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parkezra · 1 month

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✨ hello, beautiful citizens of jongnorp! ✨ how the hell are ya?! my name's ryan (h/h, 25+) and i'm so thrilled to finally be posting one of my eight muses' (yes, i know... i know 😅) intros! first up is one of my all-time favorites, ezra park! he's currently working as an influencer who mostly creates fashion, lifestyle, social commentary, and makeover content, but he'll be expanding his résumé with exciting new projects very soon! 👀 below, you'll find a quick breakdown of his life, as well as bits and pieces of his personality. please 💖 this if you'd like to plot!

to keep things simple, he was born and raised to a rather liberal family in queens, nyc. both his parents made good money, he felt very supported, loved, and accepted, and honestly speaking, he had a rather idyllic childhood. i've written this muse before, but in this update of him, i wanted to give him a less grim upbringing.

however, his brighter history has created new flaws. being that he grew up in a rather privileged environment, it's made him ignorant to many things, and upon moving to seoul, he's been hit in the face with plenty of life's harsh realities. he's on his own now (for the most, part, anyway—his older half-brother is also in seoul), he's starting a career for himself, and it's his first time in a part of the world that's dramatically more conservative than the safe haven he surrounded himself in back home.

is he losing his mind? sort of, but he's doing keep his feet on the ground. he'd love it if you joined him on this new journey he's on!

ezra park is a hedonist. he's someone who'll never say no to another drink, or a second slice of cake, or going home wrapped around the arm of a handsome someone. he's over-indulgent like that, and substantially sensual, as well. he's someone who will catch a man's attention by eye-fucking him across the room, then moments later, appearing only to whisper the most delicate compliment in his ear; hoping that the sweet scent of his breath and the feeling of it ghosting along the other's skin is enough to reel him in for a night of fun.

if there is one thing that ezra park values, it's beauty. why else would he host a show on his channel that highlights attractive men from around the city, mostly by giving them makeovers? why else would he be teaching people how to upgrade their closet with clothing that accentuates their best features? why else would he be interested in ensuring that he never leaves the house looking anything other than immaculate? however, he realizes that, like most things, beauty is subjective, and he aches to discover what others find people, too.

ezra park is an individual, much to the chagrin of his grandparents' home country. he's still not gotten used to the stares of his elders whenever he enters public transit, or the glares he receives from his peers when he's a little too "flamboyant" in a public space, but he likes to think he's learning how to comfortably coexist in a place that doesn't fully understand him. after all, that's kind of all he can do. he made the choice to learn about his heritage and expand his career by relocating, and it's a choice he has to live with now. at least for the foreseeable future.

ezra has a show on his youtube channel where he gives handsome men from around the city (often male models, drag queens, and less often men from off-the-street) to interview and give makeovers to. he asks them questions about growing up in korea, and the knowledge they have on queer individuals, and their opinions on certain topics. in addition to this, he also hosts queer people of korea to ask them, specifically, about their experiences living in the country; hoping to shed awareness on stories told by marginalized voices. these could work as connections!

he's been in the city since february of last year, so it's been around a year and he's likely made some friends! maybe they could be your muses?

he's also likely slept around with plenty of men. he's no stranger to jongtaewon, and even hongdae, so if your muses frequent these areas, they've likely ran into him or ended up in his bed.

does your muse watch his content? do they love it? hate it? have them tell him! it'll be a fun time either way!

i'm honestly down for any and all connections, and this is already so long, so let's come up with something incredible together! 🥺💖

#JONGNO:HELLO #/ late to the party but i hope you forgive me!#/ been wearing my “🍑” hat if you know what i mean... 👀

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party-gilmore · 3 years

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Thinking about all the lesbians from the bar adopting Eliot and like.

On a more sentimental note.

Can we just.

He would Family them so fucking good???

Especially those who's families had rejected them like.

Every generation on down the line, from the elder dykes to the baby gays, he'd be such a sweet son/baby brother/annoying middle sibling/older brother/dad figure to them all, and like.

Of COURSE he soaks that up just as much as they do and if he thinks about it for too long there's a threat of waterworks so it goes in the box next to HardisonAndParker labeled "Well Don't THINK About It Then."

And he's always there to support them like as much as it's risky for him to interact too much with cops he's a bunch of the younger one's (and some around his age too, though the elders are a little more Handle It Themselves Like We've Always Done - Trust Me Sonny What Ever You've Got To Throw At Me Can't Hold A CANDLE To The Eighties) first call when they need a cishet-passing just-a-good-ol-boy sounding man to deal with an authority figure for them. He's the BEST at diffusing situations where police have been called or there's some Heartlander causing trouble. Sure he'd also LOVE to hit some of these fucks, but there'd always be some threat of retaliation later when Eliot's not available, you know?

And vice versa, they TRY and help him out, but it's always [Nate voice:] "you never admitted to needing need anything." So they bully him into accepting some comforts at least, even if they can't get the whole story out of him. And maybe there's one grizzled ex-vet, pushing 90 but still buff and ornery as hell. Tattooed every where. maybe she even runs the joint, used to be special forces herself till they found out she was lesbian (it might been fine if it were just her sexuality, but apparently her gender was a bigger issue) and started on a PMC tour of her own. She was good at what she did, and private companies were always a little more willing to look the other way in exchange for skill.

Anyways she not only knows The Look but also still keeps her ear to the ground, stays in touch with some old squad mates from the military days as well as some of her private security contacts. Spencer was WELL after her generation so the name doesn't spark anything until the boy comes in looking haunted as hell the night after The Warehouse, and she knows that look, so she starts digging.

The name gets her a heavily redacted service history, some spotty PMC employment records, and a frantic voicemail from a friend in Brussels telling her to stay the fuck away from Moreau's Dog.

She follows that name around a bit - it's like pulling teeth at first but when suddenly the news breaks that Moreau has conveniently just been imprisoned in San Lorenzo? it gets a hell of a lot easier. the only people who like to gossip more than freshly dumped pillow princesses are mercenaries whose NDA's have just been suddenly terminated - and gets a few more pieces of the story. Enough pieces to put together a decent picture.

Eliot heads right for the bar when he gets back to Boston, only to find it closed for a Private Event.

Damn.

He really coulda used just bein' around the girls for a bit tonight. After everything. Might as well head back to McRor-

"Bout time you got your ass back stateside, boy," comes Toby's gravelly smoker's drawl just as he turns to leave. "S'just you an' me an' a couple my ol' army buddies tonight, kid. We're gonna talk a bit then we're gonna drink a lot then we're gonna take all your money in a poker game. Get on in here."

And just like that Eliot's got himself a queer ex-vet ptsd support group too.

#toby as in tobias #it worked out well for her whenever she needed to codeswitch #because after she changed it at least when she had to deal with being male-passing she didnt have to get deadnamed #considering the way western-centric goyim always just assumed it was a mans name anyway #eliot spencer #and yeah i know hes already got a toby but whatever im projecting #maybe thats why he was so drawn to her in the first place #mayBE THATS WHAT WAS THE FIRST INSENSITIVE COMMENT HE MADE THAT STARTED THE FIRST FIGHT #like not even thinking about it as a microaggression just open mouth insert foot 'i knew a guy called toby once-'#then later after the Return and Apology he explained what he meant to say was she shares the name of someone who mentored him and changed #his life and he just. didnt think before he spoke about it.#lesbian bar au

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naamahdarling · 2 years

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Will you please post more about Surviving James Dean as you get through it? I'd really like to read it in the future, but I'd love to hear someone else's opinion on it currently.

I will try! I'm waiting to borrow it but I read for an hour last night and got through the first five or seven chapters.

It's very good so far. I know almost nothing about James Dean. Less than any random one of you, probably, but I'm actually enjoying coming into it cold and getting to know Dean as the author does.

Bill Bast is an excellent writer and it's a compelling story even if you remove the fact that it's an autobiographical book. Like, I'd read it just as a piece of fiction. He has a lot of dialogue in there, so it reads like fiction anyway. There's a lot of sadness in it, a sense of lost time, of very very old grief. And a sense that there's nothing left to lose, so might as well tell the truth. I'm sure Bast's memory of events isn't perfect, certainly most of the dialog is invented, but it doesn't ring false.

I'm looking forward to finishing it.

I would recommend it to young queer people just based on what I have read. This man is older than my father, and I'm in my mid 40s. It's a narrative penned by a gay man who grew up in the 40s not even knowing what gay was, who didn't know what queer meant besides "effeminate", who had no support and no community. No internet, no queer friends, no books in the library, nothing to teach him. And it's a story partly of how he came to understand what he was.

I think more of y'all terminally online young folks (not a jab, that's literally me as well) need to read narratives by and about people who use different language, who have experiences that don't fit neatly into labels, who struggled not just to accept what they were but to even know that there was a name for it. Because a lot of you don't get it. But you could, partially, if you read/heard your elders' stories. And you need to do that. You need to know your community's history and be ready to preserve and protect it.

This is a thing I am trying to do more of, myself, to the extent I am able, because I spent 20+ years walled off from my community, alone. So I'm in the same boat of needing to know more.

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redbeardace · 4 years

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August TAAAP Chat Notes: Sex Ed

This is a scattered bunch of thoughts and notes on some of the things that were discussed about sex ed in the August TAAAP Pride Chats. There’s no solid thesis here, but maybe a few conversation starters. Some of what’s here is a post-chat thought and wasn’t even discussed at all. This should also be taken as incomplete and not a full overview of what was discussed. (Notably, it doesn’t include much of what went on in the voice chats.)

[Cross-posted from Pillowfort.]

Include aces and aros. Unsurprisingly, one of the main things was that aces and aros should be included in sex ed courses.

Sex ed has gone backwards since the early 90s? Either I had a wildly advanced program in my schools (in a deeply conservative rural area), or the fallout of Jocelyn Elders and the “abstinence-only” nonsense of the Bush years completely obliterated the usefulness of sex ed. We had a program that spanned multiple years, starting with a single day vocabulary lesson and “puberty is coming!” warnings in the 5th or 6th grade, through a two week lesson about all sorts of things in 9th or 10th grade health class. We were told that masturbation and gay people and condoms and oral sex existed, although there were no details about how any of those things worked. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. But a lot of the people in the chats were talking about their sex ed, and it sounded woefully, frighteningly inadequate.

What is “sex ed”, anyway? School, teaching the basics? Information for adults? Training courses for professionals?

Cover the basics. The basics are important. Anatomy, menstruation, common medical issues down there. Cover what’s “normal” and what should be taken to a doctor.

What about other classes? How can a math teacher express support? Hang a flag. Tackle amatonormativity in story problems. Discuss it in the staff room. Point the sex ed teachers at aro/ace resources. Be out. Stories about aromantic people read in English class. Asexual people talked about in history. GSAs/Pride groups in school that are aro and ace inclusive.

Desire for sex or romance are not universals. Stop with the “Everyone wants it eventually”, and switch to something more like “a lot of people do, but not everyone, and it’s okay if you don’t.”

Reframe the discussion of “No”. Too often, in sex ed, it’s all about when you’re “ready”, with the implication that you will be “ready” one day. And when you’re “ready”, there’s the implication that you’re ready and willing for everything from that point forward. Like if you say “yes” to a date and you’ve opted in to all the romancey things, say “yes” to sex and you’ve opted in to all the sexy things. That’s not right. It should be more focused on what you want to do, and empower people to say “no” to things they don’t want. Discuss reasons for saying no, include “I just don’t wanna”. Normalize the permanent “no”.

Look for backdoor opportunities for inclusion. For example, the new Washington State Comprehensive Sex Ed law requires teaching of sexual orientations and gender identities as listed in the definition used by another section of state law. So if that other section gets updated to include aros and aces, the sex ed curriculum will also have to be updated.

Connect with the people doing the work. There are groups who build sex ed programs and lobby for them. Work with them to include ace and aro topics.

Beware the head-in-the-sand crowd. There is a very loud, very active anti-sex-ed lobby out there. In WA, they got the sex ed law put up for a vote. Some of their objections are that affirmative consent goes against their religious teachings, and that although they can opt out their kids from the lesson, they can’t opt out their kids from schoolyard talk, so your kids have to remain ignorant, too.

Fuck you, Kemper Freeman. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

How do you accommodate varying levels of interest and aversion, while still providing necessary levels of detail? The topic of sex ed is a bit of a minefield. Some people want to know all the things, some people want to know very very little. Some topics are dysphoria triggers, some topics are aversion triggers, some topics are just not interesting or of any practical use. There’s a baseline of information that everyone should know, and there’s a level of detail that the interested people should get. But how do you do that in a classroom setting? One suggestion was to allow people to freely step outside for certain topics. Another was to have an interactive lesson, where the student is able to adjust the detail based on their comfort level and interest. It would start out with a “default” level of detail, but would allow the student to request less detail or more detail for each topic. The less detail level would still have all of the baseline level information that everyone should know, while the more detail would go beyond a surface level summary. Likewise, images could be switched between text description, line art diagrams, and actual photos.

Resources! Scarleteen, Sexplanations, etc.

Discuss healthy relationships and consent. Provide practical examples. Not just how/when to say yes or no, but how to bring up things you want to do or are curious about. Include queer relationships. How to ask for what you want. How to know what you want. How to say no to what you don’t want. All relationships, not just sexual or romantic.

Reconsider segregation by gender. A lot of sex ed is done with a gender split, but does it need to be? If there is a value to such a split, how can it be made trans and intersex supportive?

Bring up body variations. There’s a wide variety of genital configurations, so mention them. Discuss intersex bodies. Discuss small parts, large parts, asymmetrical parts. This would likely be an appropriate place to include actual photos, because so many people said that actual photos were only used in the STD scare tactics.

Elaborate on “sex”. Too often, it’s discussed as just PIV to orgasm and that’s that. But what about things that don’t involve Ps or Vs or do involve Ps and Vs, but not the I? What about stuff before and after? What alternatives are there if you don’t like certain aspects but are fine with others?

Cover everyone. If there is a separation, each group should cover the same things, at least at some level. Everyone should come out of sex ed knowing about their own body and its processes, as well as about bodies they don’t have, and their processes.

Don’t “teach” through fear. STDs are bad, but they’re preventable with caution and mostly treatable in some form or another. Pregnancy typically isn’t desirable for high schoolers, but here’s a dozen ways to avoid it. Give direct information, don’t try to terrify people.

Mention pleasure. Mention the basics of obtaining pleasure, whether alone or with others. If anyone walks out of a sex ed course of any kind without knowing about the clitoris, it’s a failure. People should know that most clitoris owners can masturbate, and can experience pleasure from sexual acts, if done the right way..

Dispel myths and lies. Not everybody wants it. Vaginal penetration isn’t necessarily going to lead to orgasm. It’s not supposed to hurt the first time. You don’t have to have an orgasm. It’s okay not to know what to do. “Girls don’t want it.” “Boys will be boys.”

Toys. AFAB people don’t have to only use vibrators to masturbate. AMAB people can use toys.

What is “Attraction”? And along those lines, what is “Libido”? What do these things feel like? How do you know what you’re feeling? What are these experiences like for different people?

Hygiene. Give information about keeping various zones clean. Talk about the results of various activities, partnered or not, and what steps might need to be taken.

Porn is fake. Watching porn to pick up information about how to do sex is roughly equivalent to watching a crime procedural to learn how to become a cop. You’ll get a very skewed view of things. Pleasure isn’t always visible or audible.

Destigmatize it all. Sex is seen as taboo and secret, and not to be spoken of, and that attitude harms people. It prevents them from feeling comfortable to bring up important things or ask important questions. It prevents them from learning things they need to learn. It forces people into bad situations and mediocre encounters because they don’t know it doesn’t have to be like that.

Teach people how to learn. Sex is currently a subject fraught with misinformation. Porn or Cosmo are main sources of information, yet aren’t super accurate. People should be given tools to know how to find and evaluate the information.

Consent is bigger than the bedroom. Consent includes touch, jokes, conversations, etc. It’s anywhere boundaries exist.

More than just cis white male voices. So much of sex ed is heteronormative, amatonormative, tailored for specific cases, and mired in the ignorance of the past. Sex ed needs more perspectives.

#asexual #aromantic #sex ed

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aziraphaleisagender · 4 years

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boshberrysfanblogsfanblog replied to your post

“An old woman in Soho meets Aziraphale and thinks he’s her son who died...”

For the love of God herself, would you write like a bunch of bullet points for this? I don’t want to ask you to do lots of writing but this heals my soul and I beg of you to continue xx

Look I have a lot of stuff to do today

.......................but that can wait

The little old lady is Maude. She’s trans. Her wife of fifty years left her when she came out.

Maude sees Aziraphale at Pride and is struck by how his eyes are exactly the same as her son’s, and how he smiles at her and makes sure she and the other elders aren’t ignored or bullied. His entire aura reminds her of her son, who she misses so much.

Her son Thomas, Tommy, joined the army because he was outed at his job and he thought he could get a place away from conflict. No such luck. He was shot in his first month of active duty.

But Maude sees Mr. Fell, sees him being kind and also yelling at the street preacher trying to hand out homophobic pamphlets, and she sees her son. And she’s old. She’s tired. She thinks he’s her Tommy, come back to watch over his neighborhood that he so loved.

Aziraphale can feel the pressure of her love, can feel how it’s misdirected, but fuck it, he’s with the humans now. And he remembers Maude from her childhood, when she was ten and wanted to be just like him when she grew up. When she asks if he’s her Tommy, he smiles and says, “Yes. Hello, mum.”

Unfortunately, he forgot that old people can have child-like instincts. Maude thinks he’s her Tommy. Therefore he is. She does not forget this.

So Aziraphale starts dropping in to say hello, every week. He sits with her and they talk over cups of tea and trays of biscuits. Maude senses that he doesn’t remember much from being alive, but he remembers her, and he still loves her, and when she asks if she misses having a mother and father, he says, “No, mum. I missed you both. That’s why I stuck around. And I’m still angry that mum left you.”

When they’re not having deep discussions about the world, about society, about war and love and life after Tommy’s death, they talk about Tommy’s new life, and the scrapes he gets into with his godchildren and his partner. Maude can never get a read on if it’s one partner or several, because Tommy uses different pronouns, but always with the same love and exasperation.

Finally, Maude says, “Can I meet your partner?”

And Aziraphale pauses, then smiles. “Absolutely. We’ve got a date planned at the Ritz; you can come too.”

It takes longer to convince Crowley that this is a good idea, but finally she allows that this deception, while still a deception, is in good faith. She does not dress formally, but she leaves off the mini skirt for meeting Aziraphale’s “mother”.

Maude is delighted to meet Toni J. Crowley, who she pronounces “a lovely young lady” within fifteen minutes. Aziraphale can’t help laughing as Crowley fights a scowl.

Crowley starts coming to meet with Maude too, and they talk about Golden Girls together while Tommy/Aziraphale watches, beaming.

One day, Maude asks Crowley, “So, have you thought about children? I know Tommy can’t give me any grandchildren, but you two are practically married.”

“Ngk,” says Crowley, brain stalling.

“Um,” Aziraphale says, also stalling.

Suddenly, a bright idea.

“I... I did have a child. A son. I had to give him up for adoption. He’s about eleven now, and his parents are American. He asked to come stay with me for a while, though. Would you like to meet him?”

“Oh, yes, please!” Maude does not ask for the story. She senses it’s painful for Toni, and she doesn’t want to aggravate old wounds.

So of course when Warlock comes to visit Nanny, Nanny tells him all about this deception, and the boy just grins and says, “AWESOME! You’re a better mom than my biological one. Do I get to talk about you and Brother Francis being mushy when I was a kid?”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT”

(he does anyway)

And then of course the tale trickles to the rest of Soho’s queer community, who agree that protecting Mr. Fell and supporting an elder who gave so much to the community for her son’s sake is a Good Thing To Do

Cue absolute chaos as people forget to match stories, Warlock slips up in front of Maude and Aziraphale has to cover for him, Mrs. Dowling arrives in London determined to bring her son home, and the Them come to visit and immediately and enthusiastically accept Maude as their grandmother because she gives them sweets and tells them funny stories that make Uncle Fell squawk.

Crowley’s bad luck keeps getting close and she has to keep fighting it off with her umbrella (sometimes literally).

Warlock is LIVING for the chaos and also has a crush on Adam

#boshberrysfanblogsfanblog #Good Omens #Ineffable Husbands #ineffable spouses

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ayellowbirds · 6 years

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[image: a twitter thread by @LiamDel. Transcription follows]

TW: oldschool transphobia The thing about "don't use x term for x group" is this discussion really only exists online. Offline, there are many predominantly older people who identify in extremely individual ways that they spent decades fighting to be, that now get told they can't

I know trans men that call themselves lesbians for so many reasons - maybe they never go on T or get any surgeries because its an intrinsic part of their identity and who they are to have the body they do - it bears scars of being in punchups with skinheads and police violence.

They never had the freedom to choose which identity they were - they were dykes for decades before we were born, and they've led the Pride parade with Dykes On Bikes and let countless queer women find safe haven in their home and cared for so many gay men as they died in the 80s.

They weren't able to call themselves transgender. The language didn't exist. The internet didn't exist - I can't stress how small each of our worlds was back then, how the flow of information was so slow and sterile. The idea of BEING transgender/queer DID NOT EXIST for so many.

You'll see many older trans people that identify as 'crossdressers' or have zero intention of medical transition. They're too old for surgery or too poor or discovered they were trans yesterday. They have ZERO idea wtf a truscum is, they have never heard the term transtrender.

Some get 2 hours a week that they get to wear the clothes they want to, then its back to being an elderly person with a homophobic/transphobic manager and family. Some get fired anyway for misunderstanding who can see what on FB - and older people don't get employed again easily.

If a trans guy said they were a guy to a medical professional back then, they got put in an insane asylum. I know a guy this happened to. He's not even that old. Once the asylum was shut down - the only escape - he accessed T by trading E with trans women in the same situation.

He is poor as shit, and he has dedicated his life and money to helping young trans men that come to the support groups he runs and tell him "You're not allowed to say FtM anymore" and he has that term tattooed in his flesh as a medal of "fuck you" to society.

I know elderly trans women who are the epitome of grace and fire, for whom the term "transexual" was freedom from a cage. They, when given space, patiently point out to me that they are trans-sexual, not trans-gender, as they have always been the gender they are - woman.

Please educate and inform cis people of what the current expectations of them are in the current time in terms of terminology and thought. But you cannot then look back over your shoulder and say "oh and all the trans people that came before me - change your offensive identity"

The online community young trans people have access to is literally life saving, I know from experience. But I implore you to go to your local trans support group, and listen. Don't interrupt someone - they know their identity better than you. See, and hear, and think.

You will learn so much. You will find things that sit uncomfortably with you, and these are amazing opportunities to confront your internalised transphobia. You may find people you feel might not represent The Community how you want to be represented- what a great time to reflect

on the importance of making space for every nuance and facet of our community, and consider ways that you may not have realised of being more inclusive of everyone. You may see people that might come across as 'shameful' to you - and hearing their story, you may come to

understand that the only way they are alive today is by doing whatever it took to survive, however ugly. You may come to the realisation that literally every trans-aware medical professional was taught from the ground up by these elders, who had to literally beg for treatment.

And, hopefully, you will come to find deep and meaningful connection and kinship with people older, wiser, sillier and stronger than us. Please don't tell them what they are.

While you're here, I wrote a similar thread delving into the mental health stats of transmasculine folk and why they stand out from other LGBTIQ identities. This may help you frame older trans masc people in a new light. TW: everything around depression+++

[link to another thread here]

Adding here - if you feel like an older person is offending you with their outdated language, assume they've never heard of twitter or any conversations we have here, and say something like "have you heard why some people don't use x anymore?" They're usually excited to learn.

(If a t*rf shows up, consider not engaging - we have such a wholesome discussion happening here and you deserve better than spending time and energy on someone who won't listen ♥)

#trans history #long post

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madamehearthwitch · 6 years

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Liam The Gender Upender on twitter @LiamDel

And, hopefully, you will come to find deep and meaningful connection and kinship with people older, wiser, sillier and stronger than us. Please don't tell them what they are.

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garden-ghoul · 7 years

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fellowship of the bloggening, part 4...?

“maybe aragorn is in this one?”

We rejoin our heroes

AT THE SIGN OF THE PRANCING PONY

We begin with a brief description of the humans who inhabit Bree:

According to their own tales they were the original inhabitants and were the descendants of the first Men that ever wandered into the West of the middle-world. Few had survived the turmoils of the Elder Days; but when the Kings returned again over the Great Sea they had found the Bree-men still there, and they were still there now, when the memory of the old Kings had faded into the grass.

When the memory of the old kings had faded into the grass! I like that, I like that being where memory goes. Bree is also the only settlement where hobbits and humans live together! Sweet. The one inn in Bree village (presumably the Prancing Pony) is a haven for travellers and rangers, which is nice, because I assume the Dunedain don’t have many havens any more. They do have settlements though, right? I feel like I blogged about that a little while ago.

Our hobbits are let into the village by a very suspicious (and suspect!) gatekeeper, and followed in by “a dark figure that climbs quickly over the gate.” I can’t imagine Nazgul being undignified enough to climb something, so one hopes it was a friendly spy like some ranger. Anyway they get a room at the inn with absolutely zero fuss (and also zero cash changing hands) and then go into the common room to mingle. There are actually some Underhills there--if you recall, this is Frodo’s disguise name--and they just kind of assume he’s their cousin. Everyone’s very curious what Frodo’s doing, and he gives possibly the best answer for turning away suspicion: he’s writing a book on hobbits outside the Shire, which of course makes everyone clamor to give him information. And if they’re busy talking about themselves they’re not asking about him! I don’t know to what extent this was premeditated but it seems very clever to me.

There’s a human man who loudly implies that a bunch of his folk will be coming up here looking for places to live and may have to displace some other folk. And there’s a man in the corner listening with great interest to the hobbits. Frodo, the nerd, notices that his boots fit him well but are very dirty. The innkeeper explains that he’s a ranger and everyone calls him Strider because he’s always going about in a great hurry and has very long legs. I didn’t realize! That’s a cute reason to have a rather ominous nickname. Strider warns Frodo that Pippin is drunk and close to telling perhaps a rather revealing story about Bilbo’s last party, so in desperation Frodo jumps up on a table and makes a speech. This feels like one of those middle school memoir books. Anyway they make him sing a song; it’s an expanded version of hey diddle-diddle, and I remember being more excited about this than 90% of the everything else while listening to the audiobook on long road trips. Frodo gets overexcited about the success of his distraction and accidentally becomes invisible; there’s a great uproar, and now everyone wants to have a private word with him. I’m almost expecting three people to ask him on a date and he agrees with all of them and then he has to figure out how to go on three dates at once. But oh no! one of the people he’s going on a date with is secretly a Nazgul! How will he get out of this one??

Anyway first off it’s time for Frodo’s date with

STRIDER

Strider says he has some info... for a price. Frodo suspects he’s some kind of rascal, but in fact he just wants to come along for the ride. No doubt secretly commissioned to do so by Gandalf.

'Oh, indeed!' replied Frodo, surprised, but not much relieved. 'Even if I wanted another companion, I should not agree to any such thing, until I knew a good deal more about you, and your business.'

'Excellent!' exclaimed Strider, crossing his legs and sitting back comfortably. 'You seem to be coming to your senses again, and that is all to the good. You have been much too careless so far.’

I want this dynamic to continue. This would be a good ship imo. As I recall Aragorn is like 80 at this point but Frodo is 50 so I figure no harm done. We’re all astonishingly well-preserved old men here. I will be vigilant for further support for this ship.

Strider tells our heroes that he overheard them earlier and was already on the lookout for one Frodo Baggins; he tried to come talk to them earlier so they wouldn’t go to the common room and make a scene, but the innkeeper stopped him. "'Well, I have rather a rascally look, have I not?' said Strider with a curl of his lip and a queer gleam in his eye.” Hehehe.

So they have a talk with Strider and with the innkeeper and everything gets straightened out; Frodo finally gets a letter from Gandalf that was supposed to be send months ago, explaining his mysterious absence! But why didn’t Strider just say he was Gandalf’s friend?

‘I had to study you first, and make sure of you. The Enemy has set traps for me before now. As soon as I had made up my mind, I was ready to tell you whatever you asked. But I must admit,' he added with a queer laugh, 'that I hoped you would take to me for my own sake. A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship. But there, I believe my looks are against me.'

::( ::( Aw I love him... let him rest... I have such a soft spot for narratives about being hunted and having no haven and just wanting people to trust. In Gandalf’s letter there is a very nice poem about, presumably, being Isildur’s heir. Without knowing Gandalf put it down Strider quotes from it, and says “the verses go with the name Aragorn.” Also, for a guy who is concerned about looking intimidating, he does intentionally scare the hobbits quite a lot.

Merry returns (he was missing this whole time btw) and reports being, uh, enchanted by a Nazgul. Strider actually implies that the Nazgul, whose power is in terror, will drive some of the townsfolk to murder our hobbits! Good gracious!

Well, that’s all for tonight, I’m very tired. But as frustrating as it is I’m really digging the slow, natural progression from normalcy to epic quest. I think it really adds a lot, although it doesn’t make particularly good blogging.

#frodo/aragorn is a good ship #that's my hot take on chapters 9 and 10 #blog of the rings

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mitchellkuga · 16 years

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On Writing for the Muses

Published by The Creative Independent

Astrologer and author Chani Nicholas on the connection between astrology and storytelling, having the time and space to fully be a mess before you finally hit your stride, and understanding the audience you're writing for.

Your voice as an astrologer is so distinct. What was your journey as a writer?

I certainly don’t know anything about grammar and sentence structure—I was a really bad student. [laughs] I was in my daydreams all the time and I didn’t pay attention and I wasn’t good at homework. I also didn’t write consistently for much of my life, but I always remember when I would write things people would say, “Oh, that’s really beautiful, you’re a really good writer.” I had this natural need to express myself, but I never thought of it as any kind of way forward.

When I went back to get my bachelor’s in San Francisco I thought, “Would I really want to be as an essayist? Well, that’s stupid—you know you can’t make money doing that.” And that’s when I started to write astrology. I realized this is a way that I can actually write. So I put my passion for all the things I was learning about into the form of astrology. It helped me build a habit of writing consistently and it was that habit that eventually turned into everything else. It really just started with the habit of showing up at the same time every month or every week or, in the beginning, every full moon, that really hooked me into the relationship with writing.

Would you say the essence of your voice was there from the beginning?

Yeah, my weird sentence structure and all that? [laughs] That person never changed.

Your book opens with a love letter to your wife Sonia Passi, who is the CEO of FreeFrom, [a nonprofit dedicated to financially empowering victims of domestic violence]. How does your relationship inform your work?

It’s very necessary for me to be part of some sort of social change in order for me to feel, somewhat, like I can sleep at night. My ability to support her and her work in the ways that I can helps me to feel engaged. That is a really healing part of our relationship. She also works on chaninicholas.com with me. Within FreeFrom, Sonia is an incredible leader—she’s gifted in a lot of ways, but that’s one of the ways in which she’s extraordinarily gifted—so she teaches me how to be a leader in my own life and business, and about how to create the best kinds of habits for work culture. We don’t just want the work that we do to go out in the world and only help the people that receive it—we want ourselves included in that equation, we want the actual workspace to be as healing as the work that is being produced. It has to happen at home first. She’s taught me about that.

And then there’s just the basic… well, it’s not basic, but I’ve never had somebody believe in me the way that she believes in me. Someone who has that kind of watchful faith, who’s that mindful. It has helped me to take risks I don’t know if I would have been able to take otherwise. It has helped me to develop in ways that I didn’t know were possible.

A lot has been said about the particular resonance astrology has with queer folks. I’m curious about the other side of that equation: if being queer informs your approach as an astrologer?

What I learned from some of the elders in the queer community—whether they’re Black feminists, indigenous feminists, POC feminists—informed everything that I am. It informed how I see the world and everything that I write. If it’s any good, it has someone’s teaching in it that I’ve gratefully received. So my queerness, I mean it should be clear: I think we have to push back against the currents that are trying to sweep us up and say, “Fuck this. This is actually the way I need to take up space in the world.” Even if we can’t take up that space externally, for safety reasons, I think it’s really important if we allow ourselves to take up that space internally. Astrology supports that, because it only ever speaks to your essence in a nonjudgmental way. So as queer folks living in this place in history we need these systems of knowledge that support our understanding of ourselves to say, “You are you. This is exactly what was meant for you. This is exactly who you’re supposed to be.”

How do you interpret the link between astrology and storytelling?

The story that we have about ourselves—and about each other, but it’s essentially about ourselves—is so incredibly important. Astrology is a map of your life. It tells a story of your life and if we can work with it in a way that feels affirming and also in a way that challenges us—not to stay complacent, not to stay in places that are comfortable or quelling our creativity—then it can be used to help us tell our story in a really wonderful way.

Like, everybody knows what Saturn Return is now—the story of our Saturn Return is always so magnificently perfect for that person’s chart. Even if it was extraordinarily painful and challenging, it’s something that helps us to shape, contextualize, tell the story of our life and the choices that we had within that story. It’s still a choose-your-own-adventure. Astrology would say, “Okay, this is the story that we’re in. What are you going to choose within this setup?”

You mention being a late bloomer in the introduction to your book. What did you gain from leaning into your calling later than is culturally expected?

I was such a mess in my twenties and thirties. Like I really, really wasn’t ready. The moment I was ready for it, I felt like it came. I needed all those years to heal. I needed all those years to figure myself out. I’m not someone who naturally has a really thick skin, so learning in public for me, like it is for a lot of people, was really challenging. I’m really glad I lived out a lot of mistakes offline. I’m really glad that I wrote a lot of awful things that didn’t ever see the internet. I’m glad that I got to, you know, like really fuck up and find my way through it. And I don’t know if that’s a cop out or not, but I just needed that time to not be inside the fun house of success. Because success does not make you happy, it just magnifies what’s already there.

Personally, I needed to be really humbled by doing work that I didn’t want to do for a long time. It was a way of me developing my spiritual practice. In jobs that I hated, I would pray or do affirmation and breathing exercises all day long, because I was so miserable that if I didn’t I was sure to get fired. [laughs] Working through the despair was a big part of my journey. Working through the despair of not having “made it” and having to learn how to love and value myself anyway, even though I hadn’t fully established myself in any kind of way that felt really meaningful or connected to me. And then it took me a long time.

My whole story really is about disconnection and abandonment. You know, the childhood story. And so the astrology came along and I kept refusing it and rejecting it, but it was the one thing that, when I started to get into it and write about it, was the one place I felt connected, and it never abandoned me. I had to learn how to not abandon myself and not abandon it. And the more I turned to it the more I felt this internal relationship with it. That was like a lifeline for me internally. It was like, there’s something here, there is energy here. I can keep putting energy into this, and it keeps feeding me.

So much of your business depends heavily on digital platforms. What is your relationship to social media and how do you avoid burnout?

Oof—I get so burnt out. I really do. So like, 90 percent of the time I’m posting something that I’ve created out of the need to create it, and probably 10 percent of the time I’m forcing something and posting it because I feel bad that I haven’t posted something. I’m not as consistent as, you know, I should be for business purposes. I don’t post every day, I don’t do all that stuff. But I do feel like it’s a creative outlet for me that’s kind of compulsive. I know that when I feel pain or when I feel my own kind of sorrow, the way that I feel back in control is to be creating something. That is where I find my agency and maybe it’s where I distract myself—which I don’t think is such a bad thing—but it is from a place of wanting to be able to do something about either how I feel or something that I’ve come to in therapy. [laughs] Like, oh, that thing! Yeah, how can I bring that in? How can I communicate it to people? Is it useful? Is it relevant? Do I make another fucking meme about something or should I just shut up?

Do you have any tendencies as an astrologer or writer that you find yourself actively fighting against?

As an astrologer, I’m always trying to understand what I’m not witnessing or how I’m not seeing the picture. As a writer I’m always trying to think: If this is a square and I turned it on a corner, it would be a different shape—how could I look at it from that additional angle? I really feel like I’m trying to learn how to be a better storyteller, how to point to things that are in support of what I’m trying to illuminate, like rabbis do. I’ve heard a lot of rabbis tell incredibly woven tales: they start with, “It happened on a Saturday,” and then they transition to something that happened in the world, and then they go into a cloud and it’s like, “Oh my god, how do they do that?”

How do you balance the day-to-day tasks of running a business while still giving yourself the necessary space for creativity? Do those two things feel separate or are they pretty intertwined at this point?

My god, that’s a lot of what I’m doing right now. We’re trying to create, again, habits. I’m trying to help Sonia help me help the people we’re working with. I’m not good at it and it’s been total chaos mode and just flying by the seat of our pants, trying to figure it out and fit it all in.

I’m at the space now where I have to block off creative time—it has to be just itself. And then I have to have time for meetings, for email, for all of the other business things that have to be separate from the creative time. Otherwise it’s too easy to let yourself be distracted by all the busyness of the day. I really have to quarantine my creative time. I’m really trying to carve that out in my everyday schedule, Monday to Friday.

Why did you decide to write a book?

I’ve thought about that many days. Why? [laughs] You know, publishers started reaching out to me in ways that made me feel like, “Okay, it sounds like a time to write a book.” I know that writing a book in terms of being a business legitimizes you in some way. And then I felt like there wasn’t a book for beginners to learn the core principles, to understand the meaning of your chart in a very fundamental way. There wasn’t a book I could point to that I didn’t feel was kind of problematic in some way—which is also fine, people can read around things, but I wanted to write my version of it, my kind of updated version. It’s the book I wanted people to read when I was teaching courses.

How do you define success in your work?

Success is feeling like I didn’t let panic or fear ruin my day. That I was able to be present and thoughtful, and that I was able to show up. That I was able to be in the day and creatively, thoughtfully responding and not reacting to what was happening. Because every day something chaotic happens and I need to be able to roll with it in a way that doesn’t tax the fuck out of my system.

How have you been doing that lately?

Well, I fail a lot and I talk about it with my wife and friends. If I fuck up with somebody then I make sure that I apologize right away, or change the behavior right away, or a combination of both. And then I’m trying to remember to breathe. Just take a couple of deep breaths and feel my seat in the manic-ness of everything. That’s the thing I think that helps me the most.

You’ve said in a previous interview: “I actually just write to please the muse I’m writing for or with.” Who is that muse, and do you ever write with a specific audience in mind?

I’m always writing for my people. You know, like I’m always thinking about those people who I don’t know yet or maybe never will, and those that I love and those that I respect and those whose work I know but might not know personally. I’m always having conversations in my head with the things that I’ve read during the day, or have read during my lifetime that have shaped me in some way. Those are all my muses.

And then there’s just an energetic presence when I’m writing that we’ve all experienced some version of. I’m trying to get in line with it. And when the sentence lands in the way it wants to, there’s an energy or lightning or something. My friend Barry Perlman describes it as a little ding-ding-ding. [laughs] Like, yes, you got that. You got the golf ball in the hole or whatever. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it feels so epic.

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mastcomm · 4 years

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Artist-Run Galleries Defy the Mega-Dealer Trend in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES — The gallery M+B sold out its show of surreal, cloud-dappled landscapes by Leo Mock over the summer. The work was enigmatic, with images of long, birdlike legs stepping through the paintings. The official “artist bio” was also mysterious, saying only that Mr. Mock had graduated from ArtCenter College of Design and “lives and works in Los Angeles.”

But those in the know soon discovered that Leo Mock was actually the alias of one Steve Hanson, a local art dealer pursuing his sideline career. Leo was his uncle’s name; Mock, his mother’s maiden name — but it works as a jab at the art market, too: “People don’t like artists having two careers,” said Mr. Hanson, a founder of the pioneering Chinatown gallery China Art Objects. “I’m an old punk rocker and all of those musicians take pseudonyms,” he explained by phone.

How to exhibit your own work is just one of the challenges facing artists who open up shop as dealers, a deep-rooted tradition that is thriving these days across this art-obsessed city. Another is juggling the demands of making art while running a gallery, two careers not known for reliable revenue streams. But a surprising number of artists in Los Angeles have been opening commercial spaces anyway, giving the city’s gallery scene a scrappy energy all its own and providing a strong counternarrative to the idea that visual culture here is defined by the recent influx of New York and international galleries.

These spaces run the gamut from funky weekend-only apartment venues to larger spaces with regular hours, but they tend as a whole to have a more adventurous spirit. As Mr. Hanson puts it, “The Home Depot-fication of galleries is one reason why artist-run spaces are so important.”

Last year alone saw the opening of Real Pain Fine Arts by the artist Peter Harkawik near the Underground Museum; Murmurs, a welcoming gallery-cafe complex downtown founded by Morgan Elder and Allison Littrell; and La Loma Projects, which Kirk Nelson runs out of his living room and garage in Pasadena — not far from the artist Dani Tull’s two-year-old gallery Odd Ark. More established examples include Smart Objects, Five Car Garage, Bel Ami, Big Pictures L.A., Moskowitz Bayse, Night Gallery, Commonwealth and Council and the Pit. (The last three will have booths at Frieze Los Angeles, the art fair running Feb. 14-16, in a special section devoted to local galleries.)

Most of these galleries follow a traditional 50-50 sales split with artists, but none are as high-overhead and profit-driven as the blue-chip galleries now in town.

“L.A. has a long history of artist-run galleries — it’s where so much experimentation and innovation take place,” said Bettina Korek, the director of Frieze Los Angeles. She called the model an alternative to the usual white cube and “a great reminder that art can happen anywhere.”

Amy Bessone is a Los Angeles painter and sculptor with a high-profile New York gallery (Salon 94) but she still supports artist-run galleries at home: She had a solo show at the Pit last year and has work in a group show at La Loma Projects now. She credits these spaces with generating a “sense of solidarity and community,” as well as “bringing a lot of artists out to see their shows.” Their openings are also inclusive, she said, complete with “children, dogs, friends of friends, and sometimes tacos,” minus the fancy after-opening dinners.

Chadwick Gibson, founder of Smart Objects, contends that “making art makes you more attuned to what’s going on” in the culture. “A lot of galleries will say they show new or emerging artists,” he added, “but if you go back you’ll find that they showed at three artist-run spaces first.”

He started his gallery in Echo Park at the end of 2012 specifically to hold an exhibition of his own work — screen shots of gallery and museum interiors he printed from Google Art Project, where the operator’s camera is caught in the image, a way of turning the Google eye on itself. He has just leased more space next to the gallery with plans to turn it into an arcade.

Devon Oder and Adam Miller, the wife-and-husband founders of the Pit,

met while getting their M.F.A.s at ArtCenter. Both worked for the artist Sterling Ruby, and in 2014 they opened the gallery next to their studios in Glendale, in a former mechanic’s garage. (The mechanics’ pit is a still-visible feature of the space.) She shows her photography with the Portland gallery Fourteen30 Contemporary, while he exhibits his obsessively patterned paintings at various local spaces.

“In our branding, we like to say we’re an artist-run space,” said Mr. Miller, calling their business “collaborative” in the spirit of musician-run record labels like Dischord Records or Lookout Records. They produce zines for many of their shows (doing designs, printing and binding in-house) and are known for their flexibility in scheduling.

He remembers a big fair two years ago when four out of five artists could not make their deadline for delivering artworks to be photographed. He supplied older artwork instead and rescheduled the shoot. “When those things happen, instead of hammering artists about deadlines, we are more likely to pivot and accommodate the creative process,” he said.

As a figurative painter, Emma Gray of Five Car Garage said she realizes “how long it can take for an artist’s vision to come in — I hold the torch for them.” Her old-fashioned training in portraiture at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in London (“no electric lighting was allowed”) also helps her “talk to painters about painting.”

She founded the gallery in 2013 after moving to a home in Santa Monica that had a large custom-built garage for a car collector. Now, the garage is the gallery, with a meditation studio on the property that she uses for community sound baths, breath work, and performances involving her artists, such as Alison Blickle (a practicing witch) and Lazaro (or “L,” an alchemist). In her own studio next door, Ms. Gray is currently working on a series of “fire” paintings based on her experience fire-walking in Santa Fe.

Eve Fowler, a co-founder of seminomadic Artist Curated Projects, says that giving artists agency was the goal of her program, started in 2008 out of her own apartment with a colleague, Lucas Michael. “We had so many friends who were good artists and didn’t have shows. We also felt like artists don’t have any power,” she added — so early on, they invited artists to share the decision-making and organize the shows.

Her last show featured optically “tricky” paintings by a graduate student in fine arts, Kate Mosher Hall. But now that Ms. Fowler’s own queer-forward, text-based art is gaining traction — a recent film is heading to the New Museum in New York for a screening — she is not sure she will continue the gallery.

On the flip side, some artists who found their calling as gallerists have decided to postpone their own art careers, perhaps permanently. Davida Nemeroff of the downtown destination Night Gallery, says she stopped making work in 2016 when her gallery partner left and she had to take over all operations. “I realized from my own artists how much time and energy you need to put into your practice, and I just didn’t have that,” she said.

Young Chung, a founder of Commonwealth & Council in Koreatown, said he “went back in the closet as an artist” and stopped making work in 2012, two years after opening the space in his apartment. At that time, he said, “a Getty curator came to see one of our artist’s works but then the conversation gravitated to my own work — in that moment, I realized I had a conflict of interest.”

Every artist-dealer contacted for this story acknowledged the potential conflicts when juggling the two roles: whose work are you really promoting? Most have included their own work in an occasional group show but said they would not give themselves a solo show, with Ms. Gray saying she feels like it’s “largely unethical to cross the line.” Ms. Fowler said: “I just didn’t think it would look good. I thought other opportunities would come up, which they did.”

But Mr. Gibson, who opened his space to have a venue for his Google project, conceded, “I understand why people might think it’s tacky, ” adding, “it’s O.K. if the artists you show are good with it.”

Some gallerists sidestep the conflicts by refusing to promote their own art. Robert Gunderman rarely showed his own work while running the influential gallery ACME with Randy Sommer for 22 years. But after the gallery closed in 2017, Mr. Gunderman reinvented himself as an artist, with two strong shows of his lushly textured abstract paintings organized by the curator Lauri Firstenberg.

It turned out that Mr. Gunderman had been painting fairly consistently, and discreetly, all along. “Only a few people knew I had a studio,” he said. “And I would tell them I had six cats there ” to keep them away. (Visitors to Frieze can see his work in a pop-up space called The Street & The Shop on the backlot of Paramount Studios.)

As for Leo Mock, better known as Steve Hanson, he is now busy painting in Mérida, Mexico, where he recently moved with his wife, Tuesday Yates. But he has not given up his idea of running a gallery. To that end, the couple is currently rehabbing part of an old bus depot in Mérida. Still confounding the art world, they plan to call it China Art Objects.

The Pit, 918 Ruberta Avenue, Glendale, Tuesday-Saturday

Smart Objects, 1828 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, Thursday-Saturday

Five Car Garage, open Saturdays and by appointment, [email protected].

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