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Hiatus Notice

//Hello all.  So I’ve had no energy and no muse for a while.  I’m dealing with some health issues right now that are making things very difficult.  So I’m putting this blog on hiatus.  I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.  I expect probably until there’s some sort of resolution to what’s going on right now.  I may come back and clear out my drafts of everything that isn’t a meme.  I’d just be tagging and queueing things.  If I do that, I’ll make sure this message reposts every so often.  I’m hoping for a quick resolution to things, but given my insurance situation at the moment, the wait times for specialists around here, and my health at present, I may end up being gone a few months.  I do intend to come back, I’m just too tired to keep up with IRL things, let alone all my RP blogs and something had to give, at least temporarily.  I hope to be back with better news soon.

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Bucky was absolutely miserable right now. And he couldn't stand hearing Klaus screaming. The soldier was shivering. He didn't quite meet Ben's eyes as be told the young man quietly, "Go take care of your brother. I'll... I'll come untie him in a few minutes."

Honestly, he just wanted to be left alone. He'd not handled that well. Plus he needed to put his weapons away, but that was secondary. What he really needed was a chance to get himself back together. To get his breathing under control, try to bring his heart rate down, and to rinse the taste of vomit out of his mouth. He couldn't face Klaus just yet. And he really couldn't do it if the man was still screaming.

Chance

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military worship in this country is out of fucking control

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Me on Fourth of July like

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I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

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“Now Colin, you’ve always been seen as a romantic lead to the ladies. How did you apply this to a gay context? Was it difficult for you? How did you-”

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Since joining Tumblr, I’ve met a lot of young queer people. Look, I’m a bisexual man in a gay relationship, and I’m approaching 30. I was still a kid when Matthew Shepard’s story was being covered on the news. I remember thinking, “I better keep my mouth shut about these feelings I’m having.”

And then I met Dominic when I was 12, and people could see how in love we were. And we got the shit beat out of us. The year I met him, some kids in the grade above me held me down against the bleachers in our gym and stomped on my hand until my fingers broke. Instead of sending me to the nurse, the teacher sent me to the assistant principal to explain the situation. She asked why the kids had beat me up. I said, “They were calling me gay.”

Her response was, “Well, are you?”

My, “I don’t know,” earned a call to my parents, and I was outed. Efforts were made to keep me from seeing Dom. Throughout high school, Dom’s stepmother intensified these efforts. He slept in the basement of the house. Although he was an incredibly talented student, he was prohibited from participating in any extracurriculars. He suffered a lot of physical abuse during those years.

The day he turned 18, he packed up everything he had and walked to my house, and we’ve lived together ever since. Things are better, but they’re not perfect. I’ve had trucks pull up next to me at stoplights and, seeing the pride sticker on my car, through old drinks and garbage into my window. I no longer speak to my dad’s side of the family. I haven’t been to see them for Christmas or Thanksgiving in years. One of my uncles had cornered me at Thanksgiving when I was 17 and said, “I’m not going to judge you, but I’d be happy to break your neck so God can do the judging a little sooner.”

I joined a support group for trans and intersex people. When I joined, 40 people attended regularly. Within the year, the group was half the size it had been. Some couldn’t make it anymore, because they were staying at the shelter, where their stay hinged on them agreeing to instead to attend homophobic sermons. Some were put in correctional therapy. Five of them died. Three of those, I didn’t know, but I knew Alex, the 19 year old who was fag-dragged in Kentucky and died a day later in the hospital, and I knew Stephanie, who went home to Alabama to care for her mom in hospice and was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her mom’s boyfriend.

Tumblr is not reality. The dynamic here does not reflect the dynamic out there. Here’s the part where I finally make a point, and it might be extremely unpopular - but guys, value your allies. Value each other. We are met with enough hate in our daily lives to enter an online safe-space and meet more hate from our own, over petty things. Don’t go after one another over every little thing you find problematic.

Learn to see nuance. Maybe the word “queer” bothers you, and you see a gay man using it as an umbrella term. Maybe someone called a trans man a trans woman because they’re confused about terminology, but the post where they did it was voicing support for the trans community. Maybe someone is just asking a question, wanting to learn more. Stop. Attacking. These. People.

Allies are being driven away. Members of our own community are being ostracized. Others are feeling nervous and estranged, and it’s largely because of places like Tumblr, where the social justice movement is quickly becoming violent and radical. I am begging you, stop nitpicking “problematic” things and start directing your efforts to create real change. When it comes to comes to your allies, forget the “social justice warrior” mentality and put down your torch. Educate calmly. Be respectful. Be understanding. Be forgiving. And I’m certainly not saying that your anger doesn’t have a good place - when you are met with bigots on the street, congress members who want to pass hateful laws, violent protesters, abusive parents, prejudiced teachers, that is when you need to be a warrior. That’s when it counts. In the real world. When you have the opportunity to protect people from real harm. Attacking your would-be allies via anonymous asks is just going to lose us ground in the long run. And we don’t have time for that, not when trans women of color are being murdered every day, not when states are still fighting against marriage equality, not when there are politicians in office who believe that trans people are possessed by demons, not when we’ve just lost 50 brothers and sisters to one gunman, not when the media won’t even admit that the attack was homophobic.

Please step back. Look at the big picture. Look at where we are, globally. Don’t just log on to your safe space and attack your allies over small missteps. That’s like washing the dishes in a house that’s on fire, kids. Let’s fight on the battlefield, and when we come home to each other, let’s just focus on bandaging up our wounds so we can go out and win the war.

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This photo always cheers me up a bit. It’s a front-page article from 1955 about Christine Jorgensen, one of the first women to have sex-reassignment surgery.

Since the text is a bit small and I couldn’t find a larger copy, here’s what the small blurb says:

A World of a Difference

George W. Jorgensen, Jr., son of a Bronx carpenter, served in the Army for two years and was given honorable discharge in 1946. Now George is no more. After six operations, Jorgensen’s sex has been changed and today she is a striking woman, working as a photographer in Denmark. Parents were informed of the big change in a letter Christine (that’s her new name) sent to them recently.

This article is 58 years old, and it’s more respectful of Christine’s pronoun choices and name than some publications are today. It makes me happy to see a newspaper be respectful of a trans person’s choice of name and pronouns like that :3

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The Asset growled again at the agent’s response, though it didn’t sound nearly as intimidating in this form.  Its eyes flashed gold as its hands tightened on the agent’s wrists.  Through bared teeth it rasped, “What are you?”

It could tell something was off about this one.  He didn’t smell fully human.  The Asset knew how to spot the differences.  It knew how to find other weres.  But  this wasn’t quite the same.  Usually a were smelled of both human and whatever animal they became.  This one...  He smelled of human, but there was something under it that the Asset couldn’t identify.

Entangled Weres

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The Asset growled at the command, baring its teeth in warning.  Then it pressed its nose into the technician’s hair, sniffing at him.  It growled again, this time in frustration rather than warning, as it stuck its nose to the underside of his jaw.  It couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the man’s scent.  Shifting lower, it nosed at his armpit because moving down to his groin.  All the places his scent was strongest.  Still obviously not finding what it wanted, it growled once more, staring the technician dead in the eyes.

And then, where a moment ago there had been a wolf, suddenly there was a man. The technician was still pinned down - the Asset was on top of him, straddling him, with one hand pinning each wrist at his side - and the Asset was still staring him dead in the eye.  But it had made no move to actually hurt him, despite having had plenty of opportunity.  In a harsh, rough voice, it demanded, “What are you?”

Laying on the ground, Lise frowned in frustration as the wolf just started sniffing all over. He knew what the wolf was searching for, but it didn’t mean he liked it or found it cute. In fact, it was quite threatening. A wolf is larger and stronger than a fox, regardless if the fox had magic. And he certainly did not want Hydra finding out what he was.

“H-hey!” He pushed at the wolf’s head when it was nosing places it shouldn’t. But in the blink of an eye, his hands were pinned to a side with the Asset sitting on him. Lise tried to wriggle free. Nope. Where was everyone?! Distractedly looking at how he was being held down, it took him a moment before he actually met that stare and became still. Lise narrowed his eyes, before stubbornly insisting. “Your handler.” He huffed with indignity, with an obvious glare daring the Asset to try and interrogate him.

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The Asset growled at the command, baring its teeth in warning.  Then it pressed its nose into the technician’s hair, sniffing at him.  It growled again, this time in frustration rather than warning, as it stuck its nose to the underside of his jaw.  It couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the man’s scent.  Shifting lower, it nosed at his armpit because moving down to his groin.  All the places his scent was strongest.  Still obviously not finding what it wanted, it growled once more, staring the technician dead in the eyes.

And then, where a moment ago there had been a wolf, suddenly there was a man. The technician was still pinned down - the Asset was on top of him, straddling him, with one hand pinning each wrist at his side - and the Asset was still staring him dead in the eye.  But it had made no move to actually hurt him, despite having had plenty of opportunity.  In a harsh, rough voice, it demanded, “What are you?”

Entangled Weres

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The Asset waited patiently as it was taken back to the cell in which they were keeping it.  The advantage of the new tech pushing the cart onto which they had loaded it was that it could smell him more clearly now.  There was something not quite human about his scent.  It set the Asset on edge.

When they reached the cell, the Asset waited for the new handler to release it from its bindings, waiting for the most opportune moment.  It knew better.  It knew it was to remain still until the handler had left the cell.  But it needed to know.  Something was off about this one.  And that something could be dangerous.  So as soon as the shackles fell away, it was down on all fours.  It didn’t lunge at the handler - nothing so outright offensive, it knew better than to make a threat of itself - but it reared up onto its hind legs, aiming to land its front paws on the handler’s ribs.  It was considerably larger than a normal wolf, stronger and faster and with the advantage of the metal foreleg.  It didn’t anticipate any resistance it couldn’t handle.  And perhaps now it would be able to pick out what it was about the man’s scent that was off.

Even though Lise’s nerves were on the edge, alert for any movement from the Asset, he still wasn’t fast enough to evade its approach. Hence resulting in the awkward position of him mid turn from trying to flee, and carrying the weight that is the Asset from where it got him on his chest, blowing the wind right out of him. 

The technicians outside were agitated, yelling out for the Asset to stand down. Yet someone also hit the button to close the cell door, abandoning the new staff inside. Someone ran off too. And everyone, including Lise, forgot that a normal human shouldn’t have been able to take the were’s sudden weight.

Lise blinked and stared, fear trickling into his eyes. Vaguely, he got a little worried for his own safety, so much less compared to his fear of being outed. Gathering his wits back to himself, he frowned. “Stand down! W-what… do you want?” 

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//For Munday, have my cats being dorks. Lila found a new use for her claws on one of her walks. And Kell was "helping" me clean by stealing pens out of the pile of school crap I had rounded up from around my living room.

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//This is 1000% how I do fanfic, RP, cosplay...

Me, writing a fic: okay lets pluck Tony from avengers assemble, steve from cafa, bruce from avengers 1, thor from ragnarok, natasha from caws, clint from the comics-

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My muse is feeling touch-starved.

Send one of the following touches for my muse’s reaction. Bonus points for a description/context of some kind to make it easier for your partner to respond!

❤ - gentle or loving touch (romantic or platonic!), such as face caressing, holding your muse, rubbing their back, petting their hair, hugging them tightly, etc

ღ - kisses of any kind (romantic or platonic) such as cheek kisses, hair kisses, mouth kisses, kiss to the hand/fingertips or eyelids, etc. feel free to specify a body part!

☕ - reassuring touch, such as holding their hand, gripping their shoulder, guiding them by the arm or by a hand on the small of their back, etc

❥ - rough, violent, or dominant touch, such as gripping the back of their neck, holding them down, shoving them into a wall, digging their nails into them, grabbing their jaw, etc

❣ - add this to any of the above to make it sexual. 

¿ - write your own touches!