#sometimes you just have moments that affirm you are gay and mine is a lovely blue lady

[catalinemorosetheblog]

Started Playing Mass Effect 1 a little while ago and...

Me (playing relatively blind): So I know there's romance in this game, but I doubt there's gay romance since it's from 2007, so who should I date. Garrius seems cool (did not know he was unromancable in this game), and Kaiden has some interesting backstory going for him.

Liara T'Soni: *exists*

Me:

Me: ✨WOMEN✨

[you-show-me-love]

How Tami Met Mickey

I really just wanted to write a headcanon of when Tami understood Mickey's existence since we were deprived of their interaction in the show okay bye

Tami was going to kill Lip. She was going to kill him and leave Fred on the dirty floor of the Gallagher house and she was going to disappear from their lives, head out west and hide out in a hair salon under a false identity, because Lip swore up and down Fred's teething ring was here somewhere and the kid was screaming his head off and had been for the last hour.

"Where the hell is it?" She whined, feeling like crying herself as she pushed aside random junk on the floor near where they sometimes set up the playpen. 

Mickey descended the stairs into the kitchen, still in his tank top and boxers even though it was well past noon. He grimaced at the sound of the crying baby. 

"Will you shut that kid up? Some of us are trying to sleep." 

Tami rolled her eyes, disrupting her search of the coffee table covered in crayons and paper. She loved Ian, she did, but she couldn't comprehend why the sweetest Gallagher had up and married this surly, foul mouthed convict. She chose to ignore him most of the time, especially after Lip told her he had been in for attempted murder of one of their family members.

"Believe me if I could I would but he's teething and I can't find his teething ring anywhere and Lip said it was here in this mess somewhere..." 

She was rambling, losing her sanity as Fred screamed louder and pulled a fist full of her blonde hair. Maybe Mickey could put her out of her misery since he apparently had no problem killing family members. Afraid to ask in case he took her seriously she shifted Fred to her other hip and pushed her fingers into the couch cushions, trying not to think of what they might come in contact with in the process.

Mickey watched the tall blonde with apathy as he chugged orange juice straight from the carton. He belched loudly and moved back out of sight, running some water and opening the refrigerator. A few more minutes of fruitless searching and Tami decided to give up. She turned to head to the backdoor only to find Mickey there, a wash cloth in hand. She watched, rapt, as Mickey pushed the chilled, damp cloth into Fred's open, wailing mouth, watched as her son clamped down immediately and began to suck. Her ears rang in the blissful silence and she stared at Mickey in awe. 

Mickey wasn't looking at her, he was cradling the back of Fred's head and running his thumb along his baby soft hair, a small almost sad smile on his face.

"How did you know to do that?" Tami couldn't help but ask. 

"My kid used to cry like that, had to keep this shit on standby for him, twenty-four seven."

Mickey seemed to come back to himself, dropping his hand from Fred's head and stepping back from mother and son. He was back up the stairs before Tami couldn't say anything.

==

Tami had stopped by too late to have breakfast with the Gallaghers, Lip giving her the extra hour of much needed sleep after Fred kept her up most of the night. She accepted Franny's hug around her knees and gave Fred a tickle and a kiss to the forehead. He smiled around his squishy teething ring and wiggled in the high chair. 

Debbie paused her cleaning to pull Tami's plate from the microwave and Tami decided to ask Debbie something that had been on her mind since yesterday.

"So, Mickey has a kid?"

Debbie looked up at her, face twisted in confusion, but she nodded. 

"Yeah, Yevgeny. Why?"

Tami didn't know how to answer that. Why did she want to know? Maybe it was because of the obvious.

"But…he's gay."

Debbie rolled her eyes.

"Gay people can have kids." She seethed, indicating to her own mini-me. She shoulder checked Tami on her way upstairs muttering bitch under her breath as she did so.

==

Fred had been just put down and Lip and Tami were laying in bed, trying to decide if they should use this opportunity to fuck or to sleep. Lip made the decision for them when he pulled off his shirt and rolled onto Tami.

They were kissing, hands roaming, but Tami's mind was on someone else entirely. The trail of kisses Lip was leaving down her body stopped as she asked him what had been on her mind.

"So, Mickey has a kid?" 

"Uhhh, yeah." Lip affirmed, looking up at Tami in confusion. "With a Russian hand-whore." He concluded with a light chuckle.

"What?!" Tami sat up, Lip further away from his destination. He sighed and joined her at the head of the bed. 

"You good Tamietti?" Lip asked as he watched his girlfriend's face pass through a range of emotions. She eventually shook her head. Lip licked his lips and leaned closer to her, keeping his voice low even though it was only the two of them.

"Look, it's a touchy subject for Ian and Mickey both. Broke Ian's heart to see him marry her. Then Ian stole the baby-"

"Wait wait wait." Tami interrupted, too loud considering their own sleeping baby was just one room over. "Mickey was married before? Ian stole a baby? What-"

"It's best if you don't know just...don't bring it up okay?"

Tami nodded, accepting a few more soft kisses from Lip before they both settled into bed and fell asleep while they had the chance.

==

Tami couldn't not bring it up, not when Ian was right there, bouncing Fred on his hip and making silly faces. Tami had to get to work but she could spare a moment to ask what had been eating away at her for a week now.

"Ian, can I ask you something about Mickey?"

Ian regarded her hesitantly but nodded. She let out a breath and resolved to satisfy her need to know once and for all.

"He has a kid. He's gay but he has a kid and used to be married to a woman? And you stole his baby? I mean, what is the story here?" She ended with a hysterical giggle, arms smacking against her thighs in exasperation.

Ian went paler than usual, his chin jutting out in a hard line. He stared at his nephew, watched his tiny fingers wrap around one of his own. Tami swallowed at the dark look on Ian's face, sudden regret for not following Lip's advice filling her.

"Back when we were kids Mickey's dad caught us. The homphobic prick beat Mickey bad and forced him to fuck a woman in front of me." Ian's voice was rough as sandpaper only making Tami feel worse.

"Mickey got her knocked up, married her, thought we could still bang in secret, but I took off. I came back and we tried to make it work but then I had a manic episode and took off with Yevgeny. I wanted him to be mine, be ours. My brain just ran away with the idea."

Tami's knees were weak and she backed herself into the nearest chair. She knew about Ian's disorder, but had never witnessed it, never heard them talk about it much at all, and she understood why looking at Ian now, seeing how much guilt and pain he internalized over what he did when he had no control. 

"Svetlana filed for divorce while Mickey was in prison, married some old rich bastard, and disappeared. Mickey's never tried to find them, don't think either of us deserve to at this point."

Ian sighed, finally looking Tami in the eye. She could only stare helplessly back in the wake of his words. Mickey wasn't just some convict Ian brought home after his stint in prison after all. Mouth dry she figured she had already dug herself this deep, what's a bit more.

"He really go to prison for trying to kill your sister?"

Ian made a face of knowing, standing taller and squaring his shoulders, jutting his chin even further in defence. 

"Yeah, he did." And with a bit of softening creeping into his hard features he whispered, "He did it for me. Because he loves me."

Tami left a few minutes later, assured by Ian he was fine to watch Fred until Lip came home. She totally cut a client's hair uneven as her mind drifted back to Mickey and what she now knew about the man before today. Turns out she knew jack shit.

Now she knew he was so much more. 

==

Tami threw open the front door of the Gallagher home, Fred crying in her ear after refusing to take his afternoon nap. Two heads turned at the commotion. Quickly Ian halfway off the couch to rescue his brother's girlfriend. Tami ignored him entirely and dropped Fred in Mickey's lap.

"He needs some more of that Mickey magic." Tami explained as the husbands stared wide-eyed between mother, crying son, and each other.

She left them to take a much needed bathroom break. After she was done she grabbed a beer and leaned against the doorway, watching the way Fred squirmed in Mickey's arms as he held him close and rubbed his back. Ian watched the pair with adoration before looking up at Tami and mouthing a simple thank you.

And that's how Tami Tamietti met the real Mickey Milkovich.

[gleekto]

Roommate Wanted (11/12)

Summary/Prompt (stolen from @hazelandglasz - thank you!):  Straight guy (Blaine) worries he’s being homophobic to gay roommate (Kurt), then realizes he’s fallen for him. NYADA AU. Blaine POV.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six (Interlude (Kurt POV), Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Eleven

“Show me.” Blaine breathes out and lets his dark eyes look up and down Kurt’s body in his impossibly skinny grey jeans. He raises his hand gently to Kurt’s neck, underneath the blue scarf where the hickey is fading, and moves his thumb slowly up and down. Kurt closes his eyes shut under the scrutiny.

“We should,” Kurt’s voice is shaky. “We should talk. First.”

“Yeah,” Blaine’s voice is equally shaky. “Okay.” He lets his lips tickle Kurt’s ear. God.

Negotiation is easy when everyone is on the same page and eager to stop talking. Kurt pulls Blaine over to the couch and they sit down, knees touching, hands intertwined. Blaine runs his index finger along Kurt’s bare forearm. He can see it distracts Kurt - that’s the point.

“What do you have in mind, Blaine Anderson?”

“You.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “I’m serious. If you actually want to get naked at some point tonight, you need to answer.”

Blaine’s eyes light up with the confirmation that they are, in fact, on the same page. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’d like to get naked with you. Tonight. And we can stop at any time.” Blaine will definitely definitely not want to stop. 

“Agree,” Kurt says. “But no, you know-that.” He stops.

“Anal sex?” Kurt squeaks his affirmation and Blaine laughs. 

“Not yet,” Kurt recovers.

“Not yet,” Blaine agrees. 

“What have you done, anyways?” Blaine figured this was on Kurt’s mind. He’s had sex with one person, it taught him a lot. No regrets. 

“I’ve had sex,” Blaine says. “With a girl. My then girlfriend of many months, Julie. And I got tested before I came to NYADA. Just in case, you know, I met someone.” He smiles at Kurt.

“Did you - I mean, was it- You don’t have to tell me the details or anything.”

“I liked it.” Blaine understands the question. “I like sex. I liked sex with Julie. It felt good. And I loved Julie in a, I guess now, sort of platonic way. But it wasn’t-” Blaine searches for the word. “Like it is with you.” Not like he is now - a shaken up soda can, finally open and fizzing over, his body on fire just thinking about it.

“You don’t know how it is with me.”

“Kurt.”

“You’re going to be very good at this, aren’t you?”

Blaine blushes at the expectation. “Well, I don’t know about that,” He shakes his head dismissively. “But I do like,” Blaine pauses in a moment of nervousness. “Sex. And I may have been told that I sometimes talk - like during -  I may say things to you. That I’ve been thinking. It heightens it, for me. Unless it embarrasses you. Then I won’t-”

“You can,” Kurt says quickly. “I like that you’re” Kurt breathes out, “Not shy.  But I am. Still. I think,” Kurt muses. “I want this. So don’t interpret my total awkwardness for embarrassment.”

“You’re not awkward.” Blaine has untucked Kurt’s yellow shirt, and is making small circles on his lower back. Kurt is letting him. “But just to be clear,” Kurt’s getting goosebumps.“Whatever you want to do to me - even if it’s very little, it’s okay with me. I just want you to be comfortable. So I can be comfortable. You don’t even have to look at me naked-” 

Kurt laughs, “I want to look at you naked, Blaine.”

“Okay,” Blaine licks his lips. “Then the last thing is, so there are no unwanted surprises, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to go down on you.”

Kurt laughs out loud. “Oh my god, Blaine. Why is that a term of negotiation?”

“I want to,” Blaine shrugs innocently. “I’ve been thinking about it.” 

“Okay, I can live with that,” Kurt answers. Blaine finally lies him down on the couch and settles on top of him.

“Okay.” Blaine is where he wants to be.

...

It starts gently. They have all night. Blaine licks slowly at Kurt’s lips underneath him. Kurt mirrors him, slow, soft kitten licks. A tease. 

“I’m going to really kiss you now.” Blaine moves his hand behind Kurt’s neck, sinking himself into the kiss. Kurt moans and Blaine sighs into his mouth at the sound. He can feel Kurt’s hands on the small of his back, moving slowly lower. “Grab my ass,” He breathes into Kurt’s ear, burying his mouth on his neck.

“Oh my god,” Kurt laughs breathlessly but he does.

“Your hands feel so good.” Blaine warned him he would talk.

“You know I like your ass,” Kurt squeezes harder and Blaine feels powerful.

...

Too many minutes of kissing, pressed on top of each other on the couch and Blaine’s jeans are very uncomfortable. Which means Kurt’s jeans must be painful.

“Kurt,” Blaine lifts up. “Do you think we can move this to somewhere more comfortable?”

“Your place or mine?” 

They choose Kurt’s bigger bed, standing up from the couch and moving as quickly as possible. Kurt crawls on to his bed and Blaine quickly takes off his own shirt while Kurt is facing the other way. He’s not rushing - just wants to turn the heat up one notch.

“Wow,” Kurt is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at a now half naked Blaine. Blaine preens, stepping between Kurt’s legs and bends gently to kiss at his neck, encouraging. Kurt places his hands on Blaine’s stomach and explores, running hands and fingertips over his nipples and Blaine starts to unbutton Kurt’s canary yellow shirt.

They lie beside each other, shirts off, kissing slowly. Kurt gets goosebumps every time Blaine runs a finger pad over a nipple. “Ahh. Sensitive.” But Blaine likes the sound he makes so he does it again. And then sucks Kurt’s nipple into his mouth. “Hnnngh ah!” 

“And I thought I would be the vocal one.”

“Shut up, Blaine. It’s intense there. For me.” Blaine does it again and Kurt groans deeply. Blaine sees Kurt’s toes curl. “Wow. It’s just a lot.”

Blaine gives a last lick and gently moves back to his pillow, stares at the ceiling for a breath. “We can stop now, you know? I won’t be disappointed. Well, maybe a little,” Honesty is the best policy. “But there will just be more for next time. It’s really okay.”

Kurt turns his head to face Blaine. “I did not say that I wanted to stop.” Kurt turns back to the ceiling too, breathing heavy, determined. He looks straight up, bites his lower lip, and puts his right hand firmly on Blaine’s clearly hard dick hidden in his jeans. Blaine’s heart races and he stays very still. Wants to let Kurt do whatever he wants. Kurt starts to run his hand up and down, gently squeezing. 

“I like that, Kurt. Your hand on me.” Blaine’s breath is shaking and he closes his eyes.

“I think you might like it more if we got these off.” Kurt pulls at his jeans. 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

...

 It doesn’t take them long to each remove their jeans. Blaine was not even going to try to peel Kurt’s off of him. He thinks he would have had to use a scissors which would have been a definite mood killer. Instead, he watches Kurt remove them slowly, turned around in a way one does for privacy when changing in front of someone. It gives him a chance to take in Kurt’s body - his long, strong legs, his round ass in black briefs, his broad back.

“Are you staring at me?” Kurt turns around, blushing slightly.

“Yes,” Blaine says. “Come here.”

...

Making out in only underwear is so much better. His cock has been hard since the couch and now he can feel Kurt against him, he can press against Kurt. He’s not sure the first time he does it how Kurt will react - Too forward? Letting Kurt feel how turned on he is. But Kurt grunts and mirrors his movements, his cock against Blaine’s leg, Blaine’s cock. It’s a new feeling completely - He grabs Kurt’s ass and pushes them together.

“Never felt anything like this before, Kurt,” Blaine lets out between soft moans.

Kurt is on top of Blaine and lifts up on his forearms and pushes his pelvis down in response. “You’ve never been gay before, Blaine,” Kurt smirks, mimicking him.

“Yeah,” Blaine can barely talk “So hot.” He takes the next step and slips his hands on to Kurt’s bare ass in his briefs, keeping the rhythm. “I want to see your cock.”

...

They stand in front of each other, naked and hard, and stare. “Your body is amazing, Kurt. All of it. You’re big.” Blaine knows he’s staring shamelessly. He wants to look.

Kurt is deep red but doesn’t rush to move, instead reaches out to fit Blaine’s cock in his own hands. He pumps gently. “You’re hot.”

Blaine presses them together again and they fall on to the bed, kissing and grabbing and rubbing more urgently against each other. Blaine can feel Kurt’s urgency.

“You’re getting close,” Blaine whispers in his ear and Kurt scrunches his eyes shut.

“I don’t want to be,” Kurt pants. “But yes.”

“So I’m going to suck you now, Kurt. Okay?” It’s a rhetorical question. “Spread out for me, babe.” The word feels new on his lips and he sees Kurt blush but that could be for other reasons. Kurt is a babe. Kurt opens his legs as Blaine kisses the inside of his thighs. He licks up, paying attention where he would want it, letting his tongue swirl around the head. Kurt whimpers and pants. “This is what I wanted, Kurt.” He licks lightly again. He knows he’s teasing. “Was hoping you would let me.” Kurt grabs on to the sheet beneath him, close. “Don’t be afraid to move, okay?” And then Blaine sinks down on him, jaw loose, trying to focus on all the sexual sensations around him. 

“Ah ah, Blaine! I’m going to-” Blaine keeps bobbing with just enough suction, and puts his hands under Kurt’s ass, lifting him in deeper, encouraging him. Kurt puts his hands on Blaine’s head, lets himself buck up. He screams loudly as he comes in Blaine’s mouth.

Blaine only chokes a bit, and he grabs a tissue to wipe at his mouth and does his best to swallow the rest. It’s slightly gross, but also epically hot. He’s so turned on he thinks he could come just from thinking about it.

“Sorry,” Kurt pants out as he opens his eyes. “That was loud.”

“That was literally the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced,” Blaine is still panting.  “Because you were loud - and who cares? We’re alone,” Kurt can’t argue with him. “And also because you, you know, weren’t shy.”

“Thanks,” Kurt smirks. “I’m trying. And so,” Kurt is now staring at Blaine’s still very hard cock, as Blaine kneels beside him unabashedly. “It’s your turn.” Kurt moves quickly -  opening his mouth and licking, before Blaine can begin a lecture on making sure Kurt is comfortable, being happy to wait until next time. He would be. “Ah Kurt, you don’t have to-”

“Please be quiet,” Kurt huffs out before opening his mouth wide and sinking down. Blaine is still kneeling, and puts his hands down behind him, grabbing the sheets. Blaine can watch him like this, eyes closed in concentration and mouth working. He puts his hands gently on the back of Kurt’s head, likes to feel the movement on him. He arches back.

“Kurt, I’m going to-” Kurt pops off as Blaine moans deeply and comes, on himself, on Kurt’s stomach. He watches Kurt’s amazed expression as he finishes.

There is a sticky mess all over both of them. “I wasn’t sure I would be able to swallow,” Kurt apologizes. “But I thought it would be hot to ummm,” Kurt looks sheepish. “Make a mess.” Blaine takes his index finger and traces it along the mess on Kurt’s stomach, and holds it up playfully to Kurt’s lips.

Kurt eyes it uncertainly, but sucks the tip in, assessing. “It’s not that bad, right?” Blaine encourages. 

“You tell me.” Kurt presses his mouth to Blaine’s, pushing them both over into a tangled mess of now very satisfied naked bodies.

“I love it,” Blaine answers into Kurt’s neck, cupping his ass and holding them together.

“Of course you do,” Kurt laughs. “Blaine, you have definitely earned your membership card. With honours.”

[letterboxd]

Under the Stars.

On the UK release of Harry Macqueen’s tender Supernova, the writer-director talks to Ella Kemp about timeless love stories, his favorite screen lovers and working with best buds Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci.

Love is patient and love is kind in Supernova, Harry Macqueen’s tender story of marriage, memory and maps. It’s an autumnal study of a mature, rock-solid love and the unfair illness that threatens to undo it. We’ve seen stories about gay lovers that end in tragedy before, but this one is different: a sense of security and trust infuses the final holiday of husbands Sam and Tusker, as they come to terms with Tusker’s recent diagnosis of early-onset dementia.

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play the couple—a pairing written in the stars, since the actors have been best friends for twenty years—who are traveling England in an RV, visiting places and people they have loved. Sam is a pianist, Tusker a star-gazing novelist. Together, they mine emotions that manifest in everyday care rather than grand, theatrical gestures. Julien describes Supernova as “a marvel of tiny moments that feel so real they register like bullet wounds,” while Lola feels the destabilizing power of these lovers. “I love love,” she writes, “but love is painful, beautiful, heart wrenching, frightening and forever.”

Supernova is the second feature from Macqueen as a writer and director after 2015’s Hinterland, in which he starred opposite Lori Campbell in a contemporary, rural tale of a companionship that spans decades. A London-trained actor, he made his debut in the under-seen Richard Linklater film, Me and Orson Welles. On Supernova, however, Macqueen remains firmly behind the camera.

The filmmaker opened up about the stars in the sky, the ones on our screens, intimacy, pride and more for his Life in Film questionnaire.

Harry Macqueen on location with Colin Firth for ‘Supernova’.

What do you think the connection is between stars—the celestial kind—and lovers? Harry Macqueen: Historically, we’ve always found the cosmos to be both perplexing and inspiring. I suppose there’s a kind of infinite beauty in space that is definitely related to love, and especially for a character like Tusker, who is contemplating his mortality. He’s looking up at the stars and thinking about what they mean, and what he means in that context, and it seemed like something that would be a natural thing to do if you were in that situation.

In terms of the other kind of stars—your incredible actors Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci—how did you find the right people to bring Sam and Tusker’s love to life? I think that what they do in the film is very surprising, in a way that’s beautiful and delicate. But it was also one of the easiest casting processes of any film, ever. Stanley was the first person we sent the script to and he read it very quickly and responded to it in the way that you hope that people will. We were really interested in one of the characters being not British—we felt there was something potentially quite stuffy about having two Brits bumbling around the countryside, so another culture would add a bit of a different energy to it.

Stanley loved the script and we got on really well. I really wanted, hopefully, to get two actors who knew each other and had a shared history for these intimate roles. And he said, “I don’t know whether you know, but my best mate is Colin, and I could get the script to him.” I obviously said yes and he said, “Okay, well, I already have, and he loves it and he wants to meet you.” So it was all a bit of a dream!

Let’s talk about the inception of the script. Supernova is obviously a story about love, but it’s about illness and death and mortality and all of these things, which feels significant in terms of it being a gay love story. A lot of queer love stories in cinema are tragic, but also are often very specifically reckless and youthful, and don’t really linger on this later chapter in life. How early did you know, then, that this film would be about two men? If you’re talking about early-onset dementia, you’re naturally talking about people in their fifties or sixties, so I knew that I was always going to tell a story about romantic love of some kind in that part of your life. I had done a lot of research around that, and I realized I had never worked with a same-sex couple. All the couples and families that I’d worked with, the central relationship had been a heterosexual one. So my initial reaction was to write that story, but then I countered that really quickly and wanted to challenge why that was my initial inkling.

I just thought, I’m writing about really universal themes—love and death and life and trust and companionship—and it seems to me that no one sexual orientation or gender has a monopoly on those things.

And you’re right, LGBTQ+ cinema over the years, quite often for very, very important and understandable reasons, has been about that period of flux, transitioning or coming out, the moment of becoming your true self at a certain time of life, when you’re usually quite young. And that is quite fraught, frantic and a bit grimy sometimes. So I was aware that there was a gap in cinema to present a love story about two people of the same sex who were in this stage of life. That romantic, mature love we don’t talk about very often.

The film also aspires to be the type of story in this type of community that I hope that I live in, even if perhaps I don’t—to tell a story in which the sexuality of the characters isn’t mentioned. It’s just accepted, embraced and loved. The sexuality of the characters doesn’t impact the story or inform anything, it’s just their lived experience in the world. I’m really proud that we did that, because I genuinely think, in its own tiny way, it’s a revelation.

Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci navigate love and illness in the Lake District.

This film, materially and aesthetically, is beautiful. The landscapes, the actors, Sam and Tusker’s knitwear. How did you navigate the balance between creating this very cozy world that also understands heartbreak and decay as potent things? What I want to try and do in films generally is wrap an audience up in an intimate world between two people, and hopefully allow the audience to fall in love with those people. That shared history they have meant that all of these things felt quite organic. They’ve got some money, but they’re in a camper van, they’re not loaded. They’re reasonably creatively successful, but they’re not famous, necessarily. They’re just two guys trying to live under quite extreme conditions.

The intimacy in the film is really, really important to me. What degree of romantic intimacy these characters have, how you film that, and how you plonk an audience in there. Because you don’t want to make a dirge—the film is life-affirming because they love each other so much, and because of that, it’s also devastating.

So that informs every choice you make stylistically. It’s quiet, and it’s patient, and it felt like exactly the right way to tell this story, to not intrude on this beautiful relationship, to not impose anything on it, to be very simple, really—which, as I’m sure you know, it’s not simple!

I know that kind of filmmaking is not to everyone’s taste, that avoidance of melodrama, that lightness of touch. I find it beautiful, but others probably don’t.

Gordon Warnecke and Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ (1985).

Now, a few Life in Film questions. Who are your favorite gay lovers on-screen? Carol and Therese in Carol, Russell and Glen in Weekend, Marianne and Héloïse in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Johnny and Omar in My Beautiful Laundrette.

What is your favorite timeless love story? This is so difficult! Maybe Alice in the Cities, Wendy and Lucy or the Before... trilogy.

What is the best film about pride, the definition of which is very much open to interpretation? Jiro Dreams of Sushi—a brilliant film about having pride in your craft.

What should we watch after Supernova? I tend to be a bit controversial and say the couple from Amour by Michael Haneke. Or maybe Life of Brian, or a Studio Ghibli film—but definitely not Grave of the Fireflies.

What was the film that made you want to be a filmmaker? I’m not certain there is a specific one, but there are films you encounter all the time that make you want to be a filmmaker all over again. The two films that made me think it might actually be possible were Old Joy and Katalin Varga—they inspired me before I had any budget or experience. But it could also be any Yasujirō Ozu film, or Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami. All very inspiring in their own way.

Related content

Queer Love and Desire: a list by the Criterion Channel

The Pride of Sundance: 400 LGBTQ+ films to watch this June, curated by the Sundance Film Festival

101 Must-See Movies for Lesbians: Jenni Olson’s list (including Carol)

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

‘Supernova’ is in UK theaters now, and available to stream on Hulu, or rent/buy from other VOD services in the US.

[runaway-horses]

Rainbow Colored Love

Word Count: 1,765

A/N: Me? Self-projecting? Never. (Read; I absolutely am) This took me in a lot of directions in one day before I settled on what I have now. (Yes, I wrote this in one day, and yes, I am exhausted.) Happy Pride to everybody! This fic means a lot to me just because I made Virgil non-binary, like myself, and I hope y’all enjoy it.

Warnings: One use of the F-word, Sympathetic Deceit but he’s only mentioned twice and both times off-screen. I think that’s it? Un-beta read, all mistakes are the result of writing this past midnight.

Tags: @pippippippin, @a-cure-for-sentience, @stormcrawler75, @princeyssash, @quoth-the-sparrow, @theresneverenoughfandoms, @queer-guineapig

Virgil sits at the end of their driveway, head tilted back, eyes shut. The harsh June sun beats down on them, but Virgil is enjoying it. Normally, they would find the heat oppressive. It made wearing their signature hoodie uncomfortable (and according to Patton, dangerous) and the Florida sun was not kind on their pale skin.

But it's hard to muster up any sort of negative feelings today, not even towards the sun.

A smile splits their face as they hear the distinctive rumble of their boyfriend's car making its way down the road. Virgil sits up and squints at the dark blue van rolling to a stop in front of them. Their boyfriend steps out and runs a hand through his blue hair, missing it up. Virgil feels a pang of fondness in their chest at the very sight of him.

"Logan!" They call, standing gracefully. Logan looks over to them and he smiles big, dropping his hand. “Hello darling,” Logan greets, his eyes bright behind his glasses. Virgil walks up to him and tilts their head back to look him in the eye. As much as they liked to grumble about it (and as much as Roman teased them about it), they loved how Logan was just a head taller than them. It meant Virgil could tuck their head right under his chin and breathe in the familiar scent of their boyfriend. (It also made them feel safe, when Logan would wrap his arms around them and press a kiss to the top of their head- yeah. That was nice too.)

Logan’s hands are cool against Virgil’s warm skin as he gently cups their face and kisses their forehead. “Are you ready to go, starshine?” Virgil hums in affirmation and bounds over to the passenger side of Logan’s door, sliding into the car and ignoring Logan’s fond chuckle. Virgil tries not to bounce in their seat as Logan backs the car out of their driveway, and they reach into their pocket for their fidget spinner. They spin it around and enjoy both the motion and the whirr before turning to Logan.

“I want to dye my hair,” They say, abruptly. They’re surprised by Logan’s smile (Logan is extra smiley today, usually it takes a bit more to get their stoic boyfriend to show emotion. Although Virgil supposes they’re feeling particularly stimmy and happy today as well.)

“I had a hunch, or a hope, that you might say that. I re-did mine last night,” He gestures to the vibrant color atop his head, “And I purchased some extra dye. Did you have a particular color in mind?” Virgil hums and flicks the spinner again.

“I was thinking purple?” They say and Logan nods.

“I have a bottle of it at home. Would you like me to do that before we leave for the parade?” Virgil hums again and nods before turning to look out the window. Logan reaches for the radio and the playlist that Virgil made him for their anniversary fills the car, which causes Virgil to glance over at Logan.

I need to know

That when I fail you'll still be here, mmm

'Cause if you stick around, I'll sing you pretty sounds

And we'll make money selling your hair

He’s smiling, and after a moment he starts to song along.

I don't care what's in your hair

I just wanna know what's on your mind

I used to say I wanna die before I'm old

But because of you, I might think twice

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

+++

The two of them are still singing along to the playlist when Logan pulls up to his house, and they wait in the driveway until the current song finishes for Logan to turn off the car. Virgil opens the car door and follows Logan into his house. They like Logan’s house, it smells like peppermint and cinnamon and Logan’s dad is always kind to Virgil. Logan leads him into the bathroom, where there’s bottles of hair dye on the counter. Virgil spots the purple and picks it up to look at the color more closely. Vibrant Violet, the label reads. They smile at Logan and hand him the bottle. “This is good, I hope.”

Logan reaches for the latex gloves on the counter and urges Virgil to sit up on the edge of the sink so he can start on their hair.

45 minutes later, Logan is blow drying Virgil’s hair as they discuss Doctor Who and Logan is making Virgil laugh with his Intense Focus face. (Your eyebrows scrunch together and you get this really serious look on your face; it’s adorable! Sometimes you even stick your tongue out a little-hey! I’m just telling the truth!)

“All done!” Logan announces, peeling off his gloves and dropping them in the trash can. Virgil hops off the counter and turns to look in the mirror, gasping at their reflection. Their hair is a vibrant shade of purple, the bangs fluffier than usual due to its recent blow drying. They run a hand through their hair and study their reflection for a moment longer before turning around and hugging Logan.

“I love it! Thank you, Logan,” They say into his chest, and they feel themself melt a little when Logan drops a kiss on their head.

“You’re welcome dearest. Now, are you ready to get dressed? I don't want to be late.’

Virgil nods and looks at themself in the mirror one last time before grabbing their bag and darting into Logan’s bedroom, pulling their outfit out of the backpack. They’re pulling their shirt over their head when Logan enters and they smile at his tank top, which has the words “Everything is gay and nothing is binary” printed on it in blocky letters.

(It also highlights Logan’s impressive biceps and shoulders, so in no way is Virgil complaining.)

He lifts up a pallet of face paint and shakes it. "Would you paint my face for me, dear?" Virgil nods and reaches for the pallet, swatting Logan's arm when he lifts it up out of their reach. Logan laughs and hands it to Virgil, who flips open the lid with a huff. "You're lucky I love you," they mutter as they swipe color across their boyfriend's face.

"Indeed I am," Logan murmurs, leaving forward and kissing Virgil gently, trapping their hand between their chests as they melt into the kiss.

"Fuck you, Logan. Now I'm soft," They object weakly, fighting back the blush that's painting their cheeks red. "You weren't supposed to make that romantic!"

Logan pulls them closer and kisses their cheeks. "Roman must be rubbing off on me," he says. Virgil pushes him away gently, certain that they'll explode if Logan keeps kissing them.

"He's a bad influence on you, that Prince."

Virgil finishes the last swipe of blue on Logan's face, having painted two identical bi flags on either side of Logan's face.

"You're all set!" They say, admiring their work. "I can't believe I painted straight lines during this Good Gay Month."

Logan's laughs as he pulls on his combat boots. "Now who sounds like Roman?"

Virgil doesn't respond, preoccupied with their task of painting yellow, white, purple, and black stripes on their own face. When they catch Logan's eyes in the mirror, he's smiling at them.

They smile back at him, and pull back from the mirror.

"Ok, I'm ready." They say, picking up their backpack and slinging it over their shoulder.

"Let's get our gay on, shall we?"

+++

The entire drive, Virgil is vibrating with excited energy. They spin their fidget spinner for the entire ride, trying to settle their emotions somewhat.

When Logan parks the car at their destination, Virgil reaches into their backpack and digs around for a moment before emerging with a small pin that they fix to their shirt.

My Pronouns Are they/them/theirs.

Logan reads the white text over the non-binary flag and gives Virgil a smile filled with pride. Virgil smiles back. They've come a long way in two years, two years ago they never would've imagined being comfortable enough with themself to wear a pin like this, to have the flag so visible on their body.

They step out of the car and grasp Logan's hand as the two of them walk towards the loud and joyful sounds of the crowds. There's glitter and color and sound everywhere, and Virgil feels the tight grip of anxiety for a terrifying moment, but then Logan squeezes their hand and the crowd parts and they can breathe again.

They hear a loud shout to their left, and when they look they see Roman and Patton hanging off of each other, each decked out in Pride regalia.

"Oh my stars, Virgil! Look at you, you look wonderful!" Patton says as they get closer. Virgil smiles shyly and squeezes Logan's hand again.

"Thanks Padre. You look pretty pan-tastic yourself."

Patton screeches with joy and slaps at Roman's arm, smiling huge.

"A pun! What a pun-derful pun, thank you Vee!" Virgil smiles at their friend as he flaps his hands a little and Roman looks at his boyfriend like he hung the sun. Roman is wearing his “No Romo” shirt that Virgil gifted him when he came out to the group. (Later that night, he also admitted his squishes for Patton and Dee, and the three of them have been together since. It’s a memorable day in their friendship history for a couple reasons.)

"We're looking for Dee, but we'll see you guys once the parade starts?" Roman asks, questioning gaze lingering on Virgil.

"You will, for sure." They say, happiness bubbling in their chest as they answer. Roman smiles at them before leading Patton off, presumably in search of their third QPP.

Logan and Virgil walk hand in hand through the crowd, and they find what they deem to be a good spot to wait in for the parade to begin. Virgil takes their backpack off and reaches into it again, pulling out the finishing touch to their outfit.

The demiromantic flag unfolds, and they tie it around their shoulders resolutely. They look at Logan, pride in their eyes, and Logan kisses them.

And as Logan's fingers sink into their hair, with the rumble of people around them and their flag fluttering at their back, Virgil feels at home.

And when they break apart to walk, Virgil says a silent thank you to all those who walked before, and gave them the opportunity to be here, walking hand in hand with the boy they love.

[lisinfleur]

Tango

Author’s Notes | I tried to fit the three requests in a single one. Hope you guys like! Universe | Vikings Pairing | Hvitserk x Reader Info | Modern Age, requested by multiple anons for 5CW5 Words | 1433 ⁑ Warnings: ANGST, not heavy. Some cursing.

He did it again.

He went too far and hurt you, he was sure.

But how could he hold back when you were posing that way, in minimum lingerie, with another man's arms around your waist and his lips so close to yours?

"Her work is killing me..." Hvitserk mumbled.

His fingers messing up with the ice into his drink while your sister was sitting beside him, listening to his grieve as always after a fight of yours.

"She fought hard to be who she is, Hvitserk. But I get you... It's hard to see your girl that way even knowing it's scenographic."

"It is for her," he insisted, "I'm not here mistrusting Y/N's love for me or her loyalty. I never doubted her... But fuck, what man could be like that with a girl like her and affirm he's not feeling anything?"

Hvitserk sighed. His relationship with you was always like that. Coming and going whenever your new works came out with one or two sexiest poses beside your co-workers.

You could understand his jealousy - some poses were even uncomfortable for you and for the men working with you, due to the huge sexuality some photographers wanted to print. But shouldn't your love be enough for him? Shouldn't he trust your words about how it wasn't really sexy to make those photos?

"In the great majority of times? They're feeling cold," your sister joked, drinking from her cup and attracting Hvitserk's eyes towards her.

She was always trying to help. You knew Hvitserk through her: they were best friends and she was the greater supporter of your relationship. Now? She was always helping to fix these little wrinkles in between the two of you.

"You should go with her to the studios, man, I did it before. All the sexiness goes to hell, buddy. You would be pissed off with the way they treat those models."

"She thinks I'm too jealous to go with her," Hvitserk answered, drinking from his cup.

Both of them sitting in a bar, near your apartment. "Y/N thinks I'll end up getting in a fight or something."

"You probably would. But not because of the reasons the two of you are thinking," she sighed, looking at him. "Last time I went, I fought a photographer and threatened to take my sister back home with me if he didn't turn off that damn air conditioner."

Hvitserk started paying attention as your sister kept talking.

"The bastard settled that shit to the lowest temperature because of his equipment and it was a damn cold night. Y/N was working through the whole day, they barely paused to eat, and that stupid asshole was complaining she and the other model were shivering at the positions, preventing him from taking the perfect pictures and making the section longer." she sighed, taking another sip of her drink.

Hvitserk's forehead frowned, surprised.

"I almost punched him. It was fucking cold, Y/N and the girl were both in tiny little lingerie, hungry, tired, and he wanted them to pose like porn queens almost fucking each other."

"You're right... I would get a fight into a place like this..." he said, kinda angry.

"But not for the reasons you were thinking," she smiled."The same goes for the masculine models, Hvitserk. They're there hungry, tired, and many times, they don't even like women. This guy you're complaining so much? Well, he's gay and his boyfriend was fucking pissed off with the photos the same way you are."

Hvitserk rubbed his face.

"Feeling idiot now, right?" she joked again, getting an annoyed side look from him. "Don't push her so hard. Y/N is not this little defenseless angel you think she is, Hvitserk. I saw my sister refusing millionaire works because of how much she loves you. She knows the places where she works and she refuses services with people she knows would try to make it wrong. And man, she loves you. She fucking loves you, dude... You have no idea how much."

"I..." Hvitserk sighed again. "I love her too. I'm just... It's hard, you know? I wish I could be there with her and at the same time, I don't wanna see other people undressing her, touching her... It's... It gets me annoyed, even knowing it's not real."

"Then make it real for you and her. Go there, be by her side if you feel you need, buddy. Protect her if you feel she needs, but trust her over everything. You guys need to stop this dance of mistrust or, sooner or later, it will break your relationship for good."

Hvitserk didn't want to lose you. You were everything to him and despite how jealous he was about your work and all the stupid jokes he had to hear sometimes because of your photos, he wanted to be by your side. To be yours as he knew you were his.

"They can be seeing her almost naked, Hvitserk. But you're the one who wraps your arms around her and to who she runs back every day. My sister's body may be stamped in outdoors and calendars, but her heart is yours," your sister said, taking his cup away and patting his shoulder. "Now go back home, buddy. She must be sad and the two of you need to talk."

He sighed one more time. Your sister was right.

Not letting her question anything, he paid the full bill of the bar, hugging her before leaving.

"Thanks..."

"Come on, brother... We do it all the time," she said, smiling.

"It doesn't mean I shouldn't thank," he answered, holding hands with her before leaving back to the apartment you guys were dividing now.

Instead of using the elevator, he went through the stairs, getting time to process everything your sister told him. When he arrived, you were sitting in the middle of the living room. In front of you, the calendar that motivated your last fight torn into pieces. All those pictures you worked so hard to make were destroyed by your own hands, crying another fight with him because of your work.

Sometimes, you wanted to stop. But then you would remember all the fights you had to face to reach the place you were now and your heart would clench into your chest. It wasn't fair! You weren't doing anything wrong!

So why were the two sides of your life destroying each other?

Hvitserk kneeled behind you and slowly wrapped his arms around you, bringing your body against him while sitting on the ground. Silently, you crawled into his embrace, hiding against his chest, feeling when he kissed your forehead and embraced you tight, protective.

The two of you remained that way, silent for a long moment before your crying voice broke the silence, mumbling at him.

"I swear... It's not this way... It's not what you..."

His fingers touched your lips and you felt him lifting your chin, kissing your mouth softly and tenderly before mumbling back.

"I was wrong. I got angry and messed up. And I'm sorry," he said, nuzzling his nose to yours, slowly. "I know it's not like that. I know my mind plays with me and my jealous makes me angry... But I shouldn't have said what I said and hurt you that way. It's your work and you're amazing doing this. You fought for this and I shouldn't be so jealous because I know you're mine..."

Your body relaxed into his arms, your heart becoming warm with his words.

"I don't wanna be a jerk anymore. Let me go with you, understand how it works, work upon this jealousy I feel. I wanna be with you. By your side. I wanna support your work and I don't want you to stop or tear your photos this way. It's your work. And you fought too hard for this to be ruined because of something stupid like my insecurity."

His fingers slowly slid through your face and he touched his forehead to yours.

"I love you, Y/N. More than anything. Can you forgive my stupid words? Can we start over?"

Your eyes filled with tears and you nodded embracing him tightly, hiding your face against his neck.

"I love you too, Hvitserk."

Hvitserk's embrace became tight around you and he sighed, breathing your scent, kissing the top of your head and caressing your hair.

It was for you. He could try to control himself and stop being so harsh.

He had to.

That relationship was the music of his life. And he didn't want to stop dancing with you.

Do you like my work? Support me!

Tagged ones:

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[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey Steph! I’m on this app called amino(it’s a social network) and I’m in this Sherlock community and most of the people there aren’t really familiar with TJLC. So I want analysise the show from a Johnlock perspective and talk about some metas and theories from other people to. I was wondering if you have some really good metas I should include? I will maybe post my Johnlock analysis on tumblr to.

Hi Lovely!

Yes, I know of Amino only because a few youtubers I watch used to be sponsored by them, LOL

AH, it’s been awhile since I’ve kept up with Meta and Theories. I’m going to naturally direct you to the links that appear in the header of my tumblr if you’re viewing it on desktop (and some of my personal meta additions):

NEW TO JOHNLOCK / TJLC? (My Meta)

MY S4 META MASTERPOST (Pre-S4)

Guide for Newbies: Post S4

S4 Meta Masterpost (Aug. 3, 2018)

TJLC: A Beginner’s Guide

Abridged Version

Another List

And Another 

Johnlock, Garridebs, and S4

Johnlock vs. TJLC

What is A TJLCer? 

What Does TJLC Mean?

Johnlock Moments That Convinced Me

Johnlock in S4

Johnlock Moments in S4 (Post S4)

Will the Writers Make it Official?

Johnlock is Already Blatant

Will Johnlock Be Confirmed in S4? (Pre-S4)

Is It Queerbaiting?

Noteable TJLC & Fandom Meta

Is it True That ACD Couldn’t Make Them Gay Because of the Time Period? 

TJLC Analysis of ACD Canon? 

Episode By Episode: John Loves Sherlock

Proof of John Loving Sherlock?

Why Does Sherlock Love John?

Why Sherlock and John are More Than Friends (Meta Masterpost)

Blog Theory / John’s Alibi Mini Masterpost

John’s Alibi Theories (Jan 2019)

Can you Link Me to Some Theories?

An Outsider’s Perspective: Some S4 Theories

S4 Meta and M-Theory Meta?

Does M-Theory Still Work for S4?

Some Fuckery About S4

Is Sherlock S4 a Stage Play?

What Are The Gayest Episodes, Plus: Sherlock’s Sexuality in ACD and BBC Sherlock Masterlist

The Mary Problem: Mary’s Manipulation

A LOT of those are a bit outdated (I’m actually updating the Queerbating link, just very slowly, LOL) but they do contain some great meta about reading subtext and helping people see the Johnlock in the series.  

Here are some other meta I’ve recently catalogued that I’ve actually read:

OTHERS’ TJLC META

Sherlock and John’s Romance Arc in BBC Sherlock

TJLC For the Uninitiated

Watson and Holmes Were Never in a Relationship in the Books!!

How is Irene Attracted to Sherlock if She’s Gay?

What Can We Deduce About his Heart?

“Sherlock wasn’t gay in canon, bye.” Uhmmm. (Sherlock’s Sexuality)

Molly as John’s Mirror

Female Reading of the Male Gaze, and Sherlock

Fucky S4 Things

Sherlock & Romance, AKA Why So Many People Ship Johnlock

“Oh Mycroft… What Have You Done?”: Part One of Game Theory Meta

Why “Game Theory”? 

Who Or What is Moriarty? Game Theory Part 2

Hints at Marriage / Wedding Between Sherlock and John 

TRF Theory Part 3 

Musings on Mycroft’s True Nature & the Divine Comedy

ACD CANON: Arthur Conan Doyle and Subtext

Johnlock Meta and Authorial Intent in Sherlock Fandom: Affirmational or Transformational

Blog Theory: T6T – John Cheating on Mary was Already Happening 

Blog Theory: John (The Writer) is More and More in Crisis as He’s Writing

This is just a VERY VERY VERY small sampling of all the meta that I actually do have catalogued (I have over 1000 links sorted right now, LOL, most of them mine but that’s a moot point lol) but these should get you started with helping people see what Johnlockers see :) If there are any doubles, I apologize… I sort them all on an offline document based on reblogs, and sometimes I name them differently in different sections so I don’t realize I did it LOL.

If there’s something specific you’re looking for, let me know and I’ll search my blog tags for you :)

[zamancollective]

The Constructive Agony of Talking Politics at Shabbat (Or How to Survive a Debate with Your Relatives) 

By Gabriella Kamran  

Illustration by Sophie Levy

I wasn’t yet 20 years old and I had already forgotten what it felt like to join my relatives for Shabbat dinner and eat brisket without a side of political commentary. Was that a new phenomenon? Was I too busy spitting tomatoes into napkins as a child that I didn’t notice the moral axioms being thrown above my head? Regardless, charged conversation after charged conversation gradually emerged from background noise while I chewed to a dynamic that captured my interest and charted the course of my intellectual development. 

It seems accurate to say that I entered the fray around the same time I started buying my own clothes. These were the early teenage years: I was testing the waters of feminism, experimenting with political Facebook posts, and learning that not everything I believe to be true is, in fact, the truth. Every young person has a moment of realization that adults can sometimes be profoundly wrong. Mine took place gradually over a series of weekly dinners, as my male relatives argued and I felt an arsenal of my own opinions weighing in my chest. 

I will say with no qualifiers that it is difficult for a fourteen-year-old girl to wedge herself into a conversation with several adult men. First, there is the issue of a quiet voice, not yet amplified by the support of social affirmation. Then there is the matter of being taken seriously — that is, the unspoken surprise that I was not in the living room talking to my girl cousins about nail polish. 

(The aunts, for their part, either ladled soup in the kitchen or listened at the table, inserting a comment when appropriate. For a long time, I interpreted their disinterest as ignorance or resignation to gender norms, but with maturity one gets better at recognizing weariness. I remember once my jaw dropped when a cousin’s grandmother expressed a political opinion out loud- something about Hillary’s foreign policy. I hated myself for being so shocked that she’d have something to say.) 

I learned quickly that family debate is rocky terrain. The post-meal discussion usually unfolded as follows: 

Man 1: This ObamaCare is going to put doctors out of business, I’m telling you. 

Man 2: Just awful. The liberals are pushing us towards socialism. Aunt: We’re just giving more and more money to the lazy bums. Me: What about the majority of poor people who aren’t lazy and were born into poverty? I don’t think anyone genuinely wants to be on welfare. 

Man 2: Oh, no. We send our kids to the conservative schools and they still get brainwashed by liberals. 

Man 1: Question everything your teachers tell you, Gabs. They have an agenda. An agenda. 

Alternatively, the “elders” card was pulled and the conversation stopped short: 

Me: I don’t think you should call people _____ 

Relative: You can’t speak to me like that. How can you disrespect your family?

The more politically conscious I became, the more these dinners began to wear on my nerves. At school, I was learning so much I could almost feel my mind growing into itself. The classic teenage practice of finding oneself was in full force for me as I wrote school newspaper op-eds in my successive editor positions and defined myself in the lines of my rhetoric. Dinner with relatives sucked this pride out of my chest and pulled the plug on my budding confidence. I oscillated between righteous indignation that prompted me to sit firmly in place when the political debate started during our meal and outright fear that anyone would ask me at any point in the night about something of more import than my week’s activities. Family dinners became a matter of fight or flight.  

I took refuge in journalism and books. They seemed to possess more certainty than my relatives’ armchair sociological analyses. I read Betty Friedan, Ta Nehisi Coates, Ari Shavit… and the fact that I considered these all to be radical texts is indicative of how intimidated I felt in political terms. My progressive ideals were no longer inclinations; I could use words like “neoliberal” and “reactionary” to match my relatives’ rhetorical skill. Vocabulary aside, however, a gulf persisted between me and some of the men in my family.

What was this gulf, exactly? Was it a generational gap? Surely an ideological divide existed between every new crop of cousins, fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. Common wisdom dictates that naïve youth will always be more progressive and open-minded than their older counterparts. It seemed to me, though, that something more was at play here. These Shabbat dinners meant more than a blasé tidal shift in opinions, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. 

The time came for me to go to college, and I was surrounded for the first time by a collection of politically conscious people who had enough intellectual acuity to rigorously critique the elder generation’s values. 

I met friends who told me their grandparents were “hella liberal” and still smoked weed on the weekends, and I beheld these friends in awe. This must have been the diversity they extolled in admissions brochures, the expansion of horizons — but which one of us was living in a bubble? Then there were the students who seemed to have swallowed their relatives’ platitudes like pills, rolling their eyes when they passed a student protest or snickering at T.A.’s requests to state our preferred gender pronouns. These students made me the most uneasy.  

Mostly, though, college brought me a network of friends who shared my experience. By this time we had all developed standby strategies to deal with opinionated table talk: some blocked out the rhetoric and ate their khoresht in peace, and some, like me, often ventured back into the weekly scuffles like moths to a partisan flame.  

But, of course, it was more than righteous indignation that pulled me back into the tides of argument. The supposed radical leftist hegemony on college campuses gave my relatives plenty of dinner table fodder on the nights when I made the ten-minute journey from my dorm to their dining rooms. They particularly liked to raise an issue with my chosen minor, Gender Studies, which they denounced as man-hating. As they prodded me about my professors in order to attack their liberal agendas, I felt the familiar nagging anxiety: Was the leftist haven I found in college making me tone-deaf, insular under the pretense of high-minded morality? I felt obligated to listen to every dismissal of Hillary Clinton, every racial slur, and every condemnation of Islam. This was my internal protest at their accusations of narrow-mindedness. 

I still wondered what was really new in our political conversations. Topics had changed — Obama and McCain became Hillary and Trump, Al Qaeda became ISIS, gay became LGBTQIA+ — but the emotions I had as a young progressive facing several elder conservatives were constant. What were we all feeling during those semi-heated exchanges? We one-upped each other and attacked arguments at weak points, but what was the seed of all this debate? Perhaps it was a sense of familial betrayal. 

We swear to keep family and business separate but there is no such promise when it comes to politics, although we know they are equally divisive. “The personal is political” is also true in reverse — to disparage someone’s worldview is an affront to their world. Political standpoints are currents that run deeper than the surface waters of opinion. Debate is healthy and insult is not, and the line between them is fine. 

One August night before my freshman year of college, one family member reminded me once again to question everything my professors would tell me.  

“These are a different kind of people. Really liberal. They don’t think like us.” 

I wondered briefly what he meant by “us,” considering our often radically divergent opinions. He had been at the dinner table all these years — could it be that he never truly listened to me? 

My cousin leaned toward me, interrupting my thoughts. 

“Or you could come back from college a flaming liberal, and we’ll still love you.”

 I was struck by the resonance of my cousin’s joke, and I still think about it often. By the very merit of calling one another family, we make an implicit promise to stand by one another and love unconditionally – that is, regardless of ideology. When we sit across the dining room table, embroidered white tablecloth stretching between us, and launch attacks intended not to teach, not to strengthen, but to change, there is a sense of combat that doesn’t belong in a family. These mealtime political debates are not a leisurely pastime but a battle driven by an attempt to win, and to win means to vanquish. Hovering over the platters of chicken and tadig is an intention to change one another, and the promise of loyalty feels contingent upon your next comeback.  

Isn’t that what families do, though? We change each other. Any amateur psychologist will tell you that our personalities begin at home. Parents, and to an extent other relatives, are charged with the responsibility of edifying their children. It takes a village, and a large part of this is the admonitions and proverbs of the villagers. Perhaps my relatives feel this weight of social obligation propelling them forward as they critique my beliefs. They crave my confirmation that they are succeeding in their efforts. Maybe when I push back and hold my own, they feel some kind of failure. 

There’s a Jewish parable in which a sage, faced with a crowd of scholars who disagree with his judgment, asks God to determine who is correct. God declines to comment. The wise men debate and eventually move forward with a decision. From heaven, God laughs with joy: “My sons have defeated me!” 

The goal of true mentorship has never been indoctrination. Young people look to their beloved elders to create some kind of safe space to learn to walk, to stumble, to mess up. The goal is that eventually, the pupil becomes the teacher. A student who recites their teachers’ talking points is a student lost.  

Through the ages, a 7 p.m. roundtable over plates of freshly-cooked dinner has been the family’s classroom. The curriculum is set by the routine inquiries of “What did you learn at school today?” and, “How was work?” Some families study in groups of three, and some are lucky enough to learn alongside dozens. I should hope that men in my family take enough interest in my growth to stretch my mind and challenge my thinking. So, too, should they hope I prove them wrong sometimes. 

[deadlifts-and-derrida]

Well, it's been a while since I posted any long form writing here. So how about I do that now? Let's get UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE.

To tell the story of my first boyfriend, I need to tell the story of coming out to my mother.

I came out to my mother the week before I left to begin university. It didn't go as I hoped it would. I chose mom instead of dad because I thought mom would be easier. Girls and women seemed safer than boys and men. To teenaged me, active homophobia seemed mostly a masculine trait.

I'll stop there. I don't want to set mom up like she had the worst reaction. She didn't get mad. Mad, I could have handled. I was a bold, righteous, outspoken teen; I was equipped to deal with anger. Mom wasn't mad - mom was sad. As if a precious object had dropped to the floor and was now damaged - even if it could be repaired, the crack would always be there.

I couldn't handle sad. It was like I told her I had an inoperable cancer. That's a homophobic attitude just as much as throwing your kid out is, but it's… subtler. How do you respond to it? If you get angry she'll just get sadder. Her sadness hurts you to witness. You wish you hadn't spoken up, because you love your mother and you don't want to make her sad. You regret ever opening your mouth. By you I mean I.

I left for university a week later having had no follow-up discussion, having stuffed myself back into the closet, more or less. When I got to university I would be free to be as gay as I wanted, and I intended to be very. Very. Very. Gay.

Why do I need to tell this story before I get to Matthew? (His name was Matthew). Well. I guess I'm trying to explain why I was the way I was, and I'm hanging the blame on Mom. It's not really fair. Her reaction was bad, and it hurt me, it didn't give me the support I needed at a critical moment. But all of it - her reaction, the fact that I needed the support in the first place - is because of our damned stupid homophobic society, right? Mom and me, we're both just products of the hate machine that spat us out, right? Right?

I love my mother. I forgive her. She danced joyfully at my wedding. It's all fine. Everything is fine. The precious thing got repaired so well you can only really see the crack if you know where to look.

So Matthew.

I spent all of highschool wanting a boyfriend and sex. Unrequited crushes on unattainable men. But the fear. That was real, too. Not just fear that if you got caught checking out the wrong guy he'd gaybash you - although that was a real, potent fear. But also the fear that if you got caught checking out the right guy, then you'd have to go through with it.

Isn't that crazy? Being afraid to go through with the thing you want to go through with! But it's true. Actually attainable men? No. There was one other gay guy in my high school class, and we shared a friend group, although the two of us never really clicked. I was too weird and he was, for want of a better word, too basic. I was also very unfortunate-looking in high school. But in addition to all of this - there was the sense that I couldn't be attracted to him because if I was then something would have to happen and I wasn't ready for that.

But I wanted to be ready for it!

So Matthew, again.

When I got to university, free from my mother's terrible sadness, free from my high school self, I wanted to shed my skin like a snake and slither my way into a new me. Now that I was out and lived in a city (a small city, but the biggest one we had), I really femmed up. Glitter. Tight clothes. Limp wrists. Hair dye. Even eyeliner, sometimes. I wanted the world to know. In part because I was signalling to whoever around me who had the correct receptors: I'm here, I'm queer, for the love of god please do something about it.

Matthew picked up on that signal. He was a (female) friend's best friend. He was in his last year of high school in a town about 90 minutes away, but he made trips in on some weekends to see his best friend. One of those weekends, only a couple of weeks into my very first semester, he and I fell into each other's gravity. Nowadays, I know the sensation well. I'm sure most people will, too. You feel this tug between you and someone else. You draw closer. You look at each other. Closer. A few touches, at first passing it off as innocent. Then more touches. Closer.

We were so close our lips were brushing each other's as we spoke quietly. I don't remember how long the lip brushing lasted before it became kissing, but despite everything, despite the utter hell Matthew would eventually unleash on my life, I still think this is probably one of the best first-ever kisses on record.

(It wasn't his first-ever kiss. He already had an ex-boyfriend. I was his second. But it was my first-ever kiss).

Matthew wasn't my type. He had a shrill, harsh laugh. He had a giant mop of curly hair that he liked to dye. It was kind of like a clown's wig. I was still unfortunate-looking myself, please understand. He wasn't active, didn't exercise - which is fine, except all of my sexual fantasies focused on very muscular, large men. "Being young, gay, and mean isn't a personality," as the line goes. Matthew had a bit of that. But he was smart and funny, too. I shouldn't pretend he wasn't.

But I was so ready. Over-ready. I needed someone to fuck me, already, and I figured I would be lucky if anyone, anyone at all, would ever be willing to do it. So. It was Matthew because he was the first one who stepped up to the plate. Although attempts at sex were always awkward and we never really quite figured that out.

He became my boyfriend. It lasted for about four months. Because he lived 90 minutes away and was still in high school, I only saw him on weekends, but not every weekend. Maybe one weekend a month. This was 2001. Smartphones weren't a thing. Texting wasn't even really a thing. I wouldn't even own a cellphone until 2005. We messaged each other on ICQ and spoke on our landlines.

He broke up with me in January.

Did I love him? I don't know. I think I did. Or I loved the idea of him. I loved the icon I had built in his shape, a representative of all the things I wanted to achieve by Having A Boyfriend. I wanted it to affirm my sexuality. I wanted it to mean I wasn't unlovable. I wanted it to refute my mother's sadness.

It felt like a failure that I couldn't keep him. When he got a new boyfriend before I did, that felt like a failure too, like it had been a race to see who could land a new man first. Why was I thinking this way? Looking back, it's awful. I instrumentalized him, made him a symbol, and made relationships and sexual experimentation into some kind of… clout game. It wasn't about having fun and enjoying myself - it was about proving something, something to myself, something to my family, something to the world. Sex? A boyfriend? Things to acquire.

But maybe I did love him. I cried a lot, and it wasn't just over the insult to my ego and the setback to my plans. I remember distinctly walking through the underground tunnels that joined buildings on campus, thinking to myself - well, we're still friends, maybe we'll get back together in a few years. It was a story I told myself to comfort myself. It wasn't a forever breakup - he'd come back to me in a few years if I was just patient and kind, if I just waited.

When he got a new boyfriend, I needed to get one too. I found a guy on the gay.com chatroom, which is the closest thing we had to apps back then. He… had problems. Valentines was a couple of days after our first date and he got me an ostentatious bouquet of roses, an over-the-top gift that made me more uncomfortable than charmed. He already showered me with the l-word.  I remember waking up in his bed, the one night I spent at his place, him slipping his dick into me. It's this hazy nocturnal memory and I'm not even sure if it's real or false. If it's real, it was my first time successfully bottoming. If it was real, he didn't use a condom.

A few days later he told me that if I ever left him he'd kill himself. I didn't know what to do. I just turned very cold, hoping he'd break up with me. It worked. He dumped me after another few days. The whole thing didn't last more than two weeks.

Matthew was still with his new boyfriend and they seemed very happy together.

So. It's clear I reacted badly.

Around the time we broke up, I moved into a basement apartment with his best friend (remember, she was also a friend of mine) and a third party who was also a good friend. Our apartment was a bit of a party house. Matthew would come into the city on weekends, and he'd stay at our apartment - because his best friend lived there, and I lived there too, and even though we had broken up we were still friends, right?

I don't know what I did to deserve what he did to me. I don't think I was ever malicious to him. If I was ever cruel, it was a clueless and unintentional kind of cruelty.

He was staying with us. I was out of the house. He went into my bedroom and went on my computer. He snooped around and found folders of niche porn that I enjoyed. Should I say what sort it was? Is it pertinent to the story? It wasn't all that weird. It was basically bodybuilders. Muscle men. Some of them photoshopped to be bigger than would otherwise be possible (some much bigger). Some of them with exaggerated genitalia (some of them very exaggerated). I also had an interest in fat guys and I know there were some pictures of that nature in there too (some of them very fat).

But he was 17 and mean and judgemental. He showed my friends my secret porn in a deliberate attempt to humiliate me. He shared it around. He let everyone know, in a cruel, mocking way, about sexual interests I didn't yet feel strong enough to share with the world. Sexual interests I still felt a lot of shame about.

I only learned about this because my other friend who shared that apartment took me aside and told me what he had done. She did this because she thought it was wrong of him.

Despite this show of support from a friend who had the good sense not to follow the current of cruel mockery, I was beyond mortified. The shame was galling.

My new gay life ended there. My clothes became drab, baggier. My manner less femme. I stopped transmitting "I'm gay!" to the world. I stopped trying to fit in with the gay crowd Matthew had introduced me to. They all had a name for me now, anyway. Psychael. Like, psychotic Michael. How could I fight a battle when the first strike was nuclear? I quit. It seemed like the only move available to me.

It was 5 years before I'd kiss another man. I fled back into the embrace of my family. My coming out was never mentioned. I basically went back into the closet. At least the people in there loved… some version of me that I could maintain without that much effort. Just… close the door on the seven months when I had been an out gay man and pretend the whole thing didn't happen. Easy.

I don't hate him.

We were both very young.

We were both inexperienced.

I would hate for someone who only knew me as an 18 year old to think of me now, in my mid thirties, as if I was the same person. So I don't think of him as he was when he was 17. He's 34 now. He's probably a much better person.

Maybe he feels sorry.

Maybe he doesn't.

I wish I could have those years back. The long years I spent frightened to be myself.

I wish I had been strong enough to look him in the face and say "so what?" I wish I had been strong enough to own my sexual interests, none of which are immoral or wrong or even all that strange.

But I was weak. I was weak and alone. And wishing doesn't get you anywhere.

I don't know if there's much point to this story.

[vodcar]

I'm a prehrt trans girl. I have mixed feelings about my facial hair. I shave but its so thick that i'll usually end up cutting my face. I've been told that light scruff softens my facial features and makes me look softer. So sometimes I consider growing it out again but then I worry that people will just say im actually non binary or that I'm not even actually trans. I also worry that it makes my lesbian partner seem straight when we're in public? (though maybe thats good?) THOUGHTS?! halp!!

Hey there friend !!!I’m in a very similar situation in many respects; pre-hrt, lesbian, all that jazz. But I am also white with fairly pale skin and I have thick dark facial hair, so the contrast is pretty strong. Most of my advice will apply directly to these two particular shades of skin and hair, but hopefully there’ll be something useful for you here too!My advice will also depend a lot on your routine and your needs with tackling your dysphoria if you have any about your facial hair, or your concerns with how others will see you. I shave pretty much every day. At the weekend I like to schedule in a day where I don’t go out so I can give my skin a break and not shave. If you’re also considering shaving every day, giving your skin a break is a really good idea! I would also say giving yourself a few days or a day where you can play around with growing out your facial hair in the comfort of your own home might be a good idea, or if you do go out, take a razor with you so you can shave on the go if you need to!Always remember that no matter the length of your facial hair, you’re still a woman, and still a big gay one at that! (My wife says when I haven’t shaved for a little while and I have a little fluff its like a baby hedgehog which is very adorable.) I’ve thought about growing mine out a lil in the past, cute girls with facial hair are certainly out there, I’ve got a good few tumblr mutuals who rock it. As you grow out your hair, play around with snazzing it up maybe? see what makeup looks would pair well with it (bold lipstick and eyeliner is always a good look), or what cute hairstyles or outfits would compliment it. If you’re worried about not being read as a woman, buying a cute pronoun badge or a fun piece of clothing with WOMAN written on it could be fun. (I have an old baseball cap from back in the day with WOMAN on it. Very affirming and cute.)If you’re going down the shaving route:So for starters, I would recommend investing in a good quality razor. Recently I’ve found myself really enjoying a safety razor like this. Although it is a big upfront cost at around £25, the cost of 100 replacement razors at around £7.00 will save you lots of money, and it will mean you can always shave with a sharp razor which should stop a lot of rough and bad shaves.

I always first wash my skin with water, and then use a very gentle exfoliating face scrub. This helps reduce dead skin tags from building up after shaving and can prevent your face from getting cut. I got a very cheap one from primark for about £1 and it is lasting me ages.I wash off the scrub and then add plenty of cheap hair conditioner. It smells lovely and gives a really slick finish which is kind to the skin and works well with blades. Alberto Balsam is the best imo!

In terms of technique, my own method is to shave with the grain at first, and then again against the grain afterwards. This means, for example, on my chin going with the grain I shave from my lip downwards, and against the grain from my chin up to my lips. This gives me the closest shave and lets me get very smooth. This technique took me a while to build up to; at first my hairs just wouldn’t let me shave against the grain. Take it slow and easy and eventually you’ll be able to.Shaving in front of a mirror always gets me the best shave, but most days I shave in the shower. This stops me having to pour over my face for too long which is often very distressing, and it keeps my skin in contact with hot water. Always have hot water running to keep your blade wet and hot.After I’m done I make sure to rinse my face with hot water directly, and then to gently dry it by patting it with a towel. I wait about one to three minutes and then apply a gentle moisturiser. At the moment I’m using E45 Lotion, but I have used Nivea Soft in the past. Find a cream that works for you and does not sting when you put it on and then buy lots of it, you’ll be using it plenty. After I’m moisturised I tend to wait about five to ten minutes before putting on any makeup. (If you want me to go into my makeup let me know, but I will say always make sure to take it off at the end of the day with a gentle makeup remover and then moisturise before bed.)HRT will help things, giving you softer hair and a slower rate of growth whilst also stopping any new non-vellus hair from growing in. It won’t reverse or get rid of any of the thick facial hair you’ve already got though. This is why it works best with laser hair removal or electrolysis.

This is another option for you whilst you wait for HRT. You can opt to pay for your own laser hair removal/electrolysis, but it will be generally less effective without HRT, but you will see some results after a full course of about eight weeks. It should cut down on your need to shave most days, and it should thin out your hair too, depending on how well you respond to that certain treatment. You can buy your own machines, but the only ones worth buying are very very expensive, so sessions at an actual clinic are probably the best.Sending you love!!!! hope this helps!!!!

[1000000dreams]

My Testimony (part 2 of 2)

If you don’t already know how I came to Christ, you can read that journey here. I made the choice to come out at my church fellowship, and I couldn’t have asked for a better coming out. I was a gay Christian who was following the path to celibacy. But my return to my hometown brought me a new challenge to face.

OUT OF THE CLOSET - How I became visible

Moving back in with my parents wasn’t easy. We had more of the same arguments, and I felt caught between my family and my faith. Eventually, this dispute went from deep contention to deep respect. From the shadows of disputation came the dawn of honesty. What I thought was a terrible experience with my family turned out to be the very thing that would bring us closer together.

This winter, I decided to buy a ticket to the annual Gay Christian Network conference. This year it was in Denver, CO. I heard about it through a straight ally, and I’ve always wanted to know more about the organization. I was not prepared for what God had in store for me.

Aside from finally being in a space where I don’t feel out of place, and meeting online friends in real life, and feeling instantly connected with people who are from completely different cultures,...there were 3 takeaway points I got from GCN:

1. There are parts of my identity I never noticed were there.

I noticed this when I was around other Side B folks, especially the ones who were more out than me and happened to be more flamboyant than me. I noticed myself being comfortable expressing my - for a lack of a better term - “femininity.” It was shocking to me how comfortable I felt expressing this side of me. It was like flapping a pair of wings I didn’t know I had. Was I suppressing my “gay” side my whole life? What else was hiding inside of me that was afraid to see the light?

2. Side A people aren’t bad Christians. 

I’ve been told my whole Christian life that Side A people were twisting or watering down the Bible, treading dangerous waters, living a life of lies, or just straight up not Christians. This negative picture of them caused me to cling to what I thought was the only way, which is to believe that God had called all gay Christians to celibacy. I especially cling since I still sometimes believe and act like I’m a new Christian. I could finally sit down and talk to Side A Christians face-to-face and hear from their perspectives what God was revealing to them.

3. Side A and Side B are not opposites.

These two camps were polarized by my peers. I’ve been told they “can’t both be right” and that they are on opposite sides. There is actually a lot the two sides have in common. The most important one is that we both want to help our churches understand and nourish us. Rather than argue theology, we should unite in helping our churches succeed, and we can learn from one another in the process. I also got to meet a few Side A folks that used to be Side B, and what that journey was like.

I could write several blog posts of how God used GCN (now called Q Christian Fellowship or QCF) for me. But in summary, this conference made me a beautiful picture of what the kingdom of God was like, and how I could be a part of that as a gay man. You can imagine the huge contrast I noticed coming back home.

I’ve been attending a large 1000+ congregation church ever since I moved back to my hometown. And even though I had been there for 2 years, I had not met a single other LGBT person that attends it. Realizing my lack of an LGBT network, I decided to seek non-religious LGBT friends for the first time. In doing so, after being out of the closet for 5 years, I could finally accept myself as part of the LGBT community. I came out on Facebook because I realized how many churches lacked an LGBT voice. I could finally let my Christian and non-Christian friends know that gay Christians exist and we have something to say.

OUT OF THE DARK - How God became visible to me through a new lens.

I was still feeling uncomfortable about my feelings. Was I supposed to live my life having crushes on men all the time and then just do NOTHING about it? To help me make logical sense of myself, I took the bold step to download a dating app for the first time in my life. Although it was exhilarating at first, I eventually realized the downsides to online dating and reeled it back to just passively looking. There were still a lot of questions I needed answers to.

I read books by Kathy Baldock and Justin Lee, and I was listening to countless episodes of the Queerology podcast. I was having conversations with LGBT Christians online, and I found a local LGBT bible study group. I was (and always was) an information sponge.

I got to a point in which I realized how Side A Christians seemed no different from the rest. They wanted to live life in honor of Christ, they want to center their relationships around His word, they make great parents, and they even seek out premarital counseling just like a straight Christian couple would. I got to a point where I was uncomfortable believing that God’s call to celibacy applied to EVERY LGBT person. 

I started to become bitter at my lack of LGBT exposure in my adulthood. It was even more evident when I realized I had only gone to heterosexual Christian weddings for the last 8 or so years of my life. What was marriage? What defined a Christian marriage if I had never gone to a secular one? What defined marriage if I had never gone to a homosexual one? 

God answered my last question in a humorous way. I got to finally “attend” my first same-sex wedding by watching two female characters in a TV show propose and marry. I watched that episode with a queer friend of mine. “Why do you still believe what you believe, Derek?,” they asked me. “I feel like I’ve been supportive most of your life, and your parents have been supportive most of your life. So why do you still believe what you believe?” I summarized to them Side B theology and explained I was still in between B and A. It challenged me and made me do a lot of thinking.

I had the opportunity to attend my first ever affirming church - although it was only 5 people and we met in the back of a restaurant. The pastor was really wise, and they had been in the gay church for decades. I really saw a deep care for people like me. A respect for seeking God in a way that only LGBT people can seek Him. As I drove my friend home from that church, I couldn’t help but be excited. I was excited to meet more people like that and have more conversations with them. My friend looked over at me and said something that really stuck with me.

“Derek, it’s great that you want to meet all these people and talk with them. But you can’t have them decide for you what to believe. Only you can decide what you believe.”

I nodded and kept driving, but they were right. I needed to make this a personal decision.

That night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that God was trying to tell me something. I went outside to the pool area in my apartment complex and lied down on one of the orange lounge chairs. The only light that was illuminating the dark, star-less sky was a single lamp post and the blue glow from the water. I decided to call up a friend. 

I wasn’t sure what God wanted me to do, so I just prayed with them on the phone. I began praying about how God made me and how I enjoyed the Earth he put me on. I prayed how diverse he made us yet how we couldn’t live up to His perfection. And then I realized the other beautiful thing He gave me. The power of choice.

By this time, my words could no longer be comprehensible over the tears and the sounds coming from my heart. My friend finished the prayer and thanked me for letting them into this experience. They ended the call. I cried for another 19 minutes. I couldn’t move my fingers. I couldn’t get up off the lounge chair. My body was aching with whatever was transforming me at the moment. But I was extremely emotional because I realized the power of choice.

God gave me the choice to believe in Him or not to believe in Him back in my freshman year of college.

God gave me the choice to come out or not to come out when I was about to graduate.

God gave me the choice to stay at my old church or move across California to live back with my parents.

And finally, God gave me to the choice to believe in Side A or in Side B.

What was preventing me from choosing Side A? That I would lose community. That I would lose all the people who had supported me when I was choosing Side B. That some of my churches would look at me with shame if I started dating another man. That some of my friends would not attend my wedding if I decided to marry that man. 

But you know what? God’s love is greater than that. God’s love is greater than my friends’ love for me. Instead of fearing what I would lose, I could hope for what I could gain. I could gain a more beautiful and authentic life. A life in which I no longer felt like I was cursed, but a life in which I was blessed. The beauty of God’s LGBT children was extremely evident in that moment, and transcended all of the fear I had of my non-affirming friends’ judgments. So I guess you could say that’s when I became Side A.

Since then, I have remained a huge ally to the Side B community, and I have received love from every person that I came out to as Side A. I hope to follow God and explore what it means to be a gay Christian, and I hope that anyone who reads this will be inspired to learn more about people like me while living their own authentic lives. I hope to have continual conversations around this topic, and I hope to humbly learn from those who have different opinions and beliefs than me. Thank you for reading, and I hope we can all bring peace to this complex life we all live <3

[jinglyjangly]

I know this is out of nowhere but I wanted to ask another trans person for advice. Because my family are super nosey and insensitive when asking me questions and just barging in and starting a conversation about what's in my pants, am I gay or straight, misgendering me and just being super fucking rude sometimes I get really mad but then I wonder if I'm even allowed to. Bcs when I get mad they say how else are they supposed to know and I'm just being dramatic and I feel guilty. Maybe their right

There was a few things that made me realize i was trans that really helped me. I write down a lot of what im thinking in notebooks and how i feel to  affirm myself over and over, it helps

-cisgender people have no fucking idea what being trans actually is 99% of the time. I was always told and so i believed being trans was “a boy who wants to be a girl” or a boy “trying” to be a girl, or someone who is “unhappy with their gender” and... etcetera. Being trans is actually realizing that you werent born a girl or boy, you were born a baby with no concept of gender or language or ANYTHING, but society forces the cisgender binary on us through thousands of years of cultural influence. Western culture forces these ridged customs and reinforces them  to uphold oppression. Thats one reason it’s called homophobia/transphobia,  people ARE afraid of lgbt ppl, we turn their perception of what a perfect cis binary society should be on its head by just existing. Their fear turns to hate.

- being trans isnt a political statement/ phase/ trend to get attention and never will be. Its about how you feel about yourself, its never about anyone else. Only you can ever know your true self and your gender, everyone else only sees you how they want to see you, and its influenced by what you show yourself to them. 

- your not wrong or broken or mentally ill for deviating from societies norms. Wanting to love yourself as your gender isnt wrong. Breaking societies imaginary rules doesnt make you ill. 

Like honestly your family sounds abusive and you should seek help, but i really cant give you any advice on how to deal with them specifically because im no professional. Youd have to find a therapist or someone who actually knows how to deal with that kind of problem. All i can really tell you is that im only out to a certain amount of people and “lie” about it a lot, but its not a bad thing to do that. The moment i knew i was 100% a trans man and not a bi woman, lesbian with compulsive heterosexual, or asexual was when I realized i could be any of these things and its okay if i am. Like, i could be any of these and its not wrong. But when i look in the mirror, talk to myself, daydream, and have designated safe spaces with friends/online where i could just sorta trywhatever i wanted and  i just sort of embraced being trans more comfortably then anything else. But i also had to just...isolate anyone else from my mind to see what i really want and who i really am. It sounds dumb but try just meditating on it before you let people gaslight you out of your own gender. I wish i couldve figured mine out earlier, it wouldve helped me a lot.

[queermikehanlon]

Birds of Paradise (Stanlon AU)

Summary: When Stan was eighteen he started running a flower shop and now as he's three years older he's made friends with the tattoo apprentice next door, Mike.

Words: 4494

ao3

A/N: This is part one of three! I don't know how often I'll update it but I wanted to get something posted before the end of the year. This idea came and I ran with it. I hope you all enjoy it!

One / Two / Three

Stan loved his little shop. When he started it at the age of eighteen, he didn’t expect to love it as much as he did now. He started the flower shop because he loved gardening and he thought it would be the good way to make some money while he put himself through his business classes at the local community college. Now, Stan is twenty-one; this job was his main aspiration and his eighteen-year-old plans of being an accountant were thrown out the window.

Stan lived his life with sun shining through long windows and his life was surrounded by bright colors. The heat from his UV lamps in the shop made him feel warm and cozy on a winter day. Stan’s building mates (the owners of the other half of his building, a tattoo parlor) were nice and didn’t make his life hell like his past mates. Life is good.

Stan’s life is full of flowers and lovely people needing bouquets for their significant others, their friends, people needed well wishes, and weddings. It was sunflowers and roses, lilies and daisies, carnations and hydrangeas. Stan had his loving friends and a good relationship with his parents. Life is good.

Life had gotten even better for him when the bell rung on his shop after lunch on a sunny Wednesday.

Stan had been moving around the orange clay pots, making sure the matured flowers that were the prettiest were out in the shop so all his customers could see the pretty ones, and all the ones that were getting a little old or the ones that weren’t matured yet were in his small greenhouse in the back. Stan had his little grey and green cloth gloves on and his shop was looking fuller and pretty. The bell above the door jingled and Stan turned to face whomever came in.

A man wearing a black Henley with the sleeves cut off and a chain with a class ring hung around his neck. His dark skin had a few dark thin lines of tattoos. He was glancing around the shop with nervous eyes. Stan set his small pot of petunias on the counter and made his way behind it to greet the guy.

“Hi, how can I help you?”

The guy, who couldn’t be more than a couple months older than Stan himself (and very good looking, if you asked Stan), wrung his finger together and spoke. “My mom and my grandma are coming into town for a visit and I need anything you can throw together.”

“All right, I can set you up.” Stan pulled the fingers of his gloves and took them up and got some hand sanitizer. “When are they coming in?”

“Tonight.” The man spoke, leaning his hands on the counter. “They surprised me with a call while they were at the airport, and I can’t call 1800 flowers, not after last time.”

Stan’s eyes widened, and he nodded his head with affirmation. “Okay, we can do this, don’t worry. Do you know what flowers or what colors they like?”

The man sighed with relief and let his shoulder’s drop. “My mom likes irises and the color yellow and my grandma like all the small pink flowers. That I do know.”

“Yeah, we can do that. Give me a quick minute to pull out some stuff from the back and let’s see what we can make up, yeah?”

The guy nodded his head and let himself lean down a little on his elbows.

Stan moved quickly throughout the back, grabbing small plastic cups of flowers as samples to show him, the guy who he had yet to be introduced to.

Stan loved making compositions and loved it when his mind ran through all the possibilities of different flower combinations. It was what he used to do with numbers that made him good at accounting and what he still did sometimes with his intrusive thoughts (Only sometimes now. The medication he took now helped him a lot more than his fourteen-year-old self would like to admit). Colors and sizes and shapes went through quick.

Stan pulled out some yellow pansies (pink was the most popular for pansies so he kept those out front and all the other colors in the back) and some more orange than yellow poppies. He had some irises up front and wait to get those later.

For the second bouquet, Stan grabbed some baby pink peonies and some of the same shade of carnations, then some light lavender colored petunias. With his arms full of small, plastic pots of flowers he pushed to the swinging door with his back and laid the small plastic pots on the counter in front of the guy. “It’s two different bouquets, right?”

The man nodded and spoke. “Uh, yeah.”

Stan smiled and grouped the flowers into two separate bouquets. Then he moved away from the counter and grabbed one of the pots from the window, the pot that had irises in it. Stan started his little rant, his little flower rant. “This is what I’m thinking: we have the irises and we have the yellow pansies to make the purple stand out. Then we have some orange poppies to make the blue in the irises stand out. We just need something white or cream colored to make all the other colors stand out.”

The guy leaned forward. “Aren’t there little flowers that look like this,” his fingers brushed over the petals of the yellow pansy, “but like, smaller and like cream colored? I think I did a piece with them a few weeks ago. Johnny somethings.”

“Johhny Jump Ups.” Stan spoke in recognition. “I think I have some of those, not a lot of people ask for them. Let me check.”

Stan went through the back and went through his little plots and he found the Johnny Jump Ups, small and white and a related to the pansies. The ones had a little touch of lavender on the ends of the petals but that would go well so there wasn’t too much yellow in the bouquet. Stan came back through the door.

“These are perfect.” Stan sat them down. “They’re small enough to fill it up but pretty enough so they’re not out of place.”

“Yeah, I did a few flashes with them, I got used to drawing them.” The customer said. With Stan’s confused look he explained. “I’m an apprentice at the tattoo parlor next door, it was such a relief to have this shop next door with them coming to town.”

“Oh, yeah cool. I guess you do a lot of flower stuff.”

“Yeah, almost once a day, probably even more once I’m not an apprentice and I’m a fully licensed artist.”

“That’s really cool.” Stan smiled, and they were both leaned in over the flowers and he looked at the guy, and for some reason he actually noticed him.

Dark brown eyes and hair that was long on the top and faded on the sides with two stipes shaved on the right side. He was handsome, and Stan reveled in it. Stan wasn’t closeted by any means, but he didn’t announce that he was gay to the entire world all the time at work. He leaned back, showing off the other flowers.

“And for your grandma’s set I was thinking these peonies with the carnations and the light purple petunias. It’s a lot softer than the other one.”

“You thought of all of that on the spot back there?” He asked, with a chuckle, still leaned over the counter. “Are you a wizard?”

Stan took a moment to consider it. “Yes. The flower wizard, making sure that everyone has something pretty.”

The man laughed. “Good, I would only trust a flower wizard to make these bouquets.”

“So you like the idea? The flowers all together?”

“Yeah, it’s amazing, perfect, thank you.”

Stan went to the drawer behind the counter and got one of his order slips, a big pad of paper with the white, yellow, and pink sheets. The customer info, the types of flowers, everything that Stan could think of to make sure that he got everything right.

He began writing, one slip he wrote the flowers iris, pansies, poppies, Johnny Jump Ups, the on the other he wrote peonies, carnations, and petunias.

“Can I get your name?” Stan asked, both for the order and because he wanted to know it. The man was cute, a good sense of humor, and he knew a little bit about flowers? Sign Stan up.

(He was by no means closeted, all of his friends knew and his high school bullies are long gone in New England. He didn’t put a rainbow flag in his shop to announce it to the whole world, but when cute men come in your shop for flowers? Can Stan take it as a sign?)

“Michael. Mike Hanlon.”

“Alright, I’ll get this form all filled out for you. You said they were coming in tonight, when will you need them by?”

Mike put his hands up, “Don’t drop other stuff to get mine done quickly. I don’t want you to-“

Stan stopped him. “Mike, it’s two bouquets. I can do them pretty quick. What time do you need them done?”

Mike bit his lip and thought. “I can come by before 6, or you could drop them off in the parlor considering that our door goes into my room.”

Stan thought about the door, the one that connected their two shops. Stan had never gone through the door, as courtesy more than not wanting to (c’mon Stan was always curious). “I always wondered what I’d find on the other side. I guess I didn’t want to accidentally run into something awkward or something.”

Mike laughed. “Just little ol’ me. Thank you so much for doing this, on such short notice.”

Should Stan say what he thought? You’re cute so it’s fine? “It’s no problem, honestly. I’m just going to need your phone number to complete the order form.”

“And not for yourself? I’m hurt.” Mike had a teasing smile on his lips and Stan’s ear went red with embarrassment because Mike managed to guess what Stan was thinking.

“I guess I’ll have to use it for myself too then, just so that your feelings aren’t hurt.” Stan was quick with his wits, he got that from being friends with his bunch of boys. Making sure you didn’t crumble under the pressure of a bad burn, Stan learned how to one up his friends.

“Good. It’d be a shame if I find this cute guy and he wouldn’t call me on a professional courtesy.”

Stan’s blush moved from his ears to his cheeks. “Well, what is that phone number?”

Mike rattled off the phone number and Stan wrote it down on the order form. When he capped his pen and looked back up at Mike, he was closer than he was when Stan had looked down.

Mike held his phone out to Stan, showing him the new contact page that he opened his phone up to. Stan bit his lip. “How will I know it’s the cute flower shop guy who’s calling me and not one of my clients?”

Stan grinned but tried to keep it so he wasn’t showing it to much and he took the phone in his fingers. He typed out his name and his number, making sure that everything was right so that Mike had the right number. “I guess I can give it to you then, just so you don’t get confused with one of your clients and not so you can text me later and ask me to hang out.”

“Or something else?” Mike’s voice was raised, and his smile was teasing. Stan hadn’t had someone come on to him as strong as this since he went to the gay bar for the first (and last) time.

(That was a mistake that his friends had made, and he was dragged along. Gay bars make their drinks to strong and Stan found out the hard way.)

“Or something else.” Stan agreed.

Stan went back to the order form and ripped it out of the pad, taking the pink carbon copies and giving them to Mike. “These are your receipts.”

Mike took them, making sure to go the extra mile and touch Stan’s hand when he did. It was obvious to Stan that he did it on purpose, but he didn’t mind.

(Sure, he’d have to wash his hands later, but he would wait until Mike had left so he wasn’t acting out with it.)

“Thank you for doing this, Stanley; it means a lot.”

“Stan,” he corrected. “or Stanley, if you prefer.” He forgot about the name embroidered on his shirt that had his full frst name.

“Okay, Stan.” Mike smiled. “I think my break’s about to end soon, so I should probably be getting back before they fire me or something.”

Mike pulled out his wallet and looked at the price on his receipt and paid. Stan put the cash in his register, typing fast on the keypad so he could get back to talking to Mike as soon as possible. Stan went back to the counter and held the receipt form in his hand, curling the corner of the paper in between his fingers to keep them busy with his anxious energy talking to Mike. “I’ll be by. Before six, that’s what you said?”

“Yeah, thank you so much for this.”

Stan laughed a little. “It’s my job to make bouquets, you don’t have to thank me.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have to thank you.” Mike glanced at his watch, then glancing back up with the same nervous eyes that he had when he walked in the door. “Now I really have to go, but I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.”

Mike walked out the door, the bell jingling behind him. Stan watched and when he saw Mike through the window, Mike was glancing inside looking back at Stan. They made the other smile just at the thought of them not wanting to leave and wanting to look at each other more.

When Mike was out of Stan’s sight he let out a breath, of relief or of something else; Stan didn’t know. He stood in his spot behind the counter and let his wrists that still held his paper fall to the counter so he had something to ground himself to, and maybe, he should start on those bouquets.

It was five fifty-five. Stan had two bouquets in his hands, the one for Mike’s mother wrapped in a silvery white paper to cover the stems and the one for his grandmother in a gold. He held them in his hands and he waited by the door that was shared between the tattoo parlor and his flower shoppe. Mike said he could come through the door, that it goes to his room in the studio, but Stan felt that him walking through the door was too much, too casual. At least for right now.

He went through the greenhouse to get to the door that separated the backrooms from the shop that Stan made to be the prettiest part because if a flower shop wasn’t pretty no one wanted to shop there and that was half of Stan’s job in running the place.

He took out a sign from behind the counter and made his way out the front door of his shop. The sign that said ‘Sorry, you missed me! I’ll be back in ten minutes!’ He didn’t really close the shop until around eight thirty, because some people like to get last minute flowers for dates, but he didn’t open until nine thirty to make up for it. He didn’t like to leave the store alone, in case he missed someone, but because he was the only one working today (he usually had his friends pick up shifts on the weekends when they needed some extra cash) so he would have to leave the shop alone for a few minutes.

Stan made sure he still had his keys in his pocket and walked out the door, balancing the flower bouquets and the sign in his hands while he locked the door behind him and made his way out in the cooling air. He hung up his sign on the little nook that hung outside on the door frame. This sign went over his open sign and once it was on there okay Stan walked the few feet to the door of the tattoo parlor.

In just walking the few feet Stan could see the differences between his shop and theirs. Stan’s windows were filled with green leaves and the dusty yellow that reminded him of some old Spanish building, along with all the orange clay pots and the beige clay vases that his friend, Bill, made sometimes when he was having blocks with his writing.

When Stan walked over in front of the windows of the tattoo parlor he saw the walls were painted a dark red and the black leather furniture. The decals on the windows blocked some of his view but he could see the different pictures on the walls of the small tattoos that you could get.

Stan opened the door and then felt incredibly out of place in the parlor. He felt awkward in his work button down and his khaki shorts and tennis shoes.

“Can I get you some help?” Stan’s head turned to the sound of the reception desk.

Red curly hair and the side of her head pulled into two tight braids. The arms that were covered in a see through pink long sleeve. Black chipped nail polish. Stan recognized the girl behind the counter. “Beverly?”

Beverly was dating Ben and Ben was friends with Stan. Stan and Ben had met in high school, along with all their other friends and with their movie nights Beverly had come along some nights and they had become okay friends, not the best of friends but they could hang out with each other.

“Stanley, hey.” Beverly pushed her curly hair off of her face and sat up a little more. “Can I interest you in a tattoo?”

“I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Ben never mentioned?”

Stan shrugged, the bouquets still in his hands. “He mentioned you were a tattoo artist, I don’t think he mentioned that you worked right next to my flower shop.”

Beverly laughed. “I didn’t know you worked next door. Maybe I can come hang out in there rather than eat in our dirty break room.”

“Hey, I cleaned that break room!” A man around their same age shouted across the room. He had been hunched over a desk and writing something. Stan had barely acknowledged that he was there.

“Not good enough! Apparently!” Beverly shouted back then turned back to Stan. “What can I help you with?”

Stan blushed, and held the flowers tighter in his hands. “I’m actually looking for Mike?”

Beverly smiled and glanced at the flowers in Stan’s hands. Stan recognized the sly smile on Beverly’s face. “Those flowers for Mike?”

“Yeah,” Stan said, then corrected himself. “He made an order and I’m delivering them. I need to deliver them.”

Beverly winked. “Of course, you do. I’ll take you back there.”

Beverly got up from her seat and got out from behind the counter and Stan moved forward. Beverly walked to the hallway in the back and Stan followed, albeit a little slowly trying to take in the parlor as it was showed to him. It was a little bigger than his own shop, but his shop floor was small so his back room would be bigger to hold all of the flowers he had to grow, all of the pots he had to keep and the piles of dirt. the parlor was able to open up all of their shop so anyone could be in it. Stan liked the openness of their floor.

“Mike is apprenticing right now so he’s probably tattooing on a banana or something.” Beverly chuckled, as if it were an inside joke. “Maybe you could be Mike’s first client, eh? Thinking about getting a little flower tattoo in a place where the sun don’t shine?”

Stan blushed. “No, tattoos aren’t really my thing.”

Stan didn’t feel like describing the entirety of being Jewish and having tattoos so he just left it at that. Beverly turned down a hallway and shrugged. “Maybe when you see what Mike can do with a pen will make you change your mind.”

Stan twisted his fingers around the flower stems wrapped in the foil. “Yeah, maybe.”

Beverly knocked on the door at the end of the hallway and opened the door. “Mikey? You gotta visitor!”

Stan looked through the open door and saw Mike at a desk, a lamp and a few knick-knacks on the table and a tattoo bench in the middle of the room. Mike looked up and then saw Stan behind Beverly. “Thanks Bevvie.”

Beverly stood there and waited. Stan walked through the door, standing beside Beverly rather than behind her. Mike put his pencil down and faced them. “You can leave now, Bev.”

“Maybe I want to stay and watch the show. Stanley wouldn’t mind, would you, Stanley?”

Before Stan could think of a rushed response, Mike stood up and stood facing Bev. He put his hand out and slightly pushed Bev back out of the doorway. Mike put a smile on his face and used his fingers to wave goodbye to her as he closed the door.

“Y’all best not be fucking when I check on you!” She shouted then Stan hear footfalls that were getting softer and quieter as he assumed Bev went down the hallway.

“Yeah, Bev’s not the kindest one in the bunch she’s cool.” Mike said, rubbing the skin on the back of his neck.

“Yeah, I know. I’m friends with her boyfriend.” Stan told him. He sat on the tattoo bench, but he didn’t lay back like you were meant to, just sat down with his knees together and the flowers in his hand. The flowers! “Oh, here are your flowers!”

Mike looked as if he almost forgot about the flowers the same as Stan. “Oh yeah.”

Mike took the flowers from Stan’s hands and held them up and looked at them. “These look better than what you made in the shop. How do you do it?”

Stan smiled. “I thought we talked about that, I’m a flower wizard.”

“Oh right of course.”

Mike sat in his chair, which he rolled so that he was closer to Stan. Stan looked around the room and saw that the room was bare and unlike the lobby of the parlor and didn’t have many frames of drawings or any small tattoos. There were a few, some of snakes or flowers, then some geometric shapes made into wolves and elephants. Then just a few photos that Stan didn’t want to get too close to look at lest he seem too interested and stalkerish.

“You did all those drawings? They’re amazing.” Stan stood up from his seat and stepped closer to look at the drawings even closer, seeing the pen marks making the scratchy sketch lines.

“Thanks,” Mike said. “I actually wanted to ask you something?”

Stan turned away from the drawings and faced Mike, who was still sitting in his chair. “Yeah, sure, ask away.”

Mike bit his lips and Stan noticed him scratching his thumb with his index finger, something Stan did when he was fidgeting too.

“Maybe, if you’re free and if you wanted to, you want to go see a movie with me? Maybe Friday night?”

Stan smiled shyly, but he had to make sure. “Are you asking me out on a date, Mike?”

Mike’s nervous smile dropped, and his eyes widened. “Did I read this the wrong way or?”

“No,” Stan said quickly, hoping to cover up his mistake in Mike thinking he wasn’t into it. ”No, just making sure. I want to go on a date with you. I think we’d have a fun time.”

Mike shoulders dropped and a smile spread across his face. “Okay, cool, yeah.”

Stan and Mike waited in the room in silence, a comfortable one. Stan was not one to just go out with a guy, especially one that he meant that day, but maybe this guy was good? Bev seemed to like him, and that seemed good in Stan’s eyes, even though he didn’t know her well. (Stan trusted Ben and if Ben trusted and loved Bev then that was good enough for Stan.)

Mike had a way to himself, maybe it was the way he spoke or maybe it was the way that held himself but Stan wanted to know more about him, spend more time with him and maybe taking chances that he normally wouldn’t would make it so that Stan would actually get a boyfriend.

“I should probably get going back to my store.” Stan said softly. He didn’t want to go away so soon. “I think maybe you should use my number when you figure out what movie we’re going to see.”

“Yeah, I definitely will.”

Stan, in something that wasn’t Stan at all, touched Mike’s shoulder in saying goodbye. “I guess I’ll see you on Friday?”

“Not unless I visit tomorrow.”

Stan smirked. “The store’s usually slowest in the morning, just for future reference.”

A knock came at the door and Stan jumped at the sudden noise. Then Beverly’s voice called through the door. “Boys! What’s going on in there?”

Stan walked closer to the door and put his hand on the door knob and let him turn the knob and open the door to Beverly who had her ear pressed to the door. When the door was away from her face, she slowly stood up straight.  “Have you been standing here the whole time?”

“No,” Beverly stated, very quick with her response. Stan looked at her with his eyebrows raised and she shrugged. “You think I’d waste my time eavesdropping on my dear, dear friends?”

“Yes,” Mike answered. “You definitely would.”

Stan walked past her and turned around to Mike. “You’ll text me later?”

Mike nodded his head with a smile and Beverly looked between them with her head turning back and forth like she was watching a tennis match. Stan laughed at her.

“Well, I’ll see you later then.”

Stan walked out of the room and down the hallway back to his shop. He walked through the lobby, seeing the guy that shouted at Bev earlier and gave a small wave when he looked at Stan. He walked outside and took the sign from the door and went back into his warm and cozy shop, waiting for Friday to come and the text that would start Stan and Mike talking again.

[ubelyptus]

soooooooooooo bb,,,...,.,,,strawberrry.

......I JUST FIND IT

  interestinggggggggg

how you Big mad cuz MY block game seeems 

skrong or summn

hanh???

oh.

well.

i never blockedt you 

on snapchat 

or whatsapp (you weren’t even muted),

yup, i still haven’t

but i didn’t have a properly working phone...

still......don’t

but either way you keep threatening to split on me 

like a weapon…fcking

manipulative as shit

it just seems to me that you just want to?

you never imprinted tho 

but she did 

so why should you?

i won’t ever, again, fight....

….with you.

my favorite accomplice

i wanted to learn with an open mind 

even after my phone died 

how to remain soft with you.  

even after being callled 

“old news" 

pffft

at least until

 i ‘m  eventually murdered by a cisgender man...

but

don’t fckn

pppppppop shit 

cuz like….. literally…..all i did was change my url.

shit, i Only blockedt you AFTER i saw you referencing gaslighting.

bc uhmm IIIIIIif that is about meeeeeeeeeeee 

ha!!!

 how fucking dare you.…..lyk....wuhh?

like when you said there is no difference between syn and alesia?????

HANH?

oh, but you think i blockedt you first bc i didn’t wanna get my feelings hurt?

….mhhhhhhh. ok.

seeems odd since you’re not liar 

right, eli????

but,,,,,so what’s this about the cozi password change? am i just shifting too rapidly between your and my reality???

bet.

no, i blocked you on things after THAT 

AND THAT WAS TODAY

oh, and didn’t your friend, my so-called “fighting buddy,” anan…

.just,,,,,fckn block me like i’m useless

trash

randomnly 

after all

i asked 

was that they 

not speak to me 

about you?

but YAAAAAAS  twas ONLY Me and simply Myself and just i 

who ain’t wanna get….hurt.

hanh?????

oh ,

obvi,

yeaaaaaaa

yeeeei

truuuu,

sooooo 

sssssorry,,,,but

calling me “old news” or saying i’m “old too” 

don’t forget your girl is 2 yrs older than you 

and then staying silent for these few days about changing passwords

that..... already did that, boo

at least i sent alesia third party emails thru the app, boo

she pushin 30 and can only talk you 

venuse....????. no....a 

talking and 

w a l k i ng tragedy

entyway don’t bring that up just to be loud and wrong about that too

you’re not always wrong tho, you know

you’d probably fuck up and slit my throat 

 powertripping

when i’m wrong about you

and you can only do that if you

 black and white 

me out 

to NEVER BE WRONG 

AND I DO 

ACTUALLLY HATE THAT ABOUT YOU!!!!! 

WHY CAN’T I EVER BE WRONG, ELI???? 

WHY????//

OH your emotions....? about your father that after 6 yrs you didn’t tell me about?

your reality? when you have a habit of projecting?

 and lowkey being dishonest 

to yourself first

 and then subsequently

 to me????

your time? when i’m mostly on yours?????

your efforts? like ripping up notes and telling me 

“my turn” to get fucked 

by you 

was over

when the only reason i was tiredt

was bc i crashed

too tiredt after explaining to You

that

  i‘m not even going to LET you play middleman

for a baby pushign 30????

oh. bet.

but since we’re being transparent:

here are receipts with timestamps:

http://microhealer.tumblr.com/tagged/hop-hop-hop-hop

http://microhealer.tumblr.com/tagged/hop+hop+bun

http://microhealer.tumblr.com/tagged/hop-hop-bunny

yea you must love dirty laundry

oh.

but that’s what i knew about you.

oh:

be yr own guest my love

i Knew you would ignore the “old news” message since that's literally when you started telling on yourself 

you do treat trans partners

 like side hoes, 

thasssa wholeBET 

and some change

 for you to create

cuz thassssssss 

how you feel about me fr fr

so that “like” is mine but

  i…..actually really Really love that you laughed tho.

bc i haven’t heard you fully belly laugh in a long time.

if ever iirh.

even after knowing you for 6+ years, 

your supposed “first friend “ in the DMV

the person i can trust my life with

the only

you’re my only...

 ,,,,,even after i spiraled 

and cut myself for the first time since middle school?

now my friends are fucking spotting you 

and talking to each other 

about you

oh, you didn’t know. 

but i got mehndi done today 

let a summer baby boy

love 

a cut up 

by me

body

 before noon

today 

thinking i’d see you and we could talk like,,,,

…..like real people do.

and you’d be distracted by the design and not zone in

 on the failed cuts

 on my wrist 

since i’m shit at not just repeatedly carving into 

white meat

 when i can only use a ceramic blade

i just didn’t WANT you to 

so i never “came home to [you]”

you said that on nov 4th/5th of last year

and

i’ve been looking up bpd all day

eventho i told you

  i don’t trust the internet 

sooooo you not telling me 

didn’t hel p

but it’snot at all your job to 

and i sitll

stilllstil stil stilllca’t see

....and i dind’t want you to see.

bc i’m not just a man.

i’m still femme

which you seem to love to forget

and still soft enough, i think.....

i hope…..or learning to be soft,,,,

where it won’t get me killed,,,,,

but where it still counts.

with…or without you.

either way i’m a man who loves you. a man whose phone died at 28% trying to get you to see that i was trying to be soft even after you called me

 “old news”

but,,,,,.....,,,compared to …..who?????? sh....oooo??????

your new girlfriend who is 1 or 2 years older than you?????

and can’t speak to me 

a man who is only barely out of 23???

and instead only whispers

 to you?????

bruh, she’s clearly not fond of me. 

and you’re not a liar , 

so don’t 

she had to tell you that she wasn’t the one putting out “aggy energy”

specifically

during yennayer which

i ruined

and im still sorru

but which means

she’s probably done it in your apartment on purpose already, boo

didn’t think of that, did you

lingustically.,,,,,nope.

oh, but there’s power in a whisper, darling.

i am just cardinal like you

i am air too.

  i should know 

bc i accidentally whistled....and,,,,,,

i only blockedt you so that you wouldn’t “hurt [your] own feelings”

 like you told anan you sometimes do.

sooooooooooooo yea... i

did it so you wouldn’t hurt you. 

as cardinal water/pisces moons 

are prone to do.

you can;t drain

and you can’t drown

 ain’t that how i affirmed you

i already hurt me 

when i dissociated 

and i’m STILL FUCKING sorry 

that there was blood that you had to see. 

i couldn’t stay in my body long enough to clean fast enough

but i still didn’t want you to hurt you bc of me.

like you did repeatedly

bc of bpd or bc of basically cishet or at least cis ~queer girls

or other partners 

like when you were with kat,

who’s still disgustingly attached to a messy white

and now a new black kid.....

or with shushoo.

and how you might with alesia.

no, correction: how you have with alesia. 

how you will continue to, if you’re not careful, with alesia.

you’re a lion facing a prince of a house kitten ,....,

.,, who is homeless.

do you feel good, big boss?

all i asked was for you to listen t

o how you were speaking to me 

on the phone 

at your place of work 

and when she’s there

possibly a place of worshiop

..... even after i told you 

that i was intentionally putting energy into Not fighting you

and you

  say you

"don’t wanna be a middle person" 

but you also….wanna cape for yet another fucking cis girl.

who isn’t even muslim this time. 

HOWtragic.

i couldn’t laugh

couldn’t ever laugh at sway

bc by whatever fortune if you do split or don’t 

 i still  love you

i love you too much

but in those moments after that phone call….

after my phone died…

and my body couldn’t move to charge it.

wouldn’t move….

and all i could do was cry during the adhan.

bc you’re tooo much like matt now

i wish i knew what it could feel like to

 hate someone 

who called you 

"OLD NEWS” 

compared to a bitch pushing 30 

youza WHOLE fuckn clown, dawg.

matt did this same shit

move me out for a new side bitch

yet anotehr cis

look at how cute trans love can be

oh

no

NO

no,

no

no

this is what you give me:

laughter.

BC what fucking luck.

BUT IT’S gotta be TROOF

  s ince you don’t lie?/?

shit I LAUGHED TOO:

it sounds like….

NEITHER OF US

KNEW WHAT COULD

HAVE BROUGHT US

HERE, ELI.

maybe you nursing poison in your own home

and telling me i’m making you feel unwelcomed

on a blog and not to my face did it

fuckingggggggggg. why’ald.

you think it’s too much sweat????? false. 

that apartment stayed cold.

too many tears?

 ok ok yea troof.

but too much love? forreal?

we?????

ooooop

hoooop!!!

oh, you speakin’ french now. our collective colonizers tongue in 20gayteeeeeeeen?????

CAN’T RELATE 

bc I’M TOOOOOO GAY

wow. we ruined it, fam???? fr fr?

nah, chosen fam.

you ruined us.

you ruined us over:

 a cis girl and

your own impatience

and your own anger.

and my slow brain and my slow body

//

i’m not sure she’d find you from maryland

if you dissociated bc your other semi

 but not 

girlfriend emotionally abused you

until people who didn’t know you were muslim

thought you were fucking drunk

and you fucking stilllllll 

work with her?????

why couldn’t you just wait until she found a new job???

ain’t she trying????

or izzzzzz she??????

hahhnh???

where was the damn rush?????

you’re like two goofy high schoool kids 

reaching for the quickest nuts every 6 hours

 like jesus fuck.

you’re irresponsible as shit telling me i’m a grown man making grown decisions and i see this 

?????

unREASONABLE, ELI.

this isn’t a situation of a kettle calling a pot black

 babe

bc i’m actually Black

and you’re not

but she’s black too.

what did i tell you:

"you datin’ two whole Niggas. if you fight me over her, you will lose either way.”

but instead you called me “obtuse”

SAT words for me

 but not for you…….what.,,,.,,,,,,,, fckn luck……..

what luck,,,,,that the one person who housed me consistently

and kept me alive

when i trusted no one

would call me "old news”

and let their cis girlfriend

 turn herself into your

personal "healing” …...

sibkid. \\\\

howTragic like all of CC’18

you know what happens when you slip and get sloppy and let a baby bitch be responsible for your healing?

she leaves. 

for a real bitch 

with microhealing abilities, 

GOOFY.

she worships a new goddess every friday?????

well, i know only of orixas 

and only of black power

 but from what i know of goddesses OFF of OUR continent…

soooon...

at least one of them WILL want a soul from her

just letting you know it might not have to be hers.

…..OH!

and when i chargedt and openedt my phone after days of wandering. ….the last messages from you are:

YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID “LEAVE [[[[MMMMMYYYYYYY]]]]]] KEYS”

like a fucking baby.

imagine that.

even to you, i’m still a whore.

out…the…bakc….dooor.

??????

i couldn’t even work a john when i wanted to

 if i was sad about you.

but imagine?????

  a cis-pixie woman older than you

letting you treat her like a child?????

then

imagine me feeling shamed into leaving

bc of pictures of your smiling face

after i cut myself and felt shame 

that

in your unwelcomed  to both me and you

BLOOD

 blood 

is what brings me back

 to life.

how.

fucking.

why’yald.

i blockedt you so that you didn’t lurk.

bc THat is what you do.

instead of speaking with me, 

you seem to have expected me

 to read your blog back 7 years.

and just know all of the fatherly things that trigger you.

like…even during the times when i was afraid of my own phone and laptop for 2 months bc of my sister, brother, and birth parents????

funny how i’m the youngest of us “grown folks” and yet still find that really 

FUCKING

immature.

of YOU

to do

you really never knew me, or did you…..??

you donated to me before you even knew me.

so i know your heart has parts made of gold.

but now you show off your crystals and your gold.~~~

yep.

here we are.

you’ve "only every seen [me] as a boy.”

ok. bet.

and unti this post:

i’ve hardly heard you refer to me as a man.

so:

ain’t you late?

ain’t you late, babe??

ain’t you late?

i’m a year younger than you.

which means if you grown

i musta BEEN a man too, boo.

but you’ll always be

 my favorite accomplice

 and always be my favorite friend too.

but you cannot think you can play me by calling me

 “old too” or “old news"

 for young fish who is basically femme trade

and thinking i won’t cut open a fool.

which coincidentally always happens to be me

she’s hardly out to anybody important and lying at work too.

i must be bigger fool.

bc you knew better and didn’t do better.

but i’m being immature.

  ok ...,.,,.,,

cute.

your pisces moon is keeping you from seeing clearly but that’s what young water seems…to do. to much light reflected; tho it is a fountain of youth.

she’s pushing 30 baby 

but true, you’re her boo.

yea, a childish boo.

you ever wonder why her playlist from you had more songs than ours did?

why she can never keep a man around for valentines day?

oh but don’t you love “patterns”, baby????

unless it’s her leaving shit around the apartment

or her triggering you

or her treating your dick like it’s foreign, 

even to you.

my gay ass was shookedt 

when you told me you voluntarily 

triggered yourself

 for her kitty too

but i AM 

a grown man

 who is “running” from….you

you think that statement is not…. dishonest??

you really think that statement is true???

—

i didn’t run. i just

needed space

and you afforded me none.

you couldn’’t afford it.

february is before march which is before april 

sooooooo it’s always a tight month ain’t it???????

oooooooh but you afforded her plenty.

she gets to take off her fucking pants while i try to figure out if i should move from a spot next to you….

on your fucking bed.

she took off her pants to climb near you before she could even say hi to 

nooonoo

ahh right

and THEN ME.

“Oh, you CAN stay”

that’s what She told me.

and you said nothing.

so i left….the room.

i never run.

you pushed me out with your captain save-a-cis silence.

it’s violence.

and

you’re still pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing 

until me…you know 

i, the "old news” 

just feels like he should just 

fucking fall 

onto the district streets

and she finds it

to her fucking fancy 

to fall

 into your lap

like a damn,,,,zel. 

distressedt.

with a roof over her head outside of your apartment too.

woooooooops!

yip, as she is probably prone to do.

her kind….isn’t new….boo.

her kind isn’t new to me

her kind isn’t new to you

you ever wonder why she feels so familiar to you?

she reminds Me of the girl who told you 

she could never marry you 

and is now trying to date someone just like you

so don’t be so unkind to me 

or to you 

or be so foolish

 as to believe i gave up on you

you gave up on me

and on top of that

you think i just...ran

ran….with what clothing?

the ones you packed up for me and left at the door 

that i was suppose to pick up 

and slide out the back….like a fucking whore?

you just tryna be

a cissie's bae

who stay clownin on trans folks now?

oooooooh issa bet, mo

. i mean.,,,.,,.mhhhh i guess?

—==—

but troooof, i don’t “need" anybody.

but i want you.

but you need her.

that’s how it work, don’t it?????

that’s why you risk job security every day.

and let her leave her panties on my clothes.

and let her tell me i "can stay" in …..A, not MY, spot next to you

in yo'bed?

what fucking fools. the two of you.

but “no one is forcing [me] to"

oh, baby you /are/ forcing me too

i look on your blog and then find out you’ve been feeling “unwelcome in [your] own home”

this whole fucking time

all the way since early november, innit?????

if i love you at all, 

what else am i to do?????????????

??????????????????????????/

know that you will self-destruct 

and just…wait for you to????????????????????

???????????????????????????????/

no

i didn’t run.

you just fucking pushed me.

and you’re still fucking pushing.

and you’ll keep pushing.

bc that is what you do.

embe…..@strawberreli 

se sá’m te konne nu’ou.

you like microblogging so much

so like it if you read this shit

[biofunmy]

Enthralled by ‘Euphoria’? Hunter Schafer Knows Why (It’s Because of Her)

It’s hard to upstage Zendaya, the Disney Channel star who soared through “The Greatest Showman” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming” into the Hollywood stratosphere.

But in HBO’s “Euphoria,” Hunter Schafer has done just that, in what is remarkably her debut acting role.

Schafer plays Jules, the new kid in town — a trans girl with a dreamy Sailor Moon vibe and a self-destructive yearning for affection — who becomes best friends with Zendaya’s addiction-tormented Rue at their sex-and-drugs-deluged high school.

Her performance as a sensitive, stabilizing force amid the insanity has captivated viewers and critics alike, who’ve anointed her the series’s breakout star. And its fourth episode, on July 7, explored Jules’s story, following her harrowing journey from a depression-filled childhood into a psychiatric hospital — and, eventually, a happier transition.

Shafer was modeling in New York, with plans to study fashion design at Central Saint Martins in London, when her agency informed her that she’d been asked to audition for “Euphoria.”

“I gave it a shot just because I had been mildly interested in acting, but it wasn’t something that I thought I would be pursuing seriously in any way, shape or form,” she said. “Then I just kept going back in and getting more of the scripts and eventually started to fall in love with my character.”

After landing the role, she spent hours with Sam Levinson, the show’s creator, helping to fill out Jules’s experiences transitioning. “We were just telling each other stories and bringing forward timelines that we thought could make sense for Jules and then conceptualizing and sharing ideas, and that was the beginning,” she said. “I feel like Jules was being built until the last day we wrapped.”

“Euphoria” may be her first on-screen gig, but Schafer is no stranger to attention. Raised in Raleigh, N.C., she was a plaintiff in the American Civil Liberties Union’s 2016 lawsuit against North Carolina House Bill 2 that required people to use the restroom for the gender they were assigned at birth. She wrote about the experience of navigating bathrooms in her public high school for i-D, and for her convictions made Teen Vogue’s 2017 list of “21 Under 21.”

In a phone interview as she shuttled between a photo shoot and her New York hotel room, the sunny Schafer, 20, talked about her newfound fame, representation in entertainment and why she doesn’t want to be called an activist.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How does it feel to be having this moment as a breakout star?

It’s pretty surreal. I feel so lucky to have “Euphoria” as a first experience with taking on a character and exploring acting, and in having this group of people as well. I couldn’t be happier about the situation, and so whatever people are calling me is just the cherry on top.

You’ve said that your life was similar in certain ways to Jules’s. How?

I transitioned in early high school, and her transition might have been a little bit earlier than mine. But transitioning while you’re in public school is a pretty intense experience, so I knew I could bring that to her. And then Jules’s drive and motivation for the way she acts from the start, as far as a desire to be treated “like a woman.” And I’m saying that with quote fingers because that’s a loaded term. But I think one of Jules’s main battles is her desire for romance and normalcy and love, which I think she’s kind of locked down a routine as far as getting some form of that. But of course it’s not healthy, and I can relate to that point in my life. I didn’t act out on it, but I certainly desired to be treated a certain way in order to affirm my femininity.

What’s it like working with Zendaya?

She’s amazing. Z was my main scene partner for most of this season and I just feel so lucky to come out of this experience with a new best friend.

As an aspiring fashion designer, did you have any input into Jules’s distinctive style?

Some of Jules’s looks were already written into the script, and it was clear that she was expressive and stood out at her school. But as far as narrowing down what that aesthetic was, that was something that was really fun to work on with Heidi Bivens, our costume designer. I remember she let me make mood boards coming into filming. Then throughout Jules’s arc I think we start to witness a little bit of a change in style, which was fun to navigate as well. Heidi and I were just constantly sending each other references and photos and general guides that we think Jules could inhabit so it was really collaborative.

The Parents Television Council issued a warning about “Euphoria” before its premiere, calling it a “grossly irresponsible programming decision” for its graphic content. Does the show ring true to your memory of your own high school experience?

I can’t say I lived the way these characters do, just because my default is to be internal and stay home. Making artwork was my saving grace in high school. I didn’t really go out to parties very often the way these characters do. Oftentimes their actions make their experiences kind of messy where there’s no parents involved. But it’s interesting because my siblings have recently seen it, and I think they have a different experience of high school than I did. And they found it extremely true or relatable. It just sort of clocked high school in a way that they hadn’t seen before, which I was really excited to hear.

You’ve been what most people would consider activist, and yet you say you don’t like that word. Why?

When I think of an activist, I think of a community organizer who is working every day and directly with community members, and making it a job to take care of and speak up for a community in some way. So as an actor and an artist whose primary focus is making artwork or world-building, I don’t think I fall into that category. There might have been a point in my career where, because people have been telling me I’m an activist, I took on that label. But in retrospect, I don’t think that’s what I am — or what I’ve been — just because I’m vocal about my identity sometimes.

You’ve listed “Pose” as one of your favorite shows. How do you feel about trans representation and opportunities in Hollywood?

I think it’s always preferable that a trans person plays a trans person — one, because there’s enough cisgender actors in Hollywood, and two, because trans people can bring levels of experience to the trans experience that they might be portraying. A cisgender actor might be able to conceptualize and get it down to a T but won’t have the experiences in their back pocket that they can bring forward to use for that character. Trans people deserve to see themselves represented on their own TV screens, not being inhabited by people who might not completely understand them.

You’ve walked the runway for Helmut Lang, Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs, to name a few. Any plans to return to modeling?

I think I’ve taken a step back for now just because I really liked the way I felt in front of the camera acting and I want to keep exploring.

Are you auditioning for other parts, and do you have a dream role in mind?

I’m still kind of winding down from “Euphoria.” It’s taking a bit of time, just because we were doing this for eight months and I’m very immersed in that world, and I’m still in the process of letting it go. But I think I will start auditioning soon, and I’m really interested to explore what other characters I could inhabit. Jules was so parallel to me in a lot of ways. I would love to branch off to someone who is cisgender or a fantasy role. There are many different ways to go and I feel so new to acting and really excited about the art form. I’d love to just keep exploring.

In a 2016 interview, you said you came out first as gay, and then trans. Then you began exploring non-binary identity. Could you explain what you mean?

Earlier in my transition, I think I relied on a vantage point of the world that was very close to the gender binary and was only able to be myself in the gender-binary viewpoint. And as I’ve learned more about my community and come to understand gender as a spectrum, and the gender binary as something that’s nonexistent and a construct and a product of colonialism, I have sort of let go of the idea that I need to do the one or the other — and just let myself be.

In Episode 4, we see Jules admitted to a psych ward as she struggles with body dysmorphia and self-harm, and her desire to transition initially treated as a mental illness. Was that something you could relate to?

That experience is something from Sam’s life actually, something that really happened to him, not necessarily because he was trans but because he was dealing with similar symptoms of anxiety and depression that I think Jules was dealing with at that time as well. He was talking about being on the set and how it looked exactly the same and how intense that was.

I remember when I was early in my transition and had just come out and was starting to get help, I had to meet with a therapist for a year and have that therapist confirm to doctors before I could have access to hormones — have that therapist confirm to them that I was, in fact, female in my head, which is nuts just to have to have some doctor making decisions about your identity when you know the whole time. I don’t think it’s like that everywhere but that’s one experience that I remember specifically that was just really weird and not affirming as far as people believing me when I’m saying who I am.

This episode is also the moment we see Jules rethinking the ways in which she has pursued affection. And then that kiss with Rue as they’re lying in bed …

What I just loved about the script is that we see her start to recognize [her reliance on men] and eventually move away from it, particularly with her relationship to Rue, which I found really exciting as well as a young trans girl in a not-heterosexual relationship.

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

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[chocolate-brownies]

Fred McFeely Rogers was a shy, somewhat awkward, and sometimes bullied child growing up in the 1930s. After going to college for what he called his “first language”—music—he prepared to enter seminary and study for the ministry. But on a visit home for Easter, he saw television for the first time. He hated it—people on the program were throwing pies in each other’s faces, and Fred found that demeaning. Nonetheless, he sensed instantly television’s capacity for connection and enrichment. That moment changed his life—and the lives of millions of Americans.

Fred Rogers, of course, went on to create Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which aired nationally for over 30 years. Beginning in 1968 and continuing until (and beyond) the end of production in 2001, untold millions of children grew up under Mister Rogers’ steady gaze and faithful care. Those children now make up much of the American public, and now many of them are flocking to theaters to see the documentary of Misters Rogers’ life, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Somehow, over 15 years after his death, we seem unable to stop turning back to Mister Rogers again and again—with a feature film that will begin filming in Pittsburgh this fall, and a biography that will be released in September. It seems we sense that Mister Rogers, whom we used to know so well, who used to seem to know us so well, may have something to say to us in our divided, contentious, often-painful cultural and political climate. Here are some of Mister Rogers’ teachings that could help us weather today’s ups and downs, stand up for what we believe in, and come together across our differences.

1. It’s okay to feel whatever it is that we feel

From 1955 to 1961, Fred Rogers was puppeteer and organist for The Children’s Corner, a popular, live, local Pittsburgh show that he co-created with Josie Carey. During his years on that show, Fred often spent his lunch hour taking classes—first at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (then called Western Theological Seminary) and later at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied child development. It was through his studies that he met child psychologist Dr. Margaret McFarland, a member of the Pitt medical school faculty.

Margaret and Fred became good friends, and Margaret worked as chief psychological consultant for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from the time it began until her death in 1988. It was Margaret who helped Fred get in touch with his own childhood memories, who helped him anchor the scripts, songs, and set of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in child development theory, and who said to him repeatedly, “Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable.”

In other words, whatever we feel, it’s okay to feel it—even if our feelings seem chaotic and complex. And naming our feelings, speaking them out loud, and exploring them with those we love are all good ways, as Mister Rogers might say, of growing on the inside.

2. But our feelings aren’t an excuse for bad behavior

The famous video of Mister Rogers’ 1969 testimony before a Senate subcommittee shows up on my social media feeds every time government funding for PBS or NPR is threatened. But while my friends and I are busy trying to score political points, it’s easy to miss the substance of the testimony itself.

The young Fred, just a year into the national run of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, doesn’t talk, as I once assumed, about ensuring that educational television is equally available in all zip codes. He sits calmly, speaks slowly, and talks about feelings.

Specifically, he talks about anger. He quotes, at length, his song, “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?” which gives suggestions for how to channel anger: “punch a bag,” “pound some clay or some dough,” “round up friends for a game of tag.” His favorite part of the song, it seems, talks about what he calls the “good feeling of control”:

It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong, 
and be able to do something else instead and think this song: I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish. 
I can stop, stop, stop anytime. 
And what a good feeling to feel like this, 
and know that the feeling is really mine, 
know that there’s something deep inside 
that helps us become what we can. 
For a girl can be someday a woman, 
and a boy can be someday a man.

Mister Rogers and his Neighborhood constantly affirmed the coexistence of self-expression and respect for self and others, and this was in no way a passing interest—the song that Fred quoted in his Senate testimony appeared in 38 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, including an episode filmed 30 years later, in 1999.

Mister Rogers and his Neighborhood constantly affirmed the coexistence of self-expression and respect for self and others.

When Fred was asked in an interview toward the end of his career about television’s responsibility to children, he replied, “To give them everything that we possibly can to help them grow in healthy ways, and to help them to recognize that they can be angry and not have to hurt themselves or anybody else, that they can have the full range of feelings and express them in very healthy, positive ways.”

3. Other people are different from us—and just as complex as we are

In a time when people on the left and the right dread family holidays with each other in equal measure, we’re hyperaware of differences between people. Our media diets, our social media feeds, and even our in-person relationships lock us into silos of agreement, where it’s easy to demonize and oversimplify those with whom we disagree.

But Mister Rogers showed us another way. As if he had spent a Thanksgiving or two around a family table, he wrote a song that said, “It’s the people you like the most who can make you feel maddest. It’s the people you like the most who can manage to make you feel baddest.”

In another song sung frequently on the Neighborhood, he reminded his television neighbors,

Sometimes people are good, and they do just what they should, 
but the very same people who are good sometimes 
are the very same people who are bad sometimes.
 It’s funny, but it’s true.
It’s the same, isn’t it for me…

Isn’t it the same for you?

However tempted we may be to call others “bad,” however tempted we may be to call ourselves “good,” all of us are more than we seem. Fred Rogers’ favorite quote from his favorite book was this: “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” In English: “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

4. It’s our responsibility to care for the most vulnerable

Mister Rogers was as gentle and loving in real life as on screen, but he also had an iron will and perfectionistic standards, and he kindly and firmly demanded excellence from himself and from all who worked with and on behalf of children.

Fred Rogers built his life and work on a bedrock of conviction. Though he studied and appreciated many religious traditions, he was, at his center, a Christian deeply committed to the values he read in Christian scripture. He believed in—and worked every day to emulate—a Jesus who welcomes children, loves us just the way we are, and calls us to love self and neighbor.

An ordained Presbyterian minister with a one-of-a-kind charge to minister to children and families through the mass media, Fred took seriously the scripture mandate to care for the most vulnerable. He worked with prisons to create child-friendly spaces for family visitation, sat on hospital boards to minimize trauma in children’s health care, visited people who were sick or dying, and wrote countless letters to the lonely.

In a 1991 speech to the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, an organization of lawyers, judges, educators, and counselors whose work included arbitration of custody disputes, he said,

“The problem is that when we deal with a group of people—one or more of whom is a child—we just can’t be impartial. None of us who have anything to do with families with young children can.”

Just last month, Megyn Kelly asked Fred’s wife Joanne Rogers what Fred might say to America in 2018. Joanne replied, “It would be about the children. It would be about the immigrants who are having children taken—the children themselves. It breaks my heart, and I know it breaks everybody’s heart.”

5. We can work to make a difference right where we are

As Michael G. Long points out in his book, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, Fred’s work for the greater good did not take the form of marching, rallying, or picketing. He occasionally wrote a note to a member of Congress, and of course he testified before that Senate subcommittee.

More often, however, Fred did his work in and through his own context. Fred didn’t march against Jim Crow; he cast black actors on his program. He didn’t travel to Birmingham or Selma in support of integration; he set up a pool and invited Officer Clemmons (played by black, gay actor François Clemmons) to soak his feet and share his towel.

Marching, writing, calling, and organizing are all good ways to make change, but Fred’s life reminds us that we can work for the well-being of the most vulnerable wherever we may be, in whatever work we do. In other words, “There are many ways to say ‘I love you.’”

Fred’s life reminds us that we can work for the well-being of the most vulnerable wherever we may be, in whatever work we do.

6. It’s important to make time to care for ourselves

Fred was a vegetarian, he didn’t smoke, and he rarely drank alcohol. When he traveled, whether for business or pleasure, he never changed his watch—or his personal schedule—to local time.

Wherever he was, he began each morning with prayer and Bible study, followed by lap swimming at the local athletic club. Swimming, as Mister Rogers sometimes shared with his television neighbors, was a way he could express emotion, especially anger. What he didn’t tell his television neighbors was that he often stood beside the pool and sang a quiet hymn before diving in. Fred also made time, almost every day, to sit and play the piano.

Fred spent his life giving of himself—on screen and off, to those he knew very well and those he met only in passing or in the pages of a letter. But he could only do so because he was absolutely committed to doing what he needed to take care of himself. Making time for self-sustenance meant he had more to give away.

7. We are neighbors

Mister Rogers didn’t call us “acquaintances” or “friends”; he didn’t call us “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen.” He called us neighbors.

When Mister Rogers called us neighbors, when he hosted us in his own Neighborhood for over 30 years, he was calling us—gently but firmly—out of our structures of power and our silos of sameness, into lives of mercy and care for one another.

Admittedly, maybe he was overly optimistic. Maybe he was calling us something better than we actually were. But maybe he believed that if he got to us while we were young, if he told us, again and again, that we were good, that we were lovable, and that we could extend mercy, maybe we could grow into real neighbors to one another.

Maybe we still can.

Lyrics by Fred Rogers provided courtesy of The Fred Rogers Company.

This article was adapted from  Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

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