#it might make my queerness a fuck ton more visible
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The Lacy Tree Philo and this Monstera are duking it out for my heart. They're both in the same building too, though on completely opposite sides. This is my favorite building to work, not just because of the incredible plants (the Philo has two new leaves and they're so soft!!!), but also because it has a bunch of chalk and white boards (which, ngl, I feel a bit guilty about cleaning). Sometimes people write things that remind me that humans can be good too... and I need that in my life (though a Monstersa I couldn't fit through my front door wouldn't hurt 😅).
#if you're wondering I buzzed my head cus I straight up don't tolerate the heat (never have)#I buzz my head every summer then grow it out through the cold months#it might make my queerness a fuck ton more visible#but no one on campus gives a fuck about that sooo.........#lol you can't even see my tats on my head cus it was so difficult to get the Monstera and my head in frame#plants#plantblr#houseplants#vines#Monstera#i don't know if this is large form or just a really big specimen#but jfc I about died when I saw it
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might as well do a little TDOV promo, esp since ive got some new folks following me. hi, im rath! im a queer nonbinary game designer, and ive written a bunch of ttrpgs!
some quick blurbs under the readmore
BIG PROJECTS:
- Disparateum, a game of exploring a city at the crossroads of many worlds. dance through dreams, swordfight your reflection, explore a fractal museum, scale the surface of your own soul, and more!
- KATABASIS, fight your way out of a concrete afterlife as you try and return to life. your armor, weapons, and tools are crafted from your emotional baggage, and the monsters and environments youll face are all splintered and confused reflections of the world you're struggling to return to.
- [BXLLET>, a post-apocalyptic cowboy game where bullets are your XP, and every shot fired kills your target. has a ton of supplements and reimaginings.
SMALL PROJECTS:
- Charcuterie, three zine collections. the first two are compilations of small games ive written and released in various forms, the third is short stories and poetry. messy, weird, barely edited, stuffed with doodles, a lot of fun.
- Stationkeeping, a small Animal Crossing-inspired game about renovating a dinky space station, slowly expanding it out and occasionally meeting aliens or other players on their own journeys. played on index cards you carry with you and fill out as you do various things in your life.
- Maybe One Day, It'll Be Enough - a game about war gods sentenced to infinite community service for their crimes. played by throwing a ball against a brick wall. for hours. originally released as a tumblr post here.
- NOT WEAVERDICE, half a core mechanic for a superhero game, half a ramble about superhero ttrpgs and how to have fun with them. im currently working on a game that expands out this idea, called Unskilled Labor.
- MORTAL POP!BAT, a 616-page Funko Pop wargame. yeah, im including it in the small projects category. fuck you.
- Wintergreen, an OSR game that fits inside a mint tin. one of my earliest released games, still has some pretty cute ideas.
thanks for checking this all out, it means the world! the last few months have been pretty tight, and every little bit of support really does make a difference. happy trans day of visibility everyone, love yall!
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Some thoughts on Carnival Row (spoilers both seasons)-
- this show feels like a remake of a late 90’s to early aughts cartoon but with a gritty adult vibe. I say this with affection.
-I think if this was maybe a movie or maybe they had just gone a slightly different direction this would have really taken off. Even as is though it think it’s vastly underrated, like it has problems -oh boy does it-, but the steampunk-ish early 20th century vibe plus fantasy set in an entirely new world is cool. Just the vibes, they are great. (Ps it could actually be gaslight punk or something).
- I really hope the “New Dawn” revolutionary group from the Pact might be good guys? Like not perfect, but I’d like the communists to maybe make some lasting good change on the world? I’m probably putting my clown make up on with that a little. On the other hand I am deeply pessimistic they are going to also be the villains. I hope I’m wrong, I hope they are a nuanced faction which does offer support but maybe is doing some fucked up stuff too, which just pales in comparison to the rest of the world atm.
- I wish the Fae were more like, visibly on screen queer and poly instead of just minor lip service to back up the mostly obscure world building for that. The poly part I get is slightly more… a sign of some progress in that even talking about it as a good thing is a positive. But this could be more queer. (I got a whole thing about how it seems like Amazon especially doesn’t like mlm on screen but that does extend to queer people as a whole).
- there is a fuck ton of worldbuilding and I’m sad we won’t be able to see much more of it. I think it could be really neat.
Ok so, plot opinions time.
- I enjoy Imogen and Agreaus but they really are just in a different show, I’m hopeful their involvement with the New Dawn is going to lead to them being used to support the Row and the Fae in the Burgue. Tbf I’m not really annoyed by them just off doing whatever, I just think it’s kinda funny, but it is a show.
- plot point 2. Flying into the Burgue State dinner was… a choice. A very dangerous and likely deadly one. The core “show them what is happening to us and how we are suffering” is good but like… these people are just inches from, uhhh, mass murder -well, more of it? Dahlia deciding she *had* to be the one to go was odd to me, because it seemed like a death mission right? The power play of showing up to that dinner, when they aren’t even supposed to be able to leave the Row, well that’s a threat and like I said solutions in the Burgue are, um, very death oriented at the moment. Which, I thought maybe Dahlia might be smart enough to try a “how about you do that and I will coordinate from here (and hopefully you die because I hate you)” to Vin. But, nope she went herself with a handful of others most of whom died -though I think it wasn’t at the dinner, I need to rewatch. The woman with Bas Dubh (is that black death? It’s not translated for me, but it’s pretty much just Irish yea? I don’t recall the meaning of “bas” If any [edit yea it’s Black Death]) anyway she was shot. So. Idk if the garnering sympathy worked. Personally I think maybe a gathering of both common people and some of the politicians would have been most ideal. But I know the point was stopping Philo, bringing us too-
- Philo, really dude? You hid you half fae status your entire life -because the discrimination is so bad in the Burgue- and now it’s “oh now that I’ve revealed that, I can totally uh, convince all these violent bigots to listen to me -someone they no longer see as a person- that their leader is, illegitimate and murder-y?” What? Again, the solutions are very murder oriented and idk, doubt they will listen. Maybe I’m being the asshole pessimist here idk, but I just don’t think that’s how a systems like that works.
- counterpoint to the general murderous political environment in the Burgue. Primarily from seeing some of the Burgue owner class being like “this whole confining our workforce with a police state is really hurting our bottom line” was something. I hope, but doubt, it will be explored more. For instance, some of them should be plotting a coup. B/c when the government begins to threaten their bottom line many companies will decide “how get rid of this?” And choose “overthrow the whole government, consequences be damned”.
- I think it’s was a Pact (feudalist) dignitary or soldier who shot the woman with Bas Dubh, which could indicate that they are in fact the worse guys in that conflict and the New Dawn could be primarily helpful later on.
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So I recently made a carrd for my twitter profile - which isn't a mrmallard account, because I made it at a time when I wanted to talk about stuff I didn't want irl people to be able to find. It's like an anime profile picture blog, but it's a total pisstake because it's not like an anime girl or a guy that people are simping for, it's an ugly fantasy creature I perceive as being similar to myself.
One of the paragraphs I made in it is this:
"anti-bi/trans/ace discourse has poisoned the queer community and I don't abide by any of that. I've adopted the term queer with open arms, and as far as the acronym goes my favorite iteration is LGBTQIA+."
The last I remember, non-binary folks are counted under the trans umbrella as a measure of solidarity. But I do want to point out that as far as visibility goes, non-binary identities are both counted under the T and/or relegated to the + of that acronym. They're not actually visible by themselves.
I think this observation is significant because I think I'm seeing an uptick in non-binary backlash within the queer community.
I could just go "well I already said that anti-bi/trans/ace backlash has poisoned the community, and I accept queer as a broader identity for broader diversity - if I count non-binary as an identity under the trans ladder or uplift the broader label of queer I've done my part" - but frankly I don't think I've done a whole lot in uplifting non-binary folks specifically. And in an environment where I perceive non-binary backlash as being on the rise, I feel a need to say something more substantial.
So here it is.
I've seen a trans webcomic artist revise their gender identity recently and refer to themselves as they/them, incorporating aspects of both masculinity and femininity into their identity where one of those was preferred previously. When that happened, they got a ton of messages - not explicitly hateful, but entitled and overbearing - going "oh but I preferred you before, you made such a good [gender], I'll miss you" - and I just want to say, fucking what
They're still the same person with the same inherent value they always had. What right do you have to go "oh don't change, I'll miss who you used to be"? If you want to feel like that behind closed doors, where there's an adjustment period, fine - people change and sometimes you need to adjust. No harm, no foul. But why would you send that to someone who's just taken a massive risk in changing their pronouns?
That's their decision to make, and your preference for their former presentation should not be leveraged against them as guilt because you haven't come to terms with their gender identity yet.
I say that in regards to both people who present as non-binary after being cis for their whole lives, or people who have transitioned to another gender before settling on non-binary as an identity. Because it does go both ways, because gender is complicated and personal and doesn't follow a linear path for everybody.
And just today, I saw a blog I've been following for years get involved in discourse because they added they/them pronouns to their blog. I've known them for years, back when I was a different person who hadn't matured a great deal - we don't talk much, but I care about them. And they were upset because people had been starting discourse about their gender identity and their sexuality.
And it makes me incredibly mad, because they're one of the most open, insightful and critically minded people I know - not "critically minded" in the sense of "everything has something wrong with it", but in the sense of "nuance and value are present in things that more zealous people might paint a whole other picture of based on a kneejerk reaction".
Just as an example, I've been a zealot against a particular show in the past, and their engagement with that show helped me calm down and express interest in it because they were engaging with it on their terms. What I had taken issue with was this massive monolithic fan zeitgeist that painted this whole other picture of what the show was, but this person's sincere and earnest engagement with the show was the best representation of it for someone who was on the fence about it. They're a massively insightful and intelligent person who I've been glad to know for so long.
But because they've revised their feelings on their sexuality and gender, people feel entitled to call them things that don't apply to them? They feel entitled to start discourse about another person's identity? Who the fuck makes a public argument out of someone else's gender identity and sexuality? When they say "I feel like this", why do you feel a need to give them a label YOU think fits them best rather than the decision they've come to?
Because I doubt this happened overnight, at the drop of a hat. This is the end result of a period of introspection and discovery, unique to this specific person. To push your own interpretation of their sexuality and their gender identity onto them is to invalidate what they've been through. It's incredibly disrespectful.
When someone discovers something about their gender and/or sexuality, why do third parties feel a need to police them on it? To put them in broad boxes and narrow labels against their will, when they're hammering out the specifics based on their own introspection and coming to terms with that on their own? You are not the arbiter of who is what. This is their journey, their identity to develop.
It's just... let people discover and revise their own gender identity without projecting your own feelings and biases into it. If someone asks "hey I've been feeling these things lately, what do you guys think?" - within a respectful range of conversation, you might be able to discuss their gender and sexuality and stuff. But when they go "I've been feeling like this and come to this conclusion", you don't get to say "but I'll miss the old you", or "well actually you're this now, you need to take your drama to this community because this is who I've decided you are".
If the issue is personal and you need time to adjust, that's on your time. You shouldn't project that onto them, because they're the same person they always were. They're just changing a little bit, and when you've come to terms with that, they'll still be the same person you enjoyed being around. So don't go "I'll miss you", because their gender identity isn't "them". They, the person, are not going anywhere - what you miss is something you have no right to leverage over them.
And it should go without saying, but don't turn a person's gender and sexuality into a public fucking argument and don't try to force someone else into a box based on your own values.
It might not be entirely comparable, but if I told you that your favourite dessert was ice cream after you tell me you prefer waffles and churros with ice cream rather than without it, you'd probably hate that because no-one gets to decide your preferences but you. Just because you like waffles and churros with ice cream, doesn't mean I get to say you objectively prefer ice cream over both waffles and churros or whatever deranged decision I've come to make. That's not my call to make.
Don't force labels on people, and don't argue about what their gender/sexuality "really" is rather than what they say it is. This isn't a case where a murderer says they're not a murderer and you have to prove they are a murderer. This is a person expressing a personal identity that they've come to express after a period of introspection and discovery, and they're the only person who gets to decide what that means. Gender and sexuality are incredibly personal and nuanced concepts that exist within everyone, and you can't sort someone in a neat and tidy box based on your own values. That's their decision to make.
Let non-binary people be non-binary, and don't hold your own idea about who they are against them.
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Having a really weird day.
It’s a weird one!
I’m all over the place.
Or it feels like it.
Mostly I’m just. Ricocheting around this one expansive building in my dumb sprawling brain labyrinth - the one about healthcare.
Trying to hunt down a new PCP.
Trying to find out HOW to hunt down a new PCP without wasting tons of time. I need one that isn’t going to do like my last team did. I need people who won’t fall for the siren lure of ingrained socially-supported medical fatphobia at the expense of the Hippocratic Oath. I need a healthcare team that actually provides care. I need queer acceptance. I need my concerns to be taken with seriousness and respect - and I need a doctor who won’t just handwave everything away because it’s quicker and easier to chalk it up to some other part of my very messy medical situation. I need a professional who will do their due diligence, and run the diagnostics, and make decisions based on results and data - not their personal mythical psychic assumption senses.
I need to know these things BEFORE wasting time and effort and energy and money on an appointment.
And nearly none of this is available information. Doctors are under no social pressure or obligation to make this sort of information publicly available. And “customer reviews” are rare and unreliable. The greatest failures result in death, and those people can’t very well complain, can they? The next greatest failures result in defeat and exhaustion - and those aren’t conditions conducive to leaving reviews, either. Survival, first and foremost.
I’m a perfect example of that.
Could I try to leave reviews about my last doctor in every corner I can find online that will grant me the space? Yes, I could.
Am I going to? No. I don’t have the time or energy.
Stressing about a dentist. Not thinking about the dentist. So much fucking trauma oh my god just don’t think about it. But these broken teeth though. I need a dentist.
How bad will it all actually be?
It’ll be bad. It’ll be worse than I’m prepared to handle. Just like last time.
I’d love to be able to smile again. I’d love to have reasons to smile, first, of course. But it’d be nice not to be greeted by chipped holes and visible dark grey fillings that look and feel worse than the “cavities” they supposedly replaced.
It would also be nice if my jaw wasn’t lopsided. If my teeth lined up, instead of my bottom jaw being ~4mm off center. It didn’t used to be that bad. It was always a little off - the way some of my bottom teeth grew in as a kid. Was never severe enough to merit braces. Or maybe we just couldn’t afford braces. But then after some cavities and breaking teeth and botched cavity fillings that completely changed the topography of my bite... my jaw has gradually resettled, and it has done so. To the left.
But mostly I need my wisdom teeth. Fixed. Removed. I don’t know if they can be salvaged. I thought I was okay with losing them all, but the more I’ve thought about it, and thought about how my jaw has already shifted, the more scared I am that fully removing them will make it all worse. I have the space for them. If they’re removed, I’m just going to have... weird empty space?? And no teeth there for when I’m chewing??
Teeth are so stupid. I hate them. I need them.
Mental health. Hahahaha. But for real. A psych who won’t just try to shove prozac on me. One who will give me the time of day to go through diagnosis criteria for things beyond the Big D. Sure my depression is bad, and it’s at the front of my miserable mental marching band, but my anxiety has got to the point where I’ve got painful physical symptoms, and my un-diagnosed/untreated adhd sure isn’t making any of that easier. Maybe I could finally get a lucky break with medication/treatment for one of those, and actually get some relief. Especially with the anxiety and adhd. I feel like there might be less total drugs available? So less total experimentation possible?? Maybe just wishful thinking...
And... therapy? Actual therapy??? Maybe??? I’m jaded as cynical as fuck and I know a lot of methods of therapy won’t work for me BECAUSE of how my particular pudding cup of brain fuck is mis-wired - but I’d love help. I want and need help. But it has to actually BE help. “Sometimes just talking it out helps” NOPE. N-O-P-E. I’m long past that point, honey darling dear!! I need actionable help! Techniques, challenges, tools - not just a sympathetic ear. Believe it or not, I’ve got that covered! Me, myself, and I - oh, we talk. We talk PLENTY. Relentlessly, endlessly, brutally - it’s covered.
I learned what city he lives in.
I looked it up.
I could be there in 14 hours. It would take about $130 in gas, though. One-way.
It’s just slightly further than Manning - the place I used to stop overnight on my FL trips. It’s 120 miles further west. That’s it. A handful of hours between the two places.
It’s a fairly small city. Low cost of living. Low minimum wage, as a result - matches federal. It’s right against the state border. Hell, it might technically span into the adjoining state.
It has a surprising amount of golf course land. Population is not majority-white.
I don’t want to overdo this. But I can’t help how badly I want to know things when I’m interested. When I care.
My heart hurts. I hate that I’m like this.
I wanted to sleep more. I’ve been up for about 4 hours. Before that, I slept for maybe 3? And before that I was up for... 5? And before that, I was in bed most of yesterday, but it was just wishing I was sleeping for hours and hours and hours, and only actually being asleep for about 2.
I ate leftovers for dinner, instead of what was made. I had reheated pasta with meat sauce and veggies, instead of a plain breaded chicken patty and More Fucking Potatoes (pierogies). I think my brother ate what I didn’t. Which is fine. No leftovers to juggle. No food wasted.
I ate some of sister’s culinary leftovers for breakfast. Some risotto. Not sure exactly what kind. Apparently it came home with shrimp - mom ate those. I don’t know if I’ve had risotto before. It was good, but I took too much and it was tasting extra salty before I tapped out.
I made a cup of coffee again, too.
I’m beginning to see the caffeine/adhd stability correlation in myself. Don’t know how to feel about that.
I need to double-drive again today. Pick sister up. Drop sister off.
I wanted to try to shop a bit yesterday, but I was way too tired.
I was also supposed to have a friend help me tackle some of the doctor-hunting yesterday, too. But... too tired.
It’s 10 AM. I’ve got 2.5 hours until I need to drive.
I’m restless.
I’m tired.
I probably can’t sleep but I’m going to try I guess.
Or just sit here stalling out for 150 straight minutes until I have to go. idk.
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(Friend, here's a fic meme for you!) Ask meme time! Pick three fics you have written, post a favorite section of each and explain why it is your favorite. Then, pass it on! :D
Ah, thank you so much, my friend!! Putting this under a read more since it’s probably gonna get kinda long :D
01. two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl (the anatomy of apocalypse. remix).
A blast from the past for this one but it’s been Big Mood for me lately, so. This is a West Wing story, and a remix of a post-apoca Sam/CJ piece that I absolutely adore by furies.
When it is her time to sleep, he sits on the burnt ground and watches the cavernous expanse of thick ashen clouds that conceals the stars that travelers once used to light their way home. Even the illuminating glow of Polaris cannot pierce these clouds, but it is of no consequence: there is little use for celestial navigation when they have no terrestrial destination.
In a perpetual waking nightmare they trudge on through the wasteland of the world, communicating mostly through gestures, if at all. There is little to say that isn't as empty as they are, and as words begin to lose their meaning he tries, desperately, to hold onto language, the last best vestige of his humanity. When he can no longer summon the will to create sentences, he murmurs hollow words, any words he can recall, under invisible stars that died millions of years before he did. Stars are really only dead husks of gas and flame that look alive unless you know better, unless you know that what you're seeing is a lie that is older than the world.
When he looks at her he sees the stars. When he looks for the stars he sees nothing.
Somewhere above the smoke and ash and sulfuric acid aerosol there are still stars, and among them is Galileo. Centuries ago Galileo Galilei looked up at the stars, and for performing that miracle they told him that he was a sinner. Now he wanders a celestial battlefield littered with dead and dying heavenly bodies, exiled for eternity to the vast cold vacuum of space.
Galileo. He said it right, once. Now he says nothing.
The original story is all from CJ’s perspective so my remix is from Sam’s, which was an excuse to lean into language and the importance of it, how much Sam tries to cling to his own humanity after the world ends by turning it into story, or, when there is a lack of a cohesive narrative for his life any longer, into any words he can still find. It’s about two people who are falling apart. It’s bleak. There is not a lot of hope in it. It’s just two people slowly unraveling but determined to live anyway, which maybe is something I connect pretty strongly to at this moment in time!!!! This story also contains the line, “if wishes were horses, they would all have pale riders,” which I’m not gonna lie is one of my favorite lines I have ever written and i stopped trying to top it years ago because probably I will not.
02. you do not have to be good.
He cracks a shit ton of eggs into a flour well and wonders if Parker and Hardison are aware that where he comes from, feeding someone is sort of a silent I love you. He frowns at the eggs. Thinks about Hardison buying this place. Thinks about Parker not really seeing anything special about food until recently. Hardison knows, probably, that he feeds people because he loves them. Parker almost certainly doesn't.
He thinks of how he might explain that to her, and it gets complicated pretty quick, because the truth is that where he's from, food can also sort of be a silent fuck you, considering the number of times he's been to a potluck where something like ten different little old ladies brought the same recipe, each secretly thinking theirs was better than you-know-who's. He can still hear the whispered accusations, all these years later. I just saw Flora come through the front door with her casserole dish. You know she puts carrots in that, don't you? Yes, you heard me right. Carrots.
He laughs a little at that. Maybe not everything from home was bad, even if it does seem to have left him with enough baggage to fill a damn shipping container. He hadn't really realized how much he'd been resenting that lately until now, but as he carefully mixes eggs and flour together with a fork, he feels a little of that hurt slipping away. As far as he's concerned, whatever he grew up with, all this internalized whatever, was sort of like a potluck: you go down the line and fill your plate and sometimes you take shit you don't want because it makes other people happy, but in the end you eat what you like, and then later when Miss Flora isn't looking you dump the rest of the shit on your plate in the trash because goddamn, her corn casserole is the worst one you've ever tasted. Who puts carrots in that? The devil, probably.
By the time the eggs and the flour are a big ball of dough underneath his hands, he's chuckling to himself, and he honestly feels a whole lot better about everything. The knot of anxious tension that's been sitting in the pit of his stomach since he and Hardison had that talk is gone. Whoever he is, whatever he is, it'll come together. He just picked up a lot of shit that wasn't his, that's all, but it's not who he is, and he doesn't have to keep it. It's just a potluck. It's shitty corn casserole. It's okay. He can toss it out and make a better one.
I dumped a lot (A LOT) of my other Southern/Heartland queer feelings into this brace of Eliot-centric stories for Leverage fandom earlier this year, and this is maybe one of the most Me parts of the whole thing, because I’ve given myself the Potluck Talk on and off for at least twenty years now. The attitudes about food and potlucks and the battles between potluck cooks described here are also 100% pulled from my real life, and that’s why this is my favorite. This is just me, working through my shit while cooking, only it’s Eliot, too. We love a convenient excuse to tell our own stories and work through our own shit with fanfiction, right?
03. visible cities
This is an old The Phantom Tollbooth piece that I wrote for Yuletide several years ago, and since Yuletide signups are opening and I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s the opening bit from this piece:
Many long years have passed since Milo's journey through the kingdom of Wisdom. He is older now, which is to be expected: hardly anyone grows younger in the course of many long years, though the lessons he learned as a boy have kept his heart lighter than most.
The way into other worlds had been easy enough to find, once he knew where to look, and oh, the things he has seen.
Still, as exciting as his life has been, he thinks of his friends from Wisdom often, especially Tock, especially lately, for he never seems to have enough time. There's always something to see, something to do. There are mountains to climb and oceans to swim, and he's been climbing and swimming for so long now that he has quite forgotten what it is to do something that is entirely for himself.
"I'm as tired as can be," he murmurs, a wistful smile on his face as he strolls home, careful as ever to take in all of the sights along the way, for no matter how many times he walks this path, he always finds something new to delight him.
When he arrives at home, there is a box waiting for him, the packaging the same wonderful blue that he remembers from his childhood, and he smiles so brightly that an unhappy gentleman passing by the window at that exact moment suddenly remembers all of the kind things anyone had ever done for him and immediately hurries home to hug his children.
I just love this book so much, it was very much a Formative Book for me, and when I got this Yuletide assignment I did my best to write sort of a love letter to other media through the vehicle of this story. This passage in particular I like because I like the thought of Milo as an older man, still carrying the lessons he learned so long ago with him now. And I really liked the guy outside running home to hug his kids. It felt Very like the book to me, the book is full of those kinds of things and it’s one of the reasons I love it, this way that Milo is connected to other people even when he doesn’t know them, because...we are, and it’s a small detail, but it’s why I like this bit of the story.
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There’s Something Rotten in Las Vegas (It’s Clexacon)
Hey y’all, I’m back again with my feelings about Clexacon. This is my 3rd year going to the convention, and sadly it’ll likely be my last. This will be a longgggggg post, so I’ll be putting it under a cut. So if you want to hear about my experience at Clexacon 2019, here you go:
Show! Me! The! Money! (No Seriously, Where’s it Going???)
One of my biggest concerns (among the many that I have) is how this convention is now an opportunity to grab as much money as it can from its LGBTQ audience. I’ll start with the con itself, and then work all the way through to its “affiliates”.
If you wanted to do anything at Clexacon that was not the actual convention itself, you were required to pay an additional fee. I personally went to the Academic Lab, which was an additional $75 on top of the regular $160 3-Day Pass ticket price. The Creator Lab was also the same day and was also an extra $75. Ascension, the Saturday night party, was $50. There was also a comedy show, and unfortunately I don’t have the info on how much that was. And sure, you might say, “Well Morgan, those are all extra events that are optional, so maybe paying for ‘opting in’ makes sense!”. Okay, sure, but there are also plenty of conventions that have additional, “opt in” events that are free for attendees.
Let’s use Dragon Con for example, as I live in Atlanta and am the most familiar with that one currently. Dragon Con has a TON of extra events, including a wrestling show, a burlesque revue, and dance parties. Most of these events are completely free as long as you have your convention badge. The events that aren’t free? An awards banquet and a HUGE ball with celebrity guests. There’s even an academic track for panels, which is also free. And okay, yes, Dragon Con is gigantic and is already established in the convention circuit. There are even smaller conventions that are doing free events too. I lived in Cincinnati for years and went to the Cincinnati Comic Expo, which is much smaller but still runs free events for attendees. So it is doable.
There also needs to be attention drawn to the fact that every organization attached to the “Clexacon” name is ran/owned by the same handful of people (NOTE: The two people in question will not be named here as I do not want to open myself to them potentially taking legal action. However everything stated here is either my experience, the noted experience of others, or easily accessed through organization websites, particularly the website for The Visibility Fund). Those people own and operate Clexacon, DASH Productions, and DASH Photos. They are also on the board for The Visibility Fund, a non-profit organization that gained funds from the Cocktails for Change event hosted at Clexacon this year. Prior to the removal of the Clexacon staff page online (which was removed promptly after the convention ended), the names of people from Tellofilms were also included as staff for the convention. It is deeply concerning that all of the money is being funneled in/through a small number of organizations ran by a small number of people. When I teach Media & Culture I always warn my students of the dangers of a small handful of people owning the means of creation. Often when that occurs, the limits on what the audience is able to see get smaller and smaller, focused on the wants of the corporations and businesses. It seems that Clexacon is moving in that direction.
Who’s Running the Show?
The organization of this year’s Clexacon was a complete and utter mess. I’ll start with the mismanagement of the Vendor Hall. While there was more space in the Vendor Hall this year, this did not lead to better promotion by the Clexacon staff. With the Photo Ops being moved upstairs, the hall was not as cramped, but it did remove a large source of foot traffic for the vendors. A logical next step would have been for Clexacon to tweet something about the Vendor’s Hall to push that foot traffic back into the space, but that did not happen. Instead, the traffic continued to flow upstairs and into the large panel room, with people only coming into the Vendor Hall through word of mouth or to get autographs. As someone who was in the Vendor Hall this year and last year, I noted a significant decrease in foot traffic, and other vendors I talked to noticed it too. This doesn’t even take into account the issues concerning the inconsistent pricing of vendor tables. I cannot speak further about this as I wasn’t involved, but there are multiple tweets in the #clexapocalypse hashtag with more info.
There were also issues with volunteers checking badges and other forms of “security” during the weekend. There were multiple instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall and no one checked my badge. There were instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall without a badge on, and no one questioned me. Bags were rarely being checked. I’m not advocating for more security at Clexacon. I’m against having heavier security or “police” in a queer space, especially a space where queer folks of color are present. However, there at the very least should be volunteers present to make sure that people without badges can’t walk in. Why on earth would I buy a $160 badge if anyone can just walk into the space?
Photo Ops were also a disaster. My friend and I bought a Photo Op for Chantal Thuy and Nafessa Williams. Not only was the picture very washed out, but when we asked about getting an extra print for one of us, we were told by volunteers that extra prints wouldn’t be available, and if we wanted them we’d have to “wait for the digital print and get it printed at a Fed Ex or something”. Y’all, I’ve been to multiple conventions and not once have I not been able to get another print at the con. They also said that it would take nearly two weeks for us to get the digital print, as “it’s just one person processing all of the images”. WHAT. That’s completely unacceptable. Other folks I spoke to at the convention cited similar issues, including being charged for Photo Ops that they didn’t get and poorly shot photos.
Finally, there’s the issue of leadership for this convention. In the previous section I outlined an issue with the heads of Clexacon running multiple organizations connected to Clexacon, which appears to be fairly well known on the internet. What might be less well known is that after last year’s Clexacon, those people pushed out one of the original organizers for the convention. This person questioned the concerning direction the convention was taking and not only were their concerns invalidated, they were given no choice but to walk away from staff and were asked to not return to the convention this year. (Note: slight edit made to previous sentence based on new information) After the removal of that person, the convention morphed into what was presented this year. As you might have noticed on Twitter, many of the Clexacon staff resigned from their positions through each of them sending a public statement tweet. Of my knowledge of the situation, this was due to the management issues concerning the heads of Clexacon, as well as problems with how their labor was used (or misused) by those heads. When multiple people exit their jobs within an organization, that signals an issue with how that organization is run. I hope people will look deeper into this issue than what I’ve outlined here.
I’m going to move on now to more “identity based” issues. I wanted to get all the money bullshit out of the way first because I have a lot of fucking Feelings about how people were continually marginalized at this convention and I didn’t want to run out of anger steam before talking about the money.
Concerns About Accessibility (I Have Them)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT, DO I HAVE CONCERNS. First, let’s review what occurred before Clexacon happened. Multiple people contacted Clexacon with issues attached to their unclear accessibility policy, with many getting poor responses or no responses at all from the staff. Eventually the outcry on Twitter prompted the staff to issue a new statement about accessibility, which was initially done so through an image on Twitter…which was not accessible to those with screen readers. They later reissued the statement through multiple tweets, but this would be foreshadowing of things to come. They stated they were talking to people well versed with ADA compliance knowledge, but it’s clear that either they didn’t do that at all, or they did and then chose to not follow them. This showed at the actual convention itself.
First was the issues with obtaining the program itself. They didn’t have any paper programs available this year, instead telling everyone to use the app. Well, that app was only accessible half the time because getting wifi was impossible, and cell service was horrible in the con space. Also, having the programs through the app only meant that they were assuming everyone had a cell phone and were able to use it throughout the entire con. I’ve been to conferences/conventions where they’ve had digital programs, but there’s always the option of getting a paper program if that works better for you. Not having those options got in the way of people being able to plan what events they were going to.
From just my experience at Clexacon, there was not enough accommodation made for attendees who were deaf or hard of hearing. There were multiple panels, including panels in the large room, that did not have an interpreter present. There were also clearly not enough interpreters available for the number of attendees who needed them. Moog ( @wayhaughtt ) talks more about this in their vlog, which I’ll link here. It is completely and totally unacceptable (not to mention illegal) for Clexacon to not have enough people available to assist attendees.
Along with not having enough interpreters, the space is just totally not accessible for anyone who has mobility issues. Small panel rooms are all the way at the back of the con space, making it hard for people who cannot walk long distances. Aisles were not wide enough for people with mobility devices to use. While there were some things in place to assist with having to stand in line, it was still difficult for many people who couldn’t stand for long periods of time. The elevator on the bottom floor near the Vendor Hall was out of the way enough that I didn’t notice it until Sunday. The Quiet Room shouldn’t have even been called that, as it was sandwiched between the Photo Ops and the Film Festival, making it impossible for people to achieve the quiet they were going there to find. And sure, you might say, “Well that’s not their fault, it’s the fault of the Tropicana”. But at the end of the day if you are really committed to making your event accessible to everyone, to create this “safe space” that you continually advertise, then you will make the effort to not only actually provide people with adequate accommodations at the very least, but also find a venue that will be accessible for your attendees.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (At Clexacon)
Okay, so, I’m really annoyed that I basically have to write the same thing I did last year. I was really, really hoping that white people wouldn’t fuck it up again and would show up, but apparently the small amount of faith I had in my fellow white fandom people was too much. It was very clear AGAIN this year that white fandom will only show up for shows with white characters. I did notice an increase in the amount of people who attended the One Day at a Time Panel, and that’s great! But there were so many other panels with queer folks of color that were either a quarter or half full. I was hoping more people would attend the Black Lightning panel now that they were an established show finished with their second season, but nope, it was maybe half full. The Vida panel had a good number for attendance, but it was in a smaller panel room, so I can’t really gauge it with the other large room panels, but that room was not full. The Queer People of Color Representation panel, a really great panel with an important discussion, was about a quarter full. WHITE FANDOM NEEDS TO BE HEARING THESE CONVERSATIONS. Us not showing up and not putting in literally the minimum amount of work is fucking ridiculous, and shows everyone else where we stand.
There also, again, was a noticeable difference in the length of autograph lines for white actresses verses actors and actresses of color. Jes Macallan’s line was wrapped around the autograph area. Even though this is their third Clexacon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Kat Barrell’s lines were long as well. Caity Lotz’s line was also pretty long. On the other hand, Nafessa Williams was sitting at her table with no line for a significant chunk of her autograph time, as was Chantal Thuy and Lesley-Ann Brandt. Just that visual alone makes it abundantly clear who white fandom is willing to give their time and money to. So many of us complain that there’s not enough LGBTQ representation, but then refuse to put in the work when the characters are people of color. Saltygaysianpowerhour on instagram has a great post about this, which I’ll link here. White fandom, if we’re not putting in the work, we cannot complain when we feel there’s not enough LGBTQ representation. We’re part of the problem.
Lastly, I noticed that the Clexacon space was extremely white. When this happened, we as white fandom should have been aware of that and been better allies for attendees of color. That did not happen. I’ve heard so many stories of attendees of color who felt othered or additionally marginalized by both attendees and con staff in a space that should have been just as much theirs as everyone else’s. This convention is not a “safe space” for queer people of color, and some very, very significant changes will have to be made for it to get even close to that.
I Can’t Fucking Believe I Have to Write About TERFs
Just like the fucking subtitle says, I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT TERFS. The complete and utter failure to make this con a positive and safe space for trans folks is honestly stunning. Literally so many people I know got repeatedly misgendered at Clexacon, and so many people didn’t even care to find out what people’s pronouns were. Volunteers misgendered multiple people, which is a problem staff should have addressed at the very beginning. I heard many people say they encountered TERFs at the con and I don’t think I need to mention this, but like, if TERFs think your con is a safe space then that’s a huge problem. I honestly think there were more cishet men on main stage panels this year than trans folks. That’s a problem. This con should have had some way to signify your pronouns on your badge, whether that be a ribbon, button, or even a fucking sticker for people to fill in. I feel like if you’re running a convention that claims to include all LGBTQ people, then you need to do basic things like that. Otherwise change how you market the convention.
What Is it Good For? (Actually, a Few Things)
Okay, now that I’ve aired all my grievances (or at least the ones I can think of), I do want to talk about the good things this con can bring. This con does offer a space for people to create community. Sure, we can do this online with Tumblr or Twitter, but it’s not the same as seeing a living person in front of you. It’s not the same as talking to someone face to face and being excited about whatever media you love. It’s not the same as getting to hug your favorite people. And with all its faults, Clexacon does create a space for this to happen in real time. I know people who have met some of their closest friends at Clexacon. Hell, I met my current girlfriend at the first Clexacon. But that doesn’t erase that this community is currently toxic, and if we want to keep going we’re going to have to deal with those toxic parts or it’s all going to rot. Unfortunately I’m not going to be attending Clexacon in the future unless the current management is removed and significant changes are made. I’m lucky enough to have other places that create positive LGBTQ community like @tgifemslash. I’m not going to shame anyone for going to Clexacon next year, especially if that’s the only community you have. I just hope that in reading this very long post (and thanks if you’re still with me!) you reflect on what Clexacon is and how it can be better. We’re already marginalized by broader society, we don’t deserve further marginalization from our own “community”.
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An
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Today is Transgender Day of Visibility.
I know I’ve never been too vocal about my identity. And as such, I don’t really consider myself “visible”.
But the hard, cold truth is that there is no such thing as a “completely stealth” trans person. None of us really go unseen. We might be made invisible more often than not, but our identity is something we cannot erase.
Some of us are targeted because of who we are. Mocked, insulted, harrassed, beaten, injured, raped, murdered.
We have to remind ourselves of who we are, and find pride in our identity.
What helped me a lot was reading other people’s stories online. It helped me relate and gave me keys to understand who I am. I will always feel thankful for anyone who puts their story out there, who is willing to share what they went through themselves.
I will try as best as I can to share some of mine today.
For a long time, I “didn’t want” to be trans.
I slowly came to learn that something was up with me. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t understand gender, why boys had to be a certain way, and girls another. Yet, when I learned about transidentity, I didn’t want it to apply to me. I thought that being transgender came with a lot of hardships, which I wasn’t willing to go through.
Yet I slowly realized that this wasn’t something I could simply ignore. This was an inherent part of who I was. No matter how hard I tried to escape dysphoria, it only came back more and more violently each time.
Dysphoria threw at me body image issues, self-hatred, anxiety, depressive thoughts, and many more awful things. For the longest time, I was unable to leave any “traces” of myself. Up until a few years ago, I refused to take pictures, even with loved ones. I threw away all of my drawings. I refused to buy myself clothes I liked. I went through disordered eating behaviors, thinking it would help me like my body more. I was unable to open up to anyone about the way I felt inside my body. I always tried to please others in relationships, and never really put my comfort first. I was terrified to talk to people about my preferred pronouns, because I didn’t want to bother them with that.
To this day, I still have a lot of trouble with some of these things.
When I grew up, the internet was a good escape for me. It was a place where people didn’t have to see me physically, and therefore had to go by the pronouns I was using for myself. But, if at first I felt like it was a safe place, it soon became a platform for an onslaught of hate against me. Because I was trans. People would make me go on about my gender, ask tons of uncomfortable questions, make me tell them my birth gender, my birth name, show them what I looked like. And at first I was patient. I understood that you can’t really guess how to behave with a trans person if you’ve never met one before. But I soon learned that they didn’t even deserve my patience. They were ill-intentioned. And before I knew it, I was humiliated, mocked. And, of course, misgendered… by people who hadn’t even known me as my assigned at birth gender.
The least I can say is that it fucked me up. People’s selfishness, intolerance, and morbid fascination for everything outside of the norm… really hurt me deep.
Today, I honestly feel like my youth was robbed away from me. Living in that dark closet was fucking hell. And only now that I’m begining to open the door, and emerge little by little, I am truly able to appreciate life. I earnestly want to live on.
This year, I am finally taking clear steps in my transition. I am slowly coming out to more and more people that are dear to me. There are still many challenges ahead that await me, but I will tackle them as I need to.
I am currently making plans for a surgery, and have much more ahead of me to finally feel right in my flesh.
When you’re trans, it sometimes feels like waking up in the morning, in itself, is a political act. And that’s what it really is when you remind yourself how poorly society accepts our hardships.
But I will keep waking up, and I will keep living. I am not doing it for people who don’t understand or who are disgusted by me. They’ll call me queer, but to me, they are the queer ones. Their bigotry and self-entitlement is much stranger than transitioning could ever be.
Nobody has to love themselves. It’s alright if you are unable to love yourself.
But you must respect yourself, as you should respect anyone. Don’t sabotage yourself.
You deserve to live, and you deserve to live with dignity.
We are so much more than insults and marks of hatred.
We, trans people, are a knife cutting deep into the skin of gender roles, homophobia, body shaming, and many other social constructs. Our cause is not just a fight for our rights and our freedom, it’s so much more than that.
Transitioning can be terrifying, especially when everything is going against you.
But you are the only one who knows who you are, and you are the only one who should rule your body.
Please stay safe and be gentle to yourself, because you deserve no less than your happiness.
#okay to reblog but please don't delete the caption!#tdov#trans day of visibility#transgender day of visibility#tdov 2018#transgender#trans#nonbinary#non binary#agender#androgynous#queer#self#.txt
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enchntedapril ha respondido a tu publicación “ur post about fic & racism in the supergirl fandom really got me...”
I get the parts about Jimmy vs Mon-El, but the rest? Not so much. Since when has Sanvers NOT been huge? I see tons and tons and TONS of Sanvers fics, and let's keep in mind that Alex is not the main character. I don't know what you're talking about re:Floriana being or not being white having anything to do with her popularity. In fact the only criticism I saw was, as you say, about Floriana not being ENOUGH of a WOC. Roulette fic? M'gann??? Seriously?
Why the heck would there be Roulette fics? Perhaps the reason has less to do with race and more to do with the fact that she was a relatively poorly written character in two measly episodes? Likewise, M'Gann was never a main character, and if anything, I would pair her with J'onn, but the fandom (at least as represented on AO3) seems much more devoted to wlw pairings.
Personally, I'm a huge Sanvers shipper, as well as Kara/Lena, Kara/Cat and canon endgame Kara/James. I'm not even sure why any of this is an argument. Pairings between characters who rarely have shared screen time are simply never going to be as popular as those that do.
Also, where is Maggie being demonized within the fandom?? Apparently I'm blissfully unaware...
Sooooooo lemme kick this off with a seemingly-unrelated story, since “well-meaning” skeptics like you are the reason I started doing all this data-tracking in the first place:
Several years ago I took my daughter on vacation to a country where I used to live, speak the language fluently, and racially blend in. We went out to dinner the first night and the waiter didn’t give me my change when I paid the bill, then seemed annoyed when I asked for my money. It was a holiday and busy, so I shrugged it off.
Except then it happened again the next morning at breakfast. And then again at lunch, where the waiter tried to give me the bill for another table that had ordered multiple bottles of alcohol and some seafood platters, when all I’d bought was two sandwiches and a Coke. At this point I was getting pissed off, because what the hell, I speak fucking Spanish and in ten years of traveling to this region I’d never had this happen before.
The next day, all of these mysterious “accidents” with trying to rip me off miraculously stopped. And when I figured out why, I got even more pissed off. Know what happened? My daughter had started wearing her sunglasses and people couldn’t see her eyes anymore. (She’s Asian. I’m not.)
Like. Whether it was malicious or not, people were straight-up ignoring my visibly local-ass face, hair, and accent like I wasn’t even there and fixating on the fact that my kid looked foreign, then treating us as they would have if she had been alone. That is how implicit racism works: there are always plenty of ~reasonable excuses~ for it when you’re not the one it’s happening to.
So congratulations, just because *you personally* don’t perceive fandom racism on your very narrowly-curated tumblr dashboard doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist -- or that you have any right to dismiss the hundreds of other people who see it for what it is.
Also, I am confused as to where you think anyone is arguing, or that this is even something to argue about. It is a fact that implicit racism affects fan behavior and preferences, just like it affects our behavior everywhere else. @diversehighfantasy made some excellent additions to my post with examples of how this behavior plays out across multiple fandoms in multiple ways. There is plenty of literature on this problem of racism by fans within the field of fan studies. None of this is an opinion. It’s a fact.
And the fact that you’re so quick to defend the disparity by a) scoffing off the idea that anyone might find Roulette shippable in the first place; b) suggesting that M’gann’s relative lack of screentime is the only factor explaining the general lack of interest in her; and c) throwing up “but everyone’s into femslash” as an excuse for the lack of black het pairings when I’ve spent the better part of a year and a half tracking this fandom and can tell you, with detailed references, that you are wrong ... says a whole lot about you, none of it flattering.
It also says that you don’t follow my tumblr, because I don’t write things I can’t back up. And thanks for telling me there’s lots of femslash like I don’t already know.
Let’s go through this step by step, shall we?
“I see tons and tons and TONS of Sanvers fics, and let's keep in mind that Alex is not the main character”
1) High five for your use of hyperbole, but here are the actual AO3 numbers from March:
2) Despite how hard CW keeps trying to change this, Alex is still the co-lead of the show. She has the most screentime after Kara. The amount of fics featuring each of them as a romantic lead is roughly proportional to their levels of screentime. (49% less time vs. 44% less fic)
3) There was a mass migration of queer fans explicitly because of Alex’s coming out arc that inflated the interest in her character. How do I know this was an inflation? Because S1 fans did not move away from their old ships -- output for every other femslash ship has stayed consistent since S1 ended. (Supercat is at 1/2 scale so it fits on the graph.)
“I don't know what you're talking about re:Floriana being or not being white having anything to do with her popularity.”
You say this like I didn’t explicitly note in my original post that I had the data to back myself up re: the drop in interest in Sanvers. Here you go:
This graph is on a log scale, aka it’s showing growth exponentially so it’s easier to make comparisons and see trends. Sanvers, when it first appeared onscreen, had the quickest growth of any Supergirl ship to date. And yet, there’s a sharper-than-expected publication slowdown throughout November of 2016.
That’s because this appeared on October 26th:
So, yes, the race/ethnicity clusterfuck did have something to do with the popularity of the ship. People backed off writing the pairing. I mean, I can explain further why the legitimate criticism from latina fans re: Kreisberg’s racist assumption was advantageous to racist people uncomfortable with Maggie’s clearly nonwhite skin color, but this post is long enough as it is. Moving on...
“Roulette fic? M'gann??? Seriously? Why the heck would there be Roulette fics?”
Gee, I don’t know, enchantedapril, maybe because there are published romantic and/or smutfics for all of the following:
Kara and Max Lord
Kara and Livewire
Kara and Silver Banshee
Alex and Max Lord
Alex and Silver Banshee
Alex and Cat Grant
Cat and Livewire
Cat and Astra
Lucy and Alura
J’onn and Jim Harper
J’onn and Clark
J’onn and Mon-El
Kara and Eliza
Kara and Non
Kara and Clark
Assorted threesomes of the above
Come on. Even your dismissiveness at the idea that people might see Roulette as desirable or interesting reeks of prejudice. And your incredulity over anyone thinking M’gann might be a ship-worthy partner is just gross. To put your comments into perspective: by 2x12, which aired in February, M’gann had racked up more screentime than Lena. And yet, by the end of January there were exactly four shipfics featuring M’gann on AO3 (zero of which included J’onn), compared against 1162 for Lena.
And to counter arguments about screentime proportions making a difference: Alex has had more scenes & time with M’gann than with Lena, yet there are 11 Alex/Lena fics and zero Alex/M’gann ones. There are also more femslash fics about Alex and her friend from high school than there are about Lena & Veronica Sinclair.
So, nice try.
“Pairings between characters who rarely have shared screen time are simply never going to be as popular as those that do.”
Ah, yes, and this is why Lucy Lane and Kara’s dead mother, who have never met onscreen, have more shipfics about them than multiple WOC from Season 2 who directly interact with main characters. This is why Karolsen flatlined for months, but Karamel took off like a rocket, and why there’s more fic of Winn & Mon-El than Winn & James. Like, if you’re going to make this basic argument, maybe crawl out of your Tumblr bubble a little more often, because multiple people in the fandom have started researching this shit specifically to refute people like you who insist that we’re exaggerating or imagining things. There is literally more shipfic on AO3 about Kara's terrorist uncle than there is about M’gann and anyone.
“Also, where is Maggie being demonized within the fandom??”
I don’t read a lot of Supercorp, which is where it tends to crop up most often, but here’s one example (in which the OP respectfully listened to people’s concerns and reworked their idea).
“Apparently I'm blissfully unaware...”
tl;dr: yay for being ignorant?
#enchntedapril#long post#replies#supergirl#fandom racism#fandom stats#my meta#literally the only plus to this clusterfuck of a season is that nobody's writing offensive latina stereotypes
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What would you do on impulse? https://ift.tt/2SYthjG
"No, fuck you dad!" I bellowed as I stormed out of the room. I was fervid, blood was coursing madly through my veins. My ears felt like burning charcoals, and I was shaking. Enough of this bullshit. One last thing before I get out of this hell-hole.
I put a mysterious sticker containing a smiley face on it on my tongue and patted my pocket to check if my Pixiu was there. My Jade Pixiu was a personal totem of mine. I made it right after I watched 'Inception', (That was a hell of a movie by the way.) It was a Chinese feng-shui thing - A flying lion whose unruly behavior caused the Jade Emperor to slap its butt so hard its butthole got sealed. Not kidding.
The Pixiu was chipped from when I dropped it on the floor, not accidentally. Only I know the exact position and texture of the chipped part. If I was in a dream, the Pixiu would not be chipped, and hence I will know that I was in a dream.
I grabbed my dad's car keys on impulse and go out of the house. I didn't tell my father that I had his keys. I snickered. I got down the stairs, unlocked the car, and got into it.
It was nighttime. We lived in a very busy colony, so the night air was filled with the sounds from the street. I drove my car all the way down to the beach, I don't know how I did it - I was on autopilot.
I stopped at the beach to gaze at nature and chill a bit. The air hung heavy and tasted of salt. It was a dark and desolate place, that beach. You see, it was located a good distance away from the hustle and bustle of the city. So I was all on my own.
By now, the LSD I had taken had started to kick in. It made everything all the more surreal to me. I laid back, taking in the beauty of my surroundings. I always had loved the sea, I sought refuge in it whenever I felt sad or angry or lonely. Something about the raging waves crashing against each other, spewing spouts of brine and mist and foam, calmed my soul.
It was quite eerie. Not a soul around me, and my surroundings were barely visible. Civilization was miles away, and I was surrounded by the dense canopy of a nearby forest. All of a sudden, my headlights dimmed. I was confused.
Were my eyes playing tricks on me?
Right then, my phone beeped an unusual beep. I received a message from 'ma'am'. I didn't know who it was, and I don't remember having any contact named 'ma'am'. Weird.
The message contained a video. I clicked on it.
Wrong Click.
It was a strange video in which a lady was in a dark forest. All around her were animals with glowing yellow eyes. They were growling and circling menacingly around her. They made weird hisses and radiated a kind of darkness. The night seemed to grow darker around them as if that is even possible. Chills tingled down my spine.
Who the fuck would send me this strange video at this ungodly hour?
It was very queer. After watching the video, I felt the effects of LSD multiply manifold. Was it my imagination? I had to clutch my seat hard and brace myself.
At that moment, I received the shock of my life. My car lurched forward and launched itself into a 360-degree spin. It was spinning wildly and I had no control. I realized in horror that my hands were glued to the wheel, and I was the one who was doing it. I tried to wrench my hands off the steering in vain. My hands seemed to clasp at dear life the way they didn't let go off the wheel.
I looked around and was stupefied. The glowing yellow eyes were around me again, this time I could see it was a dog. Or two. Weirdly, my body released tons of adrenaline upon the sight of these dogs. I have to admit, they looked very scary, but how come my body knew to release a fucking chemical on its own? (Don't blame me, I was on LSD. I forgot that this was what the body does in face of danger).
Suddenly I remember that all the windows were down and our car was open back. Imagine my reaction.
Luckily right then I regained back control of my arms. Creepy. But I didn't complain, I raced my car down the road... only to find out I forgot how to drive. This time I couldn't take my foot off the accelerator, and boy oh boy was I in for the ride of my life. My car raced down the beach with increasing speed, at a level of rashness and recklessness that would make F1 racers proud.
I had yet another reason to worry- the car was going a slightly crooked angle to the left. This meant it was going straight into the beach. To my doom.
This thought gave me renewed strength and I was able to turn my car around. I tugged at my wheel hard and managed to turn it around and slowed down.
I stopped for a second and got out instead of racing back home. Yeah, I did that. I howled into the deep, dark Nyx, "Fuck you dogs! FUCK YOU. Fuck you, world!" This was actually why I came to the beach in the first place, to vent out my anger by shouting out loud.
I took my Pixiu out and checked for the chipped part. It was there. This wasn't a dream. Oh, well.
I looked around. I saw those darned dogs - more of them. It seems they were at a distance, fighting their life out. Wrong move to stop the car, indeed.
Okay, enough time-pass, time to go home I thought. As I turned to go to my car, I saw that the huge dogs were sprinting towards me with vengeance in their glowing yellow eyes, and drooling mouths with intimidating fangs. I raced to my seat and tried to drive back.
The car wouldn't start.
What timing, I thought. I got out and pushed my car. It was an upward slope, woe me. I pushed with all my might and made it to the summit and the car started going down. Frighteningly fast so.
I somehow ran and clung to the car, and got in from the back. I sat in my seat. The car was out of control. I couldn't find the goddamned brake, and the car was gaining momentum.
I swerved left and right, here and there, in a blur of fierce dogs, unforgiving car metal, and my adrenaline. A while passed.
After what seemed like an eternity, I got rid of the canines at my tail. Now the last straw was I still couldn't find the goddamned brake.
The car went headfirst down a very steep slope, and I knew I had entered the city, for the unmistakable sounds of the town and people talking with each other hung in the gloomy air. I needed to take a left and swerved hard, a little too hard maybe. For I had just missed a lady with inches.
I regained control of my brakes again, Thank God. And I made my way home.
I reached home and waited at the doorstep, ready to apologize to my dad and promise him that I won't be a dick again. I took a deep breath and calmed myself down. I was filled with gratitude, for living, for being back home. sigh. I can decide whether what happened was a dream or not later.
I barged in. The walls were a different color, there were different couches, different things. Some people in the living room saw me in my disheveled state and started screaming. I cried out "sorry" and slammed the door shut. It was my home, no doubt. The same number, the same floor, the same building. But then again, it was not the same home. Everything, every fucking thing was changed inside.
No, something was very wrong with me, I thought. I looked down and realized that I have changed. I had a full beard, I was tall and fully grown. And my voice was deep and different when I said sorry.
You know what the strange thing is? I was fucking 16 when I started on my little adventure.
.
.
Months passed as I learned to embrace my new self. I have a girlfriend living with me in an apartment now. Her name is Christy. She is older than me, and we are deep in love. I am glad that I am still alive and somehow put my life back together.
I still remember the incident with vivid clarity, how it made time jump 7 years into the future for me. I started to believe it was all a dream. To be honest, my older childhood was slipping away from my memory. I have these weird moments where I could recollect specific moments and incidents of another guy's life and childhood, probably my new self's.
But I still remember my old parents, and how they looked, and how they treated me. God bless them.
But anyway, I was hungry and went into the kitchen. I and my girlfriend take turn cooking, and today she was cooking something emitting a very pleasing smell, indeed.
Suddenly, I felt like I was on LSD once again. I don't know what got over me. On impulse, I lifted Christy's skirt and stuck my hand deep into her warm, wet, hairy buttcrack.
.
.
~ CallMeDirus
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Chapter Twenty-Six : THE + IN LGBTQ+
So here we are. I did the L. I did the G. I did the B. I did the T.
L G B T. Done.
Oh for fuck’s sake, now what ?
What do you mean there’s more letters ?
LGBTTQQIAAPC2 ????? YOU SURE ? I don’t think anyone is at this point.
Okay, let’s make a quick rundown of them all (it’s not like I have a life or something).
Q as in QUEER
Nop, I’m keeping this one for the very end as I have a shitload to say.
Let’s see.
Another Q ? Oh, okay, I see.
Q as in QUESTIONING
We ain’t starting with an easy one. Questioning is the period of time a person can go through to sort out the ideas of gender, sexual identity and/or sexual orientation. It is a process of exploration for people not sure of themselves (which is a fair feeling) and uncomfortable with the idea of social queer labels.
If you’re looking for a particular branch of people who could fall into that category, look no further than teenagers. At a time when your body is changing, your hormones are showing, and society still doesn’t put forward the idea that being Queer is acceptable, one might feel a great deal of confusion and uncertainty. Kids right now promote the right to sexual fluidity and I think that’s great. I just called them kids. I feel like a grandpa.
The concept of sexual fluidity available to someone who doesn’t want to constraint him/her/themself in a subcategory is theoretically extremely healthy for the mind, helping seeing things clearer in the future.
I as in INTERSEX
Well, I’ve already talked a lot about Intersex people in previous articles, as it is so connected in its History to the lives of Transgender people (so read the articles from June 24th on Trans Identity and the June 9th on the differences between Sex, Sexuality and Gender Identity if you’re interested).
I’ll do a sum up. Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variation in sex characteristics (chromosomes, sex hormones, genitals) and who do not fit the binary definitions of male or female bodies. Do not use the term “hermaphrodite” because if you do, you’re a hateful asshole.
It’s a biological specificity that has long been ignored by the medical and social scene, giving them little to know coverage to actually build a proper gender identity up until recently. There’s a whole campaign right now to stop forced surgeries on Intersex infants as they are treated as wrong doings from nature that should be corrected. They shouldn’t. Binary notions of life has to be corrected. As the same for forced sterilization on transgender people, modifying the sex characteristics of an individual without his/her/them consent is a Human Rights violation.
The existence of Intersex people is still not up to date in the world but progress has been made with gender classification on legal documents.
Finally, being an Intersex individual does not make you automatically homosexual or bisexual. It’s a gender identity that has nothing to do with sexual orientation, giving to some arguments that they should not be included in our community. Fuck those people.
But let’s not forget that as part of our community, we need to make an effort towards you in understanding your identity, include you in general conversations and fight for your individual rights that sometimes have little to no relations to ours. Let’s not repeat the errors of this heterosexual society, please.
A as in ASEXUAL
Good god, so much controversy over that one.
Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, low or absent interest or desire for sexual activity. To make shit clear to everyone, it is considered a sexual orientation, although the primal idea of it is that there’s no sexual orientation to begin with. Although as in every sexuality (or lack of), there are levels and degrees of what being asexual means to someone.
The acceptance of Asexuality is relatively new to the scientific community and to the world, mostly since the internet was invented and people started sharing their personal struggles (as they were deemed struggles in the eyes of society).
More than any other term, asexuality seems to have a big question mark in the minds of people. Well, as sexual beings mostly driven by our urges, it’s hard to comprehend a world where no of this is part of the day-to-day mental conversation. The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) has a great thing to say about the words Asexual :
“There is no litmus test to determine if someone is Asexual. Asexuality is like any other identity — at its core, it’s just a word that people use to help figure themselves out. if at any point someone finds the word Asexual useful to describe themselves, we encourage them to use it for as long at it makes sense to do so”.
Words of preaching that can be applied to any identity in our supposedly inclusive rainbow.
Anyway, it’s a complex question that can go to various scenarios. Someone Asexual might engage in romantic relationships, other might not. They could have sex in order to satisfy their partners, but they probably wouldn’t take any pleasure out of it. Maybe they masturbate, maybe they don’t. The point is — Their sex drive is not our businesses. We don’t need to know what you do in your down time.
Labels that can be adopted by Asexual people can also include Aromantic, Biromantic, Heteromantic, Homoromantic, Panromantic — with the acknowledgment of “sexual” orientation but lack of lust towards someone else. See ? There’s also Gray-romantic, Demiromantic, Demisexual, Semisexual, Friend-Focused.
Queer people, know that Asexual as their places among our ranks, as their can be subjected to as much vile discriminations if out as the rest of us. More importantly, there’s currently no major legislation focused on Asexuality and no media exposure of any kind.
Another A as in ALLY
Also sometimes known as “SA” for Straight Allies. Usually cisgender heterosexual people who supports equal rights, gender equality, social movements and are in opposition with homophobia, biphobia, transphobia. I don’t have a lot to say about Allies.
They’re good. The more we have, the better.
Just don’t confuse being open to being an Ally. Being a Ally means make actual changes into your environment towards Equality. It’s not just saying that you have tons of gay friends and “they’re so much fun, I love them!”.
Uh uh. It can be activism. It can be protests and articles and petitions and working for LGBT groups. Sure. Do that if you’re into it.
I’m not an activist myself. I ain’t gonna judge you if you don’t want to be socially active for us.
But you can be an ally by first of all, listen. Not just to us but to all the shit that can come out of your damn mouth that are homophobic and you don’t even realize it.
Be ready for being taken back to school, people. Because the struggle is sometimes real. So real that some Queer people don’t want to educate straight people. I’m willing to but only if I feel like the person can really get it. I quickly know if they are or not.
Don’t use our reclaimed slurs. Don’t “Guuuurl Okrrrrul Death Drop” us for the sake of comedy. As a gay man, I’m not even sure I can do it myself since it’s been part of the drag world. Yes, cultural appropriation inside the Queer community is a thing. Look it up.
Anyway, Ally in the acronym ? hmm, debatable, even for me. Maybe an honorary title on the side ?
C as in CURIOUS
Arf, nop. I don’t agree. Next.
T as in TRANSEXUAL
Already covered the Transexual identity in the June 14th article.
Go read this one, sucker.
P as in POLYAMOROUS
The practice of/desire for intimate relationships with more than one partner. Not to be confused with cheating as a polyamorous is made aware by all partners involved. It’s been described as a “consensual, ethical and responsible non-monogamy” philosophy/sexual identity.
Those identities are so exciting to talk about.
A polyamorous individual believes in an open relationship and rejects the view that sexual and relational exclusivity are necessary for deep, committed, long-term loving relationships. It’s not just about being sexually attracted to other people while in a relationship and acting on it, there’s real values such as love, intimacy, honesty and integrity in the process. Also a healthy position on non-possessiveness that I admire greatly.
Many social factors enter into consideration when it comes to polyamorous identity. The disillusionment with monogamy, illustrated with cheating and divorce from previous generations. A need for independence and equality, sometimes driven in a woman with feminism beliefs. You don’t need a man and you can do your own choices. Be as free as a man has been for thousands of years. Most of all, there’s this belief than human beings are not monogamous to begin with and to impose it on people is madness.
The interest thing about polyamorous identity is not really the details of the relationships but the fact that it is not an identity or sexuality per say, but a companion piece to some of them. You can be poly and Straight, Poly and Trans and a Lesbian. Off course, as most of the other categories, it is not widely accepted by society and until recently, rarely talked about.
I have a feeling it’s about to change.
One of my friends came out to me as polyamorous. I mean, she didn’t actually come out but the fact that she openly talked about it surprised me and then delighted me.
Not to be confused with Bigamy, which with being married to multiple partners. Not very common on western countries but forms of judicial recognition of multiple non marital partners are here and there, most notably in parts of the States.
P as in PANSEXUAL
Already did that one at length on the June 20th article on Bisexuality.
No need to repeat myself that much.
2 as in TWO-SPIRIT
That one you’ve never heard of. Right ?
It is a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some indigenous North American tribes to describe Native People in their communities who fulfill a third-gender (or other gender — variant) ceremonial role in their cultures. The term was created in 1990 (birth year) in Winnipeg by Lesbian and Gay indigenous gathered for the occasion, as a way to differentiate First Nations people from non-Native Queer Community people.
The concept of Two-Spirit has been around for a long, long time but it used to have another name : Berdache. It was thought to be replaced as it is considered outdated and offensive (from the arabic “Bardaj” that means “slave”, the french Berdache that means “passive” and Italian “Bardassa” that means either “young prostitute” or “brat” and primally focuses on transgender folks and not other areas of the now-named Two-Spirit).
Two-Spirit is not considered to be the same as being a Gay Native American. Yes, Two-Spirit people can fall in love with people of their same gender, or genderfuck conventions of what it means to be a man or a woman, but it’s way more than that. The term is meant to carry on the traditions of Indigenous people, too broad to explain them all here as each tribe has their own little definitions of what a Two-Spirit individual is.
For more comprehensive information, you can watch Lydia Nibley’s 2009 documentary feature called Two Sprits. It focused on the murder of 16 year-old Navajo Fred Martinez, described by his mother as “nadleeh” or “half woman, half man”. But careful, it doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means.
And finally
Q as in QUEER
This one’s easy. It’s us all. It’s an umbrella term to represent anyone in the Queer community. We’re a lot of categorized minorities in need of regroupment and that’s the easiest way to do it.
I actually love the word Queer. It’s just an empowering word due its directness and History.
It appeared around the 16th Century to talk about things that are “strange”, “odd”, “peculiar”, “eccentric”. Perfect fit. It later implied a feeling of suspicion and unwellness. It took 300 years for the word to get use in a pejorative way towards sexual differences. It was that or “invert”. Both are extremely fun.
For almost a century, being called “Queer” was probably the worst. Well, Faggot isn’t a good one either but you get my drift. In the late 80s, the word started to be reclaimed as a neutral or positive self-identity by LGBTQ+ people.
An activist organization to fight anti-gay violence called Queer Nation was created in 1990 (birth year, AGAIN!). I believe it to be still active and alive in some capacity somewhere in America. It also seemed important at the time to find a word that wasn’t so narrow in scope (as “Gay” is) and as the AIDS Epidemic was baptized “The Gay Cancer”, we were truly in need of a rebranding intervention.
But that rebranding didn’t came without its challenges. With a new name came a new attitude, one that rejected the principles of assimilation into heteronormative society. The idea of marriage, adoption, service were banned from what was known the Queer movement in the 90s (while the “Gay” movement was still very much alive and willing to find new rights to Queer people).
I didn’t live through this and I only have my perception of the word. I know some of y’all reject that term as you deem it offensive and self-deprecating. Some of you don’t appreciate the political vibe it brought to the community and the divide in ideas that followed.
I only know that we cannot keep adding letters to our acronym. Ain’t nobody got time to say all those letters. We need to compromise, people. Yes, it’s a bad word. Now, it’s OURS. Being gay is political. They MADE IT political by beating us, torturing us, arresting us, killing us.
They wanted to insult us. We take it and we roll with it with Pride.
So, are we good now ? Have I covered them all ?
Nop, I forgot to talk about Gender-Fluid, Non-Binary people (or Gender Queer), Bigender, Trigender, Pangender. Androgyne. Gender Bender. Third Gender. Androsexual, Gynephilia, Transvestite…
Time for you to make your own damn research.
I still have four more articles to right and just so you know, I won’t use the term “LGBTQ+” anymore. I’ll say Queer as nothing else as of now.
Position cleared.
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