@ahallister / ahallister.tumblr.com
officially decided that anyone who tries to divide the lgbt community is a fed. i dont care if you're not actually a fed, if you're causing infighting in a minority community then you're a fed who just isnt getting paid to be one. either apply for a job at the CIA or shut the fuck up
some people understood this post. some people revealed themselves to be feds
"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.
"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"
"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."
"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."
"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.
"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."
"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."
"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.
"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.
"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."
"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."
"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."
And so, the moment I’ve all been waiting for! I’ve finished coloring this comic, and I am going to post it right now.
I think Street Fighter 6 might have the best character creator ever because I was able to pick a template and adjust it a bit and then someone in chat was like “hey she looks persian” and that’s literally never happened (I am persian on my dad’s side)
this would never happen in a million years in your average RPG where you only get straight hair
I only said that because it was true.
We're rewatching She-Ra and I did a screencap redraw of my favorite sparkle girl 💜✨✊🏼
the point of my masculinity and male positivity posts are to underline that masculinity and manhood are seen as a threat or in direct opposition to queerness, and that often times in order to be seen as queer you have to be partially or wholly feminine or gender neutral, or express your manhood in a feminine or gender neutral way in order to no longer be threatening, invasive, or a problem.
it is very difficult to exist in queer spaces as a hyper masculine person & a man. you're made to feel like you need to walk a tight rope feeling like you're inherently out of place, as if you existing and being masculine or a man in queer spaces makes others uncomfortable inherently.. just know that when i make positivity posts it is to remind us all that masculinity/manhood and queerness are not opposites and that you do not have to be a feminine man or masc person to be viewed/seen/heard as queer.
chasing men, masculine people, and masculinity out of queer spaces isn't helping anyone currently and won't help anyone down the line. please accept masc enbies, butches, bears, and masculine trans men with the same kindness, love, and passion that you do neutral and feminine people. that's the point when i make these kinds of posts. thank u
This is 100% thanks to the “No kink at Pride” people. Because?
They didn’t want these men at Pride. This is a leather daddy. (A rather covered-up leather daddy, because this addition doesn’t do anyone any good if it’s flagged into invisibility, but best believe that dude has hella abs under there, and a 50/50 chance of heavy tattooing.)
Here’s another. Again on the modest side for the sake of not triggering the automod thing, but you can see the interplay of queerness and masculinity—particularly a kind of forward, unashamed sexual explicitness, if you take a look at their crotches. That’s a kind of…for lack of a better term, mating display. “I have this and want to use it, or at least know there are men here fantasizing about me using it.” It’s akin to a woman wearing a plunge neck. You’re supposed to look, and if you’re a dude, he’d like you to like it.
These dudes (well, most of these dudes)? They’re bears. (I said “most” because the guy in the sunhat is technically a cub. He’s too young to be a bear.) The furriness and the beards and the age and the bellies ARE THE POINT. The name “bear” is an affectionate one. Literally “I’m big and hairy!” In the 00s there was a stereotype(?) that bears were also super-cuddly. I don’t know how true it is, but I can confirm every bear I’ve ever met gives amazing hugs. They will readjust your spine, your touch starvation, and your entire outlook on life.
None of this touches on the rather large queer kink communities around “men in uniform.” Military, police, construction, I can’t tell you how many strip nights I’ve been to at a local gay bar with a guy dressed as a sexy firefighter getting absolutely swamped with dollar bills and lap dance requests.
You aren’t seeing these men because they’ve been forced out of spaces THEY CREATED. One of the best things you can do is to help bring them back.
They’re not threatening, they’re not disgusting, they’re not somehow dangerous just by virtue of being open about their sexuality and sexual desire. They’re just human beings who human slightly differently than you.
But more importantly?
They’re family. And don’t you forget it.
Leather daddies, imho, are fucking around with hypergender performance as much as drag queens. It's two sides of the same coin. Leather daddies literally have beauty pageants.
Also, there's a solid 50% chance that when you talk to those masc-looking leather daddies and bears are just much femme sissies as more femme presenting gay men.
Sincerely, a genderqueer amab bear who dresses like a dad half the time
Your local leather historian here to add a little bit of context to the "this is the fault of the no kink at pride" thing.
The leather community has existed formally (in the United States) since the mid 50s. The Satyr Motorcycle Club was founded in San Francisco in 1954, it is still around today making it the oldest continously run gay organization in the country. This is 15 years before Stonewall. The first gay leather bar, the gold coast, opened in 1958 in Chicago. 11 years before Stonewall. Informally the leather community has existed since the end of wwii when men who had spent years wearing leather, riding motorcycles, and having gay sex came back home and kept doing those things.
Gay men have been arguing about whether or not the leather community belongs at pride since 1970. Since the inception of pride, or more accurately, "Gay Freedom Day." Because the leather community has heavt ties to the SM community. (Whether or not the Leather community is a sub community in the larger SM community, or there's just a lot of overlap is a conversation leathermen have always been having) but there has always been push back because of the tie to radical sex and because of accusations that leathermen are trying to "act straight"
In an essay in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice Leatherman Michale Bronski recalls hearing a lesbian tell a gay man "“Give me a break. You think that someone wearing chaps, a black leather jacket, a motorcycle cap, handcuffs on his belt, two different color hankies, and 36 inch high black boots looks Straight!”*
Which brings us to their presentation of masculinity. If you'll excuse me for becoming An Academic(tm) for a moment, if you look at these communities, Leathermen and Bears, what you find is that popular theories of masculinitu don't work when describing these men, at least not when they're in the spaces that the audence that their gender performance is for also exist. Queer masculinity is a performance for queer people, framing it in the lense of heterosexuality does not do anyone any good and erases the nuances of what is happening.
The leather communities are some of the oldest queer communities in America. To push them out of the queer community or suggest that they're toxic, or somehow harming the community as a whole is to ignore history completely, and engage with an argument that's half a century old.
In 1982 leathermen founded AIDS Emergency Fund in San Francisco. Consistently through the first decade of the AIDS Crisis leathermen (and other radical sex communities) were promoting safer sex, and hosting all kinds of fundraisers to raise money for PWAs and reseach (a lot of leather beauty pagents popped up just for the purpose of rasing money.) All this while they were being told BY OTHER GAY MEN they were the ones killing everyone, they and their weird gross sex were the problem (never mind that a lot of what the leathermen were doing was already safer than monogamous anal sex)
Leathermen are your family, we're part of your community and have every right to be here, even if you don't understand our masculinity.
❤️🖤💙🤍💙🖤
*none of this even begins touching the surface of the discourse leather lesbians and feminists have been having since the 70s. It's tied to TERF rhetoric and the anti-porn movement.
Historic note on bears: the origin of the community is shouded in myth, but certainly by the late 70s the beginnings of the community were there. The AIDS Crisis shot the community to popularity. Because AIDS will cause incredible weight loss, the eorticization of fat bodies was the eroticiaztion of safe bodies. If you read porn written by bears in the 80s and early 90s you'll notice the use of condoms where in other erotica that is lacking.
Won’t lie, if I were having a rough time and the office himbos brought me mac and cheese I would be cured.
These guys are really on to something here.
Scorfuma Headcanon: People think Perfuma wants to be dominated by Scorpia, because of Scorpia's muscles and giant claws. Not exactly, no. She doesn't want to be overpowered and she also knows how uncomfortable that would make Scorpia.
But.
Perfuma has a kink for Scorpia's stinger. She doesn't want to be stung, even a little bit, and she doesn't want to be threatened. She simply loves the danger of it. The point of the stinger lightly tracing along her skin. The tip resting lightly, motionless against the hollow of her throat. The electric thrill of dancing along the edge, her pulse pounding in her veins, making love passionately but carefully, balancing lust and danger.
Scorpia, of course, is deeply conflicted. She'll do it; she'll do anything for her Wildflower. It takes her a while to accept it, to get used to it, but after a while she realizes how much it turns Perfuma on and she starts to...not exactly enjoy it itself, but enjoy how much it thrills Perfuma.
Then Scorpia tells Perfuma about her own kink...
Regarding the original tags, I think it’s just a paralytic, and doesn’t seem to be portrayed as especially dangerous. It might be interesting to explore using it for kinky purposes, but that’s going to leave a mark far more difficult to explain the next day than a hicky.
Catra: Where's Perfuma?
Scorpia: Well, it's kind of embarrassing. Last night we were...you know...and now she can't move.
Catra: Oh yeah. Sometimes, when I'm through with Adora she can't move either.
Scorpia: You're venomous?
Perfuma: Look, the first time only lasted a few minutes before I could start wiggling my toes again, so I figured it would be fine and I’d probably build up resistance over time. If I’d known I’d be stuck like that for seventeen hours, I’d have picked a more comfortable position first!
Catra: Wait, you’d still have let her sting you repeatedly, knowing that?
Perfuma: I already have a pose picked out for next time!
explanation: a Quality Assurance Engineer is someone who (among other things afaik) does software bug testing, like in videogames or websites.
So the joke is that the QA tests the bar by doing a bunch of random unexpected things that might make it glitch.
Then when the first actual user of the bar does something that is normal and should have been accounted for way before the QA was called, everything goes catastrophically wrong because nobody bothered to think about anything other than ordering (and presumably profit?)
[image description: a tweet from Brenan Keller @brenankeller, reading: "A QA engineer walks into a bar. Orders a beer. Orders 0 bears. Orders 99999999999 beers. Orders a lizard. Orders -1 beers. Orders a ueicbksjdhd (random string of letters). First real customer walks in and asks where the bathroom is. The bar bursts into flames, killing everyone." End ID.]
“Omg I made this prom dress for only $10!”
- already owns $200 sewing machine, $100 dress form, full supply of thread/haberdashery
“You can recreate your favorite fast food menu items at home for less money and more flavor,” says the person with $3k in Le Creuset cookware, six professional kitchen appliances, living in the heart of a large city with ample grocery selection, sponsored by Hello Fresh and Skillshare.
"You can cook this full course meal for less than five dollars!" says the person who acts like you can buy $0.001 worth of salt, $0.05 worth of flour, and $1.27 worth of pork.
Strong community ties could resolve a lot of this. Knowing the person who *does* have a dress form you could borrow, a toolshop you could use, etc would drastically reduce the cost of doing a lot of things, but that mindset is antithetical to the capitalist desire to sell a ladder to everyone in the apartment complex, not a single ladder to be shared among the hundred residents and still sit unused in a storage closet most days.
Frosta: Can you guys give me some dating advice?
Hordak: Why us? Wouldn't you feel more comfortable going to another couple in the alliance for this?
Frosta: Are you kidding me!? Bow and Glimmer are oblivious, Spinnerella and Netossa would turn helping me into a competition, Scorpia and Perfuma would be insufferable if they found out I like someone, and Catra and Adora are "it's complicated" incarnate.
Entrapta: Why don't you ask Sea Hawk and Mermista for advice?
Frosta: I'll be the one asking stupid questions here, thank you very much.
