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lesbianboyfriend · 7 months

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can i ask for lesbian book recommendations 🥹🕺

yeassss ofc my love <3

erm and obligatory disclaimer for any who might read that i don’t think “queer” or “lesbian” is a necessarily coherent category of books or adequate descriptor for a novel which is why i’ve also provided the actual genres here (sorted into which ever one i felt best fit) and descriptions. and these books have much more going on than just being about lesbians. however all books are undeniably awesomer with lesbians so yayyyyy

FANTASY:

-the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw: fantasy horror; murderous mermaid and plague doctor come across a cult of children (could be read as not lesbians bc one character is nonbinary but i choose to read as. lesbians)

-the empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unravels the tale of exiled empress’ rise to power

-when the the tigers came down the mountain by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unwinds the tale of a tiger and her scholar lover to prevent other tigers from eating them (stand alone sequel to empress of salt and fortune)

-ship of smoke and steel by django wexler: ya fantasy; girl has to steal a ghost ship to save her sister’s life

-the mermaid, the witch, and the sea by maggie tokuda-hall: ya fantasy; pirate falls in love with one of the ship’s hostages, a girl being sent to an arranged marriage against her will

-tremontaine created by ellen kushner: political fantasy; there’s a lot going on in this one okay just trust me that it’s really good esp if you love political intrigue (this was released serially and is easiest to acquire an electronic version)

-the deep by rivers solomon: fantasy/spec fic; African slave women thrown overboard gave birth to mermaid-esque descendants. one holds these traumatic memories for her whole people and must grapple with that pressure

-wild beauty by anna-marie mclemore: ya magical realism/fantasy; a family of women who can create flowers and whose lovers always tragically vanish fight to keep their land and to unravel the mystery of a strange boy who appeared

-siren queen by nghi vo: historical magical realism/fantasy; girl’s rise to stardom amidst the monsters of hollywood back in the days of the studio system

-gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir: sff; um. how to explain briefly. gideon wants nothing more than to leave the ninth house, but her nemesis harrowhark needs her sword skills to pass the emperors trial and become immortal. sure. (caleb i know you’ve read this just adding for any other viewers yayyy)

HORROR:

-white is for witching by helen oyeyemi: horror fantasy/magical realism; a house with women in its walls calls to miranda silver while the people she leaves behind struggle to make sense of what happened to her

-plain bad heroines by emily a. danforth: historical horror; when filming a movie about the macabre history of a boarding school, its past starts to become the reality for the stars and author of the novel it’s based on

LITFIC:

-girl woman other: contemporary litfic; the intersecting stories of Black british women told in verse

-nightwood: classic literary; i feel like i can’t describe this one well but nora and jenny are obsessed with robin, whose penchant for wandering and inability to commit drives them crazy. toxic dyke drama at its best

-the thirty names of night: lit fic; transmasc syrian american unravels the history of artist laila z who encountered the same rare bird his mother saw right before her death and realizes their pasts are intertwined

-under the udala trees: historical lit fic; coming of age set against the backdrop of civil war in Nigeria, two girls from different ethnic communities fall in love

-everyone in this room will someday be dead: contemporary lit fic; that moment when your ocd lands you a job at the catholic church even though you’re an atheist and also your relationship is falling apart

-stone butch blues: historical lit fic; butch lesbian realizing and grappling with her identity throughout the 40s-70s

-the color purple: classic lit fic; story of two sisters separated in their youth—one is forced into an abusive marriage and falls in love with her husbands mistress, wondering what became of her sister

-oranges are not the only fruit: semi-autobiography with slight fantasy elements; exploring growing up lesbian in a deeply religious pentecostal sect

SCI-FI:

-the weight of the stars: ya sf romance; aspiring astronaut is forced into friendship with a girl who waits on the roof every night for radio signals from her mother in space

-the seep: sci-fi/spec fic; what if aliens invaded and formed a hive mind of everyone and also your girlfriend turned into a baby again. wouldn’t that be fucked up

-the stars are legion: political science fiction; an awakes with no memory amid a group of people calling themself her family who claim she is the only one who can save their world

-not your sidekick: ya sci-fi; superheroes are real and they fucking suck

SHORT STORIES:

-sarahland: contemporary/spec fic short story collection; various stories about people named sarah

#jules.txt #asks #bookshelf

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dear-indies · 2 years

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hello :) please could you give some alternative suggestions to cindy kimberly, preferably someone with resources from tv & film. tysm <33

Indonesian:

Lulu Antariksa (1995) Indonesian / German.

Brianne Tju (1998) Indonesian / Chinese.

Jihane Almira Chedid (2000) Javanese Indonesian and Lebanese.

Arawinda Kirana (2001) Indonesian.

Other suggestions:

Simone Ashley (1995) Tamil Indian.

Coty Camacho (1995) Mixtec and Zapotec - is pansexual.

Lindsay Watson (1995) Kānaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, White.

Tati Gabrielle (1996) African-American / Korean.

Charithra Chandran (1997) Tamil Indian.

Amita Suman (1997) Bhojpuri Nepalese.

Janhvi Kapoor (1997) Indian.

Jaylen Barron (1997) African-American / Mexican.

Banita Sandhu (1998) Punjabi Indian.

Gabbi Garcia (1998) Tagalog Filipino.

Coco Jones (1998) African-American.

Joanna Pincerato (1998) Mexican, Syrian. Swedish, Italian - no acting resources.

Diamond White (1999) African-American.

Imani Lewis (1999) African-American.

Alycia Pascual-Peña (1999) Afro-Dominican.

Lizeth Selene (1999) Mexican - is genderfluid and queer - they/she.

Daniella Perkins (2000) African-American / European.

Kate Valdez (2000) Tagalog Filipino.

Savannah Lee Smith (2000) African-American - is bisexual.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (2001) Tamil Sri Lankan.

Josie Totah (2001) Palestinian / Lebanese, Italian, Irish, German - trans.

Isabela Merced (2001) Peruvian / White.

Finding somebody with acting resources was difficult but here are some suggestions!

#fc help #rph #rpc #alternative fc #cindy kimberly alts

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dillydedalus · 5 years

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february reading

truly the month of the 2.5 to 3/5 star books

the testaments, margaret atwood y’all.... i was bracing myself for disappointment but yikes. the first half is semi-decent, with at least the storylines of aunt lydia’s (alleged) diaries and the testimony of a girl raised in gilead opening up some interesting themes (the third, from the pov of a canadian teen, is a fucking disaster from the beginning), but the second half genuinely reads like generic dystopian YA, it’s predictable & tropey & silly & the prose becomes bad, real bad, ‘is atwood okay’ bad. 1.5/5

paul takes the form of a mortal girl, andrea lawlor really cool & propulsive picaresque about paul polydoris, a queer student in the early 90s who can shapeshift (yeah) & explores what that means for his identity, learning to reject attempts to force him into binary categories. it’s a fun read, but it felt a bit directionless (picaresque i know), and like... i read a lot of this on my commute & there really is nothing like sitting on the train, in a half-awake daze, and your book throwing a fisting scene at you. 3/5

delusions of gender: the real science behind sex differences, cordelia fine nonfiction book dedicated to debunking claims about the neurological basis of sex differences. it’s from 2010 so prob a lil dated (scientifically i assume, as well as a relative lack of intersectional analysis), but it’s a good overview of why such claims are often based on flawed or misleading studies (like one on toy preference where monkeys where presented w/ gendered toys, such as the clearly female-coded pan, which like... it’s a monkey...). the section on supposedly gender-neutral childraising was particularly interesting & depressing. 3/5

silence, shusaku endo (tr. from japanese by william johnston) historical novel about the oppression & persecution of christians in 17th century japan - the protagonist, a young priest, secretly travels to japan to find his mentor & ends up betrayed & captured, under threat of torture, struggling with his own doubts about his faith. it’s interesting but preeetty damn slow. also tbh i can’t really relate to the struggle of whether or not you should step on an image of jesus to save yourself or others from torture/execution. (to be fair depending on your reading god does break his silence to be like ‘dude. just step on the fucking image.’) 2.5/5

the garden of the finzi-contini, giorgio bassani (tr. from italian by william weaver) a melancholy novel in which a jewish-italian narrator looks back at his youth & early adulthood thru the lense of his relationship to the finzi-contini, a very rich jewish family whose daughter, micòl, he was in love with. although the narrative is slow and leisurely, the growing antisemitism and the narrator’s retrospective knowledge of what is to come makes this quite haunting & unsettling. what’s also unsettling is the narrator’s campaign of sexual harrassment against micòl in the end of the book, which is painted as silly, lovesick weakness, rather than, you know, harrassment. 2.5/5 why are men like this

white is for witching, helen oyeyemi i love an evil house, i love an evil house that gets to narrate (!!!), i love (conceptually!!!) an evil xenophobic white supremacist parasitic house that loves & starves its daughters. conceptually & thematically oyeyemi sets up a lot of really cool shit about haunting & grief & race/whiteness & yanno, evil parasitic houses that eat you from the inside, but i don’t think the resolution of these themes really works & a lot of the build-up just kinda deflates (the brother especially is kinda pointless). idk. i want to read more from oyeyemi tho. 2.5/5

vater unser, angela lehner (no english translation yet) the blurb for this is big cringe (’you’ve never seen a crazy person like this!’ like bitch i have to see myself every damn day) & the bones of this are not super original (mentally ill compulsive-liar narrator gets herself committed, manipulates everyone around her) but it’s pretty well-executed with a strong & funny voice, lots of austrian-specific weirdness, & a nice zippy pace. the twist is a bit predictable but still well-done imo. 2.5/5

interior chinatown, charles yu really smart experimental novel(ish) about one willis wu, struggling actor, trying to work his way up from Generic Asian Man to Kung Fu Guy in a strange shadow-world-version of chinatown where everyone is an actor & everything is part of the set. this strange half-world & the fact that much of the novel is in script-form are both really clever & also work really well in setting up the novel’s deeper point (i.e. not just that the film industry sucks if you’re any kind of minority, but that the stereotypical roles one is assigned in a culture have deeper repercussions in terms of identity and self-perception). it’s also a really funny books, and the epigraphs for each chapter are *chef’s kiss*. 3.5/5

die erfindung der deutschen grammatik, rasha abbas (tr. from arabic by sandra hetzl, no english translation) funny little collection of very short stories by a young syrian journalist & author who moved to berlin in 2014. the stories are for me most part about her experiences as a refugee, learning german, dealing with german bureaucracy & so on, often with a slightly surreal twist. fun but not super substantial or anything. 2.5/5

northanger abbey, jane austen tbh henry tilney is a condescending ass & the whole thing about him only falling in love with catherine bc she is so in love with him is a big yikes from me but it is so charming & funny (the thorpes! the narrator!) & catherine is so sweet, so ready to suspect gothic misdeeds & so naive when it comes to the much more commonplace cruelties that like, i still love it. 3.5/5

a thread of grace, mary doria russell historical novel about the nazi occupation of northern italy from ‘43 onwards, told thru various perspectives of partisans & resistance members, italian jews and jewish refugees in hiding, and catholic clergy involved with the resistance efforts. given that topic, it’s often brutal and depressing but there is always that (title drop) thread of grace in seeing the heroism of the partisans and the people who aided them & hid thousands of jewish refugees from the nazis. and russell just always brings so much humanity to her characters. not as good as the sparrow, but man, russell is great. 3.5/5

eure heimat ist unser albtraum, ed. fatma aydemir & hengameh yaghoobifarah & many many others (german, no translation yet) 2019 anthology about racism in germany, what it means to be a minority in germany, and why ‘heimat’ (~home(land)) is a problematic concept. as it is w/ anthologies it’s a mixed bag & i will say that i don’t think it’s as radical as it presents as overall but i think the #discourse in germany just ain’t as advanced as it is in the us&uk. 3/5

currently reading: gideon the ninth (i have no idea what’s going on but it’s very stylish)

#the books i read #tbh except for testaments i didn't dislike anything but very few of these books really stood out #to the point that i completely forgot to publish this #long post

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annbrighthaus-blog · 6 years

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Erotica, for those who don’t already partake, is any work of art with sex as a central focus – and the reason for consumption – that does not cross the line into pornography. This includes photography, literature, dance, sculpture, film, and really any medium that captures the human form and appetites in a compelling and sexy way. The definition is a bit vague. And pornography is hard to define as well, as the Supreme Court can attest, so erotica has, in some circles, garnered a reputation for being more sophisticated pornography, and in others, it’s just diet-porn. The recent SESTA/FOSTA acts further illustrate how difficult and problematic it is define pornography and other levels of sexual content.

However, erotica serves an important purpose for a great deal of the population, and can enhance your erotic ardor in ways that regular, garden-variety porn cannot (though porn can be great, too), because sometimes it’s fun to take a minimalist approach and leave the rest to your imagination. Exploring erotica can enrich your feminist sex life, partnered or not, so whether you’re new to erotica or an erotica diehard, read our recommendations for our favorite feminist erotica and some hands-free toys, too!

A Brief History of Erotica

Once upon a time, long before 50 Shades of Gray became a household name, dinosaurs roamed the earth. And soon after, dino-porn probably came along. Porn has likely existed as long as humans have. It’s a tale as old as time; with each new technological invention comes the aftermath of how it can be used for sexual purposes. The printing press was invented and immediately came the list of books that were to be banned; with the daguerreotypecame pictures of erotic acts for the first time (rather than drawings). Soon after, government officials around the world took to seizing any lewd photos they found. Erotica has a rich and varied history, and sex geeks or history buffs will definitely want to check out The Whores of Yore, a sex positive website that advocates on behalf of sex workers. Not only is there fascinating information on sex, sex work, and old-timey sex phrases, the NSFW photos dating back from the 1800s are beguiling on both intellectual and sexual levels. Typically, the pictures are geared toward people attracted to women, but it is fun for anyone to see how many activities that some might categorize as new and edgy are, in fact, old and traditional.

Why You May Want to Give Our Favorite Feminist Erotica a Try

Why should you branch out from your regularly-scheduled porn regimen? Lots of reasons! For instance, maybe your interests lie in more intense fantasies – fantasies you’re not sure you’d feel comfortable watching actually occur. Erotic literature can help get your creative juices flowing and be a good testing ground, without having an image in your head that you can’t un-see. Plus, your imagination is vast and often far more delectable than what can be conceivably performed by porn actors on a porn-flick budget.

Further, people of demisexual orientation may find a greater affinity toward erotic literature than porn. In a book, you can build a strong emotional tie to a character, something much more meaningful than a pizza deliverer bringing hot sausage and an order of buffalo wangs to your door. The sex scenes often have more depth, even if they are casual in nature. And, just like porn, erotica contains multitudes. If you can dream it, chances are, it already exists. Into BBW who are into shapeshifters? Yep, that’s a thing. Lesbian werewolves with penises? Goofy, pun-laden, Santa smut? Campy, absurdist tales of a gay dinosaur? Check, check, and check. On screen, these would all be totally ridiculous. But in your mind’s eye, there’s only a very good chance that they’ll be ridiculous. Yet, sex and desire as a whole could benefit from a bit less gravity, a bit more humor, and a lot more acceptance.

Also, as it can be hard to find porn that feels welcoming to people with vulvas, and erotica is not fundamentally different. Marquis de Sade, a French writer from the 1700s, wrote books so brutal that the term sadism was coined for them. So, it’s good to know going in what you like and what’s off the table. But now, there’s a lot more readily-available, femme-friendly reads.

If you’re looking for something academic, look no further than Anais Nin; in particular, Delta of Venus. Part memoir and part short-story anthology, this book pioneered the way for literary erotica to make its way in to the mainstream. It is very ahead of its time as far as steering clear of slut-shaming and being sex positive. The Proof of the Honey by Salwa Al Neimi is a lightly erotic book that stars a young, Syrian academic who journeys through her own sensual self-realization. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters is an exquisite historical-fiction-style dive into gender roles, sexuality, and a lesbian relationship framed in the asphyxiating backdrop of Victorian-era England. More straightforward erotica, such as Curvy Girls: Erotica for Women and Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica are also some of our favorite feminist erotica titles. Lastly, Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden is a compilation of real women’s fantasies and reads as hot today as it did back in the 1970s when it was first published.

If you look for free online stories, the old adage “you get what you pay for” definitely applies here. Skip free sites like literotica.com, which don’t maintain editors or style guidelines and are often riddled with typos, plot holes, and even name changes – and those things can really wreck the mood. That caveat aside, the Sugarbutch Chronicles are a fun, queer, kinky ride. Bust has a great publication called one-handed reads. Whatever you do with your other hand while you read is your business.

Like too many other things in 2018, a lot of books in this genre don’t have appropriately labeled trigger warnings or blur the line of consent. It’s best to find an author you love and trust, and stick with them, if you’d prefer to avoid those waters.

Sometimes, reading non-fiction, “how-to” type books can be enough to get you in the mood. If you’re interested in learning how to top or learning how to bottom, these books provide admission into the kink scene and enough explicit details that you will likely know by the end whether or not you’d be into it. Or, give Sex for One by Betty Dodson a read, which is a turn on to all the ways you can explore self-pleasure and your body, with concrete techniques for you to try.

Some Accompaniments

Spend some quality time with yourself, a good book, and a good toy – perhaps something hands-free. That way, there’s nothing between you and that next steamy chapter. Why not try the Stronic G Pulsator by Fun Factory? A totally unique vibrator that has the capacity to thrust, leaving your hands to your favorite book while it pulsates away. Both your g-spot and your brain will be stimulated.

Folks with penises could cuddle up with a good book and the Pocket Pulse by Hot Octopuss! This toy is a stroker that has hands-free capability once the user is erect.

People with vulvas can keep their nose in a book and an Eva II by Dame between their legs for hands-free clitoral stimulation. Also fun for partnered sex, this cute little vibrator has three vibration settings and is waterproof for those who like to read and play in the tub.

Vibrant Has All the Body Safe Toys (and Books) You Need

Vibrant has an array of body-safe sex toys for every body. Check out our curated collection of toys and books, too! Or, chat with us, and we can help recommend the product that’s perfect for you. We’re available 9am-9pm EST daily on our website chat (just push the purple button at the bottom right!) or call us at 866-316-VIBE(8423).

#bevibrant

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pixelgrotto · 7 years

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Three free games on Steam, part one

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been scouring the Steam store for free stuff. And by free, I don’t mean free-to-play online games like DOTA or Smite, which are all well and good and certainly deserve their place on the world’s most ubiquitous online storefront, but rather the weirder, experimental indies that exist within the cracks. I was inspired to do this by the trippiness of Doki Doki Literature Club, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Doki Doki is certainly one of the most interesting projects on Steam that managed to spawn quite the considerable fanbase, all without charging a cent, and I noticed that if you take a deep dive, there are a few similar games out there also worthy of notice. Not all of them are great, but they’re all at least interesting, much in the same way that short stories and student movies are. Many of them are also text-heavy games with the same dark flavor as Doki Doki Literature Club, probably because the visual novel and horror genres mesh well with these small, self-contained free projects. Anyway, here are my quickie impressions on three of the ones I’ve tried out so far.

Cupid - I really enjoyed this one, and I’m quite surprised that it’s free. If Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays on anime harem tropes and then subverts them by going down the path of psychological horror, Cupid is a visual novel that’s also filled with unnerving moments, but more rooted in a dark Gothic sensibility. You play as an 18th century French girl named Rosa who’s grown up under the guidance of an abusive mother and has quite a lot of issues to work through, including crippling self-doubt and a tendency towards self-mutilation. After becoming an orphan, she falls in with a young piano prodigy named Catherine who’s being sponsored by a strange nobleman named Guilleme. Eventually, a death occurs, and we learn that Guilleme isn’t exactly what he appears to be - and the nuances of his reveal actually make him one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen in a game in recent memory.

I’m perhaps not the target audience for Cupid, since in some of the unlockable development notes, the creator states that she catered towards the needs of queer female players and straight female players who wanted to question their sexuality first. But I can enjoy an intriguing story as well as anyone, and Cupid ended up addressing the nuances of love in a mature manner that really impressed me. And when I say love, I don’t just mean romantic or sexual love, though there’s at least one (very well-written) sex scene along the way - Cupid also deals with parental love, the love between friends and the love that one can have for life. There’s not too much online about the main creator behind this game - all I can find is that she’s an illustrator in Asia and has a team website here - but she wrote a compelling script that reminded me a bit of a cross between Dracula and Fingersmith, a novel and BBC serial from 2005 that I watched with an ex a few years ago and enjoyed. Pretty unique combination, really.

PRICE - This one’s an “escape the room” horror game that kinda feels like something you might find on a Flash website, but it certainly has higher production values. You play as a Dane (or German?) guy named Ivry who wakes up in his sister’s room and has to get out, and he just might not be alone in there. It was made by a tiny Chinese team, and the voice acting and sound design is surprisingly great at creating some spooky vibes. It’s even got some degree of replay value, since you unlock a second area after you beat it the first time, and the true ending doesn’t become accessible until then. The gameplay’s of the point ‘n click variety, and it’s a tad hit and miss since the game is very dark and it’s not always clear what you can interact with and what you can’t. The story’s also something of a mixed bag - it’s certainly got great style, but at times it feels like a mish-mash of random concepts borrowed from shoujo and horror manga that the creators thought were “cool,” ie - a brother and sister who are a little too close, a flowery European setting, and lots of macabre paintings featuring skeletons and other vaguely devilish characters. There are some references to Hans Christian Anderson that caught me by surprise, though, and the game is great deal better than an actual escape room that I recently went to in real life, so there’s that!

Yume Nikki - Yume Nikki (the title translates to Dream Diary) might be the most well-known game on here, since it’s one of the more famous projects to be created with RPG Maker 2003. It first came out in 2004, and was actually one of those rare indie gems that accumulated a substantial following in the days before indie games were mainstream. In the years since, it’s inspired light novels, lots of comparisons to Earthbound and Undertale, and quite a bit of speculation on who its mysterious creator, known only as “kikiyama,” actually is. (It’s a secret to everybody!) When it was released for free on Steam a few weeks ago the reviews quickly shot up into the very positive range, largely thanks to old devotees gushing about how they’d loved it when it had first come out. Later, it was revealed that the game’s release predated a remake/semi-sequel of sorts that is decidedly not getting the same glowing reception, so it’s clear that the original Yume Nikki means a lot to quite a few people.

For me, someone who didn’t experience the game upon immediate release, this one falls squarely into the “interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s for me” range. All you do is control a little girl who’s wandering around surreal dreamscapes, and the experience is meant to communicate the strange and often horrific nature of the things our minds create when we’re asleep. It’s purely about exploring and drawing your own conclusions about the stuff you see around you, and while I can appreciate the intent here, the actual execution left me a little bored. I guess I’m one of those people who just likes to do stuff in games, though I can see how a moody exercise in wandering around and occasionally encountering frightening imagery might be appealing to some people. It’s certainly impressive considering the limitations of RPG Maker 2003, and I have a feeling I might’ve enjoyed Yume Nikki more if I’d first played it in 2004, as an impressionable 16-year-old who was also messing around with RPG Maker and had more time on his hands to simply explore.

I’ve got a few other free titles queued up, including a game styled like a 16-bit RPG that tells the story of a Syrian refugee, and will likely write a part two to this post once I’ve worked my way through them. Overall, it’s an oddly enjoyable experience investigating the often unnoticed free section of the Steam storefront. It feels like getting a glimpse into an underground subculture, or at least like attending a university’s niche film club weekly gathering. (Actually, it’s better than the one time I did attend my college’s niche film club. I nearly fell asleep watching Death in Venice, ugh.)

Screenshots all taken from each game’s respective Steam page.

#pixel grotto #video games #now playing #cupid visual novel #visual novel #yume nikki

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prince-spence · 7 years

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I wrote a piece for film and I thought Tumblr might appreciate it

What are your views of America?

“I'm not sure I understand this question, or at least if I understand it in the way you probably want me to. There are two ways I can see to answer this: The historical facts of America (racism, sexism, classism) that I associate with America and our ideals, or the America thought of in media or propaganda made to teach everyone that America is good and great no matter what, such as the original Captain America. And even later Captain America comics see Cap showing dislike for what we stood for, and at one point he even drops the mantle of "Captain America" because of this. American ideals only seem to be strong and good if there is someone worse. In Cap's case, Nazis. If you can't tell, I'm a bit of a sceptic.

The idea of America as a place of dreams and opportunity (for white people at least) seems to have very strong roots in our history, at least until the great depression. With the great depression came more people dissatisfied and cynical about the government, and movements such as the first and second waves of feminism seemed to be as far out as rebellion and dissatisfaction can be seen, in masse at least. The civil rights movements and later feminist movements, as well as the queer rights movements seem to be the first time there was severe unrest, discomfort and distress regarding what America stood for and what we were willing to stand for. At least, this is the first time in history we seem to recognize today, but this is what has shaped my image of america. My image of america is rich people watching the poor die while trying to still scrape a penny out of their deaths, like the story of the radium girls. The radium girls were factory workers that were encouraged to not just work with, but ingest radium for decorating watches, when the company knew about the effects of radium but lied to save money. My image of America is straight people in power watching as almost all of the queer community died, and using their deaths to promote ideas of homosexuals being evil and deserving death. My image of America is white people killing children in protest of black people wanting to exist, like with Birmingham Sunday. My image of America is the government spying on MLK and releasing information about his personal life to to try and discredit him and his movement, while hosing and killing unarmed and peaceful black people, something that continues to this day. My image of America is arresting and murdering women for wearing dresses, because they were supposed to be men instead of women. My image of America is stripping the rights away from disabled people and making it almost impossible for them to live. Something still going on today. Did you know it's legal to pay disabled people under minimum wage? My image of America is police arresting peaceful women wanting to have the right to vote, then force feeding them with a tube down their stomach when they went on hunger strike. When I think of America, I think of Europeans coming over to the Americas and murdering most of the indiginous people and then forcing them to live on barely liveable pieces of land that nobody wanted. My image of America is turning away Jewish refugees when they only had Hitler to head back to. For context, Americans on average are warmer today to the idea of Syrian refugees than they were to Jewish refugees. My image of America is being okay with a man that says my people are rapists and murderers. My image of America is letting children get gunned down in schools to protect the rich people invested in guns. My image of America is Neo-Nazis marching in the streets and murdering counterprotesters, then being told the counterprotesters were the same as the Nazis. My image of America is gay conversion therapy still being legal. My image of America is ABA therapy still being legal. My image of America is not very kind. My image of America is not baseball, apple pie, the american dream and equality for all. My image of America is hatred, of everything different, of everyone different, of a lot of things I see as good. Sorry if this wasn't quite the assignment.”

#social justice #mine #racism #sexism #aba #disability representation #donald trump #resist #xenophobia

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queermuslims · 7 years

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Amir Rabiyah is a two-spirit disabled queer femme poet and writing coach. They were born in London, England to a Cherokee and European mother and a Lebanese and Syrian father. Their work explores living life on the margins and at the intersections of multiple identities. Amir writes about living with chronic pain and illness, war, trauma, spirituality, redemption--and speaks on silenced places. Amir is the co-editor of Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices and has published in numerous anthologies and journals. They currently live in San Diego with their beautiful partner, two dogs, one super senior cat, and a 13-year-old film-making prodigy. They love being a housewife and believe domestic work, chanting Sufi prayers over a home-cooked meal, and nurturing our communities is crucial for revolution.

Pre-order Amir Rabiyah’s collection of poetry Prayers for My 17th Chromosome due to be released 11/14/2017

Amir has been previously featured on the Queer Muslims tumlbr. Click here to watch a video of them reading their work.

#lgbtq #queer muslims #lgbtq muslims #poetry #indigenous muslims

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queerfilmfestival-blog · 5 years

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Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America

Written by Ali

The 81-minute documentary film “Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America” directed and produced by Tom Sheppard describes the lives of four LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East who have fled anti-LGBTQ+ violence in their origin countries and moved to re-settle in San Francisco, U.S.A. In order to understand the context of this film, it is essential to understand the lives each individual presented throughout the film. Subhi Nahas, a gay upper-middle class Syrian refugee, who after receiving many death threats from Islamic terrorists, and after brutal beating from his homophobic father, flees from a nation devastated by war. Subhi applies for refugee status and successfully moves to the US, where he eventually becomes an activist and inadvertently a leader for refugee rights in the U.S. Cheyenne Adriano and Mari N’timansieme, a lesbian couple from Angola, who after having faced terrifying harassment from family and neighbours, move to the U.S. on a temporary visa. They struggle in their pursuit of legal asylum through the American immigration courts, while focusing on their music careers. Junior, a gender non-conforming gay male from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, flees from persecution in his own neighbourhood after a near-death beating in public. Junior is granted refugee status to the U.S. through the UN, where he struggles to find basic housing in his exploration of his identity.

The two major concepts that will be discussed are compulsory heteronormativity and intersectionality. These concepts are prevalent in today’s societies around the world, which the film reveals unequivocally.

The entire premise of this film is based upon the discrimination of LGBTQ+ peoples in non-Western countries, that was clearly portrayed in the film. From the video of Junior being publicly beat up, to the slurs hurled at Cheyenne and Mari, to the physical depiction of Subhi’s scar on his chin from the attack by his father. Compulsory heteronormativity is the idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a heteronormative and patriarchal society. Every single one of the characters in this film faced physical violence or verbal abuse from people in their community. This notion of compulsory heteronormativity drives the narrative of seeking refuge for the safety of their lives, as the characters attempt to escape culturally or politically influenced persecution from their respective origin countries. The stories narrated by each of the characters explained their discomfort in their communities ill-treatment of them, due to their identities. In the film, Subhi was unable to go to university, whereas Mari, Cheyenne and Junior couldn’t leave their homes. In Sara Ahmed’s, “Being in Question” it writes, “Queers might be asked not to make others feel uncomfortable, by not displaying any signs of queer intimacy. You might be asked to tone it down, or you might decide to tone it down to avoid creating discomfort. The availability of comfort for some bodies may depend on the labor of others, and the burden of concealment” [2]. Ahmed explains the oppressiveness of heteronormativity on LGBTQ+ people, however, this example is too Westernized, as LGBTQ+ aren’t given a choice in order to maintain physical and psychological safety, so they must flee to spaces with laws that protect their identities. The compulsory heteronormativity is a concept that drives the reason to seeking refuge for the characters in the film [2]. The film appropriately puts into perspective the individual struggles of the global LGBTQ+ community, in the face of discrimination and violence.

Throughout the film, the characters narrate the difficulties and challenges they faced in the navigation of their lives. However, each of the characters experiences differing levels of privilege and oppression. Subhi is an olive-skin tone Syrian, fluent in English, with some level of university education, and came from an influential upper-middle class family. He receives the best treatment, finding people to take him in and serve as his sponsor. He unexpectedly becomes an activist, while sharing his refugee story at the United Nations in order to promote immigration and protection of LGBTQ+ peoples abroad. He also attains a job, stable relationship, a fancy apartment, participates at pride events, and gives speeches. In comparison, Junior is a dark-skinned Congolese, gender non-conforming person who appears male, has no educational background or skills, struggles to even find shelter. Junior, coming from a poor family, suffers from PTSD, finds himself in volatile relationships, and becomes an alcoholic. Kaufman details intersectionality as, “an important and pervasive concept because it has ‘given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion’”. The intersectionality of race, class and gender are all aspects that play a role in Subhi’s rise and Junior’s oppression in their assimilation in America. Subhi’s privileges allowed him to have material and emotional wellbeing, whereas, Junior’s lack of privilege, lead to his suffering. Sheppard properly displays the differences in privilege and oppression in the intersection the character’s lives.

The exposure of documentaries based in reality emphasizes the legitimate hardships international LGBTQ+ people confront every single day of their lives. The rights we may take for privilege, in Western society, bring awareness to the inequalities faced by oppressed groups. The ReelOut festival allows us to reflect on the modalities of our lives, in comparison to others and remind us to stay mindful.

Word count: 873

References:

[1] Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life: Being in Question. Duke University Press, 2017.

[2] Kaufman, Peter. Intersectionality for Beginners. W.W Norton & Company Inc. 2018. https://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2018/04/intersectionality-for-beginners.html#more

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chicleeblair · 5 years

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i watch titanic every few new years eves while i browse l various articles and sites about the disaster ans the film. now ive always noticed it’s kind of white washed and was guilty off hand-waving “big white ship going Liverpool—Belfast—NYC” the only stops the film bothers with if i didnt pull Belfast from another source. ANYWAY easy to assume the “others” are all Irish, Eastern European, and poor people.

However it took me two seconds to determine that there were 165 Syrian/Lebanese folks on board, some immigrants, some families on trips. Some, maybe all but this is a cursory google, muslim and a more speculative attempt to tell stories of lebanese passengers,,. if they check out the similarity to famous stories is heartbreaking (eg a young couple refusing to leave without each other, like the elderly couple dying together in their bunk. (the founders of Macys, fyi) there were jewish passengers too and honestly that it could be its own post. just you cannot claim that they were at all WASP entity especially because of him:

[image description: a sepia-tinted Edwardian photograph featuring a mixed race family. the mother, Juliettte, stands with a hand on her husband’s chair to her left and The other holding the hand of her toddler, Simonne Marie Anne Andrée Laroche, who is happily standing up on the cushion. to her left the father, whose skin is darker than the other three, holds a baby, Louise “my sister took all the midddle names” Laroche on his knee. she is very happily putting up her fists. i speculate she is joyously ready to fight the strange man ducking under the cloth to take fiddle with the box that goes boom. she has dark waves, and the little girl has a curlier texture but seems to be blondish.]

Like many, it seems, thr Laroche family was not originally traveling on titanic, but when they found out that Juliette was pregnant again, they put a rush to get her back to Haiti before the child was born. It is notable to that while they had first class tickets they sacrificed them so that the children could join them in the dining room and not be relegated to a nursery

Laroche’s family survived the night, but like many of the men sacrificed for the sake of women and children, he did not. I have no idea if that has a racist component; all I came here to say is that even in a situation that seems to be full of the whitest of white people, that’s generally not how history worked. I’ve read so much about the Titanic, all classes, but never come across these stories—I should’ve sought them out earlier, but I also shouldn’t have had to do that.

(FWIW Laroche DID have an opera written about him)

In retrospect, non-racial minorities were undoubtably represented. I don’t really know how to go about looking for passengers with disabilities, but I am so sure they were there, grateful for passenger elevators. did a secret queer club meet in one of the common area dark corners? I don’t know but it doesn’t seem like a stretch. I don’t have much of a point, I’m just a white chick trying to use my platform to point out the white Anglo-Saxon supposed-Protestants-with-amazing-hair were not the only ones on the titanic, or in other parts of any recent history and I think that we’ve come to the point where those are the stories that need telling. it’s not a new or unique idea but something I hadn’t really examined until probably my 10th watching of this film—which prided itself on its accuracy in so many less meaningful ways. it shouldn’t feel anachronistic for minorities to be there just because our ancestors ignored them.

#titanic #historical inaccuracies #POC on titanic #POC in history #ramblings #history

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ucsdcrossculturalcenter · 7 years

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What I’m watching - Maha

Froggy Blues- An animated film by Alia Hijaab, a queer Muslim, Syrian-American.

http://weareempower.org/2016/03/alia-hijab/

Alia Interview highlights:

What aspects of your identity do you try to incorporate into your work?

I’m still trying to find my style. I’m only in my second year [of university] and I’m still trying to figure out my work or practice. I definitely want to incorporate a lot about my memories of Syria and my experiences of living in the Middle East into my animation, because I think it’s such a beautiful culture and it’s such a beautiful part of the world and it yields well to have wonderful art made about it, especially in light of all of the political mayhem that’s happening there. I’d like to think that perhaps, I could make an animation about a Syrian child, and a Syrian child would watch it and feel like they see themselves. Representation is really important and I recognise that. Even though I’m a white passing Syrian, I never really saw someone on any of my shows or cartoons that I felt represented me. I am mixed race and there’s just not a lot of shows out there about people that are mixed race or people who are Syrian or Arab. I want to hopefully tap into that in my work.

What were some of the obstacles you had to overcome as a woman of colour in your area of study?

I think that in general, animation is really driven by the white man. Everything you see, all the books, all of the main movies, and all of the resource information are all made by white dudes. One of the major obstacles for a lot of animators is just hoping and praying that your work gets made into a real movie. Sometimes you have this big budget idea and you don’t have that big budget, so you’re going to have to give it to a studio, and it’s just disheartening seeing all of the studios that don’t make as many movies about women of color. I know there’s a couple but that’s it, there’s only a couple. I think it’s definitely on the up and up, but it’s still really a male dominated field. I’m hoping that when I start working in the industry that will start to change.

#ucsdcrossculturalcenter

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tigerstrikesasteroidnetwork · 5 years

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The Green Sun @ Icebox Project Space

In their No. 1 Sun Engine, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller deal with a largely forgotten episode from the early history of the commercial use of solar energy: in 1913, Philadelphia-based engineer and inventor Frank Shuman inaugurated the first large-scale solar power generator in Maadi near Cairo.

THE GREEN SUN: A MICRO-SYMPOSIUM August 25th, 10AM-4PM FREE-RSVP ONLINE Doors 9:30AM

PRESENTATIONS, ACTIVITIES, DISCUSSION ON SOLAR POWER AND ITS POSSIBILITIES

Philly-based artist/curators, Ricky Yanas and Kristen Neville Taylor invite you to The Green Sun: A Micro-Symposium, a day-long series of artist presentations, activities and panel discussions focusing on the intersection of art and policy as they relate to solar power, the history of energy and possible futures.

“To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

In this passage, famed fantasy writer, J. R. R. Tolkien speaks to the nuanced labor, the “elvish craft” of creating a world in which “the green sun” exists for the reader. Accordingly, our program asks: What is required to imagine solar energy as commonplace? What is necessary for crafting a vision of the future? What role does art play?

The Green Sun: Micro-Symposium, is a series of artist presentations, a workshop and a panel discussion that will focus on the intersection of art and policy as they relate to solar power, the history of energy and possible futures. The symposium will take place from 10 AM to 4 PM on Sunday, August 25, 2019 in the Icebox Project Space, located at the Crane Arts building in the South Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, hosting members of the arts, policy and commercial sectors, and the general public. Responding to the public desire and civic efforts towards developing more sustainable energy sources, this event will serve as a catalyst for bridging dialogue across communities and generate new ways of thinking about and implementing solar technology. This program will be the starting point for a larger, developing project/exhibition called The Green Sun, which will consider solar power for its practical and narrative potential towards envisioning a healthier, more equitable world (opening at Atelier FAS Gallery in September).

The Green Sun: A Micro-Symposium will be comprised of three presentations followed by lunch, a break-out session and a panel discussion. Swiss artists, Roman Keller and Christina Hemauer will present on their project No. 1 Sun Energy which originally brought them to Philadelphia in 2007 to research Frank Shuman, an early solar pioneer who kept a laboratory in Tacony, PA. In addition to serving on the panel, Aurash Khawarzad will present on his project.

Decolonize Energy Mixtape, a method he’s developed to generate multimedia educational content about public policy based on the way audio mixtapes shaped the way music was produced and shared. Award winning, film-maker and sound artist, Chet Pancake will present "Slow Selves Futures", a brief overview of Pancake's creative work regarding mountaintop removal in southern WV, air pollution from natural gas infrastructure for the project "Citizen Sense," and a recent work "Arboreal" exploring somatic and phenomenological experiences of arboreal blockaders on the Mountain Valley Pipeline. These presentations will provide a context for the solar panel discussion later in the program. Following lunch, organizers, Nora Elmarzouky and Anthony Giancatarino will lead a group activity breaking down the power structure of our energy system. The day will end with a panel discussion addressing the ways that professionals in the fields of art, policy and commerce can use their expertise to make solar energy technology accessible to more Philadelphians.

Panelists will include founder of Solar States (Philadelphia-based solar energy equipment supplier/educator), Micah Gold-Markel, head of Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA)'s Solarize Philly campaign, Laura Rigell, cultural broker/ organizer, Nora Elmarzouky, and individual artists Aurash Kawarzhad (N YC Artist, Educator, and Urban Planner) and Chet Pancake (Bloodlands (2016) & Queer Genius (2019)) . The panel will be moderated by Bethany Wiggin, founding director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. COFFEE, LUNCH & SNACKS PROVIDED. SEATS ARE LIMITED. RSVP ONLINE @ EVENTBRITE.COM

PROGRAM SCHEDULE 9:30 am- Doors open 9:45 am- Coffee & Introductions 10:00 am- Aurash Khawarzad 10:45 am- Chet Catherine Pancake 11:30 am- Roman Keller and Christina Hemauer 12:00 pm- Lunch 1:00 pm- Breakout Session w/ Nora Elmarzouky & Anthony Giancatarino 1:30 pm- Panel discussion moderated by Bethany Wiggin 3:00 pm- Q & A 3:30 pm- Announcements 3:45 pm- Goodbyes/Thank yous

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS Ricky Yanas and Kristen Neville Taylor are artists, educators, and curators. Working within a pragmatic tradition of problem finding, Yanas aims to create intersectional spaces of inquiry and mutual engagement through art making and art thinking. Recent projects include Extension or Communication: Puerto Rico at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery Philadelphia and Taller Puertorriqueno. In 2016, Yanas founded Ulises Books with Nerissa Cooney, Lauren Downing, Joel Evey, Kayla Romberger, and Gee Wesley.

Taylor investigates multiple truths to reveal diverse perspectives in dominant social, political and historical narratives. Her work has been shown at Vox Populi, the Woodmere Art Museum and the Philadelphia Art Alliance (Philadelphia), Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland), Richard Stockton and Rowan University Art Galleries (New Jersey), and Expo Chicago. She has organized several exhibitions including Landscape Techne at Little Berlin, The Usable Earth at the Esther Klein Gallery, and she co-curated Middle of Nowhere in the Pine Barrens. Taylor is a recent alumni of Vox Populi gallery and co-founder of Little Berlin, a Philadelphia art gallery and collective renowned both nationally and internationally for its cutting edge programming and distinct curatorial model. Together they maintain a working group that meets to share readings and conduct workshops that address the climate crisis.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Nora Elmarzouky is a cultural broker/organizer, who designs and facilitates programming on a range of themes such as cultural understanding, identity, Egyptian culture, education, immigration, arts and culture, storytelling, diversity and equity, philanthropy, and interfaith understanding, as well as writing and public speaking. A co-founder of in.site collaborative, a collective of women dedicated to equitable, engaging, and inclusive urban spaces, she consults and evaluates alternative community engagement methods. RE-humanization and collective collaboration are central to her work, demonstrated currently through the partnership with Ebony Suns exploring energy democracy and the green economy as a framework for bottom-up community-driven development with Centennial Parkside CDC and managing Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary - a collaborative exhibitions project between Swarthmore College, book artists, and Syrian and Iraqi resettled individuals. She is a board member of YallaPunk, Barrio Alegria, and the East Parkside Residents Association; Impact100 founders fellow, and co-founder of PHL Niqash discussion group.

Anthony Giancatarino is a father of three and lives in Philadelphia, PA. In addition to his role as a dad, he is currently a project fellow on Just Community Energy Transitions (JCET) housed at the Movement Strategy Innovation Center. In this fellowship, Anthony works with community partners in building out anti-racist practices and community-driven processes to support alignment, policy development, strategy, and collective governance to advance energy democracy at both national and local levels. Locally, Anthony collaborates with Philly Climate Works and POWER and partners with the Center for Coalfield Justice on statewide work. Previously, Anthony spent seven years at the Center for Social Inclusion, working with community organizations to support policy strategies to achieve racial equity in energy democracy, food equity, and transparency, participation, and accountability in governance.

Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller live in Zurich, Switzerland. Recent exhibitions include United Alternative Energies, Centre for Contemporary Art, Aarhus, Denmark, curated by Latitudes (2011) and the 11th Cairo International Biennale, Cairo (2009). Using re-creation and re-enactment to revitalise the optimism of these pioneering projects, Hemauer and Keller also highlight the time that has since lapsed; that these were “roads not taken”. They revisit episodes in the history of oil and solar energy to ask questions about the present energy situation: increased dependence on, and continued conflict over, fossil fuels. Since 2003 the focus of their research-based practice has been the concept of energy as a defining force of modern society, including works and performances that herald the post-petroleum age and map the relationship between the history of energy and modern art.

Aurash Khawarzad is an Artist, Educator, and Urban Planner. His work emphasizes the combination of research, creative practice, and multi-disciplinary collaboration, in the process of visioning cities. Most recently he created of The Upper Manhatta(n) Project, a model for analyzing and communicating the impacts of climate change. He is originally from Virginia and has been practicing in New York City since 2009.

Chet Catherine Pancake is an award-winning filmmaker, video, new media, and sound artist. They have exhibited at national and international venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Royal Ontario Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Murray Art Museum Albury, Australia, Shanghai Conservatory – Shanghai PRC, and Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. Pancake’s narrative and experimental documentary work has been screened at over 150 venues nationally, as well as broadcast (entirely or as excerpts) in the US and UK on the Sundance Channel, PBS, FreeSpeech Television, and the CommunityChannelUK. Their films are nationally & internationally distributed by Bullfrog Films and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and are held in permanent collections in over 100 university and museum archives nationally. Pancake is an Assistant Professor in the Film and Media Arts Program at Temple University. Pancake is a 2017 Leeway Transformation Award winner.

Laura Rigell has led the Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA)'s solar efforts since 2017. She developed and implemented the nation's largest Solarize campaign, which helped build a residential solar market in Philadelphia -- the 4th fastest-growing solar market in the US. Laura's work prioritizes equity, creating new vehicles to support solar for low- and moderate-income households citywide, and starting the School District's first solar and energy efficiency training program, Find Your Power, focusing on high school students. Laura has raised funds through federal, state and corporate grants to support institutional, commercial and residential solar deployment in Philadelphia, and provides support to the City's utility-scale renewables projects. Additionally, Laura leads PEA's stakeholder engagement related to renewable energy and climate change. Outside of PEA, Laura is active with Serenity Soular, a grassroots initiative designed to drive equitable solar jobs and installations in North Philadelphia. Laura has a BA from Swarthmore College and a Masters of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bethany Wiggin is the Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and an Associate Professor of German. Her scholarship explores histories of migration, ecology, language and cultural translation since the Columbian exchange on both sides of the Atlantic world. She is author of the book, Novel Translations: The German Novel and the European Book, 1680-1730 (Cornell UP); editor of three volumes, Un/Translatables: New Maps for Germanic Literatures (Northwestern UP, with Catriona MacLeod), Babel of the Atlantic (Penn State UP), and Timescales: Ecological Temporalities across Disciplines (under review, with Carolyn Fornoff and Patricia Kim); and a special issue of the German Studies Review on The Rise and Fall of Monolingualism (forthcoming 2019, with David Gramling).

Micah Gold-Markel founded Solar States in 2008, a certified B Corporation, which is taking the opportunity to affect positive environmental and economic change by making a commitment to solar energy project implementation and education. In addition to installing solar arrays on schools, homes, and commercial buildings, Solar States works to connect students from our region with the green-collar economy through training and jobs, investing in the region’s future and our local economy.

Solar States and it’s founder, Micah Gold-Markel, began the Philadelphia Solar Schools Initiative which creates educational and workforce development partnerships where we offer solar industry training and provide career opportunities to people who are interested and motivated to join the solar industry. In 2016 Solar States hired five full time employees from the education and workforce development program pipeline. Their vision is to use solar as a force for social change.

OUR SPONSORS AND HOST Penn Treaty Special Services District (PTSSD) is a nonprofit, private foundation formed by volunteers from four neighborhoods named in the C ommunity Benefits Agreement (CBA) reached with SugarHouse Casino in 2009. Tiger Strikes Asteroid is a network of artist-run spaces with locations in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Each space is independently operated and focuses on presenting a varied program of emerging and mid-career artists. Our goal is to collectively bring people together, expand connections and build community through artist-initiated exhibitions, projects, and curatorial opportunities. We seek to further empower the artist’s role beyond that of studio practitioner to include the roles of curator, critic, and community developer; and to act as an alternate model to the conventions of the current commercial art market.

Icebox Project Space is an innovative and experimental contemporary arts platform where visual artists, musicians, film makers, and performers are able to work, think, and collaborate within a uniquely large scale and open structure. Icebox Project Space is located at 2600 N 5th St, Philadelphia, PA 19133. For further questions, press inquiries, and images please contact: Ricky Yanas at (210) 275-8422 or email: [email protected]

#thegreensun #tigerstrikesasteroid #tiger strikes asteroid

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siavahdainthemoon · 7 years

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I totally feel the same way as you do for that new american assassin movie

Right??? Like. Dylan is so pretty. Pretty Dangerous Boys are basically my fave.

But why the fuck do we need another film all about Ebil Brown People and the White Americans Who Must Save Us???

Like. There are so many WHITE terrorist groups. Why didn’t you pick neonazis as your Big Bad? That would have been fucking AWESOME. Or if you absolutely had to pick Daesh* or a fictional representation of them, how about giving us, you know, some Syrian guy who makes it his mission to take them down? That would have been epic!

Hells, you could have gone totally mad and done it queer; have the mc’s boyfriend/fiance gunned down at Pride by some fundamentalist Christian/far-right nutcases, and I hate the Kill Your Gays trope but it would have been so much cooler than this???

Does it fulfill the Kill Your Gays trope if your gay then turns around and murders everyone responsible for the trope, or does that make it a brilliant exception

Can you imagine a badass that fucking dangerous being queer in a blockbuster film, it would have been amazing.

(*I will never call those fuckers what they want to be called, that is the name of the Egyptian Queen of Heaven goddess of magic and you can fuck off)

#stories have power #WHY DO YOU KEEP MISUSING IT #story ideas #because these are too good not to remember #paint-music-with-me-larry

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justanearth-boundmisfit · 8 years

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It is getting harder day be day to keep our wits together for being a Misha/Cas stan and wanting what is best for the actor and character. Jensen's acting to Cas dying was clearly one where he is trying to be removed from the scene so fans don't read into it and scream Destiel. His face is so animated when Sam is dying or Bobby is dying, but Cas - hell no. I think Destiel fans have ruined Cas and Jensen's acting when he is around Misha. I blame them for Jensen wanting less scenes with Misha. UGH

Hi anon! Fair warning this is going to be really long. Under the cut it goes.

I agree with you that it´s really hard being a Cas/Misha only stan. Sometimes I feel like we are 5 or something around that number. Almost all of the blogs that love Cas, are also hard destiel shippers. And there´s nothing wrong with that in my opinion. We have different points of view. Look, maybe mmm 4 years ago? I would be jumping and celebrating like them (believe me I would be a happier person), but after all this time of being taunted, seeing my ship erased by the writers and some actors, seeing Cas suffering and left behind and a million other horrible things, I became ultra bitter. I can´t stand how they treat Misha and Cas. I see them first, I will defend them first. I don´t care about a fucking ship. I can´t see Cas hurt and jump because he said I love you. All I see is my angel hurt again and again. And I can´t be happy about that.

Destiel has become a touchy topic for a lot of people. Years ago we didn´t have this rabid obsession. But well, what can we expect? The subtext WAS there, everything was there. We were not delusional. As critic as I am of the deancas interaction nowadays, they made destiel seemed a possibility with a lot of baiting. A LOT. There are tons of posts in the early stages of destiel, analyzing the light, the way the scenes were filmed, the looks between the actors, under a romantic construction. And ALL of them were right. They knew it, they played with it, they played with us, and when it became a huge topic of discussion and incredible popular, they dropped it, they erased it, they shamed us. To be clear when I say “they” I´m talking about producers, writers, the network and, to an extent, a certain actor.

After that, they tried to “fix it”, they kept Cas and Dean apart, the interaction was minimal, the relationship became less than a friendship. When this happened the destiel fandom broke into groups, there are people who hate it with all their hearts now, there are people (like me) who don´t hate it but don´t see it anymore and we hold on to the vintage destiel through fanfic, and there are people, the majority I think, that want destiel so much that they are fine with every little interaction they get between Cas and Dean. Some of them reach too much and this is what bothers a lot of people. I give you an example: Misha tweeted about the syrian refugees and the first response that he got was someone shouting destiel is real! I kid you not. THAT kind of behaviour is getting really tiresome and disrespectful.

Which brings me to Jensen. I think he is a great actor. Really. He can show 5 emotions with only one look. And the chemistry he has with Misha is undeniable. Was he aware of his acting choices when destiel was developing? I doubt it. Although Misha seemed to know that the writers and directors were pointing at something, he had said this. But Jensen is another story completely, he really is no homo with Dean, he has constructed this character on this basis, Dean is Jensen sometimes, Jensen is Dean sometimes too. And he interprets Dean as straight. And that´s ok, too, because it´s the way he reads it. It´s the way he sees it. Nobody knows Dean more than Jensen. But that gives him no right to treat fans with disrespect when they have another reading. Because again, maybe he didn´t see destiel, but it was there. And people have a right to see things different, all forms of art are seeing from different points of view. And what he does, getting mad, answering with contempt and disrespect, erases a great part of the fandom. Although some destiel shippers are extreme, not all of us are or were like that. We don´t deserve that lack of respect, nobody deserves that for asking about a queer ship. And for that I blame Jensen and Jensen only. I´m not afraid to say it. He can talk about hetero ships but when a question about destiel is asked he gets mad? No, no and no. Something is wrong there.

Is his acting reflecting how uncomfortable he is with this? Yeah,for me, it is. Can he erase years and years of destiel subtext? Hell no. But it´s not only him: the writing and the direction have changed. All in all, there is a whole group of people trying to erase destiel, with our homophobic friend Robert Singer at the helm. And in this is when we find how blind destiel shippers can be today. Tptb don´t want it, Jensen doesn´t want it, a whole bunch of their homophobic audience don´t want it. It is NOT going to happen. Spn is a dude-bro-no-homo-everythin-is-white show. That´s the reality. That is what they want to transmit to people. Nobody is going to change that. No matter how much some deancas fans tweet to the producers/writers/actors, no matter how much they shout it at conventions, no matter how many questions they make. They can have whatever interpretation, but as I said that is not going to change reality.

(Ugh anon sorry this became so so long. At this point you must be sleeping. But I wanted to vent about this and you gave me an out.)

So I can´t blame destiel fans for Jensen´s change in his acting. He is the one who chose that, because no homo! He is the one responsible for his acting choices. As a professional he shouldn´t change the way he plays Dean because of the interpretation of the fans. Imagine every actor in the world doing that. Impossible.

What I don´t like about destiel shippers is when Cas is only important because of a ship. When Cas is being tortured/destroyed/dying/bleeding and all they see is how Jensen turned his head and “destiel happened”. Cas is such an interesting character, with so many layers, that he is iconic by himself at this point. I think that we can´t see his actions only through destiel shipper eyes. Imho It´s a disservice to Misha´s wonderful acting.

Again sorry for this long mess, I hope I didn´t bore you to death. And please forgive the mistakes and typos, english is not my first language. Take care anon!

#Anonymous #incredible #long post for ts #really it´s a novel #so sorry #and I have more to say but this was too much already #wank for ts #destiel for ts #rant for ts

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