The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken by Peter Mishler

I keep thinking about this tweet, how meaningful and reassuring it was that when one pillar of my childhoods crumbled, the others stepped forward to show they would continue to shoulder the remaining weight all their own.

And this phrase in particular — “I do not think these things of you” — is such a quintessential Piercian refrain. It’s direct in a way that cuts to the core of the argument. It’s a little old fashioned, a bit clunky in its plainness. It acknowledges the distasteful power an argument may hold while simultaneously denying it room to breathe.

I keep hearing that thing Tammy said about Alanna and Kel—which itself is not particularly meaningful to me—playing in my head over and over like a mantra. Because it’s catchy.

“Alanna prefers “Sir” because she was making a point. Kel prefers “Lady Knight” because she’s making a different point.”

…The clarity! The concision! The oddly plain, repetitive twist, easily avoided, that nonetheless persists and makes you stumble.

The statement cuts straight to the point, but it leaves space for you to draw the conclusion yourself. It’s instructive but not pedagogical. It’s a bit awkward, but somehow that works in its favor.

It’s a way Tammy has of writing that I (an overwriter, an overthinker) have held up in my head as a model for years. As much as I am grateful for Tammy’s consistent stance on the right side of the fight for justice, I am also grateful for her specific way with words: simple, blunt, and unadorned, which has meant something to me for so long.

I’m calling this segment

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* Just Ace Things *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

me at 1 pm: borderline comatose, eyes need to be propped open, behaviorally indistinguishable from lichen

me at 1 am: planning an expedition to neptune, listening to three songs at once, blood has become liquid copper

You could tell Hasan was uncomfortable having to be that blunt, but the man told no lies. People of color have to be absolutely stunning to get cast in pretty much anything (unless they’re maybe playing villains), but white people can look like a crusty potato or soured bread pudding and still lead a franchise or a tv series.

Mt. Konjuh, Zlaca River, Banovici, Bosnia | Mevludin Sejmenovic

*gains exp from not having a panic attack in home depot*

I am a hockey blog, but tbh this the best Gritty take I’ve seen. Cities should just have monsters, sports or no sports.

Poem Bangkok fall/winter 2019 “Eternity In An Hour”

So, like the post I reblogged a moment ago said, Check, Please is about growing up. However, the problem is the way the narrative equates growing up with coming out and especially the way this places a sort of value judgement on Kent and Whiskey compared to Jack and Bitty.

These are the only canon queer men in the story, and all of them have good reasons to be closeted: Bitty is afraid of his parents' reaction, Jack and Whiskey are both hoping to get onto an NHL team and Kent is on a team with at least one openly homophobic member.

Jack and Bitty's problems are resolved by them making a spur-of-the-moment decision to kiss, which was made possible by the Falcs being very accepting of them (there is one reference to a homophobic comment, but it's not talked about at all) and by Bitty knowing that even if his parents were to take it badly, he is dating a millionaire and is not financially dependent on his parents accepting him.

However, the situation is different for Kent and Whiskey. Whiskey is worried no NHL team will want to sign him if they know he is queer, and Kent knows that at least one of his teammates would not accept him. And both of those are perfectly reasonable assumptions to make! Neither of them is the son of a hockey legend! Their careers could easily be negatively affected!

By showing Jack and Bitty as more mature than Kent and Whiskey because they came out, the narrative in Check, Please! is pushing the idea that every queer person should be publicly out and suggesting it is immature for a person to rather play the sport they love and have a well-paying job than to take the risk that coming out in a homophobic environment is.

is anyone else just really fucking sick and tired of pointless plots and meaningless endings that don’t make any sense for character development or foreshadowing like game of thrones, the 100, supernatural, how i met your mother, lost, the list goes on and fucking on. when will it end? when will years of angst and death and development mean something in the end? when will the feeling of “i wasted years of my life watching this and it all meant nothing” end? it’s not cool. it’s not subversive. it’s not innovative. it’s an insult to every fan, every cast member, and every character. i’m so tired of modern media. the only bright side to this mess is that it’s teaching people how NOT to tell the story.

oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”

Absolutely living for the fact that in ancient Greece, it was said that when Apollo was drunk he created people with the “wrong” genitalia,, which, first of all, means that 1. trans people are not a new thing, we’ve always been here and we’ve always found ways to justify and explain our existence, and 2. the way that we chose to explain ourselves at one point was, “Yeah, the sun was wasted as hell when he made me, but it’s cool.” and that is fucking awesome

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Keynote Address at ADL’s 2019 Never Is Now Summit on Anti-Semitism and Hate