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a dagger... a dagger...

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gerard screaming and laughing during the end of ray’s kids from yesterday solo!!

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@python are they using this technique on you. are you vulnerable due to the large armholes in your tank tops

NO partly because I have the cold tolerance of a large and woolly mountain quadruped despite being built like a Victorian waif, and also because it's currently a glorious 68 degrees here

Me: it is 31°C out. I should wear shorts and a crop top to vent some heat

The humble massachusetts bay transit authority bus air conditioner: LOST ICE TECHNIQUE - FROST ANGEL MAELSTROM "ABSOLUTE ZERO"

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HOT DOG!

Ooouughhggh I always forget how much I love real ink. Last nights show ruled.

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Never coming home

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my vid of gerard reading to the dummy

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I cannot stand the parodies of modern major general, they're overdone and simply not as good as the original. They've done them about everything, whatever topic, big or small.

And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.

The diction's always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.

The scanning of the lyrics in the meter is unbearable, they emphazise the syllables in ways that are untenable, in short in matters musical, prosodic and ephemeral, i cannot stand the parodies of modern major general!

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the thing is gay people can look like anything and anybody BUT at the end of the day like. "gay man" and "lesbian" can be in themselves labels of gender as much as they are sexuality.

"fruit", "invert", "dyke", etc all carry implications of gender incongruity or non-conformity

and like. we're allowed to identify with that. there is a push by some well-meaning people to indemnify the world against transphobia by being like. "men are men, women are women, nonbinary people are nonbinary" and it's like. a third equally static and policed category is not a fix actually

i don't use the nonbinary label. a lot of people very badly want me to be nonbinary bc of the ways in which i'm effete and effeminate, because of how i talk about masculinity and femininity, bc of my comfort with trans women and lesbians as much as other queer men

but it doesn't MAKE me that

i don't use they/them pronouns. i don't identify with nonbinary labels or third gender labels. i don't really engage with or identify with gender abolition for myself

i am first and foremost, a man. a queer man, a gay man. but that i am transgender is less important than that i am a homosexual

many people are ALMOST comfortable with "lesbian" as a gender label in itself, one that venn circles with "butch" and "fem", but are less comfortable w "gay man" as a set of gender expectations bc they're scared it's homophobic

many queer men don't mince like they used to

the mincing homosexual, who i do still joyfully meet in gay bars, is often invisible on british tv bc people are frightened to be accused of caricature or abuse. the gay tory is the new focus. gay man but he wears a suit and wants 2.4 children and went to private school and works in bureaucracy

he has an ugly but expensive haircut and expensive but bland shoes. he certainly doesn't mince. he doesn't paint his nails or wear earrings or wear rainbows. being gay, he might tell you, isn't "his whole identity". what he means is that despite his preference for men, he assimilates w heterosexuals

but that set of political and socioeconomic choices and aesthetics doesn't mean that another sort of homosexuality ceases to exist. some queer men have always and will always be targeted for the same sorts of violence and retribution that some transfems and trans women are, bc of gender incongruity

they don't have to identify as women or be perceived as women to be targeted by this sort of homophobia - what may not be transmisogyny, but functions in the same way as transmisogyny does. it wishes to punish perceived sexuality, but in the moment is fixated on gendered cues

it targets and demands retribution for aspects of gendered aesthetic or behaviour - movements of the hands, feet, hips, and mouth; clothing and jewellery; lisps, laughs, modes and manners of speech; eyelashes and mouths and fingernails and hair; hobbies and interests and passions and dislikes

all of these things are seen as disgusting or despicable bc they are seen as clues to other homosexuals that this man is a homosexual. they are seen as clues or implications of future or past degenerate sexual attractions or behaviours.

but they aren't in themselves sexual. they're gendered.

the homosexual who is perceived as woman-like, who might even proudly present himself as woman-like or feminine - as much as the homosexual who is perceved as man-like, who might proudly present herself as man-like or masculine - is not, by virtue of other people's perception, inherently nonbinary

some of them might be. some of them might really enjoy different nonbinary labels and classifications.

but not all of them do or want to. and imo that's a trigger for some intergenerational clashes - it feels for some older queers like ppl are forcing them into a category they never chose or wanted

and at the same time, younger generations might feel disrespected or misunderstood bc it feels like older generations are dismissing them or misunderstanding the core of what they want when it's just, you know. a different set of lenses for similar feelings and perceptions by outsiders

and the anger and hostility about it at the end of the day is also about, you know, prescriptivisim - obsessive focus on labels as having Firm and Unchanging Definitions, and anyone who uses those labels HAS to have the Correct Definition - and that's just another form of gender and sexuality police

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Like for real I've been wondering this for a while. I'm pretty sure not everyone has a pyjamas for every night of the week and presumably noone is putting worn pyjamas back in the drawer. Where are you guys putting them?? Under pillow?? Just strewn about bedroom???

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I've been rereading TLT and as much as I love the insane lesbian angle, I can't stop thinking about how Harrow as a child fell instantly in love with Earth.

She grows up in the darkest, saddest, deadest corner of the solar system, deprived to the point she's unable to tolerate bright light or really even much flavor in food. And she sees the face of Earth, and without understanding what she sees, loves it. my ecologist heart feels some type of way about this.

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Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF

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Thinking more about Edward Little and his coat(s).

In much of the 19th century, men’s coats served a very similar role to women’s corsets—they were garments constructed with very specific structuring techniques to visually and physically shape the body into the desired silhouette. That’s something people generally know about corsets, but not so much with men’s jackets! But the interior layers of different fabric weights or padding, the stitching on collars and lapels to give them dimension—all of that unseen scaffolding works to create an image of a Man as required by the trends and culture of the day.

With that in mind, Edward never being seen without his coat says a lot of things. He’s gripping onto convention with his fingernails. He needs something to help him appear visibly masculine. He needs structure and support. He refuses to be seen for who he is without his station. Edward’s coat is compensatory masculinity. It’s armor. It’s a mask. It’s a brace.

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How do you know when you're done with figuring out your queerness/sexuality/gender/etc? Like, you know you're a man. So at what point did you figure out, that's it, I'm a man, that's what I truly am inside and I'll be this way for the rest of my life? Or is there no such point? I'm scared of deciding on a label and just rejecting it again and again. I fear impermanence.

Oh, huge mood, fearing impermanence.

Some people just /know/ who they are with a certainty, and I admire that even as it bewilders me.

I realized a while ago that I’m probably never going to find “the right words” to describe myself to others. If you wanted to get technical about the nitty gritty aspects of my identity, I could give you a whole list of words other than “binary trans man” whose definitions I fit into.

So what I did instead was set the words on a shelf for a bit and examined my ~experience~ as a person. What did I want to look like? Sound like? Dress like? What did I want people to call me? In an ideal world where I did not have a rational fear of rejection or harmful repercussions, How Would I Gender?

And that’s when I realized that no matter what I called myself or which words I used to let other people know how to relate to me, what I’ve wanted out of my body has never changed. It’s always been static. I want top surgery, a hysterectomy, a low voice. I want to dress like this, be perceived like that. Love this way, be loved that way, grow in this direction.

Everything else is just....trimmings. My words are what I use to give other people a sense of what I am. It’s not entirely accurate, but I’ve given up on being Fully Understood by other people. I’m not even fully understood by myself.

Do I like every change being on testosterone is going to do to me? Or the potential visual top surgery will leave me with? No. But I can live happier this way. I will have fewer regrets than if I did nothing. I will love and be loved by more people if I accept what I’m feeling in this moment as true than if I let the fear that I might identify differently in the future keep me from pursuing relationships.

At some point, I think you’ve just gotta decide what you’re willing to live with. It’s perfectly okay to be questioning your whole life, and to fear the impermanence of the self. But if you’re uncomfortable now, or if doing something different would bring you joy now, and the way you feel now is that you’d have fewer regrets in the overarching arc of your life if you do something about it, then I say run with it as far as it will take you.

Being something else in the future doesn’t invalidate how you feel at this moment, and you can always do things differently when you get there.

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so somerville MA has a bunch of cats competing to be bikepath mayor and

!!!!!!!!

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My favorite slow burn, novelist-and-the-amateur-detective-who's-crushing-hard-on-her to lovers, multi-novel relationship ever. And in the meantime, while they sort out their baggage, their weird friendship remains an absolute delight.

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Whilst entirely useless as a Wikipedia article, this version of the one on If on a winter's night a traveler remains one of the funniest things I've read