#and just thinking about how they had more gender fluidity in a couple minutes of nanny crowley than loki did the whole show cjfjcjcj | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav · 3 years

Note

Could you please write the brothers with a genderfluid MC? You’re writing is so amazing! 😍😍

At what temperature does gender fluid become a solid? It varies, welcome to my bad jokes and fluffy headcanons

I use they/them pronouns for this MC throughout the headcanons for ease of reading, but naturally some genderfluid people use multiple sets of pronouns which may or may not include they/them. Know that the brothers would absolutely use whatever pronouns you tell them to!

Also uhhhhhhhhhh… this ended up including some of my HCs about the “brothers’” genders as well. Quick rundown of that, I see Luci, Mammon and Beel as trans guys, Levi as genderfluid but an egg (ie. closeted/still figuring himself out), Satan as demigender/Spite, Asmo as genderfluid/nonbinary, and Belphie as agender/*snoring cow noises*

No I don’t always use these headcanons when writing requests, and in this all the characters are still referred to with he/him pronouns, but if people do want to see more of my Obey Me gender HCs, feel free to ask!

Also thank you for the compliment uwu I definitely did not turn beet red and spin in my chair for several minutes after reading it

The Brothers With a Genderfluid MC feat. some Trans/NB Brothers HCs

Lucifer

When MC first showed up to the Devildom, their presentation didn’t match the gender Lucifer had on file

He didn’t think anything of it, just quietly made a note to correct the information later

But then a couple of weeks later MC starts presenting differently and he’s like, “??? Oh wait I get it”

Decides that the easiest thing to do is just approach MC directly and ask them what they’d like him to write on their file

If they ever got a hold of it, they would see a couple scribbles on it lol

Lots of things give Lucifer headaches

MC’s gender is never one of them

He takes any fluctuations in stride: change of name? Sure. Multiple names? No problem. Feeling more masc/fem but don’t want to go through the effort of necessarily presenting that way? Just let him know how to refer to you and he’ll follow your lead

It’s a complete non-issue for him basically, totally normal

Though because for him gender is a Private Matter, he won’t make a big deal of it unless he senses that they’re nervous about it and his reaction

In that case, he will assure them that he’s not acting the way he is to be cold, he just doesn’t want to make them feel othered or like a spectacle

Will Not talk about his own past though, unless you’re really really Really Super Mega Close

Perhaps post-pact he might be more forthcoming...

Mammon

Wait, so MC has to buy multiple wardrobes?? Isn’t that expensive?

Not necessarily how it works bud, but go off

His most common nickname for MC is “human”, so no need to worry about any accidental misgendering there

Should any gendered terms/pronouns come up though, Mammon might stumble a bit at first, before he knows MC’s rhythm and preferences

Not in a “ugh it’s too hard to keep track” way but in a “oh shit I don’t wanna get this wrong” way, you know?

This resulted in a lot of “MC’s so stubborn, h— sh— they— OY HUMAN! WHICH PRONOUNS IS IT TODAY?”

While in the Devildom changing names and pronouns aren’t really a big deal, if MC doesn’t like extra attention being drawn to themself this way, they’ll quickly figure out a system to let Mammon know how to refer to them

It makes his whole tsundere act infinitely funnier tbh

Hard to play the “I don’t care about you” card when you meticulously respect someone’s identity and always ensure they feel comfortable

Nooooo, he totally didn’t get MC that outfit they were wishing for because it’s easy to make more masc or fem!! That’s ridiculous!! NO DON’T LOOK AT HIS CREDIT CARD RECEIPT—!

Leviathan

*Leviathan has added Gender Envy to his list of envies*

Someone please crack this egg, he’s got a job in there it’s been so long

I hc that Levi is genderfluid, but because Insecurity and deeply internalized transphobia some Certain Corners of human world fandom, he’s never tried just casually presenting differently

When it’s a costume/cosplay people are generally receptive, but would they accept it if it was just him?

But seeing a genderfluid MC? Either just casually doing their thing, or quietly confiding in him about their identity? It gives him hope

His Henry understands!

If MC is still experimenting with presentation or names/pronouns, Levi is super supportive, even if his proposals are very… particular

And through helping them, he gets a bit more comfortable with himself as well

He’s still a bit nervous to officially come out, that lingering fear and doubt is hard to kick, but it’s nice to know he has someone who will stick by him no matter what

He’ll do little things with MC, if anyone asks he’ll say it’s in solidarity with them, but his brothers start to pick up that something Else is going on

Do Levi and MC get matching TSL pride pins at some point? :3c

It’s at this point that Asmo, known Gender Trapeze Artist, loses his shit and Demands that the others let him help Levi with his Gender Makeover, but they all furtively tell him to zip it. Levi will tell them when he’s ready, and IF he wants help with anything

Satan

Satan has more Spite than gender, but is very intrigued by the concept of gender fluidity

Asks a Ton of questions, not out of ignorance but curiosity over the particulars of MC’s specific experience

He’s internally comparing it to his own, as well as others he knows — it’s interesting to see the differences in how humans and demons understand gender!

If MC’s not down to talk about it or gets annoyed by the questions, he’ll of course back off and apologize

He knows there’s a lot of issues in the human world with people asking invasive questions and feeling entitled to trans people’s entire life stories

However if MC accepts and even reciprocates his curiosity?

*Accidentally acquires a degree in Devildom Gender Studies*

Is always ready to help MC stand up for themself and assert their identity

No one misgenders them on his watch

No One

Asmodeus

TWINS!!!!! :D

Asmo is very excited to find out the human exchange is just like him!!!

Okay, they might not necessarily be exactly like him in terms of presentation: maybe MC prefers a more consistently masc/fem style, or is more lowkey in general, or— oh no, they’re not too insecure to even try to present how they’d like to, right?!

If MC does find something about their presentation lacking or unsatisfactory, Asmo is 3000% willing and ready to help

But more importantly, if it’s MC’s confidence he cares about most

He’ll help an insecure MC find their inner strength and confidence, and be the Best Hype-Person for an MC who’s already confident

Asmo’s brand of genderfluidity is usually pretty loosey-goosey, his general sense of fashion leaning more towards the fem side but internal identity swinging about wildly, but should he and MC ever “synch up” at any point, he Will make a joke about it and how it must mean they’re meant to be! ;p

Also knows the best tips for coping with fluctuating dysphoria because although he publicly hides it, sometimes it does get him down

It tends to blend into his pre existing issues with public image and his body and even with shapeshifting sometimes things just Don’t Feel Right

So if MC’s ever having a rough time, they know who to turn to

Beelzebub

Like Lucifer, he’s very chill about it

It’s the content of MC’s character that matters, not their gender

And he thinks they’re a great person, so any way they want to be referred to, he will respect it without question

If MC is the type to change their presentation to suit their feelings, he’s lowkey in awe that they pull it off so well

Even before he transitioned, Beel was never very good with fashion beyond finding what makes him most comfortable and what’s most practical

But he respects the skill, and sometimes wonders if it would have made some of his pre-transition time easier to cope with

However unlike Lucifer, he’s fine confiding in MC about his experiences if he thinks it will make them feel better

Lots of Support Hugs

Sometimes it feels like he’s trying to hug the dysphoria out of them

Also re: the Lilith thing, if MC ever feels Extra awkward being compared to Lilith because she was a girl and MC Isn’t, Beel will take extra care to remind them that he and the rest of the House of Lamentation love MC for who they are, not because of their connection to Lilith

Belphegor

Ughhhhhh that sounds like so much effort

Uhhh, explain yourself cowboy, and talk fast

Belphie’s not really a boy, but whatever.

See? That’s so fast, “ehh I don’t really Do the gender thing, k byeeee” Done

Or at least it would be if people weren’t so stupid and kept pestering him about it

But MC… if their gender changes over time and people ask about it, that must take so much explaining

Doesn’t it get annoying?

Ohhhh… He’s trying to empathize!

Belphie has a weird way of showing support, but he means well

Like Satan, he doesn’t take any shit vis a vis misgendering, but instead of righteous fury, it’s more of an exasperation

“Just use the right pronouns! It’s not that hard! Mammon can do it, for fuck’s sake, are you saying you’re so dumb you can’t keep track of what even he can?!”

If MC’s having a mini Gender Crisis because sometimes gender is just weird, Belphie will absolutely say something stupid like “Nah, your gender is just taking a nap. You should too. C’mere *grabby hands*”

He’s insufferable, but also a stalwart supporter of MC

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me imagines #trans obey me #obey me trans mc #lucifer #mammon #leviathan #satan #asmodeus #beelzebub #belphegor #mine #my writing

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1ddiscourseoftheday · 5 years

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Mon 2 Sept

"Back to work," said Liam and I'm just gonna assume he meant me cause man, they are making a lot of work for me right now so thank you for noticing Lima so thoughtful!

Louis is of course the man of this week (though the rest are right behind him so next week is anyone's guess), KMM release is closer every minute and we're not to forget it- today we got a lyric tease and a glimpse of some visuals. "The devil in my brain, whispering my name…," Louis tweeted, and a picture of a pen drawing (road, hills) with lyrics (and release info) on it pinned to a board was posted to his instagram. Definitely looks like it could be from another lyric video in the stop motion style of the excellent TOU lyric video (and the JLY video)... And then, a minor German site posted a pre KMM article about Louis, mostly totally standard, except for at the end when it says, "A second song release is already scheduled. As Sony Music announced, the second single We Made It will be released on October 3rd." Some question the source's validity and for sure! This isn't official and could be drawn from (speculative) twitter gossip! But them just carelessly using info that was supposed to be embargoed until a later date is plausible as well. Louis did tell us to expect two singles in close succession, he teased a song called "** **** it" and said that song might be a single, Oct 3 is a Thurs about exactly one month after the KMM release date... I buy it. If it is real and is that song: one, VERY EXCITING, two, we've heard a clip of it! It's the song he posted a clip of in Feb of last year ("a new mix of something for the album.") (Oh my indeed.) And finally, three, it can be about whatever it's about but if he didn't want us to draw a link to Harry singing You're Still The One he could have changed the name and if he didn't know damn well we would he wouldn't have starred it out to save it up.

Liam posted a car selfie this morning titled, as mentioned, "back to work" and then sure enough, got right to it. He showed up at Capitol Records signing a wall, posted a handsome walking-down-the-street pic captioned "I hope you’ve all had a good start to the week," members of his team reposted that pic with the back to work caption, everyone's got a part to do to get the Liam promo machine rolling, he posted a fanart of this mornings selfie (the fast turnover!) and he followed Maya Henry (who then liked his post). We're told by "sources" that he and Maya have "been seeing each other for a while" but were waiting until Liam was promoting a new single to go public. Scott and Chris on BBC Radio 1 mentioned today that they wanted Liam fans to get in touch as 'something cool could go down'; one fan who texted in got a call back and was asked if she was free at 4pm tomorrow (um YES obviously) but given no other details. That show ends at 4 so whatever fan interaction happens is unlikely to be live tomorrow but we'll be hearing from him all week I think: another radio station says that he'll be popping by tomorrow... Tomorrow is also the GQ Men of the Year Awards, co-hosted by Hugo Boss: let's just say I wouldn't bet against him making an appearance but if you want to I'll put big money down in favor

Niall, also gearing up towards release, sat down and wrote an essay on twitter, wow. He writes about how he loves Flicker and how happy he was/is with it, and how appreciative of the response, and how touring it let him see what people responded to and work that into his process, and how excited he is to get the new stuff out. "What's the hold up then," he's asked, and he is like yeah yeah there's a lot that goes into this, and talks about all the different teams working on different parts of things. A good reminder of the iceberg that is a label release: months of work that have to be completed with us seeing only glimpses before the much smaller visible result pokes up out of the water for us to catch sight of at the last minute before we crash and die.

Harry liked a post about a fan's journey to feeling more confident with being gender non-conforming set to a HS1 vs HS2 timeline and a couple pictures from Harris Reed's new (gender fluidity themed) collection and took a fan pic back in London: don't ask cause I don't know, his hair was tucked in a hat.

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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Hello I see that your ask is open. I imagine from what I've seen that you know and like the Tennant Richard II and I only recently experienced it (had it forever but the Tenaissance is upon us at the heels of Good Omens) and I would like to invite you to share any feels or flails or complexities you might have in terms of the relationship of Shakespeare to History or Kingship to Divinity or the conflation of Queerness with Otherness etc in the context of that performance

OH NO. YOU REALLY WANT ME TO GO THERE DO YOU.

First of all: yes, the Tennant Richard II changed my life, after I watched it with @oldshrewsburyian whilst on vacation at the start of June and had to yell at her about my feelings for like ten minutes afterward. I was just SO FASCINATED by the things it did with gender and kingship and queerness (god! It was SO GAY! I was NOT PREPARED! The kiss with Aumerle broke my brain the first time I saw it). I was compiling a preliminary bibliography for my new queer medieval book project a couple weeks ago (which is very interesting, if I do say so myself, and I am really trying to get someone to give me money to research it at their institution) and I discovered an article basically arguing that the RSC Richard II was bad because Richard was portrayed as effeminate and openly queer/bi. Now, to be mostly fair, I think it was because it wanted to critique the association of queer men with effeminacy, rather than being homophobic, but it was still…. a bad take? Or at least a substantially underdeveloped one. It never said why this was bad, it never really got into the gender politics of what it wanted to say about this performance and the queerness thereof, and I was left looking at it like… uh huh, so… what’s your point here pal? (It griped about Gregory Dolan changing the script to have Aumerle kill Richard, but given as every Shakespeare play alters the script or staging or whatever else, I was still waiting for it to say something more about that too. But no. Anyway).

My feelings about Shakespeare, queerness, and queer Shakespeare have recently been noted. I have been working my way through Shakesqueer, which is undoubtedly fascinating, though as a historian I sometimes find all this theoretical vagueness a little TOO broad and am like DEFINE SOMETHING AND SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT RATHER THAN SAYING THAT YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING. But that’s a personal methodological thing on my part, and it certainly has been delightfully helpful in pointing out how none of Shakespeare’s plays are in the least Straight ™ by modern standards, even if technically none of his characters are LGBT. Obviously, they would not be constructed as such by sixteenth-century terms, but that’s another debate. He absolutely left the exact interpretative space that many productions have taken advantage of, some plays are VERY heavy on the subtext, and while critics have argued that the gender subversion and sexual fluidity is introduced only to re-establish heteronormative supremacy at the end, I think that is a fairly shallow reading. Why otherwise HAVE it so consistently, when its negotiation and presence is part of the ways in which these characters can and often have been read? Just because everyone gets married at the end of the comedies doesn’t mean that the queerness has been negated or made irrelevant. Arguably, the opposite.

Anyway, one of my main contentions in this premodern queer lives book project that I’m developing is that when we read the past as queer, we have to take care that we’re not only considering it as thus in comparison to modern heteronormativity, which we consider to be monolithic and transhistorical and applicable to all times and places. Richard Zeikowitz (among others) has made this point in Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the 14th Century. Male desire that we would consider “queer” either in its affection or formulation was solidly mainstream, and if we read that as Queer/Other, we risk imposing an estrangement on medieval/early modern queerness that may not have necessarily existed within its community. Yes, we’re all aware of the anti-sodomitical polemics of clerical writers, but consider: why did those guys (the equivalent of right-wing religious commentators today) keep having to write things complaining about it if nobody was doing it, if it wasn’t visible or accepted at all in society, or it was only a theoretical concern that had no relevance to anyone’s daily lives? This is why it drives me so batty when the Straight Historians inevitably try the “just because it was being written about doesn’t mean anyone was doing it!!!” erasure tactic. My dude my guys my pals. How do you think rhetoric even works?

In the particular case of Richard II, there was absolutely a queer discourse/suspicion of queerness around him in his own time (see Sylvia Federico, ‘Queer Times: Richard II in thePoems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England’) and it was part of a larger late-medieval discourse of suspected sodomy around kings and their favourites, not just in England but in other places across Europe. (Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst, ‘Kingsand Favourites: Politics and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe’, and E. Amanda McVitty also talks about Richard, his favourites, chivalric masculinity and homosociality in ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting ChivalricMasculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415′). So…. yes, there is considerable leeway to depict him as queer, and Shakespeare does write it in the text in the scene where Bushy and Green are accused, prior to their execution by Bolingbroke:

You have misled a prince, a royal king,A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,By you unhappied and disfigured clean:You have in manner with your sinful hoursMade a divorce betwixt his queen and him,Broke the possession of a royal bedAnd stain’d the beauty of a fair queen’s cheeksWith tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs.

“Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him/Broke the possession of a royal bed.” Yeah, they’re Richard’s boyfriends. Both we and the Elizabethan audience would have understood it that way. Bushy, Bagot, and Green are fictional, but Robert de Vere, duke of Ireland, was Richard’s real-life favourite and was accused by Thomas Walsingham at least of sleeping with him or otherwise having some taint of an “obscene relationship”. But Richard was also notably devoted to his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, so as ever, bisexuality exists, my pals. It can go both ways.

….anyway, this swiftly got away from me, so in conclusion, let me relate an actual dream I had last night, for which we can 100% blame the heat. In it, I was watching some Shakespeare play or other, and there was a scene in which the villain dramatically pushed the blonde heroine into the arms of his muscle-bound henchmen in their flowing trousers, then turned to the hero and announced that he would do the same to him. To this, in what was supposed to probably be a defiant “you just try it” moment in other versions of fictional Shakespeare plays that my subconscious writes, the hero stared him dead in the eye, whisked his tunic off to reveal he was wearing nothing but a jeweled G-string underneath, and announced that lo, NOW HE WAS PREPARED. DO THY WORST.

I can only think that this is exactly what Shakespeare would have wanted.

#shakespeare #richard ii #medieval history #queer history #rionsanura #ask

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katscratches · 5 years

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Nice Girls Don’t, & Other Lies I Was Taught (part 1)

-- a comparison of sex education between generations --

Disclaimer:

I don't claim any sort of sociological or psychological background. My sole qualification for writing about the impact of a lack of sex education is, frankly, that I've had a lot of sex. This has turned into more of a memoir than anything, is certainly more opinion than fact, and draws heavily on my own personal experiences. Names will be changed as needed or requested for the sake of privacy.

Part 1: The Boring Yet Obligatory Introduction

Now that Pride month has drawn to a close – yes, I know it's been a week already, but it's me, and you might have expected I'd come sliding in just after the last-minute, clothes askew and hair all mussed – I have been thinking quite a lot about how attitudes have changed regarding sex, gender, sexuality, sex education (all the fun stuff!) since I was a kid.

See, I have kids of my own. Teenagers, really. Two of them are even technically adults! I know, I know – I can't believe it either. And the things they've learned in Canadian public schools over the last decade or so is a far cry from what I supposedly learned in 1980's Catholic school. They've learned about the mechanics of sex, the fluidity of gender, sexually transmitted infections, safe sex, etc. It's an eye-opener, let me tell you. The stuff they're taught now could fill volumes!

The stuff I learned wouldn't even make a satisfactory introductory paragraph.

When I originally conceived this idea, I was thinking of some sort of brief essay. But as I began actually sketching out ideas and outlines, so many memories surfaced, most of which I'd completely forgotten. I really felt they were too important to the subject as a whole for me to discard them, and this little idea grew. And grew. And before I knew it, this was turning into some kind of half-assed memoir.

This was not my original intention.

However, how can I possibly explain differences between my kids' sex education and my lack thereof, without also explaining how those very differences directly impacted my whole life?

I'd like to give you a little bit of background about myself, so you have some idea of where I'm coming from. I hope that's not too boring. I'm sorry if it is; I'm truly not a terribly exciting person. But the way I was raised and the people who raised me – and how they were raised -- do actually have a great deal to do with my attitudes toward all things sexual.

I was born in Toronto, Canada, in the summer of 1970 to a pair of rampantly horny teenagers – Catholic mum, Protestant dad. Birth control was not considered, clearly. And abortions were certainly not readily available. What was available was adoption, and I was made a ward of the Catholic Children's Aid Society quicker than you could spit. For a brief time, I lived with a foster family who had wanted to adopt me themselves, but decided against it as they already had eight kids of their own. Yes, EIGHT. They must have been very loving people; that's all I can say. Really loving. Like... all the time.

When I was roughly 3 months old, I was adopted by an older couple – they were both 40 years of age at the time of my adoption – who already had one natural child of their own, aged 4. My new parents fought a lot with each other when I was young. Most of the time it was verbal abuse, although there was one memorable time where my dad had slapped my mum across the face because she'd bitten his arm. I don't know what precipitated that fight. It may have been finances, as it was right around the time my dad had been laid off from work due to an economic depression in the early-mid 1970s. But who knows? They argued over nearly everything. They'd even once had an argument over Jello-O, which resulted on my dad deciding to sleep on the couch for the next twenty years! (I wish I was exaggerating that.)

Needless to say, they did not share a bedroom.

My brother and I used to pray for them to divorce. Although we always ended up having to take those prayers to Confession, what we really wanted was some peace and quiet. We were too young to know what went on behind closed bedroom doors, but we had an idea that maybe most parents at least shared a bed. All we could figure was that if they couldn't get along well enough to share a room, maybe they shouldn't be together at all.

Believe me when I say there was nothing sexual going on in that house, and I was about as innocent as you could get.

There were two main reasons my parents never divorced. First and foremost, they were Catholic. Divorce would have been a sin. The other reason was that it really never would have occurred to my mother at that time to want something different. Here's your bed; lie in it.

The Seventies must have been an interesting time, I think, with all the strangely mixed attitudes toward sex. On one hand, people were still dealing with the sexual hang-ups of earlier eras, where sex was barely talked about inside the bedroom, much less outside of it. But on the other hand, suddenly sex was everywhere. Feminism was booming. Homosexuality was beginning to be decriminalized. The book markets were fairly bursting with all manner of sexually liberating books – Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Dr Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex, for instance. And while Playboy had been around since the early Fifties, suddenly there was Playgirl, and the much more explicit Hustler. All of this led to the 1970s being referred to as a decade of sexual revolution.

Sex was finally ceasing to be such a taboo.

Not in my house. I grew up blissfully unaware of anything to do with physical love. I was a mostly happy kid, though very shy, and very sheltered. And as the youngest child out of all my cousins, there was literally no reason for me to ask about how babies were made, as there weren't any around.

This strangely sterile upbringing had a very lasting effect on me. To this day – no matter how many or what kind of things I've done -- I can't begin a conversation with my kids about anything to do with sex. I don't mean rude comments or dirty jokes – that's no issue – but an actual serious conversation? Not happening. If one of them brings up a topic, then they've broken the ice, and it's smooth sailing from there on in.

But I just can't bring myself to initiate it.

Notes:

At the present time, the outline I have for this has come to 18 chapters, including this introduction. I will try to update as often as I can, but I ask you to keep two things in mind. One, that I work full-time at a mentally exhausting job (although I do actually love it) and can't manage to get time to write every day, although I'm trying. Two, I am going to be moving house over the next few weeks, and I have an absolutely dreadful amount of packing still to do! Updates may come more regularly after I'm settled in my new home.

If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to see covered, please message me about it!

#sexuality #sex education #writing #memoir

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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Sugar and Spice, Chapter 4 (Bitney/Group Fic) - Lita & Veronica

A/N: Hello darlings! Here’s Chapter 4! You can find the previous chapters here.

In this chapter, we learn about the casting for the Fall musical, and the group has a less than pleasant encounter with Violet.

Thank you so much to @kitschypixel for beta-reading.

CHAPTER 4

“Look, all I’m saying is, why the fuck did she give the lead man’s part to a girl, again?” Willam ranted to nobody in particular as they left the auditorium in a huddle - only just managing to get a word in edgewise at last.

The last twenty minutes had been occupied by Dela’s squealing about landing the lead - Bianca had experienced this a thousand times and it never got less annoying. But it was significantly more annoying when she didn’t get her way, and she knew that from experience too. Hell hath no fury like a leading lady scorned, apparently. She held her script in her hand - Dela already with her nose buried in hers as though to drive home the point that she had more lines to learn, and as such had to start immediately - a perfect, irritating Sandra Dee in her white swing skirt and pale pink blouse.

“I’m not really a girl though, am I?” Jinkx said pointedly, raising a confrontational eyebrow at Willam - the pissed-off ranting continuing under the blond’s breath.

“Yeah, get into the fluidity of gender, Willam,” Dela defended her co-star, some kind of bizarre hand gesture going along her words. Willam rolled his eyes as he walked away at Jinkx’s side, still ranting about reverse sexism, as though that was a thing.

“He’s gonna have a damn field day with Max,” Dela sighed, rolling her eyes and looking somewhat scornfully at the cast sheet on the door. “I mean, how and why the fuck did that happen?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Bianca pursed her lips, before forcing the expression into something that hopefully resembled a smile. “Hey, I said it earlier but you were too busy with your whole ‘pretending to be shocked’ routine, so I don’t think you actually heard me, but I really am happy for you. You deserve the part-��

“Hold on, could you say that again so I can get it on camera?”

“-after two years of me upstaging you,” Bianca finished her sentence, smirking.

“You’re so mean!” Dela said with an exaggerated pout on her face.

“And you’re an asshole,” Bianca said through a low laugh, half-heartedly pushing the darker-haired girl out of her way as she half-deliberately veered into her path, not paying attention for reading.

“How’s it going, losers?” Adore yelled down the hall at them, Courtney cuddled up at her side. Bianca wasn’t entirely sure how this could be comfortable for her with the spikes in the shoulders of Adore’s shirt, but maybe she was just uber-committed to being clingy.

“Fine,” Bianca said simply, leaning against the wall and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her black jeans.

“Dela got the part then?” Courtney asked Bianca, breaking away from Adore to lean against the wall beside Bianca, poking her gently in the cheek. “Seeing as your fake smile is starting to melt.”

Dela nodded excitedly, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Bianca interjected before she could burst out into another tirade.

“She got Mrs. Lovett. Jinkx is Sweeney. Willam is pissed.”

“What about you?”

“I got Lucy.” Bianca said. “That is, I do for the time being. If Dela gets into another fight with her fucking horse then who knows.”

“It was just a couple of broken ribs, I would have been fine!” Dela scoffed.

“Five is not ‘a couple’.” Bianca said somewhat exasperatedly; before realizing she needed to change the subject away from Dela.

Their current situation bore a striking resemblance to casting day last Spring - Dela and Courtney skipping out of the auditorium arm in arm, singing What is this Feeling? at the tops of their lungs; Elphaba and Glinda in that year’s Wicked, perfectly predictable, while Bianca trudged about six feet behind, trying not to be pissed about being cast as Nessarose. Mostly because of the twisting envy at how many scenes Dela and Courtney would get to share; wishing that she could take the other brunette’s place.

She’d never cared about leading parts - if it happened, it was nice, as it had with Evita last Fall (which Dela hadn’t taken lying down), but she didn’t get nearly as invested as Dela. But Courtney had been the obvious choice for Glinda from the start, and since realizing this, Bianca’s desperation to get the role had been keeping her up at night. She figured for once her awkwardness might serve in her favor. Dela was too…Dela for Elphie anyway. Too pretty and simpering and cute. But for whatever reason, Ms. Shupack hadn’t seen it her way.

But for once, fortune appeared to have been on her side. Dela had come into their first tech rehearsal after some kind of horse-based mishap over the weekend, insisting that she was fine - only to literally throw up when they tried to hoist her up for Defying Gravity. Dela’s bitterness over having to switch parts with Bianca had been difficult to weather - performing sitting down was better than not performing at all, of course - particularly given her constant jibing ‘as if anybody would ever believe that you were the prettier sister’. But Court had made it worth it.

Her face grew a little more morose at the thought that she wouldn’t be there this time - stifling her emotions before trying to impassively bring it up.

“Hey Court, why didn’t you try out?” She hoped that had sounded casual.

Courtney seemed slightly nonplussed by this, shrugging a little. “Ummm...I dunno. I don’t really like the music, and none of the characters felt right, and-”

“Uh, hello? Annoying drippy doe-eyed blonde soprano, Johanna is fucking made for you.” Dela said. “You just don’t think the costumes are cute.”

“That too,” Courtney shrugged. “And cheerleading is way more intense in the Fall. Plus, Adore begged me to do choir this year.” She laughed as Adore hip-checked her in response.

“Fair enough.”

“I hope you don’t miss me too much,” Courtney said, tossing Bianca a playful wink.

As Bianca racked her brain for a way to respond without stammering like an idiot, Dela saved her.

“Oh! Hold up though, listen to this.” Dela lowered her voice a little, holding her script up over her face, seemingly just in case they were being spied on. “Apparently Max auditioned at some point too, and she got Johanna - that’s like, the only other female solo.”

“What the fuck?! I’d kill to see how Violet reacts to that,” Adore said, a wicked smile on her face.

“Today’s your lucky day,” Bianca said, gesturing to Violet and Max in a heated exchange down the hall.

“Omigod, let’s eavesdrop!” Adore exclaimed, grasping Courtney’s hand and pulling her down the hall. Courtney followed, giggling.

“...I mean I don’t care what the fuck you do, but I’m gonna be honest with you,” Violet said, sighing dramatically as she lectured Max. Still visibly matchy in the pastel pink dress code du jour, Violet’s expensive prep was offset by Max’s very obvious, very deliberate attempt to make her outfit look awful in the name of ‘fashion’; overlarge vintage shirt tucked into her skirt, and obnoxious platform shoes boosting her to a similarly obnoxious height. “Hanging around all those theatre freaks is definitely not going to help your reputation. People already think you’re weird...”

Adore rolled her eyes at Courtney as they passed, and Courtney smothered a laugh behind her hand.

“You’d think someone as slutty as Violet would be less judgmental about other people’s extra-curriculars,” Courtney said thoughtfully, and Adore let out a cackle, spinning around and putting her hands on her hips.

“Hey, Violet!” Adore called.

“Speaking of freaks,” Violet muttered, plastering a fake smile on her face to answer loudly, “Yeees?”

“Courtney was just wondering why you’re so judgmental about Max being in the play when you’re-” Courtney hit Adore on the shoulder, not wanting her to repeat what she’d said, but Adore dodged her and exclaimed, “When you’re such a rancid slut!”

A boy down the hall repeated, “Rancid slut!” and high-fived one of his buddies, making Courtney’s stomach twist uncomfortably. This wasn’t how she wanted to begin her day. Violet’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s not what I said!” Courtney insisted.

“Whatever,” Violet said, tossing her hair. “Pot, kettle, as they say...right Courtney?”

“I didn’t say-”

Violet spun on her heel and walked back down the hall, Max trailing after her, as Courtney turned to Adore, currently doubled over laughing.

“Adore, why did you say that? I was just kidding around.”

“Cause it was funny as fuck, boo!” Adore chuckled, blowing a kiss. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s one thing when it’s just us, but when you antagonize her, and in front of other people...I just wanted to be chill this year.”

“You can’t be chill with Violet,” Adore said, shaking her head.

Courtney sighed, leaning back against the wall.

“Honestly, Court, I'm usually the first one to advocate the whole ‘kill ‘em with kindness’ routine,” Dela said. “But Violet can’t be killed with kindness. She’s pure evil.”

“Right!” Adore agreed. “She’s literally Satan.”

Courtney exchanged a put-upon look with Bianca, who flashed her an amused smile.

“You havin’ a hard day, kiddo?” Bianca asked, jokingly offering a hug.

“Totally,” Courtney giggled and skipped forward, throwing herself into Bianca’s arms.

“Must be tough to be you.” Bianca let herself relax into the embrace. It was probably her imagination, but Courtney always seemed to hug her extra long. Definitely her imagination, she reasoned, pulling away and looking into Courtney’s face, which was now lit up with glee.

“So tough. Thank you,” Courtney laughed, wrapping her hands around Bianca’s arm. “Let’s go to math.”

“Uh...bye?” Adore said.

“Bye!” Courtney sang unironically, leaning on Bianca’s shoulder as they headed off down the hall.

#rpdr fanfiction #bitney #bianca del rio #courtney act #adore delano #violet chachki #max malanaphy #high school au #lesbian au #sugar and spice #veronica #bendelacreme #lita

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janephillipsblog · 5 years

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One Yellow Rabbit’s 33rd Annual High Performance Rodeo

This year I decided to sign up as a volunteer, mostly as an usher, for the High Performance Rodeo which is a three week long international theatre festival, hosted by One Yellow Rabbit. I takes place here in Calgary every January and this year it was the 33rd year. I signed up for a lot of shows right away as the spots fill up fast.

Just before the festival began, I attended a volunteer session. Though I was late (my acting class ran over time), it was great as they went over all the shows (I found more that I wanted to see – somehow I had missed that Scott Thompson of Kids in the Hall was part of the line up), gave out door prizes (I was not lucky that day) and there were complimentary drinks and snacks (including wine and beer).

My first usher shift was on the second day of the festival, January 10, and was for Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua. It was sold out, so I almost did not get to see the show, but in the end there was room for the volunteers. Billed as “Part Cabaret, Part Tent Revival, All Drag”, this show was a unique, intimate and interactive experience created and performed by Justin Miller as Pearle Harbour, an all-American gal and World War II stewardess. I loved its originality and the pace of the show kept the audience engaged throughout. I was so engaged that when I left the tent, I forgot I was an usher with a duty to pick up empty cups around the seats. Oops!

My second usher shift was on January 11 and was for How to Self-Suspend, written and performed by Mx Katie Sly. The piece promised to be provocative, thought-provoking and boundary pushing. We ushers were told that people may need to leave the space at some point (a few did) due to the subject matter dealing with trauma, abuse, pain, and sex. How to Self-Suspend is a performed memoir following Mx Sly escaping an abusive childhood in Montreal through to the discovery of their sexuality, gender-fluidity and eventually wholeness within themselves in the rope bondage scenes of Toronto and Vancouver. Mx Sly is a compelling storyteller who I found very likeable, which for me made the difficult subject matter easier to handle.

After a four day break I returned to the Rodeo to usher for Live Your Prime, with Damien Frost by the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble featuring Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis and John Murrell. This was a very fun and light-hearted show about an older man who had rose to fame starting with his book “Live Your Prime” and who now tours the country as a self-help guru with his son, Damien Jr. and wife, Darlene, a family who on the surface look like they have life figured out, but perhaps all is not what it seems. I loved the staging and the limited use of three, brightly coloured armchairs to create the various scenes. At the end of the festival, there were books for sale, including a lot of scripts by Canadian playwrights. With too many plays to choose from, I stuck this “non-fiction”. I bought copies of “Theatre of the Unimpressed” by Jordan Tannahill and Denise Clarke’s “The Big Secret Book”. After the festival, I got the chance to attend a talk at Poole Lawyers with Denise Clarke and so I got it signed there. Denise’s talk was about the book, Damien Frost, her life and One Yellow Rabbit which was very interesting and inspiring. My friend Denise (too many Denises!) and I had a nice chat with her afterwards too.

Crawlspace, written and performed from Karen Hines, was brilliant. The play is an account of her true- life real estate nightmare in 2006, after she purchased a tiny house in Toronto. Throughout the play, I empathized with Karen on many levels. Having worked as a REALTOR® now for nearly 12 years, I know that a real estate transaction really is all about caveat emptor (buyer beware). I have my own dead animals in houses stories (luckily not in my own residence) and I know the stressfulness of having to deal with pests and problems with the home (in my case, due to my own neglect). I also completely felt for Karen as she described how the home put her tens of thousands of dollars in debt and the traps that credit card companies created with their ever-increasing credit limits. Very inspiring and to think I almost didn’t get to see this play: first because the usher shift I signed up for was cancelled, then I was put on as an ambassador but this week warned that because it was sold out I would probably not get to see the play. I ended up doing coat check but there was room for all the ushers to watch the show so I was thrilled.

My fifth show to volunteer at was God’s Lake presented by A Castlereigh Theatre Project and Sage Theatre at the Pumphouse Theatres. The play, a work of documentary theatre, featured four actors playing members of the remote fly-in community of God’s Lake Narrows, Manitoba, following the murder of a young 15-year-old girl. The script is taken verbatim from actual interviews conducted in the community in 2017. I found this a raw and emotional piece and through the words of the community, it brought an understanding of the complex issues of life on the reserve and perhaps began to answer questions as to how a First Nations community can be torn apart by the cold-blooded murder of one of its youth. At each performance of a show during the High Performance Rodeo, a territorial acknowledgement of the Treaty 7 region is given and for this one, it was by a First Nations Elder. The performance ended with an Honour Song in which we all rose to our feet and then a short speech by the Elder indicating that as with a ceremony it is time to leave those negative thoughts with the Grandfathers and Grandmothers.

The sixth show for me was bug presented by the Manidoons Collective, written and performed by Yolanda Bonnell. The performance took place at the West Village Theatre in Sunalta and I loved how the stage was set up as if in a gathering with the audience all around. This one-woman performance was about indigenous women navigating addiction and inter-generational trauma. I found Yolanda Bonnell to be an extremely compelling and unique storyteller. At times, the story she wove was in places hard to watch and all emotional, however not without humour.

Into the final week of the Rodeo and the first show of the week for me was Café Daughter by Kenneth T. Williams, presented by Alberta Theatre Projects, starring Tiffany Ayalik and directed by Lisa C. Ravensbergen. Inspired by the early life of The Honourable Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck, Café Daughter is a coming of age story about a young woman of mixed heritage (part Cree, part Chinese) growing up in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. Filled with humour, though in parts it was emotional, I felt that this show was amazing and so well done. Tiffany Ayalik, as the sole performer, commanded the stage not only as the main storyteller, Yvette Wong, but also as all the other characters in Yvette’s life. Her physicality was awesome and I was in awe of how she smoothly transitioned between all these characters and brought them all to life.

Hammered Hamlet was a completely different experience. Presented by The Shakespeare Company and Hit and Myth Productions at the Legion, three out of the five actors downed four shots of whiskey before the show with the encouragement of the audience. This show was a total riot – what a great way to present Shakespeare! The show was supposed to only be 90 minutes with the intermission and ended up being more than two hours! I actually wished I hadn’t ushered for this one, as I think it would have been more fun to watch after a couple of drinks.

And now for something completely different…….Cow Love! Created and performed by Federico Robledo and Nanda Suc for the Société Protectrice de Petites Idées from Guingamp, France, this was 50 minutes of offbeat physical comedy. It combined acrobatics, dance, slapstick and pantomime and was thoroughly enjoyable to watch.

Macbeth Muet played at the Pumphouse Theatres on the same days as Cow Love. As both were only about 60 minutes long and both works of physical comedy, the plays were scheduled so a patron could watch them on the same night if they wanted too. As an usher, I watched them on different nights. For Macbeth Muet¸ I knew, when I was instructed to tell people that the show contains eggs and blood, that we were in for treat. Created by Marie-Hélène Bélanger, Jon Lachlan Stewart, and of course, the Bard himself, this was unique retelling of the Scottish Play without spoken words and with only two actors (Jérémie Francoeur as Macbeth and Clara Prévost as Lady Macbeth) with some help from some homemade puppets. Another steller show that I have been lucky to attend and I loved the soundtrack.

A about this time in the festival, the days are starting to meld together. A couple that came to see Cow Love on the evening I ushered for Macbeth Muet, I recognized, but thought they had attended the previous evening’s performance of Cow Love, when it actually was from Hammered Hamlet which was earlier in the week. They also were at Après de Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues when I was ushering for that.

The last show, for me, of the Rodeo, was Après le Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, created and performed by Scott Thompson. Originally a regular Kids in the Hall character, it was a real treat to get to see it live. The Kids in the Hall was a show I got into as a teenager when I first arrived in Canada and Buddy Cole was one of my favourite characters. This show was definitely in my top three shows and as I type, my face still hurts from smiling and laughing so much. Just over halfway through, the microphone decided to play up, but Scott incorporated it in to his act. It was Buddy Cole that was having mic issues and being driven insane with sounding like he was speaking into a tin can. In the end he took off the mic (you don’t really need it anyways in the Big Secret Theatre).

After the show, Scott and his team were having a drink at the Laycraft Lounge next to the theatre as well. I thought about approaching him just to say how much I enjoyed the show, but I was too shy and just headed home with the books I had bought, though I didn’t realize I had left behind my water bottle until the train was making its way through downtown.

And so that was my first experience of the One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo. What a fantastic, but busy, three weeks. I did not see every show that was a part of the festival and there were some recurring events that I did not experience this year such as the 10-Minute Play Festival and The Veronicas (an award show where everyone wins). Of the shows I did see, I did not see one bad show, they were all unique, well done and fabulous to watch. I loved how some shows – How to Self-Suspend, Crawlspace and Bug were examples of how artists had “taken their broken heart and made art”. Generally, I was most impressed with the one-person shows, with the performer’s ability to command the space and keep the audience engaged the entire time. My top three shows for this year’s festival were Café Daughter, Après le Deluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, and Crawlspace.

I am already excited about next year!

#HPRodeo #OneYellowRabbit #YYC #Theatre

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burnouts3s3 · 6 years

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Simoun, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price for Season (MSRP): 25.00 USD How much I paid: 23 Dollars USD. Number of Episodes: 26 Episodes Price per episode: 1 Dollar per episode Length per Episode: 25 Minutes on average. 21 Without Intro and Ending song. Number of Discs: 5 DVD Discs in total. Episodes per Disc: 5 or 6. Licensed and Localized by: Media Blasters Animation Studio: Deen Audio: Japanese Audio with Subtitles available Bonus Features: Staff and Voice Actor Commentary. My Personal Biases: I actually saw Simoun a while back but never reviewed it. I like other shows in the Shoujo Ai genre such as Mai Hime, Mai Otome, Maria Watches over Us, Strawberry Panic and yes, even Kannazuki no Miko/Destiny of the Shrine Maiden. My Verdict: Simoun is probably one of the best shows and anime series I’ve seen even if it wasn’t part of the shoujo ai genre. It stands up to one of the best in the business with its beautiful animation, amazing soundtrack, incredible world building and interesting characters. But its tone and message is joyless, sullen and grim. Even when the series has a handful of hopeful (not happy mind you) scenes, there’s still the sense of loss. If you can stomach some truly heart wrenching scenes, check this show out when you can. A/N: Okay, so Media Blasters is the official licenser of the show and translated most of the subs. A lot of the names were also translated but a lot of fans noticed a change in names. Mainly, a lot of characters whose names end with a “u” end up having the “u” dropped. So Caimu is Kaim, Anubitufu is Anubituf and Aeru is Aer. Also, Rodoreamon is apparently Rotreamon now. I’m going to use the names Media Blasters chose for the characters for the sake of simplicity. Simoun, a review

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I consider myself a fan of shoujo-ai or Yuri anime. I own a couple of boxsets of Yuri anime. I watch Yuri anime. Even the stuff that bores me (Strawberry Panic) or annoys me (Kannazuki no Miko/Destiny of the Shrine Maiden) at least makes me rewatch it again and again. Like all things, I tend to have agreements of which shows I like and which shows I detest like the fucking plague. But, then comes a series that not only makes me rethink preconceptions I had about religion, war, politics, children, innocence and romances, but also makes me rethink myself and how I rate things on a good or bad rating. Simoun is a particularly hard series for me to review. It’s a study of contrasts. While I can honestly say the efforts put forth by the director, the animators, the voice actors and the writers is nothing less than something I find in a movie studio and the passion put into this project is nothing less than soul bearing, it remains one of the most polarizing and controversial shows I’ve ever reviewed. So, let me say this upfront so you can understand where I’m coming from: Simoun is a fantastic anime that covers the concepts of children at war, religion rivaling technology, gender roles, maturity, war in the name of religion, and the loss of innocence… that also happens to have lesbian romances. It’s probably one of the few shows that’s legitimately good and can recommend to people who aren’t shoujo ai fans. The scope magnificent, the animation, even the stilled shots, are gorgeous to look at, the music is haunting and the characters and voice actors do their absolute best to make the characters come alive. Even the use of CGI ships against a 2D backdrop manage to still look compelling (if a bit dated). A war breaks out between three nations Simulacrum, Argentum, and Plumbum over Simulacrum helical motor technology that powers the airships known as Simouns. Two fleets of the Simoun, Chor Caput and Chor Tempest, stumble upon a huge Argentum airship fleet attempting steal a Simoun. Suffering massive losses in the battle, the pair Neviril and Amuria of Chor Tempest attempt an extremely powerful but extremely dangerous maneuver out of desperation named the Emerald Ri Mājon. Neviril hesitates after making eye contact with the enemy, and the pair fail resulting in an explosion that takes Amuria with it. The fight leaves the sibyllae or members of Chor Tempest extremely demoralized and Neviril in despair. This is not Strawberry Panic, an all-girls school romance; this is Ender’s Game and Top Gun for the Shoujo Ai Genre. I would even hesitate to use the word Romance to describe this show because of how dark and at times bleak it can get. But, if you can stomach through the hardships and the gut wrenching scenes, you will find a light at the end of the tunnel and will find hope for the world and its characters. The people of Daikūriku are all born female. In Simulacrum, the girls grow up until age of seventeen, when they make a pilgrimage to a holy place known as "the Spring" to select their permanent sex. Four new sibyllae join Chor Tempest, one of them an excellent pilot with an unshakeable morale named Aer. Aer immediately decides to partner with Neviril, however despite her persistent attempts, Neviril remains too mired in her grief over Amuria's death to accept her. How committed are the producers to this premise of everyone being born female? So committed that they literally hired only female voice performers to voice all the characters, even the older men with facial hair. It’s that fact that haunts the world around them. Certain countries do not have access to the well so they have to perform sex reassignment surgery operations for half of the population to keep them afloat. And the use of such technology is polluting their world to the point of seeing nothing but red and black. This show came out in 2006 before the idea of there being more than 2 genders, debates on whether gender and general roles are a social or biological constructs and gender fluidity became popularized on internet sites like Tumblr. (I will point out to my internet skeptic friends that the show’s setting depicts EVERYONE as being born biologically female and, according to this world, that certain members MUST transition to the male gender to keep society functioning.) But be warned; the show can get bleak and downright depressing at times. If you thought it was hard to sit through some of the darker parts of Kannazuki no Miko or My-Hime, you haven’t seen anything yet! For example, as early as Episode 4 (one of the ‘filler’ episodes), Aer and Rimone take an unauthorized flight and get ambushed on the ground by an enemy soldier. The Soldier dies only to have his body stiffen up with his hands on the controls of the Simoun. Rimone points out that prying his hands off will break the controls, stranding them there in enemy territory while the enemy comes closer. So Aer has to take her tiny pocket knife and SAW OFF THE SOLDIER’S HANDS FROM THE REST OF HIS BODY. It’s not even the amount of blood or gore that’s disturbing; it’s seeing a child having to endure and do such a thing that’s so messed up. See, one of the interesting things I love is seeing how characters interact or react to the world around them. In Simoun, the Sybillae are so used to the idea of war that hearing about people dying is nothing new for them but the idea of having to deal with a mouse is frightening. It’s the type of world where a kiss on the lips between women is so commonplace but Rotreamon cutting off her braids is more dramatic. If there’s a consequence to the proceedings it’s the characters. Don’t get me wrong; the characters aren’t ‘bad’ per say and a lot are very interesting and have interesting dynamics, such as the incestuous undertone of Kaim and Alti, the mechanic Waporif dealing with the idea of faith and technology, the class struggle between Roderamon and Mamina. Even Floe, the cute girl and comedic relief, doesn’t escape the world unscathed. It’s just that the world and the situations and the conflict are so interesting, that you start to notice that the characters are a bit on the stock type. (Then again, I think you need familiar stock types so you can digest some of the bigger concepts.) But our main pair, Neviril and Aer, are the center of the proceedings and it’s their relationship that nails it. You get the sense that Neviril and Aer are both locked in a sense of immaturity, albeit from different perspectives. Neviril is locked in the idea of being pure and being a priestess forever, even going so far as to not fly again once Amuria dies. Aer, meanwhile, is an impulsive hothead who wants to do nothing but fly, even at the cost of being an adolescence. But as the war rages on and the casualties of people they know and love start piling up, the two eventually find comfort in each other’s arms. It first seems like Aer is the stronger of the two only for her to completely break down when one death becomes one death too many. If Junji Nishimura’s direction and co-writing are what brings the characters alive, Toshihiko Sahashi’s music is what makes them transcendent. Every so often, he would incorporate pieces of church music, classical music and tango to make the dichotomy and juxtaposition of certain scenes blow you away. Yes, Tango.

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Towards the latter half of the series, I noticed that the animation liked to use still shots with characters still talking. At first, I thought this was intentional by the showrunners. But, as I rewatched the series, it dawned on me that the animation budget was probably blown on the CGI battles and the rest of the team had to resort to cost saving techniques for the show. CAVEAT: Shows like Simoun do not get made every day. Directors and writers willing this bold of a risk to tell this dense of a tale should be rewarded. And yet for the same time, it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s not for the casual viewer. In some ways, it’s not even for anime fans. This is the anime version of 12 years a Slave as it provides a brutal, harsh and unflinching look at the world. Do you hate this show? No, because if I hated it, I’d simply write it off and say it’s a piece of crap just to be done with it. It’s not. If anything, Simoun is an ambitious anime made by well-intentioned people that for a lot of people is not going to resonate with them. And I’m not even throwing shade on religious viewers who have trouble digesting the heavier concepts. Even more progressive minded viewers are not going to sign on to a lot of the negative and just melancholy tones throughout the work. The work isn’t so much dark as say parts of Kannazuki or Mai Hime are as it is bleak. There’s a sense of melancholy in the air that just persists and there’s no getting rid of it with glimmers of hope scattered here and there. Why is recommending the anime so hard for you if you thought it was good? Because for a lot of people, a lot of the world building, concept provoking and issue debates are not what they wanted. Aside from the heavy themes and messages, a lot of the technical flaws do stick out. Neviril and other character designs were a bit off putting to me the first time I saw it, resembling more like dolls than usual anime characters. The CGI Simouns are interesting in concept (and I like the idea of rendering them in CG to show off how alien/foreign they are) but do show a dated look. And for some people, the slow (intentionally deliberate or not) pacing will drive them nuts. I came upon Simoun as I was exploring Yuri anime and wanted to see, yes, anime girls kissing. What I got instead were thought provoking concepts that only changed my view but changed the views of people around me. Buying this show just to watch girls kissing each other is like, as Jeff Foxworthy said, buying a 747 just to eat the peanuts. Erica Friedman, writer of the blog Okazu Yuri, once said this show is not for the Lowest Common Denominator. And upon rewatching Simoun, I had the startling realization that not only was Friedman right but also that I was part of the Lowest Common Denominator. Simoun is more of a show that I admire and respect the hell of, than I actually like and the fault lies more because of me than what the show did. And for 23 USD with the amount of content AND the numerous special features including Director Commentary and cast interviews, this is truly a must buy! That ending shot gets me every time. Verdict: Buy it!

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ferryboatpeak · 6 years

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Original mpreg anon here, please continue this I love it!! And I LOVE it being end game gryles. Maybe once Harry realizes he’s actually pregnant he moves in with nick, unofficially, like he did back in 2012, and when nick halfheartedly protests he explains that it’s really all nick’s fault that he took the test ‘without you none of this would have happened nicholas’. even though he’s pretty sure that’s not how pregnancy works he can never say no to harry, self preservation be damned...

It’s you, the real hero! Thank you for checking in, and thank you for this premise that I have completely taken astray!

[links to previous six installments here]

I am so sorry to have to tell you that Harry does not move in with Nick. This is partly because I’ve already written pregnant Harry moving in with somebody and I want something different. BUT ALSO because Harry is rich as hell, and I do not want to deny him the pleasure of nesting the fuck out of Erskine House. This is what he was waiting for, back when he was a teenager buying a house because he thought he had to, even though it felt too big, too lonely, too much. He wasn’t expecting it to happen this way, of course, but it all makes sense. This is the moment he’s been waiting for. He’s gonna finish that nest, and he’s gonna hatch a baby.

It’s good to be back in London, hanging out with his London friends and enjoying a long stretch of time with no official appearance. He figures he’s got at least a couple of months before he’ll be showing that much, if he buys himself some time by eating smart and keeping off the weight that’s just post-tour laziness. So when he and Nick are shopping one afternoon, he drags Nick into a couple of posh baby shops and buys some very expensive but very adorable little outfits. (Decisions about clothing a girl baby present a painful struggle between Harry’s love of pink and Harry’s love of gender fluidity.)

Of course, a blurry cellphone photo makes the rounds on twitter and tumblr. Harry’s in thousand-dollar trackies, holding up a striped onesie to get Nick’s opinion (#gryles baby shopping #get married already #put a baby in him). Liz gets fifty anons and starts a moodboard about it. But everyone just assumes they’re shopping for one of Harry’s or Nick’s millions of godchildren.

Harry’s favorite scruffy white boys come over to the house for writing sessions, laying the groundwork for the second album. Harry pours all of his pregnancy feelings into his songwriting, and the results are pretty fucking weird. Obscure instruments, references to waxing moons and ripening fruit, and an extended Virgin Mary metaphor that just does not work. But there’s also a couple of hormonal rage tunes that really bang. Tyler and Alex emerge shaken. Mitch takes it in stride. (Harry’s even more cuddly than usual.)

Harry’s seeing his medical team regularly, with all the secrecy you’d expect: after-hours appointments, entering the hospital at the loading dock and being escorted to the clinic down back hallways, and so on. The perinatologists and internists who are overseeing his care don’t have any day-to-day concerns, aside from the overarching question of where the hell this is going.

But the doctor that Harry gets the most attached to is his original OB. She’s the one who’ll listen attentively to his rambling questions and patiently answer whether he can have peanut butter and why he’s taking so much folic acid and whether hot yoga is allowed and what position the baby might be in if Harry feels a kick right here, no, a little more on the side, yeah, like there, do you think she’s facing front or back? Can she turn? What if she turns?

The other doctors, the specialists, are fascinated by Harry’s case, but he’s a lot to deal with day to day, you know? They’re relieved to wave his questions off to the OB whenever they can. At one evening visit to the imaging department, somewhere around week 26, everybody realizes that Harry hasn’t taken a gestational diabetes test. The hospital doesn’t have a supply of the glucose drink, it’s late, and the doctors just want to get home. Everyone decides that Harry can just drop by the OB’s office tomorrow to do the test.

Harry and Nick meet up for brunch the next day. They’ve got some time to kill before Nick’s due at work, so Nick ends up going to the doctor’s office with Harry. It’s November, which means that Harry’s got on a hoodie and two shirts and a giant shearling-lined coat. He doesn’t look pregnant, he just looks bundled up for winter. (However, Harry definitely looks pregnant when he’s only wearing pants. He’s slept over a couple of times, snoring on his side of Nick’s bed with a furry pillow doubled over under his belly, and it’s seriously fucking with Nick’s head.)

Nick laughs at Harry’s grimace of disgust when he downs the glucose drink. They sit in companionable silence, messing about on their phones, while they wait out the prescribed period before the blood draw. Nick makes tattoo jokes to the phlebotomist. Harry passes the test and is predictably smug about it, and Nick tells him that of course his system’s great at processing sugar, he’s had enough practice, hasn’t he.

On their way back to the car park, someone shouts at them to hold the elevator. Harry gives Nick a nervous glance, even as he sticks his arm out to block the door, because Harry’s got to be a nice guy even when it creates the possibility of an awkward elevator fan encounter. The source of the request clatters into view down the hallway: a woman pushing a toddler in a stroller, with an overloaded diaper bag slipping off her shoulder, hustling toward the elevator as fast as she can when her kid is obviously due to have a younger sibling in the very near future.

Slow down, it’s all right, we’re not leaving, Nick and Harry call out. She makes it to the elevator and between huffs of breath she thanks them several times and explains that her husband has the car today, her bus is leaving in a few minutes, if she doesn’t catch it she’ll be waiting around with the baby in the cold for an hour. Then she starts fussing with the diaper bag, clipping it to the handles of the stroller, and Nick and Harry exchange a look of relief when she doesn’t give any indication that she recognizes them.

Harry shifts position so he can grin and wave at the baby in the stroller. Nick’s heart does something funny. Shopping for baby clothes, seeing the silhouette on the ultrasound… all of that felt vaguely fictional, like the most extreme version of all of their old pregnancy jokes. But watching Harry’s face light up as he says a big exaggerated “hiiiiiiiiiiiii” to the baby, that really makes Nick realize that Harry’s going to have a baby sooner rather than later. Harry and a baby. Nick wants a baby, in an abstract but real kind of a way, and somehow Harry got there first. He got there without Nick.

The elevator reaches the ground floor and Nick and Harry step out of the way so that the pregnant mum can dash to her bus. But she only makes it a few feet before the diaper bag comes unhooked from the stroller and hits the ground, spewing its contents everywhere. A sippy cup goes rolling halfway across the granite floor of the lobby. She swears sharply, clenches her fists, and bursts into frustrated tears. The toddler in the stroller follows suit.

Harry immediately crouches down and tries to amuse/distract/comfort the baby. Nick scrambles around the lobby, retrieving the sippy cup and shoving wipes and baggies of snacks and the woman’s phone back into the diaper bag. He tries to loop it back over the handles of the stroller and she says no, no, she’ll take it, she was such an idiot for putting it there in the first place, god, this has been the worst fucking day.

Nick gives her an awkward hug and says something comforting that feels entirely inadequate. She sniffles against his shoulder. Meanwhile, Harry has converted the toddler from tears to hiccupy giggles. You guys are so nice, thank you so much, says the woman, and she and her kid head off to the bus stop.

Nick and Harry don’t think anything more of it, until a few days later, when one of Nick’s occasional visits to the gryles tag makes it clear that somebody in the lobby got some photos of them that day. Harry talking to the baby, Nick hugging the woman. There’s lots of speculation about the identity of the mystery mum, but nobody seems to have found her. Thank god, Nick thinks, the poor woman.

He puts it out of his mind. But the next day, the professional media picks up the photos, and Nick’s confronted with his face on a tabloid and a headline that feels like a kick to the chest:

Harry Styles and Nick Grimshaw Visit Doctor With Their Surrogate

#coming atcha from denver!#in case you need something to read on the way to red rocks #wrote this almost entirely in the tattered cover today #also we had biscuits and they were awesome #first guy ever verse

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wrecktify · 6 years

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ross butler, 28, he/they | oh, them? that’s jacob vogel. they’ve lived in carina bay for, like, six years. last time i spoke to them they were a bartender, and if i remember correctly, they’re a gemini. seeing them around always makes me think of weakly woven beaded bracelets, a thundering laugh, and jacket pockets stuffed with grease stained napkins.

a brief aside, since this is the first of my intros : hello ! my name is admin l aka liz, i’m 21, and i have a basketball game tomorrow. i live in the est timezone and i go by she or they pronouns whatever floats ur boat. if u ever wanna talk about xmen w someone that cares way 2 much , im ur gal. if u wanna contact me on discord, my user is elizabitch#5957, and i’d love to chat with you there or on tunglr :) without further ado, i’ll make w the intro

TW ; NEGLECT , IMPLIED DRUG ABUSE

A HISTORY

jacob was born on staten island. he’s a new york native and that shouldn’t be a character trait, but it truly is, because he loves his city, and his burrough especially, and its where he considers home above all of the physical houses and apartments he’s ever lived in.

he was born to a single mother and while he could call her one room apartment home, it just doesn’t feel like it as much anymore. growing up, he idolized his mom, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. you watch her put on her face before she leaves for work, you revel in the way she lets you stay up past bedtime, you don’t assume the worst of her. you stand up to her boyfriends when you need to, you tidy up after yourself when she’s sleeping off a long day’s work. you love her and when you tell people she’s raising you alone, they remind you that makes her even stronger and braver and capable.

tw neglect, drug use that made it sting even more when it all crumbled down. when he realizes she never worked a graveyard shift, and instead on those nights he spent alone she was out god knows where snorting god knows what. (he now knows what, but he wishes he didn’t. perhaps she’d still be home if he didn’t.)

tw neglect when they call it neglect and they take him away, it changes things. because he wants to love her, and he tried to brave a smile when he had his visits with her, but he could never shake what they told him, no matter how many times she tried rehab, or therapy, or swore she was doing better.

when he was ten, he was placed into foster care, where he’d remain til he aged out. seven houses in eight years, scattered through the city. he could call them home, because truly, some of them became that in his time there. they weren’t permanent, but they were comforting. even today, he still has relationships with some of his foster parents, as though they passed him along, he’s never blamed them.

as a teenager, he was a handful, he’s sure. he could never get a handle on classwork, he spent too much time hanging out in his old neighborhood with his childhood friends, he got caught under the bleachers with girls too many times. he was a piece of work and he can’t put that on his foster parents. (or something like that. but deep down, he didn’t mind. so long as he kept these things temporary, there would be no trust to betray. he didn’t have to worry about having a repeat of his mom.)

he didn’t have the grades for college, so after a couple years of just Hanging he decided to travel to carina after hearing a friend-of-a-friend talk about his childhood vacations there. it sounded romantic, like somewhere you could forget about the rest of the world for a minute, and as much as he loved the city, he could use that escape. and, if he was just gonna work, he may as well do it somewhere serene and beachy.

THE LEGEND

personality wise, jacob is the kind of guy you want to have at your party because he’s just a good time. it’s always been effortless to him (see: all the trouble he got in for having too much Fun) and he can start a conversation with just about anyone. if anything, he talks to much, because he can’t stand the lapses in conversation.

he’s something of a take on the label the lothario. he’s out there having a lot of sex but he’s defensive of it. he’s a poster for sex education and sex positivity and having conversations about what it means to have sex in the Digital Age. he’s also a strong believer in the fluidity of gender and sexuality and is openly pansexual and non-binary ( a demiboy he/they )

while, yes, sex is ultimately a way that he gets close to people without having to get emotionally intimate with them, and he just loves the attention, he really does get bugged by the stigmas surrounding it and the close mindedness regarding sex, sexuality, and gender that’s still pervasive in us culture.

he’s v much the poster child for being surrounded by people but still being lonely

he’s a Secret Poet don’t talk about it :/// he wishes he had been born into a situation where he could pursue writing but he’s not so instead its just a fleeting hobby and his secondary source of release after Sex but if u ever ask him what he’s jotting down he WILL say its just pick up lines :///

uhhh he works at ripleys and lives in the tucana apartments probably w roommates or s/t

this was the worst and i’m sorry u had 2 read it any other time i’ll hopefully make more sense and i’m still v excited 2 be here and plot !

#carinaintro #ill make this a tag drop later

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semisweet1992-blog · 6 years

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The Wide Spectrum of Femininity and Gender

While most people are closely tied to a very rigid, binary outlook of viewing gender this is hardly the true reality of how humans express themselves with gender. The range it can go is not a simple thing to measure, as emotions are not a logical thing to be put on a 1-10 scale. The ways in which we act out and preform our gender is entirely of our own creation, the way in which we feel comfortable moving and living in our own skin. Though, this view of owning the agency of our own gender is by in large viewed as should be in the binary of man and woman based on biological and social dictations, we need to open the eyes and gates of our society to allow freedom in how we enact our gender.

Samaria Budd

Interviewing people that identify as non-binary and gender fluid. I will not identify the individuals by name, but rather refer to them by their pronouns they gave me.

Individual #1, identities as non-binary: they/them/their

Individual #2 identities as gender fluid: he/his/him or zhe/zir/zhim (I am choosing to refer to the individual within the blog as him because at the time this was the pronoun that him currently choose to use that day)

My first question that I asked is what them/he considered their gender to be and why they felt the need to go against the binary? The response that individual two gave me was he wanted to feel male or masculine because of the dominance that is associated with male masculinity. Even with his body being feminine, he doesn’t want to be seen as feminine and waking up to a feminine body makes him angry, even being called feminine upset him. This leading him to choose a gender-neutral name that allows him to be seen as male or gender-fluid.

The next question I was asked because the previous conversation had made it seem like femininity was seen as a negative thing. I do want to note here that this is entirely based off my assumption and not what the individuals actually stated to me. I asked why do they/he see femininity as weakness and why does masculinity relate to strength even though both individuals have feminine bodies? Individual two explained the examples of boobs, although boobs are pretty to look at it is a giant inconvenience. He continued to explain that he didn’t even want breasts further explaining by the unfairness that women or people with feminine bodies have to purchase expensive bras and waste their money on other expensive things. Individual one told me that they are seen by other people as a woman because of their body. They bind and wear loose clothing to hide their breasts or hips from people who would assume their gender. They don’t want to be seen as a woman, just as themselves, calling their gender as a “weebly, wobbly, gendered something”.

I asked both individuals if it was accurate that they/he both wanted to just be seen as a person and both responded with an enthusiastic, “yes”. I inquired where they/him believed gender-fluidity and non-binary can from? Did it come from not wanting to be sexualize, objectified or categorized that would therefore place limits on their existence? Individual one told me they are okay with showing their body when they are with the right people, like close friends that see them as a person rather than a feminine body existing within the gender binary. Individual two cuts his hair in an androgynous style and changed his name to an androgynous name in order to feel more comfortable. He explains to me that he has feminine moments, but those only last for a few seconds or minutes. Indvidual one finished the question with telling me that genitals shouldn’t decide your personality and gendered roles are wrong. I asked individual one how they feel about drag, since it is a play on the binary does it discredit gender-fluid or non-binary genders? They explained to me that drag is a play, a person doing drag can be transgender and it doesn’t take anything away from that person’s gender identity.

I also wanted to ask what are the biggest challenges of existing out the binary. Individual one responded that it is often tiring. If someone purposely doesn’t want to use the correct pronoun even after them ask given the correct pronoun to use. Gendered language is also a huge challenge, English is not such a huge deal because it isn’t as gendered as other languages, an example being German, that doesn’t allow for other pronouns to be used, because even the pronouns and nouns have to be gendered with the binary. Them also talked about the dysphoria they experience from other people that make them feel invalid in their ‘non-binary-ness’.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Colby Keller

Jade Stone-LaFontayne: identifies as a trans-woman and female-impersonator

Priscilla Divine: identifies as a cis-gender male and preforms drag

Jade Stone-LaFontayne: My first question was When did you first hear of drag and what was your first impression of it.

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

One of my moms best friends was a gay male. Who did drag on and off for years and he dressed up for my moms birthday party one year when I was in about 6th grade. I was in awe. Like what is this big beautiful woman!?

Colby Keller:

Did he explain drag to you at that time?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Well it was kind of unspoken he didn’t have too. Mom said “that’s chris, chasity is chris” and I just got it..

Colby Keller:

So when was the first time you did drag?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

My freshman year of high school.

Colby Keller:

What was the circumstance?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

“Powderpuff” at my high school the girls would play football and the boys would dress as women, whatever boy raised the most donation money won princess(freshman/sophomore) and queen (junior/senior) I won powder puff princess then went on to win powder puff queen my senior year..

Colby Keller:

Do you cite that as your start as a budding queen?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Yes. It was amazing feeling.

Colby Keller:

Explain that feeling to me, what made you want to peruse it?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

The fact that i was so comfortable and it was the piece to the puzzle that made me feel like I fit in instead of being left out.. I felt like myself so it was my outlet.. the only time I could be myself but have an “excuse” to be.

Colby Keller:

Why did it make you feel like you fit in?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Because I later become to realize I was trans. And it wasn’t a phase. So the feeling of fitting in was just being comfortable in my own skin.

Colby Keller:

So what would you label yourself

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

A queen, female impersonator, trans woman. I’m a trans woman. Who happens to be a drag queen.

Colby Keller:

So I wanna know about your thoughts on gender. How do you construct your womanhood? What do you think it means to be a woman?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

I’m not a “woman” nor can I ever be. I’m a trans woman. I don’t want people to see me and be like she’s a woman(which yes it feels good) but I wanna be the part of trans community who makes it okay to say.. “oh she’s a trans woman” we are our own gender. And there is so many more.

Colby Keller:

So you don’t want to hold to the stereotype of what women are usually seen as?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Yes. Because I don’t want women to think trans women are representing them wrong. Because just as us trans women are, women have fought hard for their rights which is part of my inspiration.

Colby Keller:

So what have you based your sense of femininity upon? Do you have any idols or inspiration?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Firstly taking care of yourself. The 20’s when women started to wear what they want. Makeup, hair, nails. I’m still very traditional, a woman cooks for their man, cleans, does laundry. Is pretty to go to the mailbox. That’s femininity to me speaking as a future wife and my goals sense. I look up to Michelle Obama. Lavern Cox. P!nk. And even Madea. There’s so many more. They all have a message from a different standpoint. And they are all important to biological and trans women.

Colby Keller:

What do you think are the main aspects of your look and how you present yourself as a woman?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

What I’m comfortable in. If you own it, your comfortable, people will feel that. And own it with you. I have so many different looks. And I don’t want to be known for a certain “look” or hair style. I just wanna be comfortable.

Colby Keller:

Does your more traditional view on gender roles conflict in The LGBTQ community in your mind?

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

No. Because that’s my personal future goals or plans. Everyone else’s is different. I mean I’m sure there’s people who would disagree. That’s just my opinion. That’s the beauty of the lgbtq+ community we are all so diverse and live such different lives. Regardless of how others see us.

Colby Keller:

So would you agree that in just that option we have to live that life is good enough if we want it to be our life

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

I don’t understand the question..

Colby Keller:

If you can life that traditional life and that’s what you want that’s awesome you can now live it. Being a part of the LGBTQ community that was so long excluded from it.

Jade Stone-LaFontayne:

Well now we have the luxury of living the traditional life but at the same time be able to step out of that.. like gay couples bringing their adopted kids to pride celebrations.. gay couples or “trans couple”(man and trans woman or vice versa) being able to still have a family and do drag, run for pageants, etc, we still have goals and can achieve them. Still living a traditional lifestyle

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Priscilla Divine: The first question I asked to gain her understanding about gender was when was your first exsposure to drag.

Priscilla Divine:

In jr high school I saw the movie Priscilla queen of the desert on vh1, I didn’t know exactly what is was but that was my first time seeing anything like that. At 16 I got a fake Id and started going to the stonewall in Huntington where I met and befriended lots of the queens there. I would have been 11 when I saw that movie

Colby Keller:

What did it make you feel like?

Priscilla Divine:

Like I want such a weirdo o

Colby Keller:

Why did you feel that way

Priscilla Divine:

Growing up in wv you always feel like the odd ball, I like to always be the center of attention. And I found that via drag. It helped me express myself and sure filled in voids where I wasn’t so masculine, I wasn’t into sports or cars etc

Colby Keller:

What got you to break into drag?

Priscilla Divine:

Like I said I befriended many queens I spent most of my time in the dressing room helping them get ready. And one night they were like why are you not doing this too. And I was like ohhh I can’t I wouldn’t be good, which was met with makeup brushes and wigs flying, ronica reed tami whynot Martina desarea’ and heather Monroe got me together and shoved me out on stage. My original drag name was Priscilla hunt… And I was hooked. I always had fem facial features so it wasn’t a huge jump haha’ There at the stonewall I developed my love for all things extravagant, huge hair feathers rhinestones etc, I’m glad I stated drag back then, when bars where the only place for people like us to go. Queens are like gays version of celebrities. I have been very lucky that people all over wv have grown to love me as an entertainer. And other states also.

Colby Keller:

So as a queen what are your inspirations and idols?

Priscilla Divine:

Chelsea pearl Mimi marks Taj Mahal Victoria lePaige chili pepper, Michelle st james Martina desarea, roxxxy Andrews cezanne dee ranged Carmella Marcella Garcia regine Phillips. I could go on and on

Colby Keller:

Just for yourself could you name just one?

Priscilla Divine:

Being able to bring some of the nations top queens into Sw gave me time to spend with so many of them who influenced me. Sorry I miss read that.

Colby Keller:

It’s fine I know those queens and they work it lol

Priscilla Divine:

What inspires me to do drag?

Colby Keller:

Yes.

Priscilla Divine:

Honestly the crowd, My job is to make them feel something. To be a story teller as odd as that may sound. Music is how we express our emotions. I want them to feel something when they see me. Joy sadness happiness, doing a song that reminds them of good times and bad it’s all part of it. I like to make eye contact with people during me show, being them into it. Make them smile , let them know they mean something for that moment. Obviously they mean something all the time. But at that moment it’s just me and them. Life isn’t percent, I have to put on a smile and try to do the same for all of them.

Colby Keller:

So as a man impersonating a woman what are your thoughts on femininity and womanhood?

Priscilla Divine:

You are what you are.

Colby Keller:

Explain.

Priscilla Divine:

Well…As a queen I have 100% ability to transition myself into a woman. I need to fit that part. Walk in heels good have good skin nails hair. It’s almost taken to the extreme, always keeping in mind that people are watching what I do. I was raised by several strong women in my life. So I have lots of respect and admiration for all women. I’m a true feminist. I don’t do drag to take Anything away from real women. More to celebrate them. My mom has huge boobs, So do I. She loves jewelry, and so do I. My aunt always wore the finest clothes and big 80’s hair and well again so do I! I’d like to think I am the best of all parts of the people who raised me. They all had something to do with who I am. Both as jerry and Priscilla.

#lgbtqa #nonbinary #genderfluid #queermedia #queer

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katiestreatherphotography · 6 years

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Semester 2 - Expanded Photographic Practice Week 2 (WB 12.2.18) - Performance

Brief 2 was based on Performance and Audience, within our group we had the option of doing a performance in public and recording it via video or photography, a performance that happens as part of a presentation such as a video or a live performance during the presentation period. Initially on being given the brief I personally was very nervous about the connotations of a performance, it was something that somewhat unnerved me and quickly discovered that the other members of my group felt the same way as I did. However, because of this feeling towards the brief we profoundly struggled with what we would do for it. We decided to go away individually to think of some ideas we could do within the timeframe we had been set. I kept checking in with the members of my group, but we were still struggling with an initial idea. I personally wanted to do something around mental health so began to research online for some inspiration I also looked on Instagram and Pinterest to get a starting point for a potential idea. While flicking through some images on Pinterest I found an image of a model with her face obscured by some kind of animation which sparked an idea in my mind, I started to think about how I could incorporate that into a video and decided that because of myself and my groups aversion to performing that reciting some kind of reading or poem would be our best option in the circumstances.

I found a poem about suffering from a mental health condition which we would all be able to read and decided that if we all read a section on camera we could create an animation over the persons face, like in the photograph, to obscure their identity because mental health can affect anyone not particular groups of people. Due to the fact we were also limited to 2 minutes of footage the length of the chosen poem was short enough for the 2-minute timing. I then delivered my idea to my group via email for them to consider, this option gave us the opportunity to all shoot at home and give one person in the group the responsibility of editing, meaning each person could make an effective contribution to the outcome.

Collectively we decided to shoot the entire poem each so that I could edit the best bits together from each person, we also decided to shoot landscape and skim the shot to just a head and shoulders shot to create some similarity between the footage. I also decided that we would edit the footage into black and white in Adobe Premier Pro as well as add some cutaways to break up the video a little and add context and fluidity to it.

Artist Research - Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper is an American conceptual artist and Philosopher who was born on 20th September 1948 in New York. Piper's work addresses the concept of otherness and racism. Piper initially studied Art at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan then moved on to study Philosophy at the City College of New York and a Masters at Harvard University.

Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVcXb8En_Tw

My chosen piece from her work is the performance called 'Mythic Being' (1973), the piece begins with Piper transforming herself into a man with Afro hair and a large moustache and glasses. Throughout the footage she repeats a phase over and over again as she walks through the streets of New York, she performed publically as a 'third world, working class and overly hostile male'. The piece is a comment on the attitudes of the general public at the time towards race and the stereotypes associated with it. The piece is a success in my eyes as it highlights the aforementioned issues and is an interesting visual representation/analysis of the issue. There is a lot that can be learned from the simplicity of the piece which is definitely something I would like to bring forward into the project but using simple shots and framing that can help the performance flow together.

Ref: https://tiffobenii.wordpress.com/performing-gender/adrian-piper/

In conclusion I believe that overall the performance video was a success as it demonstrated what I wanted it to visually and came out looking how we had planned which was good. However due to our arguably limited knowledge myself and my team were unable to do the animation element of the performance. However, I think it's something we could achieve with more time to complete the brief. One problem that did arise was the difference in quality of the footage for example footage I recorded was filmed on a DSLR whereas footage my other team members did was shot on iPhone's so when I had to edit the footage together the variety in shooting quality made it difficult to flow together. It also was a little challenging to acquire the footage from members of my team as some members were not able to stick to our agreed deadlines which made the editing challenging initially. After explaining the work and presenting it a couple of people commented that the idea and its intentions maybe a bit too thought-out and that I should step back from the idea a little and let the audience’s ideas carry the performance.

#student #photography #expandedphotographicpractice #adrianpiper #mentalhealth #performance

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porchready · 7 years

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“I think your height is okay”

Grace says –>

Okay, here we go. I’m usually a pretty private person when it comes to relationships and social media. But here I am to tell you that for my most recent challenge, I tried something that I’ve always been a little skeptical of: online dating. Although I had never used dating websites or apps before, the idea of meeting up with people from the interwebs fascinates me. I should say that I am in part fascinated because I can completely understand the appeal of looking for a partner among strangers. I am in my mid-twenties, and in my professional, academic, and social lives, I meet many, many more women than I do men. On top of that, I’m at a phase in my degree program where I spend a lot of time working independently, so I’m not really meeting many people in general – male or female. So, recognizing how unlikely I am to meet single men in my day-to-day life (never mind single men who have any particular traits I’m interested in…), I figured I’d set up a few profiles and see what my generation has been up to all these years.

I set up profiles on three sites, though I mostly just use the one that requires the least effort (that’s the spirit, eh?). I have to say that so far, the experience has been largely a positive one. First, it was an interesting exercise to decide how to present myself to a group of total strangers. Even more interesting, I think, is seeing how others take on the task. Some profiles are relaxed, self-deprecating, and funny; some are let’s-settle-down-right-now serious; some not-so-subtlety indicate an interest in casual hookups. A number of profiles reflect arrogance or attitudes of mistrust, or suggest issues in past relationships. In these latter cases, I can appreciate the honesty, but I sometimes wonder about the motives and stories of the people behind them and of the people who respond to such profiles. I think about how the internet mushes us all together – people of varying expectations, experiences, motives, and desires – in a way that we wouldn’t otherwise come into contact. Given that offline, we mostly meet and retain contacts based on shared interests, values, backgrounds, and so forth, to me, the idea of injecting pseudo-random contacts into social networks is fascinating.

On some of the sites and apps, your profile asks you not only to describe yourself, but also to articulate what you are looking for in a partner. That was, and continues to be, another interesting exercise for me: distilling what is negotiable from what is not. Personally, my faith has been a particularly complicated aspect of this, as the field narrows quite a bit when I restrict the pool of eligible mid-to-upper-20s bachelors to just those who describe themselves Christian in their dating profile. This is before, of course, requiring Christian identity to intersect with other qualities I am looking for. For now, I’m passing on self-described atheists and going case-by-case on the rest. My reasons include: what does “spiritual but not religious” even mean?; considerable heterogeneity among people of any religion; and the permissible fluidity of beliefs for everyone, from any position. This stuff is hard.

Now, once my profiles were up, I started to realize something that I didn’t expect but should have seen coming: the online dating experience is intensely gendered. The model of who-messages-whom can differ by site, but on the site I use most, all I’ve had to do is fill out my profile and then filter through messages in my inbox. (Any clue why that’s the site I use most?!) Really, it is bizarre to me that I can be this lazy while men sort through profiles and try to come up with customized one-liners. I feel maybe a bit guilty for perpetuating this gendered experience through my preferential use of this site and my failure to initiate conversations. Yet here am I: a lazy, bad feminist.

Okay, and speaking of customized one-liners sent to this lazy, bad feminist, you should know that you get some real gems from time-to-time. My favorite so far has been a message from a young man who assigned a more literal meaning to my username than I had intended. The message appeared beside the man’s very serious profile picture; he is young and blonde, with a stern face. After looking through a list of messages from other men asking about my travels, my interest in public health, my degree program, and so forth, I clicked on this message to see:

“giraffe?

I think your height is okay”

I laughed out loud, just imagining the guy in that picture looking with a puzzled expression at my 5’8″ frame, and then saying those words to me in real life. Maybe you had to be there. Trust me, it was funny.

Now, this may sound a little scandalous to those who have never used a dating app, but another thing that has been new and strange to me is this idea of going on dates with multiple people in a short period of time. I think the general expectation with these sites and apps is that everyone’s shopping around, and you assume non-exclusivity until otherwise decided. I can see how that makes sense, considering that you’re really not invested in anyone you’re meeting for the first time. Given that the second date rate is likely very low, it would be extremely inefficient to talk to people only one at a time… and isn’t online dating sort of a means of increasing efficiency? Still, it does feel weird!

I have met up with some people offline, and I am relieved (though for story-telling purposes, maybe a touch disappointed) that I have nothing crazy to report. I treat the dates pretty casually and stick to coffee or drinks when I’m the one to suggest a place, as I think that in most cases, it takes just a few minutes to screen for second-date interest. Really, though, even when it’s clear that a second date isn’t on the horizon, the dates haven’t been any more awkward than grabbing drinks with a new colleague, neighbor, friend-of-a-friend, etc. Because of these dates, I’ve also checked out a couple of new places and stepped away from my laptop a little more. Those seem like healthy things to do no matter the reason.

I’m sure that I, like most people, will become more cynical about this whole thing over time. But at least for now, meeting strangers from the internet has been a rather interesting and even comical new thing in my life. Online dating lives on in my mind as an interesting cultural practice, though one which is mercifully less awkward than I (as a dispassionate observer) had assumed... and I am at peace with my participation in it.

Okay Mom, for your challenge, I’ve got a question for you. Avid skeptic of all things as I am, I’m currently reading a book called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. In it, Keller, a pastor in New York City, discusses arguments in support of and opposition to Christian beliefs. Inspired by some of what I’ve been reading in there, I want to ask you: To what extent have your beliefs about God changed throughout your life? Does the God you believe in now resemble the God you believed in during your childhood and early adult years?

#onlinedating #strangerdanger #dating #challenge #motherdaughter

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