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#queer people deserve to SEE queerness not just say it happened
minnnieminmin · 1 year
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funny how dana made hunter bi, willow pan and h*ntlow canon meanwhile there is NO indication of any of that in the show lol
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nonokoko13 · 6 months
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Friendly reminder that being queer/LGBT ally/jewish/pro-semitism isn't, can't and shouldn't be used to justify and support ethnic cleansing, colonization and genocide. If you do think so then I don't want you to talk to me ever again 👉🚪
#from the river to the sea palestine will be free#free palestine#“BUT IF YOU LIVED THERE THEY'D KILL YOU” bitch people from my own country would rather see me dead for existing too#just because minorities are oppressed by their governments doesn't mean the citizens deserve to die#they're just weaponizing people sexualities and you are buying into their “noble” reasoning#“it is a war not a genocide” isn't it weird that the only side that is being censored for speaking about what's happening to them#are the Palestinians?#in pro palestine protests people don't yell death to Israel they yell they want freedom and ceasefire#if you think “from the river to the sea palestine will be free” is somehow the same as a (death) threat the problem is on you#and yes you can question Israel without being antisemitic. People can be jew and/or queer and be against them#this dehumanization shouldn't be answered with indifference or “they deserved it lol” BIG FUCK YOU#not sorry if this is how you find out what side I'm with. If talking about this makes you uncomfortable or offended feel free to unfollow m#tener que decir algo que debería ser universal y de sentido común me toca mucho los huevos#when I say I prefer to be drama free I mean about fandom discourse. Never about war crimes and violation of human rights#“if they don't want to get bombed just leave” THAT'S NOT THE SOLUTION THEY DESERVE TO LIVE IN THEIR LAND WITHOUT GETTING ATTACKED FOR IT#god dammit#I'll be back to being silly later but first I wanted to get this out of my chest#🍉
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vaspider · 2 years
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Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.
It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.
On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.
I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"
That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.
Never.
These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.
And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.
Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.
You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.
But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.
That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.
It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.
Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.
Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.
Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.
They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.
But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.
I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."
(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.
Fucker.)
But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.
I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.
But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.
The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.
That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.
The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.
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fairuzfan · 1 month
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About liberal Zionists.
First, Zionism is a nationalistic ideology so we have strike one for how they constantly feel "betrayed" by leftism. But also, when I go to the blog of a liberal queer rights, equal rights for all Zionist there are some things I noticed.
Zionist 1 has mostly agreeable positions in their own thoughts and reblogs. They want the sufferings of the Palestinians to end but have mostly shallow ideas on how that could be accomplished because the central violence that the state Israel enacts on the Palestinians is invisible to them except a short "the settlements are bad". They accept that Gaza is suffering too much but stay clear to call it a genocide.
Zionist 1 often reblogs from Zionist 2.
Zionist 2's opinions and reblogs are now way less agreeable. When I say "agreeable" I mean agreeable to a nominal western, white, somewhat leftist audience. Z2 openly has nationalistic views, everything starts on 7.10 except Hamas was always bad. Some denialism on past Israeli atrocities. Calls Jews critical of Israel "self-hating" without pause. When the topic of genocide comes up they say it doesn't exist. Maybe they criticise Netanyahu.
Z1 makes sure that only some of Z2' thoughts and reblogs end up their own blog.
Z2 often reblogs from Z3 who is an open, flag waving, idf idolising, arab hating islamophobe. They don't care about civilian casualties because in their opinion there are no civilians and/or they deserve it for electing Hamas and not fighting against Hamas right this second. The hostages are worshipped, just like every political decision of Israel, current past future. They deny that a genocide is happening but only on the word alone because they wish that everyone in Gaza should die and disappear.
Z2 makes sure that only some of Z3 thoughts and reblogs end up on their own blog.
And this is how supposed liberal or leftist Zionists regurgitate far right fanaticism even if not openly all the time.
You distilled this perfectly, this is exactly why I dislike so many liberal zionists on here. They straight up reblog from people who were genocide deniers and those people reblog from outright fascists. Like yeah if I see you make community with people who spout zionist beliefs then I'm considering you a zionist, even if you deny it.
Also the liberal zionists always talk about how we should "stop dehumanizing Israelis for the actions of their governments" when we very much can see the way Israelis perpetuate the colonization of Palestine. Oh and they also don't think palestine is colonized by Israel.
But yeah this is exactly it thank you anon.
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rowenablade · 7 months
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Okay. I’m going to wait to do a second watch before I articulate most of my other feelings here, but I want to address one thing.
I’m seeing a lot of posts like, “I related to Izzy because I am also queer and older/disabled/depressed. By killing him off, the writers are saying that I deserve to die.”
Guys.
I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid. I totally understand grieving a character that you relate to. But speaking as a writer, I just want to point out that trying to write with the shadow of “what is the absolute worst and most harmful way a reader can interpret this” will smother your ability to create. Twisting yourself in knots, trying to think up the worst-faith takes possible and scotch-guarding all your writing decisions against them is exhausting to the point of making you just not want to write anymore.
And we’ve seen the writers deliberately choose not to do this in Season 1. Remember all those terrible “Izzy is racist” takes that the writers and cast seemed completely blindsided by? That happened because the writers and directors and actors weren’t going over every scene with a fine tooth comb, ferreting out every shot or line of dialogue or micro expression that could possibly be interpreted as racist, and scrubbing it off. Because there comes a point where your story is what it needs to be, and you have to accept that some people will interpret it in ways you didn’t intend them to. And if you can’t accept that, you’ll never find the courage to put your work out there.
The point of diverse casts and writing teams isn’t to achieve a state of, “Nothing bad ever happens to a character from a marginalized demographic ever again.” It’s to achieve a status quo of these types of characters just being people in the world of the story. Not symbols, not representation boxes to tick, not tokens that you can point to so that you can say, “Here, we acknowledged this type of person exists, now where’s our woke points?”
OFMD is full of characters of color, queer characters, older characters, characters of differing body types. And in stories, things happen to characters. Some fall in love. Some make the same mistakes over and over. Some turn into birds. Some die.
Izzy’s character represents a lot of things, but he does not represent every older, disabled fan or fan who has struggled with suicide, any more than Jim represents all genderqueer fans, or Olu represents all black fans. That’s not how the writers were handling him. They were handling him like a character, because that’s what you have to do.
Again, I understand being sad. I am so, so fucking sad. But this idea of, “Any time something bad happens to a character I relate to means that the writer thinks I deserve these bad things to happen to me,” will poison everything you engage with eventually. Because stories are full of things happening to characters, and they won’t all be good things. And the more representation we get, the more often bad things will happen to characters we relate to.
But good things will happen too.
Queer couples get married. Disabled women run off with their favorite husbands. Middle-aged characters change careers. A multiracial polycule finds a home at sea. A fat man covered in tattoos stars in a drag show and all his friends cheer. All these things happened in the same show as Izzy’s death. This is what this world is.
Anyway. I know emotions are running high and I’ll probably get blocked or unfollowed by a few people for this. But I’m just trying to find my peace where I can, and if anyone else finds this useful, cheers.
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inkskinned · 1 year
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one of the things that's so frustrating is how often the arguments against us are actually happening to us. we said - you need to watch out, this will evolve into allowing fascism into legal statute. and we were told: you're a sensitive snowflake. you're annoying and stupid and have no concept of reality. nobody really believes that stuff.
but it's indoctrination for kids to even see queer people. it's grooming for kids to even be around queer people. it's disgusting to even put rainbows on kids clothes. it's inappropriate, shameful, still-an-argument. like any of this is new - we know already. for you, even seeing someone unashamed is the same thing as "forcing" it onto you. because god-forbid you confront any internal thought you have. because god-forbid you practice empathy. rage is better, i guess. it keeps you pretty.
this has always been the way of some people - a while ago, it would have been "sinful" for my white mom to marry my hispanic dad. once, in the year of our lord 2015, someone told me that "mutts" deserve a woodchipper. that one particular insult stayed with me - not because it was the first or last, but because there was something so unbelievably violent about it that i couldn't figure out how to hold it. the idea that someone is so assured of their bigotry and rage that they would paint this kind of a picture. even jokingly, even with the anonymity of the internet, it kind of centered things for me. a sense that, for some people, their rage burned so unimaginably large that it blocked even the basic fact of my humanity.
at one point, while i still had enough fire in me to get into long arguments, one of the bigots i was "debating" (being harassed by) said: to be honest, it's about the sex, not the love. between you, me, and the four walls of this blue hellsite, i actually didn't really care for "love is love" as the slogan of our community. it seemed so placid, so gentle, so ally-focused. where was the vitriol? where was the hours i spent agonizing over myself? where was the quiet moments of my life, filled with the sound of other people's hatred? this static that settles over everything; even for the action of holding her hand.
the world is unfair. i am an adult, and without the veneer and small-pond syndrome of my teenage years, the slogan has started sounding more desperate. the more places i went, the more people i met. love is love. love is defending him on a rooftop bar. the drink she throws at me goes down into my shoes while i stand there, wishing i had a better retort than what the fuck. love is both of us, keeping our heads down, the black SUV full of frat boys (?) pulled up next to us, howling, for five whole blocks, until we both gave up and had to stick our bare legs into the thicket by the side of the road, giving over into tick country rather than let it go on any longer. love is a lazy spring afternoon, my hand on her belly, the fan spinning overhead. did you hear the whole thing about target?
did you hear about being the target? that's a fun little parallel, isn't it. it almost feels like the game that-is-about-me is being played without-my-participation. someone wants to set fire to my life, and i have to wait for a response from a capitalist institution. i am watching a tiktok where a white woman under white lights complains about adult swimsuits, even though i think a lot of people would benefit from having swimming options that are not "instagram-inspired bikini" or "impossible to move in but otherwise pretty".
sometimes it just seems so fucking stupid. like, just to check, the rage you feel and the hatred - you could really just avoid all of that by minding your fucking business. sometimes (and this is true): it's not about you, and people don't need your permission. like, i don't understand any obsession with sports, but it seems to make other people happy. american football literally results in grievous bodily injury - and yet there are onesies for babies that say future quarterback. i personally don't love it, so i just don't buy that stuff. i walk by it, and don't let it bother me. there have been so, so, so many times that i was told - "so what if he's a little bit homophobic, if you don't like him, don't watch his movies." "so what if they fired her. don't buy their product." "so what if they wouldn't make a rainbow cake. just don't support them."
sometimes i feel the meaning of it scud against my body, an orca whale inside of me, threatening the boat. it is too large to see from my place; this shadow of a thing that dwarfs my petty other-concerns. i need to find a dress for an event, and florida is passing more anti-gay legislation. i need to text my friend back and confirm our plans, and someone is throwing beer bottles to the floor in a walmart because a different case had rainbows on them. it is a long fall, if i look down into it; this sense like the bottom doesn't exist. like i have only ever dipped my toes in.
sometimes i am unbelievably tired of talking about it. it feels like it has become too trite in my own poetry - queer writer complains about the state of the world! how original! - and then something else happens, and i am here again. i remember that it isn't a moment. i remember it isn't a scattered population of cartoon evil-doers, intent on world domination from behind handlebar mustaches. it is a concerted effort of real people with real power who really-do want to see my end. it is a lifetime of dodging the beercan as it sails out of the back of the van. it is a lifetime of not-kissing once we leave the apartment. it is a lifetime of watching someone protest our existence and then, very slowly, giving them the finger. it is a lifetime of holding my friends' hands and hearing the same agony in their life that i lived through. it is us, together, our faces turned upwards, the night sky so vast, milky way overhead like a lacework zipper.
it is a lifetime of staring down woodchippers.
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daryl-dixon-daydreams · 2 months
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You were ambling back to your shitty little apartment, dripping with mud, and sweat, and gore from the Commonwealth's version of "community service." When you looked up toward your building, you were surprised to see Daryl standing there waiting, his crossed arms highlighting his broad shoulders. You sighed, wondering if you were about to get a scolding.
He seemed to just look you up and down for a long moment, taking in the splatters of walker blood all over you. "Heard ya got assigned clean-up duty," he drawled. "What the hell happened?"
You scoffed. "You mean what did I do?" He nodded. "I—I may have punched Sebastian in the face after he made a disgusting and offensive comment..." You sank down on one of the concrete steps and waited for his reaction.
"That spoiled little shit?" Daryl asked. You nodded. He sighed and sat down next to you. "'M sure he deserved it. How many hours did they give you?"
"Thirty," you said.
"You're lucky they didn't banish you. Kid is like fuckin' royalty or some shit."
You tilted your head. "Kind of. Except I think his mother is equally as disgusted with his behavior most of the time..." Daryl hummed his agreement. You glanced over at him. "Can I tell you something?'
He nodded. "'Course."
"I kind of fucking hate it here."
A wry laugh left Daryl and he nodded. "Ya don't say..."
"Something about this place feels... off. Something's wrong. Or rotten. I don't know..." you trailed off, looking across the street at the dilapidated apartment buildings where they shoved the lowest class of people. "I know I should probably feel more grateful. There are walls and more reliable food and... but I just—I kind of wish I was back on the outside. It was... freedom. Sometimes terrifying and frequently hard and awful, but freedom." You glanced over at Daryl again and he had a queer expression on his face. "You think I'm nuts?" you laughed.
He shook his head. "Nah. Hell no. Ya just said everythin' I've been feelin' too. Somethin' is rotten in here. Ya ain't wrong."
"Are we trapped?" you asked in a low voice, a shot of anxiety causing your heart to beat erratically for a brief moment.
"Us?" Daryl repeated. "Fuck no. We ain't ever gonna be trapped. Everythin' we've already been through? They've got another damn thing comin' from us if shit goes south." He climbed to his feet and held out a hand to pull you to yours. "Listen, if that little prick comes sniffin' around ya again, ya lemme know. I'll take care of it. Try and keep yerself out of trouble."
You smiled at him and shrugged. "Being one of those Stormtroopers give you some kind of immunity?"
He shrugged. "I doubt it. But I'll deal with that asshole so you dun gotta. I'd love the excuse..."
"Alright," you laughed. "Deal."
He nodded and gave you a tight smile. "Try and get some sleep," he said.
"Yeah... you too."
Prompt: "Can I tell you something?"
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forpiratereasons · 7 months
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all right. i'm ready to talk about izzy.
izzy is a great character. in s1 he sits in this great position as an antagonist that's close to the main characters, and in s2 he sits in this great position as an antagonist who's gotten everything he wanted, and found that actually - fuck! - that's not it at all. the world changes enough in s1 that there's no satisfaction in izzy getting what he wants out of blackbeard. and it's not just ed that's changed, it's not just the crew, izzy himself is fundamentally changed too. even before s2, and that change continues to grow and flourish through the series.
in reality, death is cruel. and death is senseless. and death is unfair, and shitty, and it happens to the wrong people at the wrong time, too early, with too much to live for, who mean too much to too many. it happens.
maybe izzy's death is all of those things, but i don't think that's the point. it's not meant as a lesson in mortality; it's not meant as retribution for past crimes; it's not meant as a commentary on who deserves to live and who deserves to die. it's not about deserving. if anything, it's about the fact that deserving doesn't come into it at all.
the point is that izzy healed.
a lot has been made of the fact that izzy is the only character who bears visible scars from the kraken era - the scar on his head, as well as the leg. but i don't think they're meant as a reminder of the injury, or as a sign that izzy is "damaged" post-kraken era. they're representative of the fact that izzy healed. the scar is there to remind you that izzy survived. you see it heal over multiple episodes because that's the work izzy is doing - he's healing from blackbeard's actions, from his own actions, from his history, from his constraints.
it's not too late to heal. it's not too late to find your place. it's not too late to come out. it's not too late to let people in. it's not too late.
and all those things are worth doing despite the fact that our time here is limited. we are all going to die. but we are here right now, which means it's not too late, and it is worth it to free ourselves to be who we need to be regardless of who we have been and who we are now and what time we might have left.
izzy isn't suicidal in ep 8. he's healed from that. izzy isn't abused or depressed or alone in ep 8. izzy is strong, and competent, and respected, and loved.
and some folks have been disappointed it's not romantic love. i get that. but i think it's super important too that izzy's healing is worth it without romantic love. familial, platonic love is so fundamentally important to the queer community. found family. friends. solidarity. the look when some stranger sees you and you see them and you both know the other is family, that they're safe. the way we fight for each other - for our rights to love who we want, fuck who we want, to marry, to adopt kids, and also for housing, for jobs, for healthcare. for our rights to use the bathroom, for our rights to choose our own names and our own bodies and our own families. we're fighting for our right to exist and that, guys, it's not romantic. the foundations of our community is about - well, i'll let izzy say it:
it's not about glory, it's not about getting what you want. it's about belonging to something when the world has told you you're nothing. it's about finding the family to kill for when yours are long dead. it's about letting go of ego for something larger. the crew.
ed and izzy, following s2e3, interact and communicate on izzy's terms, and that's made clear. that's the last relationship for izzy to heal. when izzy finally approaches ed in ep 6, it's - not great. it's a start. you gotta start somewhere. he lets ed apologize, in their very closed, guilty way of speaking to each other, but then goes back to the crew, back to his safety.
he finally finishes his healing arc with the drag performance and la vie en rose, and then he and ed DO have good moments. he teases ed about stede. he directly reverses his previous actions in s1 and tells ed to listen to his good feelings. that's where djenks is getting this (imo, still a bit weird) father-figure business. the scene in the republic where ed's watching fishermen and izzy comes to say hey, it's all right, hey, listen to your gut. they don't need to directly come out and have some deep serious conversation about their relationship because that's just not like them, man. they're doing their healing their way. i think it would be nonsensical to expect these two to be open and honest with each other regardless of how they are with everyone else because their relationship is not like their relationships with anyone else.
until they run out of time.
and this, i think, is important. izzy controls this last conversation because it's what ed needs to hear, because izzy no longer needs to hear it. izzy doesn't need to hear that ed's sorry, izzy knows ed's fucking sorry. ed's whole arc this season is about the guilt he's carrying. izzy says what he says because he knows ed needs to hear it. ed, you weren't a monster all on your own. ed, i saw you. i saw you outgrowing him, and i didn't want that to happen because i was worried about what it meant for me, but i see now that it could have meant this all along - family. balance. something to die for, sure, but something to live for.
you could argue that ed and the crew don't think of each other as family. i think it's a bit more complicated than a yes or no on that one, but when izzy says, ed, you're surrounded by family, maybe it doesn't matter whether that's fact. maybe it's a statement of possibility. look at this family who can love you if you let them. look at this family who will forgive you even when you don't deserve it. look at all the ways you can still heal. look at how worth it it all is.
just be ed, izzy says, there he is.
he says it to ed because izzy already knows he can be just izzy. izzy already knows he's dying surrounded by family. izzy already knows that love and belonging and family are worth it, and he uses his dying moments to make sure ed knows it too because despite everything, despite everything he did and despite everything ed did and despite not being ed's romantic choice, he loves ed. it's worth it to use his dying moment to make sure ed knows this because izzy loves him.
it's worth it.
izzy is the stand-in for the stereotypical pirate, the villain - the representative of how repression and oppression work together, of how race and class and colonization interact with each other, of the lines between love and obsession and power and rage and fear blurring beyond recognition - and he heals. guys, the point of his story is not that he was all those things and paid that price. the point of his story is that he could grow beyond all those things and that growth and healing was all worth it despite the fact that yeah. our lives will inevitably end.
historically, israel hands is said to be one of the only major pirates who survives the golden age of piracy, and he doesn't survive it well - according to the contemporary account of "captain charles johnson" (almost certainly a pseudonym) in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, published 1724, hands dies a beggar in london sometime between 1719 and 1724. it has been suggested by some pirate scholars that hands may have actually been the source for much of the information johnson is able to relay regarding blackbeard - and that johnson's apparent wealth of information contributed significantly to the legacy blackbeard left behind and his lasting fame. i had actually really hoped to see this play out in ofmd - izzy protecting ed and stede through perpetuating stories about blackbeard's 'death' (fake, i'd hoped) and legacy.
but i think - he is. in his way. he's there on the hillside, keeping watch. he's there to hold all the stories and all the memories of pirates and what it meant to belong to something, even as the golden age of piracy sets. he's there to show what it is to love and to be loved in return: eternal.
i don't like that izzy died. i think he's a great character, i think he's great fun to have in the ensemble, i think his dynamics with ed and stede are so fucking chewy and delicious. i think con o'neill has done the work of a lifetime on this character and, i hope, had and continue to has the experience of a lifetime with this fandom. my heart goes out to those of you who are devastated; i've been there in past fandoms, i know how achingly difficult that is. i'm so sorry.
but izzy's story is worth telling. izzy's story is worth celebrating. izzy is about making mistakes - bad mistakes! - and finding your way back to something better. izzy is about healing, and about community, and about hope that even when things are shit and people are shit - they can change. things can change.
and maybe - yeah. it's about the role stories play in our lives. about using fictional little scenarios to deal with our traumas. we're here. we're alive. we're coping. we will heal.
not moving on is worse.
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batsinurbelfrey · 2 years
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#its been over a decade since this song came out and it still makes me fucking ugly cry every time i hear it#in 2011 i was a lost queer teen that could have VERY easily been one of the subjects of this track. god knows i'd had multiple attempts by#that point#i was in a terrible environment and lived under a roof that would have sooner seen me suffer and fade out than just accept who i was#i VIVIDLY remember this track dropping. i remember being inconsolable. but in a good way. feeling SEEN feeling HEARD. feeling valued and#cared about. even if it was just as a statistic.#hearing a group so established basically saying with no room for doubt or confusion 'whats happening to you is WRONG. you deserve better'#'you deserve to be alive and happy'#Rise Against was the first band i ever snuck out to see live. the start of a habit that carried through my late teens#but they were the FIRST#because i needed.....to go to this tour. i needed to hear it.#And a decade later and through so much concussion induced memory loss i STILL remember it VIVIDLY IN 4K DETAIL#standing there in the venue crying my GODDAMN eyes out but in the most positively cathartic way#imagine being a child raised in the catholic school system with bigoted home relations#being told you are sick and wrong and broken and damaged#and need Fixing or you will burn for eternity#and then one night. you sneak out and hear#10000 people yelling this song#about how what you are experiencing is wrong and how you are loved and just need to hold on a little longer#and to realize#that the echo chamber you are trapped in is NOT the world at large#fuckin#thats such a core moment of my life i owe so much to this fucking band and this fucking song#anyway. happy pride to young and old. you are loved and you are valid.#music posting
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drdemonprince · 28 days
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The article regarding about annoying queer people sparked a by now long forgotten memory.
When I went to my first pride I snuck out secretly and thus was there after the parade. Most people were already some form of drunk or high(didn't know that at the time, I was 15 and naive beyond hope)
That was also the first time I saw puppies ever. In retrospect I must have stared and seemed like one of those annoying "no kink at pride" puriteens. They probably just wanted to allow themselves a small joke but what happened in praxis was, that a grown, white man in only puppy mask and boxers crawled up to me, stood up, started sniffing my breasts and when I started panicking and running away he run after me and everyone else watched and laughed. I think I screamed for help or cryed to please leave me be and was ignored but I can't remember much past the fear.
To them it was probably a small joke but to me it set me back for years. I didn't go to pride in that city ever again and took years to move past "no kink at pride" opinions, an opinion I didn't even have before that.
I felt incredibly isolated and wearing a small rainbow bracelet and cutting my hair took so much bravery. And it earned a lot of backlash too?
So often I see coloured hair and pins as this cutesy cringe thing of no consequence, but for me it resulted in hours upon of arguments and insults. It was worth it, because it helped me built my own identity apart from my families bigotry, but it sure wasn't fun or cutesy. Ultimately it led me to becoming brave enough to actually discover who I am and start making connections with the wider queer community.
Thankfully I had no social media accounts or I would have had some truly stupid arguments.
What I'm saying is, yes young queers can be annoying and it can be tiring to deal with them but being an asshole and vilifying them isn't the solution.
Making fun of teenagers doesn't make yourself more valid and doesn't give you the status of being an old experienced queer.
I'm saying teenagers here but the fun thing about queer people is that we can discover ourselves at any point in time. So it's less teenagers and more people newly discovering themselves as queer.
I get how annoying they can be very well now, doing voluntary work at pride does that.
Do many of those we consider annoying queers hold some harmful opinions? Yeah sure. (The amount of white queers, teens or adults, not dealing with systemic oppression beyond their own is staggering and they more than deserve to be called out. Just to be very clear, when I talk about annoying behaviour I do NOT mean microagressions or discrimination in any way)
But annoying behaviour is not synonymous to that and maybe we should all just start being less mean in public spaces? I get how satisfying it can be to get a hit tweet via a bitchy twitter reply now, but quite honestly I am more ashamed of that now than when I was running around in hoodies and short hair being painfully naive.
Because then I wasn't being mean to anyone. I had some stupid takes sure but no outlet. On twitter I was making fun of people to validate my own queer-ness. (Personally I think I was covering up for the fact that I was afraid the queer people I worked so hard to be part of wouldn't consider me one of their own. So I worked hard to show how I'm not one of "those queers".)
Either way, thanks for reading all this and thank you for sharing the article because it is something I strongly agree with. Just let people be annoying without making fun of them for it. It doesn't need to be a big deal.
Thank you for this wonderful, vulnerable, honest message about your slow path to self-acceptance in the face of a lot of barriers, anon. I'm glad that despite everything you've found your way.
Yeah, I think queer people have many reasons to feel terrified at the rising "no kink at pride" discourse, but sometimes when we lash out at puriteens we sound a bit like the childfree people who say that they hate kids?? Like, we're blaming literal children for an ideology of protecting "The Family" that has been foisted upon us.
I'm guilty of it. I was HAUNTED by the social pressure to get married and pregnant and raise a bunch of kids. It caused me massive dysphoria and didn't jibe with my queer identity. But I rebelled against it for far too long by saying that I hated kids.
It was not the kids' fault! It was the ideological specter of The Family as an institution that isolates and attacks all nonconformity and 'deviant' sexuality! Me being an asshole to children was not gonna set me free, kids were even more disinfranchised than I was!! I don't think I was ever overtly cruel to children, just kind of aloof and freaked out by them, but I definitely *did* say some numbskulled shit to my friends with kids a few times. Completely missing how disempowered mothers (and it was usually mothers) are in society BECAUSE of these same forces .
And I think something similar is going on here. Queer people are tired of having "Family Friendliness" shoved down our throats by corporations and conservatives, and so then we lash out... at young queer people. it's fine to have 18+ areas and events; It's very, very important to me that spaces like Furfest have them. But that's not the same thing as claiming young people have no space in our community as a whole. And I do think we need to erode the barriers between the adult and child worlds in a whole lot of ways, and reorient our attitudes toward nudity, sexuality, roleplaying, etc in public life. but that also doesn't mean a pup should run you out of a pride parade actually fucking sexually harassing you.
It feels great to be able to talk about this stuff! Thanks for your message.
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mimymomo · 2 years
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In ‘Lucas on the Line,’ Lucas Sinclair experienced countless bouts of racism and micro aggressions including but not limited to:
Had children run away from him and refuse to touch him because they thought his Black skin color would rub off on them. This happened IN THE THIRD GRADE! And he never told his parents about it!
Calmed his anxiety about being the only Black kid in his homeroom class by coming to the realization that since there was no other Black kids that meant he most likely wouldn’t be bombed
Had to install a camera in his locker because his property got defaced by a glitter bomb
Lost his first and only black friend/mentor who supported him thanks to an ACTUAL MAKESHIFT BOMB being installed in his locker that caused a janitor to go to the hospital for 1st/2nd degree burns (and the white boy who did it barely got punished)
Got teased that the only reason he got on the basketball team was because he was Black
Comes to the realization that he might’ve actually only gotten in the team because the coach has a history of recruiting Black boys for the team regardless of their skill level
Gets called an Oreo (for uneducated: white on the inside, black on the outside) by racist bullies. Erica (who apparently has also been called this) sticks up for him and is the only one who understands what the insult means which means Mike and Dustin don’t know/understand the lengths of how deep the racism Lucas experiences in Hawkins on a daily bases
And these aren’t even all of them! These are just examples I had from the top of my head!
And despite all this happening in the book, “fans” have STILL FOUND A WAY to turn this book about Lucas and his struggles as a Black boy in a mostly white suburban town and his deteriorating relationship with Max and make it about Byler!
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The fact that Lucas, one of the only characters of color on this show, can’t have ANYTHING to himself without people using him to push their ships is so aggravating!
He and Erica constantly get shit talked and miss characterized by fans, get excluded/cut out of group shots, and barely get any fanart/fics about them and their struggles compared to the white characters (I could make a whole new post about the terrible way this fandom treats Erica but I won’t do that here). Hell don’t forget that the fandom constantly tries to dispute the racism Lucas received in S2 from Billy was either not really racism, just a moment that Duffer Bros. put in to “ruin” Billy’s character and ultimately can be tossed out and ignored.
The only time I ever see Lucas get any large amount of attention is either due to 1) Lumax (but let’s be honest: 90% of the lumax tag on here isn’t even about them and has now become Elumax 2.0 and most post are people praising ElMax and then being like “oh Lucas/lumax is cute too” in the tags and that’s it). 2) people creating “parallels” of Lumax to their ship of choice (mostly Byler and Mileven) as a way to say that their ship is gonna be canon or 3) to say that he’s bisexual.
And all that is fine and whatever, ship and headcanon things to your hearts content, but if you only care about Lucas if he’s helping push you ship narrative or because you think he’s gay (to the point where some people actually read snippets of the book that talked about Lucas coming to the realization that Black boys like him can be considered attractive and only acknowledge the “queer” reading of the text and completely ignored the big race element that was the main focus), I’m sorry but, that’s not cool. The fact that 95% of the Lucas Sinclair tag isn’t about Lucas himself but white characters like Steve, Eddie, Byler says everything about how the fandom treats him.
I’m just so tired.
Lucas Sinclair deserves the same respect that the white characters get!
I leave you one of my favorite sections of the entire book: Lucas learning to become unabashedly himself:
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Rant over.
Edit: in my blind rage I realized I forgot to edit out the Twitter handle. That’s completely my fault. Please don’t hate that Twitter user. I’m just coming back to fix that.
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fastcardotmp3 · 1 year
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Steve is the first person Robin ever comes out to.
And it's good, it goes better than she ever could have hoped, it goes miraculously well considering just how reckless she had been about it in hindsight, how nearly accidental and vaguely self-destructive a choice it had been to wield Tammy Thompson's name like that in front of a boy she'd learned to trust within the past six hours.
The thing is, it's good, but she realizes later on that she never actually says the word. The big one, the identifying one, the one that gets thrown around as a slur as often as queer or dyke do towards any girl who dares not present in a specifically feminine way.
It's a bad word, a scary word, a word that drips off tongues like acid and drips drips drips a corrosive hole in Robin's chest every single time because if it's being said in her vicinity that means-- just at any moment-- anyone could figure out--
Robin doesn't care for the act of coming out either in theory or in practice. She believes that anyone she trusts enough to know gets to learn from context clues and anyone she doesn't trust will just never get to know her fully and that's good enough for her.
She doesn't sit her parents down and say, "Mom. Dad. I'm a--"
She doesn't sit her little apocalypse posse down and say, "Just thought you guys should know I'm a--"
She didn't tell Steve.
She doesn't say the word.
Because as much as she's able to accept who she is, it's so hard to claim a word that has been used like a weapon her whole life. Because as much as even her parents and her friends love her for who she is, there is something about saying it like that that makes her wonder if it could sully the support.
As if they'd realize oh, you meant like that...? and change their minds.
It's not until IUPUI, a little house in Indy with Steve, and a little record shop next door to the deli where Eddie got a job slicing meat that she starts seeing that word, feeling it anew.
There are zines at this shop, the ones behind the counter that she's offered after a few visits and a few conversations that she later recognizes as coded and questioning in nature.
There are stories and art and poetry and that word is all over them.
And the thing is? The thing that has Steve finding her crying in their living room one afternoon as she reads through the stack like it holds the answers to the universe?
Is that it is written and spoken and displayed like the most beautiful word in the world.
It's a compliment and a blessing and a brag. It's a little bit of magic and a great deal of history.
It's her, in the end. It's her and it belongs in her mouth, deserves to be spoken, because too many people are out there misusing it like a disgusting thing when it is divine, fucking love incarnate.
Robin tucks into Steve's embrace, his instinct to hold her even as he tries to understand what has her sobbing in the middle of the day, whether or not he needs to fight anyone about it.
He holds her and she holds him back and it only feels right that it happen like this when she takes his face in her hands, shaky but oh, so certain.
Steve was the first person she ever came out to.
If she's going to let the scary word become her favorite the way it is for the people writing it out so proudly, this is probably the place to start.
"Steve Harrington," she beams at the furrow in his brow, those big concerned eyes that she knows will be confused about this, but she knows will only hold her tighter once she explains. "Steve. Stevie. Guess what?"
"What's up?" he laughs, gathering the joy in her tears like she knew he would, and Robin feels something click in the moment before she says it to him.
Out loud and real.
Very nearly holy.
"I'm a fucking lesbian."
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ardourie · 2 months
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ok cool ig im name dropping then, u are literally making up headcanons about me based on fucking nothing, i didn’t exclusively focus on the flaws of white trans people over cis white people if u actually read anything i posted instead of believing anons randomly accusing me of things you’d see my only issue is white people like YOU because you are white
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watering down the impact of racism and pretending that it isn’t as harmful when coming from queer people as if being queer is an inherently purifying or redeemable action, this website is overwhelmingly trans, our circles are majority trans, getting into disagreements with trans people on here is going to happen bc of how many queer people there are on this platform, if the only people you claim i harassed are users like ratliker i don’t want to fucking hear it, i’ve been having people call me a terf for years bc of standing up to her racism and black genocide denial, every single fucking time someone on here does something racist and a brown person points it out ppl around you run to call them transphobic, like ur doing right now! the second sentence of her post literally says i deserve to be called a terf for just talking about the racism happening on the poll, she said that HERSELF
i said hussie has done racist acts and has racism in their comic, that doesn’t make hussie evil or fans of it evil it just means we should actually acknowledge its there and not have viral post going around claiming that none of what hussie did was that bad bc they’re trans and if ur bothered by it ur automatically transphobic, as if that isn’t an incredibly fucked up thing to say, bc u said that urself on ur blog multiple times, here’s my original and ONLY post that made someone go and tell plaidos i sent death threats when that wasn’t remotely what i was saying
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plaidos posted this ask that immediately had ppl in my inbox calling me a terf and bigot for harassing a trans girl (hussie) and saying im a horrible person for sending death threats when i NEVER did that, had no reason to, and hussie isn’t even ON tumblr to do that
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she also stated that she meant i “started” the death threats instead of sending them which is still a fucking lie bc the poll that i was referencing was posted FOUR days ago and has ppl fighting and talking about death threats about hussie before i even knew it fucking existed, and she would know bc she was arguing under the post four days ago HERSELF
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how did i start death threats on a post i didnt find out about until 4 days after people were fighting under it? how the fuck does that work?
she then went on to slip up and reveal that she subconsciously thinks the queer community is only white bc when ppl complain about white queers they r complaining about latent racism, bc brown people exist in ur community and acting like poc criticizing white people (who will always be white no matter the other identities they have) means u hate queers is racist as hell
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shit like THIS is what hussie was doing on a constant basis
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these are just two examples you could google “homestuck racism” and find much more my only point that i ever made is that it’s insensitive and fucked up to act like anyone who doesn’t like or even hates homestuck for its racism is a transphobe or evil instead possibly someone deeply affected by hussies racism, and plaidos was under the original poll post i referenced arguing with black people calling them liars for saying hussie is racist and has antiblackness in his work:
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if you recognize hussie is racist and has racism in their work why the fuck are you arguing with black people about that fact? why are you pretending people are lying and making up rumors when hussies racism has been a known fact for a literal decade at this point, hussie was quite literally responsible for a boom in antiblack racism online in the early internet you cannot be so dense as to not acknowledge this, and i want to clarify im literally a homestuck fan, homestuck meant so much to me as a kid, and bc of that i know that online spaces for homestuck treated black people like absolute shit for complaining about the racism, i was bullied and harassed so much for even being upset at characters in the comic using the n word or mocking black people, im criticizing it bc i care about it being such a large phenomenon responsible for the normalization of my oppression.
not going over the homestuck racism workshop thing bc u ppl r being purposefully obtuse and i already talked about it here
if you don’t believe me, please go ask the people accusing me of these things for screenshots of me sending death threats, ask them to show that i have no transfem friends, ask them to show it bc every fucking time theirs never any proof, stop believing ask u read about me with no proof stop believing rumors, put urself in the shoes of others, would you want hundreds of ppl sharing post saying you did something you didn’t fucking do with no proof? ask yourself why you don’t see many black people speak out on racism on here and ask urself if maybe it might correlate to how we get demonized for it, if you think callout culture is bad why participate in it in a way where you don’t even have photo evidence backing for what your sharing
lastly, u people keep going on and on about the company i keep but are the same ones cropping out the trans girls im friends with and constantly talking to on my blog, you did it with the last situation regarding aaron bushnell you did it with the previous pregnancy callout, yall literally accuse every trans girl around me of being self hating or theyfabs, random trans women who simply shared my opinion have been harassed and accused of being sock puppets, i have a whole post about that in my pinned, but u don’t care, it’s easier to make me a scape goat and deflect criticisms of racism despite you being white and unaffected than it is to simply go “yeah some people are gonna hate media that has racism in it and that isn’t indicative of anything other than hating racism” your fucking white, can we be serious right now, you published ask saying i was sending death threats to hussie when that never happened and accused me of starting the anger on a poll i never reblogged that a bunch of my trans girl mutuals were complaining about 16 hours ago, so which is it? transfem opinions matter to you or they don’t? bc it seems like u just pick a fucking choose which girls to listen to and like randomly going after black people for not liking antiblack racism
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apomaro-mellow · 9 months
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Steve's parents compete to matchmake him with someone 1/?
Jonas and Diane Harrington sat in silence as their son's confession hung in the air. They'd met homosexuals before. You didn't travel as much as they did and not meet different people. But it had never occurred to them that someone so close to them - that their own son might be...
"Can you guys say something? Please?", Steve begged.
"Oh honey...", his mom started. "...Was Tommy?"
"What?", Steve pulled back at that. "Tommy? And me? Me and Tommy? No. We were never like that. Ever."
"Well, good for you son. You can do better", his father said, leaning back in his chair a little.
"He was so smarmy. You deserve someone who'll actually take care of you", Diane said, putting her hand on top of Steve's.
He looked down at the point of contact. "What's happening here?"
"Well, you being, you know, in your way, doesn't change our conversation", Jonas said. "We still think you need to stop sleeping around and find someone to be a little more serious with."
Diane nodded. "It's not good when all the gossip at the hairdresser's is about who your son is messing around with. Oh! What about Matthew?"
Steve raised a brow. "Your hairdresser?"
"Not mine, but he did fix me up when we were in New York, you remember the gala? He's nice, worldly-"
"I'm sorry", Steve interrupted. "I just told you guys for the first time ever that I'm gay, and you immediately try to set me up with someone?"
"Your love life is getting out of hand", Jonas said. He leaned forward and tented his hands on the table. "There's bets down at the bar. On who you're gonna knock up first."
"But if you're gay, we don't need to worry about surprise babies, right hon?", Diane smiled.
"Actually, I have a question about that now", Jonas started before his wife sent him a glare. "But we can save that for later. Point is, you need to hold on to someone for longer than a week."
Steve shook his head. "I can't believe my parents are talking to me about dating. What makes you think I can even get a guy? Can't exactly put the moves on them like I normally would."
His parents looked to each other, proving that neither of them really had an answer. With a sigh, Steve asked to be excused and when they granted permission, he went up to his room.
"Our Steve...a...a queer", Diane whispered.
"You think it's because I made him play football when he was a kid?", Jonas asked.
Diane shrugged. "If anything it's because of all those musicals we watched together. Then she released a heavy breath. It couldn't have been easy for Steve to tell them. And it couldn't have been easy for him to go on all those dates with those girls.
And if the rumors were true, he'd done more than date them. Jonas reached out and grabbed his wife's hand. From the moment their son had been born, all they had wanted was for him to be happy and healthy. Sometimes the healthy part meant leaving him for extended periods of time. Clearly, he'd been left on his own for too long. Surely they would have caught onto this sooner if they'd been around more, been involved more.
"What are we going to do?", Diane asked.
"You and I knew what we were going to do when we started this conversation", Jonas said, standing up from the table and putting his hands on his hips as he paced about the kitchen.
"Jonas, we can't give him Noelle's number now."
"Not Noelle, we just switch gears. Find a...a Nolan instead", Jonas decided, nodding as if to convince himself.
"Jonas, even if we can find another gay guy in this town, how do we know Steve will like him?"
"I know my son, I've got a decent idea what he likes."
Diane shook her head. “You just don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t know what I’m talking about?”, Jonas questioned. “What, I can’t see what makes a man attractive?”
“Not the way Steven would. I think I understand this a little better than you.”
Jonas’ hands went to his hips. “Oh you do? You think I can’t find our son a date? You don’t think I know a handsome man when I see one?”
“Name one then”, she challenged.
“….Robert Redford.”
She crossed her arms, unimpressed. "Easy shot. Now name five that are actually our son's age."
Jonas looked put out and rolled his eyes. There was...there had to be some rock star, who was Steve listening to nowadays? Did he have a poster of someone? Who was in the movies? Maybe he had mentioned a boy at school at some point?
"Well, the bar is very high Diane. Steven is obviously the best looking boy at his school."
Diane grinned and stood up. "Was. He graduated, remember?"
"How can I forget? The grays won't stop coming."
Steve's graduation had been what had sparked this evening. Not getting into college, their son had seemed directionless. And messing around with too many girls had been the cherry on top. They had agreed to a gap year for him if he could use the time to get his relationships in check.
If he was into men, that made it slightly more challenging, but they wanted to give Steve the freedom to find himself. It was more than either of them had ever had. And what good was all the money if they couldn't spoil him a little.
"So, maybe I don't know what he's into. Doesn't mean I can't find him a good guy", Jonas said.
Diane wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. "You do know a good thing when you see one."
They went upstairs to check in on their son only to find him halfway out the window with a packed duffle bag.
"I'm sorry", he said, leg hanging out. "There's just no way you guys were this cool about this."
"For god's sakes Steve, get back in here", Jonas grumbled, grabbing his son before he cracked his head on the ground.
"Believe it or not, your parents are capable of higher brain functioning", Diane said, already setting to unpacking the bag and putting the clothes away. "Some of this stuff doesn't even fit you anymore", she noted as she looked through his closet.
"Hey, how's about we all take a trip to the mall tomorrow?", Jonas suggested. "Refresh our wardrobes for the summer!"
"Oh that sounds perfect!", Diane agreed. "It's been a while since we Harringtons turned heads as a group."
Steve sat on the edge of his bed, looking tense, yet hopeful. "You guys don't...you don't think I'm any different? You don't...", his voice got small, "hate me?"
"Oh Steven!", his mother wailed and sat next to him in a rush, holding onto him tightly as she cried.
Jonas cleared his throat. "Di, there's no need for tears. There's nothing sad happening."
"I'm not crying because of Steve", she said defensively. "I was thinking about Matthew. I really hope he and Otis worked it out. And that he knows he always has family who love him. And that even if the world beats him black and blue he can always come home, okay? Always, you can always come home."
"Yeah mom, I know", Steve said, eyes wet as he got her thinly veiled meaning.
Jonas sniffed and patted Steve's shoulder. "And if the world does decide to put its hands on you, remember your old man's got mob connections."
Steve gave a watery laugh at that but thanked him anyway when his mom lit up in recognition.
"Oh! What about Ricci?"
"Ricci? For Steve? Get outta here", Jonas waved her off.
"Who is Ricci?", Steve asked.
"He's a nice boy", Diane answered.
"He's a numbskull is what he is. I'll do business with the mob, but I'm not giving them my son", Jonas said as he walked towards the door.
"Who said anything about giving? His family's well off, he can take Steve nice places", Diane said as she followed him.
Jonas threw his hands up in derision. "Mobsters are like five year olds with their dames. Once they lick it, it's theirs."
"OKAY good night!", Steve closed his door to shut out the rest of their talk.
"We're going to the mall at ten, honey! Be ready for breakfast", his mother called out, then continued her conversation with his dad. Probably debating whether or not to set him up with a closeted senator's son.
Steve rubbed his face and let out a sigh. He'd confessed tonight to get any talk of girls out of the way for the summer.
Mission accomplished?
Part 2 coming soon
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messrmoonyy · 29 days
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-Sadie Adler as your gf hcs ( sfw/nsfw )
Sadie Adler x Fem!reader
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A/N- I am in fact posting these out of pure and utter spite because Sadie Adler can. And will. Kiss girls. Because this is what?! Fan fiction!And it brings me an insane amount of joy that the sheer idea alone of Sadie being queer angers people. Sadie Adler kisses girls pass it on!!!
These are mostlyyy epilogue and beyond based Sadie pls lemme be your lil housewife
Dedicated to @queer-sadie-adler for being the true voice of reason lately amidst the hell hole that has been the queer Sadie discussions. You’re awesome.
Masterlist - requests are open!
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• she’s incredibly protective of you. One wrong look your way and she’s ready to start shooting or swinging. Shes so a ‘ why don’t ya take a picture, it’ll last longer ‘ baby has some slight anger issues
• falls very much into the ‘ I hate everyone except you ‘ category. So stoney faced and ready to brawl with everyone, but soft gazes and tender touches with you.
• you hear her before you see her. She’ll ride back home to you after going after a bounty and proudly announce her return with a ‘ honey I’m home! ‘ as she rides up to your home.
• secretly adores the way you fuss over her before she goes out. She lost everything other than you in the space of like. A year. so it’s nice to be reminded how much you care about her. And that she has someone in the world to care about herself.
• she’s actually a pretty decent cook. And you can often expect her to try cook you something nice. Especially if she’s gotten onto your bad side some how, she knows a nice romantic meal will butter you up nice and quick
• I have this thought that she is just a nightmare to share a bed with. Girly tosses and turns and takes up too much damn space. But it just gives you the excuse to crawl up close to her and get comfy in the little space she leaves, falling asleep practically on top of her.
• and on the subject of sleeping. Has just the finest motherfuckin morning voice you’ve ever heard. Her raspy ‘ Mornin my darlin’ in your ear everyday makes you wanna melt into a puddle every damn time.
• loves sharing a bath with you. Especially if she’s been gone for a few days. She’ll make some excuse that it’s just to save on water. But in reality she just wants to relax and hold you close to her, feel your skin on hers to remind her she’s not just some angry bounty hunter. All tough and rough and fighting. She needs the gentle and the calm you provide her.
• hand holding. Forehead kisses. Sitting in her lap as you read on the porch. Just small, gentle acts of intimacy. The kind not discussed but well practiced between lovers.
• she can get in her head a little sometimes. She knows it’s not easy being in a relationship like that in 1907. And she knows that she doesn’t make it much easier on you with the works she does either.
• but she loves you wholeheartedly. And she knows that you love her just as equally. And as much as she feels she doesn’t deserve you, she’ll keep loving you until you don’t want her anymore which would never happen of course
•NSFW•
• she needs to be the one in control all of the time. This isn’t to say she doesn’t like receiving, or like having you on top of her. She just likes to be the one with her hands on the reins yk.
• in fact. She quite enjoys you on top of her or In her lap. But even so, know that she’s the one pulling the strings and she’s two steps ahead of you at all times
• she’s gentle and soft with you, but determined. Whether that’s knowing exactly where to touch you and abusing that same spot over and over again until you’re a shaking mess. Or telling you where and how to touch her.
• I said this in my last hcs but fingers in the mouthhhhh. Idc what anyone says. I see it so vividly. She loves it. Loves watching you suck her fingers to get them wet. Or clean them off.
• eats pussy like a god. Will have you seeing stars and thanking whatever Lord may exist for putting that woman right between your thighs. Sloppy and thorough and has you coming with her name on your tongue.
• thigh riding!!!!
• girly loves to manspread. Will sit there and pat her leg for you to perch on, but manoeuvre you to straddle her leg instead. And she loves how it makes you blush ‘ you’re a regular ol’ cowgirl now ain’t ya honey? ‘ as she leans back in her seat to watch you I’m literally going insane
• morning sex!! Waking up spooning with her, teasing her by wiggling your hips against her until she slips a hand over your hips and between your legs
• ‘ this what y’ wanted? Been dreamin of me honey? ‘
• will absolutely get up afterwards as casual as ever and ask what’s for breakfast. As if she hadn’t just had her fingers buried in your cunt.
• her aftercare is just so gentle. Especially if she’s been gone a while and has you coming for hours on end. She’ll praise you and hold you and help clean you up. Maybe drag you into the tub with her and sit behind you to wash your hair.
• and she enjoys the intimacy of dressing you so much more than undressing. Getting you comfy and cosy in clean night clothes before snuggling up with you in bed, letting you rest your head on her chest and tangling up your legs together.
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rthko · 4 months
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"Validity" as a concept is antithetical to queerness as an academic or political tendency. If you take validity to mean "let's all be nice to each other" then sure, I'll link arms and frolic around right with you. Instead, validity is shorthand for expertise or speaking authority. It's something ontological to you and your identity, and no amount of learning or life experience is required for your credibility. You might then be drawn to queerness as a tendency because it is open-ended, but the open-endedness of queerness in this view begins and ends with the idea that "LGBT" just doesn't have enough letters. I am not going to debate who formally belongs; that is not the point I want to make, and it's an argument that queerness as a tendency circumvents. Some don't even view it as an identity to begin with! But queerness as a tendency is, almost definitionally, critical of ontology and the reification of identity over behavior. It is very deliberately not a closed identity politics. Some have argued that conceiving, say, homosexuality, as an abstract identity rather than behavior, leads to a politics that is euphemistic and apologetic about the very sex that first defined the concept. Love the sinner, hate the sin.
And so I see a subset both online and off that is both singularly concerned with "validity" and proudly Capital Q Queer. Not gay as in happy but queer as in "has a vague understanding of who Marsha P Johnson was," et cetera. They are unsatisfied with the limitations, real and perceived, of LGBT activism. Yet their solution is to go through the same legitimizing plots for newly minted identities that stifled LGBT activism to begin with! You are valid, you were born this way, your credibility comes with the territory of your identity alone. Everyone is deserving of kindness, and belonging should not be held ransom until you fulfill some expected milestones. I think even cis straight people can belong in queer spaces (whatever we mean by this), if they're respectful. Your local drag performers need the tips anyway. But if you are not reading, if you are not engaging with queer culture, if you are not connected to any scene, then I'm not sure why you would expect to be treated as an expert. People without these perspectives and experiences, even if they belong to a particular identity, will not see a broad picture. Look no further than statements that begin with "as a queer person" and end with some diatribe against kink at pride or whatever the outrage du jour happens to be.
Before the obvious hypocrisy of my statement comes up, I want to acknowledge that I've been there. Like any other Tumblr-riddled individual, I've been obsessed with blogging about queerness for years without living it or learning about it in any meaningful way. To this day I am very uncomfortable with being treated as any kind of expert. But I wonder: was being told I don't need to do this or that to be valid helpful? I'll extend it beyond queerness: "you don't need to read theory to be a leftist," et cetera. We were railing against gatekeepers: not institutions with the power to gatekeep in any meaningful way, but people with no real power of their own. Was I doing myself any favors by not doing anything to broaden my perspectives but still demanding to be taken seriously? So, you don't need to do this, you don't need to do that, but you can, and you might enjoy it. Queer activism and literature defend ways of living, pleasure seeking, and saying yes to life. If you want to do all of this for clout or "validity," start over. Do it because you can.
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