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the-dragongirl · 3 years

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Hello tumblr. I have returned from a long period of inactivity, because I must bring the good word to the corner of the Star Wars fandom that used to be my main fannish home: there is a new era of Star Wars canon that was made just for our taste. It is called the High Republic.

WHAT IS THE HIGH REPUBLIC?

The High Republic is an giant multi-media project being carried out by the Lucasfilm story group to create a brand new era of Star Wars canon. It is set a few hundred years before the prequel era (so, a long time after the Old Republic era), in a period of peace and stability within the Republic. It currently includes several English language adult novels, a YA novel, two serialized comics, a manga, some short stories, and some short video blurbs published on facebook and youtube. A TV show for Disney+ has also been announced, but is a few years off. This project is unique in Star Wars, in that all of the different parts are being written together by one writing team, and are coordinated to tell a cohesive story. Also, what has been announced is just the beginning – they have stated that there will be three different sections of the High Republic, and everything we have had announced so far is just part one. As a note: this is an era for which there was NO pre-existing canon in Legends, so it is totally new territory.

OKAY, THAT’S NICE, BUT WHY SHOULD I BOTHER TO CHECK IT OUT?

There are SO many reasons why the High Republic is worth your time to explore. I will try to outline some of them here below the cut (without any significant spoilers).

IT IS A LOVE LETTER TO THE JEDI

This is the era for everyone who loves the Jedi and wants to understand how they got to the point they did in the prequel era. It shows Jedi at their best: saving people, working together, being completely in tune with the Force (in so many beautiful and original ways), demonstrating creativity and flexibility and being rewarded for it, actually thinking through the ethics of things like the mind trick, and DEALING with their emotions rather than repressing them. It shows us how the rigid Jedi culture was saw in the prequels was a corruption of something that was originally healthy and uplifting. Jedi in this era are allowed to be flawed, and to grow, and have a community that supports them in doing so. This is the Jedi culture so many of us created as fix it fic for the prequel era, but made canon.

IT IS AN ERA OF HOPE

There are some serious problems in the High Republic Era. Without spoilers, the era opens with a terrible humanitarian crisis, laid over the Republic equivalent of the New Deal from US history. We see a lot of examples of people doing their best to be good to each other, and working for a more just and kind galaxy. They acknowledge that things are not perfect, but people from many different backgrounds (Jedi, politicians, farmers, pilots, business people) work together to try and make things better. I don’t know about you all, but with the darkness we see in the world today, I NEED some of that optimism in my escapist media. The High Republic provides that.

IT WILL GIVE YOU FEELINGS

The existing material so far is structured to really let you emotionally invest in the characters and their struggles. Unlike with many eras of Star Wars canon, characterization is not sacrificed for the sake of plot (though never fear, there is PLENTY of plot). That means there is huge scope for empathy. I’m not going to lie; I cried within the first three chapters of Light of the Jedi, as did several other people I know. It is POIGNANT in a way that feels truly genuine.

IT IS FUN

The writing team understands that, in the end, Star Wars is space fantasy. If your space fantasy is nothing but serious, gritty grimdark, it becomes pretentious and unbearable. So, for all that there is some heavy content in the High Republic (VERY heavy content – the Nihil should really have their own content warning), it has many moments of levity that keep it from taking itself too seriously. For example, the High Republic made Jedi bodice rippers canon. Also, characters like Geode exist (yes, that rock there is a CHARACTER). The result is something which honors the spirit of Star Wars, and keeps you engaged without being tedious or ridiculously depressing.

THE WRITING TEAM HAS DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

The main writing team consists of five people: Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Charles Soule, Daniel José Older, and Cavan Scott. You will note that includes two people of color, two women, and one out Queer person (in fact, one of the writers is all three of those things). This is a far cry from the white-cis-straight-man-dominated writing teams we have seen in the past. And when they bring in other people to the project, they make a point of looking for perspectives that aren’t represented on their team – for example, the manga is being co-written between Justina Ireland and Japanese writer Shima Shinya, and Ireland has stated in interviews that Shinya is taking the lead on the writing.

IT VALUES MEANINGFUL REPRESENTATION

That diverse writing team means a cast that looks WAY more like the real world than any other era of Star Wars we’ve seen, in terms of representation. There are multiple characters of color, who are both heroes and central to the story. There are at least five canonical queer characters to date (a MLM couple, an Ace character, and two NB character). [EDIT: Thank you @legok9 for letting me know about the NB characters]. Among binary gendered characters, there is a very even balance of men and women. The writing team has also stated that they will be incorporating more representation of disability in the works to come. And the story is so much better for it – representation is included here BECAUSE it makes for more creative, believable, and original storytelling.

IT IS ACCESSIBLE

Because of the multiple formats, and the fact that it doesn’t rely on you knowing any prior lore, the High Republic offers many avenues to engage for people with all kinds of needs. Know nothing about Star Wars canon and feel intimidated about catching up? The canon is all new in this era anyway, so you’re fine. Can’t handle flashing lights? No problem – the little bit of video content that exists is totally free from the strobing effects that caused seizure and sensory issues. Need purely audio content? You can still have a full experience of the High Republic with the gorgeously sound-scaped audiobooks. Don’t have the attention span for books or long movies? Then the comics are your friend.

THERE IS SOMETHING FOR ALL

Between the books aimed towards adults and teens (and their respective audiobooks), the kids books, the comics, the manga, the short stories, AND the eventual TV show on Disney+, there is going to be content in the High Republic that suits most audiences. And that is just what has been announced so far – there is still more to come for phases II and III. This isn’t Star Wars written towards one group or demographic – it is Star Wars for everyone.

DID I MENTION THE FANCY JEDI UNIFORMS?

Because cosplayers and fanartists? This is the era for you. We are getting Jedi in silks with elaborate gold embroidery. Jedi with jewelry other decorative elements. Even the practical field uniforms have tooled and embossed leather. If you want to draw or make Jedi that have some of that that sweet LoTR-esque high fantasy aesthetic, the High Republic has your back. (Not going to lie – I am ALREADY imagining the time travel AUs. Put Obi-Wan in fancy clothes!)

OKAY, YOU’VE SOLD ME. WHERE SHOULD I START?

I strongly recommend everyone looking to get into the High Republic (who is old enough to be on Tumblr) start with Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. I alternated between the physical book and the audio book, and found it delightful in both formats. After that, you have a lot of options. You can read or listen to the audio book of the YA novel A Test of Courage by Justina Ireland. You can check out the currently running Star Wars: The High Republic comic from Marvel, or the Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic from IDW. Or you can skip straight to Into the Dark by Claudia Gray. Honestly, there is no wrong order to try out most of the High Republic.

IN CONLUSION

The High Republic is Star Wars written for people who DON’T want Star Wars to be a good ‘ol boys club for salty white dudes who don’t want to see anything but more of Luke Skywalker. It offers broad representation, and optimistic narrative, and whole bunch of awesome Jedi content. If you are someone who fell in love with Jedi in the prequel era, the High Republic will give you more of what you loved. And if you are totally new to Star Wars? The High Republic is here for you too.

So, go check it. And then go write fic for it (please, there are only, like, 14 fics on AO3, I am dying).

#star wars #the high republic #jedi #long post #recs #book recs #representation #seriously I cannot recommend this highly enough #everything about the high republic is so very tailored to what I love about star wars in general and Jedi specifically #also...sorry I had been absent here #I swear I still love you all #I just have limited interaction spoons these days and spend most of them on costuming stuff

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morningsound15 · 3 years

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hi! i’m a major fan of yours across several fandoms (bechloe, fuffy, hermione/anyone 👀) and i’m always really impressed with your ability to jump around fandoms while telling these very complete stories with awesome characterizations. any chance you’d be willing to share what your process is like for preparing to write a story? thank you for sharing your work! really enjoy it.

asks like this are so so sweet! compliments AND writing process questions at the same time is just *chef’s kiss*

i got a similar question to this in a comment on one of my stories a few weeks back, i hope you don’t mind that i’ve lifted some of this from that answer!

when i’m starting a new fic, these are the 3 basic things i focus on (not always consciously, this is just how my brain works):

characterization (who is the story about/why is the story being told)

plot (what story is being told)

and form (how is the story being told)

(this is long! more under the cut)

CHARACTERIZATION: the first thing i do is try to get a feel for how the characters think and speak. so the first thing i’ll write is usually something light and banter-y between two main characters. i find that story beats, reactions, emotions, etc. (all important parts of scenes) flow from me much more easily if i have a good feel for the characters and how they interact with each other. for example, the first scene i record in a voice note on my phone or dump in a word document might be: character A and B are eating breakfast the morning after sleeping together for the first time. they haven’t talked about it yet. they are trying to hide what they did from the other people in the room while trying to subtly see how the other one is acting

writing a scene like this would help me figure out a few important things about my characters, like how they interact with each other when they need to be covert (are they embarrassed? flirty? ashamed? cold? nervous? blushing?), how their friends might or might not pick up on their dynamic, and most importantly it lets me practice the pace of how the characters speak and the basic nature of their conversation styles with each other (do they crack jokes, are they unnecessarily cruel, do they openly flirt, is there a competitive undertone, exasperated fondness, etc.?).

people should be able to understand everything important about your characters from the way they speak and hold themselves in a scene. having the characters’ voices, rhythms, and interpersonal banter down is really important in making sure that whatever is happening in your story is compelling. if the characters feel real, the plot will feel real, and you can hook people into reading stories for fandoms they otherwise wouldn’t.

PLOT: this is kind of cheating, since i GUESS technically ‘plot’ is the first step to preparing to write a story, but to me, the most fundamental thing you need to have down to write fic is an understanding of the characters. you can use whatever tried-and-true soulmate/fake dating/bed sharing/alternate universe tropes you want, but the thing that makes or breaks a story is its characters, so that’s why i put that part first.

but okay, talking about plot. for me what comes first is less ‘plot’ than ‘situation’.

here’s an example: i decided a while back that i desperately want to write a sansa x margaery hogwarts au. has it been done before? yes. does it sound fun? yes, and also, i love writing hp universe, and i love sansa stark. but the idea’s been done before, so what am i hoping to write that contributes to the genre/trope? what’s my hook? what’s my angle? what’s my read of the characters and how do i want to get them together?

i settled on this: Sansa is the first Stark in five generations to not be sorted into Gryffindor.

suddenly bam, i’m off and running. i’ve got a story universe, i’ve got a couple of characters whose voices i’m starting to settle into, i’ve got a whole cast of characters i have to suddenly squash into this alternate universe, think about what roles they should play, how THEY should speak and interact. suddenly i’m drafting scene ideas to make sure that i highlight the sibling dynamics i want between the starks, the tension between sansa and arya, sansa’s alienation and the family’s pride.

the next step is thinking about story beats. what are good tropes in hp universe stories (spell casting scenes, hogsmede scenes, quidditch scenes) -- how can i write some of these with a new fun twist? similarly, what are good tropes in romantic stories (jealousy/pining, being forced to work together when you don’t want to, romantic rivals) and how can i use these characters to pull off these tropes in a way that feels natural and novel? and of course, hugely important — when should the characters kiss for the first time? (every story’s gotta have a good first-kiss scene.)

i like my stories, generally, to have 2 main plots going: the romance plot between the two main characters, and the maintext plot/situational hijinx they’ve gotten themselves into. figuring out how to weave those storylines together (and ideally to have the Big Climax Scenes Converge Somehow) is tough. so i write in bursts, jumping around between chapters and paragraphs and scenes, cutting whole sections and shuffling them around constantly.

FORM: the first drafts of my chapters are mostly dialogue; i go back in and add actions and internal monologue as some of the last things that i do. scene transitions are also some of the last things i write, or beginnings/endings to scenes. that’s just a personal preference.

i don't tend to write linearly. i guess you could say i write in a vignette style; that’s why most of my fics are organized with individual scenes divided by a textual break, rather than long continuous stream of consciousness/linear time. this allows me a lot of freedom in my writing; if something isn’t working at the end of a scene, or if i can’t figure out a way to transition between moments/times of day, i can just add a text break in. easy as pie. it keeps my stories tighter (lol i know they’re so long who am i kidding) and lets me move things along.

while i jump around a lot, writing scenes that strike me when they strike me, filling in the gaps here and there as i go along, i do like to make some important decisions early on. i think about tracing the arc of the main relationship — are they interested in each other right away, what are the obstacles to them being together, is there going to be an issue with sexuality/queerness or is that a non-issue in this universe? — stuff like that. i think really important scene ideas to have early on (if i’m writing fic, obviously this applies strictly to writing fanfiction romance stories, which are already pretty trope-filled (that’s not a read i love tropes)) are the scenes that Change the direction of the story: the get-together scene and the plot climax. having an understanding of how those crucial scenes are going to play out means that i can make sure that all the writing before those scenes is building in the correct direction.

that doesn’t mean i stick to my outline, or that i’m afraid to change things up! on the contrary. i like to have an idea of where my story is going to end up as i'm writing, because then i can shape the characters and let them grow in a way that naturally arrives at the conclusion. but of course the conclusion is usually just an idea, a vague notion (‘they break out of the curse dimension’ or ‘they’re going off to college uncertain but hopeful’). i avoid writing the end of the story until the very end because the natural conclusion changes as my story goes through more drafts and i get a better feel for the characters. i also like to see how the readers are reacting to the story, what they're noticing, what questions they still have that i need to answer, if there are any scenes that aren't coming across the way i want them to, that sort of thing.

and one last note for fic writers -- this is what i always think about as i’m writing/about to write a story: why am i writing this story? what am i trying to say, how am i trying to better understand the characters or deepen my understanding of canon with this? am i adding to canon or just repeating it? is this personal catharsis, meaningless smut, a bittersweet fix-it?

readers are smart, and most importantly, they’re fans! they’re coming to fic from consuming the original product! they don’t want what they’ve just seen regurgitated to them. take risks in your stories! know the characters, dig deep into their relationships and get inside their heads. if you’ve got the characters down you’ve got everything you need to write a good fic.

mostly i just hope people come away from my stories satisfied by what they've read.

you all know me, i write for any fandom i want to with no rhyme or reason. i have a lot of ideas and varied interests. but i don’t speak a TON about my role as fanfic consumer, so i wanna do that.

fanfiction, for me, is a way of better understanding these things that i love. i come to fanfiction after i finish a show or video game, if i’m revisiting childhood movies or books. ao3 is one of the first places i go after i finish watching something, because i am enchanted by the way fans take characters that exist and with just a few twists of a word or a look, they change the meaning completely, elevate canon, or flesh out side characters that basically had nothing going for them. and because when i finish something i love i don’t want it to be over. sometimes that means i write, sometimes that means i read, but i always go to fic. i love it, it’s comforting and beautiful.

phew! that was long-winded. thanks for the ask!! sorry for the word vomit

(also yes hermione/anyone aka hermione/happiness)

#anonymous #asks #my writing #fanfiction writing things #long post

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hpconsentfest · 5 years

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Consent Fest 2019: Anonymous Masterlist

Friends, after a month of marvellous art and fic that made us laugh, cry, and everything in between, here is the masterlist of this year’s submissions. Now is your chance to get caught up before reveals are posted on Sunday! Happy catching-up! <3

ART

Title: Who They Are Prompt: #15 Rating: G Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: genderqueer/nonbinary character, minor transphobia that is more unintended ignorance than anything else Summary: Draco’s always known who they are. They’ve just been waiting for someone to listen. Medium: Digital

Title: Something they don’t want to be afraid of Prompt: # 21 Rating: explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Internalized Homophobia, unenjoyable sex in a flashback See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Draco struggles with his internalized homophobia and fears, even when he really wants something. Last time, it went ugly. And ugly won’t do. They have to try again. Find a way to make it better. Medium: digital art

Title: Coming loose Prompt: #80 Rating: E Pairing: None Warnings/Content Notes: Lots of very pornographic NSFW drawings, internalised acephobia, unenjoyable sex, bite and blood fetish. Summary: Pansy Parkinson has a lot of sex. Until she realises that it’s okay to not want to. Medium: Ink and marker on paper

Title: Human, Not Object Prompt: #23 Rating: Teen Warnings/Content Notes: Street harassment, cat calling, unsolicited touching, verbal harassment of a sexual nature, fighting back, defiant woman, powerful woman Summary: Fleur Delacour has endured harassment of all kinds from men from a young age. Growing up she’s told that’s “just what men do.” As a powerful woman learning to navigate the world she finds this mentality unacceptable and chooses to live her life defiantly. Medium: Digital

FIC

Title: One and Only Prompt: # 20 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Albus Severus Potter/Draco Malfoy Warnings/Content Notes: Bodyguard AU, Bodyguard!Draco, Minister for Magic!Harry Potter, Pansexual Albus Potter, Potions Accident, Forced Bonding, Sharing a Bed, Legilimency, Explicit Sexual Content, Masturbation, Frottage, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Bottom!Draco Malfoy, Age Difference, Implied/Reference Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, References to Addiction, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Eventual Consensual Relationship, Romance Summary: Draco always knew his downfall would be at the hands of a Potter.He just never realised which one. Word Count: 19.6k

Title: Blind Item #3 Prompt: #88 Rating: T Pairing: Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy Warnings/Content Notes: tabloids, right to privacy, forced outing, homophobic slurs, rated T for swearing, british sixteen year old talking about sex, blink and you’ll miss it threat of sexual violence Summary: What’s the ssssecret doing the rounds in a certain common room? Rumour has it that the other snakes have been turning a blind eye to this burgeoning love affair, but what will the boys’ fathers say when they hear about it? Word Count: 7064

Title: A Touch Of Respect Prompt: #90 Rating: Teen Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Family Drama, Touch Phobia, Panic Attacks, Old Fashioned Parenting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Past Minor Character Death (Astoria), Past Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter, Child in Hospital Summary: Five year old Scorpius isn’t fond of people touching him, and he has a million reasons for it. However, his father is of the opinion that just saying ‘no’ should be enough without giving any of those reasons, but not everyone in his new-found family agrees. Word Count: 23.432

Title: The Words that Pass Between Us Prompt: # 28 Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: POV Draco Malfoy; Invasion of Privacy; Loss of Trust; Infidelity; Misogyny, Classism, Unredeemed Draco Malfoy, Verbal Abuse of a House Elf Summary: Sometimes, Draco draws pictures of what could have been, had he made all the right choices: Draco in the Slug Club; Draco holding the Quidditch World Cup; Draco holding hands with some nameless, faceless person whose become some sick, secret sort of friend. He’s on every page Draco has touched. He flies with him, sleeps with him, laughs with him. And sometimes, if he pretends hard enough, Draco swears he can feel this person’s breath against his neck; a whispered I love you that has him pressing into the mattress every night, only to wake up alone wishing it were real. Word Count: 10,047

Title: Capture the moment (Capture my heart) Prompt number: 24 Rating: Mature Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Asexual Draco Malfoy, Demisexuality, Queer Character, Brief mention (from previous encounter) of Mildly Dubious Consent, Photographs, Minor Luna Lovegood/Pansy Parkinson, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley Summary: Surrounded by photographs with just a cat to keep him company, Draco was left questioning his identity and what a new label would mean for his relationship with Harry. Word Count: 9,612

Title: Blood Will Out Prompt: # 87 Rating: T Pairing: Marietta Edgecombe/Pansy Parkinson Warnings/Content Notes: menstruation, PMS, endometriosis, heavy bleeding, cramps, intense period pain, Healers, doctors, hospitals, exams, critique of Healing and medical institutions, family secrets, memory modification, horrible parenting, blood status discourse, self-reflection redemption arcs See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Marietta Edgecombe doesn’t need re-education. She’s done nothing wrong. She just wants to keep her head down and keep her job. At least until Pansy Parkinson starts acting weird and a visit to the Healer suddenly brings the post-war conversation too close for comfort. Word Count: 21565

Title: This Year’s Love Prompt: Self-Prompt. H/D—how to navigate feelings for your best mate. Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: This story discusses complex topics such as slut-shaming, promiscuity, heartbreak, dating culture(s), and sexual autonomy within everyday life. See full tagset on AO3 Summary: This year’s love had better last, heaven knows it’s high time when you try to make lovers from friends. But Harry Potter realises time and time again that it’s simply not possible for him. And then along comes Draco Malfoy— the ultimate foe on the mend. Whatever will become of them? A story about love. Word Count: 84000

Title: All The Little Signs Add Up Prompt: # 49 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Past domestic abuse, past child abuse Summary: Harry starts to notice some worrying signs in his relationship with Draco. He flinches when Harry moves too quickly, he thinks everything is going to be blamed on him, and he doesn’t think his own desires count. Harry, fresh from dealing with his own childhood PTSD, jumps to some conclusions. Some of them are right, some of them are way off. Word Count: 9624

Title: The Generation Who Lived Prompt: # 11 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Journalist Draco Malfoy, Enemies to lovers, Past relationship, Getting back together, Minor Luna/Neville, Minor Ginny/Blaise, Interview format, Post second war with Voldemort, Enthusiastic consent, Rimming, Anal sex, POV Draco Malfoy Summary: In the months leading up to the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy writes a series of articles about famous war survivors.

So far, he’s managed to interview everyone he wanted.

Everyone…except his old nemesis, his one-time lover, and the elusive war hero who stubbornly refuses to be featured in Draco’s interview series, Harry Potter. Word Count: 14761

Title: Ron Weasley and the Clothes of Doom Prompt: #86 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Blaise Zabini/Ron Weasley Warnings/Content Notes: (I honestly don’t know) Summary: Do the clothes make the man?Ron Weasley thinks he has no chance, until one night when he dresses up and Blaise Zabini can’t take his eyes off him. The solution is easy, then, right? Ron just has to keep dressing up, and Blaise will keep wanting him. But every time Ron puts the new clothes on, he’s sent spiraling off into a past filled with insecurity. Will he really be able to keep this up without going completely bonkers? And what does Blaise actually want from him, anyway? Word Count: 32,872

Title: swallow your words Prompt: # 67 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: No archive warnings apply Summary: The truth is, not many things are known about the magic that is behind soulmarks. They’ll turn up when they want and not before.

The truth is, you don’t get a choice in your soulmark. The truth is, not everyone is okay with that. Word Count: 9,140

Title: Long live the beautiful heart (who find love and tear it apart) Prompt: #46 Rating: GEN Pairing: Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Angst, Depression, Abusive relationship See full tagset on AO3 Summary: If Harry were someone else, someone who loves and understand books, someone like Hermione or Draco, he might think of a classical tragedy. He might section the whole catastrophe neatly into five acts and make sense of it that way. But he’s not, and so he doesn’t, and, anyway it’s just the beginning of the story yet. Word Count: 6630

Title: Safe Words Prompt: # 47 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Consent, BDSM, Bondage, Whipping, Safe words, Safe Sane and Consensual, Kink, Family Drama, lots of book reading, Dirty Talk, Slapping, Kink Negotiation, Rough Sex, Accidental Bodily Harm, Remorse, Weasley Bashing, Molly Bashing, but please know it’s from Draco’s admittedly skewed perspective, In this house we love Molly Weasley to death even if our characters don’t always, Married couples are kinky too Summary: Draco discovers his husband has been keeping a secret from him. At first he’s amused. Then he’s curious.

The problem? Harry’s always had a hard time saying no. Word Count: 26,867

Title: They Talked Prompt: Self-prompt Rating: Teen Pairing: Ron & Draco (platonic) Warnings/Content Notes: none Summary: Is it ok if they talk? Draco isn’t sure, but it keeps happening. Word Count: 1094

Title: That’s Ace Prompt: Self-prompt Rating: Explicit Pairing: Charlie Weasley/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Asexual character, bisexual character, sex toys, non-penetrative sex, mutual masturbation, monogamy Summary: Charlie is asexual. Harry isn’t. They still find a way to satisfy both of their needs, however Word Count: 2080

Title: So sweet with that blood in your teeth Prompt: # 16 Rating: E Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Dom/Sub, Consent issues, vampires, sleep issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Mind manipulation, depression See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Harry works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. His latest case his to stop a vampire uprising lead by none other than Draco Malfoy. Malfoy seems willing to negotiate with the Ministry. There’s just one small condition: Harry has to agree to be Malfoy’s dinner. Word Count: 25k

Title: Lily Luna, Unapologetic: The Things We Don’t Talk About (But Should) Prompt: #39 Rating: Hard T Pairing: None Warnings/Content Notes: Implied Dubcon/Noncon, Offscreen Dubcon/Noncon, Implied Violence (offscreen), Implied vs Explicit Consent, Consent Issues, Teaching Consent, Sex Education, Peer Pressure, Harry Potter Next Generation, Badass!Lily Luna, When Internet Meets Magic, Alternative format: magazine profile Summary: “Before I can get my first question out Lily asks me, ‘When was the first time someone gave you a sex talk?’I find myself telling her about overhearing my mom in my older sister’s room when she was home on hols from Hogwarts in her fourth year—I was 10 and had just received my letter. It was the year there had been a string of love potion ‘accidents’ and I could tell my mum was worried.

She nods and jots something down in her notebook. As I continue telling her about these memories, I wonder why I’m sharing all this information with Lily. Aren’t I the one supposed to be interviewing her?

‘That sounds awful,’ she commiserates, ‘but can I ask you one more thing?’ I nod, curiosity piqued by her tone. ‘When was the first time someone talked to you about consent?’” Word Count: ~8,000

Title: I See You In The Club Rating: E Pairing: Draco Malfoy/OMC Warnings/Content Notes: Sex club, Dom/sub play, Light Bondage, Age difference, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent due to Identity Issues, Ruminating on the Topic of Consent See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Draco, recently divorced (for the second time) is finally free to explore ‘other interests’. In particular, reconnecting with some long-put-aside desires to play with dominance. He’s not confident in what he’s doing, but he’s done his research, and surely this delectable young thing, kneeling in wait for him, can help?

'Hello,’ he says, and feels immediately stupid.

'Hello, Sir,’ Alex says, his voice low, barely above a whisper. Draco wonders if it’s an effort to sound sexy, or show submission, or if his throat is so well-fucked by others that he can no longer talk. He doesn’t even know if it matters. Word Count: 12909

Title: a note to the boy I love Prompt: # 81 Rating: E Pairing: Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy Warnings: Underage See full tagset on AO3 Content Notes: epistolary, first person POV, established relationship, school romance, communication, consent, sexting except in letters because they are wizards, underage in that they are both seventeen (17), first time, loss of virginity (but that’s a social construct anyway), letter writing, dirty talk (sort of), vignettes, kissing, frottage, dry humping, oral sex, love confessions, boys in love Summary: Albus knows what he wants to do in bed with Scorpius, but struggles with actually talking about it. Scorpius’s solution? Writing letters. Word Count: 4,359

Title: Sex Ed for Witches and Wizards of All Ages Prompt: # 68 Rating: E Pairing: Multi-ship Warnings/Content Notes: Major Character Death, Underage, Explicit sexual content See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Draco and Astoria decide on their wedding night that they’re not going to raise their future children with the same outdated traditions they were raised with, especially relating to love and sex. They never could have predicted exactly how much that decision would change Scorpius’ life. Word Count: 76 732

Title: Curry & Wine Prompt: # 35 Rating: Mature Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Mentions of main character being pressured to have sex in the past Summary: Harry’s promised Draco their first proper date. What could be better than homemade curry, a little wine, a much-needed talk? Word Count: 1,651

Title: A pink tie, a box of condoms Prompt: 52 Rating: E Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: See tagset on AO3 Summary: It had been months since they’d last seen each other. And if Potter didn’t show up soon… Word Count: 1459

Title: Knights in Shining Armour (Ever After Lovers) Prompt #: 23 Rating: M Pairing: Bill Weasley/Fleur Delacour Warnings: No major archive warnings See tagset on AO3 Summary: Fleur has been objectified for most of her life, her bodily autonomy often dismissed. Being part Veela only makes matters worse. Word Count: 8.6 k

Title: The Way Your Heart Touches Mine Prompt: # 56 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: N/A Summary: What does it mean when a certain someone gives you numerous gifts on ordinary days? Harry’s kind of sure (and mostly hoping) that Draco likes him. So why hasn’t Draco asked him out yet? Word Count: 3.9k

Title: Epoximise Prompt: #10 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Consent Notes: Press and Tabloids, Dom/Sub Play, Sub Harry Potter, Dom Draco Malfoy, Sex Magic, Kink Spells, Coming on Demand, Dildos, Magic used as a Restraint, Panic Attacks, Discussion about Consent, Discussion about setting Ground Rules before Sexual Activity, Discussion about Safe Words, Sexual Triggers. Word count: 2487

Title: Forbidden Fruit Prompt: # 15 Rating: Teen Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Internalized Homophobia Summary: “To Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter had always been akin to forbidden fruit.” In which Harry comes out as genderqueer, and Draco envies his self-confidence. Word Count: 1,907

Title: Unconditional Prompt: #32 Rating: Teen and up Pairing: Albus Severus Potter/Scorpius Malfoy Warnings/Consent Notes: Anxiety, Boys in Love, First Boyfriend, First Kiss, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Feelings of Inadequacy in a relationship, Discussions of Pyschological and Emotional Manipulation, Relationship Discussions, non-consensual touching, Scorpius gives good advice, Mild Bigoted Language to describe Asexuality, Discussions about Healthy Relationships, Demisexual Albus Potter, Awakening Feelings of Desire, Eventual happy Ending. Word count: 7277

Title: Risks Worth Taking Prompt: 83 Rating: E Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Light BDSM, Dubious Consent, Mildly Dubious Consent See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Draco and Harry broke up 78 nights ago. Only a miracle (or perhaps an errant spell) could bring them back together. Word Count: 18,149

Title: Like The Sun Prompt: #78 Rating: T Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black Warnings/Content Notes: Unaware Veritaserum consumption See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Sirius wants a good laugh and when he comes across some Veritaserum, he decides slipping into Remus Lupin’s, the ever guarded werewolf, pumpkin juice will be a great way to start their day. Remus ends up revealing a bit more than Sirius had anticipated. Word Count: 4033

Title: (Never) Be Still My Beating Heart Prompt: Self-Prompt Rating: M Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Trauma, Violence, some blood, Vampires, Light Dubcon Parallels, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, further explanation of dubcon tag in A/N See full tagset on AO3 Summary: Post-War, Draco decides he’s done being comfortable. Which turns out to be quite convenient as he’s thrust headlong into a case involving a Serial Biting Vampire. Worst of all, Potter’s gotten himself involved. Draco thinks he can take it, so long as his heart doesn’t give out on him along the way. Word Count: 15595

Title: Working Out The Kinks Prompt: #18 Rating: E Pairing: Jeddy Warnings/Content Notes: Mild Dom/Sub Elements, Mild DubCon See full tagset on AO3 Summary:

There are three things James Sirius Potter is certain of:

One: He’s loved his boyfriend since he learned what romantic love was;

Two: There is nothing James wants more than said boyfriend to pound him into the mattress;

Three: His boyfriend, Teddy Lupin, can never find out about number two.

—or—

Four times James tried to pretend he wasn’t submissive and the one time he didn’t. Word Count: 6,247

Title: You Set My Soul Alight Prompt: #13 Rating: Explicit Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Warnings/Content Notes: Post-War, Auror partners, case fic, enemies to lovers, mystery, romance, adventure, pining, getting together, forced proximity, bed sharing, banter, UST, loss of virginity, first time, dub-con, consent issues, secrets, misunderstandings, miscommunication, sleep talking, frottage, rimming, face-sitting, intergluteal sex, anal sex, switching, blow jobs, fluff, angst, angst with a happy ending, references to suicidal thoughts, implied/referenced child abuse, references to depression, mental health issues, emotional hurt/comfort, minor character death, arguing, reconciliation, ewe Summary: Students are going missing at Hogwarts, but that’s not the only mystery Draco is determined to solve. Something’s going on with Potter. He can deny it all he wants. Draco is going to find out what it is. Unfortunately, trying to get to the bottom of it has some unexpected consequences and if Draco isn’t careful, he’s going to jeopardise their mission. Word Count: 54k

#masterlist

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otdderamin · 5 years

Text

Transcript: Wednesday Club Ep19: Love is Love

Looking for some good Queer content? The best Wednesday Club was Episode 19: Love is Love! with Marc Andreyko. They talked about the Love is Love anthology made in memory of the Pulse shooting and talked about the history of queer representation in comics.

This is also the episode where Taliesin and Amy came out as bi. It was so soft and empathetic and empowering the whole way through that I think it gave them a push of confidence to say it.

Interesting history, they pulled this VOD after this aired and edited out that coming out. I suspect someone felt they got caught up in the moment and weren't actually sure they did want that out there. But word spread anyway and a few weeks later it was quietly restored.

The only depressing thing about this episode is how hopeful they were for the future and how much everything's gone to shit in the two years since it came out.

Official Twitch VOD, Bootlegged YouTube VOD

If you can handle the sorrow, I really can't recommend "Love is Love" enough. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. A lot of it is heartbreaking, but there are also a lot of uplifting pieces about pride and joy and love, and those were so special.

This episode is so fascinating because there's are dozens and dozens of little ways Taliesin's subtext was "I'm queer," but it was such a surprise for that subtext to be text at the end. I think it's greatly affected how I read his queer coding in acting.

Reading Taliesin himself in this episode of Wednesday Club is a major reason why I feel somewhat confident in my analysis about the queer subtext he shows in Caduceus (and Percy). He's very deliberate about his subtext, I think the joke is always that it's genuine.

"Well, those are then the Schrodinger's representations which are 'Are they? Aren't they? We're not going to say.' [Stage whisper] But they are."

I think about this quote all the time. What he says sideways is deliberate, and something he personally delights in reading into. This is, after all, him playing out people in the way he would interact, not really for other people. We don't ask straight people to tell us they're straight, they just show it and we all assume it's true. I strongly suspect that's a freedom Taliesin looks for in queer portrayal.

One of the dynamics going on here that's SO INTERESTING is how apparent the age gap is between Marc and Taliesin and Amy. I don't know Amy's age, but I'd guess she's a decade younger. Marc and Taliesin are so much more okay with clunky, subtext, and or tragic representation.

Partly this is just a difference of Taliesin liking sad stories & Amy liking happy ones, but the difference is so much more magnified in this episode. Her standards for what makes good representation are noticeably higher, I'd guess partly because she grew up in a better world.

One of the books they mentioned is "My Brother's Husband" by Gengoroh Tagame. there are two volumes and it's such an outstandingly soft story. One of the best comics I've ever read. Yaichi and his daughter Kana get a visit from Mike, his brother's husband, after his brother died. It's about Yaichi trying to get over his homophobia and teach Kana to be a better, more accepting person than he was. Kana just accepts Mike straight away and thinks he's amazing.

Here is a selection of comic picks from the episode (by no means all of them). Here's Amy's crowdsourced queer comics recommendation thread, which is full of excellent reads, some of which they talked about.

4:45 Marc: "I'm glad [the Pulse shooter] is dead because he did a horrible, unforgivable thing, but part of me wishes someone had been there to give him a hug, you know?"

[I've been thinking about this sentiment and grace for two years.]

10:54 Marc: "We need to hold our government responsible with the same passion we do when Marvel has Spider-Man's costume wrong in an issue."

0:16:08 Taliesin: "It is a thing that happens to me occasionally on the internet, and this book brought this back up pretty significantly, and I don't do this all the time 'cause I only have so much emotional energy for a human being, especially, you know, times being what they are. I've only got so much of my brain power before I turn into a quivering mess."

0:16:25 Marc: "I can't wait for the day we can wake up and not be angry."

Taliesin: "I know. I'm so…"

Marc: "I'm so tired of being mad!"

0:16:31 Taliesin: "I take moments every morning, and of course being on the internet you get a lot of- there's hate and trolling that come my way, and a lot of it is nothing I didn't hear in high school, nothing that I'm not use to, you know, I've got a pretty thick skin, and I don't delve into the comments sections of videos or anything like that because I'm, you know, sane. But every now and then some body gets through and I just kind of want to have a moment of, like, I wish- and I want to test the theory that if I just find this person, I grab them for a second, and like, "Dude, are you alright? Like, do you need therapy because I'm in therapy and it's fucking great, and what can I-" I feel like, "When was the last time anyone asked you if you're just okay, if you need something 'cause, like, what the fuck, man?"

…

0:17:18 Taliesin: "I wish I had the energy for all these kids. I mean, like, it's so- and in real life I can do this, and I've had those moments in real life where you see someone losing their shit and you're like, 'Do you just need a fucking drink and someone to listen to you talk about your shit and not tell you that you're being, like-'"

Amy: "Or fewer drinks."

Taliesin: "I mean, like, often times just sit down, and I promise I'm not going to make fun of you, I'm not going to tell you you're being weak, tell me, like, what, man, what hurts?"

0:17:59 Marc: "I don't think most people are evil. I think that there's a percentage of people that occupy the White House that are pure evil…"

Taliesin: "I've had a couple roommates that I'm not even making a joke that are definitely into that spectrum, but most people are just lonely and sad."

Marc: "Well, most people want to live their life, be happy, and be left alone, and I think for me it all boils down to education is the key because when you have- when you're not educated, you're easily scared and when you're easily scared you look for scape goats. It's what one political party has been making their hay on for a number of years."

31:27 Marc: "We're all the same. We come up with things as a species to divide us when we're actually 99% the same. And we just let that 1% get in the way of everything."

36:01 Taliesin: "I started to figure out that this was the beginning of a process. And I was starting to notice, 'This is going to lead to the types of characters I want to see in my fiction. And I started breaking down this formula of there's things that you have to do in the momentum of pop culture to get the kind of characters you want. And this was one of the thing that you have to do. And I broke it down to metaphorical representation with books like the X-Men where there are no—there were almost no gay characters in the X-Men." Marc Andreyko: "Or Peppermint Patty, or Schroder."

Taliesin: "Well, those are then the Schrodinger's representations which are 'Are they? Aren't they? We're not going to say.' [Stage whisper] But they are.

"But we have the metaphorical, we have the Schrodinger, we hate the stereotypes, which are the these are the things people think they know about these people."

Marc: "The gay hairdresser, the black drug dealer…"

Taliesin: "Then you have the buddyism, which is you have the established characters going, 'Some of my best friends.' And then we can just have a character where this is part of the tapestry. Once we've gone through all of this stuff so that everybody has gotten it out of their system, we've kind of sifted the pop culture to the point that now you can just do it."

Marc: "But that's not just limited to LGBT."

Taliesin: "No, that's any."

Marc: You look at female characters, you look at African American characters, and what's interesting about the LGBT experience now is it's taken 100 years for Black characters, it's taken 100 years for women characters, the LGBT representation- In my lifetime- if you told me 20 years ago that the Supreme Court would say that marriage is a right, I would have said, 'No way.'"

Taliesin: "No."

Amy: "No way."

Marc: "If you had told me there was going to be a gay-straight alliance at my high school, where my graduating class was 1000 people, 99% of the them I'd say, 'No.' My high school reached out to me after the book came out to send copies to their library. The learning curve for LGBT- we have gotten the privilege of having a very accelerated learning curve on the backs of other minorities who are still struggling to get ahead."

Taliesin: "We got to live- you actually get to live to see the work pay off. Which is rare in human history.

Marc: "As you say, that's just the way it starts out. It starts with exotic, then it becomes noble savage, then it becomes villain, then it becomes minstrel, then it becomes best friend, then it becomes lead. That's just the evolutionary trail."

54:32 Taliesin: "Culture is not a rocket ship. We all don't get on the rocket ship to the planet culture and go up to the moon. Culture is like life: it is chaotic, it is violent, it is hungry… It is not normal for everything to just keep getting better all at the same time. It's normal for everything to get better over a period of the long game. In any internal point, chaos—"

Marc: "Well, Love is Love, a tragedy made that book come to life."

Taliesin: "That is the soil in which these things get planted, sadly."

Amy: "But that kid who graduates high school [because the book encouraged them when they thought they couldn't do it], who knows what happens."

0:55:04 Matt: "We've got Blackmarket Bingo asking, 'What does Pride mean to each of you individually?'"

0:55:11 Marc: "Well, pride to me is a loaded word because, as a writer, I think 'pride,' I think 'hubris,' I think pride can be a detriment. There's pride with a lowercase p and there's Pride with a capital P. I think, for me, Pride in the LGBT sense of the word is lack of shame, is owning who you are, and not apologizing for who you are."

Taliesin: "Personal honesty."

Marc: "And being a good person who's an honest person. If you're an honest person and you live your life by the only direction we need as people: treat people the way you want to be treated. I don't care if you're gay, straight, Black, white, Republican, liberal, conservative, whatever, if you treat people the way you want to be treated that is living Pride because you should be proud of us not yourself; you should be proud of the change you can affect to make the world a better place. And I know that sounds like fortune cookies or Opera, or Yanla (sp?) changed my life or something like that, but it is very true. So, a lot of these clichés are become cliché because they are very true. And I think if you just try and live your life honestly and be nice to people. Hold the door, let someone in in traffic, you know, talk to the old lady in line at the grocery store, you never know what difference that's going to make. You never know how that's going to change the course of someone's life, so why not?"

…

0:56:48 Taliesin: "The notion of, 'We're all in this together.' And I will say Pride for me has always been about… and I got a lot of, well, for various reason I got a lot of crap as a kid, but one of the things I got crap about was this notion from some people, this was the weird one, that I was somehow putting effort into being this kind of person. That this took effort, that I was somehow pushing forward a pretense, and I just kind of had to do the, "No, this is actually…"

Marc: 'Who has the energy?"

Taliesin: "Who has the energy to pretend to be this weird and awkward! This is just me letting go and if every- like-"

Marc: "I'm not Andy Kaufman, this is all real."

Taliesin: "This is not an act! this is just- I mean, occasionally it's curated, which is different, especially this being the internet, but like, just the notion that if we all are- and the honesty that I was talking about, it was not honesty to other people necessarily, but just waking up that morning and being the person you feel like being and then just treating everybody the way- and just finding that communication between real people, not people trying to live up to some notion of who they think they should be."

0:57:50 Marc: "Well, once again I'm going to circle this back to a quote Patty Jenkins said, she talked about how the word cheesy is banned on her sets because she said, 'When did we become afraid of genuine emotion and sincerity.' And I'm guilty of this; we've all become too cool for school; we've all become the kids in Heathers and all that. And that's kind of why we're at where we're at now: We're afraid to cry, we're afraid to let down our walls, and I can't even read the quote because I start bawling, but she talks about we're in a really difficult place as a species right now. We should be embracing sincerity and genuine emotion and that sort of thing. We shouldn't be afraid of it anymore. And I just responded to her, I tweeted back, 'Fuck yes!'

1:09:28 Marc: "There's something to be said for the hidden and the metaphor, you know?"

Taliesin: "Yes!"

Marc: "It's great that there's so much acceptance for LGBT characters and LGBT people today, but part of me wishes it was still back when I was in my 20s when you would get- you would see someone as a party and be like, [knowing nod] 'Yeah, I know,' and it was just unsaid or your would know that Peppermint Patty and Marcy are going to have a bed and breakfast in Oregon when they're adults."

Taliesin: "Obviously."

Marc: "And all that secret handshake stuff was… It's immeasurably better now and I'm putting this in… I would never want it to change, but there was something that the not knowing, the not having everyone be in on the joke, was nice because it also gave us an ownership of ourselves where it was the club we could control, we were the bouncer at the door of this club, and of course, ironically, homogenization is a good thing and to an extent of everyone being missed up, but there's something to be said about the subtlety of that, and I think a lot of times the subtlety and the metaphors are far more impactful than the direct."

1:15:41 Taliesin: "You have to be open to new ideas and you have to have faith in your ideas, if you think they're good ideas, that they're not… if they're good enough ideas, the world is not going to break them in half. They don't need to have a fence built around them. If you have good ideas and philosophies about the world, the world's not going to break them, it's going to enforce them.

1:20:10 Marc: "'Cause I always say that being gay is a huge part of who I am, but it's also an utterly insignificant part of who I am. We're all, once again, we're all have the same day to day struggles."

1:54:18 Amy: "I don't talk about it much, but I'm the B in LGBT, for the record. Doesn't tend to come up a lot."

Taliesin: "Are we going there?"

Amy: "Well, I am."

Taliesin: "Yeah, I am, too. Fuck it."

Taliesin looked at her with intense trepidation after she said it. Worried about what that step might mean, but also what it said about him if he did that whole episode about Pride and but was too scared to show it. And then wrote it off with a brief shrug and "Fuck it."

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me through ko-fi, Patreon, or my shop. I'm severely disabled and it all helps justify my time spent on this project. Learn more about how and why to support me, including links.

#Wednesday Club #Geek & Sundry #Wednesday Club Transcript #Transcript #GSA

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sandersstudies · 5 years

Note

Could you talk a bit about the Catholic side of things? I was raised Lutheran so I guess I never see a difference because I never paid attention

Sure! I’ll touch on a couple of major things, but this is by no means a comprehensive list. Warning, this post is long and, obviously, talks about religion a lot. I’ll be adding tags momentarily, but let me know if additional tags are needed.

Oh, and notice to all local assholes: I’m not here to play a game of apologetics. This anon was very polite in their request, and I love responding to polite anons, but if you bust into my inbox sealioning or looking for a debate you’ll be promptly deleted, thanks.

Biblical interpretation - Most Protestant Christians believe that the interpretation of the Bible is highly personal, whereas Catholicism has dogma/catechism which comes from the catholic tradition, councils, the Holy See, etc. etc. While Catholics do have freedom to find what the Bible means for them, the Catholic church has an official stance on many issues including homosexuality which are included in our catechism (that is, the book that declares what it is we believe. Other Catholic-specific things like the body and soul assumption of Mary, veneration of saints, and resurrection of the physical body are included in this book). For the curious, the section on homosexuality begins in paragraph 2357 of the catechism and essentially says that “the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible…They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.” Okay, so that’s GREAT. Gay and bi people exist, be nice to them, don’t discriminate against then, they’re still God’s children. HOWEVER, the catechism also says, “Homosexual persons are called to chastity.” That is, the act of homosexual sex is still a sin. So’ saying “God still loves you if you’re gay!” is…well, sort of woven into the fabric of our religion, but it doesn’t change the fact that by the word of our religion… to have gay sex is still a sin. So positivity that tries to put a different “spin” on Biblical homosexuality (”but Jesus blessed a gay couple!” “but this part about men lying together is actually linguistically vague!”) also kind of has less meaning for us because that doesn’t change the word of our church. Some Protestants really don’t like this: I get it. You feel like we’re just marching lockstep under the pope or something. It requires a much more big-picture look at Catholic vs. Protestant beliefs to really “get” this idea, and this post is long enough as it is.

Purgatory - So I know “Gays go to Purgatory” is really not a catchy slogan for your average hate-preaching homophobe, but it’s important to note that Purgatory is a central conceit of the catholic faith. Basically, instead of “good/faithful person -> heaven; bad/unfaithful person -> hell,” Catholicism claims that because nothing impure can enter the kingdom of heaven, purgatory is the “final purification.” It’s frequently described as a cleansing fire, and a place of both suffering and joy. We have to truly repent of our sins and be made clean, BUT it’s an exciting place because hey, it’s basically the lobby of heaven. The catechism (paragraph 1030 for those interested) says that “all who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” go to purgatory to be made holy. Purgatory prevents us from entering heaven with our earthly biases, grudges, and angers, and lets us be made pure. It is “entirely different from the punishment of the damned” (that is, hell). (Unrelated but this is why Catholicism really emphasizes prayer FOR THE DEAD. We have to pray for them so they can stay strong, remember God’s love, and overcome the trials of the final purification.) A lot of Christian positivity (of any kind, not just LGBT) speaks of the afterlife as a heaven/hell binary without considering the dogma of purgatory for Catholics. Some Protestants don’t like this either, because “well, Jesus already died for our sins so…why should I have to suffer for them?” Remember, though, it’s a final cleansing. It’s to heal, not to punish. Kids hate taking baths or medicine, but their parents make them because it’s good for them.

“Faith alone” - One of the reasons Martin Luther broke away from the catholic church was because of the use of indulgences. Indulgences were preached about at the time, but were not official catholic dogma, and essentially claimed that monetary donations would result in reduced suffering in purgatory (see above). Luther (rightfully) said no, that’s not really how God’s love works, but went a step too far and began to really emphasize faith or even “faith alone” over actions. Depending on how much emphasis you put on faith, it’s possible for a Protestant to claim “well, your faith is what really matters, not your actions. It’s okay to do xyz as long as you have true faith in God.” The Catholic church places much more emphasis on action, which leads to our more pronounced history of Reconciliation/Confession (the use/significance of which varies in Protestant denominations). It’s not really in the teaching of our church for a catholic to say “it’s okay to do xyz (read: have gay sex, a gender correction, etc.) as long as you have true faith in God.”

And I’d like to clarify that I’m in no way putting down the Christian LGBT positivity that exists - it’s so important for young queer people who are connected to their faith or are feeling excluded by their religious community - it’s just a personal frustration of mine that a lot of it is inherently Protestant or is Protestant-centric.

#religion #catholicism #long post

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becomingmac · 6 years

Text

My So Called Life

I realized I never put my story on here. *for TL;DR will be in bold for people who doesn’t care to read.

Adolescents: This story starts at a young age, It starts with my dad. My father wanted a boy. As a toddler we played rough games, I played Sega and played only football games. I wore shirts out of the boy section, I loved spider-man, Pokemon and Dragon ball Z. All things that related to boys. My grandmothers and my mom dressed me as girl, in pink, in dresses, capris, and other stuff that girls liked. But me, I didn’t like any of that. Barbies were a no. Girl coloring books were no. I thought care bears are the closest I got to them. I had Barbie sheets despite not wanting them. I was five years old when a girl punched me for liking blue and she told me that wasn’t a girl’s favorite color. I moved towards having friends that were boys. But never the popular boys though I envied them for all the girls wanting to be around them. Girls became more beautiful the older I got. I wanted them to see me the way they saw boys that they liked. Muscular, cool hair, boys clothing that was simple. But that wasn’t me. The older I got the more I was told I was a disappointment by my grandmother for not liking dresses and not wanting to have anything to do with being feminine. I had to wear bras despite not wanting boobs, I had to wear girly deodorant besides not wanting to smell girly.

Pre-teen: This body wasn’t mine and I didn’t want it. I began having crushes on all (not all but like most) my friends at the age of 11. But they all wanted boys so I pretended not to like them and liked boys. I made up lies and rumors, to cover up what I felt. At thirteen I learned about being a lesbian and I thought this was it. But don’t tell my friends they wouldn’t get it. I began to like my best friend. I tried to tell her, but she didn’t get it. I had my first girlfriend and I hid her away from everybody. She was proud to be with me but I didn’t feel the same. It was simply because I didn’t really like her and when everyone found out they didn’t act shocked. I told them I was bi so I seemed less strange to them. Girlfriend #2, When we would talk, I would take on the masculine role. That was me, the man. Another friend came out… or I outed. But she stayed with boys. Boys who were a mess and I didn’t understand. Again, I was not muscular, my voice wasn’t getting deeper and I wasn’t comfortable with me. I began dreaming about being what these girls wanted. Handsome, tall and muscular. But girlfriend #2 came back and forth. To feel the way I wanted I started doing.. unconventional things.

Teenage: Girlfriend #2, dumped me because I got a haircut and she told that I no longer looked like a girl and she wanted nothing to do with it. Eventually she came back and we spent months together. She left me for someone who looked even more manly and was athletic. Things I wasn’t more of.I began cutting off my hair more and more. Eventually I was getting called Sir. My grandmother began complaining that I had too short of hair. But I finally came out to them and they understood and eventually I was out to everyone. My dressing turned manlier and honestly then and now, Boy jeans are fantastic. Truthfully, I felt relieved that I could dress how I feel and have my hair feel the way that I wanted. But I became embarrassed to dress on the boy’s side because I was a girl. But as equally hating the women’s side because I didn’t belong there. Bathrooms started getting uncomfortable and having to wear a band dress became uncomfortable. My favorite super heroes were all male and I related to them so much. My ships were heterosexual couples and I wanted to be the men in them. I was constantly being told “If you were a boy, I would date you.” Girlfriend #3, She made me into something masculine, taught me how to dress fully comfortably on how I wanted to look. I was 16, I was introduced through one of my friends to a Person #1and Person #2. Person #1 wanted help on figuring out how to be manly and how to officially come out. The more P1 explained to me all the terms and one stuck with me, Genderqueer. Genderqueer is (noun): a Person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders. Was this me? I began talking about my feelings to Friend 1 and she told me whoever I was, she’d still be my friend. P2 and talked and she told me she didn’t see it but I felt it. I started getting mistaken more, hardly having boobs was truly helping me. My mother was angry and she said that it made her feel sad that people weren’t seeing her daughter and for me to stop cutting my hair. I made my own mother embarrassed of me. Eventually I told Girlfriend #3 what I was thinking and what if I was this term, and what if I was a boy. she said that we wouldn’t be together because she could never see herself with a man. So, I buried my feelings deep down to continue in my relationship. Now I felt more weight I didn’t understand on my shoulders. The more I buried my feelings down, I began feeling unhappy, I was seeking attention from other girls, especially one. But she had a boyfriend. But Girlfriend #3 was still around, we were trying to keep things together, though she was cheating with someone more feminine then me. Why wasn’t I the girl I was supposed to be? I began to hate my relationship more and more every day. Bye girlfriend #3. [Insert Complicated mess that is me and Friend 1] Again still a lot of people telling me that I was a better boyfriend than their boyfriends. Sorry your boyfriends sucked.

College: I became increasingly not comfortable in my body again. I began changing the way that I dressed, I switched to shorter shorts like frat boys. I might as well be one because that’s how douchy I look. I met Girlfriend #5, who was so much better than any girl I met. She matched my intelligence, she had an interesting life and we shared interests. Towards the beginning I told her about my gender problems and she said “boy or girl, I’ll love you no matter what. It doesn’t matter to me, You’re still you.” I had never cried so much like a baby. Her little sister I feel like she knew, in some way somehow “I’m girlie girlie and you’re boye boye.” [Fast forward like two years] As of march the conversation started popping up more and maybe because I didn’t feel like the person I was supposed to be. I would say things like “I don’t know, I’m not a girl.” Eventually I came to the terms of Non Binary. It just made sense, I wasn’t a boy or a girl. She supported that decision. I told my family, they were okay with it. My mom named me Thor. But it just didn’t feel right. I began feeling overwhelmed and unhappy. My grandmother she told me “You know what I don’t like about you? You’re not girly and you think you’d dress the way I want to make me happy.” I began thinking of what my life would be like as a male. A man, that’s a dream. At UTSA, I made a friend 2, I never paid a lot of attention to him but he was very nice to talk too. The conversation started over Gender Dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), or gender identity disorder (GID), is the distress a person experiences because of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In this case, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender. I made some comments on how I felt. Things like that I loved having short hair. Always being drawn to Boy gendered things. The happiness of being mistaken for a boy. How I had a name picked out if one day I decided I was a trans man. “That’s not normal, Cis people don’t say that. Oh yeah, and by the way I’m trans.” From that moment on, I began questioning my life. Who was I really? Why can’t I be Veronica? I wanted to be someone else. Anyone else, but Veronica because I wasn’t Veronica. I had never been. I stayed up sleepless on how I felt. I cried constantly because I didn’t understand myself even more now. I wasn’t the person I was supposed to be. I wasn’t muscular, I wasn’t tall, I wasn’t any of the things I wanted to be. And all I wanted was to be me. Girlfriend #5, she started noticing the crying and she started talking about this man she followed named Chella Man. Little by little she showed me more. Until one day I said “What if that’s me?” and she’s like “he has a ted talk lets watch it.” Chella Man, he was known as the boy named Rachel. I related to him and I started to understand him. Chella man identifies as Gender Queer. He talks about the difference between gender identity and presentation. While he was gender queer. He presented himself as a man with male pronouns. He said this way he didn’t have to get rid of his feminine qualities and he got to express his masculine qualities. There was a lot of crying but “No matter who you are, I am always going to love you and I’ll be here every step of the way.” I sobbed like a baby. That’s me, and that’s who I wanted to be. I reached out to Friend 2. He talked to me about himself and his life before. He showed me somethings that he wrote and they really hit home. I found out who I am and I felt all the pressure go away. While one thing still bothered me, how would my family take it? Later one night I wrote out this long facebook message about who I was along with that video. I lied to everyone though, I told them that I didn’t know which pronouns I wanted. I wanted He/Him. The decision of not telling them bothers me. But I assured them that I was still going to be me. Because I am me. GF #5 and I started looking up names and making me comfortable with male pronouns and other words like Boyfriend (I hear big time rush in my head right now) We even choose a name, Mateo Aiden Carranza. MAC just like my uncle and my dad. I started by buying a binder and continuing my conversations with Friend 2. I told my three best friends about my decision and my name change and immediately they went into helping me. “can I call you Matt for short?” “love you no matter what, bb.” “Is that how you would like me to address you?” “It doesn’t bother me.” “you’re an inspiration.” I started reading things online and researching how to go about everything. I released a video on snapchat asking people to help me. Everyone supported, and people started asking how to help. But It didn’t help the way I felt, and it caused me to spiral – Quit my job, went through a break up, tried to die. The usual problems. I came out to my family. I started realizing somethings such as I constantly compared myself to Boys from the age of 5 to even the ones I see now. I created doubts and faults of myself that way. I had no way of being them. I lead myself down a path where I pretended to be someone else. Someone who tried so hard to be happy with the cards they were dealt, but man they were some shitty cards. Being Veronica was exhausting. It made me realize this whole, I didn’t care who I was because GF #5 made me feel like it didn’t matter, I could have been like a furry and she probably would have been down with it. But I’m happy now. Got a decent job, I love the people I work with and I got to start fresh with them. Started T as of this week. I have the support of all of my family. Schools aright. But yeah. I still have the rest of my journey ahead.

Always Forward, Never Back.

#My Story #MAC #Sorry if someone I know is reading this #Sorry if you're included in here somehow #BUT YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

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