across the face because I couldn’t believe they actually did this, is where Markowitz sort of finds a girl to hook up with and this girl is just plain stupid. This girl happens to have a manga character pin on her work shirt and being the comic fanatic that he is, he recognizes it, and the two of them start talking. When they use big guy Marko here as bait and things turn bad, he and his girlfriend, alongside Edgar and Ashley decide to take cover in a hotel room. Here poor Marko gets stabbed in the throat and dies. But they can’t morn now, there are killer puppets after them! They start to jump out of the window one by one with Marko’s little Asian girlfriend as last. Edgar and Ashley, having normal IQ’s, jump right into the dumpster downstairs. This girl does not. She jumps right onto the side of the dumpster and dies instantly…

Where this movie is already so bad it is actually entertaining, they decide to throw that scene in like it is nothing. And it is nothing, not really. But, just, why?

Edgar says in a very sweet, little voice that he now knows how his brother died.

Edgar and Ashley seem to know how to stop all this and head to Mr. Toulon’s mausoleum. When they arrive after a thirty-minute drive or so and stop the car for a minute, they decide to buckle up. Because… logic. They see that those weird spikes are giving off electrical shocks. Edgar here warns his girlfriend very briefly about driving the car straight through the mausoleum’s wall before he does just that. Mr. Toulon gets disturbed in his death and the puppets stop killing. Unfortunately for the two lovebirds, Mr. Toulon isn’t as dead, and slow, and dumb as zombie movies make them seem. But then again this is an Egyptian spell, not a zombie-virus. Mr. Toulon kicks the shit out of the two and goes back to grab his gun (?) and shoot Ashley, after which he just leaves and let’s Edgar live.

Do the puppets get alive after this again? Because Mr. Toulon is not really dead. Why does it happen now? How does he get this spell? Why does he have this spell? So many questions…

This movie is full of weird and sudden deaths, fast paced shifts between scenes and a story which is not really explained. You get almost no backstory whatsoever (this has probably to do with the fact that this reboot is the 14th version, or spin-off, or sequel, or part of this huge franchise). What you do get is 86 minutes of pure puppet-gore. This movie has some excellent deaths with great visual arts and a good way of keeping it interesting. Everything could’ve felt very fast-paced because it was just so damn interesting to watch. The way it was filmed felt a bit off. It looked like a B-movie from the way the camera was angled, and the lack of storyline didn’t really help. The deaths, the blood, the intestines, the gore, everything important basically looked really fucking good though. At this point the weird point of views and slightly off-colored shots didn’t matter. It worked.

The puppets look absolutely gorgeous and really original. The creepy factor is definitely there. I can honestly say that I want to watch those other movies and read the comics. The art is just beautiful and well made, I want to see more of that.

I do have to say that this movie means absolutely nothing if watched on its own without further interest in the story. So, for a movie on movie-night, this isn’t really a good movie to watch. You just get more questions and find out you need to invest a lot of more time to get the whole story. But, if you got nothing better to do like me, I think this is going to be a hell of a ride to follow, figure out and enjoy. This wasn’t really my favorite movie to be honest. Let me hear what you think.

What was your favorite scene?

Which part of all those other ones do I have to watch first?

Which one is your favorite puppet?

Let’s talk.

-Miez.

[cassandraclare]

Anna, Ariadne, sexuality and genderfludity in the Belle Epoque

SPOILERS (and a mass of text, much under a cut)

jonginflicted said: cassie i loved every exquisite thing so much oh god, i could almost see myself in ariadne, like a sort of refusal to fully be herself (we were born in the same place too!) and i'm wondering, does ariadne really love anna or is this just a time-pass or an experiment for her. she does say that she likes anna a lot, but her willingness to marry charles seems a little off to me (or am i seeing things) as always, thank you so much for writing for us!

-Thank you!

Ariadne is under crushing social pressure to marry a man. She does love Anna 

— she’s fallen in love with her the same way Anna has with her, with that sort of sweeping at-first-sight romantic overwhelmingness that sometimes happens, especially when it’s your first time. I really tried to avoid any suggestion this was an “experiment” or anything like that for Ariadne. She’s a lesbian and she knows she’s a lesbian. She just also believes it’s impossible for her to live an authentic life as a lesbian woman in 1901 without being cruelly punished. I don’t think you’re seeing things so much as it’s hard to understand what Ariadne is facing in 1901 (and would face in some places now):

From Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb: 19th-century homosexuals lived under a cloud...Most of them suffered, not from the cruel machinery of justice, but from the creeping sense of shame, the fear of losing friends, family and reputation, the painful incompatibility of religious belief and sexual desire, the social and mental isolation, and the strain of concealment.

That’s a horrific thing to face. (Not that we live in an LGBT+ utopia now and they lived in an LGBT+ dystopia then: it’s a lot more complicated than that.) Ariadne’s parents, unlike Anna’s, are extremely conservative, and this union with Charles is the thing they want. So it wouldn’t matter much to Ariadne whether it was Charles or some other guy – it’s not going to be the thing she wants except that she doesn’t want to be isolated, to be abandoned, to be rejected by her parents and family, which are totally normal things to be terrified of. 

Everyone has layered identities. Ariadne has identities as a woman of color, as a lesbian, as an adopted child, as the daughter of conservative government officials, as a woman who wants children, and in many ways those identities are in conflict for her in ways Anna’s identities are less so. Ariadne isn’t a coward, or a cruel person. She is making the best choices she can within a set of limitations that are oppressive, and that she did not invent or ask for. 

ti-bae-rius said: Hello Cassie! Firstly, wow okay turns out I have a huge fiction crush on Anna Lightwood. Hot damn. Secondly - and slightly less flippant/lovestruck - is Anna happy with female pronouns? Is that what Anna identifies with or was it more due to conformity of the time? Basically, is Anna’s gender expression limited by temporal factors? Such a badass character who is seriously fuelling my waistcoat obsession right now. Love the new GOTSM and all the best! x

I'm so happy you enjoyed the new GOTSM and that you like (have a huge crush on) Anna! I would say that Anna is happy with female pronouns, yes, as she's happy with the gift of the necklace that her mother gave her, something she can be comfortable with as she's not with dresses. That said, temporal factors are certainly a part of that! Today Anna would consider and call herself genderfluid, but the term didn't exist at the time, and of course many genderfluid people today refer to themselves by “he” or “she” pronouns, as well as many others, according to what feels most comfortable to them. Anna is a product of her time: had she been born in a different time many things might have been different — but that is the case for every single one of the TID and TLH characters, and for all of us alive today, who express ourselves in ways which would have been extremely unconventional in the past and will likely be considered backward and oppressive in the future. :)

In 1902 (a year after the events of EET) people were academically discussing the idea of a third or “intermediate” sex, but it was a very new thing — not something Shadowhunters would know about, or the average mundane. It was also referred to as “sexual inversion” which was seen as an academic term at the time. The idea of LGBTQ+ sexuality was a taboo topic--sexuality at all was a taboo topic, with people getting arrested for indecency for publishing pamphlets about contraception--and the idea of LGBTQ+ identity was scarcely understood at all. 

Anna herself, and those who love and accept her, would find it very hard to conceptualize or articulate gender fluidity. Feelings have always existed long before there were words for them, and many words once used are not the words we use now. I wanted to be accurate and faithful to the time period, but I also wanted to be as sensitive as possible to the modern day, real life readers, and not hurt them by using terms which would have been acceptable then but are certainly not acceptable now. (A whole code for speaking about homosexuality existed at the time, ranging from the gentle “Is he musical?” or “Does she like Achilles?” to words I would just never use whether they’re historically accurate or not.) Anna, as we see, has strong feelings about not only romance with women but friendship and alliance with women, and female pronouns to her feel like another way of expressing that alliance, even while she wants to be true to herself and express her complex and beautiful identity as fully as she can. 

ariadnebridgestock said: hello cassie!! I was incredibly touched by how understanding and supportive Cecily and Gabriel were about Anna so I was wondering, will we be seeing other support that Anna receives from the rest of her family, like her brother Christopher, her aunts and uncles and her cousins and family friends like the Fairchilds etc?  thank you for taking your time to answer questions! 

archerondale said: Hi, Cassie! I was just wondering- what does the Clave think about Anna wearing man's clothes and preferring women?

EET is set two years before TLH, so in 1903 Anna's already openly living a fabulous lifestyle in her own abode in Percy Street, and her family and friends are all fully aware and supportive of her lifestyle. We will see her family support her, though not every single one of their specific reactions to her starting to dress as she prefers, as that's well in the past. Everyone responds with love, in their characteristic ways, so we see Matthew, a loving and fashionable friend, giving her his clothing: Christopher, her sweet and science-minded brother, offering to perform a saving act of science (Christopher would blow up the Tower of London to make Anna feel better, any day of the week). Everyone offers support in their own way. Lucie asks to hear about Anna's scandalous love life so she can write about romance in her novels. James reads up on people like Julie d'Aubigny, who dressed as a man, fought duels, and liberated her lady beloved from a nunnery. 

However, the Clave as a whole, and even the Enclave in London, is vaguely horrified by what Anna's up to, but Anna's helped out by the attitude that what Anna's doing can barely be true--there is a myth that Queen Victoria refused to believe in women feeling passion for other women, which reflects the prevailing attitudes of the time (which again, aren't the same as Shadowhunter attitudes, but Shadowhunter attitudes are influenced by the world) that love between women didn't happen, or if it did, didn't count (Unlike sex between men, lesbianism was not illegal in 1903). 

That said, in 1902 (after EET, before TLH) society became interested in “sexology”--examining the different kinds of sexual attractions and activities that existed, and the terms sapphic and lesbian came into more common use. Lesbian activity wasn't criminalized in the same way as gay activity (though the denial of women's sexuality is a problem in itself): Oscar Wilde's fate would not happen to a woman, though as we see with Ariadne there was still horrible pressure to conform. During this same period, Vita Sackville-West (later, Virginia Woolf's lover) and Violet Keppel, the daughter of King Edward's mistress, were involved in a schoolgirl romance, but Violet's mother urged concealment and both were to go on to marry men. You can read their love letters here:

Oh, Mitya, come away, let’s fly, Mitya darling —  let’s go away and forget the world and all its squalor — let’s forget such things as trains, and trams, and servants, and streets, and shops, and money, and cares and responsibilities. Oh god! how I hate it all — you and I, Mitya, were born 2000 years too late, or 2000 years too soon.

:(

Anna insisting on living openly, dressing the way she wants and publicly loving who she wants, has created something of a sensation in the Enclave society. Sona's worried about Cordelia consorting with the infamous Anna: Mrs Bridgestock is appalled by the idea of Anna, now living so scandalously, approaching Ariadne. Many mothers are whisking aside their children and many proper Shadowhunters are shunning Anna. London society says Anna should be got under control, or that they should stop her from fighting because it's given her ideas: all manner of microaggressions are visited upon Anna, but Anna prefers to steadfastly ignore them (not that they don’t bother her or add up over time — this is just her particular coping strategy). Sometimes she trots off to Paris if they annoy her. But the fact she's learned to just avoid or not think about unpleasantness may become a problem for her, later, since eventually unpleasantness that she can't avoid does come and she has to face it.

Still, the constant love and support from her influential family and friends is very helpful, not just emotionally but socially: it matters that Charlotte's the Consul, that her Uncle Gideon is influential in the Clave, that her beloved Uncle Will is Head of the London Institute and loves and looks out for her. With them standing by her, the Clave has been able to mostly overlook Anna--maybe she's just going through a wild phase! Even the Consul's son Matthew is running wild, what will become of the children! They say nasty things sometimes, and Anna isn't invited to the most proper parties, and Anna DEFINITELY wouldn't be able to wield political power within the Clave or marry a really respectable Shadowhunter boy (luckily...Anna isn't at all in the market for a husband), but Anna's extremely popular with the younger set and well-supported by the older set. Which is all to say: as it has been for people like Anna in many generations and many places, one can create a society within a society where you feel comfortable. She is lucky that her own family home and the homes of her friends are places she can feel comfortable (the same is not true for Ariadne, for instance) but outside of those safe spaces, there are places where she would (and is) stared at, commented on, and subject to prejudice. 

* One of the fascinating things about LGBT+ history is the way there have always been subcultural spaces where the non-straight and non-cis were able to carve out networks of neighborhoods, bars, clubs, salons and spaces where they felt safe and were able to be open. I don’t just keep mentioning Paris randomly: neighborhoods in Paris were a lesbian and gay haven during the Belle Epoque — one of those subcultural places I was talking about, where Anna and other non-binary and LGBT+ people could feel comfortable. Fin de siecle society in Paris included bars, restaurants and cafes frequented and owned by lesbians, such as Le Hanneton and le Rat Mort, Private salons, like the one hosted by the American expatriate Nathalie Barney, drew lesbian and bisexual artists and writers of the era, including Romaine Brooks, Renee Vivien, Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, and Radclyffe Hall. One of Barnes's lovers, the courtesan Liane de Pougy, published a best-selling novel based on their romance called l’Idylle Saphique (1901). Descriptions of lesbian salons, cafes and restaurants were included in tourist guides and journalism of the era, as well as mention of houses of prostitution that were uniquely for lesbians. Toulouse Lautrec created paintings of many of the lesbians he met, some of whom frequented or worked at the famed Moulin Rouge. — Wikipedia

Sounds like a great place and we’ll definitely be visiting :)

[delcat177]

Tag!

Rules! Tag (numbers) people you want to get to know!

I was tagged by @heliodora97 while between PCs, made a note not to forget that shit, promptly forgot that shit, and just remembered that shit 8,D

This got long (of course)

Name: Del Terance-Theodore Scott

Gender: Trans guy

Star Sign: Scorpio

Height: 4′10″, 147.32cm, a smol, just a real smol boy

Sexuality: 5.9 on the Kinsey scale.  Like, maybe one woman in three hundred piques my interest, and that’s usually because they’re coded masculine.  The entire nonbinary spectrum is a case-by-case deal, although again, I’m more inclined toward masc coding.  Basically, I’m panromantic but with the BIGGEST FUCKING BIAS toward gay and 99.8% gay sexually, and since I’m in a monogamous relationship, identifying as gay is really just easier and more gender euphoric.

Also I wanna fuck the fish

What image do you have as your lock screen: 

This has been my lock screen, header, and PC background for two years now and I do not anticipate it changing, thank you @nooneandeveryone

Have you ever had a crush on a teacher: Two or three notable teachers in college and a little schoolboy crush on my high school teacher because he liked and understood me better than 90% of the kids in Crazy Fundie School (he liked MST3K!!!)

Where do you hope to see yourself in 10 years: Holding a big folder of fanfiction marked “DONE” with a big red rubber stamp

If you could go anywhere else right now where would it be?: France, my fiance is probably on their second cup of morning coffee by now

What was your coolest Halloween costume?: Since Halloween is my birthday and Mom was INCREDIBLY patient and skilled, I had some real bangers.  A few that stand out are Queen of the Butterflies and The Most Extra Grizabella the Glamour Cat Cosplay Ever because I am very very gay, plus a not-too-shabby DIY Pyramid Head costume for my last year ever going out.  I think I’m proudest of the year I decided I wasn’t too old for trick-or-treating at the VERY last second, though--I found a huge picture frame and Mom pinned some fabric to the top as a backdrop and bam, I was a portrait.  I taped a “plaque” made out of a post-it reading “(NAME), AUTHOR, AGE 9″ on the bottom because I had Aspirations.  My arms were killing me from carrying it by the end of the night but folks loved it.

What was your favorite 90’s TV show?: 

First fandom and one of the greatest.

Just don’t talk to me about the remake.  Don’t fukken do it.

Last kiss?: Last August, at the airport...I wanna go drink coffee wah

Favorite book?: 

BUT TO NAME A FEW

My love of Discworld and The Phantom Tollbooth should be very apparent, I adore short horror fiction, but one of my favorite unsung heroes is Bruce Coville.  He was one of my greatest influences growing up, both through his books and through his stubbornness in getting anthologies aimed at kids with REAL stories published.  Seriously, the Bruce Coville’s Book Of... series has To Serve Man, Zero Hour, It’s a Good Life, all these sci-fi classics that were in Real Adult Anthologies and the most fucking surreal shit I have ever read and I am counting my adult experiences.  I read Joe R. Lansdale’s The Fat Man at 9 because Bruce Coville thought I should have that right and bless him, I have never been the same.

When I was 10, Mom found out that Bruce was doing school presentations in Michigan and made some calls (I was still homeschooled at the time) and got me in not just to see the presentation, but meet him in person beforehand and talk to him one-on-one.  It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, but I spent a long time wondering if he’d still accept me if I met him as a trans gay adult, because part of being trans is having your fantasies cut short with “shit what if he misgendered me”.

So I wrote him a long letter about it and it turns out he’s progressive as fuck and totally accepts me and now we’re honest-to-God comment-on-each-other’s-posts Facebook friends.

No seriously.  Sometimes your idols actually turn out to be heroes.  Every time I see him lambast Trump my kokoro doki dokis and boy howdy that’s a lot of dokis.

Have you ever been stood up?: I dated all of two people before falling in love with Crow, so I didn’t really get the chance, which is probably a good thing?

Have you ever been to Las Vegas?: I lost two life’s savings on Neopets in one day when the slot machines came out, I spent everything I had and then sold one of my most expensive items and spent all of the proceeds from that, so I’m just gonna play the occasional quiet game of Poker Night 2 ok

Favorite pair of shoes: I have Achilles’ tendonitis so I can really only wear specific sneakers, but before we knew that, I used to beg Mom to let me buy boots at the Army Surplus store and I would wear them until the sides gave out (yes, the sides, my ankles are fucked up and weird).  Gender euphoria to the NINES.  I miss it augh.

Favorite fruit?: A L L OF T H E M

ok actually I’m not too much into citrus except for pomelos and kiwis are too sour and these things can fuck right off but buddy I avoid putting on stoner weight because I will just sit there slowly eating individual blueberries like a lizard for four hours, or crack open a can of jackfruit, or make myself positively ill on cherries, FRUIT IS AMAZING

I think if I absolutely HAD to choose, it’d be cherries.  Cherries are Michigan’s Thing and we used to pick them ourselves from tourist farms and oh God I am forever spoiled on cherry flavor because that shit does NOT compare.  It’s so good.  It’s so so good.

Casul is a fruit bat for a reason ok

Stupidest thing you have ever done?: 

Boy howdy that’s a long dark road to potentially go down so let’s have three lesser stupids instead of my sincere regrets:

--I got a virus when I was 15 and someone hacked my comp saying that if I didn’t give him my Neopets password he’d delete all my shit and I didn’t disconnect but instead made fun of him in whatever janky chat thing he installed because I didn’t think he could do it (he could) (funny in retrospect except I’m still pissed over losing all of my progress on the RM2K game I was making at the time) --When I was but an amateur stoner I didn’t realize my body would lie to me about how much it could actually eat and I ingested so, so many cashews and then staggered into the bathroom and de-ingested them violently while my dumbass brain went “haha whoops” --In Hawaii I fell on the sidewalk, completely erased the skin on my knee, terrified a family of Asian tourists by trying to patch up my profuse bleeding while the wind blew my hastily-bought medkit down the road, and spent two months nursing the two-inch-square wound it left behind.  I have related this before.  I have not related that the entire reason I tripped was I noticed a small dog on the other side of the street and got so excited I forgot how to walk.

I tag uhhhhh @thegrinningcrow, @qglas, @sugarburger, @machi-tobaye, @melancthe, @squid-ichorous, @panur, @i-like-too-many-boys, and @clumsyshark, but I would happily read responses from absolutely anyone, just tag me back please!

[fandomsandfeminism]

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe was an Elizabethan playwright, friend of William Shakespeare, and a gay atheist spy. Let's talk about that. 

(video does have closed captions) 

Full text transcript below the cut

Hello everyone! Let’s talk about Christopher Marlowe being super gay.

For those of you who don’t know: Christopher “Kit” Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and playwright, and contemporary, rival, possibly collaborator and friend of William Shakespeare. He was born the same year as Shakespeare, in fact, but only lived to be 29, when he was stabbed to death.

He was a huge influence on Shakespeare, inspiring him to use Blank Verse in his plays. and Some people have even suspected Marlowe of writing, or at least co-writing, some of Shakespeare’s early plays. Marlowe and Shakespeare were close enough that many scholars think  Mercutio, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is based off Marlowe as a sort of tribute to the man after he died. If you like Shakespeare’s work, I highly recommend Marlowe. His most well known works are Doctor Faustus, which my personal favorite, Edward the Second, and The Jew of Malta.

He was also a spy for the crown, probably, and was accused of being an atheist and super gay.

Caveat:  a few months ago, I made a video about Shakespeare being pretty damn bisexual. I said this then, but it bears repeating now: discussing the sexual orientation of historical figures can be tricky. Modern terms and understandings of sexuality and sexual orientation are modern. The way we view and contextualize sexuality is very dependant on our place in history. If you were to ask Marlowe if he was gay, he wouldn’t have really known what you meant by that.

Also, People in our culture tend to view Heterosexuality as the default, that in the absence of evidence, people are assumed straight. We are going to try to work against this. What evidence is there for Marlowe’s sexuality at all, straight or otherwise, and why might that lead us to believe that he is, well, decidedly not straight.

So, let’s talk about Kit Marlowe and how he was, maybe, probably, a gay atheist spy as well as one of England’s greatest playwrights.

Born in Canterbury in 1564, he went to Corpus Christi University in Cambridge as a young man. During this time he has several long absences from school, and spent way more money on food than his scholarship funds would have allowed. He almost didn’t graduate because of all his absences in fact, but was given his degree after the Privy Council sent the University a letter saying that he had been engaged in unspecified "affaires" on "matters touching the benefit of his country". This letter, combined with his unexplained source of income, has led many to think he was...well, a crown spy. Which is pretty great.

After college, Marlowe seems to have dedicated himself fulltime to his writing. In 1593 though, Marlowe was accused of heresy and atheism. He was never put on trial as he was stabbed to death 10 days later. Why he was stabbed is a point of debate.  It might have just been a fight over a bar tab, but other far more sensationalist explanations have been suggested over the years, including that he was murdered to cover up some spy secrets or to keep him from naming others in the government as atheists.

Marlowe never married. He never had children. As far as we can tell, he never had any serious relationships with any women. Part of that might just be that he was a very busy man, writing all those plays and being an...atheist spy for the government.

However, we have...some pretty good reasons to think Marlowe was gay and it's a pretty well accepted theory in some scholarly circles. We’re going to look at two broad sources: Marlowe’s writings and things his contemporaries, especially Richard Baines, said about him.

Now. It’s important to not ascribe too much biographical reading to fictional works. Straight men CAN write about gay themes of course, though...I would argue that it really isn’t that common. And Marlowe wrote about gay themes….like...a lot. Far more explicitly than Shakespeare ever did.

In Hero and Leander, Marlowe writes of the male youth Leander, "in his looks were all that men desire" and that when Leander is swimming, the sea god Neptune becomes really...turned on, and interested in him "imagining that Ganymede, displeas'd, had left the Heavens ... the lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him love ... He watched his arms and, as they opened wide at every stroke, betwixt them would he slide and steal a kiss, ... And dive into the water, and there pry upon his breast, his thighs, and every limb, ... and talk of love",

Edward the Second, a play that explores the homosexual relationship between Edward and Piers Gaveston, and Edward’s reign as king, and eventual fall as a monarch, is a very sympathetic view of the historical figure and contains the following passage supporting homosexual relationships:

The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept; And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.

Marlowe’s play “Dido, Queen of Carthage” begins with a scene of the God Jupiter fawning over Ganymede. There’s...a lot of good quotes from this scene, since it’s basically just a lot of flirting before Venus shows up and  There’s lots of “Come gentle Ganimed and play with me, I love thee well, say Juno what she will.” and “thou wilt be my love.”

So, Marlowe was definitely not shy about showing and talking about gay love in his plays. Which again, isn’t 100% proof he himself was gay, but...I would argue strongly hints towards the possibility.

Now, Our second set of evidence about Marlowe comes from the accusations against him in 1593. grains of salt since this came out when Marlowe was accused of heresy, and so there are shades of possible libel and exaggeration going on. But, like, it was not common to accuse your enemies of being gay at the time, so this kind of stands out.

Now, The quote you’ll see most often is that   Richard Baines reported Marlowe as saying: "All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools" Which...is a great quote. We have no idea if Marlowe ever really said this, but I kinda like to imagine him and Shakespeare laying around in some flat in London, smoking tobacco pipes and talking about cute boys. Maybe co-writing the Henry VI plays? Flirting and arguing about how to word Richard’s soliloquies? Yeah I’d pay good money for that movie. Hollywood, are we taking notes? Excellent

Baines also claimed that Marlowe told him that St John ‘was bedfellow to Christ’ which….again, I don’t know if Marlowe ever really said Jesus was...having lots of sex with St. John….but it makes me laugh to imagine it.

Much like Shakespeare, and like a lot of possibly LGBT+ figures in history, we’ll probably never know for sure. But Marlowe has become a gay icon of the theater of sorts, accepted as such by scholars and historians and actors alike for the most part. So I’ll leave you with this, a lovely quote about Kit Marlowe from the great Ian McKellen himself:

“When Marlowe met his own violent death, his glittering reputation was overtaken by law-abiding Shakespeare.  Had Will liked Kit Marlowe so much, that he recreated him as the roistering, iconoclastic Mercutio, who so resents Romeo's love affairs with women?” I don’t know Ian, but it’s a pretty good story.

[astroxnot]

Do you have any book recommendations?

oh boy do i!!

youve probably already heard of a lot of these but

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

this is my favourite book ever okay i can’t stress that enough it has beautiful gay representation and accurate teenage angst. also all the main characters are Mexican and the author is too so i assume he does them justice. It’s character driven and has a beautiful focus on family and best friends and what those things mean and honestly it changed my outlook on life there are so many profound, beautiful, painfully truthful quotes from this book (”Maybe we just lived between hurting and healing”)that ive highlighted and underlined in my own copy but i lost it and im rly sad ok im getting off topic. the thing that i loved the most about this book is how honest it is. it doesnt use unnecessary drama to move things forward and it doesn’t have unrealistic depictions of teens. these are two boys with insecurities but they are written so they’re complex. they’re not boiled down to a Boy struggling with This One Thing, they’re honest characters. oh god i love this book so much if you’re stuck between this book and another one pls read this one first you won’t regret it

here is a great non-spoiler review btw (”It’s a story about a boy who is sad and angry and can’t figure out why.” - from the review)

The Foxhole Court (All for the Game series) by Nora Sakavic

okay before i proceed i want to say TRIGGER WARNING FOR EVERYTHING YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF THIS STORY IS SAD. BAD THINGS HAPPEN. okay now that that’s out of the way. Neil Josten has been on he run from his serial killer dad for the past 8 years. The only thing he’s passionate about is a sport called Exy. He gets recruited by the Palmetto State Foxes, a team of misfits from broken homes who needed a second chance. They’re also known for being ranked dead last for a number of years. Since he’s on the team, he;’s in a spotlight for his dad’s people to find him. An exy star he knew from his childhood named Kevin Day is also on that team and is running away from the japanese mafia who does business with his dad. so double oops. it’s not centred around the sport tho so don’t worry if you’re not a big sports fan bc neither am i. also andrew minyard is a 5 ft ball of destruction and i love him. the women are badass and it has a HUGE FOCUS ON CONSENT. it’s also gay but not til the third book. the character / relationship development is so heartwrenchingly beautiful it’s worth the slow burn also THE FIRST BOOK IS FREE! and the other two are only a dollar each. if u cant afford them pls don’t download it illegally @coldsaturn will gladly buy it for you

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

oh man where do i start. it’s basically a fanfiction of homer’s the Illiad. it focuses on the relationship between Achilles and his lover Patroclus. it’s their story told from patroclus’ point of view and so you get a side to achilles than what you see in history books. this book is SO BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN it’s so elegant and the scenery is rich and oh man the QUOTES (”I am made of memories”) brilliant use of foreshadowing. the ending made me cry. i dont usually cry at books but oh man i can literally quote the last paragraph no lie. (there is a noncon scene in there where a woman is trying to get it on but the man isn’t enjoying it, so fair warning). anyway its a beautiful book

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

okay so this is a childrens book. like a bedtime story. but it’s still going on my rec list because it has incredible insight on growing up and it’s so wonderful it was one of my favourite books as a child and it still is now. It’s kinda old and was translated from french so its kinda behind the times as far as narrative voice goes but it’s about this guy who’s plane crashes in the middle of a desert where he meets the little prince. the little prince is from another planet and tells the narrator about his travels to other planets and his encounters with the “grown-ups”. it has a beautiful message about how what makes something special is something invisible: the connection you have with it. and how it’s okay to miss something because you know that it exists somewhere. (”What makes the desert beautiful,“ said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well…”) and it’s so beautiful the ending gets me every time. 

im not gonna list anymore bc im tired but here!! i hope this helped!!

[chimepunk]

What novels or book series would you recommend?

oh fuckin boy dude so many. 90% of what i read is either gay or scifi/fantasy or both, and some are technically for a younger audience but still great, so thats what most of this is which hopefully you’re cool with here goes

this got super long so i’m putting it under a cut. bolded titles are the ones that i’m super recommending, though i love them all

novels

the coldest girl in coldtown by holly black - vampires! a trans character! a bi character! one of the most novel approaches to vampires in fiction that i’ve seen! 10/10 would recommend

the darkest part of the forest by holly black - again, holly black is one of my favorite authors. this one’s got faeries (the proper vaguely unsettling kind that i’m all about) magical music, girls embracing their sexuality, girls being knights, interesting sibling dynamics, and a super cute m/m pairing

les miserables by victor hugo - ok yeah, it’s like 1400 pages long and historical fiction, but i love les mis a lot ok. it’s gotta be on this list just because it owns my ass. it’s like a old drunk french man trying to tell you about the june rebellion but he keeps getting distracted by things like people’s personal lives, the intricacies of the parisian underworld, and how much he wants to fuck the sewers. it’s wonderful

the night circus by erin morgenstern - magical circus that mysteriously appears for days at a time and then vanishes? a competition between young magicians drawn out for years? a wide variety of fascinating side characters? (i will say that the synopsis available for the book is somewhat misleading, as it’s actually less about our two protags and more about the circus itself. but that’s what makes it so enchanting)

the song of achilles by madeleine miller - retelling of patroclus and achilles story to be explicitly romantic. will make you feel like you’re floating on clouds and then rapidly crush your soul. sort of a happy ending? but it’s still a tragedy. their ending is the same as it was in the illiad so if you’re not prepared for that then maybe don’t read

good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett - a demon who’s not very good at being a demon and an angel who just wants to collect his books in peace thank you very much try to sabotage the end of times. absolutely hilarious

fairy and folktales of the irish peasantry by w.b. yeats - the best collection of irish faerie stories by one of my favorite poets. if you like creepy and tricky faeries i would def recommend checking these out

rootabaga stories by carl sandburg - another collection of folktales, this time inspired by the american midwest. kinda weird, kinda zany, very neat

the poison eaters by holly black - a short story collection of faery stories that are sometimes creepy, sometimes touching, sometimes gay. my personal favorite is about a library science student who finds a book collection where the characters come out at night and interact, but they’re all really great

series:

alex rider adventures by anthony horowitz - teenager gets recruited by MI6 as a spy, has incredibly high success rate, gets pretty fucked up along the way but damn those one liners tho, maybe have some self preservation alex? just a thought

all for the game by nora sakavic - about a fake sport called exy that’s kind of like indoor lacrosse but more violent. contains: crime families, found families, an aspec protag, girls kicking ass, unhealthy levels of sass, wonderful slowburn m/m that you can’t even see coming for a long while, and a happy ending for everyone!! i came for the gays and ended up reading all three books in two days. also you can get the whole series for less than five bucks on kindle! (note: tw for rape, physical abuse, torture, ptsd, child abuse, drug use, alcoholism, some use of slurs, mentions of past self harm, mental illness)

artemis fowl by eoin colfer - more faeries, but this time they live underground and are way more technologically advanced than humans. the first book focuses on our anti-hero trying to catch one and steal their gold, and they quickly become allies and solve faerie related cases together!! one of my favorite series growing up, and i cried in the middle of the hallway at school when i finished the last book

camp half-blood series by rick riordan - does rick riordan write a lot of mythology books? yes. do i love them all? yes. neurodivergent kids! kids from a huge range of racial and ethnic backgrounds! queer kids! collect them all! ft. greco-roman mythology and a lot of stupid jokes

emelan series by tamora pierce - ok this is easily one of my favorite series of all time. non-western high fantasy setting (picture greece/turkey, china, tibet, mongolia, scandinavia, etc type settings), following four young mages who have unique kinds of magic as they train and grow their skills and become powerful in their own right. only one of the kids is definitely white (jury’s still out on sandry), one is a lesbian, one is ace, one is pan, all four are raised by a loving f/f couple, body diversity, one of the best found families i’ve ever read, feminism, discussion of racism, classism, cultural identity, war, and so much more. it’s so so good and so under-appreciated please read all of the emelan books 

the dark is rising sequence by susan cooper - full disclosure i have not finished this series yet but i’ve re-read the first book a million times. it’s a neat take on arthurian mythology, with dark forces trying to take over and kids getting shit done

diviners by libba bray - psychic teenagers in 1920s new york! i’m a slut for prohibition, but these are also super fun and have likable and real characters, and doesn’t only focus on wealthy white people having parties which is nice. the occult! government conspiracies! historical references! genuinely scary situations! it’s rad!

the enchanted forest chronicles by patricia c. wrede - i adore this series so so much. it’s about a princess who’s father keeps telling her that she can’t have hobbies like fencing or cooking or conjugating latin verbs because they’re unladylike and insists that she marry this doofus prince that she couldn’t care less about. so she runs away and volunteers to work for a dragon and proceeds to send away all the princes that try to rescue her. it’s genuinely funny, has a really neat magic system in the later books, great female friendships, cats, dragons who have no time for your gender roles, and wizards who are the most ridiculous group of antagonists you will ever see

the infernal devices by cassandra clare - i really really do not like the author of this series but it also broke me so it must go on the list. if you’re familiar with the mortal instruments or shadowhunters on freeform, it’s set in that universe in the 1870s in london and it’s very steampunk and very angsty and it made me cry a lot

the kane chronicles by rick riordan - see: camp half-blood series but egyptian

fablehaven by brandon mull - oooooh fuck me up i love this series. this is another one meant for slightly younger readers but all of brandon mull’s series are so wildly imaginative and i’m a slut for world building so. the premise is basically that there are secret preserves all over the world that house magical creatures, and five of these preserves have vaults with artifacts that when brought together make a key to this massive demon prison. an evil society called the society of the evening star is trying to get the artifacts to open the prison, and a different group who is allied with the preserves called the knights of the dawn is trying to get to them first to prevent this from happening. there are dragons, light and dark powers, crazy convoluted vaults to get through, and some really cool creatures and characters

beyonders by brandon mull - this guy again! this one’s about a parallel world called lyrian that people on earth can only get to through small liminal windows, and usually can’t get back through. the story follows two kids, jason and rachel, who get stuck in lyrian and end up becoming major members of the resistance against the evil emperor maldor. just like fablehaven, the world building is insane and you’ll fall in love with all the characters. this is yet another series that made me cry in the middle of class when i finished it

the kingkiller chronicle by patrick rothfuss - this is series is long as all fuck and the last book isn’t out yet but it’s my #1 favorite series of all time. i found out about it bc a cashier at a local grocery store held up the line to write it down for me and i never went back. parts of it are achingly, hauntingly beautiful, other parts are hilarious enough to leave you in stitches, others make you want to pull your hair out. there’s sass, recklessness, beautiful and deadly girls, an overwhelming love and emphasis on the importance of music and storytelling, magic that’s more like science, ethnic adversity, student loans, a thing that might be a cow or might be a dragon depending on who you ask, and more quotable lines than you could dream of. the audiobook by nick podehl is also fabulous, and lin manuel miranda is producing and adapting it for the screen and maybe stage at some point in the future!

a modern faerie tale by holly black - guys. i love holly black. almost everything she’s ever written is on this list. this one is fairly self explanatory by the title, but it’s gritty and dark and has those lovely creepy faeries that she’s so great at writing. also a surprising m/m couple in the last book, both of whom are characters in the other two installments. (tw for drug use/addiction, brief sexual assault, and probably other things that i can’t remember right now)

the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater - also in my top 3 favorite series of all time, i cannot begin to describe this series. i first read it while up in the nc mountains which improved the experience to a surprising degree, but it’s stuck with me for the last several years. basically 5 teenagers go in search of a dead welsh king, but along the way there is magic, psychics, ghosts, a sentient forest, dreams becoming reality, curses, teenage shenanigans, classic cars, swearing, church, kisses and not kisses, illict hand holding, a baby crow, bisexuality, a death list, hitmen, and nicknames and it will consume your heart before you know what’s happening to you (tw child abuse, implied sexual assault, substance abuse, dissociation, mentions of past suicide attempts, body horror, gore, and disturbing scenes esp. in the last book)

six of crows by leigh bardugo - a team of criminals band together to break into an impossible fortress, fall in love, con an entire city, and get rich. set in the same universe as the grisha trilogy (which is also good but not as good as soc), this is basically a heist followed by a con, but pulled off by ruthless teenagers and with the help of magic

curseworker trilogy by holly black - crime families, magic that can only done through touch so everyone wears gloves, moral ambiguity, and a twisted romance. one of holly black’s best and most underrated series

baccano! by ryohgo narita - this is a japanese light novel series which has been adapted into an anime, but is much more extensive in print. the plot is extremely convoluted, but an absolute ride spanning several centuries, although the bulk of it is in the 1930s in nyc and chicago. there’s an elixir of immortality, crime families, trains, a solipsistic assassin and his mute assassin gf, serial killers, a demon with a catch phrase, murder, explosions, adorable couples, gambling, a gang leader named jacuzzi who is always terrified, killer corporations, and much much more

no.6 by asuka asano - another japanse series, this time focusing on two boys, one who grew up in a utopian city, the other who grew up outside the walls after the city destroyed his life. they meet when they’re 12 years old, and several years later, they’re reunited when the outsider rescues the city boy from arrest. they, along with a pimp and a nonbinary dog hotel owner, try to expose and overthrow the government. also ft. drag performances, mice who like shakespeare, killer bees, and boys falling in love.

the merlin saga by t.a. barron - my favorite take on arthurian mythology, chronicling merlin as he comes into his power. there’s a vividly magical island, giants, amulets, talking trees, stones that will try to swallow you, a swamp witch, celtic deities, huge wicker hats, poetry, new kinds of fruit, people that are also deer, and human’s long lost wings.