#maybe I’ve been having a lesbian crisis and maybe i want to cope with that by drawing butch/femme characters in a pseudo rebecca sugar style

[skipppppy]

I’ve been frantically watching all of Adventure Time to prep for Fionna and Cake and it got me thinking. I love how expansive the worldbuilding is. I also love that one artist who genuinely had me believing Finn was gay dating some catboy for a solid 6 months. I think to celebrate the new show a bunch of us should make our own Princess OCs and Goncharov them into the show. Like pretend they were always there. Let’s discuss their imaginary episodes and themes and motifs and whatever

So anyway here are my lesbians they always existed in the show they debuted in season 3 when Marceline went to that recreational fight club. Remember that episode?? Man it was wild

[facetsofthecloset]

9 people you would like to know better

tagged by @vonlipvig, thanks!

1. 3 ships: Glenda/Mr.Nutt from Unseen Academicals, Adora/Moist from Going Postal etc., uhhh shoot do I even have a non-Discworld ship I actively care about ummmm

OH let’s go for the classic Gay Attorneys Phoenix/Edgeworth lol

2. first ever ship: hmmm. Probably Ranma/Akane from the middle school days. Tbh nowadays I feel like Akane is a lesbian actually but it could work out if they grow up and Ranma becomes more comfortable identifying as gender-fluid or gender neutral

3. last song: I’ve been binging podcasts for the past week or so but I’ve also been playing Stardew Valley while listening, so probably whatever track I last heard there lol

Oh wait I had a midnight crisis last night and listened to The Horror and the Wild by The Amazing Devil a lot so there we go

4. last movie: i genuinely don’t remember, but I think I recently rewatched Nausicaa?

5. currently reading: nothing technically bc I just finished the new Murderbot audiobook but that said GO READ (or listen to, even though the narrator of the audiobook is TERRIBLE at pronouncing names) MURDERBOT DIARIES I PROMISE IT’S WORTH IT

I mean if you’re not a fan of the sarcastic first person narrative format maybe you won’t like it but it’s very well done. It’s my kind of sci-fi, in that it focuses less on tech and worldbuilding (although there’s plenty of that) and more on character and how the worldbuilding actually affects the people in it

6. currently watching: my favorite hbomberguy and Folding Ideas video essays on loop. Although it’s usually as background while I play video games soooo watching might not be the right word lol

7. currently consuming: food-wise nothing; I’m at the doctor’s office waiting room for physical therapy. Media-wise, have been listening to a lotttt of Behind the Bastards, started with the Kissinger stuff. Really makes me think emotional intelligence/healthy coping mechanisms should be taught officially or something. Sure, some people will still be awful but I think at least some people would wind up NOT committing atrocities y’know

8. currently craving: Kailua pig. Or like, one really, really good avocado. The ones back home are probably in season now and yet I am trapped in the temperate zone where no one knows when an avocado is ripe and just toss in some hard green cubes

9. tagging @mariegoos (thanks again for the Murderbot rec!) @bittersweet-poppy @petrabasil @darkprincecait if any of you want to!

[valenhell]

From the studio that brought you “I can’t find good Byler fics in the ao3 tag”, comes:

"The Definitive Byler fic rec list"

Literally no one asked for this but because I spent the majority of last year (...and 2019, and 2018...) reading byler fics and coping with life, I thought I’d make a list of some of my absolute favorites. 

The other day I was basically starving for some byler fics and the angel @magicalfairy provided me with some of her faves so I thought I’d do the same, because I love reading, and I love all of these fics and I appreciate their writers💗 And fic writers in general, come on!

- This is a mix of long works and one-shots/short stories. - Everything is mostly fluff with a tad of angst and a lot of internalized homophobia conflict.  - Every fic is completed, except for the ones I mention that they are not. - I try my best to lay out the stories in a way that I won’t spoil you the plot but also warning you of some stuff you might don’t like. Either way, all of these fics are correctly tagged by their respective authors/owners, so read at your own risk. For better understanding, in between brackets I denote Rating, Words and quantity of Chapters. - I feel like I should clarify, none of these are narrated in the singular first person. None of that “And I told him...”, no. 

Long fics

a dream always the same (T, 99k, 35 chapters) What happened in those few weeks between the Battle of Starcourt and the Byers leaving Hawkins. Literally a satisfying and very needed fill in of season three, with a good dose of Mike’s thoughts and conflict. Mike’s characterization is specially amazing in this one. The writing style is amazing and I know the author put everything into making it historically accurate, and it was really sweet. You probably read it, it’s by the amazing sevensided here on Tumblr🧡

Spring Break (T, 120k, 14/15 chapters) The slowburn of my dreams. Lots of internalized conflict and conflict with each other. Conflict within the Party (uhh kind of), conflict with Mike and Will. Byers family has moved and the kids are visiting! Chaos. Characterization is on point. Yeah, I know it’s unfinished, but the fourteenth chapter actually serves as a pretty nice ending. 

This is where it starts (M, 148.8k, 24 chapters) Aged up characters. The Party is in college and Will disappears again, but now it’s different. Mike knows he didn’t vanish from thin air, and the discovery he and the Party end up making is pretty insane. Mystery solving/fantasy/third dimension, throw in a bit of D&D and Mike realizing some shit, and you get this marvelous fic. It’s a breath of fresh air. The world building is definitely one of the elements that stands out the most, because it’s very nicely described, it sounds like a dream and it’s completely immersive. Absolute gem of a fic. 

there’s a Starman waiting in the sky (M, 30.6k, 8 chapters) Do I need to say anything? Will is out there living his best life and Mike realizes that wow, umm, maybe his best friend looks a bit too nice with that costume... and wait, is he getting horny? It’s actually really fun and sexy.

The Evening Speaks (T, 23k, 7 chapters) In where Mike is a late-night college radio host and Will is the art student that stays up till late to catch up with Wheeler on the Mic. They flirt through songs y’all, this one is really sweet. 

heads or tails? (E, 24k, 3 chapters) Aged up characters. I know most people don’t enjoy sex in fics and with specific characters but this one is insanely well written. It’s a slowburn that commits to the tension and with every word you are grasping and anticipating their next move. I think you can find the author here on Tumblr as yousaidyes🧡

The Man of Average (M, 56.7k, 5/? chapters) Aged up characters. No but you don’t understand, the writing here is absolute gourmet. The story is exciting as well, it’s super interesting. Weirdly enough, for being very aged up characters, they are well characterized but they don’t feel like teenagers. They are naturally Mike and Will. The author really captured Mike and Will’s essence. I know, it’s unfinished and it’s updated very rarely, but this is the typical fic you can’t believe someone just posted on the internet for free. I will say though, I think it’s definitely not for everyone. Read at your own risk.

Heartstrings (E, 82.8k, 24/? chapters) Aged up characters. By the same author of The Man of Average. A collection of memories, the road to Mike and Will’s happy ever after. And fucking hell!!!!! You’ll cry and get angry, you’ll cheer for them, then you’ll want to crash their faces together because god dammit you love each other!!! But yeah, same thing here. The writing and the way the story is laid out as a nonlinear narrative is brilliant. And I also think this is one of the best Will versions I’ve read. The author might as well be the og creator of this two characters tbh. You can find the author here as mylesimeblr🧡

Sinners behind the walls (T, 1.5k, 1/1) And because I can’t stop recommending this author, a little thing of Mike tormenting himself but also being too deeply committed to Will. 

The Red Envelope series (T/E, 167K, two completed works) Something happens that Will thought was impossible and from there, pure drama and romance. Anything by this author has the potential to become your absolute favorite fic, but this series in particular is amazing. I doubt that any of you haven’t read this, but it doesn’t hurt to put it in this list. I’m pretty sure the author is serendipitous-magic on Tumblr🧡

A New Fight series (T, 91k, two completed works, one WIP) And finally the Star Wars AU that we all needed. But this isn’t your typical “Mike is Han”, “Will is Leia” and “El is Luke”, it’s way more interesting than that, and the author has appropriated the Star Wars world like no other. I’ll admit I’m not a 100% fluent in SW lore but this is amazing to me either way. This author is also on Tumblr, tea-for-one-please🧡

- Yes, most of these are (if not all), in a way, canon compliant/canonverse/canon continuation into fanon. (In a way)

One-shots and short stories

Sundae for Two, Please (G, 4.8k) Steve being the supportive friend and older brother these kids collectively need. (not Jonathan erasure, we love him). Steve is very sweet himself, and this little cute thing through his POV is gorgeous. Yes, it’s byler.

Backstage (T, 10k, 2/2) Jonathan, you forgot to mention to Will how hot your new band’s guitarist is, dude. Now he’s hyperventilating and weirdly flirting with him in the corner. Background Stonathan because why not.

102 Peach Street (G, 3.8k) Established relationship, but not only that, they are married :’’))) PURE fluff. Extreme fluffiness. Diabetes. 

sweatshirts and bottled up feelings (T, 3.2k) Or, Mike thinks that the sweatshirt Will wears looks insanely good on him. And kitchens are for lovers. 

kiss it better (T, 16.3k) Basically one of the best character studies of a few precise moments of Mike and Will’s relationship and feelings. 

will wonders ever cease (T, 11.3k) #i ship will and happiness. Omfg what a beautiful piece of fanfic. Will centric, this kid really deserves all the good in the world.

The Calm After the Storm (T, 1.6k) Tooth rotting fluff, boyfriends in love. Boyfriends being lazy, cuddling, love words, kisses. Boys loving each other’s company... Basically, Mike and Will in their element. What more can you ask for?

neither of us ready to let go (T, 4.8k) That scene from season three, but a bit of a fix it. 

Still in love (G, 1k) Domestic, married life au fluff. Y’all, I’m a sucker for established Byler, even if I can’t find many fics with it. But this is very sweet. It takes place in 2020, but I don’t think there are any mentions of the COVID-19 crisis that I remember.

I Nver Find Out ‘Til I’m Head Over Heels (G, 12.5K) Classic 5+1 fic. If you haven’t read it, where have you been? This is your moment. In where Mike keeps inviting Will to the school dances and Will thinks it’s just a joke until he realizes it’s not. 

Before You’re Gone (T, 5.9k) Will is leaving Hawkins and Mike thinks this is a great moment for a confession. This one I discovered last friday, thank you friend @magicalfairy 💗

You’re weird Wheeler (M, 4.5k) Mike unintentionally starts a tradition of going to each other to talk about their sexual encounters just after they finish. Will keeps getting more explicit with the details he shares, and he makes his best friend interested. This one is really fun y’all.

Out-Of-Town Friends (N/R, 4.6K) It’s not rated. I haven’t re- read it but I’d say it would probably fall in a T rating. So cute!! Will has new friends and sneaks off every friday and the Party doesn’t know where he is going, so Mike decides to follow him and is surprised. 

Snowed Under (G, 1.3k) By the same author of The New Fight series. Mike is spending christmas by himself in college because a snowstorm hits Chicago and Nancy can’t drive to see him, but then he has a surprise visitor. Ahhh just a lil sweet holiday fic. Super cute. 

you love me anyway series (T, 7.1k, three completed works) Literally just the cutest thing ever. Established Byler. Will loves to take pictures and he loves taking pictures of Mike. It’s adorable. 

you wanna be friends forever (i can think of something better) (T, 9k) This one is so amazing. So. Amazing. From Will’s POV, my kid deserves the world and he gets it. 

okay not to be okay (T, 4.9k) Mike is a bit sad but then everything is okay. 

can’t hold out forever (G, 18.4k) Y’all!!!!! 5+1 sweetness. Mike has been falling in love since kindergarten. And it’s long af, you’ll enjoy it. 

even if it takes forever (G, 1.3k) College short AU, they miss each other, they love each other, they promise all to each other. It is sappy y’all.

clear as day (N/R, 18.4K, 4 chapters) It’s not rated, but I’d say it falls in the T category. Strangers to friends to lovers. And also, everyone is pretty gay; we have our dynamic trio Mike, Max and El as disaster lesbians (and gay). Will works at the library and he is also gay. Lucas and Dustin and Will are the best friends we needed. It’s very sweet and the Party is kind of formed here!

I went overboard with the one-shots, so you must have realized how much I love long one-shots and I favor them over long works lmao but they are all amazing!!! If it’s on this list, I probably read it at 2 am, sobbing in my bed. So. Hope you enjoy it☺️🧡

[wordstrings]

(ignore this if it’s too personal) how did you figure out you were ace? I can’t tell if I don’t like sex because i haven’t had /good/ sex or if I haven’t had sex with the /right/ people or maybe it’s my medication? or maybe i’m just not into sex. i’m so confused 😩

When I was in late elementary school, a friend told me a person in her class was “hot.” I had no clue what that meant. I mean, I knew it meant they were attractive somehow, but I couldn’t figure out how.

When I was in middle school, there was sex ed in health class and abstinence/purity talks in church. I had no idea why it was such a big deal.

When I was in high school, there were whispers that one of my friends was a lesbian, because of the way she expressed things about women in her various forms of art. I said that didn’t have to be the only conclusion, because one can appreciate different people’s aesthetics without being into them, right?

All through my teens and early twenties, I never heard of the concept of asexuality. Being unknowingly demiromantic on top of it, plus having a naturally subdued external emotional affect, I just figured my feelings were broken. I coped by embracing the studious nerd archetype and identifying pretty closely with Spock from the original Star Trek series that my family was a big fan of.

The first time I actually questioned whether I was straight was during my first year of college. I had a bit of a personal crisis over feelings for my best friend. I still believed that being gay (or anything else in the “LGBT” grouping I’d heard of) was sinful and misdirected.

I managed to shove all that down when I fell for a guy friend, and didn’t pick it up to examine it again for years.

The guy and I eventually got married. The first time I had sex was the wedding night; up until then, it was easy to point to religious reasons for abstaining, but the reality was that I just hadn’t been interested. I didn’t dislike the idea of sex. It freaked me out a bit because I’d never done it, and a penis held about as much intrigue for me as a rubber duck, but I wasn’t opposed. I figured I just had to, I dunno, get into the swing of things, and the appetite would come.

The appetite didn’t come. I decided that must have been due to my birth control medication, which I’d only begun taking months before the wedding. I switched to a low-dose pill that my doctor said would be just as effective while reducing any side effects on my “libido.” (Spoiler alert: when your baseline libido while not on potentially libido-reducing medication is already near flatline, switching the meds doesn’t change that.) I had sex with my husband probably twice a week, usually not because I actively wanted to for my own sake, but because that’s what you do. It wasn’t bad – in fact, he went out of his way to make sure it wasn’t – but it just never caught on with me as something exciting. Mostly, I found it tiring and messy which, coincidentally, is also the reason I’ve never liked working out.

I’d been married for a year when I discovered asexuality for the first time at age 26.

The split attraction model suddenly had everything making sense. My feelings weren’t broken – I was just a sex-neutral asexual person, while I remained perfectly capable of romantic attraction. (My identification with being demiromantic didn’t come until years later). I definitely felt romance with my spouse. I’d also felt romance with that best friend years before. I’d never felt sexual attraction to anyone, of any gender, in my life, ever.

Asexuality isn’t about whether I do or don’t like sex. It’s about how I’m attracted (or not) to people.

It’s possible to be asexual and love sex. It’s possible to be allosexual and dislike sex. It’s possible to feel any given way on any number of sexual and romantic spectrums, and it’s possible to decide you want to label yourself differently than you have before whenever you discover new information about yourself. (And you’re going to keep discovering yourself for years and years and years.)

—

Other posts on being ace:

Bill Nye just casually validated asexuality and I spent ten minutes crying in my kitchen

on the intersection of faith and asexuality

being asexual and having kinks

[strawberry-jules]

the first

picture this: it’s 6:32 pm, you took an edible, and you’re listening to joey pecoraro while you delve headfirst into tumblr like it’s 2014 and you’re a closeted lesbian. because you were, and still are.

january 4, 2020, she texted me drunk, saying she had a secret and she was nervous. i immediately, almost innately, knew what the secret was. i was giggly, blushing, excited, nervous, and absolutely nauseated by the combination of emotions. it was overwhelmingly pleasant, and therefore upsetting, because i didn’t understand. 

i kept opening the picture of us from my christmas party a week earlier, her arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind, twisted into mine as she leaned down and kissed my cheek and laughed quietly into my hair. my eyes peek up at the camera coyly, captured in the flash with an actual sparkle. as the photo was taken, my heart was racing, and i held her arms around me for a moment after the photo was taken. i kept holding her there, pressed up against me, as i showed her what would become one of my most precious memories that i don’t fully remember. 

between the boxed wine, the shitty street weed, and the coke, the whole night is veiled in a thin fog. i do remember her coming to my house on acid, leaning on me and whispering in my ear that she had dropped and wanted some wine. i took her by the hand and led her to the drink and snack counter, already drunk. i watched her slow, graceful movements as she chatted with our friends in the biology club, friends from classes, friends of friends, roommates, and occasional strangers. she walked like she was made of satin, smooth and slippery and soft. she dragged her fingertips across whatever she touched, and i wanted everything to be me. we sat in my room with my cat for a moment, alone, in silence, and it was one of the most intimate moments of my life. 

i reflected on those feelings from a moment, suddenly interrupted by, 

“i have a fat crush on you. like honestly if you hadn’t left there’s a high chance i would have tried to make a move this semester”

holy fuck. holy motherfucking shit fuck. those were the words i had wanted to hear since the day we went hiking with bio club, then split off to explore a rich tech high school, discussed our two daughters and a son who all went to this school, played soccer and danced and played lacrosse, respectively, then discussed taking a pole dancing class and getting our nipples pierced on the way home, in a car full of girls we barely knew. it felt like we were the only two the entire day. she was so beautiful.

i obviously said i liked her, too, in the most eloquent words i could. i wanted to make a good impression.

“shut up

“morgan i’ve had a crush on you forever”

i’m pretty sure that was actually the opening to a romance novel from the 80s.

throughout the month of january, we talked and called and facetimed and i progressively fell more and more infatuated with her. i say infatuated because i loved her as my friend, but i don’t know that i was falling in love quite yet. i got that all over warm feeling when she texted, i got the butterflies at the thought of her name or her hands or her hair, felt a tingle in my spine when i thought of leaning down and kissing her, picking her up by the waist and wrapping her legs around me, trailing my fingers under her shirt. i was wildly infatuated by the feelings she gave me, and frankly a little terrified by how strong they were. i made a plan to ask her to be my girlfriend when she was coming to visit, but it never ended up happening because her parents didn’t let her come visit. for whatever reason, that triggered my brain to shut off. i still wanted her so badly, but i didn’t want to put her in the position to be angry with her parents because of me, that would have been an awful home life. and did i really want to be in a long distance relationship? was this a sign? i had never had a relationship with a girl, did i even know how to do it? what if she didn’t actually like me, and it was just a phase for her? what if i didn’t actually like her, and it was just a phase for me? how would either of us know? was it worth risking our friendship?

i fell into such a lesbian-questioning spiral, that i found the most buff, manly, gym rat dudes i knew and went on dates that i reflect on and gag. i had this intense identity crisis and met a guy who literally looked so much like my father that you could exchange their high school photos and their mothers would not notice and made him my boyfriend as quickly as i could. i forced myself to fall in love, so that i could ignore what happened and live the rest of my days as a straight woman with a man exactly like my father, as my parents had hoped. unfortunately for me, he fell very, very in love with me, and i developed a very, very deep resentment toward him for “keeping me from women”. i woke up one morning and realized that i was no longer questioning. i had a dream that compiled every kiss with every girl i had ever had, all of the images of women kissing and dancing and embracing that had ever impacted me emotionally, and contrasted it immediately by the awkward, cold, uncomfortable kisses with strange men and repetitive, quite literally emotionless kisses with boyfriends, and the way i never initiated sex ever, even in hookups i planned, because i simply did not want to be having sex. it’s like getting high and reading twilight, then immediately getting slapped with a faux leather-bound hotel bible. 

the years i spent with men were a travesty. 

i’m now in an identity crisis because i came to the realization so suddenly that my entire life feels flipped on its head and i have literally no sense of structure or direction or emotional stability or stability in identity that i am in a perpetual tumble backward, down a grassy hill with gopher holes. i hope i land at the bottom, softly, soon. but it’s just as likely that i keep rolling because i started doing that weird sideways thing where you stand up after rolling for like 28 seconds and you realize you’re 86 feet east northeast of your friend, halfway up the hill, when you were supposed to land about 50 feet directly north, at the bottom of the hill. maybe i just rolled down too many literal hills as a child and now i have brain damage because that made no sense.

this is my long winded way of saying i think i’m a lesbian and the two women i have founded the deepest, most emotional romantic bonds with were both best friends that had my name and looked exactly the same, and i think i have a type that is just the version of me i want to be? and is there something wrong with me? and why is being alive so confusing? i am struggling to cope with actual romantic feelings that i have been burying since i was 14. how do i get over a breakup with a girl i never dated and haven’t seen in almost 4 years when she has no idea how i felt and i’m just now understanding how i felt and how fucking incredibly frustrating it is to not know if she ever felt the same, or even has the capacity to feel the same? how fucking tragic to be in love with a straight woman who probably only thinks about you when reflecting on high school, when you’re the one who walks past her in dreams and looks for her when in public and would do very embarrassing and almost unspeakable things to talk to for 5 minutes. and how do i go about processing my feelings for morgan without projecting my feelings for julia on to her? what if my feelings for morgan are simply an extension of julia that i created, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to her and the second part of my name, the second version, the second chance? is that dramatic, or does it have validity? am i just using her as an outlet for a problem i think i can’t solve? i am losing my mind, i think.

[soulvomit]

A place where the widening age difference between me and the rest of Tumblr, is an issue:

I'm at an age where I've lived through many changes, many reinventions.

A good number of things I thought about myself in my teens and my 20s were either *dead wrong* or they only represented that time in my life.

And in some cases I believed things that I no longer believe. I did shit in my 20s that isn't "okay" anymore but was well within the norms of acceptability for left wing coastal middle class white people and there were no conversations going on about whether or not those norms should be challenged. And I changed it when the conversations changed, or in some cases even before (maybe I found my own words for the problem, maybe it just felt weird and uncomfortable and like I was violating some kind of social norm).

And sometimes I simply found myself in bad spaces or bad crowds. (If we'd had today's discourse - I would have been trapped there, forever, with a growing dependence on those crowds and no way out.)

My politics and many major social beliefs shifted dramatically in my 30s.

In some cases it's because of life experience. In some cases it's because the conversations just changed around those things.

Relatively few experiences and aspects of my identity have been fixed and in some cases where they *were* relatively fixed, my feelings about those things changed, or the conversation around them changed, or in some way my relationship to my environment changed. And in a couple of spaces in my 20s, I was just wrong!! (Isn't the midlife crisis narrative fundamentally about questioning the identity you were committed to in your 20s?)

That I'm LGBTQ is one thing, and relatively fixed as an outward part of my identity for the past 30 years, but I haven't necessarily called it the same thing two years in a row - conversations were different, including conversations around self-understanding, and *they varied from place to place* and the discourse was different - and moving or even just changing my social space often meant starting over from scratch learning new concepts and new terms. People really underestimate what Tumblr and Leftbook have done for standardizing LGBTQ norms across broad areas.

I've known I'm ND forever, but the words and concepts around that changed. In one case, I was wrong about what I thought I was for years and found a diagnostic label and clinical picture that fit better. It doesn't mean that other people are wrong about what they are, just that I was.

I've even moved between vastly different subcultures.

How I feel about my gender and about sexuality in general began to change drastically in my 40s (the 30s were the hardest time with this because that's when I experienced the most "normie pressure" from all sides). I didn't have a strong impetus toward sex that was motivated by anything except desperation or wanting other people to like me at any time between my teens and my 40s, but I perceive that I can't really talk about this in mixed age environments let alone in environments where desire is spoken about in terms of permanent fixed identity. I don't know how to talk about my own life without people assuming it means I think 16-25 year old asexual or lesbian or trans identifying people will have a different identity at 40. That's not what I think at all. But I bet the same young people will have shifted in some major visible way about *something.*

I feel like I'd be talking over a lot of identity groups (this is another space where it's frustrating that individual experience doesn't exist, there are only broad identity groups) or implying problematic things to admit that I only really started enjoying sex in my 40s, with my present partner. It's not that individual experiences don't exist so much as that things are framed as experience not mattering (or being a form of privilege) and also it being framed that anyone talking about their own experience is probably talking over someone else even if they're blogging to themselves in a dark room.

By 45, the changes I've gone through have happened to lots of people. Most of the people I know in my age group still identify as the same sexual orientation they identified with at 25. But in some cases, other aspects of their identities have changed.

But the "ideal age" presently is fixed so young and so much of the social/psychological norm seems to be determined so much based upon how *very young people* process the world.

I have to be very, very careful when I talk about how I've changed my mind about anything or grown as a person about anything because I'm talking to a world that has an idea that who you are is some fixed identity you're supposed to discover at 20 and then be happy with the rest of your life, which seems kind of fucked up to me. And if you have mental health symptoms then you're supposed to experience the same symptoms forever. (Fuck, that sounds awful!) And... Jeebus, Tumblr. Isn't that actually kinda ableist? I've learned a lot of coping skills for my ADHD in this whole time.

It was the opposite when I was younger - the "ideal age" was a 30something for a long time, for about a good decade or more 40something Boomers were still a big focus of advertising and the media, I was surrounded by older people in all workspaces unless I worked in retail or college settings, and in my spaces, anything you did before 30 was treated as something you'd eventually change your mind about on your way to a suburban white yuppie heterosexual life. It was always an uphill battle to prove that I knew anything about myself, because of gender and age.

The reality is that everyone is a work in progress, forever. People change careers. They change religions (which is a weird discourse now because you're presently only really allowed to change identity if it has some kind of deep roots in ancestry or some kind of major conventional life narrative, don't people see how traditionalist this viewpoint really is?). People realize in their 70s that they're LGBTQ, sometimes after leading conventional hetero lives. And sometimes people do end up in hetero relationships after having a really solidly LGBTQ identity for a long time (because of biphobia).

And maybe major things aren't as likely to change. But how we feel about those things and most importantly *what we call them* can change many times in a single lifetime and it's not always on us, sometimes the conversations change and we're *expected* to conceptualize our experiences in different ways.

[diepreussin]

This is where we take a stand (Just some thoughts on the TKF, part 1?)

I've been thinking about Trina, Mendel, Jason, Charlotte and Cordelia's life after losing Whizzer and Marvin (and maybe writing a fic?? Idk), in the context of the AIDS/HIV crisis and their struggle with depression (content warning, btw). And I'm gonna start with my dear lesbians.

I imagine Charlotte feeling completely frustrated and powerless for not having been able to save all those lives (including the ones of her friends), becoming obsessed with her work as a way for coping the loss of W. & M. People are dying and there is no time for self-pitying. But the more patients she can't save, the more she sinks in her depression. Charlotte is a person whose confidence and pride resides in her knowledge, in her achievements, in having the situation under control. She's harsh with people, but she's harsher with herself, and she can't help but blaming and neglecting herself, being uncapable of facing that, despite having done absolutely everything she could for her friends, it wasn't enough. Because that is completely unfair, and too much for a person that "saving lifes, feels invencible." Now, she feels the opposite of invencible.

Cordelia, on his behalf, is someone who also cares deeply about the others, but is aware of her own limits. She's not a saviour and she knows it, and even though that made her a little upset initially, when Whizzer gets sick, she decides to take a step forward and bring to the whole TKF all the moral support she's capable of. She's a empathetic and optimistic, and that's why I think that, despite the brutal blow of her friends' deaths, after a while she will look at her family and realize they still need someone to help them go through this. And that's how, as the selfless person she is, she will take the reins of the TKF, also coping with her feeling of helplessness by commiting to others, simillary to her lover. I also see her getting very involved in AIDS/HIV activism, because as I have said, even if she knows there's very little she can do by herself, once she starts seeing people getting organized to protest, she will quickly realize that her power resides in remaining united and fighting together (just like a family, just like Marvin, Whizzer, Charlotte and her vowed in "Unlikely Lovers"). That's exactly what Charlotte needs to see, and what Cordelia wants to show her. And I'm sure that, once Charlotte (with Cordelia's help) gets better at not tormenting herself, she will start to fight too, and with her intelligence and regained determination, she will earn a place in AIDS/HIV research activities.

Their relationship will have some trouble, no doubt. But there's also no doubt they deeply love each other, and even though they will probably never recover completely (because that's impossible), they will learn to live with it day by day, and will take care of keeping the memory of their friends and the terrible injustice of what they went through alive, for the rest of their days. And of course, they will do it along with Trina, Mendel and Jason, but that is for another post.

[netgirl-y2k]

wip amnesty day

fics that I’m never going to finish - one (1) Pitch, one (1) PoI, both femslash, both stop mid-sentence.

Pitch, Ginny/Amelia, fake dating 

Ginny found out she was dating Amelia the same way she found out pretty much everything about her life these days: from baseball gossip blogs.

"We're dating?" she hissed into the phone.

"There's a picture of us, from that night outside your hotel room..?" Amelia said it almost like Ginny might not remember.

And as much as Ginny might like to forget that she had called a woman who wasn't her agent, in floods of tears, to fly from New York to Arizona, and then later, out of her mind on painkillers and despair, had tried to kiss her outside her hotel room... Well, it was pretty hard to forget.

Ginny made a noncommittal noise and Amelia said, "The blogmaster called for a comment--" Ginny could almost hear Amelia's inaudible, put-upon sigh "--and Eliot answered."

"Amelia, we're not--?"

"Ginny," Amelia interrupted smoothly. "This isn't going to be like the time you believed Yardbarker that you were going to need tommy john surgery even after the Padres own doctors had said you wouldn't, is it?"

"...No."

*

Ginny was in an empty hotel meeting room with Amelia and Eliot.

"Okay," said Amelia, shaking out her blonde hair. "This is fixable."

"Why did you tell that blogger I was dating Amelia?" asked Ginny, and she actually felt a little bit sorry for Eliot, who looked like he wanted to crawl inside his tablet and die.

"I panicked, okay? They sent me that photo of the two of you, um--" Eliot choked a little "--and I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know that you liked girls, Ginny!" He shot a panicked look at Amelia. "Women. Like women, I mean."

Ginny stared at her sneakers and wanted to fall through the floor. "It's not something I've ever really explored."

"Why not?" Amelia asked gently, and something in Ginny's chest clenched.

"For the same reason I don't sleep with my teammates," said Ginny. "I get enough crap as it is without inviting any additional bullshit."

"This is how we'll handle it," said Amelia, all business again. "The photograph is already out there, and there's nothing we can do about that now. But on the bride side, we're in Arizona--" Ginny had come down to Arizona early to recuperate out of the limelight before spring training, and as far as Amelia was concerned they might as well be on Mars. "So this is our story: Ginny, you and I have been dating on and off for a few months--"

"Why on and off?" Eliot asked, tapping notes into his tablet.

"Because we don't want Ginny's legions of fans to think she's been cheating on her girlfriend with a tech billionaire."

Ginny groaned. The thing with Noah had sort of fizzled out; a bit because watching your MLB playing girlfriend train in Arizona sounded much sexier than watching your sort of girlfriend sulk and bitch about her physical therapy in Arizona, and partly because his advice that there should only be one voice on the mound had turned out to be crap; they had stats geeks in baseball for a reason.

"I've come to Arizona to help Ginny through her injury and work on our relationship. Before spring training starts we'll pretend to break up for good. The media can spin its wheels while you're out of the limelight, and it'll make it easier for you later if a relationship with a woman is something you do want to explore for real."

Amelia looked questioningly at Ginny, and because it sounded better to her than admitting that she'd overdone the painkillers and decided to add a sexuality crisis to her ongoing career crisis, Ginny nodded.

*

Mike had come to Arizona early too; his knees demanded that he spend some time with the physios.

"Mike, hold up!" Ginny called after him.

"What's up, rookie?"

"Um. So. You might hear a rumour that I'm dating Amelia."

Mike blinked; he blinked again, and said, "I'm getting back together with Rachel."

"Okay."

"Okay, then."

*

The picture was everywhere online; Ginny's hand curled around Amelia's bicep, her head tilted to one side and leaning close to kiss Amelia. The picture didn't show what had happened next; Amelia pushing Ginny away by the shoulders, her soft, admonishing Ginny; in the picture it looked like Amelia was about to kiss back.

GINNY BAKER LESBIAN??? was the title of the online gossip piece the picture was attached to; Amelia had rolled her eyes and said that more than one question mark was redundant when Eliot had first shown them the blog.

Back in her hotel room Ginny couldn't help but click back to the blog, although she hadn't been able to bring herself to read more than the first paragraph. She slammed her laptop closed and picked up the remote control.

"...So it doesn't matter if Ginny Baker is gay, bi, or just has damn good taste in women; her girlfriend is hotter than any of the neckbeards complaining online could ever dream of catching."

There was a knock at the door, and Ginny let it swing open allowing Amelia in.

"Katie Nolan thinks you're hot." Ginny gestured towards the television before clicking it off.

"I just came to see how you're coping with all this."

Ginny shrugged. "Okay. I was actually thinking that maybe we should be seen together more, seeing as we're supposed to be a couple."

Amelia's mouth quirked up. "Like a date?"

"Just dinner, here at the hotel."

"You really know how to show a girl a good time, Baker."

"I--"

"No, it's a good idea." Amelia grinned. "I'll tell you what though, fake date or not, I'm not picking out your outfit for you. You'll have to dress yourself."

"I think I can manage that."

*

Ginny hadn't felt bad about losing touch with Tommy after he'd been traded to Chicago, at least she hadn't until she'd realised that she didn't even have his number and had to ask Blip for it.

She'd had to listen to a ridiculous amount of bragging about how he had a world series ring now, but Tommy had spent the first few months of Ginny's rookie season out with a broken hand, so he could kind of understand what she was growing through.

She wasn't sure how helpful his advice that she should "be a total bitch to whoever they bring in to pitch your spot", but it did make her laugh.

After the story about her and Amelia broke he texted her a series of emojis that Ginny had to turn her phone on its side and squint to understand, and when she did she stuffed her phone down the side of the couch cushions with a , "Jesus, Tommy."

*

Dressing for dinner with Amelia was trickier than Ginny had expected; it wasn't a date, but it had to look like a date to onlookers. Plus, it had to be something she could get into by herself with her arm still immobilized and in a sling.

She wrestled herself into a black dress missing Evelyn the whole time; she left her hair down because she couldn't put it up one handed, and kept her makeup to lip gloss and mascara, things she couldn't mess up with her off hand.

Evelyn

PoI, Root/Shaw, the never to be continued continuation of this

Shaw walked down the New York City street, Bear's leash in her hand and the sun at her back. She felt... okay.

A payphone started ringing as she walked past, she stopped, and picked up the receiver.

"Sameen." The rebooted Machine was still using Root's voice. Shaw looked up and found a security camera blinking at her; she smiled. "Can you hear me?"

The camera blinked again. Shaw's vision whited-out, and she could feel Bear's leash dissolving in her hand; the simulation was resetting.

No.

Shaw couldn't see properly; removing the VR goggles and the hospital strip-lighting had been what caused her vision to white-out. There was a blurry figure hovering over her, and she struck out at where she guessed the Samaritan goon's throat was.

The flunky fell back with an audible ack. Shaw rolled to her feet, blinked, and the figure sprawled on her floor and clutching at her throat resolved into...

"...Root?"

"Hey, sweetie." Root croaked. "Miss me?"

Root was dead; she'd taken six millimeters of lead to the chest and died alone. Shaw wanted to kiss her; Shaw wanted her gone.

"Do you have a gun?" she asked instead. Sometimes there was an axe in the simulations, sometimes not; a gun would be better.

Root looked long and painful at Shaw, forced the puppyish expression from her face, nodded briskly once, and said, "I know where to get one."

She scrambled to her feet and pulled open the door. Stewart the creepy medtech was out cold in the hallway, his face an unhealthy shade of blue. Root grabbed one of his ankles and began tugging him through the doorway by inches.

During one of the first simulations, somewhere in the early hundreds, Samaritan, or Shaw's subconscious or whatever, had forgotten that Root had all the upper body strength of wet spaghetti, and she'd been able to lift Shaw clear off her feet during foreplay.

Shaw pressed down hard on the skin behind her ear, grabbed Stewart's other ankle and hauled him into the room. Root found a Glock 26 in his ankle holster, which was apparently the only gun he carried.

Shaw held out her hand for the gun.

"Sameen..." Root began. She dropped the hand holding the gun to her side, but stopped short of hiding it behind her back.

"Root."

"Look, the only reason we're not swarming in Samaritan agents is that She's interfering with their surveillance somehow. I don't know how long we've got."

"Then you'd better hand over that gun."

Root sighed audibly, and offered Shaw the gun butt first. Shaw took it and said, "Can your Computer Overlord find us a way out of here?"

Root hummed and pushed her hair back over her shoulder, tilting her head to show off the line of stitches running down from behind her ear where her cochlear implant had been removed. The stitches looked more or less professional; they'd probably scar, though they didn't look infected.

Shaw wanted to touch Root's neck; she wanted to scratch through the skin behind her own ear until she hit bone and sinew.

"Right," she said, briskly checking that the Glock was loaded and ready to fire. "We play on the highest difficulty setting this time, then."

*

Even without the Machine's help they managed to find their way to a stairwell without cameras, and overwhelm two Samarian agents netting them two more guns and a white lab coat that Root had thrown on over her hospital gown.

"Can't say I love the outfit."

"No?" said Root, coming dangerously close to striking a pose.

"Psych ward chic isn't really my thing," said Shaw. "So if you playing dress up is part of Samaritan's latest recruitment pitch then it's off to a bad start."

"Shaw..." Root began, and Shaw slammed her up against the wall as two Samaritan agents passed the door to the stairwell reporting that they'd cleared this floor into their earwigs.

Shaw was pressed up against Root, her face pressed against Root's shoulder; Root felt warm and solid and real... but then, she always did.

"Shaw..." Root began again, this time with a tremor in her voice; her hands were in fists against Shaw's shirt like she was trying really hard not to clutch at her.

"I swear to god, Root, if you're about to smell my hair..." Shaw pushed herself off the wall and away from Root. "If they've finished searching this floor we

[cyborg--sevalle]

Hey everyone. For anyone wondering where I’ve been or what’s been happening with me, I’m going to put an explanation under the cut. I have some commentary on these experiences to go along with it which is strictly intra-trans lesbian, so for that reason, do not read unless you yourself are a trans lesbian, thank you.

Tw: a lot of things, I don’t really have the energy or means to specify

So, a lot has happened to me over these past few months. As some people know I was kicked out of the house I had been living in for the past year, and as a result my girlfriend and I almost wound up homeless during one of the most extremely cold winters in the state’s history.

On top of that, because I use state insurance, I can not have my hormones mailed to me, and since my only means of transportation was through the people I used to live with, and because the nearest pharmacy that carries them is restrictively far away, I’ve been off HRT since Nov, and due to complications I was unable to get my passport info changed before the inauguration, so needless to say my transition has more or less halted for the time being, which has been incredibly difficult to cope with physically, mentally, and emotionally.

However, what has kept me offline and isolated even from my closest circle of friends is the fact that back in December, I was sexually assaulted. What makes this especially traumatic was that it was by another trans woman, and furthermore it was done by taking advantage of my dedication toward providing safety and comfort to other trans women.

As anyone who has talked with me at length about praxis can tell you, I have long tried to develop a practice of healing in order to counterbalance what I consider a call to politically weaponize trans women, something which I consider unsustainable, especially without some women willing to play the role of healers and nurturers to help keep those who choose to fight going.

I was called to this person’s house because they felt if they were left alone, they would attempt suicide, and so I offered to stay with them until we could connect them with the necessary aid services to help them through their crisis, but since it was late, I ended up staying the night, intending to go with them to seek help the next morning.

However, at some point in the night, they asked me to come lie down with them, because they didn’t want to be alone, which I consented to, but shortly after that, they began explaining to me in graphic detail how they intended to kill themselves if they went through with it, and then they began engaging physical contact with me that I was not comfortable with, but when I attempted to address this, they essentially told me that if I did not consent to sex with them, they would likely kill themselves.

So, I “consented”, but it was in no way a willing consent, and I have struggled to put a name to it, but the fact is that the consent was coerced, essentially holding themself hostage, knowing I couldn’t say no if the terms were laid out as such, and so I have no other words for what happened except coercive sexual assault. I haven’t talked about this at all because I frankly couldn’t believe it until I had a breakdown a few weeks ago and talked through it with my girlfriend, and I was finally able to call this what it is.

Alongside this, as a result of the election, I had made an effort to try to build more connections with other trans women in preparation for the impendingly bleak political climate. What I got in return was a deluge of unsolicited attempts to engage me in sexual contact. I am a CSA survivor, something I have been very open about on this blog, so anyone who has followed me for more than, like, a month should know that, and thus should at least have some sense of how it affects my ability to navigate sexual situations.

Despite this, even when expressing my discomfort, it only keeps it at bay for a very brief time before I’m again inundated with unsolicited nudes and requests to sext/roleplay. I shouldn’t have to assert this, but if you have not invested in someone enough to learn and respect their comfort levels wrt sexual interaction, you certainly are not invested enough to be attempting to engage with them in that sort of manner, especially w/o prior consent.

So now, everytime I think about hopping on Skype, or Discord, or Tumblr, I feel like I’m going to vomit, because somehow I, a hardly d-list trans tumblogger, have somehow presented myself in a way that makes other trans women believe they are entitled to me sexually. To make matters worse, it’s also frequently justified by appealing to my expressed desire to be open and helpful and supportive of other trans women, but that doesn’t mean you can just demand access to my body or my sexuality because it is in some way helpful or reaffirming.

Now, in my heart of hearts, and likely I am naive in feeling this way, but I want to believe this has all been done out of desperation, rather than malice, on the part of those responsible because we are all profoundly hurting, and sometimes, when people hurt, they will justify to themselves hurting others if it alleviates some of that unbearable pain, but there are better alternatives to what is a horrific trend I have long observed from the outside which I have now been dragged into.

This is where I switch to discourse mode, because discoursing is what I do to channel pain and trauma, it’s why I was going off about anything and everything despite not talking to my friends in private these past few months, because when I hurt, I talk about shit in an analytical fashion in an attempt to distance myself from it emotionally.

We are a community of women who are frequently made to feel ugly, disgusting, and worthless, and for many of us, myself included, one of the best ways to work through a lot of that is sex. However, for some there seems to be this assumption that, because of this shared experience, that trans women are entitled to other trans women’s bodies, or that there is some sort of moral impetus for us to make our bodies available to each other, and I shouldn’t need to explain why that is profoundly misguided, but here we are.

We constantly pass around memes which tell us we are valid, that our desire for other trans women is not predatory or creepy, but what we should be clarifying is that that desire is not inherently so, because some seem to have taken this to mean that trans women’s desire for other trans women can’t be so. Suffice to say, if you are using the threat of suicide in order to coerce another trans woman to have sex with you, that is creepy, and it is absolutely predatory. Regardless of whatever emotional suffering you are going through, it is not the job of other trans women to lay themselves out for you so you can use them to work out your own miseries and pains.

As both a csa survivor and a psychotic, I’ve had to learn that frequently you need to seek out people with both relatable trauma and also coping mechanisms which are compatible with yours. If exchanging nudes helps you cope, exchange them with someone who copes in the same way. If you fuck to cope, find someone else who does the same and (once you have their enthusiastic consent) fuck them. But don’t drag people for whom sex is a complicated thing that requires disclosure and negotiation into your coping strategy, leaving you fulfilled but them devastated in the process.

Frankly, we all need to work on finding ways we can relate intimately that don’t eventually default to talking about our sex lives. I love to talk about the games/anime I watch/play, followed by poltics and theory shit with magick and occult shit close behind, then probably food, and then maybe sex, but in interacting almost exclusively with other trans women, I find that order literally reversed, so like, I was tired of talking about how other trans women fuck even before this happened, but frequently it’s the only thing a lot of us seem to want to talk about with each other, and again, this comes from the frequently violent suppression of our sexualities, but like, invest in people first before you start going off about what your fetishes are, or how you masturbate, because for some people, that’s not shit we want to hear from people who we aren’t intimately involved with.

Finally, and this is something I’ve said for a while, we really need to dispel this notion that, like, every other trans woman is automatically worthy of your trust. Like, I’m pushing 30 now, by several metrics I’m passed my sell-by date, so please listen to me when I say this. Other trans women may share your experiences, they’ll likely be capable of a nuanced understanding of your struggles, and they may be able to offer a deep and abiding connection you can’t get from people outside of these experiences, but never forget every trans woman is an individual.

Some of us go through all the shit that tends to happen to girls like us and we come out with hearts of gold, others go through it and turn into twisted, conniving, and manipulative people, just like any other population of people. As trans women we are vulnerable, and we need to be able to turn to each other for help and support, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant in looking out for ourselves and being wary of others because anyone can prey on that vulnerability, man or woman, cis or trans, and we need to be able to admit that that danger exists, and develop reasonable ways of protecting ourselves, rather than existing in the extremes of innocent and all-trusting or jaded and isolated.

All that being said, I don’t know if this means I’ll be coming back to Tumblr anytime soon. I need to first work on reconnecting with partners and close friends whose lives I disappeared from as a result of all this. If you’ve read this far (and assuming you aren’t a non-tw who ignored the request at the beginning of this post) thank you for reading, and I hope that any of this gets through because this is something I’ve seen happen in this community time and time again, and wasn’t able to understand why until it happened to me. We need to be better to each other, now more than ever.