#there are so many who are inclusive and accepting of what you want to look like and be like and that is really heart warming

[cookinguptales]

You know... I had an experience about two months ago that I didn't talk about publicly, but I've been turning it over and over in my mind lately and I guess I'm finally able to put my unease into words.

So there's a podcast I'd been enjoying and right after I got caught up, they announced that they were planning on doing a live show. It's gonna be near me and on the day before my birthday and I thought -- hey, it's fate.

But... as many of you know, I'm disabled. For me, getting to a show like that has a lot of steps. One of those steps involved emailing the podcasters to ask about accessibility for the venue.

The response I got back was very quick and very brief. Essentially, it told me to contact the venue because they had no idea if it was accessible or not.

It was a bucket of cold water, and I had a hard time articulating at the time quite why it was so disheartening, but... I think I get it a little more now.

This is a podcast that has loudly spoken about inclusivity and diversity and all that jazz, but... I mean, it's easy to say that, isn't it? But just talking the talk without walking the walk isn't enough. That's like saying "sure, we will happily welcome you in our house -- if you can figure out how to unlock the door."

And friends, my lock-picking set is pretty good by this point. I've been scouting out locations for decades. I've had to research every goddamn classroom, field trip, and assigned bookstore that I've ever had in an academic setting. I've had to research every movie theater, theme park, and menu for every outing with friends or dates. I spend a long time painstakingly charting out accessible public transportation and potential places to sit down every time I leave the house.

Because when I was in college, my professors never made sure their lesson plans were accessible. (And I often had to argue with them to get the subpar accommodations I got.) Because my friends don't always know to get movie tickets for the accessible rows. Because my dates sometimes leave me on fucking read when I ask if we can go to a restaurant that doesn't keep its restrooms down a flight of stairs.

I had one professor who ever did research to see if I could do all the coursework she had planned, and who came up with alternate plans when she realized that I could not. Only one. It was a medical history and ethics class, and my professor sounded bewildered as she realized how difficult it is to plan your life when you're disabled.

This woman was straight-up one of the most thoughtful, philosophical, and ethical professors I've ever had, one who was incredibly devoted to diversity and inclusion -- and she'd never thought about it before, that the hospital archives she wanted us to visit were up a flight of stairs. That the medical museum full of disabled bodies she wanted us to visit only had a code-locked back entrance and an old freight elevator for their disabled guests who were still breathing.

And that's the crux of it, isn't it? It's easy to theoretically accept the existence of people who aren't like you. It's a lot harder to actively create a space in which they can exist by your side.

Because here's what I did before I contacted the podcasters. I googled the venue. I researched the neighborhood and contacted a friend who lives in the area to help me figure out if there were any accessible public transportation routes near there. (There aren't.) I planned for over an hour to figure out how close I could get before I had to shell out for an uber for the last leg of the trip.

Then I read through the venue's website. I looked through their main pages, through their FAQs to see if there was any mention of accessibility. No dice. I download their packet for clients and find out that, while the base building is accessible, the way that chairs/tables are set up for individual functions can make it inaccessible. So it's really up to who's hosting the show there.

So then and only then I contacted the podcasters. I asked if the floor plan was accessible. I asked if all the seats were accessible, or only some, and whether it was open seating or not. Would I need to show up early to get an accessible seat, or maybe make a reservation?

And... well, I got the one-sentence reply back that I described above. And that... god, it was really disheartening. I realized that they never even asked if their venues were accessible when they were booking the shows. I realized that they were unwilling to put in the work to learn the answers to questions that disabled attendees might have. I realized that they didn't care to find out if the building was accessible.

They didn't know and they didn't care. That, I think, is what took the wind out of my sails when they emailed me back. It's what made me decide that... yeah, I didn't really want to go through the trouble of finding an accessible route to the venue. I didn't want to have to pay an arm and a leg to hire a car to take me the last part of the journey. I didn't want to make myself frantic trying to figure out if I could do all that and still make the last train home.

If they didn't care, I guess I didn't either.

If they'd apologized and said that the only venue they could get was inaccessible, I actually would have understood. I know that small shows don't always get their pick of venues. I get it. I even would have understood if they'd been like "oh dang, I actually don't know -- but I'll find out."

But to be told that they didn't know and didn't intend to find out... oof. That one stung.

Because.... this is the thing. This is the thing. I may be good at it by now, but I'm so tired of picking locks. I'm tired of doing all the legwork because no one ever thinks to help me. I'm tired of feeling like an afterthought at best, or at worst utterly unwelcome.

If you truly want to be inclusive, you need to stop telling people that you're happy to have them -- if they can manage to unlock the door. You need to fucking open it yourself and welcome them in.

What brought all this back to me now, you may be asking? Well... I guess it's just what I was thinking to myself as I was tidying up my phone.

Today I'm deleting podcasts.

#I guess it did save me a lot of money #I'll still probably go up to nyc to visit with friends for my bday but I won't go all the way out to brooklyn for the show #and I probably won't need to get the hotel room #and I DEFINITELY won't be supporting their patreon like I was planning lmao #I'll buy myself a new tarot deck for my birthday instead #cw: #disability #ableism

[applesauce42069]

There is a massive historical discourse issue when it comes to Israel-Palestine and yeah it pisses me off, firstly as a Jew, second as someone who is pursuing a degree in Jewish history.

You can see a part of it by looking at the historical narrative presented by a very popular source, DecolonizePalestine. This source has been shared widely by celebrities, by activists. It has been quoted to me on this website. It was even in the instagram bio of one of my TA's. It is considered a helpful and trustworthy source on Israel-Palestine.

The website has a Palestine 101 section, which includes this helpful module:

okay lets take a look:

I've never heard of the Peselet tablet, so let's do a quick google.

Huh. That's weird.

There actually is a 3,000 year old Egyptian tablet (stele) that talks about the levant though.

Oh no! Anyways. Lets move on:

I'm sorry but how do you mention the Assyrians without mentioning that they destroyed the ancient Kingdom of Israel. And the Persians without mentioning that they allowed for the end of the Babylonian exile and the building of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem . And the Romans without mentioning what they named their province in the levant. Judea. This is where the name "Jew" comes from. There isn't a J in Hebrew.

wait the ottomans???? We already got to the Ottomans??? We just skipped literal centuries.

There's clearly a narrative being created here, not by the inclusion of historical facts, but rather the purposeful omission of historical facts. No serious scholar would be able to discuss the history of the levant and COMPLETELY LEAVE OUT THE JEWS.

This is the dominant historical narrative in discourse on Israel-Palestine and it is harmful. Not only because its untrue, but because it involves the destruction of Jewish history and the right of Jews to steward our own history.

Where we come from is and has always been a huge part of Jewish identity. I cannot stress this enough. It is wrong and yes, it is antisemitic to warp and erase Jewish history for your own political purposes.

and here's what gets me: it is completely unnecessary.

You can recognize all the horrors that the zionist movement and Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians without denying Jewish history. You can demand Israel take accountability and stop what it is doing without denying Jewish history. You can advocate for Palestinian freedom, statehood and self determination, without denying Jewish history.

But people don't want to *just* do that. In the minds of many, the only acceptable Free Palestine is a Palestine Free of Jews or Jewish autonomy.

And for that, fuck you. Palestinians are indigenous to the levant. They know their history and where they come from. Jews are indigenous to the levant. We know our history and where we come from.

No one is going anywhere.

Be better.

Free Palestine and Am Yisrael Chai.

#jumblr #antisemitism #jewish and proud #i/p #jewish history

[flightlessangelwings]

While we’re in Latino Heritage Month, let’s stop assuming your reader doesn’t know/speak Spanish in your reader insert fics. Especially if you’re writing for Pedro’s, Oscar’s or other Latino characters please.

EDIT: After some criticism of how this was originally phrased, let me change it into a question/request instead- Can we as writers please try to be more inclusive with our reader insert fics so poc and others can feel represented and see themselves too? Including taking out a quick throwaway line about reader not understanding Spanish. (Keeping the original phrasing above so anyone who missed the post to begin with can still see how I originally phrased it)

If you have a throwaway line of “he said in Spanish that you didn’t understand” or something similar, just take it out. Have something like “you didn’t hear” instead and let the reader interpret how they want. Or use italics to indicate Spanish. Or have the translation right there without mention of anyone translating for them. Simple. Or if you don’t want to/feel you cannot change it, then please have something in with your warnings so Latinos/poc can skip it if they choose.

And let me tell you why this is so frustrating (even for me as someone who is not a fluent speaker). It’s because Latinos look to these characters and actors for representation. We see ourselves in them. And when you clearly do not have a Latino person in mind when writing, you’re saying we don’t belong here. In a space where we should feel welcomed and celebrated. Representation matters. Inclusivity matters. Please try to be more inclusive with reader fics so we can all enjoy and immerse ourselves in your writing.

ALSO EDITING TO ADD MORE FROM A REBLOG SO EVERYONE CAN SEE MY CLARIFICATION: (under a cut for length)

This is nothing new, poc have been asking for years now to be inclusive in fics and yet it’s still a battle. We’re not asking for a lot, and certainly not asking anyone to change their style or creativity or anything like that. Literally simple edits: take out the word “blush” don’t mention hair, don’t mention not understanding Spanish, not making reader blood related to a white character, etc. Literally tiny things that would not change the story at all but make a world of difference.

Here’s an example too: a few years ago it was not common for writers to label the gender of their reader as it was usually assumed the reader would be a woman. But, people advocated to label readers as f/m/gn/whatever to be more inclusive and asked writers to strive for gender neutral readers when possible so that more readers felt seen and welcome. Now it’s a common thing to do. Why is making the readers race ambiguous any different?

Yes sometimes posts like this come across harsh, but know that they’re not meant to be. Poc aren’t trying to demand anything, we just ask to broaden your langauge when writing reader insert so more can see themselves in your work. It’s incredibly frustrating to ask for inclusivity and be met with hostility and rudeness in return and a refusal to think about poc so yes sometimes the wording gets harsh out of that frustration. But I encourage y’all to focus on the message more and maybe think about why poc in fandom get snippy like this. We do need to have an open conversation, yes. Just look in the comments at the Latinos and poc who are upset by the exclusion and feel hurt by it. How you you white fans feel if roles were reversed and none of the fics included you? Not fun, right?

And to those who say write it yourself: I do. I’ve been a x reader writer for years now and I do strive for inclusivity in my work. But I’m only one person and this is bigger than any one person. This isn’t about what I personally find acceptable or what I personally what. It should be a collective effort among writers as a whole to strive to include as many as possible in their works and not white code your readers. It’s not about demanding writers write it a certain way, it’s about asking writers to consider others who don’t look like them who also want the immersion and the escape that your fic brings.

#inclusivity #pedro pascal #oscar isaac #pedro pascal fandom #oscar isaac fandom #joel miller x reader #miguel o’hara x reader #frankie morales x reader #santiago garcia x reader #javier peña x reader #marc spector x reader #steven grant x reader #jake lockely x reader #javi gutierrez x reader #marcus moreno x reader #marcus pike x reader #pero tovar x reader

[levmada]

Difficulties Levi has had to accept and adjust to since being discharged from the hospital—which aren’t mutually inclusive just yet—were countless already. Then came the matter of his hair.

There is one person and one person only whom he considers trusting with his hair.

Actually, he trusts you without question regardless of whatever it is. He'd just be lying if he said he wasn't nervous.

Your shared bathroom has a mirror stretching the length of the counter. He refused to sit in his wheelchair and get it covered in hair, and maneuvering into a proper chair wasn't difficult. He finds an excuse to look away from his obnoxiously overgrown bangs and awkwardly tacked-on white scar tape—and looks for you in the corner of the mirror. You set down the wheelchair somewhere outside his line of sight.

It's been several months, but he still finds it hard to accept.

He looks ahead again when he hears your footsteps, so he looks nothing but annoyed by what is surely a chore. In truth he’s so nervous he can hear his own heartbeat, and doesn’t hear you announce yourself.

You unwrap a towel on a the counter to reveal all your supplies. Nothing extravagant, it being everything he asked you to get.

Before you begin, you press a kiss to the top of his head.

The snipping sounds are terribly loud in his ears, little scrapes of a fork on a plate. It’s even the hardest thing to mess up the shaping where his undercut lays in the back, but even still.

He didn't imagine it like this. Certainly not so many memories coming, when over three decades have passed since someone else did this—Mom. In his memories she has him sat on the thin edge of their rusty bath, her kneeling behind him, and trimmed with a dull pair of fabric scissors. He can’t remember for sure, but there’s no way she made it look bad.

He hated getting his hair cut, he remembers just now. They only had one hairbrush, and the guilt would eat him up over Mom, who used it obsessively to keep her long hair neat and perfect.

So the feel of her fingers carding through his hair, or using the metal comb, was extremely painful. She'd chastise him gently. But he still couldn't bring himself.

Yet, now today, he hates himself for having hated it.

Levi can’t help but glance at his neck in the mirror. Later on, when he first asked Kenny to cut his hair, he threatened to clip his tiny throat from his shoulders with a pair of shears if he ever asked for help with something so stupid ever again. If he couldn't do something that basic by himself, he was destined to die a weak runt.

It was an odd overreaction from Kenny in retrospect.

He is weak now.

But he doesn't need to be strong any longer.

Unsure of how to feel, he makes an effort not to think at all until you pipe up that you want him to see. You pluck a handheld mirror from the counter for him to see.

He immediately makes a face, which he shoots at your reflection. "Hey. This is too long."

You smile. "I wanted to be extra careful so I don't go too short. Too much is better than too little. It's even, right?"

It is even.

He nods stiffly, pinning his tongue between his teeth as he looks away from the mirror. Like back then, this is suddenly painful, but only in the way that shows him another way in which you tell him that you love him.

Levi masterlist | main masterlist

#levi x you #levi x reader #levi ackerman fluff #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackerman x you #captain levi x reader #captain levi x you #rivaille x you #levi x gn!reader #levi x y/n

[marveltrumpshate]

As we said in our closing message at the end of this year’s auction, we've become something bigger and better than we ever imagined we could be when our journey began in 2018. As we mark half a decade of Marvel Trumps Hate, we want to share a few milestones with you starting with this year's auction results, so if you're used to our auction results posts…well, this one will look a little different. 😉

This year, 152 "Marvel"-ous creators came forward to offer 264 auctions.

And this year, we raised…

Back in 2018, our first auction total of $19,262.52 blew our minds—and this is over $16,700 more than that! 😮💖🎉

This was a quieter year than most (surely we're not the only ones suffering burnout because this has been A Year), so we're extremely grateful and proud of what we accomplished together. We broke records, some of which we were aiming for and some which we weren't. Of the ones we didn't expect, the record for the highest amount donated to a charity, which we smashed in 2021 ($6,349.98 to Planned Parenthood), was shattered with a whopping $8,039.99 going to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). We also had the biggest amount raised by a single auction this year: an unbelievable $2,101.67. All hail the power of pods!

And the biggest record of all that we set in 2023…

Drum roll, please…

With the help of 923 unique creators offering 2,217 auctions over the past five years, we raised a grand total of…

WE RAISED OVER $200,000, EVERYONE! No, we can't believe our eyes either. We're floored to say the least although maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. Every year, you manage to surprise us and set records, and this year was no different. You came out of the gate running and somehow you blazed right past our expectations, continued to make us adjust our stretch goals as bids and donations came in, and hit a number we weren't sure we'd reach even as we began to hope for it.

It’s been an incredible journey, with the mod chat pinging at all hours with excited gifs, effusive heart emojis, and inarticulate keyboard smashes as we expressed our love for the wonderful people in our fandom. It’s been very hard not blurting out the milestones as we reached them when we desperately wanted to share these amazing results with you all.

Creators, we couldn't have started this auction without you. We loved seeing so many veteran creators sign up again and were pleasantly surprised by how many new faces showed up to the party.

Bidders, as crazy as it sounds, most donations were small ones including a lot of those crazily high winning bids—so many of them were the result of people pooling their five dollars together! This has been consistently the case since MTH began. It just goes to show how much of an impact you can have when you’re part of something bigger than yourself. Each donation has a ripple effect, and enough ripples can cause a wave. You matter, and you can make a difference.

We also owe our success to our amazing signal boosters. There can’t be an auction without any participants, so to every fandom community Tumblr that agreed to reblog our posts, every Discord server mod who let us post announcements, and every person who shared our posts and encouraged their fandom friends to sign up and/or bid, thank you so much! Together, we reached hundreds of fantastic creators and bidders from all corners of the Marvel fandom, many of whom we didn't know and some who were hearing about us for the first time.

We’re so touched by the massive number of people who donated above and beyond their pledged amount, creators who took on multiple auctions and offered multiple winner slots, and bidders who accepted their second-place wins with such eagerness! We also had people make donations in the spirit of MTH even though they didn’t win an auction, which was beyond generous.

In addition to the astounding amount of money we were able to raise for charity, MTH was successful in other ways. We strove to be as inclusive as possible, determined to make this event a fandom-wide effort. Considering that the auctions covered over 381 unique platonic and romantic relationships and character-centric options (if we include "all ships/gen"-inclusive relationships, this number is even higher) across 36 universes within the Marvel multiverse, we can safely say that we accomplished our goal.

This spirit of inclusion also applies to our auctions and charities. Every one of 264 auctions was bid on, and every one of our 30 supported charities received donations. We’re in awe of your commitment to supporting all our creators and charities and thrilled that you spread all the love around, bidders!

Here’s our breakdown of the donations (to enlarge the image, click here and hover to see the donation amount per charity).

We’ve also listed the amount raised per charity on our 2023 auction results page.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for helping us turn our sixth Marvel Trumps Hate auction and the celebration of half a decade of MTH into such a fantastic experience. We cherish every single message of love and support that we received and continue to receive on our Discord server and through DMs, Tumblr messages, emails, tweets, etc. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! We wouldn't be half as good at this—we couldn't have done any of this—if we weren't doing it with you. And that's the truth. ❤️

To remember or learn why we created this auction in the first place, please check out our 2018 "thank you" post to all of our creators, bidders, signal boosters, and supporters.

If you'd like to stay updated on all of the 2023 Marvel Trumps Hate fills, follow us and/or check out the "mth 2023" tag on our Tumblr. You’ll also be able to find works posted on AO3 in our Marvel Trumps Hate 2023 collection and links to fills in our Discord server, which you can join to brainstorm prompts, chat about fills, and find out about other fandom events.

Thank you once again to everyone who volunteered their services, time, money, and platforms to spread the word. These are tough times we live in, and it's easy to believe that there's only so much you can do as an individual. But as Tony and Natasha realized throughout their years as Avengers, we become something more than ourselves when we're part of a team.

We may come from different walks of life and hail from different parts of the world. We may be part of different fandoms within the Marvel multiverse. Many of us don't cross paths except this one time of the year. But despite our differences, we share a common goal and because of our differences, we're capable of making the impossible possible. And the only way to do that is, as Steve and Tony learned over their years of knowing each other, together.

And with that, MTH 2023 has officially come to a close. We're so beyond grateful to you all and can’t wait to see all of your fanworks over the coming year! But first, we’re going to follow baby Groot and take a moment to relax.

Lots of love and gratitude, Your 2023 MTH mods

#marvel trumps hate #mth 2023 #announcement

[arklayraven]

I can't sleep rn while this annoyed/pissed off. So time to remind people OM is canonly a queer game as hell and to tell the queerphobes and transphobes to FUCK OFF. (Seriously, why are you following me if you hate queer and trans people/characters? Get out of here.)

This is a official post by OM devs over the creation of OM and their MC. Read the left section well.

"OM isn't a queer game" many like to say.

The game, writers and characters beg to differ.

From someone kind who felt they knew all about the game and characters well, even tho they played it themselves.

Let's go back to that official post by Solmare about OM and this section specifically.

Hope you read that well, and the person(and many who think/believe this) learns how damn wrong they are.

Also...God don't bring up my Asmo and act like you know all about him. Another thing from that kind person.

Firstly, canonly none of the characters have set labels. But they are all in fact canonly queer. Whether you like to believe/accept this or not. It's fact, was fact from day one.

Asmodeus is the most openly proud queer boy in the series, and gender nonconforming too at that, even if he uses only he/him pronouns(but he's been shown to be fine being called princess, queen, etc. So he's clearly open to all gendered/less pronouns/labels I feel).

He drips of gender fluidity, and going against gender presentation norms(Babe has presented so fem and nonconforming for awhile now. Learn to look at him and appreciate him better). So take note of all of that, and never say again he's not queer, because that's a damn fucking lie.

Also I hate how bi is used as default for queerness as a whole for characters who are interested in more than one gender, and wish for the day people stop using it as so. (Use MSPEC or just queer if you wish to sound more inclusive of all possible labels/identities for a canon queer character with no canon label set.)

Second, back to what I said before, ALL THE CHARACTERS IN OM ARE QUEER. If you ship your MC or yourself with them, know that's a canon queer character you're pairing them/yourself up with. And you can't erase their queerness and identity. Especially if it makes you personally feel bothered or crap.

And before you say anything, dating them, as a straight woman, doesn't automatically make them straight now too. They are still queer, but are dating you, who happen to be a straight woman. (stop being damn queerphobic challenge.)

I'm already tired of this crap, so gonna end this now and fast.

OM is a canon queer game, and was made with a MC who is genderless to be inclusive of ALL PLAYERS. This opened the door quickly for men, nonbinary, etc players to enjoy the game too, and be part of the fandom as well. There's as much men and nonbinary players in the series like women are, but only difference is in the fandom mainly. Many people choose to see which fans or MCs are more accepted in the community, and which ones to show more love/attention too.

If you tried to expand your horizons more, you will surely quickly find people who identify as men, nonbinary, etc in the fandom as well. And learn how we're here, always been here, just greatly drowned out or ignored by a vast majority of people just because of who we are. (Lots of people with dislike for MCs who are men, or just plain damn queerphobia and transphobia in the works.)

The more people try to ignore the clear fact men and nonbinary people play OM too. The more easier it is for them say OM and its characters aren't canonly queer, and they can feel special/happy about playing the game. That they want to believe was just made to cater to women only. But in reality it was made to be catered to all players, no matter their gender identity or lack of, and same for romantic/sexual attraction.

Also another thing I forgot to add to put more facts that OM is a queer game to be inclusive of ALL PLAYERS.

Already, the undateables from day one are canonly queer too. If you need to be reminded and stated that as well.

That's pretty much it on this annoying tiring topic.

Enjoy playing OM, the canonly queer game made for ALL PLAYERS. <3

#;little raven speaks #;raven om calamity

[mbslost]

Another yapping session with MB yipeee!

nah in all seriousness i would like to talk about some things, now that my temper is gone.

we still remember the post on twt made by @/renhanasgf about Gato not being more inclusive, oorrrr that her poc character are ignored. (i wont talk about the real stuff from discord in this post since proofs are still gathered.)

well here i am! (sadly)

1.How many poc characters?

7 well known (or maybe more). who are those? well we'll start with Raven(tinr) or known as Selin as well, Chet Ichpujani(tinr/tpof), Strade(btd/tpof), Thomas(tpof), Jaqueline(tpof), Machete(tpof) and fucking Derek(tpof)

some of them dont have a full name (besides an alias) either because story wise it didnt mattered or because of their lore (Strade and Machete are criminals, doubt they would want a victim that escaped to expose their identity, no?) Also another detail, even some white characters do not have a last name,such as Sid(tinr), Dragon/Jace(tpof), Komodo/Mike(tpof), Chamomile(tpof), Richard(tpof) and probably some from 'Facility'.

their ethnicities are indeed unknown, either because it wouldnt really affect their story or it was avoided in case it could cause a conflict. dunno. about this i cant really talk a lot since her blogs are gone, thus i cannot dig into this matter anymore. although i believe having a hc on them is fine. ''- It is 100% okay to have ANY headcanons about my character!''-her website)

Raven was one of the well know character from Gato that is poc. her nationality is unknown due to the story (which i would recommend you to read tinr, pretty cool tbh). since her story goes deeper i would suggest you to also read her wiki (fanmade). sadly lots of stuff are now gone about her. still a lover character.

Strade. Strade is Strade. (kind of forgot what she said in the answer about his name but the wiki says ''Strade is not his actual birth name. It's similar to a placeholder name like John Doe. His birth name is unknown." still you can check out more here)

Chet Ichpujani is another character involved in tinr, a manager (i believe) at a semi-restaurant thing? in the end he offers to help Farz with his problem. pretty cool guy since he and Anthony Shore re-appeared in tpof. (picture below)

Machete, ''Machete is the newest member of the desert group. He had to prove himself worthy by performing various criminal tasks to be allowed in. Despite his recent acceptance, the rest of the group remain wary of him. His quiet demeanor and decisive actions tend to unsettle the other members. He regrets everything he's done to be admitted into the group, but he chose to stop at nothing to get revenge for his sister. He feels as though he's completely lost his identity and humanity to his "purpose"." -wiki (also a small detail, he did everything to revenge his sister)

Tom/Thomas, ''Tom is a college student, taking a media development course centered around sound design. He took a few years off high school, kind of meandering through life without an aim for a while. However, he eventually found a passion for making music. Despite tons of research and hard work, he was never really able to get his brand off the ground, so he decided to head to college to get some formal education on the subject. Late one night, as he was about to head home, he was abducted by Komodo and Dragon.'' -wiki

Jaqueline, "Jaqueline is a young trades worker learning to paint houses. She takes pride in her work and also frequently goes to the gym. Her mother pesters her to get a higher education, but she loves her current career path. Due to the friction with her family over her job, she tends to choose to spend time with friends instead. She was violently abducted by Jack in broad daylight, unlucky to have no witnesses." -wiki

therefore, there's plenty of information, plus that lost from her blogs.

2.Model minority

must agree, her work from 2016 looked alike yet, in the last years she actually showed more bodies (like types)

here are some examples:

also Strade's new model as well:

quite diverse, is it not? i am aware i didnt show others as well but if you wish to (and i actually encourage to) you can view the rest here! Lawrence, Ren, Celia (or on pinterest!)

3. Conclusion

i still believe everyone can create whatever they wish, whatever character. the details are on their part. now i could understand Gato for being upset when someone doesnt draw their character as they are (such as changing the body type, skin colour, etc) but also cant blame those who feel like being ignored (trust me, had to survive the genshin fandom).

so the characters exist, thus i dont see the problem of not being inclusive (also, as she often said, you can hc her characters, thus i believe their ethnicities are free to chose for yourself)

that's it. as for the real deal (the discord stuff) i believe it's the best more proofs come. rn i dont see her as a racist artist, but that comment in spanish does sound in fact xenophobic... well, until more context is posted, we'll see

stay safe!

#gatobob #btd #btd2 #tpof #boyfriend to death #tinr #augh kinda getting tired of this all of this tbh might draw Law tho my pretty princess

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

My current letter to the HBO Folks.

@stardust-sadie's latest letter, @merryfinches, @poison-into-positivity and so many others inspired me to write my own letter to David Zaslav. This is what was sent, feel free to use any of it if you'd like, I stole some of Stardust-Sadie's commentary with their permission (in their letter).

---

Email Addresses:

Only emails that worked:

[email protected]

[email protected]

The rest of these are not working at the moment:

[email protected], [email protected], To whom it may concern: attention David Zaslav, [email protected]

---

To whom it may concern: Attention David Zaslav

I realize you all are probably being swamped at the moment by an influx of responses to your decision to not greenlight Season 3 of Our Flag Means Death, so I appreciate you taking the time to read this if you do. 

I am writing today, much like many of my fellow fans, hoping to provide you with evidence and earnest feedback as to why you should reverse the decision not to renew. I have used HBO Max in the past, but once a show I liked was over, and another one on another network came up that we wanted to watch, we decided to cancel. I was on HBOMax before I knew about Our Flag Means Death, and aside from Doom Patrol and Harley Quinn, we didn't have too many other shows we wanted to watch. After cancelling for many months, I heard of Our Flag Means Death from an artist that drew for other fandoms that I liked. Looking into the fanbase, I quickly found pieces that I felt were definitely up my alley and decided to cancel other networks for a few months to jump back into HBOMax.

Why is this important? I don't watch ads in a lot of places. I block pop ups because they are often very spammy, so I don't get recommendations for shows like most people. I'm a [AGE][GENDER][PROFESSION] and I avoid advertising in most cases. You know where I get my recommendations? Fanbases, casts and crews. The absolute adoration of an artist or writer that I like loving a series will get me to look into and watch that show before any other kind of advertising. Your fanbase is free advertising. THAT BEING SAID -- I'd like to explain to you what meant so much to me about this show.

Not only was I absolutely floored by the quality, and story of Our Flag Means Death, but the thing that kept me wanting more was the messages it portrayed. So rarely is there a show that embodies drama, comedy, and an all encompassing belief in forgiveness and change, and accepting others for who they are. This show gave me a new outlook on life. It helped me to heal parts of myself I didn't realize were hurt. I found love and compassion in the cast, the crew, and the fanbase that I haven't experienced in modern television in a very long time. I became engaged in other max shows because of it (Wellington Paranormal, The Last of Us, His Dark Materials, Lovecraft Country, etc). I'm actively watching shows and content I had previously decided not to worry about because of the influence of Our Flag Means Death. 

For me, as a fan, knowing that Max has content that means so much to me and others, shows that as a company, you're willing to have content that not only sparks the imagination, but fosters kindness, acceptance, and forgiveness no matter what race, gender, sexuality, or financial background you're from. That is the content we, the fans, have been looking for in so many places and have found them lacking. Another great example of this is the Barbie movie that you had a sign language interpreter for. While I am a hearing person, I still watched it because it was fascinating and so incredibly inclusive, and that tells me that you, HBOMax as a company DOES care about inclusivity.

When we waited for the renewal announcement this winter, I purchased Our Flag Means Death merchandise from your store (a mug and a blanket) because I knew I needed something to commemorate this great show no matter what happened. I am one of many fans who did this. Fun, reasonably designed merchandise is something we the fanbase can get behind. 

Our Flag Means Death is a powerhouse in television, and I know that it's only meant to be 3 seasons, so it won't be a cash cow forever, but I can tell you it's brought SO MANY PEOPLE to your platform that would normally just not have joined up. I am on HBO Max right now so that I can watch Our Flag Means Death whenever I want to. You're getting monthly subscription fees from me and so many other people JUST for this show. Your decision to cancel it is actually hurting your numbers, as can be seen in the clear drop in shareholder confidence since the announcement on January 9th.  Attached is a screenshot of the WB Discovery Inc Stock for reference.

In addition, a colleague of mine said this best so I will quote them here:

"Furthermore, the decision to cancel the show has led to a very prominent and public backlash from the very passionate and vocal fanbase of Our Flag Means Death. Fans have made their displeasure known across all the major social media platforms: X, Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, etc etc. This backlash is unlikely to die down in the near future, and is likely to continue to reflect a poor image of HBO Max to subscribers and investors. 

The egregious decision to cancel Our Flag Means Death has also caught the attention of journalists writing for major publications, such as Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, The Independent, and even more niche internet publications such as Collider. "

All of this is true. As an active member of this fanbase, I am seeing this across all platforms.

I implore you, as a huge consumer of  fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, historical, and lgbtqia content, to please reconsider renewing Our Flag Means Death for its 3rd and final season. We the fans are willing to put our hearts and souls into these letters because this show made an impact on our community that is so immense and cascading that it can't be quantified. I guarantee that a good faith act to do so will not only restore your reputation but open new revenue streams if you continue with this kind of inclusive and heartfelt content.

Thank you for your time,

[NAME]

#ofmd #our flag means death #renewofmd #renew our flag means death #renew ofmd #ofmd renewal #renew as a crew

[writingwithcolor]

Historical romance with Black woman, without including racism

Anonymous asked:

I write regency romance and I have a female character that I have written as having a mother who is black Antiguan and father who is white British in 1819—he’s a Viscount so they are highly placed. I want their daughter to have a typical romance arc…and that’s it. I don’t plan on making any of her problems about race or even mention it other than describing her as black and a brief backstory on how her parents met. In ignoring this aspect of her—whatever problems might have presented themselves, what conflicted feelings she might have about British white high society in that era—am I wrong? If I am wrong but still don’t want the romance to be about race and class, how to do that in a respectful way? 

Or, is it okay to tell the story of romance without race being an issue at all?

Yes, yes, and yes. And it’s not so much about ignoring any racial conflicts in the era. Although, the history and treatment of Black people was not the same in the European regions as it was in the Americas (feel free to do some research, for context).

It’s about whether the issue matters specifically to: 

your story

the specific area 

your character’s narrative

to those around her, or specifically the people she interacts with, including the lover, his relatives, friends, and so on.

And it’s okay for that answer to be no. You do not need to make racism just * not exist* but rather, not make it a matter for the people in the story. This is the case whether you write a story set in 1819 or 2025!

Black people should be allowed stories, especially with romances, that aren’t about racist conflict and being dehumanized. The regency romance genre lacks Black women protagonists in love, and BIPOC in general. And these Black women and people do not need to only be mixed race or light, either.

Steps to diversify the genre starts with just letting us exist in history without fears of being “historically inaccurate.”

As discussed many times here:

Black people existed (and exist!) in Europe, and not only as enslaved or oppressed people. 

Arguments against historical accuracy are usually only served to keep inclusion out, not to bring it in. The same historical accuracy is not called for when including fairies, ogres and dragons in historical settings. 

Therefore, if supernatural creatures can exist in this era as upper class and royalty, so can Black people, period. But again, they did! So.

Not including racism doesn’t mean ignoring reality 

Now, if one were to write a story about a Black person today and not include any racism, are they somehow doing Black people a disservice by not putting them through traumas and racism they already face on a regular basis? I would say absolutely not. In fact, it’s what I personally go for. Escapism should exist for us too. These heavy-hearted books have their place and can be sought out if desired. 

Colorblindness

On the same note, colorblindness is not ideal. You mention that you’ll still describe the characters, which is good. But being Black or another race or ethnicity, but leaving out the anti and ‘isms doesn’t mean you’re removing an essential part of them. A welcome part of representation is to acknowledge their looks, culture, food, languages…aka the things that make them who they are. The narrative doesn’t need to obsess over differences, but simply accept them as natural. 

Some people have this fear of race. As if to talk about, mention or even notice race is to be racist. “Black” is a whispered word. 

Avoid all talk of “despite of race” or “not seeing race” because that’s 

1) simply not true and is 

2) another form of racist erasure. 

We can see and acknowledge differences between you and me. And they can simply be embraced and accepted, not ignored.

Ways to acknowledge diversity without racism in romance

There are many ways to do this. Here are just some ideas, some vague and some specific. 

Describe and mention the character’s looks

Include physical descriptions of your character’s race. Whether you show or tell, you should make it clear that they’re Black, or the given race you’re writing. It doesn’t have to be a big deal for the plot. It should be something that is at least apparent to readers. Without clear indication, the character will likely be seen as white. Book covers help avoid this white-as-default assumption, too.

You can thread descriptions and reminders, short or longer, throughout the story.

Examples

She had rich brown skin and even darker brown eyes. I lost my breath when she tucked her chin, only to bat her heavy lashes my way.

Thick curls spilled around her face, black coils against golden brown skin.

I attribute my looks to my Antiguan roots - dark brown skin, umber eyes, and a small, rounded nose - all traits that I got from my mother. 

She tucked a thick coil under her bonnet

Comparisons also work, particularly if the people are not used to seeing people of this race. Now, these comparisons should not be about exalting one race or putting down the other group(s). Pointing out differences does not need to be a battle of what or who is better looking.

More examples

Lance couldn’t keep his eyes off of the beautiful woman stepping off of the boat. Her skin held a warm brown hue. He’d never seen skin this rich in color – all of his friends and neighbors were pale or only slightly tanned from the sun.

She had dark skin, her brown shade much deeper in tone than the other humans he had met so far on his ventures through space.

Her brown skin, black hair and dark eyes contrasted with those of the pale, blonde women in the room.

“I hear the Duke is courting that young Moorish woman.” “The woman’s name is Emilia Watson,” Sarah said, resolutely.

He admired the stark contrast of their skin, brown and white, as they walked hand in hand.

Add culture, not racism

Culture is many, many things. So there’s many ways to show hints of it throughout the story. 

Consider things like:

Food

Holidays

Clothing

Religion, beliefs, myths

Language, phrases

Mannerisms, values and habits

Superstitions

Family roles

Traditions and customs

Art

Food

A special mention to food, but perhaps because I’m hungry writing this. Food can be culture, and a very important part of it, I think it’s also an easy and fun way to incorporate it into a story, without needing to mention racism.

Examples

The characters makes her partner or the family a traditional dish. He / they could also share their favorites with her.

She shows him how to make a dish passed down throughout the family. 

Something she makes him is so spicy that he runs to find water for relief, which could be a funny and cute moment.

They celebrate a special holiday or tradition by making a meal together.

They visit a market that sells food or produce from her homeland that they try and enjoy.

In summary

Please feel free to write historical romances with BIPOC, minus the racism. I promise that there’s an audience for it!

More reading

Wealthy Black character in historical romance, written by white author

(1800s Western) non-racist White characters interacting with Black and Native people

Historical American Fiction without the Racism

FAQ - “It wouldn’t be historically accurate for my story to include BiPoC.” 

Praising Beauty Without Fetishizing PoC 

~Mod Colette

P.S. If anyone has some good diverse regency romances with WOC, please drop those recommendations. I’m always trying to find more to read! 

#Black #black characters #historical romance #regency #regency romance #escapism #asks

[mad-fem-lesbian]

We All Know What a Woman is Essay

This is the essay I wrote for an assignment where we were assigned to write an argument of definition. I defended that "woman" "female" and "lesbian" all have clear definitions and that it's offensive to try to change them.

I had to be “civil” in my arguments, so I had to rein myself in a little bit on certain parts.

But I was still able to show a backbone and make my stances very clear.

My professor was extremely impressed. He even said it was one of the best essays he’s read. 💪🏾

I’m new(ish) to the community, so I look forward to interacting with you all!

We are living in a time where the words “women” and “female” have become almost taboo and devoid of meaning. The definitions of these two words, which have always been clear historically, are now up for debate. No longer are the dictionary/medical/historical definitions universally accepted. There is a push for a change in language that’s more “inclusive” or “gender neutral.” The push for this change is mostly due to wanting to legitimize transgender identities. Some examples include no longer referring to pregnancy or menstruation as being female or women’s issues.  The point of language, however, isn’t to be inclusive. The point is to be able to describe and categorize things accurately. We need language to explain the similarities and differences between things. In the case of female and male and with woman and man, these words need to be clear because they have historical significance, medical necessity, social implications, and legal ramifications.  

The differences between the sexes and how we refer to each group have always been clear. Man has referred to an adult human male and woman has referred to as an adult human female. Biology has always been a part of the definitions and distinctions. Not accounting for disorders of sexual development (DSDs), the sexes are usually accurately observed and categorized in terms of chromosomes and primary sex characteristics. Sex and gender were intrinsically linked terms and concepts in the past. As the Merriam-Webster website explains, the terms sex and gender have been linked since the 14th century (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Meanwhile, the terms gender identity and transgender didn’t have known uses until 1964 (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) and 1974 (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). So, it’s a relatively newer concept that gender exists separately from sex. Sex has a definition based on biology; it’s based on something that’s tangible, measurable, and concrete.

 Comparatively, gender identity is based on someone’s internal sense of themself and therefore it is “unverifiable and unfalsifiable” (Griffin L, et al., 2021, p. 292). There are large enough parts of society who support the idea that women are a social category made up of “feminine” traits and characteristics. They want to redefine woman/female based on transgender people’s view of themselves. Even this side of the argument has to admit that since their gender definitions, such as the belief that “gender can be fluid” or that someone is non-binary or agender that it’s not solid enough of a concept to start changing definitions and laws based on an unprovable concept. As Dahlen (2020), explains, “No genetic marker, biochemical test, brain imaging, or objective measurement exists in medical practice for gender identity . . . ” (p. 42).

Historically, women were discriminated against medically and legally. Of course, we still see this practiced in current times by things such as Roe v. Wade being overturned by the United States Supreme Court on June 22, 2022. As a black woman, one of the first things that comes to mind when I think about the medical horrors against women is Dr. J. Marion Simms and his “medical experiments” on enslaved women (Ojanuga, 1993). Dr. J. Marion Simms was considered by many to be the “Father of  modern Gynecology.” Ojanuga goes on to explain how during that time period, gynecology didn’t even exist as a medical field yet (Ojanuga, 1993). To make these atrocities against my ancestors even worse, the enslaved women weren’t able to give consent to the medical treatments (Ojanuga, 1993). Unfortunately, black women are still facing problems related to maternal health (Cuénant, 2023). Women have never been able to separate our “gender” from our sex. Our female bodies have always been a target when it comes to medical and political attacks. Male bodies aren’t policed in this same manner and they’re often the ones in charge of women’s autonomy. That’s why the idea that any male (regardless of how feminine he may feel or how he presents himself) can “identify” as a female or as a woman personally offends me.

Our sex is fixed and anything related to undergoing hormone therapy or surgically altering one’s genitalia doesn’t actually change anyone’s sex (Dahlen, 2020). I don’t object to feminine men, only to the fact that they want to shoehorn themselves into womanhood. We are not a nebulous concept that can be erased or redefined. We are not the ‘former planet’ Pluto. Culture is different globally and the gender roles associated with different cultures such as style of dress or responsibilities may differ, but we all have one thing in common that unites us, and that’s our biology. Being the sex that’s capable of giving birth, menstruating, and going through menopause are universal female traits. As such, we deserve our own language and descriptions.

When women weren’t able to vote until the Women’s Suffrage movement successfully fought for those rights in 1920, everyone knew who counted as women. When women needed restrooms in the workplace, when it came to creating women’s schools/colleges, and when it came to owning property, everyone knew who the women were. When women needed their husband’s permission to use birth control and when they were being discriminated against when it came to getting credit cards in the 1970s, it was very clear what segment of the population was being targeted (Eveleth, 2014). It’s always women that have had to fight uphill battles to get our rights and our cries recognized.

Another way that this debate personally affects me is because I’m a lesbian. If one argues that trans women can be women, that means that they can also be lesbians by that same logic. (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). The history of the concept of lesbianism goes back even further when considering the term lesbian dates back to Sappho of Lesbos (c. 610-c. 580 b.c.) (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). The concept has always been focused on women loving other women. It still means that, even though there’s a push to make “lesbian” a more inclusive term as well. There was a feminist/lesbian music festival called Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival or Michfest for short that was held from 1976-2015 on private property in the woods of Michigan (Welcome to Michfest, n.d.).

Controversy found the festival when its founder, Lisa Vogel reiterated that the festival’s focus was for “womyn-born-womyn” (Macdonald, 2018). Despite reports that the festival didn’t allow trans women to attend, the owner did know that there were trans women attendees. Other than the incident in 1991 when a trans woman was requested to leave, the festival didn’t ban them (Macdonald, 2018).  However, Lisa Vogel never backed down from her vision or mission of the festival which is that it was always focused on women and that it was a female-centric space. There was a group called Camp Trans that picketed the festival for their “exclusionary” practices (Camp Trans, n.d.). The festival being held on private property is the equivalent of if I had a meeting for lesbians in my home and then there were people organizing on my front yard in protest. The spaces for lesbians (or women in general) to meet and connect with each other in-person and online are dwindling because of the idea that female-only or single-sex spaces are exclusionary.

As far as legal situations, Title IX is a hot button issue right now. Title IX is part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in educational programs and activities that receive financial assistance from the federal government (Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972). There are different interpretations about if gender identity is/should be protected under Title IX. It varies from issues about what bathrooms transgender students should use and if they should be allowed into locker rooms or play on sports teams in relation to their sex or gender identity. Outside of Title IX, different sporting bodies are also considering the same issues (Brito, 2023). The issue of fairness is often the argument about if males can safely and fairly compete with females in sports regardless of their gender identity. The science generally supports that transgender women have a physical advantage over women (Roberts, et al., 2020). Beyond the physical advantages is the psychological warfare on women that are forced to share locker rooms with males, especially in-tact ones. Former University of Kentucky swimmer, Riley Gaines, and her experiences should be considered. She was uncomfortable having to share a dressing room with and compete against Lia Thomas, a male swimmer who spent his first three years competing against other males (Schlott, 2023).

The radical feminist or gender critical stance is not one that objects to feminine males or masculine females; historically most radical feminists have been gender non-conforming lesbians. We generally don’t shave or wear makeup. So, no, we’re not the pearl-clutching religious or conservative group that believes each sex has to prescribe to a specific gender role.  That’s not my argument here at all.

We’re all for believing that people can dress and present themselves exactly as they’d like. We just don’t believe that someone’s inner sense of themself (their gender identity) is the same thing as them actually being the thing they want to be. 

Making legislation changes and conceding our language to appeal to someone’s inner sense of self, something that’s not concrete, is not practical. What happens if they change their gender identity again or continuously? What happens if in 10 years the medical community admits that the science behind this movement is flawed and that it should fall out of favor in the same way that lobotomies have? How will all of the female athletes who got injured or lost scholarships/games/medals be compensated?  How will they correct official documents like the sex recorded on birth certificates and passports?  These are not small, easy things to reverse. These things have to be considered when talking about policies, rules, and laws. 

We are not asking for the eradication of trans women despite what a lot from the pro-transgender side are arguing. We are simply asking them to create their own identity and spaces because woman and female are already taken. Asking us to call trans women women isn’t just going against the dictionary/medical/historical definition of the word, but it’s also asking us to erase ourselves in significant ways. 

If we don’t have language to describe ourselves, our experiences, our needs, and our rights as a defined and marginalized group, then what do we have? The words man and male are not facing the same kind of scrutiny. Phrases like “menstruator” “bleeders” “uterus haver” “people with vaginas” don’t have male equivalents that medical institutions or well-respected media outlets regularly use (Steinbuch, 2021).

In conclusion, my stance is not one against transgender women, it’s a stance that’s pro-woman. I’m for women not being erased or redefined due to a small group of males that want to “identify” as us. Misogynist attitudes, language, policies, and laws worldwide make it clear that everyone knows exactly what a woman is.

#Radical Feminism #radical feminists do touch #radblr #radical feminists please interact #gender critical

[da-birb-writes-sometimes]

This Wasn't in the Itinerary

Both of you work so hard, it's only right that you be treated to a vacation.

Character; Ruggie Bucchi

Content; fluff, gender-neutral reader, drabble

Word Count; 850+

AN; This is for a mutual of mine who brain rotted and I wanted to write a version of it. I hope you enjoy it!

“A vacation? That I get paid for,” Ruggie gave Leona a semi-shocked look. What's he playing at here?

Leona rolled his eyes, “Yeah, you’ve pulled your weight and then some, so yeah, you’ve earned it. Already booked you a room too, so don’t even try gettin’ out of it.” He tossed a key at Ruggie, who clamoured trying to catch it.

Ruggie’s brows were pinched, but he looked at the key; it looked fancy, way too fancy. “How much was this?” Did I really earn this? “I can’t-”

“Too late, room’s booked. They also got some fancy schmancy breakfast options too,” Leona handed him a card that had all of the information about the resort, all in pretty cursive. "So yeah, you can accept it."

Dear Ruggie Bucchi, Escape the stress of your life and come to The Canopy, a resort focusing on rewinding and letting your hair loose. Enjoy the fresh breakfast made by the best pastry chefs in the Sunset Savannah. Take a dip in one of the many pools on the grounds. Head out on a river cruise and look at the local wildlife. The Canopy is an all-inclusive resort, and we hope you enjoy your stay with us! Room Type & Number; Single bed with a minifridge, as well as a balcony with a hot tub. Room 183, East Wing.

This… this is real. “I-,” he took a deep breath and exhaled. “Thanks, Leona.”

“Don’t mention it,” Leona said nonchalantly He wouldn’t tell Ruggie, but he has been planning this vacation for him for weeks. “Just enjoy it. Ya earned it.”

. . .

When Ruggie arrived at his room there was already a small bag in the process of being put away, but it wasn't his. He double-checked the room number, yup, Room 183, East Wing. then why was there another bag in his room? But that scent smelled familiar-

“Ruggie?”

He turned around and saw you, standing in the doorway holding a brochure for some local shops. “Prefect?” He asked back, equally confused about the entire situation. “What are you doing here?”

You entered the room and went to your bags, looking over the card Professor Crewel left outside your doorstep. Or at least it said it was from the professor, but he hadn't said anything to you about it, but weren't complaining, you worked your butt off. Plus you didn't have to pay for any of this, so you weren't going to turn this down. “On a vacation. And you?”

“Same boat. Well, a forced one,” he also looked at your card. Room 183, East Wing. Had they double-booked the same room by accident? “Wanna talk to the front desk?”

You both looked at the bed; it looked nice, fluffy, and like it was made from the softest clouds. But it was a single, just big enough to hold one person. There was no way it could hold more without the two of you being crammed together. Ruggie could feel his ears heat up at even the idea of being in such cramped quarters with you.

You sighed and grabbed your bag, mentally preparing to talk to customer service. "Not really, but sure, why not?"

. . .

You both returned from the front desk to your room. Your shared room. And there were no other rooms available. Both you and Ruggie were stuck with each other, as the shuttle bus back to Night Raven College didn’t come back until tomorrow at noon at the earliest. So you would be stuck here for the night, sharing a single bed, together. But there were worse ways to spend your vacation, plus you like Ruggie.

“If you want I can take the floor, I don’t mind,” he offered, rubbing the back of his neck.

You placed a hand on his forearm, stopping him. “No, it’s okay,” you gave him a soft smile, “I don’t mind.” 

You got into bed a squished yourself to the edge so Ruggie could have the other half. Once he got comfy he looked up and then quickly looked away, and so did you. It was a tight squeeze, but like hell were you going to make him sleep on the floor. 

Huh, did he always have flecks of silver in his eyes? You shook your head, trying to shoo those thoughts away. When you looked back up though, Ruggie was already asleep, lightly snoring. Has he always been this pretty?

He shuffled over to you, slinging an arm across you. “Mmm, don’t leave,” he mumbled.

You stiffened but then relaxed, sighing. You carded your fingers through his hair and looked at him softly. “I won’t.” You sat there for a little bit before you too fell asleep, hiding your face next to his heart. A steady thump thump thump luring you deeper and deeper into a calm dream. 

. . .

“You did that on purpose didn’t you,” Jack asked, looking up at Leona.

Leona shrugged, “Eh, they don’t need to know that.”

Professor Crewel was not the one to gift you an all-expenses paid holiday, it was Leona. He had grown tired of the two of you not admitting anything and it was driving him up the wall, so he decided to speed things up. Hopefully, his plan turned out… the both of you deserved good things.

#twst #twisted wonderland #ruggie bucchi #twst ruggie #twst x reader #twst x gn reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland x gn reader #ruggie bucchi x reader #ruggie bucchi x gn reader #twst drabble #just something short this time; yes 850+ is short #got the 'there was only one bed' rizz #technically leona and jack make a brief appearance but they're not the main focus; so no tag for them <3 #been stuck on jack's story so enjoy some more ruggie~ #hope the ruggie kissers enjoy #twst fluff #ruggie fluff #trying this format out to see if i like it

[gay-otlc]

Transmasc Lesbianism

I'm a lesbian. I'm also a straight trans man. This might confuse you, but you may want to consider looking at perspectives of gender and sexuality that differ from your own and don't fit into neat little boxes.

A definition of lesbian that has been gaining popularity in queer spaces is "non men loving non men." This was meant to be inclusive for nonbinary lesbians, as an alternative to "women loving women." However, the phrase is very flawed. I've spoken about this elsewhere, but the main points are

It categorizes all nonbinary people alongside women. In this context, "non-men" comes off as "women or nonbinary people who are basically women." Not all nonbinary people, even if they're non-men will feel comfortable being labeled as a lesbian, since the term has feminine connotations and can cause dysphoria. It's unfair to put them in this box just because they're not a man.

Attraction is complex and cannot be divided into "attracted to men" and "not attracted to men." This disregards people who use the split attraction model (different romantic and sexual orientations), people who experience alterous attraction, people with fluid sexualities, and more.

Gender is complex and cannot be divided into "male" and "all genders that are not male." The identity most blatantly erased by this is multigender identities- people with multiple genders can be both male and a gender that is not male. There are also genderfluid people who are sometimes male, demigender people who are partially male, or nonbinary people who don't identify as male but may refer to themselves with masculine terms such as boy or man anyway.

The focus of lesbianism should not be excluding men. Mindsets like this are echoing TERF rhetoric that seeks to exclude transfeminine lesbians because TERFs wrongly consider them to be men. And it's annoying to make our identity about men or lack thereof, when we don't need to be talking about men at all- our community is about our shared attraction for women, because women are great!

Awesome, we've got that out of the way. If you're still reading this and going "but you can't be a trans man and a lesbian, lesbian means non men loving non men!!!!!", then I don't know what to tell you. Read the list again? Go through the other posts linked? Maybe log off tumblr?

If you read all that and you're willing to accept that not all lesbians will fit into "non men loving non men," and you don't understand but you're open to learn, read on! By the end you might still not understand, but you don't need to understand me to respect me.

For some context, here is a description of my gender and sexuality.

Gender: I'm a bigender trans man. To put it as simply as I can, my gender is primarily male, but I also have some of the female gender. I'm comfortable being seen as solely a man or both a man and a woman, but not solely a woman.

Sexuality: I'm sexually attracted to women almost exclusively. As mentioned at the beginning of the post, I describe myself as a lesbian (or gay, sapphic, etc). I also describe myself as a straight man (or straight transmasc, transhet, etc).

How can I be both?

That's where my multigender identity comes into play. I'm a man and a woman. I'm attracted to women. This makes me both a man attracted to women and a woman attracted to women; a straight man and a lesbian.

Like I said earlier, male is my primary gender and being female is more secondary. So, I'm primarily a man attracted to women, and to a lesser extent a woman attracted to women. Internally, I perceive myself as more of a straight man than a lesbian. I get a lot of gender euphoria from calling myself a straight man, and the feminine connotations of lesbian can sometimes make me uncomfortable.

So, why do I still identify as a lesbian?

Although I consider myself and my attraction to be mostly transhet, that's not really how I interact with the world around me. I'm out as bigender to some people, but I'm also closeted in many contexts, and I don't pass very well even where I am out. This means I navigate my life as someone generally perceived as a woman, who is attracted to women. Even if I don't always consider myself to fit fully with lesbianism, a majority of people will interpret me that way when they find out I'm attracted to women.

Lesbianism is a label I found my home in, for many years, and it still means a lot to me. I spent a long time defining myself as a lesbian and existing in our community, and it's a significant part of my identity.

The way I experienced my attraction growing up was a lesbian experience, not a straight experience. I consider myself a straight man now, but I didn't grow up interacting with the world as a heterosexual child. I was expected to have crushes on boys and was mocked for not fitting into that. I was called a lesbian in a derogatory way when I was ten, and I found power in reclaiming that. When I realized I was attracted to women, I spent years feeling like a freak for it until lesbians communities helped me to be proud. Lesbian is the label that most accurately describes my history and my experience as a young queer.

Also, although the label lesbian sometimes causes dysphoria, I sometimes get euphoria from referring to myself or being referred to as a lesbian. I especially get euphoria from being a butch lesbian. I take so much joy from my butch identity. And while referring to myself as lesbian in a joking manner, with phrases like "I'm so gay for her" or "not to be a lesbian but oh my god," might not count as gender euphoria, saying them makes me happy, and that's enough for me.

So, why do I identify as a man? Because I am one.

Why do I identify as a lesbian? Because it describes my past experience and the way I interact with the world as someone perceived as a woman. Because it's important to me. Because I want to.

Why do I use these labels that contradict each other? Because these are the labels that are right for me, and I have every right to have a confusing identity.

Thank you for your time.

#holy shit this is a long post #i'm so sorry if you actually read all that. i don't know when to shut up </2 #lesbian #men and non men #transmasc lesbian #male lesbian #transhet lesbian #bigender lesbian #multigender lesbian #bigender #multigender #transmultiphobia #<- because it is transmultiphobic to be an ass to me about my identity #gender shit #pride tag #important #so many tags jfk #i will shut up now

[controversialhpmemes]

people who single out marauders fan artists like likeafunerall and blame them for feminizing sirius need to chill the fuck out and take a break from the internet. there's currently a tiktok going around with some unpopular (and valid) marauders opinions, one of them being something along the lines of "I prefer masc Sirius! " which AGAIN is very very valid. what ISNT however are the comments going absolutely insane over fem Sirius and blaming individual artists for ruining Sirius, as if seeing him as a short long haired guy had ruined their perception of him forever. I'm just wondering if theyre aware that. that's. transphobia. like standard definition of transphobia. "Sirius cant be a woman theyre making wolfstar look like a straight couple" ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF? they claim to be inclusive and woke but their acceptance stops at anything beyond two white twinks kissing. and it SUCKS bc the "fanon vs canon marauders" discussion can very much feel like a fight between two sides and it's just a fact that a majority of these transphobic assholes is on "my side" (preferring canon over fanon). Ik that this is mostly owed to the fact that the fandom is GIGANTIC and parted into many sub fandoms and I used to be fine with that but it's gotten to the point where I feel like I need to clarify my position every time I interact with people within the fandom "yes I prefer canon over fanon, no i do not ship jegulus, yes I enjoy wolfstar a moderate amount, no I do not like the fanon version of wolfstar, yes I enjoy masc sirius, NO I AM NOT A TRANSPHOBE" to me, it has started to feel like theres almost nothing in-between thinly veiled misogyny ("remus is a casanova, sirius is 5'6, sirius needs remus help with studying") and thinly veiled transphobia ("sirius needs to be 6'4 and super masc and anything else isnt valid") and its starting to get me wondering why i am even still caring about this dumpster fire

There is a lot to unpack.

Individual artists and writers should not be blamed for something being popularized that is not canon. Individual creators should never be harassed or sent anything hate-like. Never.

There are two problems. One is fem!Sirius written in a misogynistic way where Sirius' "fem" traits are associated with misogynistic portrayals of women. Stupid, airheaded, need man to function, "hysterical," "dramatic." You get it. Sirius can be a woman, can be transfem, but Sirius is not stupid, airheaded, helpless, "hysterical" in canon.

The second problem. If Sirius is transfem Sirius should still be Sirius. Intelligent, loyal, quick-witted, cutting, intense. Those are not gendered traits. They can be for everyone. Sirius likes motorbikes. Likes creating things. Likes taking risks.

When some people see fem!Sirius art and also see misogynistic takes on fem!Sirius in fic, tumblr, tiktok they combine the two. Fem!Sirius as art or concept not the problem. Fem!Sirius where Sirius is nothing like canon and is only negative misogynistic stereotypes, that is the problem. That is more common nowadays.

If you want to write canon Sirius as transfem, OK. But make MtF Sirius with canon personality. As far as I know being transgender makes your personality shine better because you can be who you really are. If canon Sirius is written as transfem then canon Sirius personality should shine more?

So it is not the concept of fem!Sirius that is the problem. It is the execution. To me fem!Sirius should be similar to Bellatrix but fighting for good and not prejudiced. Canon Bellatrix is a formidable witch. Transfem Sirius would be also.

#asked #answered #anti marauders fanon #sirius black

[rwrbficrecs]

August Faves

Monthly Faves are back! Sorry I missed July, it became too much work for me alone 😅 So we've decided to gather recs from the volunteers as well ❤️ Here's what we all read & loved in August, hope you enjoy 🥰

we've been here forever (here's the frozen proof) by @onward--upward (book-verse)

@read-and-write-: This is an AU, where Henry is an author and Alex, after reading Henry's books, starts exchanging emails with him by asking him about his own sexual identity crisis. This fic is cute, it's emotional, it's funny. It has everything you need and more.

@inexplicablymine: Have you ever feen so emotionally fulfilled by a story you want to spoon feed it to all your friends? That is this fic right here, filled to the brim with comfort and care it’s a masterclass in strangers to lovers.

@thesleepyskipper: A fic I couldn’t put down no matter how hard I tried

@indomitable-love: I want to climb inside this fic and live in it.

Going Platinum by @cricketnationrise (book-verse)

@gwiazdziarka: Henry falls in love with a stranger on the Internet and it's camboy!Alex. This slightly ridiculous concept makes interesting things happen and it's hot. NSFW.

Who'd have known by HiguT (book-verse)

@gwiazdziarka: Alex and Henry are friends since Rio and Alex turns to Henry when he has sexuality crisis. Henry helps. It's short, sweet, a little awkward and I absolutely love it when Firstprince become friends in Rio.

The Edge of Glory by @historicallysam (book-verse)

@myheartalivewrites: This is a really sweet post canon fic, posing the question: what happens when Alex gets tapped to run for office, after he and Henry and their family have been settled in Austin for many years. It really had me by the heartstrings, I love seeing the boys grown up, talking to each other and sorting their stuff out, and this did not disappoint!

muscle memory by @stutteringpeach (book-verse)

@myheartalivewrites: Is one of those fics where the tension is unbearable between them and you just want to shake them and make them talk, but then the sexy stuff is also excellent

Body Count Baby! by @orestespdf (book-verse)

@myheartalivewrites: this is a fun look into the boys sexual history, and honestly I’m desperate to know more about Henry’s slut phase, I would read about it endlessly

Things I Cannot Accept by @sprigsofviolets (book-verse)

@suseagull04: An interesting AU where Ellen never became President during the 2016 election and how that affects our favorite prince and would-be FSOTUS and how they get together. If you love slow burn, you'll love this fic!

@read-and-write-: It's a new take on canon, one that doesn't shy away from talking about politics, about Ellen's relationship with her children and Catherine's relationship with hers. It's emotional and it's beautiful, every word is worth it

@inexplicablymine: What if it all happened a little later, a little more realistic, and filled with just as much heart. For those who love Angst+Fluff you will get both in droves. There is a chapter in here that made me cry like a baby it was such a good representation of the tenderness of opening yourself up to another.

Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness. by @beautifulhigh (book-verse)

@daisymae-12: I love how sweet Alex and Henry’s relationship is in this fic, and the exploration of Henry deciding to exit the line of succession is handled beautifully too!

show me all your seasons by @villiageidiot (book-verse)

@daisymae-12: I don’t know how I managed to miss this fic the past two years – it’s such a lovely gem that deserves all the love. Really loved the way we journey through the seasons with Alex and see him figure out how he feels about Henry.

With so much of my heart (that none is left to protest) by @kiwiana-writes (book-verse)

@rmd-writes: From the minute I started reading this Shakespearean actor au I’ve been obsessed with it. It’s not just the inclusion of so many epistolary which makes for a fic that looks pretty. It’s an incredible fic all round - impeccable characterisation, clever use of canon elements, a well-written, perfectly paced plot underscored by so much love and joy (even amongst the angst) that just leaps off the page. It had me laughing and squealing and crying and I can’t wait to read it again!!!

@inexplicablymine: One of my favorite retellings with chapters that made me cry tears of joy. This is the kind of work you pin your hopes and dreams to because it fills you with something you didn’t know you were missing. I can not get enough of it and it leaped to the top of my all time favorites very early on.

#monthly faves #rwrb fic recs #queue #firstprince #firstprince fic recs

[gageblackwood]

A Rough Transcript of James Somerton's new video

For those who don't want to watch it, I grabbed the auto-transcript of the video, and then honestly spent way to long cleaning it up. There are a few editor notes that are just attempts at clarity, and punctuation and line breaks added as best I could guess them. Here it is:

"uh just a disclosure this video is monetized but revenue from it will be sent along to H bomber guy's team to be dispersed to the people whose work I plagarized.

uh if his team won't accept it I'll be making monthly donations to Wikipedia and trans Lifeline going forward.

uh you may have also noticed that a few of my past videos have gone up on the channel again and revenue from those as well will also be sent, along with the revenue from this video.

over the last couple of months I've been getting in touch with the people who I plagiarized to apologize one-on-one instead of a mass apology.

it's a bit difficult because many of them don't have public email addresses so I'm still working on it but it is a top priority of mine.

I've heard back from a few of them and they were actually incredibly nice, um accepting my apology and just imploring me to do better in the future, so I want to thank them publicly for that.

there's plenty that I haven't heard back from and I completely understand that in many cases.

uh I wouldn't want to talk to me either.

I also want to apologize to my audience.

though you trusted me to be a good representative of the queer community and I was not that, I tried to be, I tried to be a voice for every member of the queer Community but that was a failed Endeavor before it even started.

I'm a CIS white gay man no matter how much I try to be a good spokesperson I can never really truly understand the life experiences of other far more put upon members of the queer Community.

this is one of the reasons that I would use the their own words but I should have made it very clear that that's what I was doing.

I never, ever thought that I was the only voice out there as some have said but being a CIS white man I thought I might be able to win over some people who wouldn't otherwise listen unless it was someone who looks and sounds just like them, and so I tried speaking for everyone and this was a horrible mistake.

what I thought was being inclusive ended up leading to a lot of people feeling left out and even offended.

this fell upon Nick as well as a non-binary person on the ace spectrum.

they wanted to include asexuality and non-binary representation in our videos but because Nick's experience is not Universal, there is no Universal experience, people felt that we were dealing legitimizing (editor: likely de-legitimizing) their own experiences because we focused on Nicks.

and I apologize for that and I'm sure that Nick does as well.

um I'd also like to extend a personal apology to Jesse Earl, better known as Jesse gender.

out of everyone that I spoke to who was also a YouTuber Jesse was by far the kindest person.

I think Jesse might be one of the kindest people I've ever met or ever encountered.

we never actually met in person because of my hot headedness.

I drew her into just this anger spiral of mine that was unwarranted and absolutely ruined a possible friendship.

Jesse was actually doing her best to kind of mitigate my frustration and and everything and and

uh at that moment and I just wasn't allowing her to do that and I really truly honestly want to apologize to her for that again.

if if you ever get the chance to speak with Jesse one-on-one or if you have gotten the chance you'll know just how nice she is and how kind and I was a a real, for uh dragging her into my reactionary unwarranted frustration.

we, obviously, we haven't spoke since all of that happened um but Jesse if you are watching this video um I do want you to know that I am honestly sorry for that.

I hope truly, honestly I hope everything goes as well as possible for you because you deserve all of it.

there was a misunderstanding between Jesse and I.

um after that happened, that I do want to clear up where someone who at least claimed to be a fan of Jesse's, you know did an internet and threatened to kill me.

which is, you know, being a person on the internet death threats are unfortunately not uncommon.

at the time though, uh I was in a very panicked State, and so I did report it to the police.

I did not report Jesse to the police which is the misunderstanding that people um came away with.

I did not report Jesse to the police.

I would have no reason to do that, and it did end up that this person had a prior record with the police um of violent acts and they actually lived quite near me, um so the police took it very seriously.

they took it so seriously that they implored me not to speak to, to Jesse.

which I took their advice on which I shouldn't have honestly I should have at least clarified to Jesse what was going on and not just left her hanging.

and so I want to again apologize to Jesse for that but in that state I listen to the police.

which is, you know, maybe not the best decision all the time because the cops don't usually have the best interests of people at heart.

so Jesse I want to apologize for that and everything else that happened.

completely understand why you would not want to speak to me ever again but I just want you to know that I am sorry.

but now back on the original topic.

the work Nick and I were doing on the channel.

we wanted it to be you know for everyone.

we wanted it to be a channel where every queer person could feel welcomed and we failed at that.

that is something that in hindsight I think is impossible to create and that's why it's important for there to be many different queer voices in spaces like YouTube.

and there are, what's more important is that those voices are discoverable which is something that I should have been helping with.

I often shared other queer creators on Twitter but this was when I only had you know 800 a th000 (editor: a thousand?) Twitter followers and these creators usually had a whole lot more than that.

it was a weird thing because usually they would have infinitely more Twitter followers but a whole lot less YouTube subscribers.

I'm not sure what created that dichotomy but something was definitely off with the algorithm there.

there is a part of my brain that says YouTube kind of went oh you know white male queer let's push him and you know ignore everyone else in the community.

whereas people were able to actually discover uh other queer creators on Twitter and then make their way to YouTube, but the YouTube algorithm, kind of, that's the most negative interpretation I have of it.

which unfortunately may be true.

uh in any case I should have done more to share the voices of other queer people, certainly the people whose works I used both credited and plagiarized in my videos, but also just other creators on YouTube.

it's important for us as a community as vaguely defined as we are to support each other and I didn't do that nearly enough from day one.

I was very taken in by the idea of being a YouTuber.

as soon as my videos started to get recommended by the algorithm, after not releasing a new video for like two years I felt like I had a short period of time to get the next videos out as soon as possible.

which is why so little work was put into the writing of them and so much was taken from other places, plagiarized early on.

I thought crediting authors in the opening credits alone was enough, especially since the videos weren't monetized early on, but I understand now especially after speaking with some of the people who were, who I did plagiarize that that was just, I was wrong.

that was not the way to go about it, they should have been cited properly within the text of the video video, they should have been called out in the video at least once verbally as well as you know having citations on screen.

if there were a whole lot of them, like with you know one of the examples that H bomber guy used in his video was the Deep Cuts video there were a whole lot of people who I, you know, credited in the opening credits but really it's plagiarism, they should have been cited on screen with actual citations of, you know, links where you can find this stuff.

maybe there should have even been a bibliography that you could have gone to like on a Google drive or something like that.

because you know although I might have stated that the scripts were based upon the work of these authors it in many cases wasn't just based on their work it was their work word for word.

in some cases I did get permission like with the Evil Queen's Disney video.

I'll put the email up on the screen that I got from Sean Griffin, um where he did give me permission to publish the video.

I sent the finished video to him and he watched it and he gave me permission, but in most cases I didn't get permission and thought that just putting the author's name in the opening credits was enough.

I was much more interested in the production of the videos than the writing of them at this point so after three or four videos I brought Nick on as a main writer for the channel.

the idea is that they would write the vast majority of the scripts.

I would film, voice and edit the videos and we'd split the money that came in.

we were roommates at the time and Nick didn't have a job, so I figured it would help both of us.

this is actually when we had some of our biggest videos, uh like the ones talking about Wiccan and hulkling, where we lucked out because it came out right in time for Wan division (Editor: Wandavision?) to hit and then the killing stalking video which became our biggest video by far.

uh the sadism of class was another one.

these videos weren't plagiarized and we loved making them.

uh it didn't take long for the channel income to start growing.

lucky timing really because this was around the same time that I was laid off since the company that I was working for, downsized once Co hit its second year.

Nick and I had both grown up poor, so we started doing what we could to try and stabilize our income as much as possible.

this meant putting out more videos which meant I had to take over more of the writing duties, but since filming, editing, usually doing multiple edits because of YouTube copyright issues, as well as managing the channel and dealing with my mom's recent cancer diagnosis, all of that was already taking up so much of my time and attention.

this led to a lot of copy and pasting blocks of text into scripts.

my intention at the time was to use these as a jumping off point once Nick and I sat down to edit the script, because that's what we would do.

I would sort of put in my parts, Nick would put in his parts and then we would sit down at a table read through the whole script and kind of try and make it seem cohesive.

but, and here's something I'm sure a lot of people will call a excuse, I have memory issues because of a head injury from when I was a child.

uh they're actually getting worse.

I've talked about it on streams and in videos, so yes it is real, but some people will call it a excuse.

Anyway the head injury is actually what led to me having epilepsy, which is why I can't work in any job that involves physical labor.

employers can't get insurance for me to, like lift things or operate vehicles and stuff like that.

I actually did marketing for a restaurant group for a little while but got let go when they found out that I was epileptic because, at least according to them, I couldn't be insured to be in the kitchens where I needed to be to film videos and take photos and stuff like that.

but anyway, when it came to editing the scripts I couldn't remember what I'd written and what had been copy pasted.

we should have just chucked out everything that I had put into the script and filled them in with wholly original thoughts or I should have been taking notes on where things came from so that we could at least site them in the video if nothing else, but I never did that.

according to my therapist, my not thinking to do that probably stems from my recently diagnosed ADHD, but I don't know if I'm willing to say that really.

maybe it was or maybe it was just plain laziness.

maybe I thought that this was somewhere that I could cut a corner because I was torn in so many other directions.

honestly I can't remember, like I said memory issues.

but yes we should have just thrown out my contributions to the scripts and filled them in with original writing but we felt like we had too much of a time crunch.

we felt like we had to get videos out more often to feed the algorithm, and then my mom died and I became completely useless.

I couldn't think straight at all so Nick had to completely take over writing duties while I dealt with things you deal with after a person dies.

my dad you see he can't read or write uh he was very po poor when he was a kid so he had to leave school really young to work in order to feed his many brothers and sisters.

so I had to deal with all the legal stuff after my mom died as well as making sure that all my dad's bills were paid and whatnot, especially after his income was basically cut in half.

there was supposed to be a buffer here Money Wise as my mom had a life insurance policy that was going to be split between my dad and myself, but the insurance company, RBC Insurance so if you have insurance with them maybe rethink that, uh refuse to pay out the policy because my mother never mentioned that she had family with diabetes.

she didn't have diabetes but because she didn't think to mention that she had family with diabetes it apparently voided the policy.

all they did was refund a Year's worth of premiums that she'd paid even though she'd been paying them for about 15 years.

one of the things, the main thing really that I was supposed to do with my portion of the insurance money was, I was supposed to make a movie.

these were direct instructions from my mom herself.

she'd been very much behind me when I decided, when I was about 10, that I wanted to be a filmmaker and she wanted me to finally have the opportunity to do that even if she never got to see it.

so when the life insurance went bust I decided to try and crowdfund it.

at least enough to make a short film or two this is what teos (Editor: Telos) grew out of.

so what happened with Telos, let me break down the timeline.

when we launched the campaign in February of 2022 we hoped to raise $3,000 to produce a short film that we hoped that we would then use as a sort of proof of concept to attract investors, either private public or through Canada's telefilm program, to produce a feature.

some people online have stated that $3,000 never would have covered the cost of a short film but these were not going to be unionized movies and we were very clear about that upfront.

we wanted to be able to pay actors as best that we could but we never expected to be able to reach typical union wages.

the crew was going to be made up of people that I had gone to film school with.

everyone, including Nick and myself we were roommates at the time, living on the East Coast were more than happy to work behind the scenes for free.

we planned on writing a movie with a small cast and only one or two locations, ideally ones that we could get access to for free.

again we assumed all the money would go to the actors.

uh we kind of looked at this is a sort of Community Theater troop but for film making.

after the campaign launched it did infinitely better than we could have expected and our Ambitions grew.

we started planning to make a feature instead of a short film and the plan was to take this around to, uh film festivals.

the feature we settled on, entitled final girl, was about the Lone Survivor of a slasher movie type Massacre 10 years after the fact, as she was publishing a book about her ordeal, drawing attention from people online convinced that she had actually been the killer all along.

in the end we would find out that the killer was the boyfriend of the girl who the main character had secretly been dating at the time of the killings and most of the people he killed were, in his eyes, collateral damage as he made his way to our main character, because he was not happy that his girlfriend was cheating on him with a girl.

and to those who say that I plagiarized the plot from the novel Final Girl Support Group by Grady hris (Editor: Hendrix), read the book.

it's nothing like the plot of the movie and the final girl is a Trope in horror movies, so if using the Final Girl trope is plagiarism then basically everyone who's made a slasher movie since Texas Chainsaw Massacre owes the Toby Hooper Estates some money.

but anyway Nick and I planned out the movie, but I didn't want to start writing it until the campaign ended and the money was actually deposited.

uh after the insurance debacle I didn't want to count our chickens before they hatched.

when the money was officially deposited I immediately began work on the screenplay.

I finished it that summer.

soon after Nick had left to spend two months at home in Ottawa, Ontario with family.

I sent the script to him to read right away because I was proud very proud of it but Nick didn't want to share his opinion on it until he got back to the east coast so in the meantime I put out a preliminary casting call on local job boards.

when Nick got back, uh he believed that the script needed a page one rework.

this is also when he told me that he'd be moving back to Ontario permanently soon, as he wanted to live closer to family and live in a bigger city with more opportunities.

this was a punch to the gut for me.

we' been living together since 2015 and had become quite dependent on each other.

I felt like there was no way that I could make this movie without him and since I had received not that many replies to the initial casting call I took this as a sign that Ontario would be a better place to launch Telos, even though all my professional professional film connections were on the East Coast.

that was a mistake.

there I had free access to the campground that would serve as the setting for a good portion of the movie, as well as easy access to any number of houses, apartments and even offices that friends of friends would let me use to shoot.

in Ontario I had none of that, which immediately put the breaks on Final Girl since there was no conceivable way of filming in it, at least not within the budget that we had.

after Nick and I moved to the Toronto area he decided that he actually wanted to move home to Ottawa, uh to the Ottawa area about 5 hours away, at least for a little while.

in the meantime he would take a train to the GTA the crater (Editor: greater) Toronto area once a month, uh to work on YouTube videos for a few days and then head back.

this went on for a little less than a year so I began brainstorming new movies that we could film in Ontario.

this is where the multiple posters and teaser trailers came from.

I was trying to create something tangible to show that work was still being done with Telos.

I wrote multiple treatments for movies over the next few months and Nick and I eventually landed on one, called antisocial: a murder mystery, about a former social media click (Editor: clique) who had gone their separate ways on very bad terms and they were coming together for a reunion at a sort of VidCon event.

um they were all sharing a house and then some of them were going to start showing up dead.

around the same time, summer of 2023, uh Nick had moved to the GTA full-time.

uh he and I spent weeks working out exactly how the murder mystery would parse out in the movie.

we had a bunch of whiteboards up on my wall and we were just breaking it down piece by piece.

uh I'd put out a new casting call in the GTA and received hundreds of responses so I was planning on casting as soon as the script was finished but after trying to work out the numbers as far as paying actors went, Plus locations, food, costumes, as well as the equipment that we'd already purchased and the legal costs of setting up Telos as a business, we realized that we'd gone way too big with this movie.

uh the movie had too many characters and too many locations and it was just way too complex to be able to pull off with the budget.

so I started working on a script for a movie called The Listener, about a true crime podcaster focused on the mysterious deaths of homeless gay men in his City.

I was a fair way into the script when we realized it' be about a year before we could even film anything since winter was on its way and the story relied heavily on a summer setting.

so we went back to the drawing board yet again, finally settling on a modern-day adaptation of The Vampire based on the book by John Palador (Editor: capitals added, also it's Polidori).

uh it's one of the original works of published vampire fiction.

it's never received a proper film adaptation and was in public domain so we thought it would be a great choice and the cast could be kept down to basically five characters, with only two of them being on screen most of the time.

Nick and I both wrote treatments for it which we plan on, planned on melding together into a final treatment M that we would write the script based off of.

we'd had a meeting about it and we were talking about how best to move forward, how fast we could get the script written, how long it would take to cast, how soon we could start shooting.

we knew that it had been a while since the initial funding of Telos came in and we wanted to get something concrete out as soon as possible.

after the meeting we went to dinner and while at dinner I started getting messages about the H bomber Guy video.

we were in over our heads once we left the East Coast but the intention was never ever to Take the Money and Run.

I was so insanely excited about getting to make Telos a reality.

I was excited about getting to make a short film, let alone a feature.

it's always been my dream to make movies so Telos meant and means the world to me.

for Nick it was a very exciting project but not his passion.

Nick wanted to write novels, he still does.

Nick looked at this as a good creative outlet that was way more fulfilling than writing video essays.

I should have stayed where I was and not gone to Ontario.

the move uprooted everything that was solid about Telos and it took a whole year to get it back onto even anything close to stable footing, but I am working with the producer now so you can expect an actual product from Telos this year.

it will likely be a short film to start off but there is going to be something coming out of Telos this year.

I know I've lost your trust but I will make nothing financially from this project.

the money that is there will go wholly to paying queer artists to work on a queer film.

I am not nor have I ever intended to be one of the people paid by Telos, neither was Nick.

we made this very clear to everyone who asked.

during our work on tellos (Editor: Telos) is also when the YouTube channel started getting sponsors which as I said as someone who grew up poor I basically accepted all of them except for a few that I didn't think lined up with the message of the channel or had some bad news surrounding them.

there were a couple that had some anti-tr (Editor: anti-trans?) stuff going on in the news and I just didn't want to associate with that.

but by accepting as many sponsors as we did, which became very important when Nick and I started living apart, and suddenly had two rents to pay we ended up needing to produce even more videos, which along with the work on toos (Editor: Telos?) and making sure everything was okay with my dad while living thousands of kilometers away, meant I had even less time for writing, putting more stress on Nick and leading to even more copy pasting from me.

that's what led to us putting out, I think, six videos in one month at one point.

it might have been five, but in any case it was way too damn many videos to go out in one month.

we tried to take the summer off from YouTube in 2023 to work on Telos exclusively but even that went up in smoke because my housing situation.

just, I won't go into it here, I've talked about it at nauseum (Editor: ad nauseam) on streams and stuff.

if you followed me on social media you know the cluster I ended up in that led to me moving twice in two months.

in the last couple of months I've received a lot of emails, as you can imagine, uh many from people who were rightfully let down.

some from people threatening everything from doxing to violence Because the Internet, some with the kindest words of support I've ever heard and others simply asking why I made it so difficult to contact me and if I was okay.

they wanted to know why, as they put it, I nuked my social media presence.

(Editor: Warning for talk of suicide)

to be frank it's because I didn't want to exist anymore.

if you watched my honestly horrendous apology video Back In December you know I tried to make that happen, the not existing thing, but it was more intense than taking too many pills.

it's not that I didn't want to be alive anymore it's that I wished I'd never existed at all, that everyone I'd ever known would be better off had I just never been there, very George Bailey which is fitting given that it was Christmas time.

it's only thanks to some very very dedicated doctors and nurses and one very good friend that I'm even here able to film this right now.

I'm not going to name her because I don't want to expose anyone else to the small but seriously unstable group of people who watched the plagiarism and YouTube video and thought, well he should be dead.

like I said it's a it was a very small group but when they find out your address and some of them are actually in your city they can be terrifying, and they did find my address and at least a couple of them showed up while I was at the hospital.

um my neighbors did report them to the police, uh and I I won't go into any more details than that.

I'm not sure if I legally even can but there's a reason I left Ontario within a week of getting the okay to do so from the doctors.

so what's next then?

like I said you'll notice that a few of my videos are live again on the channel, these ones don't come from plagiarize content and for the most part are written entirely by Nick.

Nick lost three years worth of work when everything on the channel was taken down and that's simply not fair to Nick.

he worked hard writing those videos and deserves to have something to point to when he's looking for new writing work.

I've also done some heavy editing on other videos that did contain other people's writing, um breaking it down to only original content, again so that Nick has an actual portfolio of work.

as mentioned at the beginning of the video revenue from these will be going to the H bomber guy team, to be sent out to the writers I play R (Editor: plagiarized) from or donated to charity, however it works out in the end.

these edited videos will be going back up on the channel in the next few days I think, um along with two completed video essays that we didn't actually get to release before everything happened.

there's also some recent videos that didn't have any plagiarism that the sponsor asked to be taken down and their ads removed, um so they'll also be going back up without the sponsors obviously and soon I will be releasing a new video written entirely by me properly cited with all sources credited.

maybe no one will watch it but I hope you do.

I want to prove that I have the ability to do this without abusing other people's work.

it's a very different kind of video than I used to make though, I'd say it's more of a documentary than a video essay.

you won't find my opinions anywhere in there just cited facts.

I'd like to keep making videos like these new ones about people and events in gay history and definitive gay movies that you maybe never heard of, stuff like that.

it's actually something that I planned on doing this year anyway.

there would be two videos a month, Nick would write a video essay and I would write one of these documentary style videos that would fulfill the two videos per month sponsorship deal that we had at the time.

I have no sponsors now so probably not going to be two videos a month, it'll probably just be the one which will give more time for research and citation and crediting and making sure that there is no misinformation in the videos, uh which I know, I know that misinformation made its way into, uh our past videos that was not something that we intended.

in some cases it was information that I was told by people that I considered experts, um in other cases it was information that we had researched, uh in other cases it was things that Nick had learned in University, the point being it was never malicious.

we didn't, we weren't trying to lie about things despite what a lot of people think.

we were not trying to spread misinformation that was not ever Our intention and that's something else that I want to apologize for.

as for my patreon everyone can stop worrying about me relaunching it right in time for a billing cycle, that will not be happening.

I don't want anyone who either doesn't know about the plagiarism or simply forgot to unsub subscribe to get build (Editor: billed) so I'm going to start from zero.

I have put together a new patreon account so if you want to support my documentaries about gay history, fantastic, honestly your faith in me after everything means the world to me.

if not I completely understand.

like I said I've lost your trust.

I'm going to work my ass off to earn it back though and I know for some of you I'll never be able to do that but I'm going to try anyway.

you know there's a link in the description to the patreon if you want to join it, where you'll be able to see the to yet to be released videos right now, as well as, you know, take part in other stuff that will be on there like a book club podcasts, uh voting on upcoming videos, all the usual patreon stuff.

but this video is not about promoting myself this video is about me apologizing and I am incredibly sorry.

it was never my intention for anyone to feel hurt or left out or excluded, it was never my intention to spread misinformation and I'm really really sorry that that happened and you know as as much as I've tried to explain myself in this video, you know the memory issues, ADHD, um the personal things that were going on in my life with my mom getting sick and then dying and trying to make sure that my dad was okay following that and everything, those aren't excuses.

there is no excuse for what I did.

there are lots of people who make videos on YouTube, there are lots of people who make podcasts, TV shows, movies, documentaries who have going on in their lives that's very stressful and they don't plagiarize people's work.

there is no excuse for what I did.

for everything that happened, whether it be with my mom or the memory issues, there was something I could have done to mitigate that.

there's nothing I could have done about my mom getting cancer but knowing my patrons as I did, in hindsight I'm pretty damn sure that if I had said, guys I need to step away for a couple of months to deal with this, I don't think a whole lot of people would have fled the patreon.

a part of me thought they would at the time because I catastrophy (Editor: catastrophize?), I, but I really don't think that would have happened.

even in the very beginning when I was like, oh I got to get as many videos out as possible, if I had said to those people who subscribe to the channel early on, you know for the next video I want to make sure that it's fully correct and I want to make sure that you know it's as high quality as it can possibly be, I, I don't think anyone would have, you know unsubscribed or not watched the next video because it didn't come out a couple of weeks after the algorithm decided that I was important.

for some reason I convinced myself of these things but I don't think, in hindsight, looking at it I don't think any of that would have happened and so there is no excuse for the misinformation and there is certainly no excuse for the plagiarism.

I up bad I stole people's words and thoughts and opinions, that they worked incredibly hard writing and Publishing and finding someone to publish their thoughts and opinions and research, hard research that they had done and, you know, in some cases, I put them their names in the opening credits which I thought was fine, but like I said I've spoken with some of these people now and I understand why that was not okay.

because putting someone's name in the opening credits, you know, okay here's a list of people, here's, you know, seven or eight people who are, even if it was you know everyone, even if it wasn't, you know, taking giant chunks of their work, paragraphs at a time, even if it was just a sentence here or there, putting their name in the opening credits doesn't tell anyone where their work is in the video.

nobody can say, oh I really like that opinion, or wow that's a really, you know, smart observation, I want to read more from this person, and then, you know, to find something you found interesting you have to go play detective and so yes, just putting their name in the opening credits was wrong.

I thought it was cool and you know cinematic, but it was wrong.

citations should have been done properly, there should never have been just chunks of text being put into videos.

there were times like with, uh the queer history of Hollywood videos, that I released this past spring they were based directly on the Celluloid closet by veto (Editor: Vito) Russo, the book not the documentary.

I expanded on it quite a bit but it was based directly on veto's (Editor: Vito's) work and I credited him in the opening credits and I thought it was okay to just do that, because the book was out of print and veto had passed away unfortunately from HIV complications, due to HIV and AIDS and I looked at it more as extend in his legacy, making sure that people knew about the work that he did but I don't think I ever mentioned his name in those videos.

he was crit (Editor: credited?), like I said his name's in the opening credits but I don't think I ever verbally mentioned his name, someone who I have so much respect for who, kind of an idol of mine and I never mentioned his name.

it wasn't because I didn't respect him or anything like that and it also wasn't because I wanted people to think that this was all me again, if, if that was the case I wouldn't have put his name in the in the credits.

I never wanted people to think that this was all me, so that's actually one of the videos I want to make.

I want to make a documentary style video talking about vetto (Editor: Vito) Russo and his life and everything that he accomplished, because he didn't just write the Celluloid closet, he did a lot more than that.

he's someone that people should know about.

obviously people can research him, uh there's books about him but I know, you know, it's easier to sit down and watch a 20 or 30 minute YouTube video than it is to read a book.

I'd like to make a video about VTO (Editor: Vito) Russo, properly cited and not just, you know, copy pasted from a book.

I want to do the work, I want to prove, not just to you, but to myself that I can do the work and that's why I've started making these documentaries.

working on these I can't, I can't really put into words how sorry I am.

I've tried, I've tried writing like a blog entry to say that I was sorry for about two months now and I just can't.

I can't get across how sorry I am and I know actions speak way louder than words and I hope with my actions that I can show you that I am sorry.

I'm sorry to everyone I play Dr (Editor: plagiarized?).

I'm sorry to everyone I've hurt.

I'm sorry to people who feel lied to.

I'm sorry to people who feel like I abused the queer Community, was never my intention.

again I'm sorry to Jesse.

There were actually several other YouTubers who, uh were very nice to me but I feel like with everything that went down Jess, Jesse is the one that I should apologize to the most.

I'm sorry for the people who felt scammed, who thought that Telos was a grift.

it was not it is not I am very sorry and I hope given time and my actions proving it that you can believe me."

--------

I hope my restraint in not adding personal commentary is appreciated, as there were times it took heroic effort. There are several places I deleted comments I typed at first, mainly along the lines of "You sure as fuck shouldn't have, buddy!" virtually whenever he said he shouldn't have done something.

To end on a lighter note, I did almost lose it at the end with the typo VTO Russo. I had just been wading through so much, and suddenly, there was Vertical Takeoff Russo.

#James Somerton #H bomberguy #long post #Also youtube auto transcript is poop #spend some of your ill gotten $ on a transcriber would ya?!

[genericpuff]

Little conspiracy theory- what if WEBTOON is aware this is AI? I remember there was this thing where you could take a picture of yourself and with ai they would try imaging you in a popular webcomics style. As a person with darker skin, mine looked pretty iffy. What if WEBTOON is testing how far they can go with ai?

Not even really a conspiracy theory tbh, they have the selfie AI thing and the AI coloring tool. I think there's just a very real possibility that WT is moving towards AI-assisted and AI-made comics and, like many of their controversies over the years, they're just expecting us to accept it blindly. Of course, they haven't outright confirmed that yet, but odds are high considering the past instances of AI they've promoted, and I don't think they want to say anything outright about it because that'll open up a can of worms they aren't prepared to deal with.

Something something "it's a feature, not a bug".

Also yeah, definitely not surprised to hear that the AI selfie tool didn't do a good job at rendering your skin tone (although I am sorry you experienced that, it's so unfair to anyone who isn't one specific shade of white) I have dark-skinned characters who I tried to color in on their painter tool and it just assumed the darker tones were meant to be shadows, it literally just made them look like their faces had been spraypainted 😭 I made it a point in the survey I filled out about it that it needs to be able to handle non-white skin tones better than it is (because duh), but I don't think they've bothered refining it since then. It's kinda telling they've been training these AI tools purely on their Korean library which predominantly features light-skinned casts.

Webtoons/Naver seems to operate with a very specific audience in mind and they're not as inclusive as they try to pretend they are. I'm very done with their "monster of the week" business model where they're just constantly outdoing themselves on how shitty and cruel to artists they can be.

#ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything #webtoon critical #anti AI