#we made plans to go to the gay club throughout the night but cancelled it bc the majority of our group is straight and feels uncomfortable

[bxdtime-ceai]

i hate that my community is so small. i hate that social anxiety prevents me from meeting the people i want and expanding my community and instead puts me in the hospital. i hate that i cant get any kind of medication without losing my visa. i hate going to the straight clubs because the only other lgbtq+ night life is just very small gay clubs where i feel like i and my group are taking space that we shouldn't. i hate that i am always somewhat uncomfortable around the people with whom i am the most comfortable. i hate that even the one person i can relate to about this stuff is able to mask better than me. it's like i am set up to fail socially

[honey-makki]

No Other Shade of Blue

Characters: Oikawa Tooru X Fem!Reader Summary: Your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in.  Warnings: implied cheating Song: hoax- taylor swift Genre: angst Word Count: 1.2k+

A/N: God I must hate being happy? All i know is angst, be gay, eat hot chip and lie. Anyways here’s this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday afternoon is you and Oikawa’s designated date time. The volleyball club doesn’t practice and there shouldn’t be any large assignments that either of you have to deal with that early in the week. Yet again, for the third week in a row, you are sitting alone at your favorite tucked away spot overlooking the ocean. Why did he cancel this week? They don’t have any practice matches coming up. We just finished midterms so homework shouldn’t be an issue. Sitting here, sipping at your now cold tea, you can’t figure out a reason and he didn’t provide you with one. You sit here for a while until you see Iwaizumi in the distance, unsure if he should approach. As one of your neighbors, he’s seen you head this way more than once. After watching you give him a kind smile and pat the spot next to you, he shuffles down the brick-ladden walkway, stumbling once or twice in the darkness. “Hey, Y/N. Oikawa seemed even bubblier than normal today, so I’m assuming you had a good date planned. How was it?” he asks casually.

The pained look on your face before you turn to look out at the deep blue of the ocean that’s almost completely concealed by the night sky, says all the words you didn’t. You both sit there for some time, taking in the hum of the city in the distance, waves slapping against the cliff and your heavy breathing. In. hold. Out. hold. Oikawa could be happy for plenty of reasons, or something could have come up after Iwaizumi saw him. He hasn’t given you a real reason to be worked up. Just keep breathing. You keep it together longer than you expected you would. Holding your tears, tensing your muscles to stop from shaking made your nerves burn after some time. Iwaizumi may not be your closest friend, but he does care about you as a person, and as his bestfriends girlfriend. He pulls you into a soft, comforting side hug and mumbles into the darkness “Y/N, I just want you to know that I don’t know of anything he's done that should make you cry like this. Maybe you should just talk to him about your concerns? I still can be here as a shoulder to cry on if you need it though.” You calm down after a few minutes, your body now no longer burning, its just ash. Leaving for school in the morning you are greeted by Oikawa at your door with your favorite breakfast food. Voice dripping with almost sickeningly sweet adoration, “Y/N-chan!! I’m so sorry for not being able to see you yesterday so I hope this food helps make it up to you! Maybe you can come to practice today and I’ll walk you home after some post practice serves?” You immediately take him up on the offer, any concerns leaving your head as he shows that he wants to see you. Yesterday was just a small scar on your heart. It’s there but it's just one and it’s so small, it shouldn't be a problem, right? The week flew by and you’ve been going to the Seijoh practices just so you can see Oikawa, even if he can't really talk to you. There are almost always a handful of people in here, changing out every day. Sometimes it's a pair hanging out and just talking while watching them practice, someone else's significant other or good friend. Every once in a while people studied in here, the slap of the ball hitting the ground providing a rhythmic beat to study to. Lately, there have been recurring randoms which isn’t the weirdest thing that's happened at practice, especially since Mad Dog is back, but the weird part is how much attention Oikawa pays them. It should be the other way around, women and men alike flocked to his charming but cocky attitude, paired with his good looks? People stared at him quite frequently, but him paying attention to others? Interesting. You stew on your thoughts for the rest of this practice and decide to bring something up to him if it continues later in the week. 

Thursday, they are there, but Oikawa doesn’t look at them a single time. He is looking at you so often that it’s affecting his play style. ‘Shittykawa’ and ‘Loserkawa’ echo throughout the gym ceaselessly. You know how much volleyball means to him, so if he's ignoring that for you, then he must love you more? You can’t even remember what those two girls look like, head full of thoughts about you and Oikawa. 

“Y/N!” Oikawa shouts into the stands as he starts gathering up the last of the volleyballs on the floor. You know that means he’s done for the day and the two of you can head home for the evening. Before he gets into the changing room you catch his hand pulling him close, and whisper into his neck, “Tooru, you seemed so distracted today at practice? Something on your mind?” Following it up with kisses from his neck to his lips. The slightest moan slips through his lips, before he can compose himself.

With a wink, he laughs and says, “Just thinking about the love of my life and what she would look like on her knees.” Before you can comprehend, he’s off, shouting that he's gonna take a quick shower before walking you home. You feel butterflies, you are his, The Great King’s. You are his queen and the world is your kingdom. This week, just another tiny scar on your heart. So small that it couldn't cause any problems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A month or so after the first time you and Iwaizumi were at the cliffside together, you show up and he is already there. This is a little weird and unexpected so you clear your throat making your presence known, not wanting to intrude if he doesn’t want company. Without even turning around he pats the seat next to him, he knows it's you, no one else would come to this spot at 11pm on a weekday. You sit still and silent, waiting for the spikers lead.

 After a deep breath he looks over to you with what might be the most emotion he's ever portrayed, but the scary part is its saddest smile you've ever seen. Still unsure of what is happening, you whisper, “Hey, Iwa? Is everything ok? Are you hurt?” Searching his eyes for an answer and all you find is pity. 

He pulls you into a hug and says he needs to talk to you about Oikawa. As soon as his name passed through his lips you knew what was coming. The knife in your back being twisted, sleepless nights, no way to stop your kingdom from coming undone.

------

The hardest lesson you ever learned is that, even though sometimes you would rather hurt than give up something good, it's never the right decision. If you were being honest with yourself, you still haven't really learned it.The scars Oikawa left on your heart, may never heal but, as much as it hurts to say, you wouldn’t mind that. He was your greatest love, your pride and joy, the reason you woke up every morning. If they disappeared, maybe you would forget all the good times. You wouldn’t want any other sadness this world had to offer. You don’t want just any shade of blue, you want white and teal and him. The only thing that you know you shouldn’t want.

Tags: @lydzisanerd @roandtheroses @karasu-hoes 

[sighfertryptich]

Im going to rant(ish), skip if you want.

So I was watching a video (its the “Generations React to Dan Howell and Eugene Lee Yang Coming Out On Youtube” video by FBE) and everyone started sharing their coming out stories, and everyone was sharing that they were either scared or felt a freak by it. I felt that I wanted to, considering this is the only platform I have on here that I can express myself to the fullest without judgement, share my own, even though I am not in an accepting household.

So, let me start out with this. Growing up, I thought I was straight. There were no signs of me feeling any different than other kids. I was one of the more innocent children, I didnt care about gender identity or sexuality. I just cared about who I was going to play with at recess. By the time I hit fifth grade, I was naïve to the fact that not everyone was attracted to everyone around them. I didn’t understand that some boys only liked girls, and some girls only liked boys. In my community, it was rare that the gays and lesbians understood what it was, so they werent around to put that knowledge in our vocabulary. To me, if you had a crush, it could be on either a female or a male, whether or not you were the same gender or the opposite.

Reaching middle school, about a year later, our views were widened. People around me were realizing or expressing their sexualities. I, on the other hand, still didn’t understand that there were labels to these things. (Keep in mind, there still weren’t lesbians or gays out in the open yet. Everyone was either bisexual or straight.)

When this new vocabulary came to light, I could finally attempt to put a name to myself, liking both men and women.

I accepted the term bisexual for myself at the ripe age of 11.

I didn’t plan on telling my parents. I never wanted to. They didnt have to know who I was imagining kissing, they didnt have to know who I had crushes on. To this day, I never planned on telling them until the day came that I would have to. As in, if the time came, I would tell them when I got engaged to a woman.

Throughout middle school, I was labeled bisexual. It just felt normal to like who I wanted to like, and the people I surrounded myself with accepted me. I guess I got lucky with that. Reaching into high school, I got my first serious woman x woman crush. Every single day, she’d come into class and I would just gush over her. She was gorgeous. And being honest, a ripe 13 year old me was in her scene phase, and this girl oozed alternative. She had a grunge look, part of her hair was dyed sea-foam green, and she was sweet and funny and kind. As far as I knew, she liked me back.

I remember my first Sadie Hawkins dance. I got with my school’s GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) Club and put together this whole thing where me and a couple friends made shirts that said “Will you go to Sadie Hawkins with me?” She said yes! but then later the dance was canceled and we just made other plans. As time went on, she led me on to thinking she liked me. I found out she didn’t and that she was wasting her time on me when she got with one of my guy friends.

This is when my chronic depression stepped its pussy up. Thank you Dan Howell for giving me that quote.

When I was 15, I moved to my small town a state over where I reside to this day. I was still labeling myself as bisexual. I met my first lesbian that year. (And yes, this was my first time meeting a lesbian. Im serious.) She became my best friend for the next 3 and a half years. She opened me to the world of different labels and helped me through finding out what I realized I truly was.

I was, and am, Pansexual. And a proud one at that. #PansexualPride.

I got my first serious girlfriend when I was 18. Or at least, I thought it was serious. I was head over heels for her. She claimed she was bisexual. [I say claimed because she admitted after we broke up that she was straight.]

Long story short, she used me to go to RenFest, then broke up with me a week later blaming her depression, then got with some dude a day later.

A couple of months later, I met a girl through an app called Amino. She was pansexual, like me, and we had a lot of the same interests. Only problem was that while I lived in Louisiana, she lived on an island off the coast of Florida.

Although our relationship didn’t last long, I added her because this was the first time in my entire life that I actually could see myself marrying a woman.

Let me explain.

Up until this point, I had only ever seen myself marrying a man. Yes, I had an attraction to women. Ive dated women, although not many, but never could see myself marrying any of them. Nothing wrong with that.

During this time, I cut my hair very short. Like, pixie-cut with an undercut. My intentions to cut it were that it’d be easier to put up into wigs when I cosplayed, and it’d be less to take care of and look good. We’ll come back to this later.

Directly after our 3 month anniversary, yes I do month anniversaries, I met my current girlfriend, Cole.

I swear, it was one of those moments where you see someone and you know they’re going to be in your life for years to come. [Fun fact - she told me that after she had met me for the first time, she joked with her friend that her and I “would have an August wedding” even though we barely had passed a few sentences between each other.] There’s just that feeling when you look someone in the eyes and know that there’s something special about them. Something you want - no, need - in your life, whether it’s to make a life-long decision or just to help you grow as a person.

I started dressing more comfortably. I no longer wore skirts or dresses. I wore jeans and t-shirts and hats and less makeup. I wore chains attached to my belt loops. All in all, I started looking more masculine, even though it was just me dressing comfortably. My job allowed it, I was earning the money to allow me to buy clothes like this. It made me happy. I started feeling more comfortable with more masculine terms rather than strictly feminine terms, ie. “mans, they, them, boy” etc. I wasn’t uncomfortable when someone said I looked like a boy, nor was I uncomfortable with my female body. I just didnt care. It wasnt insulting as I was raised to think it was. In fact, I encouraged it. I allowed - and still allow - people to think I was whatever gender they assigned me with. In all, I became Genderfluid. Gender Neutral, if you will.

Now, we’re going to back up just a tiny bit. Tee tiny, nothing big.

About a month before I met Cole, someone outted me to my mother. Keep in mind, I was never planning on coming out to her. My older sister is like me, Pansexual. She strives on the fact that she doesnt tell people she’s in a woman x woman relationship unless people directly ask. She doesnt label her sexuality. And I look up to her severely for that.

My mother is homophobic. She says she isn’t, and maybe she’s not, due to the fact she accepts my sister and her girlfriend, and hopes they get married someday. But for me, I was supposed to be the ray of hope. I was supposed to be blonde, straight, thin, cheerleading captain female who went to college and became highly successful. I wasn’t supposed to be the 5-foot-8, blue haired, overweight, artsy gender fluid kid she had who dropped out of high school, got their GED, and “doesnt show signs of responsibility” (- per my mother, who doesnt want to put me through college) kid she ultimately got.

Dressing how I felt was comfortable and loving who I wanted to love brought me hate from the one person who should love me unconditionally - my own mother. Most people were given hate by their peers, being called gay and butch. My hate was given from the person who gave me life. My mother has said that she regrets getting pregnant with me, and that she would’ve stopped after her first two kids. In fact, she had her tubes tied BEFORE she got pregnant with me. I was being born, with or without her consent. She has told me countless times that she feels like she failed as a parent due to the way I came out as an adult.

To this day, she tells me that I constantly look “too lesbian” or “too butch” and that I need to “go back to how I used to look”. She doesnt accept that I like women. She calls me a lesbian - and everyone knows that when you like both men and women, you’re very obviously not a lesbian. Ive told her countless times that I’m not a lesbian. But she never listens. She uses the term lesbian as anyone in middle school would use the word gay - as an insult.

It makes me confused. How could you raise your kid - which by the way, Im the first kid she raised on her own, her other two were raised with either my grandmother or the baby’s father - and tell them you’re disgusted by their happiness? How could you be okay with one pansexual daughter and hate the other?

(This next part might be TMI but it makes another avid point.)

How can you be okay with your daughter sending explicit pictures to a boy, but be disgusted by your daughter holding hands with a girl?

I still have to hide my relationship with Cole. It makes me sick to my stomach to not be able to say “Mom, this is my girlfriend.” with the girl I care ever so deeply for. I want to take her to family events and show her to the world, screaming at the top of my lungs that Cole is mine and mine alone.

Cole tells me that I’m an idiot when I get gushy. In fact, she’ll probably text me saying I made her cry (dont worry, its tears of love) if she gets to the end of this.

Cole is gorgeous. Even when I spend the night, and she’s got sleep in her eyes the next morning, teeth not yet brushed, hair a mess, making gross yawning faces, I still think she’s quite possibly the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. She’s always got me nonstop laughing, doubling over and straight up snorting sometimes. She’s caring and headstrong, not afraid to stand up for what she believes in.

I want to be able to show her off.

But I cant with a mother like mine.

So, long story short, I grew up in an accepting community. Fell hard for some men and some women. Grew up and realized who I was as a person. Found someone who accepts me through each and every questioning moment I have with myself. Yet, I cant show her off like the people around me all because of the one person who gave me life.

I guess you could say this is the end, but everyone knows its a To Be Continued. You just gotta roll with what life gives you, whether or not the people in your life are there to love you or hurt you.

If you got this far, I applaud and also thank you. I’m not able to rant to anyone like this, so if you took the time to read this, I appreciate it. No one wants to hear my story. If you do…

My name is Marley, and I am a Pansexual, Gender Neutral, KPop loving cosplayer who is not afraid to love who they want to love.

Thank you ♡

(Btw, sorry if I got off track towards the end. My mind wanders when telling stories. I wrote this on my phone so I’ll go back and add a “Keep Reading” thing if you’d rather just skip it.)

[ahyslpodcast-ff]

Ep. 47: The Origins of Gay Halloween

Halloween Roots: Before Halloween existed, the night before All Hallows Day (All Saints Day), was linked to the ancient Celtic festival ‘Samhain’ in the British Isles, meaning ‘summer’s end’.

European immigrants brought their rituals and customs with them to America. There are actually few accounts of Halloween in colonial American history due in part to the large Protestant presences in the Northern colonies and their strict religious beliefs. However, down in the Southern colonies where larger, more mixed European communities had settled, there are some accounts of Halloween celebrations mixing with Native American harvest celebrations.

In the mid 1800s, nearly two million Irish immigrants fleeing potato famine helped shape Halloween into an even more widely celebrated event. Scottish influence and the English celebration of Guy Fawkes Dat as well brought: Fireworks, ghost stories, nights of mischief bobbing for apples etc… Young women were frequently told if they sat in dark rooms and gazed into a mirror, the face of their future husbands would appear, however, if a skull appeared, the poor girl would be destined to die before marriage.

By the 1900s, the focus had shifted from a religious holiday to a more communal celebration. “Guising” was actually a practice dating back to the middle ages, when the poor would go around asking for food or money. During this time the children adopt this practice and make it about treats although this stuck to parties instead of going door to door as much as now a days. Also at this time the spooky superstitions have died off a bit and Halloween was more light-hearted. 

Throughout the early decades of the 20th century, Halloween became a bit more sinister in the act of vandalizing and even the KKK using it as an excuse to commit crimes against AAs. 

There is a claim from both Hiawatha, Kansas and  Anoka, Minnesota that they were the towns that started Halloween Celebrations as we know them today. The former starts in 1914 and the latter starting in 1920. 

Drunk History has a good one about Hiawatha, Kansas about a woman by the name of   Elizabeth Krebs’s who didn't want her garden vandalized so she personally planned and funded the  

From there, film and TV popularized and commercialized Halloween as a children’s holiday and that where we get to the Cliff’s Variety Store in SF.

Children's Halloween: Before the Castro was a famous gay district in San Francisco, it played host to an annual children’s costume contest that took place at Cliff’s Variety Store, starting in 1948.

When the gays started moving into the area and the families moved out the costume contest//festival slowly turned into a gay-centric event. It got so overtaken by the gays that by the end of the decade, drag queens were openly entering the costume contest at Cliff’s. 

By 1979, the Children's Halloween ended as the neighborhood's population shifted from families with children to more single men.

Rise of the LGBT Population and Halloween Celebrations in SF: Halloween in the Castro was tied to the LGBT culture of San Francisco and began in the 1950-1960s in the Tenderloin/Polk street area of the city where the mainstream gay bars were first centralized. 

After World War II, in the 1940s, the San Francisco Bay Area became a haven for LGBT military personnel who didn't want to go back to their old lives. In the 1950s, a group of gay bars in San Francisco's Tenderloin area helped create a strip of venues for "sex, drugs and late night fun". These areas around bars and sex clubs helped create a community identity and place of freedom. 

Halloween in the Tenderloin grew in the early 1960s with the growing LGBT community and welcomed tourists.

Beginning in 1970, an annual Halloween celebration was held on Polk Street in Polk Gulch, then still the most important gay neighborhood. By the mid-1970s, Polk Street was overwhelmed and closed to traffic.

In 1979, the adult gay Halloween party moved to Castro Street in The Castro, which by the early 1970s had replaced Polk Gulch as San Francisco's most important gay neighborhood.

In 1979, the owner of Cliff’s stopped the contest due to the shifting demographics of the Castro. But the ghost of Castro Halloween, as it came to be called, lived on under the leadership of the drag performance group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. 

Halloween  Becomes a Gay Holiday: The San Francisco LGBT community partied in the Castro almost every Halloween in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s, when the party was shut down after a tragic shooting.

As costumed queens were invading the Castro, a New York puppeteer named Ralph Lee kicked off the first Village Halloween Parade in 1974. That celebration has since become the largest Halloween parade in the world, and it still attracts the most elaborate handmade costumes you can find south of Broadway.

By the 1980s, gay enclaves like Key West, West Hollywood, and Greenwich Village were holding annual Halloween street parties. These parties along with the fact that the queer community has been a trend setter for heteros for decades is what made Halloween big! 

2000 to Present: In 2002, 500,000 people celebrated Halloween in the Castro and four people were stabbed. In 2003 the city's Entertainment Commission took responsibility for organizing the event.

In 2006, nine people were wounded when a shooter opened fire at the celebration. Halloween in the Castro was canceled, and in the following years a heavy police presence kept the event from happening spontaneously.