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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Owl House Reviewcaps: Eda’s Requiem or Holy Musical Batpeople

Hello all you happy people! And time clearly flies when your having a REALLY damn good season, because I hadn’t realized we’re already in the second half of Season 2. Yes after this there’s only three weeks to go before one of the greatest monsters known to fandom rear’s it’s ugly head...

No not him... he’s not due until the next time I decide to buy a pack of yugioh cards. No of course it’s a hiatus, a necessary evil to be sure, to make sure we don’t get even LONGER hiatuses, but still a pain in the tucus.

So yes you only get three more weeks of me talking about a very queer children’s show while rambling about x-men and throwing in as many simpsons refrences as humanly possible before your deprived for a while. Drink it in.

This week we get a face from eda’s past, the magic version of the bat family, a racing subplot that’s barely touched on, some more juicy plot advancment, some even more juicy shipping, and a horrifying trophy that was probably forcged out of someone’s skin.

So join me after the cut if you want some of that but before you do as i’ve been plugging the past two weeks i’m having a membership drive for my Patreon. It’s a way for me to get paid for doing what I love, help with the groceries and what not so my mom dosen’t have to pay for everything.

But I have realized I haven’t really offered anything in return apart from the usual patreon rewards of exclusive reviews, picking shorts and of course helping me reach my stretch goals so i’ll review even more stuff you all like. So i’m stepping it up. From now until doomsday, if you sign up for my patreon, wether you pledged a dollar a month or a hundred dollars a month, you get a FREE REVIEW OF ONE EPISODE OF ANY TV SHOW YOU WANT. And of course as always if you pledge 5 bucks a month you get a guaranteed review a month anyway if you really want to go full hog but yeah, from now on you get A FREE REVIEW IF YOU PLEDGE AT LEAST ONE DOLLAR A MONTH TO MY PATREON.

And of course as i’ve been plugging if at least three new people join up I will review Season 1 of the Owl House, including the two episodes i’ve covered already in two mega posts. So if you want some owl house content to fil lthe empty yawning void that’s coming up all you have to do is kick in a buck. And while you wait for two other people to do the same, you still get some juicy rewards in between with reviews of The Great North, Tuca and Bertie, and Amphibia season 1 if just one person pledges. And I will be clear here ALL STRETCH GOAL REVIEWS ARE FREE FOR ANYONE ON TUMBLR. If one of you kicks in, EVERYONE gets it. While I wil lthrow up bonus reviews on my patreon to help reward those who do help me keep going and help make this blog possible by paying the two streaming bills I pay, it’s only fair, I will NEVER put my week to week reviews behind a pay wall despite what tumblr’s trying to do and even then the pay wall is a simple buck a month, 12 bucks for a year. I will always try to give you all the most bang for your buck

So if this speech convinced you or anything JOIN MY PATREON HERE. And if you were just mentally tuning me out, feel free to join me under the cut for the review itself.

Our story begins with Eda going over her to do list for the day: getting eda a coat and “checking the itchy boy”... yes that’s really what she wrote down for checking king for fleas. Eda also muses how much she’s changed, becoming a responsible parent and person and being fine with it.

But like any parent she faces the harsh reality her children are leaving: Luz is still working on going back home to the human realm.. and outside while working out, King seemingly mentions he’s leaving which utterly deivstates eda. Eda decides to drown her sorrows by picking up her old lute and jamming, revealing she used to have a taste for bard magic... but with her magic currently corrupted it quickly fizzles out to her frustratoin. And also leaves a nearbye plant corrupted and rotted..

Cue the opening theme music.. which has an interesting addition I didn’t notice last week.

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Nah he’s always been there. No Amity’s hair is purple! I didn’t know if they’d change it because Disney’s notoriously cheap when it comes to changing intros, as evidecned by the fact that Star VS never changed the shot of Ludo in the seasons 3 and 4 intro despite that being out dated 8 episodes in. So either they’ve at least relaxed enough to get sometimes you have to update an intro to fit the series changing over time or Dana is just REALLY godo at convincing them to do shit they’d rather not do. Hopefully we can do the same with getting the season 4 the series deserves so Dana can wrap it up properly.

So Eda mopes a bit as Luz and King come in as Luz has an announcment. Eda HOPES it’s that she’s staying after all but naturally it’s not. Though it still will be a bit as Luz is still working on Echo Mouse. We get a flashback of Luz cutely helping the poor thing come out of hiding... only for Hooty, being hooty, to screw it up by eating it. Honestly I kinda forgot the fact they were bringing a mouse into a literal owl house until this happened. They DID get the little dumplin out of there fine, but it’s naturally traumatized, so it’s going to be a bit longer.

No this week Luz is helping King, as this weekend is the GLAND PRIX, which thankfully depsite the name is not a literally pissing match or some kind of sex decalathon, as they aren’t old enough for that. No it’s instead a broom race, hence the exercise, with the winner getting a horrifying trophy and more importantly a spot on tv, which King intends to use to call out for his dad. Which honestly seems like an inherently risky plan that I wish they’d mention said risk: Not from Belos, he’s shown no intrest in king and is too busy with his conditoin and the day of unity. As we’ve seen so far this season with Eda’s own powerlesness doing the job discredting her for him he really has no reason to go after her unless it serves something else he’s doing, like Hunter’s trying to arrest her during the selkiedama thign. He has the door, and while he lacks a key given the preperations are going ahead at full pace with no attempts to reclaim it, he dosen’t NEED IT.

But the fact remains King’s dad/mom/parent put him in a far off citadel guarded by a carnage golem for a reason, so while King wanting to send out a message dosen’t backfire SO FAR, it easily could’ve. Still it’s easy enough to overlook. I do wish we got MORE of the racing subplot as it coudl be fun and get into some more deep character stuff with king but I get keeping it to the margins: the plot ISN’T about king himself or luz, but about Eda, and her trying to figure out how she moves on without the people that have given her life meaning. To bring this home when King TRIES to talk to king about the l word, she instead runs off.

The whole L-Word thing is easily the weakest part of the episode> It’s very clear King really ISN’T leaving, and while the reveal of WHAT it is is very heartwarming it’s incredibly drawn out and tiresome. The plot in general is pretty easy to predict in places. Yet.. it’s not a bad episode> The skeleton is pretty worn and standard, but the meat on the bones is based in an intresting character study of eda and her interactions with someone we see breiefly on a scroll: Raine Whispers, the new head of the bard coven who ironically has stage fright.. and who Eda has a history with.. more on that in a minute.

So Eda does what you’d expect when faced with her kids going back to their birth parents so soon after her sister left just as the two were finally getting along after decades of conflict: She gets hammered. Yeah if Apple Blood wasn’t obviously some form of liquor before, the fact Eda has some in a bar while moping to the bartender makes it incredibly clear. Though hilariously, it’s in a juice box. And if your wondering as I was if Liquor Juice Boxes were a real thing, you are correct. I found MANY vareites just doing a quick google, and while most don’t use the tiny straw like the apple blood box does, a few indeed do. Sadly I don’t think disney will be doing a hard cider apple blood tie in. Some things you just.. CAN’T get on etsy you know?

Eda’s bartender is more concered with the fact she never pays her tab which shoudlnt’ remotely be a surprise to anyone whose known eda for more than a minute, but Eda ignores that and focuses on the conformotorium guys grabbing covenless witch. Eda goes to confront them and while the one guy with the blue eyes mocks her for being powerless he soon gets reminded that “Powerless” isn’t the same as “helpeless” when she quite literally slaps his fucking head around to the other side.

After righting that he prepares to attack back.. only for it to turn out Eda isn’t the only person saying fuck the man today, as a mysterious group of bards emerge at a statue, all in bat masks as the bards against the system, or the BATS for short, hence the bat gimmick, who quickly make a mockery of the two guards and let the young lady run off. But while showing off how awesome and powerful bard magic can be they also didn’t think to have an exist strategy and are soon surronded by the guards with earmuffs until Eda helps them escape ninja turtle style via the sewers and to the edge of things.

On the edge Eda gets to know the bats and asks to help out and their undrestandably skpetical... so Eda get shteir attention by taking the leaders mask off revealing Raine.

Yeah it couldn’t be more obvious it was Raine if instead of their neat cloak they wore a t-shirt saying “TOTALLY NOT RAINE YOU GUYS FOR SERIOUSLY”. The episode is not subtle in the setup of having them be the rebel leader, but it somehow works: the earlier ceremony both shows Raine off as coven leader, and shows Eda knows them, leaving us to wonder HOW she got so close to someone who would go on to be entrenched in the season she hates, and after their little performance WHY someone working directly for the system is fighting i.

Ea wonders that too and after getting introduced to Raine’s crew, including the fanfictoin lady from the pliot, something I didn’t notice first time around, asks why their doing this, with Raine explaning she actually inspired them to.

As for the how we get a romantic flashback. Yeah turn sout the two are exes, and really fucking cute together, really makes me wonder which primary ship to go for. I mean I love stan but Raine is such a good person and so freaking adorable. And probably won’t sell one of Ed’as kidneys as part of a time share scam. But yeah the two make music together.. literally this is disney after all, and blush and i’ts really fucking adorable, and we see despite them being shy and her being bold they just fit together, with her encouraging them to face their fears.

As for why they switched sides, that part is simple and realistic: Raine willlingly joined the bard coven.. only to find Belos instructions on teaching were less about actually teaching magic and more about trying to force every witch he could to join the coven as part of his big evil scheme, taking away people’s freedom of choice simply to satisfy his own ego. But rather than openly revolt or defect or something Raine had a smarter solution: work their way up slowly, and then take over, using their inside tract to destroy the system from within.

You may also notice i’m only using they and them prounouns, and may not have noticed everyone else doing the same, which is fair. But yes Raine is non-binary, Dana confirmed it shortly before the episode and it’s a simple subtle part of the episode.. but i’ts damn good represntation. Raine being NB isn’t called attention too or made a crucial part of the character.. their just an NB person who happens to be really important to the plot. It’s like any other character introduction, and the reason i’m making a big deal is this just isn’t common and while NB characters on children’s shows have started to finally make their way in, this is the first time since Double Trouble over in She Ra there’s been one in a major children’s show. It’s a rather sizeable step forward for children’s animation. The next course obviously is a NB lead, but given how long it took to get openly bi and gay leads, that might take some time but it’s a step closer. And as the uncle of a nb child myself, I couldn’t be happier about this.

So Eda naturally decides to join up when Raine offers her help> The rest of BATT are not happy about the idea, paticuarlly Amber aka the pink one with freckles, both of which happen to be a thing for me but I shant elaborate further.

But Eda provides something they need: The BATT, got the aconym wrong earlier but this review is far behind enough as is soooo moving on, have drive, determination, and skills.. but they can’t plan for beans. Their best plan was literallY “Protest in the square where the police state we’re protesting has the most power”. Eda provides better plans thanks to years of experince hiding from and fighting the schmucks their railing against, using the maps and schedules Raine’s privy to, and using those to schedule raids on holding area’s and get the wild witches outside the city, as Belos grip is weaker outside of the cities.. which makes sense. If he sent too many troops into the woods to look for them, it’d weaken his grips on the cities and give anyone against him a moment to strike. It’s easier to endocrinate more people into joining his covens willingly than to try and force everyone and slowly loose troops.. troops he needs to do the thing he set up the coven system to do in the first place.

Eda being busy hasn’t gone unoticed as her kids have noticed and King still really wants to tell her something and she still keeps dodging. Really there’s not much else to the scene other than the fact Hooty tries to offer king a shoulder to cry on only for king to hypcorically point out he has no shoulders and Hooty to prove why it took so long for hi mto get the one friend he had by chasing King around in a circle.

So they go for a big raid, stopping a transport of a ton of witches and the combo of Eda’s skilled plan and The BATT’s skilled.. skills makes the operation go of with childish ease and awesome flair. Seriously this sequence is just awesome to look at and was a heck of a lot of fun.

So now everyone, even my formerly skeptical future wife, is on Eda’s side and singing her praises and go to celebrate while she gets some alone time with Raine, showing the two are still throughly into each other, as if the blushing and stuff through the episode gave it away, and the two just ooze chemistry. I didn’t think the show would introduce a love intrest for eda, let alone make them so compelling and intresting both as a partner for her and as a character in their own right but clearly I was wrong and clearly the series needed this. I needed this.

Raine even convinces her to play a bit.. but while she plays beautifully, it decays everything around her and makes raine a combination of worried and curious.

But enough of that it’s RACE DAY. Our heroes are gathered and like a good mom Eda is watching if still sorrowful she’s loosing them. Also we get a LOT of Gus’ dad, something I had been wanting. I love Gary Anthony williams and the only time’s we’ve seen Gary were reporting for five seconds during the season 1 finale and being a dick to his son by grounding him without asking WHY he was expelled. Here he just gets to be a hammy fun reporter while his son is forced to assist with the effects.. which I feel will be important later. Not for the main plot, exclusively for gus: He noted in the last episode it was Perry’s dream Gus be a master illusionist, something Gus is good at but not something he cares about. I just feel that’s the kind of throwaway detail that won’t go away too soon.

We also meet the trophy for the event which looks like it was made of the same horrifying skin the necronomicon came from.. and is where it’s eyes went. Naturally I want one for my room yesterday. So while our heroes vroom vroom on a broom, Eda gets a call for enother raid and decides to support her partner by bailing on her children.

But said raid.. is for an abandoned area in the middle of nowhere. But the baghes are busy with a giant turtle what took eustaces hat to decorate a tree, so instead our heroes find a very transparent ambush. Raine.. I love you but for fucks sake, this trap couldn’t be more obvious if it was just a comically oversized box with a string attached to it.. and i’d be unsuprised if all of you fell for it.

So yeah the rest of the group get captured as Belos, SHOCKINGLY given what happened with Lilith in the season one finale, figured out he had a traitor in his midst and sent two of his other mini bosses/coven heads to whip the piss out of them. What actually IS shocking is that.. no one seems to have an idea who the traitor is. Really.. YOU really don’t.

As you can see by the photo the ONLY other person who MIGHT have short hair is creepy healing mask person. And that person is white. Raine is not. Given how he treats his employees who didn��t pop out of his sister’s vagina, I wouldn’t be suprised if Belos knew Raine was a double agent all along, was simply watching them to wait to see when they’d make their move as the end of the episode shows Belos dosen’t needs Raine’s WILLING coperation, and simply didn’t tell Abberwolf and Darius because he either thought it was so obvious he didn’t need to or more likely didn’t simply because he thought it’d be really funny. And fair point it is.

But yes in addition to properly meeting Raine, we get to meet two more of the ten coven heads: Darius, the hot guy in the center who heads the abomination coven and Aberwolf, that cool looking tiny beast woman who heads the beastkeeping coven and imports her sand worms directly from Arrakis.

As for their personalities in a hilaroius twist despite working with what’s essentially a muk in teh shape of a person for a living, Darius is a neat freak, while Abberwolf is both a bit feral and loves giving Darius shit and getting dirt on him just to piss him off. The shit part is metaphorical... but I wouldn’t be suprised if this was a daily occurance at darius’ house.

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But while the two are obejectively hilarous, their also obejctively horrifingly compeitent: Darius shows off just HOW much an abomination master can stretch abomination magic: not only can he summon a powerful one, but he uses it to teleport the rest of bat, who all got caught in the ambush while Eda and Raine BARELY escaped using the invisiblity glyph, hope amanda calls me after she gets out of prison, to the conformatorium. I’d be more worried for them but their all pretty powerful and while a good dad Wrath is a TERRIBLE warden. They’ll be out in hours.

But Raine and Eda are up shits creek so Raine decides to combine their powers and form captain planet.. but since they don’t have the elemental magic they settle for combining bard magic, with Raine banking on Eda’s new anti-magic born from her curse taking out the other two heads, as Raine notes Belos NEEDS all 9 other heads and while replacing one in time is hard but dooable, replacing TWO would be damn near impossible and given the day of unity clearly has a certain sell by date, it’d spoil his plans.

The two hold fast, peforming beautiful music together...

And triggering Eda’s ablility.. which also slowly kills her ... and will envelop Raine too. But the two agree to it as it’ll at least take out Belos plans with them and Raine going out just means Belos is short THREE members.

But Raine discovers one flaw... a photo of Eda, King and Luz that flies out of her hair. It’s a powerful moment as Raine is horrified to realize Eda’s been doing all this despite having kids... and brushes off her saying they don’t need her. Raine knows better: they knows any child ALWAYS need stheir parent if their parent is loving and kind enough and just because their going on their own paths away from her dosne’t mean they don’t NEED her. IT’s a good lesson for the parents in teh audience and i’ts nice that for once one of these cartoons does one for the older members of the audience instead of just the kid, acknowlding we exist.

So Raine sacrifices themself, letting Darius take them so Eda can escape in an utterly heart smashing sequence. Eda runs away teary and comes back in time for Luz and King to break a tie.. for fifth place. yeah turns out this was king during the race

And his need to made them crash. King dosen’t get his big message.. but Eda having finally gotten it into her head children don’t magically stop wanting you in their lives because they go off on their own, decides to help.

So we get our finale and i’ts one of the series best scenes thus far as King recites his message via vlog, live scrolling it for the entirety of the isles: This also results in much needed cameo’s from Willow, who i’ve felt has been horribly neglected this half of the season and was just thinking about this that episode, which may mean I have the power to sumon her. We also not only see clover adorably perched on her head but that she has her own little pet bed in the corner complete with name.

We also get a nice cameo from Amity and the twins. Gus is absent but he’s busy with his dad and got some silent screentime this ep, so that’s kay.

But we get one new face before we get back to king..... a mysterious stranger next to a caravan who just so happens to be watchin gas king shows a symbol from the cirtadel to the screen, asking his dad to read it to him.... a stranger.. who looks like this...

Yeah.... while it’s unknown if this is one of king’s parents or not, it’s possible but it could be a misdirect, one of king’s species IS not only still out there but now knows he’s alive and is looking for them. While I expected us to follow up on the King’s dad stuff later in teh season I didn’t expect any actual apperances by ANY OF HIS PEOPLE, let alone what could very well be the man, or woman , or nb themself. But yeah i’m fucking excited and i’m glad this series has decent pacing. I said decent, we haven’t seen Amity in full since two episodes ago and probably won’t till eclipse lake.

King also reveals what he was really doing: making Clawthorne his last name, making him and Eda family for life and her his mother in name, she just needs to sign which she does, and everyone has a good cry. It’s really touching and amazing stuff and while it was telegraphed king wasn’t leaving, it’s still a really sweet, amazing gesture that shows while he’s pining for his dad... King knows who raised him and who loved him these 8 years and isn’t gonig to forget her.

Sadly instead of ending on that touching note we end on Abby and Darius torutring Raine... okay Darius is actually torturing the prisoner, Abby is watching the scroll and turns it up just to piss Darius off. Raine naturally escapes, but they even more naturally get cornerored by Kiki riding an abomiaton. Darius, just as naturally dosen’t like the things and calls Alador a hack. Look bud, you turn into a slime monster thing that’s the embodiment of

I can repsect that. But Alador isn’t a hack. He’s many things: an arms dealer, a shitty father, a husband to a person whose the emobidement of every karen ever for all time stuffed into one aborhent human being, and kind of not there.. but this killer robutt captured the person you couldn’t keep for five seconds because you were bickering with your commonlaw wife, and Alador’s presumibly MASS PRODUCED THEM.

We also find out something horrifying: as it turns out Belos DOSEN’T need the coperation of his coven heads and the entry tatoos.. are also restraining bolts that can create horrifying thorny cocoons so he’s just gonig to have kiki store Raine tell them need them.

Final Thoughts:

This episode.. was a bit of a step down from the last few. It’s not a BAD episode: it has great character work for Eda, Raine is an instant faviororite, Darius and Abberwolf are fun new antagonists, Amanda is my commonlaw wife now and the ending is really good. But the plot itself is pretty standard and predicable: a character falls in with an old love intrest whose doing something and said old friend ends up captured or dead or whatever. It’s not a bad story nor was it badly executed here, it just felt a bit more mediocre than the string of all time classics we’ve been getting the rest of the season. But it is a VERY good sign when the worst I can say about an episode is that it was merley pretty good instead of a masterpiece. Next week: It’s Hooty’s time to shine! Hoot hoot!

If you like hear me say things with my mouth and want to talk more about my reviews, cartoons or other random stuff i’m into my discord is now FREE TO ALL. So check it out here

https://discord.gg/6uqxyWbz

#The Owl House #eda's requiem #eda clawthorne #king clawthorne #luz nozeda #Raine Flowers #Darius #Eberwolf #BATT #nonbinary #willow park #gus porter #amity blight #kikimora

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quercus-queer · 4 years

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BA’s Reckoning

Yes, I stole this title from the Sporkful podcast. You should check it out!

So just a reminder the whole thing that kicked this off was when Tammie Teclemariam tweeted the photo of Rapoport in brown face (yes its brown face its a purposeful caricature of Puerto Rican ppl, his girlfriend called him her papi in the caption as well) saying he should simply write the article on Puerto Rican food then (the issue was Illyanna Maisonet, a Puerto Rican food writer, got rejected rudely by Rapo for her pitch to write about Puerto Rican food) Which brings up the larger issue of BA being racist and not covering any other dishes besides Eurocentric ones, and the ones that aren't Eurocentric are almost always either whitewashed or done by white people which is what happened with Masionet’s article (this is where Amanda Shapiro and Meryl Rothstein come in).

This led to a zoom meeting where Rapo made a shitty apology leading Sohla El-Waylly’s instagram posts, where she condemns Rapo, talks about her 50k salary despite having 15 years of restaurant experience (She ran a fucking restaurant and 50k in NYC is pathetic), being hired to help white editors, and not being paid for ANY of her video appearances (none of the poc you see in videos have been compensated including the zoom videos). Which has led to many people at BA being exposed for being terrible (Conde Nast is the parent company and owns BA, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Allure, Glamour, Wired, Epicurious,Teen Vogue among other things... also take note how most of these have consistently been criticized for their racism or “race problems”)

ANYWAY here’s a general guide of what each BA person has done, this is in no way comprehensive, feel free to investigate on your own, always fact check and form your own opinions!

Adam Rapoport: Brown face, not paying his non-white employees for their video appearances, treating his assistant Ryan Walker-Hartshorn (a black woman) like shit (she was working overtime and was barely making rent with what he was paying her), he's sexist (see every video with Molly) and racist (mixing up Sohla and Priya Krishna and never apologizing) and more!

Check out the Business Insider piece, twitter (Tammie’s, Christina Chaey’s, and Priya’s), Sohla’s podcast and interviews, and someone made a compilation of Rapo being condescending I think

Matt Duckor: Disgusting, racist, homophobic, sexist all around terrible person, probably the most obviously terrible of the bunch (see Rick Martinez’s insta plus Duckor’s own tweets), strung along Sohla for months saying that her pay was “stuck in legal” so that she would keep appearing in videos, gave Sohla a contract when this stuff first started happening to try and shut her up, HE is the one deciding pay for everyone at BA and was the one not paying poc for video appearances.

Check out Rick’s Insta, Twitter for Duckor’s tweets (screenshots bc he deleted his account)

Carla Lalli Music: First off, ppl are pointing out she was condescending af to a lot of her guests on her show (except for the white ones). The racism at BA did not start nor stop with Adam Rapoport and guess who was editor in chief before him? Yup, Mrs. Carla Lalli Music! Necessary amendment: Carla was the food director NOT the editor in chief and she is currently an editor at large... still a powerful position though and I think the sentiment still stands. She had a pretty pathetic twitter thread about how she should’ve done more but was focused on the sexism/focusing on women, strange because she also sent that shitty email to two women along with Delany and Brad after the two of them, Delany, and Brad were talking in the kitchen, telling them not to enter the kitchen without permission (not enforced on Brad or Delany obviously, only the two women who happen to not be white) I misread the article, Brad was a part of the convo, he did NOT receive the email, and didn't respond to the articles request for comment.. he fucking works in the test kitchen, i’m an idiot and that's on me

Business insider and her twitter

Alex Delany: I have a post with the screenshots of the confederate flag cake he made himself because he felt the “need to express some southern heritage in cake form. Such a glorious cake...” for his friend moving to South Carolina, the lovely vine with the classic “F*g is a bundle of sticks joke” also have a post discussing that, he’s wildly underqualified for DRINKS editor and overpaid, also his girlfriend is Allegra Lorenzotti whose mother Eva Lorenzotti, is in Jeffery Epstein’s black book which is concerning (though who knows maybe Delany is dating a different wealthy Allegralo), also those sexist tweets

I have screenshots from Tumblr, ppl have the vine on twitter along with the sexist tweets (he deleted his twitter and Tumblr btw)

Andy Baraghani: There are screenshots of Alyse Whitney’s (an asian woman) twitter thread saying Andy purposefully undercut her articles multiple times because of a petty feud with Antoni from Queer Eye by using his friendship with Amanda Shapiro (Whitney’s editor) to kill the story, which is shitty and brings up the bigger picture of BA being cliquey and getting in with a friend of a friend and such which is just a toxic work environment

Amanda Shapiro: Puerto Rican food article, Alyse Whitney’s articles, she’s a perpetuator of the toxic work environment, stealing Nikita Richardson’s work and getting credit and pay for it (pls check out her twitter and the articles with her), also racist, should not be in charge

Chris Morocco: Made one (1) basic post (simply a reply to Molly calling him out actually) at the beginning of all this agreeing to not be in anymore videos until his coworkers got paid/backpay, he said he was complicit (duh) but also that he had no idea this was happening, but guess what? He is the one that hired Sohla for only 50k! There is a whole can of worms about how little Sohla was hired for despite her experience plus talent along with her current pay and Chris is a part of that. Also both his gumbo video and Halo Halo recipe are downright disrespectful at BEST and they should not have had a white man doing them (again with the white people doing articles/videos that can be EASILY given to someone whose actually part of that culture) and before anyone says anything yes the gumbo was for Chris’s show (strange how only white ppl get shows or in Andy’s case unless you’re friends with a higher up) still doesn't make the video less disrespectful, also he’s SAID he is friends with Anna Wintour (head of vogue, and a racist “there’s no room for black women” the reason the vogue challenge is happening)

Brad Leone: Himbo status permanently revoked, “Brad who just found out racism is real”(Sohla said this in the Sporkful podcast) is NOT acceptable for a 35 year old white man whose coworkers are suffering in a clearly toxic work environment, the screenshot with “I didn’t sign her contract she did” is NOT how you respond to your coworker being underpaid and disrespected by the company she works at because she is not a white man. I do not like him anymore, he has made apologies but ignorance to this extent is willful and I don't completely buy it the rumors he was upset Delany was going to be fired/would quit if Delany was fired/was mad at Sohla is not something I was able to confirm but based off of what I’ve seen he really needs to prove himself to be better, he can stay if that’s what his coworkers want but he is on thin fucking ice

Stuff I can't accredit to a single person, but BA is racist:

NIKITA RICHARDSON, pls check her out on twitter

They sent Sohla to interview black chefs (bc BA has a bad track record) because she was the darkest and there were literally NO black chefs working at BA

Making Priya only cook Indian dishes (which were kinda whitewashed) I actually think this may have been Duckor

Tokenizing the poc staff (they would make them be in the kitchen when filming the white hosts shows and push them in front of the camera to highlight nonexistent diversity)

Paying Hawa Hassan only $400 for her video (probs also Duckor)

#bon appetit #bon appétit test kitchen #sohla el waylly #adam rapoport #brad leone #alex delany #alex delaney #chris morocco #andy baraghani #matt duckor #carla lalli music #priya krishna #Nikita richardson #hawa hassan #god this got long and there is more

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todaydreambelieversfic · 3 years

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Author Spotlight: Honeysucklepink Day 1

Author : @honeysucklepink

How did you get into Glee and Glee fandom?

I was actually an American Idol fan, and I had seen the previews for the show, but I had already been burned on Eli Stone and honestly didn't want to get into a show that would get cancelled after a few episodes. Plus I was watching Lost and it conflicted (I to this day have not invested in a DVR). But the same site that was recapping Idol started recapping Glee, and more annoyingly my sister was watching it (and yet hated Idol). So anyway, fast forward to the end of Lost, and suddenly my Tuesdays were free again, so I decided to tune in to the "Home" episode. This goes to show how influential fandom can be to how a show is perceived. I loved Will, I was charmed by April, I felt bad for Kurt but rolled my eyes at his pursuit of Finn. I think the only thing that has stayed consistent was being WOWED by Mercedes. I watched the rest of the season, and then I'm pretty sure they re-ran it over the summer (I swear I'm sure they did, though even by 2010 most networks had stopped doing summer reruns).

Even through the second season, I kept up with Glee and other shows via sites like MJs Big Blog and Entertainment Weekly. But I never was in FANDOM...not until, honestly, Blaine and Darren. I knew he was coming thanks to an EW news item. I was also watching Californication at the time, and they were using his original music to promote the show (Mia's doing, I later discovered). So my joke for a while was that I kept getting hooked on these singer-songwriters from Fox TV shows (David Cook and Kris Allen from Idol, and now Darren). But also by this time I was liking Kurt more...yes I had thought his pursuit of Finn was inappropriate, but then Laryngitis and Theatricality happened and by the time Never Been Kissed was about to air I was like 'THIS BOY NEEDS SOMETHING HAPPY IN HIS LIFE.' And then Blaine sang, and Kurt smiled, and I was a goner.

But I still wasn't there-there. Not until the following summer. The tour was happening, and of course it was happening NOWHERE NEAR ME, so I followed it on social media. I had a Tumblr, but wasn't using it that much. There was a Glee Forum that I frequented much more (don't even ask what my username was, it's long-forgotten). Also, I was in Seattle for a continuing education thing, and I spent a lot of time on my computer...doing work but also taking a lot of breaks by hanging on the forums. I got sucked in...soon I was doing more fan stuff on Tumblr, drifted from Glee Forum, and well, the rest is history.

In general, what drew you into writing (and/or creating)?

I think like a lot of people it was having stories in my head that I wanted to read and, not seeing anyone else writing them, realizing I had to write them myself. Writing fic for me usually goes much more stream-of-consciousness (thank goodness for betas). Very different from the academic writing that I have to do for my career, which involves a lot of research, structure, deadlines, etc. Being Southern and coming from a storytelling tradition helps. And a little morbid, but I think a little fatalism? Knowing we all die in the end, and the idea of leaving a little something behind, something that's not a kid, but a little part of me, that someone comes across and it means something to them. Even if my actual name isn't attached to it, it's still there.

What was it about Glee that made you decide to write fanfic for it?

It wasn't like my little reader prompts were always going to get the attention of a writer, so sometimes a scene would get stuck in my head and I'd just have to write it to get it out, or a song would get stuck in my head that I wished the show would do. Sometimes it was speculation, or wish-fulfillment...I'd read a spoiler and wonder how it COULD go, or see a song done and go "pfft, not how I would have done it, I'm rewriting this." And um, let's be real, I was at the peak of my sexual health, heck I'm pretty sure the show helped me accept that yep I'm really fucking queer, and there are just some Klaine scenes that the ol' Fox Network ain't gonna show you...

Have you been a part of other fandoms before? Have you written fanfiction pre-glee?

I posted in fan communities... I was on an E! board for The Girls Next Door for a while, I was a frequent poster on college football message boards, and of course I was on some boards for Idol (and regrettably, Vote For the Worst). But those communities didn't always stick to the fandom object...like half the time on the GND boards we didn't talk about GND at all! And re: fanfiction, I never read it until season seven of Idol... there was a David Cook saga I really got into (because there was intrigue and stalking and drama), that in retrospect was very much a self-insert Mary Sue (I know that term is fraught but in this case it was SO deserved), there were quite a few "Mavid" one-shots that were pretty juicy, and oh lord there was a D/s with Clay Aiken that, if you try not to actually picture CLAY FUCKING AIKEN, was hot. I really wasn't reading a lot of LGBTQ fic. My one hand at writing fic was as a joke...there was an off-shoot of the VFTW blog, and I wrote an RPF hetero scene of Kris Allen and his wife. To this day I cringe at that. I didn't touch writing fic again until Glee and Klaine.

Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

I haven't really done a true "enemies to lovers" fic, but I'd like to try it sometime. Or fake dating, that's one I'd need to get inspired by the right set-up.

Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

I can't do incest, not even in a "well technically they're stepbrothers so it's not REALLY..." Yes really it's still a NOPE. And while there have been slave fics I've really liked, like the "Def" verse? Um, I'm from the American South, my ancestors go far back enough, fuck no I'm not writing a slave AU.

How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Oh lord, there's maybe two or three...there's one that has the premise written, that I don't know if or when I'll finish it, that has Kurt as a quarterback and Blaine as a center (the guy who is bent over right in front of the QB that passes him the ball), and it's solely inspired by a college football player that waxed poetic at a press conference about what kind of butt a good center should have, and I'll let you fill in the blanks.

***

Check out Honeysucklepink’s Fics

A Place That's Safe and Warm - Writer and blogger Blaine Anderson just wanted to have a few drinks, hook up with his friend Kurt, and pretend for a little while that his adopted city of Boston hadn’t been attacked. He meant to make a quiet exit the morning after, but overbearing parents, a cranky roommate, and the justice system had other plans.

Later On, We'll Conspire - My "naughty" fic for Klaine Advent 2015: Kurt and Blaine get snowed in, with an empty loft and an extra-special gift basket from Santana (takes place in Season Five, pre-5.14).

Somebody Loves You - My "nice" Klaine Advent 2015 fic: missing scenes from Glee Season Six. Chapter titles are the prompts.

#author spotlight #honeysucklepink

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anotherobsessedfangirl · 3 years

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~ 30 Questions Tag ~

Got tagged by @illicitfuck thank you Rei for thinking of me <3 you made my day you have no idea how much I love tags and answering questions :D

1) name/nickname: Not sharing my real name on here and I also don’t really have a nickname but I use Persephone for writing and stuff so maybe you could say that that is my nickname. (Feel free to call me Persephone on here if you want to :D)

2) star sign: Taurus

3) height: 5′3 / 160 cm

4) birthday: May 6th

5) favorite bands: Måneskin (thanks Rei for already putting them here :P :D), The Rolling Stones, The Bee Gees, Muddy What?, Santana, Rosenstolz, Electric Light Orchestra, BAP, Smokie and a lot more that don’t come to my mind right now :D

6) time: 9:30 pm

7) favorite solo artists: Oh god let me think I don’t even listen to that many solo artists on a regular basis (like in more than just a few songs of them)... okay here is what came to my mind: Lucky Dube, Suzi Quatro, Frank Sinatra, Harpo... that’s all I could come up with sorry :D

8) song stuck in your head: Amandoti Cover by Måneskin

9) last movie you watched: Twilight

10) Dream Trip: Right now I just want to be somewhere at the ocean like Italy or Greece (but somewhere not so touristy because I don’t like people :D) and just chill there and relax. My future dream trip I hope I can do after my graduation in 2 years is going to Botswana for 2 Month.

11) Last Show: Young Royals on Netflix

12) When I Created This Blog: When I started writing fanfictions about 3 years ago.

13) What I Post: Whatever I am obsessed with which right now is Måneskin :D and random thoughts or stuff I like or find funny or important :D Idk I just post about whatever I like :D

14) Last thing I googled: “In which direction to turn your key to open the front door ” (The story behind this: I moved into a new apartment two weeks ago and it’s all new and it has super heavy doors that are so fucking hard to open and after desperately trying to unlock the stupid door for five minutes I wasn’t so sure anymore about which way is the right way to turn the key because neither way worked and I was afraid of breaking the key if I accidently turn it to hard in the wrong direction. End of story: I called my bf almost crying asking if he remembered which direction is the right one and he did and then I tried again with full force and the damn thing finally opened)

15) Other Blogs: None

16) Do I get asks? Sometimes but not many but I’d love to get more so if you wanna ask me anything or talk to me please feel free it always makes me so happy if people want to talk to me :)

17) Why I Chose My URL: Because it’s who I am, just another obsessed fangirl :D

18) Following: 167

19) Followers: Tumblr says 1212 but most of these are bots because if I post something there are usually about 10 people who interact with my posts (unless something goes viral in a tag of course) It’s very annoying because I’d actually like to know how many people are really following me and are interested in my stuff but I guess I’ll just never know...

20) Average Hours Of Sleep: I need 7-8 hours minimum and if I get less than 6 hours I feel like shit

21) Lucky Number: 13, 7, 2, 21 (just numbers I like for whatever reason when I was a teenager 13 definitely was my lucky number)

22) Instruments: None because sadly I have no musical talent :/ I tried to teach myself playing guitar when I was 16 but I failed :D But I am actually thinking of trying to learn an instrument again these days just because I find it very cool to make your own music and it’s just such a nice way to express yourself and tbh also because of Vic De Angelis and her bass :D

23) What Am I Wearing: I just took a bath and just put on some comfy clothes after so I am simply wearing sweat pants and one of my bf’s shirts I stole from him because I like oversized shirts :D

24) Dream Job: Being an actress. It simply is my passion. Right now I am studying social work though (which I like too) but I am trying to do some acting on the side because seriously when I am infront of a camera I just feel like that’s where I belong. I just did some filming in May and June and when I was on set I realized that I haven’t been that happy and didn’t feel that much like myself since years and even if it’s just a no budget movie for now it’s like one step closer to my dream. Also I could totally imagine working part time as a social worker but also doing acting jobs because it would certainly put some pressure off if I’d have a steady income and can just choose whatever projects I like without necessarily having to earn a living with it (not that I’d complain lol) :D

25) Favorite Food: Pasta & Potatoes in any form. :D Oh and Antipasti because I just love having many different dishes to choose from.

26) Tea or Coffee: I drink neither of it regularly.

27) Nationality: German.

28) Favorite Song: Right now Vent’anni by Måneskin (and basically half of their discography)

29) Last Book I Read: The midnight rose by Lucinda Riley

30) Top 3 Fictional Universes I Would Like To Live In:

1. Harry Potter Universe (because we don’t like JKR in this house but we certainly love the Potterverse especially if we can make it so queer that JKR would faint lol)

2. Maybe “Die jungen Ärzte” (= ”The young doctors”) It’s a german medical drama series maybe you could compare it to Grey’s Anatomy just less dramatic and with more happy endings :D anyway I just love that series and the actors and the characters and I’d really like to live in that universe just so I could for once have such caring and nice doctors treating me who’d magically find a solution for my chronic illness just like they always do on TV :D

3. Idk does the kind of fictional Universe where I am friends with Måneskin count? :D

I am tagging: @parva-noctua @ginny-lily @bexfangirlforlife and everyone who wants to do this, no pressure though :)

#this was so much fun #loved it #tag game #tag #thank you again rei

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titleleaf · 4 years

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Instead of being a huge pedant on someone else’s post, I’m going to make a post about the piece of art featured in this post instead:

(Post credit to Capacity, artist’s credit unknown.)

I’m pretty sure this is a modern piece. I’ve never been able to find any other version of this image except for this same cropped shot circulating on social media in meme form without any sourcing or attribution. If anyone knows the artist (who deserves credit if it’s possible to give it! this piece is amazing!) or can disprove that gut “this is too contemporary” instinct with sourcing evidence I’d be happy to hear about it, but my instinct is that this was made post-Stonewall. It’s a bunch of little stuff here -- the posing, the figures’ sizes, the way the central figure’s six-pack abs are detailed and his erect though comparatively modest penis -- but basically this reads as a modern erotic pastiche to me. Given the image’s afterlife in memes and jokes about abandoning modernity and embracing tradition, its potential status as a 20th century shout-out to real and imagined homoerotic Classical pasts seems fitting, but seeing this image getting washed through the internet with no attribution, no credit in the case of a potential modern artist, and no info attached for anyone who might want to learn more just bums me out.

Even if these specific aesthetics are dubious, classical Greek and Roman people sure did own similarly frank depictions of sexuality and intimacy (between men, between women, between men and women) and the odds are good they did display them in one manner or another. If I had a giant painting of two women fingerblasting each other, I might hang it in the foyer, I might hang it in my bedroom, I might cherish it privately as a memento of the lover who gave it to me; I might show it to friends who appreciated frank depictions of queer intimacy, or I might bring it out for parties, all depending on my personality, my social circle, and my means. What about a small painting? A print? A smutty bowl? A smutty compact mirror? So it’s really interesting to me to think of the use and display lives of erotic art in the ancient world and whether it followed similar patterns. If you’re interested in ancient erotic art with an implicit history of being shown off (to at least one person) and a similarly transgressive emphasis on the party being penetrated’s pleasure, you might enjoy reading about this agate gemstone carving of two men from the first century BCE -- it comes with a lil poem, not pictured in the below detail, but which I love.

(please let tumblr not ding me for this, it’s clearly historical, artistic, AND educational dongery)

From John R. Clarke’s “Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art”:

In the Royal Coin Cabinet in Leiden is a large agate gemstone (3.1 x 2.15 x 0.4 cm) that pairs an unusually sexy image of two men copulating with a tender poem addressed to one of them (Clarke, 1998, pp. 38-42). The poem, written in late Hellenistic Greek, says:

Leopard -- drink, Live in luxury, Embrace! You must die, for time is short. May you live life to the full, O Greek!

The poem combines a command to enjoy wine, luxury, and sex with a memento mori -- a common notion in Greek and Latin poetry. One must seize the day (carpe diem), take life’s pleasures when they offer them- selves, for soon both pleasures and life itself will be gone. “Leopard” was most likely the special love-name of one of the men pictured on the gem. Since the poem is addressed to Leopard, it’s likely that the gem was a love-gift for him (against this interpretation, see Butrica, 2004).

So the Leiden gemstone at the time of its creation is an expensive piece of art, apparently personalized, small enough to keep in private but surely fancy enough to show off. Look at their relative sizes and apparent ages, the frame of the bed, the low-key impossible positioning for the sake of having the two men face each other during sex and for the bottom’s erection to be as visible as possible. Who was it for? How was it commissioned? If it was a gift, how was it given? Where did its owners store it? To whom did they show it? We have a lot of instances of sexually-suggestive-to-sexually-explicit art located in more or less public spaces (baths, brothels, etc.) and in private homes, just straight-up painted on a wall, but movable erotic art -- a dish, a cup, a cameo -- occupies a different literal and metaphorical space.

Which is all to say. Where in their house did they even put these things?

#ska reads a thing #artistic nudity for ts

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drsilverfish · 4 years

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Nine Minutes to Midnight

5x21 Two Minutes to Midnight

Nine episodes to beat God, and fifteen years since Kripke pitched his original On The Road fan-fiction meets folk horror.

I’ve had a lot of fun in this little corner of Tumblr SPN fandom, over the eight years I’ve been here. I arrived as a newbie in 2012, and people already here were kind to me. I’ve seen people come and go, get disillusioned with SPN and move onto new fandoms, or arrive latterly into this one, brimming with excitement.

This is a weird social media platform, and I doubt it will be around forever, as one of its joys is how singularly bad it has been at integrating advertising.

Some of my favourite things here have been;

Comments in the tags, often funny, thinky, joyful - love this element of Tumblr.

Coda fic - this short-form story-style, which leaps into the fan-fiction gaps, loud silences and lacunae of the text - what a joy.

All the different roles people take on in fandom, as labours of love - gif makers, fic and meta writers, artists, vidders, archivists, signal-boosters, enthusiastic readers and beta-readers, art-lovers, networkers, collaborators, question-askers and answerers, and participants of all kinds (introvert and extrovert).

Completely unrelated to SPN, posts which are full of puns and hilarity, from “lik the bred” to Brits vs Americans on the subject of drinking tea. I still love Tumblr’s collective sense of humour; it’s witty and charming.

The language of gifs; those delightful comtemporary hieroglyphics of emotive expression.

The diversity - English is the shared language, but gradually it’s apparent that despite US dominance of the site, there are people from all over the world here, whose native tongues range from Russian to Italian to Brazilian Portuguese.

The collective meta experience - sharing “live” textual analysis has been huge fun. Viewing a text in a hive mind this way always shows you something you’d have missed on your own. It’s like holding up a crystal to a thousand lights and watching all the different refractions happening at once.

Again, not SPN specific, but experts in various subjects, from Egyptology to Medieval History suddenly emerging from the depths to provide a passionate and erudite exposition on their topic. Often prefaced with, “My time has come...”

Fandom has a dark side. It can be a coping mechansim, for many, in a healthy or less healthy way. There are unfortunately, always the formation of various “in-groups” and “out-groups”, ship wars, harrassment (of other fans, cast and crew), entitlement, and wild unpleasantness. And, that scourge of the internet in general; performative outrage (otherwise known as the outrage economy) which turns up the dial on provocative statements and negative emotion because that acts as catnip for engagement. A lot of people act out their shadow-selves online, projecting their own internal stuff onto others, from behind the screen.

Almost no media texts get to run as long as SPN (fifteen years) but my first fandom was (and is) Doctor Who and that has been going for over 50. It has some absolutely horrendously toxic spaces and places online, and many of pure joy. My advice is - find the joy.

Stories, by inviting us into the shoes of others, teach us at their (and our) best, the invaluable gift of empathy.

Take care of yourselves. Endings are hard, no doubt.

Special shout-out to fellow LGBTQ+ fans - hold onto your hearts.

It can be complicated loving a story telling its queer (romantic/ erotic) love story implicitly (i.e. in subtext).

Don’t forget (as I always say in my tags) subtext is part of narrative - meaning, the totality of a text contains its explicit and implicit elements; its text and its subtext, just like Metatron (aka Robbie T) told us in 9x18 Metafiction.

I wasn’t in the fandom myself, here on Tumblr, but I saw some of the fall-out from BBC Sherlock S4, and it was particularly distressing to see so many young LGBTQ+ fans feeling deeply hurt and even suicidal, because they’d read all the (extensively crafted) queer subtext in that show as a promise which would, inevitably, lead to an unequivocal queer “coming out” for John and Sherlock.

Those queer fans weren’t “self-queerbaiting” - they were just reading the totality of the text. And after all, why not read the subtext that way, as a promise? Being of a generation who’d already gotten to see many explicitly out queer characters on-screen; why not dare to imagine the subtext was a slow-burn romance with an inevitable “out” climax? Especially because Mark Gatiss (one of the writers) is out and queer himself, young queer fans were even more certain that his Sherlock would be the first “out” queer Sherlock on-screen (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970, which Gatiss is on record as being a fan of, had previously queer-coded Holmes, as indeed does Downey’s version, in Sherlock, 2009, and Sherlock 2: A Game of Shadows, 2011.)

Of course, the corporate and production politics were no doubt complex behind the scenes at the BBC, and Gatiss himself (apparently) saw things differently saying (in an interview in Oct 2010):

“No, I don’t think I’d make a kind of gay programme. It’s much more interesting when it’s not about a single issue. And equally, I find flirting with the homoeroticism in Sherlock much more interesting.” (Buzz Magazine Oct 2010: p10).

All of which, is why I’ve been adding a disclaimer to my readings of SPN’s queer subtext for a while now - namely, that reading the subtext doesn’t promise a rainbow of obviousness at the end.

As I said, take care of your hearts, lovelies.

Perhaps we shouldn’t need the narrative closet any longer.

But, we are walking between worlds, an old one and a new, both of them currently existing simultaneously, especially in a globalised world.

Queer audience fractions are, generally, more attuned to queer subtext, because it often uses codes derived from queer culture (although reading cinematic/ television subtext of all kinds is a learned skill, and no one is born with text-reading gaydar). So, whilst queer subtext may appear “loud” to some audience fractions, it remains invisible to others. That is, historically, by design, because, whilst “out” queer characters have gradually emerged on-screen since the 1950s [and the end of the Hays Code in Hollywood] queerness was, and still is (depending on where one is in the world) subject to legal penalty, state censorship or corporate production censorship.

A contemporary kind of state censorship is e.g. in China, where overt LGBTQ+ themes and characters cannot be depicted on-screen (hence, the queer subtext in The Untamed). A contemporary commodity kind of censorship might be e.g. notes from the Network, or TPTB at Marvel Studios with an eye on box-office. Queer subtext has the ability to slip past the censors, or be tolerated by them; because, now you see it/ now you don’t. A character with a straight “surface” reading and a queer subtextual one may (depending on the film/ TV product and its market etc,) be seen to pose less risk as a commercial product, whilst being able to appeal to different audience fractions simultaneously. For example, Captain Marvel (2019) and, as above, BBC Sherlock (2010-2017).

And yes, it’s complicated, because in the midst of that still extant censorship, which queer writers and other creatives on set may indeed be trying to work around by using queer subtext, we can see another world is possible. More out queer stories are being told. And, although we may love to see implicit queerness rather than no queerness at all, and indeed although implicit queerness may (arguably) have the freedom (still) to tell less boundaried or stereotyped stories than explicit queerness (with powerful effects on the audience fractions, both queer and straight, who do “see” it) we can’t deny that it does suit corporate entities, in some cases, to be able to appeal to a dual audience without the perceived “risk” of “outness”. A form of “queer-sploitation” which leads to the charge of “queer-baiting”.

The issue is, perhaps, particularly one surrounding male hero characters in Hollywood (and here in the UK) a) because “queer stories” are (still) often, not seen as likely to have universal appeal for broader audiences, whereas “straight stories” are not framed as “straight stories” but as universal ones, and b) because of the persistence of the prejudiced belief in particular that “queerness” undermines masculinity, especially “heroic” masculinity (here we have diverged markedly from the ancient Greeks). It’s somewhat different for female characters, but that’s another post. Fantasy, in the on-screen medium (if less so in fiction or comics) appears to be a more regressive genre than, say, comedy, in terms of the depiction of “out” queer central (rather than side) characters, with the exception of the Wachowskis’ Sense8 (2015-18) in which pretty much everyone is queer. I know there’s Ruby’ Rose’s Batwoman (2019- ) which I haven’t had a chance to check out yet, and we’ve got some queer Marvel (side) heroes upcoming, apparently; Valkyrie in Thor: Love and Thunder and Phastos in The Eternals - let’s see how that goes.

Moreover, queer subtext doesn’t have an exact analogy i.e. a “straight subtext” equivalent. Yes, many films and TV shows imply romantic/ sexual tension and interest between M/ F (pre)couples before it is “confirmed” they’re into each other in the text. However, because straight is the default assumption, audiences may muse and disagree about the potential for a M/ F romance at the implicit stage (as they have done in SPN fandom re Sam/ Rowena) but they don’t ask - “Does this mean they might be straight ????” It is assumed. Queerness, on the other hand, in order to be widely recognised (rather than solely by the subtext-reading audience fraction) must “come out” in some manner, explicitly, in the text (I don’t mean graphically, but “beyond reasonable doubt”). In other words, as painful as it is, we are not starting on a level playing field. It’s not fair, but it is the deal.

That doesn’t mean we can’t love contemporary queer subtextual stories, just that it’s important to acknowledge it can be painful, for some, to do so, and just as it’s important to acknowlege it’s OK to find them too painful to love, also (historical texts obviously operated under different circumstances).

Queer audiences are not homogenous. We can, and do, see things differently from one another, perhaps particularly across generations.

It is the case however, I think, that the structuring of a story by the narrative closet, as SPN has been structured by the narrative closet (up to this point, mid S15) (by which I mean its queerness is transparent to some, invisible to others, by design) cannot help but remind many queer audience members of our own struggles with the real world closet. Indeed that may make the story attractive, or unattractive, to different folk.

Incidentally, which is why I avoid it, I think the “it’s canon”/ “it’s subtext” debate is a false dichotomy and a bit confusing, as there are two, perfectly legitimate (within their own terms) definitions of “canon”. In the fandom sense, where “canon” means a romantic/ erotic pairing explicitly confirmed in the text, Destiel (meaning romantic/ erotic orientation between Dean and Cas) is not “canon” (as at 15x11). It is implied. Of course, it is explicit text that they care deeply for one another - “You’re my family. I love you, I love all of you” (12x12 Stuck in the Middle with You), “You’re my best friend” (15x09 The Trap). The exact nature of that relationship remains, however, deliberately, ambiguous.

In the literary sense, in which “canon” means “the official body of work”, SPN’s official body of work contains a metric tonne of implicit romantic/ erotic Dean/ Cas, so, it is part of the SPN “canon” in that sense - “subtextual canon” if you like. Although, of course, because implied, therefore open to interpretation.... deliberately transparent to some and invisible to others.

Despite all this complexity, and, indeed despite other elements of the SPN narrative which I have struggled with personally (the early seasons’ misogyny is off the charts sometimes, the brutally insensitive manner of Charlie’s death) I have loved this story, Supernatural, truly, madly, deeply, in large part because of its (implicit) queerness. And for may other reasons additionally, from its folkloric beginnings and dark initial cinematographic palette, to its melodrama, to its, eventual, Ourboros structure, and its Jungian alchemical journey marrying the cosmic to the earthly.

Reading the show without the queer subtext remains possible, but oh boy is that analogous to only considering the above sea-level portion of an iceberg.

I would prefer a rainbow of obviousness at The EndTM, but I don’t expect one. What I expect is continued, deliberate, ambiguity. Something I am sure we will be debating the ethics of, long after.

I could be wrong :-). But I am taking my own advice, and taking care of my heart.

For now, it’s nine minutes to midnight; let’s see how the story ends.

And afterwards, however the chips may fall, the characters will (as this most meta-narrative of seasons has been busy telling us) be set free of “Chuck’s” control. They will belong to us, in a thousand thousand fan-works, for as long as we care to keep on loving them.

#Supernatural #SPN meta #Meta #5x21 #Two Minutes to Midnight #Endings are hard #Who am I kidding #Fandom is going to go wild #Whatever happens #The great queerbaiting debate #Reading Subtext #Dean is bisexual #Destiel #Still subtext #But subtext is part of narrative

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carryonmyswansong · 3 years

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"Wayward Creation Station" Discord Server

So for a couple of years, I’ve been running a Discord server for Content Creators who are ages 18+. I started it right after tumblr changed their NSFW policies, so i could give writers a place to just be. The main focus is fic writing, but other content creators are allowed and encouraged to join!

Well, I am happy to announce that Wayward Creation Station also has a sister server, Wayward Mentor Creation Station, for mentoring younger kids (13+) just starting out in the creative community. In order to join the second, you have to be a member of the first (or be a member of @thinkwritexpress-official’s Discord server). So this post is about sharing information on Wayward Creation Station and all that it can offer. Please join us! (invite link is inbedded in the server title)

Below is a list of all the available categories, and the channels within them. All NSFW channels, channels that contain heavy subject matters, and channels that contain spoilers, are marked with an *asterisk.

Each fandom category contains two channels, except Disney/Marvel, which often has three. The first channel is always about the shows/movies - theories, headcanons, what the actors are up to, conventions, etc. The second channel is always about the lore and established canon. In the Disney/Marvel category, each time a new movie comes out, a new channel is added. Once some time has passed, it will be retired, and then everyone can talk about it freely in the main channel. This allows others who haven’t seen the new movies to still participate in the main Disney/Marvel channel without being spoiled too badly.

If you have any questions, please send me an ask!

Welcome! Read First!

rules

server-announcements

Members

introduce-yourself

roles

member-announcements

Help

server-questions

requests-suggestions

blog-reporting

Lobby

general

*cant-sleep

sfw-memes

*nsfw-memes

In Real Life Stuff

pets

family-moments

selfies

conventions

*current-events

Mind Body Soul

drop-that-beat

*akf

*venting

*relationship-stuff

*queer-space

fashion-stuff

*body-mods

*health-related

food-drink-recipes

Promotional Stuff

freelance

fundraising

Computer Module

tatsu-announcements

bot-command-lists

tatsu-help

tatsugotchi

daily-vote

*gaming-and-such

stats-wallet

other-stuff

pokemon

Film Studio

movie-tv-recs

*tv-discussions

*movie-discussions

*general-spoilers

youtube

twitch-streaming

Writer's Room

character-sheets

world-building

*writers-block

*nsfw-inspiration

sfw-writing-resources

*nsfw-writing-resources

sfw-writing-prompts

*nsfw-writing-prompts

*tw-brainstorming

*spn-brainstorming

*mcu-brainstorming

*potter-brainstorming

*star-wars-brainstorming

*og-u-brainstorming

Writer's Display Case

your-sfw-fics

*your-nsfw-fics

*comments-interactions

The Editor's Lounge

beta-seeking

coauthors-and-collabs

The Library

bookstore-links

your-book-collection

*venting-books

*venting-fics

*fic-discussions

sfw-recs

*nsfw-recs

The Artist's Studio

sfw-art-resources

*nsfw-art-resources

art-wips

*nsfw-art-wips

cosplay-wips

Artist's Gallery

store-links

art

*nsfw-art

page-dividers

*nsfw-fanart

sfw-pics-gifs

*nsfw-pics-gifs

fiber-art

apothecary

*headers-aesthetics-moods

finished-cosplays

(Podcast) Recording Studio

promo-your-show

promo-a-friend

podcast-brainstorming

podcast-resources

Podcast In Progress (voice channel)

(Music) Recording Studio

music-wip

music-promo

music-brainstorming

Share Your Process (voice channel)

Teen Wolf

*bhhs-cafeteria

the-bestiary

Avatar: The Last Airbender

*jasmin-dragon

spirit-library

Supernatural

*harvelles-roadhouse

dads-journal

Disney/Marvel

*shawarma-palace

friday

*wandavision

DC Comics

*lux

batcomputer

Dark Horse Comics

*the-academy

bprd

Archie Comics

*pops-chocklit-shoppe

riverdale-public-library

real-time-show-talk

- I am not opposed to adding more fandoms or other categories as we need them. A lot of this server doesn't change much, but for the most part, its ever evolving, to meet our needs. I really hope to see you there!

#fanfiction #content creation #brainstorming #discord server #j'ai écrit ceci #texte

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im-not-a-joke · 4 years

Note

Mmh... All the field

the whole- the whole field....

thank you for asking, this is going to be one long post

Alisons: Sexuality?

asexual, unlabeled/queer romantic

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender?

they/them or he/him, nonbinary

Amaryllis: Birthday?

february 4th

Anemone: Favorite flower?

bleeding heart

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show?

steven universe

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger?

probably offer a place to sleep overnight

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?

“Do you think God stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he’s created?”

Aubrieta: Favorite drink?

strawberry lemonade

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

my gf? yes, absolutely.

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love?

i’d like to think so, yes

Baneberries: Favorite song?

currently “better than me” by the brobecks

Basket of Gold: Describe your family.

a mess, i have three siblings, and two of them are currently living at home, we also have two large dogs

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it?

yes! my best friend anna, and her brother bryan!

Begonia: Favorite color?

purple

Bellflower: Favorite animal?

mantis shrimp

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person?

night person

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?

dog, i want the constant love and affection

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

first a botanist, then a geologist

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children?

i want to adopt some someday! sometimes they suck, but i want to be there for someone who doesn’t have a family to lean on.

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why?

abandonment, because i’m annoying

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood.

i shared a room with my little brother until i was like 12.

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth?

visiting all the people i love most, all of my friends, my gf, i’d call my sister

Buttercup: Relationship Status?

taken!

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go?

france

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved?

when people take the time out of their day to talk to me

Canna: Do you have any tattoos?

nope, i do want some someday, though

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings?

yes! i got my ears pierced twice because it ripped my earlobe the first time

California Poppy: Height?

~5′8″

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts?

yes, and if i die before any of my friends, i’m coming back to haunt them

Carnation: What are you currently wearing?

a floral tank top, my favorite sleeveless cardigan, and jean shorts

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight?

yes, my little brother was afraid of the dark and insisted on having a nightlight on

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged?

my mom

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed?

my gf

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font?

architect’s daughter

Columbine: Are you tired?

yes, very

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to?

tomorrow i get to leave the house all day to drive across the state and it’s going to be a lot of fun

Coneflower: Dream job?

language teacher! either english to people who don’t speak it or german/french to english speakers

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert?

introvert. i’m on tumblr all day

Crocus: Have you ever been in love?

yeah, i think so

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about?

i’d actually die for multiple people in my life

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it?

yes! a stuffed white dog with a plaid scarf and matching antlers! my friend got it for me because it reminded her of my big white dog.

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign?

aquarius

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering?

once i came 3rd in my age group for a 5k i ran

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

i successfully kept a frail axolotl alive for an entire summer

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)?

i dont care what my parents think about stuff like that, they cant tell my who i am or am not allowed to date

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to?

@byler-obsessed literally like, maybe 15 minutes ago as of writing this

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at?

i’d like to think i’m decent at singing

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at?

staying awake during the day

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month?

i saw my gf for the first time in months! i came out to the girls team for xc! i spent a lot of time with one of my closest irl friends!

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today?

decent, i had coach practice, which was nice

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life?

yeah, i’d say i’m pretty happy where i am

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two?

learn guitar

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life?

my best friends anna and bryan, my older brother, the girls on the team, my ukulele, my therapist, my dogs, the creek in my back yard, my grandma’s amish apple dumpling recipe, random internet memes, books

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed?

listening to my spotify playlist

Hellebore: How do you show affection?

reassurance and/or talking about things that i enjoy, i’m really insecure so if i’m talking about something i like, that’s me trusting you.

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of?

the mental health progress i’ve made

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day.

i lay in bed until like 11, then, i spend the rest of the day out with my friends, we get sushi for dinner and stay up until like 3am

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time?

be on tumblr

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them?

i met them both in 6th grade, anna nad i were in the same science class and i met bryan at lunch, he didn’t talk to me for at least the first half of the year.

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything?

bryan, he always knows just what to say, and knows that he doesn’t have to fix my problems to be a good friend.

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have?

like, 13?

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

my friend once told me that they couldn’t tell if i was a boy or girl upon first meeting me and it made my day.

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself?

i’m a mess, an anxious, depressed, gay mess

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

my hair, it’s really fluffy and soft, and just about light enough to dye bright colors

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself?

my chest, it’s always been a huge part of my dysphoria and i want it gone please

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child?

i would play dress up with my dog, he had to suffer through wearing all my old dresses, but he got treats so it was ok

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid?

my friend ry, we met in second grade, we’re still on and off friends, currently off

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for?

in 5th grade i used the word “suck” in class and got yelled at

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about?

see above answer

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name?

carson: christian. it’s my name because i like how it sounds, and anna really liked it too, she picked it for me.

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it.

white, suburban ohio. all the kids had cliques by the second day of kindergarten, and if you were knew, you generally had a pretty good chance of being picked up by the popular kids.

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up?

i had bunkbeds with my little brother, i slept on the bottom.

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years?

so far, not really. i’m just mentally ill and closeted, it’s not great

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom.

she likes to dye her hair crazy colors, and she used to be a beekeeper, even though she’s allergic to bee stings.

Onions: Tell about your dad.

he rides his bike almost every day, and supports my mom in whatever she does

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents.

on my mom’s side, the kindest boomers i’ve ever met, my grandpa used to take us on “adventures” to the park and just watch us play

on my dad’s side: my grandpa loves seeing us but doesn’t get out much, my grandma laughs hysterically at every family gathering, and has all the best amish recipes

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable?

when i turned 13, i went ice skating for the first time and fell and sprained my wrist

Peony: What was your first job?

mowing lawns

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any?

we had mutual friends and slowly ended up being close, we were in school plays and track together.

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain?

i bite down on my finger to simultaneously distract myself, focus on something else, and hold myself back

Pink: Where is home?

my best friends’ living room at 1 am, with the golden girls playing in the background

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change?

i’d go back and stop current president from becoming president

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them.

my sister, she has always been driven and passionate and talented, and she makes everything seem effortless and still gives it her all.

Primrose: Describe your ideal life.

me and my spouse and my kids amd my dogs all live in a decently spacious house in europe, my job is stable and i love my work, my students think i’m cool and come to me if they need help, i am doing well.

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child?

i used to believe that the smoke from fireworks was where clouds came from

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life?

my best friends

Rose: What’s your favorite sound?

the sound of rain on my roof at night

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory?

when my sister, dad, and i all climbed to the top of a mountain in california

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory?

throwing up in the car on the way home for visiting my sister in new york

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want?

a hug from anna

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things?

it’s hard because i don’t trust people

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without?

the internet

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night?

like 5.5 hours

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning?

to run, it makes me feel better and i love cross country

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job?

lmao i dont have one

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing?

my binder!

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic.

the record player song but a boy

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you?

a list of reasons why you deal with me/things you like about me

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now?

the fact that this is taking a lot longer than anticipated and i don’t want people to think i’m ignoring their asks

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called?

actual books? only 2, Catcher in the Rye and the Night Circus

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year?

out with my friends

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is?

yes, and i regret it

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself.

i’m double jointed in my left pinky

#fuck dude this took forever #long post #carson rambles

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fergalamorous · 4 years

Text

5-7-20

I just finished half of my last finals week as an undergraduate and saw a post on how “you knew you were nonbinary” and felt the urge to make a good old-fashioned tumblr ramble about queerness, gender identity and the passage of time.

I never ‘knew’ I was bi. I never ‘knew’ I was nonbinary. I had to realize both of those facts about me. One of them was told to me. My boyfriend at the time said “L, do you think you might be bisexual?” And I laughed. I thought ‘is that something I’m allowed to be?’ I remember that being my first thought. My sibling was bi, came out in college, and at the time had just gotten married to a woman. Even though I knew about the concept of queerness, even of bi-ness, I think I thought everyone was attracted to women. I wish I could go back in time and roll my eyes at myself.

I’d been attracted to women as long as the concept of attraction existed to me, 3 of my first kisses were my girl best friends at the time, my barbies all had wives and girlfriends, but it never occurred to me that I could have a girlfriend in the same capacity that I had had boyfriends. After he said it, very nonchalantly might I add, I kind of just accepted it, and coming out wasn’t really a thing I did. I wasn’t nervous when I told my family I was bisexual. One of them said “no shit” another said “I thought you were gonna come out way before your sibling”. Everyone knew, my boyfriend, my parents. Everyone but me. I say that like it was some great mystery but I also a year before I ‘realized’ spent around a year being extremely gay with my best friend. Just gals being pals as it were. I don’t think this was denial, I was just clueless.

I spent a long long time really coming to feel a part of the queer community, understanding what it means to be lgbtq+ and feeling comfortable as a bi human (read: going to gay bars, drinking, and dancing with 50 year old lesbians at that one pride event.) I really seeped myself in my queerness, 3 years ago living in a very queer centric house we called Camp Queer Abyss. It was me, two gay men, a nonbinary gay human who essentially moved in with us when they started dating one of the men. I knew several nonbinary people at this point in my life. While it is possible due to exclusionary groups, you don’t really get that balls deep into the queer community without hitting trans. Out of my three gay roommates, 2 were also trans. I knew and learned a lot about being trans over the years but I thought, “but that’s them, and this is me.”

When the topic of gender came up, which it often did, I remember for years distinctly saying “I don’t even have time to *think* about that”. This had a rough translation to “I am still figuring out all this bi stuff, I know how complicated being trans is, I will let future L handle that. That’s her problem.” Come to think of it this was distinctly denial. I think deep down I knew. I knew and was trying to tell myself at every turn, but I was refusing to listen. On a call with my mother I let slip that my long hair made me dysphoric. I knew the definition of the term and thought yes that is how I feel, but saying that meant nothing to me at the time. Felt kind of weird but also true. Then a year ago happens. 3 years of denying myself the thought of my gender. Over-performing as a female, wearing skirts, lots of make up and jewelry, long hair, and heels all of which which I openly hated wearing and having. When I stopped drinking that all kind of stopped. I started wearing things that made me comfortable. I cut my hair. And I focused on school and my future.

This was just another opportunity to be in denial. I couldn’t think about gender if I was thinking about school. Good news, that didn’t last much longer. I was with my boyfriend about a year ago, maybe earlier. We were just talking casually in my room. I can’t even remember what we were talking about but it wasn’t even related to gender. Out of no where I burst into tears. At the time I didn’t even know why I started crying saying “this is so weird I’m sorry” but when he asked me why, I instantly knew and said “I don’t feel like a woman.” It’s the first time I even said or thought that sentence. I was coming out to myself in the same breath, and I think it was something I was holding onto for so long that the release was impulsive and emotional. Like a dam bursting. It was relieving and terrifying at the same time.

While he and I split later due to unrelated things, he saw me through all of the early stages of my identity transformation. He is the only one who saw me crying at school lunch about my father’s struggle with my identity and the only one who heard me say “I wish to god I wasn’t trans, I don’t want this to be my life”. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want it to be me. This was different than telling people I am bi, because I am a white, attractive bi woman and I have privilege in that a number of people think that it’s “hot” and not “disgusting”. I was a lucky queer person as I didn’t ever fear for my life for loving who I love. I felt casual saying it. I am also lucky to live in a more progressive state which was a huge plus as well. While I just breezed passed the closet for my queerness, I never hopped quicker in a closet after realizing I was trans. It’s still scary, as of today half of my family doesn’t know, and, of the half that do, a number still struggle to accept it. I was in the closet at all the schools I went to over the last year, only telling my teachers for one semester my pronouns and going right back to just accepting people wouldn’t call me them and I wouldn’t fight them on it. I didn’t feel strong enough yet to fight them.

I remember each conversation I had coming out to people. I remember the people I felt safe and comfortable telling. I remember the people that I was terrified of telling. I remember all of it because each conversation was deliberate, planned to the t, and thought out for days in advance. This is what coming out feels like. It’s terrible and I hate it and I am sorry for everyone who experienced it when they were too young to manage the emotions that come with it. I absolutely understand why queer and trans youth suicide rates are so high, it is an abomination that they should feel this. I was terrified to tell my own sister who has loved and supported me no matter what my entire life. I, this entire year, have still not told her mother whom I see regularly, out of fear that she would not let me see this child who has become my strongest ally. Even though I told her why I was scared and she said she would leave her mom to live with dad if she ever tried to keep her from me. I think I feel more comfortable knowing I can go and it won’t be as much of an issue.

I told everyone I wanted to tell to keep my sanity within the difficulty of not being out, but I’m aching to just be fully out and begin being public with my transition. Hell recently I told my grad advisor to call me by my true name and he just does now and it is euphoric every time he uses it. And honestly, this weekend I plan on telling everyone. I was planning on telling most of my family this weekend but it turns out my mom told them so that’s some weight off my shoulders, so it’s really just down to telling my stepmom. Aside from her I think I am just going to change my name on facebook to Eli and during Pride Month share a bunch of nonbinary shit. I told my mom just now I want my graduation anouncements to say Elijah Lauren Mercer, as I’m keeping Lauren as a middle name instead. Ok. I think I’m out of things to say.

#enby progress

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unofficially-geeky · 5 years

Text

Recommendations

I didn’t wanna make this a post, but tumblr is refusing to save it as a page.. So I guess it’s reblogable.

These are just some mlm/queer anime that I’ve found and ended up liking, so I’ll update this as I find more! The paragraphs might be a bit spoilerish but they’re important for tws/cws. Any title in italics isn’t explicitly mlm, but can be interpreted that way.

Please note that I have bad memory and likely didn’t list all tws in stuff!

No.6

I'd rather read the manga than the anime since the anime does censor their relationship quite a bit, but if you couldn't tell from my theme, I love No.6! It's not the healthiest sadly, but it's still healthier than most anime with boys loving boys. There's also a trans nonbinary character named Inukashi! To sum up the plot, three queer kids take down the dystopian city (also there's the old man whos the token cishet probably). Trigger warnings for this are guns, blood, violence in general, prostitution, sexual harassment, needles, insects, vomiting, corpses, animal death, government conspiracies, human experimentation, and an oddly specific one that I feel should still be mentioned, surgery on the neck and surgery without anesthetics. on the neck.

Doukyuusei

This one's sweet!! It's about a boy teaching his classmate how to sing and they fall in love. There is some slight pedophilia but the scene is clearly meant to make you uncomfortable and the teacher gets beaten. This one's a movie!

Hoshiai no Sora / Stars Align

This is a sports anime! Or, well, kind of? The cast is of a boy’s soft tennis team. It was supposed to be 24 episodes, but got cut off at 12, and then almost wasn’t allowed to have a season two. As of now, season 2 should be coming sometime in 2020-2021. Now, this anime in general has a very leftist tone. Right off the bat, we’re given a main character who is gnc and lives with his single mother. This anime goes into so much more than just being about tennis that sometimes I forgot I was even watching a sports anime. It genuinely makes me so emotional, from how it handles queer topics to abuse. A huge focus of Hoshiai no Sora, instead of just being on soft tennis, is about the team and their family/home situations. Almost all of the characters are in an abusive environment, or had a past of being abused by a parent who’s now out of the picture. There’s two trans characters, one being a trans man, who’s dating the main character’s mother and is like family to him, and the other being x-gender and nblm. This was the first anime to take the ‘dressing as a girl to get into a place’ trope, and turn it into a conversation about gender identity without any transphobia in a realistic manner, even using queer terms like ‘ftm’ and shows the x-gender character reading an lgbt+ book. Many of the teams interactions with each other can be read as platonic or romantic, highly depending on how you personally interpret it, and a supporting character who hangs around the team reads heavily as lesbian, or at least wlw. So, if you’re queer and can handle seeing animated abuse without being triggered, this is definitely an anime I’d reccomend to you.

Content warnings for this, as of season one, are on-screen child abuse of both teenagers, toddlers, and babies, domestic violence, violence, blood, transphobia + denial of a child’s gender from a parent, dissociation, homophobia/bullying from peers, annd that’s all I remember off the top of my head.

This Boy Caught a Merman & This Boy Can Fight Aliens

These are also movies, and as obvious by the titles are created by the same person/people. They're not tied together in actual plot, though you will find some easter eggs referencing the other movie, specifically in the merman one. It's been a while since I've seen either, but there's almost drowning in Merman at the start as well as death of a family member.

Given

This isn't finished airing at the time of writing this, so I hope this promising series doesn't go downhill in the last few episodes. This is a band anime! All four members are mlm. It has very healthy friendships between teens and adults. It lets the characters speak openly about their sexuality and feelings. It's just very good. One of the characters is a victim of abuse from his father, and his ex-boyfriend did commit suicide for some current trigger warnings.

Update: Now that it’s finished, I’d say this anime still holds up! It has a very nice portrayal of the two main leads and their romantic relationship in the final episodes. Here’s to hoping the movie’s good as well~

91 Days

I'll always try to keep this lower on the list, since it's not explicit, and many people disagree on the homoerotic undertones. Personally though, I think it is gay. It's implied one of the main characters is killed in the end, though it's left rather open. It's a mafia anime, so there's already some stuff you should expect, but in more detail there's death of a child, guns, vomiting, cannibalism, drinking, torture, blood, and that’s all I can think of now.

Banana Fish

I’ll probably always keep this very close to the bottom. This is not a good anime for anyone who wants happy mlm anime. It’s depressing, gritty, and extreamly upsetting, but the two main characters have the most healthy relationship between two men that I’ve ever seen in anime. One of the main characters died in the end of the manga, but in the anime it can be interpreted that he survives if you look at the op and official site.

Trigger warnings are major character death, homophobic slurs, general homophobia, rape, child porn, abuse, drugs, drugging, drinking, torture, hypnotism, guns, explosions, child death, death of poc, eating disorders (specially acute anorexia) and probably a lot more I'm missing. I think this show handles rape victims very well, there’s some found family sprinkled in, and a lot of the major characters on the main characters’ sides are lovable and grow on you quickly.

#text post #anime recommendation #mlm #lgbtqa anime #mlm anime

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cath-with-a-c · 5 years

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This is the comment I woke up to on Friday morning. The amount of bigotry hiding behind the almost polite and seemingly thoughtful wording is astonishing.

I’ve responded to it already, informing the individual behind it that I won’t be discussing the points of the comment with them, as they’ve resorted to personally attacking me, which is...dumb. I mean, attack my work all you like, it either helps me grow as an author by learning from my mistakes or as a person by growing a spine and defending my work. But coming after someone who has no connection to this and can’t defend themselves because they are no longer with us? Low and disgusting. (Also wow, they’ve taken the time to find the only truly personal post I have on tumblr, and it’s more than a month old, what a commitment to come off as pathetic, really)

Anyway, while talking to that particular individual is out of question, I still kinda wanna address the certain things in the comment because wow, my first queerphobic comment and an excuse to talk more about “Nothing and Everything”, my boys and myself? How can I pass that?

(this is like... a long-ass one... prepare yourselves)

(I’m gonna refer to the commentator as “Fox” and, probably, “them” because well, I don’t know what their preferred pronounce are)

NB! I’m using the term “queer” as an umbrella term to mean everyone who isn’t strictly straight and/or cis-gender.

Let’s start from the top

The best part about slashfic writers is that when they write about child abuse, child sex abuse, and drug and alcohol abuse while including gay characters, is that they’re really writing about the lives of gay men without realizing it. To you, gay men being abused and that being the arbiter of their homosexual identity is too homophobic to fathom. But you still confirm it in subtle ways, and that always brings a smile to my face.

Now, English isn’t my first language, so I might be missing something, but If Fox meant being the arbiter of as in defining, being the reason for, than no, it’s not homophobic. It’s just dumb. One, there isn’t a single relevant scientifically accurate study on the abuse causing someone to “turn gay”. Two - there might be a correlation (and it’s not necessary there, I’m just guessing), but the cause and effect will be the other way around, queer kids get abused more because they are queer, not become queer as the result of the abuse. And, most importantly, three - in terms of sexual orientation, you can’t turn someone queer, as well as you can’t turn someone straight. It’s something you are born with and discover as you go along.

And also the other two queer characters, Rob and Penny, weren’t abused by their parents and/or other family members, but we will touch on that later.

“The Brotherhood had no problem with homosexuality” - Of course not, and neither do the Templars. It’s the Current Year. You can marry/have sex with whomever you want, whatever you want, whenever you want.

Ignoring the fact that this was taken out of context, and the whole phrase has a slightly different meaning, there are two things that are factually wrong with this statement. First - even in the Current Year, there is a ton of places where being openly queer is dangerous, from the countries that have “anti-gay” laws (ranging from “you can be gay, but stay quiet or go to jail” to “die a horrible death for being gay”), to certain, let’s say, traditionally oriented places in the US. Second - this is not Current Year. The bulk of the story takes place between 1998 and 2003, this phrase is taken from the chapter taking place in 2003, 16 years prior, things were, let’s say, slightly different.

Also, I don’t understand why Fox tried to make this sound sarcastic, we are talking about two societies, with one canonically being for freedom and choice and the other one relying on public favor to propel their agenda, of course, none of them will have qualms with the GRSM community,

“Honorary gay parents of a gay kid” - Well no wonder the kid is gay. Look at the environment xe/xim/xer grew up in.

I like how Fox uses the non-binary pronounces referring to Penny, when the only thing that has been said about her/them is “I’m into girls.” Also out of 16 kids on the Farm, only 3 are confirmed to be queer. They’ve all grown up in the same environment, so that statement is... meaningless. And in case Fox was referring to Rob and Des turning Penny “gay” well, they’ve also been close with Sam and he’s - what a shock - straight! So again - meaningless.

I’m gonna skip Fox shitting on my friend’s art, again - such remarks are low, pathetic and not worth discussing, let’s get to the juicy stuff.

It’s amusing, no, to have a pansexual – an individual who is attracted to ‘all genders’ - writing about gay men so much? How many genders are there? Thousands? 51? All on the spectrum? Regardless, tumblrinas are as big on their sexual identities as they are on their activism. In this case, we have a person – presumably female – getting wet over two dudes banging. I’m simply wondering if they packed enough lube and had their enemas. Maybe it was hidden in their stash?

Well, as a matter of fact - they didn’t have lube in their stashes because the only way to get it was to essentially ask one of the adults going to the city to get it for them, can you imagine a 16yo asking something like that? Death from mortification would be the most likely outcome.

Seriously though, I write what I like about whom I like. The only thing it has to do with me being pansexual is that I have more confidence in writing non-straight characters and relationships because I know it’s fine, and my queerphobic background can’t silence me anymore. Also - Desmond isn’t gay, he is bisexual. Rob is gay, true.

The amount of genders is still up for debate, in my personal opinion it’s all on the spectrum, and the only reason gender issues don’t come out in fiction as much as sexual orientations do is that gender in a lot of cases is a more personal thing than orientation, that’ll inevitably reflect on the inter-character dynamics. A lot of genderqueer people are fine with using male or female pronounces, which to an outsider would put them in respective categories. There are, of course, androgynous people, trans people, non-binary people and others for whom gender and the perception of their gender are important in day to day life - and there are more and more stories featuring them.

Also, on the note of pansexuality - it’s not “attraction to all genders,” it’s having an attraction to the person regardless of their sex or gender, those labels play an insignificant part in me deciding to pursue a relationship. (Also also there might be like a ton of things to discuss in regards to how sexuality relates to gender identities, but not here, not now)

And yes, I’m afab, so yeah, “female” and I do “get wet over the two dudes banging”. Fox got me. Now what? Shame Fox seemingly can’t conceptualize that I “get wet” because I wrote those boys in a story that contains a hard emotional journey full of heartbreak, and I do revel in the short happy moments they’ve got together. The sexual/sensual part is hot because it’s those particular two guys, not just random two guys.

Oh, and the last thing here - I don’t know if it’s news for Fox, but not all people in a homosexual relationship engage in anal sex. Especially teens in their first relationship. Just saying.

Let’s skip another personal attack part, here we go, sorry that the phrase is broken up

she educated a pansexual SJW into confirming every negative and dirty secret in the gay community: a brutal, abusive father, societal ‘homophobia’, drug and alcohol abuse, and feeling inadequate compared to heterosexual people.

Tbh, this is the part of the comment that had me confused for a moment, as I mistook Fox for one of the “hardcore gay” people, that think that with letters added to LGBT and by putting everything on the spectrum we somehow affect negatively the “real” gay community. The next paragraph cleared this shit for me tho.

Right off the bat - SJW isn’t a dirty word, Fox shouldn’t try to sell it as one. And I won’t label myself as a SJW, because as of now, I lack the commitment to the cause.

For the next part, I’d really, really like to quote a line from one of my fav vines “Bitch, where?” but for the sake of politeness, I’ll go with “Citation needed,” because from all of the things mentioned, the only one that is really prominent in the text is the “brutal, abusive father”. Societal homophobia isn’t exactly in the text (pay attention, teen Rob is cautious about adults being homophobic, it’s a valid fear a lot of queer teens have prior to coming out, but the general atmosphere isn’t homophobic. If I wanted it to be, adding a scene of public shame/shunning for someone caught in the act wouldn’t be hard), no drug and\or alcohol abuse (1 scene of teens trying drinks for the first time doesn’t count - surprise, teenagers try drinking), and feeling inadequate is mentioned once as a fear of a nine-year-old Penny, who has no frame of reference other than heterosexual behavior of the others, and is corrected almost immediately by Rob.

Was this about Assassin’s Creed? No, not really. Despite you being a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE fan, you don’t really respect these characters. Miles is a douchebag, it’s true, but he’s respected even by Otso Berg. That should tell you something.

(I’d like to see an example of Fox-approved, really-about-Assassin’s-Creed fanfiction, for a future reference, but alas, they’ve commented from as guest)

Interesting how me not liking or respecting Bill, canonically abusive douchebag known for alienating people because of how cold and manipulative he is, translates into me automatically not respecting every other character in the series.

Also, I don’t see how Otso Berg respecting William as an opponent should sway my judgment. I’ve mentioned here on my blog that I like Garnier de Naplouse as a villain - how self-assured he is, and how much quiet intelligence he has. Do I like him in general as a person? No. Do I respect him? No. He tortured people. I relished in seeing Altair murder him.

With Bill, him being a douchebag and abuser is a deciding fact for me, I do not respect abusers, no matter how great they may be. But tbh, on the leadership front, I can’t quite decide if Bill is a fine leader given the circumstances, or if the number of instances of him being canonically shitty as a leader is big enough to call for his removal.

You crafted him into a predictable homophobic dad, albeit he isn’t Christian. I was waiting for the Bible to be thrown at Desmond.

Again - citation needed. One instance in the text of Bill being homophobic. Not abusive, not overly-demanding, but homophobic.

(Spoiler alert - there isn’t one.)

As for the Christian associations - well, it’s in the tags. Literally. In this story, the Brotherhood is a cult, like the JWs, or the LDS church, but with Creed instead of a holy book. And I guess I succeeded in conveying the feeling.

In another Tumblr post, you wrote about how William is very abusive to Desmond, and how that is inexcusable. You bring up Nikolai and putting his child out in the cold as punishment, and earlier, cited Philosophy Tube in regards to solitary confinement (which really shows a lot). How do you explore this concept?

I wonder what me citing Philosophy Tube shows, except for maybe that I find Olly to be a very pleasant narrator and that the themes he touches on are rather interesting (Olly is precious, protect Olly).

I think I was rather unsubtle with showing what exactly abuse, inflicted by Bill, did to Desmond. And not, not “turn him gay”, about that in a moment. I don’t delve like deep into what was happening in Desmond’s head because this story is from Rob’s perspective. Not Desmond’s.

This story isn’t about the relationship between Bill and Desmond. It’s about Desmond not living in a vacuum all those years on the Farm.

Write William being SO abusive he turns his son gay. You make him so homophobic Desmond reacts by engaging in self-destructive behaviour and, in turn, becoming your average gay man. Your OC, Richard, Robert is merely the bridge.

“Bitch where?!“ (c)

1. Desmond isn’t gay. He is bi (because I’m keeping it as close to the canon as I can and I love Elijah to death). It’s in the tags, and it’s in the tags rather than stated because Desmond’s sexual orientation isn’t the point of this story, 2. Bill isn’t homophobic, at least not openly. There’s a different issue within the Brotherhood, the fact that they expect everyone born into the Brotherhood to have kids of their own. This is the source of Rob’s unease and perceiving adults as not reacting positively him or any other kid in a queer relationship. 3. If I wanted Bill to come off as homophobic, I’d portray him like that. Using slurs, for example. 4. Bill abuses Desmond not because he thinks his son is gay - he thinks his son is weak. In general. Not related to orientation. Like in the fucking canon. I’m merely turning the abuse factor up to eleven. 5. No one abused Rob, his father is shown in the text to be one of the best parents on the Farm - and Rob is gay. No one abused Penny, her family is mentioned briefly, but I specifically did it in a way that shows that they are nice - and she is a lesbian. Another boy, Colin, got abused by his strict mother - and he is straight. Desmond got abused by his father - and he is bi. There is no correlation between abuse and being queer. 6. Desmond's self-destructive behavior came from him being abused on a daily basis for most of his life and having no way out. Again, if it was linked to his orientation Rob would do that stuff too. He doesn’t.

You make these characters gay because, as a ‘queer pansexual person’ you can. But you don’t really make them human. In fact, every single negative stereotype you want to protect yourselves from our oh-so-bigoted society are confirming them, while simultaneously denying that they exist.

In short, everything and everyone acted the way I expected to, and was written the way I expected a queer pansexual to write them: meaningless, with only the sexual identity taking place. Funny how that’s the only identity politics that’s allowed. Everything else is oh so bigoted.

I’m not denying the existence of the stereotype, I’m just not acknowledging it as valid, because it’s not. It’s like blaming violence on video games - you’d be hard-pressed to find a youngster who doesn’t play a semi-violent game of some kind, with blood and murder, but every time someone brings up that another shooter was playing those games, they forget to mention how many youngsters play and don’t commit murder as a result.

The same way Fox keeps bringing up the “abuse turned Desmond gay” without acknowledging that there’s a ton of straight teens that get abused worse than Desmond in this story, or the two queer kids right in the text who weren’t abused.

It’s also funny that Fox is adamantly holding to the “sexual identity” thing, despite the fact that it came up only in 5th chapter (with 4 chapters before that having nothing to do with sexual orientation) and it’s not even an identity/orientation thing. It’s the “relationship between Rob and Desmond” thing and “Desmond is clinging to as much happiness as he can because he has none” thing. The only time orientation comes up in term of identity it’s when Rob talks to Penny and thinks of himself as a closeted gay man, but it immediately switches back into the “relationship between two people” again.

10.

You call yourself an AC fan?

Yes. Yes, I do. Ain’t nothing some bigot on the internet can do about it ;)

(If you read this through to the end, I applaud you, thank you for your time <3)

#Assassin's Creed #Desmond Miles #william miles #my writing #nothing & everything - AC #bigotry #queerphobia

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gleepotluckbigbang · 5 years

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Coffee Shop Writing Prompts by @veronicabunchwrites

To start you guys off, a prompt list by @veronicabunchwrites. Veronica is no longer on Tumblr, only on Pillowfort, so I can’t reblog, only repost, sorry about that. The original post can be found here.

100 coffee shop au writing prompts!

there’s something about people meeting and falling in love over hot drinks that presents such a cozy atmosphere. it’s no wonder that it’s a favourite. some of these prompts are classic because who can resist the tried and true?

01. clearly you’re going through a bad breakup because this playlist is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard and I’m begging you please change it 02. you’re my favourite employee because you always have my order ready on the days I’m running late to the office 03. I order the same thing as my boss in case something happens to their coffee and one day, you write your number on the cup I give to my boss 04. my friend swears that you can pick the perfect drink for anyone but I’m skeptical because there’s no way you can look at someone and just know their order - and of course, you nail my drink 05. I run the shop beside your bookstore and I’m trying to convince you that it could be beneficial to knock down the wall between our shops and you’re being a big pain in the ass about it 06. I hired you to make drinks not flirt with every customer that walks in and how dare you accuse me of jealousy, get back to work 07. you were a dick to my coworker so I’ve been writing insults on your cups and why the hell do you keep coming back here anyway?

08. I know you’re about to close and I swear I’ll give you a $20 tip, can you please just take my order? I’ve had the worst day possible 09. a $20 tip isn’t worth me staying open late, but then you burst into tears and I end up asking you if you want to hang around to talk 10. you’re the night manager who runs open mic nights and I’m the baker who starts at 3am so sometimes our paths cross and I like talking to you 11. you never order the same thing more than once and just as you’re about to get to the end of the menu, I start adding new things because I’m afraid you’ll stop coming in 12. I’ve been writing lame jokes on your cups because you’re the grumpiest person ever and you finally crack a smile 13. you always get my order wrong and I’m pretty sure you’re doing it on purpose just so you get a free drink out of it because employees have a crap discount 14. I’ve been working on this essay/project/article/etc. for the last ten hours and I’ve barely moved so you come over to give me something to eat and ask if I’m okay 15. I’m dragged to open mic night by my best friend, and while I’m ordering my drink, your voice fills the room and I’m mesmerized 16. there’s a poetry slam and while I’ve never gone on stage, I’m obsessed with your stuff 17. you were rude so I insult you and you just left a $50 tip??? who the fuck do you think you are? 18. I decided to use my personal (and massive) mug collection when I opened my shop and you start hanging around just to see which mug you’ll get 19. I open a cat cafe with a separate room for the cats that are all available to adopt, and you keep coming in to sit with them even though you’re allergic 20. I haven’t seen you in years but you just walked into my coffee shop and by your snooty attitude, you don’t seem to know that I own the place 21. I really don’t care that you’re a famous celebrity, you will stand in line just like everyone else and that’s that 22. this shop is really busy but I need their wifi, so could we share this table? 23. we’re working on our school project in this cafe and I’m pretty sure my group just figured out that I have a crush on you 24. I have a job interview and you're the clumsy employee who just spilled hot coffee all down my white shirt 25. I’m on the worst blind/Tinder/Grindr date and you ‘accidentally’ dump a drink on my date to save me 26. you’re a big city person visiting my tiny coffee shop in a small town and you’re so rude when you ask if we have cappuccinos that I lie and say no 27. I just bumped into my ex so I slip my arm in yours to pretend you’re my current partner even though you were just standing in line behind me 28. my umbrella broke and I just stepped into your shop soaking wet and you run upstairs to get me some towels from your apartment and I’m sorry I’m crying but this is the nicest thing that’s happened to me all week 29. my AC isn’t working at my apartment so I’ve been spending most of my spare time here and using your wifi and I think you’re flirting with me 30. I’ve been hanging out more because I sit at the counter to watch two baristas flirt (OT3 bonus!) / and you join me so we make a bet on when they’ll get together 31. I named my coffee shop Coffee Shop and you’re the customer who loudly talks about how stupid the name is 32. I’ve been sitting in the break room wondering how to ask you out on a date when you come in and announce you were just asked out by a customer (bonus if OT3!) 33. you’re a famous celebrity who ducks in to my quiet shop and asks if you can hide, and I mean, sure, but are you going to order something? I have to make a living here, dude 34. I know you own this place but dude, this song has been on repeat for the last hour and I will pay you to change it 35. I’m really nervous as I’m meeting a family member for the very first time and you’re the kind employee who sits with me to help calm my nerves 36. you’re staring at me and I don’t know why until you tell me I’ve been singing along to my music and I’m mortified because I didn’t realize 37. I saw your Help Needed sign in the window and you look busy so where are the aprons and how can I help? 38. every day I write a quote on a chalkboard on the wall and apparently you’re the author I just quoted but you’ve never shown your face in public before so why are you telling me? 39. someone left a note in the suggestions box that the barista is the cutest person they’ve seen and I’m laughing as my coworkers discuss who it could be when you quietly admit it’s about me 40. you just cut in front of me in line and I’m not in the mood to let it slide 41. I noticed you were on ao3 reading smut and when you go up to get something else to drink from the counter, I realize you’re reading the fic I posted twenty minutes ago 42. your dog and my dog just tangled their leashes outside the coffee shop and now they won’t leave each other’s sides, so do you want to join me at this table? 43. I know it’s not my place but your teenager seems to be mixed up in a bad crowd and I thought you should know they’re hiding in the bathroom crying right now 44. your father comes in weekly at the exact same time and orders the exact same two drinks because that’s what he used to do with your mother and you come looking for him 45. I really need you to put up this flyer on the community board but you’re sort of being a prick about it 46. you hire my band to come place on a weekly basis but the more time I spend with you the more time I want to kiss you 47. you’re my ex who I’ve never really gotten over and you just surprised me by paying for my coffee and I’m not prepared to see you 48. my coworker wrote my cell phone number on your cup when I wasn’t paying attention and now you’re texting me 49. after overhearing you order the eccentric coffee shop owner’s drink of the week, I warn you that it never tastes good (bonus if you convince me it’s great this week so I sip and suffer with you) 50. the last clue to my partner’s scavenger hunt is supposed to be here, and while I’m looking for it, I discover that you’re my partner’s friend who set the whole thing up (bonus: ot3) 51. I sold my business for millions when I was in high school and tried to disappear from the spotlight but I’ve just been spotted drinking your coffee and feel bad since you’re overwhelmed with the sudden influx of new customers 52. I overhear you talking to your friend about how you’re planning on meeting up with your ex and I can’t stop myself from butting in because that’s a bad mistake 53. I’m hosting a food-eating contest to raise money for charity at my shop and you seem to have an endless stomach that makes me a little concerned 54. I catch you in the act of placing your newspaper over a customer’s cell phone/wallet/etc. and then stealing it when they deny you money 55. you walk into my coffee just before close looking like a runaway bride/groom/princess/prince/royalty so I stick around to keep you company 56. meeting at the coffee shop feels like fate, but now we’re sitting here because I’m terrified to tell you my big secret 57. you’re a grumpy customer who doesn’t talk but you always have the most fun tie/socks/dresses/sweaters/etc. and I look forward to see what you wear next 58. I’ve been obsessed with your homemade soups and I always rave about them to the cashier but I didn’t realize you also make them until you surprise me with a new recipe 59. I rent out your shop for the evening to propose to my significant other and they dump me on the spot 60. I run a baking class one night a week after hours at my shop and you keep coming back despite being the worst baker ever 61. you left me a bad review so I’m tracking you down to yell at you and demand a retraction 62. you’re the contractor I’ve hired to build individual bathrooms so I can offer genderless options for people (bonus if contractor is trans/nb/gender queer) 63. I host a board game night every Friday and you always come in with your best friend and ask me to teach you a new game and I cannot believe you’ve never played Life before (or: insert own game) 64. I’ve been getting really creative with my foam art and I do some naughty-bits to amuse my coworker on their drink when you mistakenly take it and think I’m hitting on you 65. I’m wiping down a table when I notice that you left a cell phone number on the back of your receipt for your lunch and I ask my coworker if I should text you (bonus if ot3) 66. every time you come into my shop, I swear you have a new sticker on your laptop and I desperately want to ask about this one 67. you come in to steal the shop’s wifi for video calls with your mom/dad/family member and when they see me in the background, they think I’m your new partner 68. I really suck at my job but I desperately need the money and when I get fired for spilling your coffee all over you, you offer me a job because you feel bad 69. we’re coworkers who make out in the supplies closet and get caught by another coworker (bonus if ot3!) 70. someone enters my hot chocolate into a contest for the National Best Hot Chocolate and you’re the hot judge who gets snowed in town for a few days 71. you join me at my table thinking I’m your blind date and you don’t stop talking about how nervous you are for this date so I don’t get a chance to tell you that you have the wrong person when your actual date comes up and thinks you were hitting on me while waiting for them 72. I watch you pull out a flask and add alcohol to your drink and then you wink at me 73. I’m playing a game on my computer but I keep failing at the level so you tap my shoulder and tell me how to beat it (and we spend the rest of the afternoon in the coffee shop bonding) 74. I've been assigned a fluff article about the different types of people who spend their days at coffee shops but I can’t seem to figure out why you’re here (articles: x, x, x) 75. I found you curled up under a blanket asleep at my front door so won’t you come in, I’ll get you some food and give you a job 76. you’re my favourite actor in my favourite TV show but by the sounds of that phone call, you seem to be having a rough day so instead of flailing, I offer you some words of support 77. I don’t know how to spell anyone’s names correctly so I spell them phonetically and you always mumble your name so I just make up something 78. I bump into you and knock your coffee out of your hands and you look like someone just died because you’re having the worst week ever and can I make it up to you? 79. we met online and you suggest this place for our first date and I’m terrified you’ve catfished me or you’re going to stand me up 80. when people hit on me and ask for my number, I usually make up a number to put on their cups, and today I just happened to write your number on your cup so you call me out 81. you’re my significant other’s ex and you’ve invited me to coffee to tell me that I can do better and our connection is immediate 82. I’m in the middle of a rant about this book I’m reading and oh my god you’re the author in line behind me and I’m sorry, not sorry 83. you take a selfie and I photobomb you, but you don’t notice until the entire photo goes viral so we agree to meet back at this coffee shop 84. I’m sorry for laughing at you walking into the glass door/window, please let me help you up 85. I’m a little concerned that you might be too addicted to coffee since you always come down from your office to my little shop to get your fix multiple times a day but my coworkers think you have a crush on me 86. I’m expecting an important phone call but my phone is about to die and please, please let me borrow yours 87. I know your sign says ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ but can I please give you a really long explanation as to what has led to me desperately needing coffee without a shirt or shoes 88. I’m a witch barista and I charm your drink so that you have a better day 89. I’ve been trying to borrow this particular book that the local/college library only has one copy of and I just realized you’re reading it at this coffee shop and goddammit, why haven’t you finished with it yet? 90. some asshole just stole your purse/backpack without you noticing so I instinctively jump into action and chase him down the street to get it back for you 91. you’ve cut in front of me in line for the last three days by shooting me a charming smile and leaving me a little dumbfounded but today, that will not fly 92. I keep making work-related puns and you’re the grumpy coworker who refuses to find me charming 93. you sit down at my table and quietly tell me to pretend we’re talking because you’re trying not to be seen by someone and I’m so confused as to what is going on but you’re cute so I’ll roll with it 94. you order the same obscure drink from the app but I always miss you picking up your drink from the counter and today, I’m going to finally watch to see who you are 95. I don’t know who you think you are, but you really can’t make this shop your office unless you’re going to order more than one tea for the eight hours you stay here 96. you read tea leaves as a hobby so I always bring my cups to you when I’m finished 97. you look like you’re having a bad day so I get some icing and draw a smiley face on your cookie 98. I overheard you talking about how you wish my shop had board games so the next time you come in, I watch your reaction to my new shelf of board games 99. you’re the very kind employee who brings me my favourite tea when you witness my public (and loud) breakup 100. this coffee shop is owned and run by queer people and is so very gay with our decor and the names of our menu items, and I’m pretty sure you’re not as straight you think you are because you keep coming in and asking a thousand questions 101. you dropped to your knee to tie your shoe but suddenly, people are congratulating us on getting engaged and we just scored free coffee so we roll with it 102. I’m wistfully watching a couple when you come up to the counter to order something and get frustrated with my daydreaming

#gpbb #gpbb prompt #coffee shop au #gpbb prompt: coffee shop au #trope of the day

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 5 years

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We’ll Carry On - Chapter Thirty Four

We’ll Carry On Tag

General Content Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Substance Abuse, Abandonment, Minor Character Death, Transphobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociation, Bullying, Homophobia

March 15th, 2017

Logan was having problems. Not with his new name, although it was frustrating him that he couldn’t figure out a good middle name that he liked after finding his first name was a snap. No, he was having problems because he realized he still liked guys.

He wasn’t pretending to like them when he thought he was a girl, but now that he knew he was a guy, that attraction was still there and he wasn’t feeling any attraction to any of the girls at his school. He wasn’t sure how his parents felt about transgender people, but he knew they definitely didn’t like gay people.

It was hard, hiding that he was trans and gay. He just hoped one day he’d be around people who didn’t mind either of those things. And, if he was feeling bold, he hoped there was someone out there who would be romantically interested in him despite being trans.

September 23rd, 2019

Logan walked into Jack’s house with a grin. “Thank you for letting me in, Mister President.”

“It’s my pleasure, Mister Vice President,” Jack said with a laugh, closing the door. The two practically ran up to Jack’s room to hang out and get homework out of the way so they could talk about whatever they wanted. “You know my parents don’t mind us talking about more ‘mature’ things around them, right? We don’t have to hide in my room to hang out and talk about things.”

“Neither do mine, now,” Logan said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable doing it.”

“All right, fair point,” Jack conceded, walking into his room and sitting on the lower bunk of his bed, while Logan took Jack’s desk chair as they both pulled out homework.

They worked through Calculus, and History, and Logan finished his English while Jack struggled with his Physics homework. When Logan finished the required reading of the night and Jack was still struggling, Logan came over and sat next to him on the bed, ignoring the flutter in his stomach as he did so. “Here, let me help,” Logan said. “You said yourself that you need to visualize the circuit if you ever want to finish this fast, so I can sketch out the circuit for you here and you can do it on the others.”

Jack wordlessly passed over his homework and pencil and Logan made a small drawing of the circuit in the margins. “There you go,” Logan said, passing it back.

“Thanks, man,” Jack said with a grin.

“It’s not a problem,” Logan shrugged off.

“No, really, Lo. Thank you,” Jack insisted.

Logan smiled even as his heart hammered in his chest. He scratched the back of his neck. “Anytime, Jack.”

Jack finished his physics homework quickly after that and the two clambered into the top bunk of Jack’s bed. When Logan was staying with Jack, he always took the bottom bunk to sleep in. But when they were just hanging out, they’d both regularly squeeze themselves into the top bunk. It was a tight fit, but neither of them minded.

Some time passed, and Jack and Logan were still lying in Jack’s bed, laughing at nothing in particular. Jack was scrolling Tumblr, and Logan was staring up at Jack’s ceiling. His stomach fluttered uncomfortably when he looked at Jack and he didn’t fully understand why. Jack was his best friend, and even if Logan developed feelings for Jack, he didn’t want to mess up what they had.

When Jack touched Logan’s wrist lightly, it felt like electricity shot through Logan’s veins. He looked over at Jack, and Jack offered him a grin. “You’ve been stuck in your head all afternoon,” he teased lightly. “And I know you’re not stressing about homework because we finished it all.”

Logan shrugged and said, “You know how it is. Tests coming up, peers being...well, however they choose to be that day, and with the new school year...it’s all a lot to take in.” Jack chuckled and Logan felt his ears get hot. “Something funny?” he asked, voice cracking in the middle of the question.

“Sometimes...you can be so oblivious,” Jack said. “Not in a bad way, but just...you see, but do not observe.”

Logan propped himself up on one arm, tilting his body towards Jack’s. “What don’t I observe, Sherlock?”

Jack’s hand reached out to touch Logan’s free wrist, and it lingered on his pulse point. “My romantic advances,” Jack said softly.

“Wait. You...you like...boys?” Logan asked, brain stuttering to a halt.

“Boys, meh. Men? Hell yes,” Jack said, voice growing deep and somewhat sultry.

Logan’s eyes flickered over Jack. His tousled brown hair, the way his muscles were growing from doing lacrosse at school, the cocky grin he wore, the lips he had been dreaming about kissing for months. He moved forward in an instant, lips colliding with Jack’s until not only sparks, but an entire forest fire grew between them. Logan didn’t have much experience kissing anyone, let alone his best friend, but Jack. Jack knew how to kiss.

His movements were sure, mouth moving in time with Logan’s. Jack had one hand at the nape of Logan’s neck and Logan had a hand on Jack’s hip. Logan could feel the beginning of stubble on Jack’s upper lip, and he felt a small thrill go through him. This was real, this was happening. Jack liked him. He couldn’t believe it.

When they pulled apart, Logan was panting a little and Jack laughed. “Did you forget to breathe?!” he asked.

“For the first ten seconds, maybe,” Logan said. “Um. Does this mean we’re boyfriends?”

“Do you...want to be boyfriends?” Jack asked, running his hand down Logan’s side.

“Yes,” Logan breathed. “Yes, I would love to be your boyfriend.”

Jack grinned. “Then we’re boyfriends,” he said calmly. Firmly. No room for argument. “But seriously. How did you not know I was into men? I’m the president of the GSA, Lo! You’re my vice!”

“I assumed that you were...not an ally, but maybe bisexual, with more of an interest in girls,” Logan said with a shrug. “After all, a lot of the girls at school fawn over you, especially when you’re practicing lacrosse. And you seem to enjoy their attention.”

“Sure, I like attention, and yeah, girls are cute sometimes, but I prefer guys, Logan,” Jack said. “Why do you think I joined lacrosse? I get to have hot guys surround me every day for an hour after school!”

Logan barked out a laugh. “Fair enough, I suppose. So are you bi? Or pan?”

Jack considered. “Pansexual, I guess,” he said. “Though saying I’m bi is easier to understand for most people, so I generally use that.”

“Cool,” Logan said. “I’m gay, I think, but nonbinary people are cool, too. Occasionally feminine-aligned nonbinary people might catch my eye, but for the most part it’s guys and more...not feminine enbies.”

Jack shrugged. “You could be bi, too. Or you could just say you’re gay. And of course, the label queer is always open for you to use.”

“I’ll probably use queer, honestly,” Logan said with a shrug. “It’s easier for me and everyone else.”

A comfortable silence fell over them. Jack looked at Logan and kissed his nose. “Do your dads know you’re queer?”

Logan paused. “If they didn’t, they’re gonna find out when I get back home and tell Roman that he was right, apparently.”

“About me being your boyfriend?” Jack asked with a grin.

“He knew I liked you before I knew I liked you,” Logan said. “He’s probably going to ask when the wedding is.”

“Tell him it’s after we graduate college, provided we’re still together then,” Jack said.

Logan glanced at him. “You serious?”

“Yeah, man. If we can date for six years and not want to break up by the end of it I’d love to marry you,” Jack said with a shrug. “I mean, I assume I would. That’s how that sort of thing generally works, from what I’m told.”

“As a concept, though, marrying someone feels kinda...hazy,” Logan said.

“Yeah, exactly,” Jack said. “Right now, I’m just happy to have you as my boyfriend.”

Logan could feel his cheeks start burning like a wildfire, and Jack grinned, kissing him on the lips, briefly. “Should we get something to drink and tell my parents the good news?”

As they got down off the top bunk, insecurity flared up in the back of Logan’s mind. “Are you sure they’ll approve?”

“They already see you as a son, Lo,” Jack reassured. “They might make jokes about you becoming a son-in-law, but that’s the worst they’ll do. They’ll love to hear that I decided to do something about my pining.”

Logan laughed a little and let himself be led downstairs into the kitchen. When they got there, Misses Harkness was already pouring two glasses of lemonade. One look at the both of them and she grinned. “Logan, honey, your hair’s a little mussed up, and you have a little bit of stuff on your lower lip. If you don’t want the world to know you made out with my son a few minutes ago, you might want to fix that.”

Logan turned deep red and fixed his hair the best he could without a mirror and wiped the bottom of his lip with his thumb. Jack groaned. “Mom,” he said. “You’re gonna make him regret agreeing to be my boyfriend!”

“Jack, if I can stand you, with all your flirting at everyone, your dorky references to shows that I’ve never seen, and your passion for theatre without any desire to actually do something about it, such as trying out for the play or becoming the head sound tech, then I’m pretty sure I can stand your mom teasing me a little,” Logan informed him quickly.

“Well, if I can stand you, with all your obliviousness to anything romantic being shoved your way, your Doctor Who jokes which never ever stop, and your overall emotional threshold being similar to that of a small child before you get overwhelmed and can’t regulate your responses, then I’m pretty sure I can stand anything you and your family will try to throw at me,” Jack responded smugly.

Logan’s jaw dropped open. “Are you seriously trying to outdo me right now?”

Jack shrugged with a grin, accepting lemonade from his mom. “Maybe so,” he said.

Logan huffed and took his offered lemonade, taking a sip before he responded. “This is a battle you’ll lose, Jack Matthew Harkness, don’t test me.”

“Oh, you used my full name, I’m quaking in my boots!” Jack exclaimed, making an exaggerated terrified face.

Logan rolled his eyes and sipped at his lemonade. “You’re still being an a-hole, Jack, and I stand by that sentiment.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s one of the reasons why you like me,” Jack said with a grin.

“If you two are going to continue to flirt, please do it outside the kitchen, I actually need to start making dinner soon,” Misses Harkness said, shooing them away.

“Come to think of it, your folks are probably gonna pick you up soon,” Jack said, sounding a little disappointed.

“Well, I can grab my things and we can sit on your porch drinking lemonade until it’s time for me to go,” Logan offered.

Jack pointed at him with a grin. “You see, this is why I like you, Lo. You’re always trying to make the best out of any situation.”

Logan turned pink and scurried upstairs to get his things before coming back down and letting Jack lead them both out to the porch. They sat on the top step and took sips of their lemonade, just enjoying the silence between them. “So, I’m assuming we’re exclusive,” Logan said.

“Yeah, we’re both monogamous, so we’d be exclusive,” Jack agreed. “I don’t want to share you.”

“Nor I, you,” Logan said, sipping at his lemonade. “Although, if you’re worried about being out at school, and you want to continue letting girls flirt with you, I understand—”

“Hey, Lo, no,” Jack said, draping an arm around Logan’s shoulders. “I don’t care what other people think of me. You go to school every day risking someone getting mad at you, just because you take testosterone and use he and him. Compared to you, I don’t have nearly as big a chance of people insulting me. And if they get offended that I’m dating you, well, it’s their problem. I don’t want us to be a secret if it doesn’t have to be. I want people to know that I love you, and if they have a problem they can come to me and I’ll show them what bigots get when they try to insult either of us.”

Logan smiled softly. “A knuckle sandwich?”

“A knuckle sandwich,” Jack confirmed. “And maybe more, depending on how much they insult you.”

“You don’t have to fight on my account, Jack,” Logan said.

“Maybe not, but I want to,” Jack said. “I want people to know that if they mess with you they’re messing with me.”

Logan smiled and kissed Jack softly, which Jack returned with a little laugh into Logan’s mouth. A moment later they were interrupted by a loud cheer and an, “I knew it!” coming from the driveway.

They jumped apart and Logan turned toward the offender with a glare. “Shut up, Roman! We only started dating today!”

“I knew it! I knew you two would start dating eventually!” Roman crowed. “Come on, Ami’s back home making dinner and I’m sure Dad will want to hear all about your new boyfriend!”

Logan sighed and turned to Jack. “Looks like I have to go.”

“I gathered,” Jack said, giving him a quick peck on the lips and taking his lemonade. “Go on, I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

“See you tomorrow,” Logan said with a smile on his face.

When he got in the car along with Roman, Dad was sitting there, smiling at him. “What?” Logan asked.

“I just figured...it’s about time that you and Jack got together. Everyone knew you two were pining except for the two of you,” Dad said.

Logan leaned back in his chair and groaned. “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Okay,” Dad said. “Do I need to tell you and Roman about safe sex practices?”

“No!” Logan and Roman exclaimed at once.

Dad laughed the whole way home.

#we'll carry on #sanders sides fanfiction #logan sanders #roman sanders #emile picani #our creations #danger gays

13 notes · View notes

chasholidays · 5 years

Note

bellarke but clarke and murphy have a weird understanding slash ride or die friendship that they don’t admit to

according to my notes, this also coincidentally fulfills @pepperf’s prompt for Bellamy in makeup, so although tumblr will not let me tag you I hope you see this anyway

Before Clarke and Murphy became friends, Clarke didn’t really think Murphy had friends. He was the kid who sat in the back of every class and made sarcastic comments and never seemed to really interact with anyone else. If someone had told Clarke that he just ceased to exist when he exited her line of sight, she would have believed them. He certainly never seemed to do anything with a lasting impact.

And then, he shows up at the first GSA meeting of tenth grade.

As someone who joined thinking she was on the “straight” side of the alliance, Clarke does get that not everyone who joins the GSA is gay, but she has trouble imagining Murphy just showing up to be a supportive ally. Even if he is somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum, Clarke is still kind of shocked he’s showing up. She didn’t think Murphy participated in groups of any kind.

Not that he really participates in GSA either. He introduces himself only as “Murphy” every time they go around the circle for names/orientations, and then he sits in the back and cracks quiet jokes when the opportunity arises. It’s like having another class with him, except that no one is forcing him to be there. This is what he chooses to do with his time.

“It’s weird, right?” she asks Finn. He doesn’t belong to the GSA, but she gives him the updates.

Finn shrugs. “I guess. Why do you care what Murphy does?”

“I just don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to understand everything, princess,” he teases, and Clarke just rolls her eyes. Obviously she doesn’t have to understand, but she still wants to.

Sign-ups for the group trip to Pride happen in May, and Murphy is behind her in line, so he’s there when Taylor asks, “You’re coming, Clarke?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Pride is for LGBT members, not allies.”

“I’m bi, remember?” It’s still new, saying it out loud, a word that tastes clunky in her mouth, but it feels right. After she and Finn break up, she’d like to date a girl. That’s an experience she wants to have.

“Oh, well, still,” says Taylor, like that’s somehow all he needs to say.

Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up. “Still what?”

“Well, you’re with Finn. I feel like it doesn’t look good for straight-passing people to be in the group.”

Clarke’s jaw drops, and she’s glad it’s anger that floods her veins and not humiliation. Taylor’s never been her favorite person, but even from him, this is a lot.

Defenses crowd her mind, but so do the inevitable counterarguments. She’s had this debate with herself so many times, if she can really be bi if she’s never kissed a girl, how she can know, how she can consider herself a part of the community when she’s dating a guy. She got through all of those things for herself, but if Taylor doesn’t think she’s bi enough for Pride, she doesn’t have any better argument than “I think I am.”

Unexpectedly, Murphy pipes up. “Hey, dipshit, she’s bi, that means she can go to Pride. What’s the holdup?”

“And whybare you going, Murphy?” Taylor shoots back. “I still don’t know why you’re here in the first place.”

“You don’t get to vet people’s sexual orientations,” Clarke says. “We all heard Pride isn’t for allies, so anyone signing up is queer. Like me.”

“I’m asexual,” Murphy says. “Is that good enough for you? I’m genuinely curious,” he adds. “If you think bi girls with boyfriends don’t belong, I’m guessing you’re not real big on letters that don’t even make the main acronym.”

Taylor’s jaw works. “Obviously, if you think you should come, I can’t stop you, I just think you should consider that it’s not entirely appropriate for–”

“You know what? Fine. I’m not coming with you.” Clarke grabs a sharpie from the bucket on the desk, crossing her name out so hard it’s probably going to bleed through to the table. “But I’ll see you there. Because I belong there.”

She’s out of the classroom before she realizes Murphy followed her.

“If I stayed there I was just going to have to talk to Taylor,” he says, with a small shrug. “Didn’t seem worth it.”

Clarke smiles with half her mouth. “Yeah, I guess not. You want a ride to Pride?”

“If you’re driving, yeah.”

And just like that, they’re friends.

Junior year, motivated primarily by spite and a mutual dislike of Taylor, Clarke and Murphy start a Queer Student Union, open to everyone who identifies as queer. To Clarke’s surprise, Murphy not only cares about LGBT issues, he’s actually shockingly informed about them. He identifies as biromantic asexual, although he admits the biromantic part feels a lot more theoretical than the asexual part, mostly because he has yet to meet anyone he likes enough he wants to be romantic with them. But he’s theoretically open to it. He’s done a lot of reading on not only sexuality stuff, but feminism and general activism, mostly because he seems interested in it. Academically, he’s not the greatest, but he’s intellectually curious, likes learning when he’s engaged.

When Finn cheats on her a few months later, he eggs Finn’s car, which is one of those things that Clarke would never approve of and would have told him not to do if he asked, but since he didn’t and she had no idea until several days after it happened, she doesn’t have to even pretend to not be happy.

It feels like the kind of relationship that might not survive college, but they both end up in Boston. Clarke’s at Harvard because she’s that over-achieving legacy kid, and Murphy goes to UMass because Clarke pointed out he could actually get a BA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies while still avoiding the classes he hates, which is his ideal learning environment.

It turns out he’s a good litmus test for her pretentious Harvard friends, less because he’s a good judge of character and more because it’s useful to see how other people react to him. Clarke doesn’t really care if they like Murphy–Murphy doesn’t care about being liked much–but how and why they dislike him and how they deal with it tends to give her some good insight into whether or not they’re worth befriending. She and Lexa break up in part because Murphy and Lexa never figure out how to coexist, while Murphy and Niylah’s weird friendship is part of why Clarke starts hooking up with her.

“He’s like all the parts of you that you want to pretend you don’t have,” Niylah observes one night, and Clarke frowns.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re supposed to be–The perfect princess. Rich, straight A’s, top of your class at Harvard. And then there’s Murphy, your excuse for not liking people. The scapegoat for all your worst instincts.”

“You have a very weird idea of what makes good pillow talk,” Clarke teases.

“I just think it’s interesting. Have you ever heard the term morality pet?”

“No, psych major.”

Niylah doesn’t bother responding to that. “It’s a concept in fiction. You’ve got a bad character you need to humanize, so they have a morality pet, the sympathetic character that they actually treat well, the one who’s there to make you think the villain isn’t all bad. Murphy’s your immorality pet. He’s the asshole you like because part of you is an asshole too.”

“I can’t believe this is what you think about right after sex.”

Niylah grins, rolls over for a kiss. “I just think it’s an interesting dynamic. The two of you simultaneously make each other better and worse people.”

“That sounds about right,” Clarke agrees, and tugs her closer, ending the talking for a while.

She and Niylah never get quite to being in a relationship, so when they graduate, they don’t break up so much as move apart. Niylah goes back to California, and Clarke stays in Boston in a cheap two-bedroom apartment with Murphy.

Sometimes, she thinks about what her ninth-grade self would think about her life: openly and comfortably bisexual, working in a museum instead of going to med school, living with John Murphy. Even her post-college self has trouble believing it’s real. But it’s good.

After six months of largely successful cohabitation when Murphy comes home late on a Saturday night with a giant bottle of flavored vodka and says, “We need to get drunk.”

Clarke never needs to be asked to drink shitty liquor twice. “Okay.”

Murphy roots around the fridge, frowning when all he finds is Coke and green powerade. “I thought we had lemonade.”

“Nope.”

“Well, this is going to taste shitty with the mixers we’ve got,” he says, frowning at the vodka, which is apparently raspberry flavored.

Clarke grabs the Coke. “If we drink the first one fast enough we won’t taste the second one.”

“Cheers to that,” says Murphy, and pours one generous slosh of booze into his world’s okayest sister mug and another into Clarke’s novelty Pikachu glass.

They’re adults.

After a glass and a half of raspberry-Coke vodka, Clarke asks, “Why are we getting drunk?”

“You need a reason?”

“I don’t, but it was your idea. What happened?”

Murphy makes a face, then drains his drink. “I think I’ve got a crush on a girl.”

It shouldn’t be unthinkable; romantic interest has always been a theoretical possibility for Murphy. He’s always said he could like someone, but Clarke sort of assumed he wouldn’t. It was just hard to imagine what Murphy with a crush would look like, and even harder to imagine Murphy’s type. What does he even like, in a person?

She wants to ask about a thousand questions, but she knows better. Murphy would just shut down. So instead she grabs the vodka, pours him more, and tops it off with what’s left of the Coke. “What girl?”

“She works at the pawn shop.”

John Murphy is probably the only person she knows who, in 2018, not only goes to a pawn shop, but goes to a pawn shop regularly enough to have developed feelings for someone who works there. It’s just so painfully Murphy.

“Is she just being polite to you because you’re a customer?”

He snorts. “She’s not polite to me. She’s an asshole. I keep trying to bring in stuff to sell and she tells me to get better shit.”

“That sounds about right, yeah.”

“So what do I do?”

“Can you just ask her if she wants to get a drink sometime?”

He pulls a face. “Pass.”

“Can you figure out a way to see her outside of the pawn shop without actually asking her?”

“I think she’s in a band.”

“So you got me drunk to agree to go to your crush’s concert with you? I’d do that anyway.”

“Isn’t that weird? Like–going to her concert?”

“How do you know she has a band?”

“She told me.”

“And the concert?”

“There’s a flyer by the register.”

“Did she ever mention it?”

“I asked her what it was and she said it was her band and they were decent.”

“So that seems like a pretty normal way to express interest in someone. You can just say you were curious or bored or whatever.”

“And you’re coming?”

“I’m coming.”

“Cool.” He groans and flops onto his back. “This already sucks.”

Clarke pats his shoulder. “You get used to it.”

Murphy’s crush’s name is Emori and she plays drums in a band called “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,’” which seems like a lot of name for one band, but Murphy tells her it’s an X-Files reference, so at least it makes some sense. There are four of them, two other women on bass and guitar, and the lead singer, a guy with messy black hair and sharp black eyeliner who looks too pretty to be a real person. He’s got a decent voice too, deep and kind of rough, an unvarnished kind of sound that Clarke feels down to her toes.

“Do you know any of the other ones?” she asks Murphy.

“Nope,” he says. “She was right, though, they’re not bad.”

“They aren’t.” She pulls her attention away from the lead singer to focus on Emori, taking her in. She’s cute, with a big face tattoo that must have hurt like hell to get, and long brown hair pulled away from her face by a red bandanna. She’s wearing a black tank top that leaves her shoulders bare, showing off more ink that clearly continues under the fabric.

She’s not who she would have pictured for Murphy, but she also doesn’t know who she would have pictured. She’s always thought Murphy’s type was more about personality than appearance.

Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” are the first of three no-name local bands in the set, and Murphy, being the disaster that he is, wants to just leaveas soon they’re off the stage. But Clarke sees the lead singer making his way to the bar, so she makes a quick decision.

“I’m going to go make friends with the rest of the band,” she says. “If you want to run away, you can go, but you’re own your own.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, but she hears some spluttered protests that let her know he is following her, and bites back on her smile. It’s definitely a little bit selfish, but only a little; Murphy did ask for her help. Sort of.

There’s just enough free space next to the singer for Clarke to wedge herself in, and the guy glances over, mildly curious, but doesn’t say anything. She checks around for Murphy, finds he’s hanging back, and leans in to murmur, “Sorry, I’m trying to force my friend to flirt with your drummer.”

The guy’s eyebrows go up. This close, he’s even prettier, tan skin dotted with freckles, a small scar placed perfectly to bring attention to his lips, the eyeliner the icing on the cake. “I’m not sure how this is helping your friend flirt with my drummer,” he replies, just as low.

“If I’m here, he can’t talk to me.”

“My drummer eats guys alive.”

“I think he’s into that. That seems to be his type.”

“Huh.”

Clarke flags down the bartender and orders a beer. “You guys are really good,” she offers.

“Thanks.”

Okay, so, he’s hot, but aloof, and a little too full of himself, if Clarke is honest. The band is really good, but they’re playing a small venue in Cambridge. They’re not big enough that he should be above talking to people, so it’s probably just a personality trait.

“What’s your friend’s name?” he asks, not looking at her.

“Murphy.”

“He probably doesn’t have a chance.”

Clarke shrugs. “I’ll be proud of him if he just gives it a try.”

“Low standards, huh?” says the guy.

“He doesn’t get out much.”

“So, how long do I have to stay here for this?”

Clarke blinks. “Sorry?”

“You’re hitting on me. How long do I have to stay?”

“I didn’t know you were in a big hurry to be gone. I assumed you were at the bar because you wanted a drink. But I can go hit on someone else. Is your bass player into women?”

That perks him up, because he’s apparently the kind of asshole who thinks girl-on-girl is hot. “Possibly, but she’s got a boyfriend right now. Sorry.”

Clarke cracks her neck as an excuse to look around. Murphy is talking to Emori and she’s smiling, which means Clarke’s work here is done and she can leave the surly asshole alone. It’s always a shame when a hot boy in eyeliner lets her down, but she’ll live. “Oh well. Murphy’s set, so you should have a good rest of the night.”

He looks a little surprised. “Oh, uh, yeah. You too.”

Clarke raises her glass in salute and slides away from him, moving down the bar to a less crowded spot. She doesn’t let herself look back to see if he’s watching her, but she does let herself hope.

It would serve him right.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Murphy doesn’t come up with a better way to flirt with Emori than going to her shows, which means that Clarke is also going to her shows, to be a supportive friend, and getting to know Emori and by extension the rest of the band.

Emori, at least, she likes. She’s quick and funny and takes no shit, which is perfect for Murphy, and despite what the surly singer said, she does seem kind of fond of him. It’s hard to get a great read on her, but she keeps coming to talk to Murphy, and Clarke doesn’t think she’s the type to talk to people unless she actually wants to. Their whole relationship seems to be based on talking shit, but that’s got to be Murphy’s type.

Raven and Echo–the bass and guitar players, respectively–are cool too, easy for Clarke to hang out with while Murphy’s busy with Emori. She likes them all, really. It’s not a hardship.

Except that there’s Bellamy, too.

She does want to like Bellamy, but she can’t get over thinking he’s just kind of an asshole. He’s never really as aloof as he was that first night again, seems to warm up once he’s realized that Emori doesn’t seem to be planning to kick Murphy’s ass, but he’s still kind of cold. And part of her can’t help feeling like she should get over it, that it’s unfair of her to hold a grudge for one night, but she just can’t figure out how to get along with Bellamy.

She does try, but from what she can tell, he doesn’t. She asks him about the band and he deflects, talking about how they’re not really that good, it’s just a hobby. She asks what his real job is and he makes a face, says it’s boring. It’s not as if every conversation is like that, but she always feels like he’s not that interested in the conversation, like he’s waiting for her to just stop talking to him.

“So stop talking to him,” Murphy says, with a shrug. “Who cares?”

“Do you like him?”

“I guess. It’s not like I’m making him a friendship bracelet or anything. Does it matter?”

“You’re my barometer, remember?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You want to date Bellamy?”

“No!” she says, but it’s too late. Murphy’s running with it.

“I guess he’s probably kind of hot? Not my type, but makes sense for you. And you’re pissed because he’s not interested.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like this is news.” It seems like a safer tactic than arguing. “I told you I tried to flirt with him the first day, it obviously didn’t work.”

“Yeah, but you’re still pissed,” he says. “So you’re still into him.”

“I want him to be into me.” If she can’t tell Murphy these things, what good is he? “I don’t get why he’s not.”

“Okay, but if you’re not into him, who cares? He doesn’t like you, you don’t like him, no harm, no foul, right? Way better than the alternative.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. He should like me. At least as a person.”

“I think he’d be good for you.”

That actually does surprise her; she’s not sure he’s ever offered an unsolicited opinion on whether or not she should date someone.

“You do?”

“Yeah, probably. He’s a pretty decent guy and we have fun hanging out. Doesn’t take my shit and gives as good as he gets.”

“But he’s not into me, so I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

“Because you wanted to talk about him. You started it.”

“I was complaining.”

“You complain about him a lot.” Murphy groans. “Look, like him, don’t like him, I don’t give a shit. But if you don’t like him, stop caring what he thinks, stop talking to him, and let it go.”

It’s exactly what she should be doing; she flops onto his stomach with a groan of her own. “I hate you she says.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, I owe you an apology.”

It’s a week after her conversation with Murphy and Clarke has admitted, at least privately, that she still wants to make out with Bellamy and still might kind of like Bellamy, despite all logic and reason.

And now he’s smiling at her, nervous and casual in a t-shirt and glasses at Raven’s game night, and she has no idea what’s happening.

“You do?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re talking about and we can go from there? Because I’m kind of lost.”

He clears his throat. “So, uh–I didn’t know Murphy’s name was John.”

“And you’re apologizing to me for that?”

“The first night we met you said your friend was flirting with Emori, and I knew she liked this customer of hers named John, so I thought you were distracting me so some asshole she didn’t like could slobber all over her. So I was annoyed.”

“And you only just realized Murphy was her customer crush?” she asks, stuck between amusement and disbelief. “It’s been months!”

“I know! I thought he just got lucky and she liked him, but then she said John was coming tonight and I said I hadn’t met him and the rest of the band made fun of me for like an hour.”

“It kind of sounds like you deserved it.”

He ducks his head, smiling sheepishly, and Clarke smiles too. “Anyway, I feel like–I never knew how to explain without telling you I thought Emori was into someone else. And I still kind of thought you were a dick for trying to distract me with your feminine wiles.”

“I was joking!”

He laughs. “Yeah, uh–anyway. Sorry?”

“You don’t really have to apologize for that,” she says. “It’s not like you were–you’re pretty polite mostly. I thought you had a bad night. And didn’t like me much.”

“Yeah. But I want us to do better, so–can we start over?”

It’s strange, because part of Clarke feels like they never actually started. Like this is actually going to be their first try.

Which makes it easy. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

It should fix all her problems, or at least all the problems she’s admitting she has, but less than two weeks later she slams a bag into the island and says, “I bought vanilla vodka and orange juice and I want it to taste like a creamsicle.”

“Won’t work but okay,” says Murphy. “What did Bellamy do?”

“Who says it’s about Bellamy?”

“Can we skip the bullshit and you just tell me?”

Clarke considers. “Drink first.��

They make it through the first round and then Clarke says, “He likes me now.”

“And you hate him?”

“No, I still want to make out with him.” She sighs. “You were right, I’m totally into him, and now we’re getting along, and everything sucks. He’s really cute.”

Murphy takes another drink of his vanilla screwdriver. “So ask him to make out. At least you’re not trying to tell him you’re into him but not into sex and you’ve never actually dated anyone before. Why are you complaining?”

“Have you figured out a way to mention you’re ace yet?” she asks.

“Nope. It doesn’t really come up in conversation. No one’s like, how much does everyone love sex? They just assume the answer is a lot and don’t bother asking.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Keep complaining about your thing, that helps.”

She flops onto her back. “He’s just so pretty.”

Murphy pats her leg. “Yeah, that sucks.”

Murphy’s problem seems easier to solve than hers, especially in early May. Clarke gives it a week and then, when they’re out drinking with the whole band, asks, “Oh, is anyone going to Pride? Do you guys need a ride?”

“You’re going to Pride?” Echo asks.

“She’s bi,” Bellamy says, even though Clarke’s never told him that. “Or pan?” he adds, glancing at her for approval.

“I usually go with bi, but as long as it covers no gender preference I’m good.”

“I’m biromantic asexual,” says Murphy. Clarke didn’t warn him, but he’s pretty quick with this stuff.

“We always go to Pride because that’s how we got to be friends. Some asshole in our high-school GSA told us neither of us belonged there because we weren’t queer enough.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Bellamy. “Well, I could use a ride.”

Clarke will admit to startling, just a little. She didn’t really think anyone in the band was queer, had just wanted to give Murphy an excuse to share his sexuality. It was always possible she’d get a taker, but it hasn’t seemed likely.

But Bellamy wants to join them. If he’s gay, that kind of sucks, at least for her. But he’s bi or trans–into women at all and queer, basically–he might be her dream guy.

“I know it’s shitty to ask why people want to go to Pride, but I still want to know,” Murphy says.

“Also bi,” says Bellamy, so, yeah. Clarke wants to marry him. “I’ve never actually been to Boston Pride, though. I don’t like going alone.”

“Then you should definitely come with us,” says Clarke, and he gives her one of his melting smiles.

“Thanks.”

“Can I come along as a supportive outsider who would happily make out with a girl if the opportunity presented itself?” Emori asks.

“Definitely,” says Murphy. “Just don’t talk about ally pride or whatever and we’re good. And kiss a girl if you can, I hear it’s cool.”

Echo’s interested to learn that he’s never kissed a girl, and she and Emori and Raven get drawn into that conversation, leaving Clarke and Bellamy off on their own.

“So, that first day we met,” she says.

Bellamy cocks his head. “What about it?”

“I asked if anyone else in the band liked girls and you kind of–” She shrugs. “I thought you were one of those guys who thinks girls kissing is hot and for your benefit. But you were excited I was queer.”

He laughs. “Shit, I didn’t know you noticed. But yeah, I always like meeting more bisexuals. I was rethinking you.”

“Where did you end up?”

“What do you mean?”

She smiles. “You rethought me, so–what did you end up thinking of me?”

He bites the corner of his mouth, glances over at his band mates. They’re not paying attention that Clarke can tell, but she knows Murphy still has part of his focus on the two of them. The rest of the band probably does too. That’s the kind of group dynamic they have going.

Bellamy must be thinking the same thing. “You want to get another round?” he asks.

“Maybe at another bar.”

He laughs again, this bright, pleased laugh, at odds with his rock-star makeup. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Outside, he says, “I thought I should have picked you up when I had the chance. I was kicking myself for–I’m still kicking myself for not flirting back.”

Her own smile creeps up, starting small but never stopping growing. “You still could.”

“We could just get a drink at my place.”

“I’d love to.”

“How much do you think Taylor Macdonald would hate us going on a double date to Pride with our straight-passing partners?” Clarke asks.

Bellamy pauses in his application of glitter to Murphy. Apparently he’s as good as makeup as he is because he taught his sister how to do hers, which works out really well. Clarke sucks at makeup; it’s nice that they have complementary skill sets.

“Straight passing?” he asks, dubious.

“His words.”

“Dick.”

Murphy grins. “I figure if I’m pissing off Taylor Macdonald, I’m doing something right. I hope every time I’m happy, he feels like someone walked over his grave.”

Clarke offers her hand and he high-fives her; Emori smiles. “I’m starting to see why the two of you are such good friends. It didn’t quite add up before.”

“Spite and stubbornness,” says Clarke.

“Our main motivations in life.”

“Exactly,” says Emori. “It makes perfect sense.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bellamy teases, but Clarke just smiles.

“Whatever. We’ve got it all figured out.”

#idleafterthoughts

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