7of-hearts

[7of-hearts]

My problem is that I like collecting things and putting them on a little shelf

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if episode four of cloudward ho has taught me anything, it’s that i could watch monty lamontgommery discover new flora and fauna for hours

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guess who just got ✨dommed by the narrative✨✨✨

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Lymantriine Moth

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some recent portraits of butches of color. via butchisnotadirtyword

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Israel has boarded the Gaza flotilla. They have

• Kidnapped humanitarian volunteers

• Seized a ship in international waters

• Kidnapped a European MEP

• Seized a ship that was carrying humanitarian aid.

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Eyes on the madleen freedom flotilla

freedomflotilla-tracker

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i can’t believe i used to think people my age were adults

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marya junková if you read this i’m free on thursday night and would like to hang out. please respond to this and then hang out with me on thursday night when i’m free

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Hells to the Bells

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Happy Pride critty role friends I want to talk about Laudna gender.

Is this a weird choice? I don’t know. I have a lot of feelings about her approach to gender that feel clear in my heart, but I haven’t been able to fully voice them outside of rabid growling in my friend’s dm’s so here we go.

Is she cis? No. But also yes. I think Matilda Bradbury was a cis woman when she died, but Laudna is something different. And I think she feels like she doesn’t quite meet the criteria for woman, the same way she doesn’t quite meet the criteria for person in the world of Exandria. When she was confronted with an angry mob in What Doesn’t Break, and Imogen tells the mob “she’s not a thing” Laudna agrees simply with “I’m a Laudna.”

Laudna’s gender is very based in performance. She wants to dress like a lady, she wants to go to fancy balls and be seen as one. There was of course the time that Orym asked her to disguise herself in white robes and she was very uncomfortable, but there was also that night when Fearne switched everyone’s clothes as a prank, and while the rest of the group laughed about it, even though Laudna didn’t say anything, Marisha acted deeply uncomfortable, holding herself like she had some core part of herself stolen.

Laudna wants to be beautiful. She worries over her smell (with Orym growing flowers on her on the travel to the hartmoore, Deni$e with the makeup outside that small town, asking Imogen if she still smelled after the raven queen tied their souls together) and when she is feeling at her worst, she’s disparaging of her looks. (It doesn’t show in the transcript but I know when they reunited after the solstice, Fearne stumbled her way into saying maybe we can put lipstick on a pig and get the Issylra group new outfits too so they can feel a little better and Laudna grumbled that the pig would look better than her.)

When she meets powerful women, she seems in awe, and when she dares to speak to them, she starts with calling them beautiful. (meeting Vex and Kiki. Also her view on the women in the woods in What Doesn’t Break, and the paladin were all admiring) And the most powerful woman in Laudna’s life, the one with her thumb on Laudna’s brain, has divided the world neatly into Maidens or Monsters. Laudna knows which one of those she is.

She’s not the cis plus that comes with interrogating gender binaries. She has a blunt understanding of gender and knows that she does not meet the criteria. She’s cis minus, and she knows she’s missing the pieces needed to construct a whole woman.

What I’m trying to say here is, there’s a trans story that can’t happen outside of the fantasy genre. (I love these.) A woman who isn’t quite, who had to build herself out of disparate pieces, and she has so few of them that even the wrong clothes might break the careful balance she made. And best of all, over the course of campaign three, she was loved by her friends, accepted by them even when she got ugly. She was desired, a happy ending was made for her, and I think, given time, she’ll find an understanding of gender that includes her.

Laudna spent a long time as a monster, but I think, removed from the societal pressures to fit in, Laudna would be happy with she/it pronouns. And like maybe down the line old lady Laudna is happy to be defined more like a creature but i don't know for sure because 30 years is a long time to build trauma. It’s nice to think about.

I’m old. When I was young, “it” was a cudgel wielded against women who didn’t conform well enough. I mean, it still is, but man the ninties and early aughts were fucking Rough for queers. (It’s bad now, too, friends, and I’m sorry. We march on.) In my non fanfic writing, I’ve been writing characters that use it pronouns, and giving focus to stories for it/shes has felt… well it’s felt good. I love a monster story, and I really love when the monster gets to be a hero.

Laudna’s gender is important to me. Her gender might boil down simply to “I’m a Laudna” and hell, name/name’s a very valid gender. But yeah. It felt very good to watch a monstrous woman, who doesn’t always fit her gender, who’s afraid sometimes of fucking it up get to be the love interest, and the hero with the hail-mary spells, and a part of a community that loves her.

Happy Pride.

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every time I mention how many days sober I am I appreciate people congratulating me and telling me to keep up the good work. it is nice. but I also wish that milestones in addiction recovery weren’t still so pinned to length of sobriety/abstinence

yeah yeah I’m 50 days sober who cares. how about the fact that, when I do drink, it tends to be nipped in the bud after two days nowadays instead of weeks or months? how about the fact that drinking has been condensed to a six pack because I’m at the end of my tether, instead of browning out every night? how about my friend who has decided to stop drinking alone, and is actually sticking to that? recovery doesn’t always look like sobriety and I wish it was more normal to talk about that. yknow. when addiction is normal to talk about at all

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Marsha P Johnson with Snoopy

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you are 16. you are talking with a gay man in his 50s or 60s, a friend, huge and gentle with a scarf and short fluffy curls of gray hair, who has directed you in two plays staged in your mid-size artsy town. (he has not yet asked you to be in his production of The Laramie Project which will change your life. this conversation will also change your life.)

he is talking about theatre. he is talking about theatre when he was younger. he says, "of course, it was AIDS then." in the pause, you ask him. clumsy and quiet and 16 and "straight," you ask him. what was it like.

he takes a moment in which his face is not like a person's face. "there was a time," he says, "i'm not sure how long, years. when i went to a funeral every weekend." he tells you about two funerals in a day, and choosing between friends when you couldn't make it to both. he does not look at you, he looks at them. his wet grey gaze is so clear that you start to see ghosts. it will be years before you understand why it feels like your grief too. why the ghosts call you family.

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Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.

It is the original sin of the so-called queer community and it damns it from the cradle.