“long hair on guys doesn’t make them less masculine. think keanu reeves, jason momoa, danny trejo, or the guy at your local dive bar who rides a motorcycle”
*the crowd nods*
“so long hair doesn’t necessarily determine masculinity”
*the crowd, more hesitant, still nodding*
“butches can have long hair—“
*GUNSHOT*
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One of the most memorable interactions was Saturday. Into our booth strolls a small family, tempted by free samples of freshly brewed tea. We chatter and give them the spiel, that the tea is character merch and we’re a cozy health-based app called Forage Friends.
The young girl zeroes in on our pride pins.
“They have my pin!” She says excitedly. “They have my flag!”
The dad blinks. He is surprised, but also calm and positive when he sees it’s the lesbian flag. “Oh. That’s… different from what you told me.”
“That was months ago, dad.” And she rolls her eyes. Definitely a teenager.
I turn to him and say, “Yeah, dad.” And we share a little laugh about it.
He says, “No, it’s great. That’s amazing, honey. It was just news to me.”
“Well, I guess I just decided to stop lying to myself. About liking guys. Like right now.”
A little lesbian just came out to her dad and he was super cool about it.
I’m standing there in my tie-dye mask and my cheery blue apron pouring tea and making small talk and I’m trying really hard not to cry or compare it to my experience, the fire & brimstone, the disgust, the conditional acceptance as long as I never bring it up.
So as this beautiful bonding is going on, the girl’s even younger brother turns his gaze around. He’s in a snorlax hoodie and bored and wants to go look at the swords across the hall. But on the other side of our booth….
“WHY DO PEOPLE DRAW THAT?” He asks loudly, and we all turn to our neighboring booth.
Our neighbors were extremely lovely people. Every time we had a break we would talk, and we became good friends over the weekend. They kept apologizing that their booth was next to ours and we kept repeating that it was totally fine. Their booth was great. I even bought their merchandise.
The thing that was so contentious, that they felt the need to apologize for, was that they were selling explicit titty hentai stickers of popular characters. They were censored with little yellow R18 labels but the content was very clear.
So back to the family: I freeze and immediately go somewhere else to let dad handle this question. With adult customers I’ve been loud and positive about our neighbors. (“Man, how has it been boothing next to them?” It’s been great! They bring a lot of foot traffic and they’re kind and wonderful professional neighbors. If anything it’s a fun juxtaposition. We believe in artistic freedom. I bought a sticker too!)
But this is a kid, it’s not my place to explain anything…. But I was extremely curious about what this chill dad would say.
“Well,” dad says with a long measured silence between each word. “Sometimes people are horny.”
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People don't like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn't be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they're basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.
Like it's just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like "we're using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can" and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.
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My father was martyred by Israel on 10 October 2023 after sacrificing his care in hospital so the injured children could take priority. Today would have been his 60th birthday. He was always selfless, kind, and giving for others. My father gave up everything for me to be able to have a better life, because that is what he always dreamed for me and my sister. The world suffered a great loss when he died, and my heart is always with him and every Palestinian who has lost someone.
In his honour and memory, I would love for anyone who is able to do so to consider donating to The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
The PCRF is an amazing organisation that does so much for those in Gaza right now, including helping provide food, water and medicine. You can donate any amount you are able to- there is no minimum! My father would have given his very last cent if he saw the way Palestine was continuing to suffer after over 100 days with this limited aid, so I know celebrating him by helping others is the least he would have wanted.
I saw @parrot-parent do a very successful donation match and I thought it was such a good idea so I will also match all donations up to $500! If you feel comfortable sending me proof of the amount of your donation, I will match it as a donation at the end of February. (My messages are set to mutuals only, but if you donate and we aren’t mutuals if you send an ask with the proof I will make sure to answer it privately.)
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Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?
Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.
All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)
But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.
But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.
I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?
It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.
Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.
Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)
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"internet historian's alt-right anyways" "great day to have never liked james somerton" "never even heard of illuminaughtii before this lol"
that's great buddy but don't go around thinking you're immune to this. if you're not looking for plagiarism, you likely won't notice it unless its egregiously obvious. hell, you've probably consumed plagiarized content without even realizing it. even hbomb pointed out that these people disguised what they presented pretty well as long as you didn't try and dig deeper. don't come away just thinking of this as a callout piece, take this as an important lesson about vetting your sources. if googling scripts in quotes was enough to expose the original, we should all start doing that shit!!
edit: it got a little too doomer-y a little too fast so one quick addition
this is hbomb's curated playlist of queer creators, many of whom were victims of plagiarism
this is producer kat on reddit calling for any more plagiarism discoveries and for queer content creators to be uplifted
please take some time to uplift these creators and recommend any you know! if you can help uncover more of the original creators whose work was lifted that would be great too :)
UPDATE- From Hbomb's twitter: "We're in the process of cataloguing everyone James Somerton plagiarised and finding their contact information. Which is quite a task, so to help us out: If you see this and happen to be one of the people Somerton stole from, please email us at
[email protected]"
edit 2:
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