HEY HEY LISTEN THE VOICE OF THE MTA TRANSIT SYSTEM, ALL THE ANNOUNCEMENTS ON THE NYC SUBWAY LINE??
SHE'S A TRANS WOMAN AND TRANSITIONED AT 66!!!!!! THE BACKGROUND HUM OF MY CHILDHOOD, AND SHE'S LIKE ME!!!! WHAT THE FUCK
Oh shit :D ?
I just remembered! (Thank you, historical fantasy section!) But like? Serving and protecting The King, especially a HIGH KING, is quite literally not just an incredible honor... but it can sometimes be a person's Life Ambition?
Specificly a WORTHY king.
Perhaps they were denied in life. Perhaps they FAILED. And in their dying moments struggle with all they were to LIVE. To PROTECT. Perhaps the PREVIOUS king was a great and worthy ruler... but their heir is...
Unworthy.
Maybe they are born to an age without Rulers. Power shifting between hands in hidden halls. Unclear and murky. All they want is for their loyalty to MEAN something. For things to be SIMPLE.
The universe is large. The Infinite Realms? Unimaginably larger.
And Pariah Dark was a BASTARD.
Who would willingly swear to him? Fools! That's who! Every warrior soul worth ANYTHING gets as far AWAY from his Realm forsaken resting place as they can. Hides. Lest they be dragged in to his infernal, gods forsaken, cess pit of a so called "army"! *disgusted spitting noises*
But what does this mean? It means every trained FIGHTER... got the hell out of dodge. Oh, sure, a FEW refused. Like Pandora and her people. But most? The farthest side of NOWHERE, several layers down! Some still GOING! Better to be decried as cowards then have ANYTHING to do with THAT(said with loathing)!
It also means they weren't where Pariah could get to them when he woke. Couldn't help. Couldn't fight. Couldn't be commanded to kneel. Nothing. They removed themselves completely. Planned on CONTINUING to remove themselves. Preferably to the farthest reaches of forever, far beyond the bastard's gaze.
But! The whole REALM INFINITE felt it? When that... that hissing, acidic, malicious undertone? SLAMS back and away, like somebody's knocked a parasite from their backs. Replaced by coolness and starlight. Delicate balance and blood on your teeth. The pounding in your chest of HOPE.
It flutters so small across their backs, inside their chests. Washing away the old.
The King... feels tiny. Young.
.......what are they doing? Running like this. Hiding away like that will change anything. How long... when did...
There are so many of them now. A veritable army of souls, of all Ages and People's. Every armor and crest imaginable. They'd been so.. so REPULSED by Pariah... nothing else had mattered but to get AWAY. Where even ARE they? What YEAR is it? Does any of that matter?
The King.
Their Obsessions whisper. Loyalty. Service. Protection. Honor. You have left you post! Abandoned your DUTY! What are you DOING!?
They are AGHAST. They turn around at once. The King! How could they have ABANDONED the King!? Who is guarding him if they are all HERE?!
Himself!?
(Yes. Danny is fine. He is eating the "Thank You for keeping us all from dying to whatever the FUCK that was!" tamales Paulina's mom pushed into his arms on his way back home. He didn't even try arguing. He made eye contact and knew he would lose.)
(Why does he feel like something really, really bothersome is headed his way?)
It's UNACCEPTABLE. Unthinkable! The King? Unguarded? Where assassination attempts and nefarious PLOTS could occur?! What if someone tried to steal his eggs!? Or attacked him while his exoskeleton was molting!? They aren't entirely sure which species he is yet, but there are SO MANY NEFARIOUS PLOTS OUT THERE!!
*panicked honor guards*
Just? Imagine becoming king. And thinking "well, aside from the skeleton army I have to figure out, at least I don't have to manage anybody!" Only to *WABAM!* your ENTIRE GHOST COURT shows up like a week later. Turns out they were hiding from your predecessor.
You have a whole ass honor gaurd. Who REFUSE TO LEAVE YOUR SIDE. You have Chefs. Who WILL cry if you send them away. The Literal Best In The Multiverse are all following you around... YOU, a RANDOM TEENAGE, with Excited Shoujo Sparkles in their eyes... because you punched a jackass really, REALLY hard.
There is no way to make this stop. Your friends are laughing at you. The interior decorator wants you to look at swatches. What are swatches and why are you being harrased by them at 1am, you wonder? If you are Mean(tm) they throw themselves upon the floor and blame themselves for their Wicked, Evil, King-Upseting Ways and you can't even TELL if your being played here.
It's like being bullied by house elves. Or Miette.
Your parents are too excited by all the New Research (at least the reveal went well?) To SAVE THEIR SON, and your sister is HELPING THE ENEMY (Traitor!), so now you're being bullied into eating vegetables and studying more.
Then? THEN!! WHO SHOWS UP?! Like... five WEEKS late?! The Justice League. Gee! GREAT RESPONSE TIME, GUYS! Reeeal snappy! But ya, JUST missed the guy!
.......YES HES BEING SARCASTIC!!!
The entire royal army of the infinite realms:
Danny just wants a nap. He probably grabs one of the sides and sits them down like. Between these hours. I am resting. Please keep everyone from waking me up. And they would get to royal guards around. This is the King's rest period. He is not to be disturbed unless there is an issue we cannot handle. They take their duty with pride! They guard the King's sleep!
This is an issue when the Justice League arrive at 3am. And the Guards? Say no. You !at not bother the King as he rests actually. He has had a few very trying weeks since ascending the throne.
So Danny wakes up to an increasinly tense stand off. As the heroes are here to question the King. How dare! You would come here! Late! And demand to wake the King from his slumber! The audacity! Angry rumbles all around!
While the Justice League? Increasingly worried. Are all these beings brainwashed? Why are they so insistent? What the hell? Wasn't Pariah Dark hated?
If any of the ghosts hear that? Shame on you! Shame! King Phantom rules now! He is just and kind! And very very young and in need of rest!
I feel like it’s dated a bit, but it would obviously take Aquaman and Wonder Woman to look at the situation (of the JL arriving at 3am to the horde of the honor guard) and just be like...
“Oh. Things just got shaken up in a way that we kind of understand! Batman, Supes, other assorted idiots; let’s back up over here, say thank you to the nice eternal beings, and let them know we’ll be waiting at a neutral place not far away until it becomes a reasonable time for us to talk to the new King!” And the whole Honor Guard spends the next 6 hours essentially like one of those angry house cats with the hissing and the puffed up fur, only to immediately be even MORE protective of Danny when telling him about the literal Amazoness and the King of Atlantis (extra points if there’s someone in the mess of people there that recognizes crests or something on WW and Aquaman).
OMG, some of these regulars like Ember or Johnny and Kitty must have laughed at him and ate popcorn
And the poor ghost box had to be reprimanded and cried so much that it was Danny who broke down and calmed things down... at least the attacks at night and during school have become extremely rare.
Oh my god? Just "We've come to-!" "No. :) " and this legion of grizzled commando BAMFS all being like "we have been given the SACRED TASK of defending our Tiny, Infant, Wee Baby Lad of King's Nappy Time! And we will defend it it with our very SOULS! RAAAAH!"
Like... hey... Hey wait a minute. Something about that feels off...
Are you BABYING HIM?! "Whaaaat? No! NEVER, your majesty! Was Nap time enjoyable?"
Cause they are are mostly OLD AS DUST and he's like... three. AT BEST.
A BABY. Tiny, infant God Baby.
NO ONE is touching the star child. So HELP THEM, Ancients! He was apparently BORN for this role and NO ONE is fucking this up for them!
And Danny basicly IS running around shouting "no stabbing! Be NICE!" Like to them that's not the MOST Baby "let's all get along and be fwiends" mindset imaginable?
Were it not for the laws of this land(Danny) they would have stabbed you, colorful intruders. Be grateful.
And Danny is just? *Stress Intensifies* GREAT first impressions, guys! He's NEVER SLEEPING AGAIN ha ha T^T
Danny has to be the peaceful one and hates it. He'd rather fight like a rabid badger than have to have a de-escalation discussion. He's bad with those words! It's more the jazz thing, the speeches and the pedagogy! He feels he's going to crack but hopes it will be AFTER the Justice League leaves
God this is great cus just imagining all the different grizzled knights war vets guards and people who put their lives on the line just going No! It's nap time you will not disturb the king
And the justice league is being insistent on seeing the king mean while aquaman and wonder woman each see like 3 separate atlantants and amazonians and realising huh yeah why did we decide 3 am
Also just imagine the fist time his knights see him fight like Oh no the baby is in troub- nope that's uh thats kinda terrifying cus da little baby boy king has full on kached onto the suit of armour and is chewing he's ripping aoart the robot hunter and cackling maniacally
Considering their technology, fashion choices and obsessions most ghosts Danny fights got to be pretty young, by ghost standards. Like even Vlad half-died maybe less than 20 years ago. Youngblood could be older but he has a bit of a Peter Pan situation going on.
The first ghost attack Danny’s fresh new honor guard encounters is Youngblood coming over for their scheduled bi-weekly play date fight. Someone maybe Jazz or Sam explained to Danny’s somewhat over enthusiastic honor guard that this was a planned fight and that Danny is not in danger and that if they ruin this for him Danny is going to be sad.
(Danny would actually be mad and then break down crying from the stress of being king and having an honor guard, but that’s basically the same thing, right?)
So now Danny’s honor guard is under the impression that all of Danny’s roughs are actually his little friends coming over for play dates some older ghost set up.
(Considering Clockwork there might even be some truth in that)
The older ghost like Undergrowth or Pandora are considered babysitters and fighting instructors.
They only ever help if he asks them too. And he probably would sick the guard on Vlad. I can just imagine him going to one of them. Using I'm baby privilege and sucking them on Vlad.
Danny: I don't like him! He keeps bullying me! And he's weird and creepy and gross!!!!
And the guard are like. well. Clearly the other child needs a time out! The naughty halfa child will be taken to the other side of the Realms! And given to parents who will look after him properly! He clearly needs better guardians!
Ah! It is Jonny 13. On of the King's playmates! Just this way young man. Have fun you two!
The Justice League would find this incredibly weird. But also. The new Ghost King is a child! Poor baby! How can we help!
Okay but the Fenton's accidentally opening the Ghost Portal into, essentially, GZ Toddler Land is honestly hilarious to think about.
Like planets were forming potentially as long as 12 billion years ago - there could be ghosts from so many species and so old.
And his rogues gallery is: electric guitar woman, robot guy, robot guy 2, bicycle guy + punk gf, Osha violation man, etc. Even pandora would've only come into being like 28- or 29 hundred years ago.
And ofc if the king was locked away & every other member of government's obsessions had them keep running As Far Away As Possible Just In Case (TM) until Danny came along? No wonder so many "baby" ghosts were just. Wreaking havoc.
Imagine some 4 billion years old nobility ghost meeting Walker. It would either be "how cute he's trying to recreate the government" Or "He's not even a millennium old and he's trying to parent all these other baby ghosts because no one else was here to help them!!! 😭 No wonder the vampire one and a few others have had such poor manners."
I was reading a comic where Clark is at this point where he just... straight up unconsciously does full body scans using a combination of X-Ray vision and super-hearing when he picks up on people's stress levels rising--and he's a lot better at picking up anything unusual health-wise in people he's close to because obviously he'd have a stronger sense of their day to day biological baselines. Of course he knows this is weird and invasive, but it's also reflexive, so he very much keeps it to his internal dialogue. Still, I feel like it would unconsciously affect his decisions with other people.
Clark: *holding up several takeout bags* Brought breakfast for the office!
Perry: *opening a box* Spinach egg bites and pumpkin seed bran muffins? What are you, my doctor?
Clark, internally: Everyone here is on the verge of anemia from all your coffee consumption, please take the iron.
Clark, externally: I'm just a big believer in protein!
Perry: *looking him up and down* ...Clearly.
So the James Webb telescope just took a picture of a galaxy that is 29 million light years away.
If that wasn't cool enough NASA decided to peel away all the cosmic dust in order to see the bones of the Galaxy itself.
AND IT'S BREATHTAKING
So the James Webb telescope just took a picture of a galaxy that is 29 million light years away.
If that wasn't cool enough NASA decided to peel away all the cosmic dust in order to see the bones of the Galaxy itself.
AND IT'S BREATHTAKING
So the James Webb telescope just took a picture of a galaxy that is 29 million light years away.
If that wasn't cool enough NASA decided to peel away all the cosmic dust in order to see the bones of the Galaxy itself.
AND IT'S BREATHTAKING
constantly devastated by the world we lost due to aids
The battles that rose out of the AIDs epidemic were access to marriage and military service. When once the Queer community was focused on creating the best art and living lives worth telling stories about, the 1990's brought on a new goal: How to best fit in. As the brilliant Fran Bebowitz has said many times, the first people who died of AIDS were the interesting ones. The artists. There's a reason that arts became Ghostbusters and Cats in the 1990s. Because all of the really talented artists were dying. The rule-breakers. The ones who weren't afraid to shake things up. And the audience died with them. "Now we don't have any kind of discerning audience. When that audience died- and that audience died in five minutes. Literally people didn't die faster in war. And it allowed of course, like the second, third, fourth tier to rise up to the front. Because of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people who… I don't know how top put this… got laid a lot. OK. Now imagine who didn't get AIDS. That's who was then lauded as like - the great artists." - Fran Lebowitz So many of the gays left alive once the Clinton Administration came into being were, to be frank, the boring ones. Gays who knew nobody and who nobody knew, and they rose to the top of the community and therefore their priorities rose to the top of the community as well. And what did they want? Apparently, they wanted to join the army and have big gay weddings. General employment non-discrimination wasn't all that important to them. Making sexuality and gender identity a protected class, along with sex, race, and religion, wasn't that important to them. They wanted marriage and military. Because they were the good gays. Not the naughty gays who were sleeping around and dying of AIDS. Not the poor gays who couldn't make political contributions. They were the gays with families and commitment ceremonies and office jobs and houses. They were the good ones. The ones who would look fantastic and incredibily marketable when they were interviewed by CNN. They were the gays who straight people would look at and say to themselves: "Maybe they're not so bad after all. I still don't want my kid to be gay. But maybe it's okay if Bob and Henry got married." The gay rights movement shifted from 'Accept us for who we are' to 'We'll be whatever you want us to be if you accept us.' And it's kind of remained that way over the last thirty years. We've been trained to be offended by queers who step too far out of the mainstream. Plenty, and I mean plenty, of gays online were on edge when Billy Porter started showing up to awards shows in dresses. Lots, and I mean lots, of gays were unnerved and worried when trans people started coming out of their own closets. Some going so far as to disavow the T from LGBT because they were worried people who don't like trans people would lop in the gay men and women in with them. Who needs community when you've already got your house in the suburbs, right?
... what the fuck.
You know, you'd think that someone who wrote an essay about queer people selling each other out for cishet approval would agree with this, and to a certain extent, I do, at least in the outcomes and effects, but this excerpt contains a number of deeply wrong and deeply fucked up things to say.
The big pushes for marriage equality and military service were responses to things done to us. They weren't the malicious behavior of a bunch of second-rate, shitty gays (holy fuck, what the fuck, measuring people's artistic prowess and social importance by how much they got laid? James, what the fuck). The push for marriage equality got bigger and louder because of the AIDS epidemic. Because we were denied entry into the hospital rooms and funerals of our loved ones. Because sometimes all families left behind when they cleared out everything in a shared apartment was a fucking box fan. Because people lost their homes when their partners died. Because people were buried under the wrong names, or unclaimed by family and unable to be claimed by the people who loved them.
The push for military service equality? That happened as a pushback against active campaigns to out queer people and drive them out of military service. Like it or not, military service has become (by intent on the part of the Department of Defense) a way out of poverty for a lot of people, and queer people? Well, we tend to be poorer than others. Protecting people's ability to serve in the military meant protecting that path out of poverty for a lot of queer people, meant protecting health care, meant protecting housing, meant protecting lots and lots of things.
A friend of mine was expelled from the military under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He'd been in almost long enough to have a pension, and he pissed someone off who knew he was gay. When I talked to him about it when DADT was repealed, he was still bitter about it -- he and his now-husband couldn't at the time get VA loans or any benefits for his years and years of service. There are at least a hundred thousand people who were expelled from military service for being gay from WWII until its repeal in 2011. Most of those people still have their records showing an other than honorable discharge, and so they and their families are not receiving benefits to which they are otherwise entitled.
Again, this push was a pushback against an active Republican campaign to drive queer people out of public life, one which was used by Republicans in order to stir up their base into a froth over the concept of gays tainting the pure American way of life. There were accusations of gays attempting to undermine the military in the 90s, lots of talk about how the very presence of queers in that space would sully it immeasurably, ruin the American way of life. (Lots of talk about 'combat readiness' and I heard people talking about not wanting 'faggots in foxholes.')
Sound familiar?
Is there a problem with respectability politics in the queer community? Yes. Does that problem with respectability politics undermine our ability to make meaningful change? Yes, absolutely. But we need to refrain from this absolutely fucking asinine and totally untrue reframing of the narrative to blame respectability politics for decisions made out of desperation by people under attack, and we one fucking hundred percent do not need this gross "the survivors were the losers who didn't fuck" narrative, as if one's sexual prowess has anything to do with one's worth as an artist or a human being.
That's fucking disgusting, and James Somerton should be ashamed for even thinking that, much less putting those words in that order and putting them out into the world. My worth as an artist -- and yes, a queer artist -- has nothing to do with who I fuck or how much I fuck or how many partners I fuck. It says a lot about the art world and who gets to rise to the top in it -- the pretty, the popular, the fuckable -- that people think so, though.
Yes, the community has a problem with respectability politics -- I have been loudly saying so for years -- but the response to that can't be grading people by their transgressiveness and fuckability. It just creates a new metric by which you can be found a Worthy Queer.
And we sure as shit need to not reframe the desperate actions of people trying to protect their livelihoods, their homes, and their access to health care from an active and aggressive onslaught of Republican politicians using them as wedge issues as the petty and frivolous concerns of a bunch of no-talent suburban sissies. That shit is just as fucking exhausting. Authentic queer liberation must include the ability to be fucking boring if one desires without incurring whatever this dramatic and ahistorical bullshit rewrite is.
I'm still angry about this. I will eat his heart in the fucking marketplace.
"General employment discrimination wasn't all that important to them."
YOU FUCKING LIAR.
Executive Order 12968 was signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on August 2, 1995. ... Executive Order 12968's anti-discrimination statement, "The United States Government does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation in granting access to classified information." responded to longstanding complaints by advocates for gay and lesbian rights by including "sexual orientation" for the first time in an Executive Order. It also said that "no inference" about suitability for access to classified information "may be raised solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the employee."
You can find this shit is fucking wrong on fucking Wikipedia, you goddamned rotten cabbage.
For clarity and conciseness, I've included only those advances made during the worst parts of the AIDS Crisis: 1982: Wisconsin: Sexual orientation protected in all employment 1983: New York: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Ohio: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1985: New Mexico: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Rhode Island: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Washington: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1987: Oregon: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1988: Oregon: Sexual orientation no longer protected in state employment 1989: Massachusetts: Sexual orientation protected in all employment 1990: Colorado: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1991: Connecticut: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Hawaii: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Minnesota: Sexual orientation protected in state employment New Jersey: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1992: California: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Louisiana: Sexual orientation protected in state employment New Jersey: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Vermont: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Oregon: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 1993: Minnesota: Sexual orientation and gender identity protected in all employment 1995: Maryland: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Rhode Island: Sexual orientation protected in all employment 1996: Illinois: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Louisiana: Sexual orientation no longer protected in state employment 1998: New Hampshire: Sexual orientation protected in all employment 1999: Iowa: Sexual orientation and gender identity protected in state employment Nevada: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Ohio: Sexual orientation no longer protected in state employment Delaware: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Iowa: Sexual orientation and gender identity no longer protected in state employment Montana: Sexual orientation protected in state employment 2001: Indiana: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Maine: Sexual orientation protected in state employment Maryland: Sexual orientation protected in all employment Rhode Island: Gender identity protected in all employment
Do you think all of those things were just magically fucking granted by the benevolent cishets? No. Each one of those advances came with long, tedious, brutal fucking fights, with people risking their careers, their livelihoods, and sometimes the possibility of criminal charges by coming out and fighting.
The idea that "general employment discrimination was not on the agenda" is such a bald-faced fucking lie that I can't even see past the goddamned red mist in my vision. I highly, highly recommend reading that page if you don't understand what an ongoing fight antidiscrimination laws have been. Several states have gone back and forth several times on whether or not employment and housing discrimination is banned, making it especially fucking risky to get involved in those fights, but the boring gays did it anyway.
Fuck, I am angry. That is just a bunch of self-congratulatory bullshit, and it doesn't do fucking anything to talk meaningfully about what AIDS took from us.
Fuck James Somerton's shitty opinions.
imagine spending all that time and effort talking about how awful AIDS was and then in the same breath saying marriage wasn't all that important except to boring gays who wanted big weddings
like
my good bitch
the MAJOR FUCKING POINT of the push for marriage was because of the rights you get with it, like, I don't know, BEING ABLE TO BE WITH YOUR DYING SPOUSE IN THE HOSPITAL
Here's the thing though: I see a lot of these shitty opinions in Young Queers and zoomers who haven't met Old Queers and learned our history. Younger generations genuinely think marriage equality was something only rich assimilationist cis white gay men wanted.
So this history and these takedowns are important cuz current generations still believe this cuz they don't know their history
Honestly, yes, and that's part of the reason I'm so fucking pissed off at James Somerton - he's thirty-four fucking years old. He's too young to remember the AIDS crisis with clarity - he was six during the worst year of the crisis - but too old and too involved in the community to get a pass for Just Not Knowing.
And also, like, we're taking the words of Fran Lebowitz as meaningful?
This Fran Lebowitz, talking in 2010?
"Candy [Darling, a trans woman] was a man who wanted to be a female movie star," says Fran in the opening of the under-three-minute teaser. "And you know, fell into the clutches of Andy [Warhol] who told her she was."
"A 25-year-old man who becomes a 25-year-old woman is not a woman at all, because a woman first has to be a little girl. Candy was never a girl."
Or maybe this from 2021's Pretend It's A City?
"I said to this little girl, 'you are not a woman.' Now you can't say that to anyone. [derisively] If someone says, 'I'm a woman,' you're a woman, okay? You can be a three-year-old girl, a 70-year-old man, you could be a giraffe. You're a woman? You're a woman."
Or how she repeatedly compared being trans to having a headache?
Who you choose to cite and who you choose to view as an authority tells people a lot about how and where you've formed your opinions. James leaning into this garbage tells me a lot about him, unfortunately.
A lot of people in the notes of this post keep saying that those of us pissed off by this garbage "don't get it" or that those of us pissed off by the post don't understand bla bla bla creating systems of support of our own outside the system bla bla bla now people are just trying to fit in to the system bla bla.
And first of all, it's fucking exhausting to see comments like that from people half my fucking age who didn't live through this and don't know fuck all about fuck all. But second of all--
-- how do you create meaningful and durable systems of support in a capitalist society if you have no form of steady income or cannot be certain that if something happens to you that the resources you've built up will be passed to the people that you want it to go to rather than being stolen by people who hate you? How do you create stability for the next generation, how do you raise kids or provide shelter and stability for young people fleeing homophobic and transphobic bio-families, if you don't have a stable home yourself or if taking in someone you're not genetically related to can cause you to lose your home?
It pisses me off to have to grab people by the neck and say "fucking stop it, we were forced into this fight to protect ourselves," because there is a lot that we lost when we had our backs put to the wall by the AIDS crisis and by the endlessly aggressive Republican attacks of the 80s and 90s, and there are a lot of things we had to give up on as priorities because we were trying to protect our right to employment and a steady place to live, and still are! It fucking sucks that we have to do this. It fucking sucks that as a community we are going to look back in 20 years and see what we could have done if we hadn't had to spend so much time and energy protecting the basic right to bodily autonomy and continually re-fighting the same fucking fights. I know that it will because I feel that way about how shit was when I was 20, and I see history not repeating but rhyming the way that it does.
But this bullshit "we lost the artists because they were the Bad Boys who fucked and that's why it's sad" shit that also contains a lot of absolute fucking lies about what "the community" did 30, 40 years ago is just not the fucking way.
The human cost of the AIDS crisis is incalculable, but not because we lost the "radical artists" and everyone else who remained was the losers who suck (a pretty ironic thing to say when you're one of the ones who lived, Franny). It is horrible because people fucking died due to active attempts to use this disease to exterminate us, because of the malignant neglect of the people in power, because people fucking died.
Not artists, not radicals, not ... whatever. We didn't lose martyrs. We lost people.
And like... this bullshit about how addressing general employment discrimination wasn't on the table? Shut uuuuuuuup. I mean, look at that list. Look at Oregon alone. In 87, sexual orientation protected in state employment (you'll see this as a first step in many states as it is easier to argue and sets the stage for general discrimination to be outlawed). In 88, that goes away bc of opposition. It doesn't return until 1992, 5 years later. Go back further, and you see that Oregon went back and forth five fucking times on the question of whether it was legal to castrate or sterilize queers during the first half of the 20th century, during which time almost three thousand Oregonians, many of them women, were either castrated or had oophorectomies performed against their will for being "moral degenerates or sexual perverts."
Tell me exactly how one establishes alternate systems of care in a society that will forcibly remove parts of your body for being queer. Tell me exactly how one establishes alternate systems of care when you can have anything you establish ripped away from your hands because your job is gone, because you're a pervert who doesn't deserve a job or the ability to rent or buy a home with both names on the deed or the ability to get a mortgage (because they COULD discriminate against your ability to sign a mortgage together, and if you don't have both incomes, you might not qualify and even if you do, if lightning strikes the property owner, well, now it belongs to their shitty homophobic family).
All of these advances in our basic rights that James fucking lies about so blatantly are the necessary ingredients for existing in this society as it is established. You cannot create these alternate family forms or alternate systems of care in a way that is stable, livable, and able to be protected without those basic rights, and the fact that so many young people take that shit so much for granted is both wonderful - because all of them have never really experienced the world that I and other older queers grew up in - and so so frustrating, because they really don't understand that all of those basic rights are written in blood.
I am deeply frustrated by the way in which a lot of the big rights organizations can be really really short-sighted and focused on the rights of cis queers, and I'm extremely frustrated by respectability politics. The solution, however, is not shifting the goalposts so that the "acceptable" queers are the ones who are sufficiently radical in visible, tangible ways. Like, what the fuck. The solution has to be actual solidarity between the radical gays and the "boring" ones, and you don't get there by lying about hard-fought history or quoting TERFy McTERFerson Fran Fucking Lebowitz.
Fuck's sake, kids.
of course you have blood all over you. and pronouns
easy website
^^^ me when I’m trying to calm down my horse named “Website”
weird horse
"Websight" is a Valid Warrior Cat Name!
Reminded by flag discourse about my proposal for a new Massachusetts state flag. The looming black triangle represents the creeping dread one experiences in Massachusetts, the white represents the horrible weather, the blue represents microplastics, and the slogan represents I saw it on a pack of cigs and thought it sounded sick
the-bright-path-deactivated2021
Similar story from a couple months ago: there’s lots of kids in this neighborhood, and mine like to go gadding about and making friends and they all go across the street to the park to play. One of the older kids that Eris bonded with comes over to our house sometimes, and very recently this kid rolls up to our front yard while we’re going some garden work and asks do I like their new hair cut?
Looks home done, like you know, buzzed it in the bathroom mirror with a pair of clippers, which is exactly what I’m rocking too, so I say yeah, looks great because I think it does. And the next thing this kid does is say with chin stuck in the air, “I’m trans, you know.” And I can see the look on his face, expecting the adult to challenge, push back, or scoff, or maybe just blink ignorantly and say “what’s that?” I smile and say, “cool, brother, same hat.” And my god the way his face lit up. Absolutely beaming. We fist bumped and he started chattering at me full tilt, not even about anything to do with gender but just talking. Because in that moment he was safe to be himself. Since then he’s got a full wardrobe change and a binder so I very much hope his mom is also being supportive, but he still likes to pop by just to chat about whatever.
Protect our trans elders and protect our trans kids. You never fucking know where you’ll find them, and what kind of impact you’ll have.
[ID: a Twitter thread by Kivan @/KivaBay reading:
I just had the most incredible experience in front of my apartment building and I have to share it.
There’s a little old man who walks up and down the street and says hi if we’re out there smoking cigarettes. I was outside smoking and he was walking past and said “good afternoon young lady!”
And normally I’d probably be too scared to correct a stranger but he’d said hi before.
No I said “actually I’m not a young lady, I’m a man” and immediately got nervous and try to explain my high voice and, uh, tiddy. “I have a condition.”
And this little old man goes “oh are you transgender?” And having painted myself into a corner I say yes.
“Me too,” he says
And I realize this little old man is shorter than me. And he’s got suspenders and a cute hat (hello call-out post for my fashion sense). And he’s smiling so warmly.
I am meeting a trans man elder and I don’t even have a good bowtie on!! WTF Kivan!
And he called me brother and said he was honored to meet me and hugged me and just after everything with my dad I can’t even begin to put into words how much I needed to see a little old man I could grow to be.
I’m actually crying right now because I just really really need that.
You’re all great, let’s protect our trans elders, and grow up to be the good trans elders for those after us. /end ID]
wake up babes my new obsession just dropped
”I bet Jesus won’t save you from-uh
my
bullying
😏 ”
Kicks trashcan ineffectually
i am never talking to a cishet person again. did you know some of these people believe that watching porn is cheating
queers are out here having five dimensional sex and cishets are living in the stone age...... we have to enlighten them......
WE HAVE TO FUCKING HELP THEM WHAT DO YOU MEAN MASTURBATING IS CHEATING . CHEATING WITH WHO.
side note but. i love so much the way basically all the characters in good omens are just people. like in tv shows you usually need to have actors within a certain age range and if they are older they need to fit a specific beauty standard unless they are playing a comedic role. here? here there are so many characters that look like someone you could meet while buying groceries. you see so many actors older than 40 and they all look so normal and don't need to have a specific body shape and they look so human and that makes them so beautiful
I think we should dismantle the cis-het-allo-normative Categories and especially the "hierarchies" of relationships that are fucking everywhere. I hate them. Fuck defining the relationship. Fuck prioritizing romance over friendship. Fuck the lines between platonic and romantic and sexual and sensual. Kiss your friends. Fuck your friends. Date your friends. Date your partner. Date multiple people. Date nobody. Kiss and fuck nobody or somebody or lots of somebodies. Why do we have to box everything in. Just do what feels good with the people ot feels good to do it with just love people (or dont).
Disclaimer that yes, obviously having defined relationships that fall strictly in one category or another is important to some people, and that's cool for them. Let them do that. The whole point here is that there should be less pressure and more options. Those include the option to have strictly platonic/romantic/sexual relationships. The point is that there is a choice.
in general i would say that “it’s not fun if they’re totally unrecognisable” is my fandom thesis. like the point of fanfic etc is putting your favourite little guys in situations. where’s the appeal if they’ve been through so many fanon spin cycles that they’re barely even your guys anymore
loads of people are reblogging this like “this is why i don’t like AUs” and honestly this is not an anti AU post by any stretch of the imagination. if you think “alternate universe fic” = “completely unrecognisable characters” then love and light but you need to read some better AUs!! putting your little guys in a completely different setting or time period or making them baristas or racing drivers or pop stars or whatever doesn’t inherently render them unrecognisable and in fact the APPEAL of a well done AU fic is seeing how your favourite guys deal with a completely different set of circumstances. support your local wacky AU today x
Hmm. Let's see how many people this annoys.
I honestly thought that the purpose of this with some kind of weird trick where they managed to lock it in at 69 notes, so that I would appreciate it but not be able to interact with it without fucking it up. Like, this is what I saw:
Sadly, no. Nothing so funny as that (though thanks for the idea!)
I’ve just gotten so used to people reacting with vitriol to authors promoting their work that now whenever I know I need to create or reblog a promo post because funds are running low, I brace myself for Discourse.
Which is sad.
People tagging my "young Dracula isn't hot" post with "spoilers".
Friend, didn't we all read in JUNE Jonathan finding Dracula's de-aged body and going into a murderous rage?
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.
This is Dracula aged down like 50 years and injected with fillers. This happened a while ago.