one day i will have a coherent and consistent tagging system she says to herself as she rocks back and forth drenched in sweat and blood (her own? someone else's?)
either way there are tears
juno steel and the audacity of they/thems
Tash // 30s // formerly @sothatwassomething // i live in the tags
“So move, yeah move, I’ve got nowhere to go, don’t move so slow, I can’t take it”
“The lyrics are v simple but whenever i listen to the song i think about tegan describing it (song written by sara) as "feeling like sara is standing on your chest” and it’s v accurate. like just complete pain and misery but it’s beautiful"
Poll Runner: Wavers between being slow and sad, and being incredibly uplifting. Especially the ending. It feels like sailing off into the sunset after a rough patch. It’s a really beautiful tune
I want to say that with trans folk now being at risk of the fucking death sentence in Florida….
The time for community is Now. The time to start planning and organizing how to get our rights back is NOW. bring it up at your local LGBT craft events or book club or support group or whatever. Tell your friends. Spread the word. And maybe see which ones will have the safety and resources you’ll need should a Lavender Hunt happen in your area.
And on the scarier end of reality….
This is fucking terrifying. Lots of people are at risk. Personally, I’m terrified this rhetoric will spread much like Trumpism did. I’m scared for my gf and I’m fucking scared for myself because we know historically that it isn’t just trans folk on HRT or drag performers that they go after.
And you have every right to do whatever you need to protect yourself.
I’m not going to shame folks who quit HRT, who take the rainbows out of their bio, the people who start saying partner instead of revealing a gender, or anyone else taking a few steps towards the safety that the closet provides. WE shouldn’t.
I fucking love you. And we’ll be okay as long as we’re together, okay?
This is what I’m talking about for the people unaware.
I looked up the lavender scare last night and was sadly unsurprised to see that the last time the community came together…was a lavender scare.
Pride was a riot because the government started doing to us then what Florida is doing to us now. It was triggered when a man was fired from his job on grounds of being gay and tried to take it to court.
This is why we have pride. This is why “think of the children” is/was an awful rhetoric to push at leather daddies and drag queens. It’s not just a bad opinion or stupid discourse, it’s a talking point for the right wing to justify fucking kill us.
It was never “just discourse” it was a right wing psyop to cripple us from coming together to fight against attacks just like this.
Your enemies aren’t other queer people with labels you don’t like. Those are your allies. Because you know who else doesn’t like them?
Nazis.
And they don’t like you either even if you have a “normal” queer identity and you don’t make it “your whole personality” or whatever.
You’re both still queer. And that’s all they care about. Trying to placate bigots wont save you. Quit playing the part of “acceptable gay” and throwing everyone else under the bus.
Besides, that they WERE thinking of the children when they started those riots dressed in stuff that makes you squirm. They were thinking of You. Of your life. Your children. Queer children.
Broke: think of the children
Woke: think of where you’d be right now if Drag queens and leather daddies weren’t there to throw that first brick. Think about about all the other people currently at risk of being killed through the Same Exact method that you had the privilege of escaping, precisely because of the people you can’t stand.
Hey y'all please reblog this version so people can see the article and explanation, there are a few confused people only seeing earlier versions that dont explain the connection/threat because it doesn’t have the article.
An interstate rainbow railroad.
For those unaware that’s this. It’s been done before.
A lot of people are scared. And I really, really want you to know that the riots started because someone scared asked for help and people answered
It wasn’t organized. It just happened. People decided to risk it at a moments notice.
This is ours. And we’ve done it before.
Stormé Delariverie, the Stonewall Lesbian that triggered it all.
And everyone who was there for her.
Were just like us
So how do we do this?
I played that level in Mario Kart but that was it. I wanna be there for you, we all do, how do we do that?
I bet one of us could call and just ask. Who doesn’t have anxiety. Oh wait it’s posted on their site :)
Kinda reads like a How To 👀
Find your niche and offer it.
People need help, you figure out how/who can, and then you follow through.
Can you drive
have gas money
have extra food
Got some clothes or meds
An extra bed or couch
maybe even an extra property or hotel room to spare?
Do you have money for those things?
maybe you’re able to connect people with needs to people who can help?
can you share/spread posts asking for help?
Or may you can just make them some tea while the host of the house is out cuz they don’t want to be alone in a new place
Maybe you keep up morale by just being hopeful
can you somehow show that there are people who are taking steps to materially care for and support trans and other lgbta people in Florida?
What can You do?
Because you are not nearly as powerless as they want you to believe, especially with some help.
“ Your enemies aren’t other queer people with labels you don’t like. Those are your allies. Because you know who else doesn’t like them?
Nazis.
And they don’t like you either even if you have a "normal” queer identity and you don’t make it “your whole personality” or whatever.
You’re both still queer. And that’s all they care about. Trying to placate bigots wont save you. Quit playing the part of “acceptable gay” and throwing everyone else under the bus.
Besides, that they WERE thinking of the children when they started those riots dressed in stuff that makes you squirm. They were thinking of You. Of your life. Your children. Queer children. “
I just wanted to point this itsy bitsy part out. because some people need to fucking listen to it.
This ENTIRE post is worth listening to, it doesn’t matter if your trans, or not. Please just fucking listen. For the queer kids and teens and for the adults and drag queens that are scared. Nobody should be scared to die. Not just in florida either.
i don’t have a lot to say about the red, white & royal blue movie (mostly because i just can’t bring myself to care about something so mediocre) but i will say that it is a pretty damn perfect example of “good representation”, in the blandest most liberal identity-politicking iteration possible.
Queer, trans, and poc characters are highly visible in positions of power and authority. of course the actual nature of the authority and power in question is never addressed beyond a few painfully clunky mentions of ‘privilege’. as far as this movie is concerned the only fault of the british monarchy are its’ antiquated attitudes towards queer identities, and the american presidency has no flaws at all, ostensibly because it’s being run by a woman who loves her bisexual son. She’s one of the good ones!
british imperialism? never heard of her. american imperialism? don’t worry about it. this movie isn’t interested in deconstructing the structural inequalities of either empire, or their dependance on the continued subjugation/exploitation of colonized nations because of course it fucking isn’t it’s a fucking rom com.
i honestly would have respected it a lot more if it had just embraced the fantasy and spared us the flaccid, transparently calculated levels of self-awareness included specifically to placate it’s target audience: predominately straight young women/teen girls with entirely ethnocentric ideas of racism, homophobia, and what makes a piece of media ~problematic~
that math is mathing though, and the target audience is going to love it, so job well done.
oh also sarah shahi needs to be cast in more comedies. like, all of them. no more hollywood comedies allowed unless sarah shahi is in it.
edit: okay reading this back and it’s a little unnecessarily mean. i stand by what i said about the movie, but i think i unintentionally implied pretty heavily that if you do enjoy it then you must be ignorant, racist, and/or incapable of critically engaging with media while still enjoying it. sorry about that. this rant was brought to you by seeing so many articles praising the movie for being such powerfully positive representation and listen. there’s only so much romanticization of modern imperialist empires that a brown lady can take before needing to vent about it
if you’re comfortable with sharing your age and/or the province/territory where you received your education, please do so in the tags -along with the option you chose
not to be a massive fucking hater or anything but any digital artist who has built their entire career on drawing big eyed small nosed pale faced cartoon versions of instagram models with triangle tits and arms like twigs is a fucking hack and actual blight on the digital art world
No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that’s so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you’ll say “Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you’re right” and that doesn’t mean you were “morally toxic” before, it means you’re a non-omniscient human capable of growth.
cowboys be like “nah that feller is just a companion to keep the trail a bit less lonely & a lot less dangerous” & then ride funny in the saddle the next 2 days
i also just think it’s very funny for the main fandom discourse to be all about the ethics of shipping alex and yassen and im over here going hmm yeah that’s fine can we talk about the casual racism and xenophobia in fanfic depictions of places like afghanistan, iraq, and various african nations (nowhere specific ofc bc africa is an impoverished war-torn monolith) and also let’s maybe address how MI6 are often recognized as being awful but only because of how they treat alex, not like. all of the war crimes and overthrowing foreign governments or torturing political prisoners you know the list goes on but for some reason most fic authors still seem stuck in the world view of british and american intelligence services being the “good guys” so hey let’s unpack that! it’ll be fun, promise!
dipping my toes into the alex rider fandom bc i like the actor who plays yassen in the tv show, and of course there is a significant contingent of fandom who ship yassen and alex. i expected that just based on the book series’ target age demographic, along with the particular dynamic between the characters (not quite allies not quite enemies a secret history tying them together, he’s a cold-blooded killer who makes exceptions for alex because alex is special. that shit is what teenage fanfiction dreams are made of).
there is also a not-insignificant pushback against shipping an adult and 14 year old. Makes sense! I get it. but the thing is. having only spent a day or two in the alex rider tag i can already say with confidence that the overwhelming majority of yalex fans are themselves roughly the same age as alex rider. It’s a fandom that skews young. and when it comes to engaging with fiction as a young person, it’s normal for teens to use characters their own age with whom they can identify as a method of exploring their own sexuality. imagining and writing about romantic and/or sexual scenarios between a character close to your own age and an older character you find attractive is pretty standard stuff.
the very first fanfiction i ever posted? rin/sesshomaru from inuyasha. for context if you aren’t familiar with the show: rin’s exact age is not given, but she is very clearly a child. sesshomaru is not only an adult but also her father figure. at the time i was writing fanfic of them falling in love, i was around 12. i romanticized the idea of a girl my own age being the most important person in the world to a handsome mysterious character i had a crush on. and it was fine. I wasn’t an adult fantasizing about children, I wasn’t supporting grooming or influencing anyone into thinking children and adults being “in love” irl is in any way okay. I was a kid trying to figure out why i was suddenly feeling nervous and shy around boys when just a year ago i didn’t care about them one way or the other. and using these two fictional characters with a dynamic that appealed to me (morally ambiguous man who doesn’t care about anyone or anything except for this one girl he protects and loves seemingly despite himself because she’s special) was a perfectly healthy outlet for me to imagine what it would be like to hold hands or kiss someone i liked.
Obviously now as an adult, the idea of shipping rin/sesshomaru has zero appeal, and the fact that canonically they do end up in a romantic relationship when she’s older quite frankly skeeves me the fuck out. but i just didn’t see it that way as a kid, because of course I didn’t.
I keep thinking about 12 year old me, in the early stages of discovering her own sexuality, and how upsetting it would have been to receive online harassment for trying to explore it within the safety of fiction. And while 12 is younger than what i would put the average yalex fan at - probably between 14 and 19 - the principle is the same, only with more explicit content than the hand-holding stage i was at as a 12 year old.
anyways. all im saying is maybe try to understand why a fandom comprised of mostly under 18 year old girls would be invested in writing/reading stories exploring their sexual and/or romantic fantasies using fictional characters as surrogates, alex and yassen in particular; a morally ambiguous man who doesn’t care about anyone or anything except for this one boy he protects and loves seemingly despite himself because he’s special.
maybe don’t blame them for the existence of pedophilia (maybe that’s something you should blame on pedophiles). and actually you know what maybe stop condescending to teenagers as though they aren’t capable of discerning reality from fiction and understanding the nature of their own fantasies. maybe just leave them be and blacklist the appropriate tags so you don’t have to see anything you don’t want to.
please let this scene of 90s orientalist racism end so i forget it ever happened
the main character is trying to rent a room in his apartment so there’s a little montage of potential buyers. the montage ends with MC opening the door to find two chinese men in suits with stern faces and i shit you not, the soundtrack plays a gong chime
anyways, one of them speaks in clipped english (“ah, cat’s good. very good to have cat.”) the other speaks only cantonese and both remain completely expressionless for their entire scene.
they’re clearly meant to be shady (they have like 1k cash on them) and even with the orientalism, not gonna lie you guys they come off looking like total badasses
i want an entire movie about these two and their dynamic.
jesus fucking christ.
this is fred. fred is punjabi. he’s played by the brilliant sindhi/irish canadian actor Raoul Bhaneja, putting on a terrible fake punjabi accent. i need to murder whoever wrote this character on his behalf
oh good he’s gay. i’m sure this will be handled well.
please let this scene of 90s orientalist racism end so i forget it ever happened
the main character is trying to rent a room in his apartment so there’s a little montage of potential buyers. the montage ends with MC opening the door to find two chinese men in suits with stern faces and i shit you not, the soundtrack plays a gong chime
anyways, one of them speaks in clipped english (“ah, cat’s good. very good to have cat.”) the other speaks only cantonese and both remain completely expressionless for their entire scene.
they’re clearly meant to be shady (they have like 1k cash on them) and even with the orientalism, not gonna lie you guys they come off looking like total badasses
i want an entire movie about these two and their dynamic.
ppl trying to make some of these ships all cute n domestic dont seem to understand these characters are insane. they would have sex by standing on opposite sides of the room fully clothed playing mind games
