#and - _-" about gay stuff

[etirabys]

meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

[shesmore-shoebill]

VERY specific knowledge here, but. uh. if im right. i think Ang posting this on her story means

There is a chance, that she will be a guest on season 2 of Pretty Gay, a queer comic web series (that I know of through Dropout, and Sam Reich specifically).

Anyway. I haven't watched the first season (although I know of some of these people) but. I am VERY excited by the prospect of Ang talking about gay stuff on a queer comedy web series. :'D

[lowkeyrobin]

heyy! can i request an mcyt preferences where they and the reader go to a pride parade?

hell yeah!!! ; also dont mind that it isn't pride month anymore (I got this July 3rd) but it's fine 🙏 gays will live forever ; but thank you for requesting! hope you enjoy!! ; also dont mind the queer artist plugs 😊

MCYT ; pride parade

includes ; tommyinnit, ranboo, badlinu, & maxggs

warnings ; language

masterlist

TOMMYINNIT

you pretend he's your bodyguard and he plays into the bit

then three seconds later he's giving a sad queer a hug cause they aren't accepted at home

literally just holding all your stuff for you

and buys literally anything that's funny or millennial core

he gets a sticker that says "sounds gay, sign me up!" and puts it on his reusable water bottle

and also gets a shirt with JFK's face on it with a progress flag behind him ??

"oh my god I love this song!!"

"i like it too, what's it called?"

"how do you not know kehlani..."

tons of new songs on his playlist by queer artists

RANBOO

just another rodeo

you guys find little rainbow gummies at a gas station before you go

munching on those all day

you guys get some new queer media recommendations to look into 🙏🙏

buys you both plushies of your fav animal holding a heart with your respective pride flags on it

"ranboo look, nonbinary lollipops!"

"we've had enough sugar"

"fuck"

"at this point call me a slur" after seeing a cringe millennial core shirt about gay stuff and hamilton

"faggot"

"not literally bruh"

FREDDIE BADLINU

guess who got hooked on kehlani, chappell roan, nina dioz, and kevin attawater? freddie did ❗️

"wtf is playing right now LMAO"

"my man dixon dallas"

"this slaps"

he dyed his hair pink, then wore a purple top and blue jorts

what a coordinated queer

he was there for the vibes (and rainbow sunglasses)

he got a pride flag too 🙏 finally some room decor for that bare ass work room

gets some pins and stickers to support small artists 🫶

was on his phone the whole time checking out new queer artists

literally anyone who was boosting their music got a new follower or at least one of their songs added to his playlist

MAXGGS

just another rodeo lol

got you into some new artists while you were there too

"how are you not cackling?"

"supportive boomers are funny, but appreciate it cause you know you don't have that in your life"

"fuck okay max"

he begggedddd the person in charge of the music to play at least one rina sawayama song

you created a mini dance party with your flags

he also helped you paint your pride flag on your cheeks cause 🫶🫶

[gayloringinplainsight]

"Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn't a straight white cisgender male," she tells Vogue, when asked about why she chose to, all of a sudden, stand up for LGBTQ+ rights. "I didn't realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I'm not a part of."

Source: https://www.out.com/news/2019/8/08/taylor-swift-says-shes-straight-despite-all-bisexual-rumors#toggle-gdpr

I was waiting for this to come through my inbox lol. (There was more then one ask about this but I'm only responding to the first.)

There's lots to unpack here but the first and foremost thing is: She doesn't actually say here, "I'm straight." It was a perfect opportunity. It was the ideal conversation. She punted. Why?

Why did she instead give this vague, circuitous, carefully couched answer?

She calls out communities encompassing sexuality, race, and gender, followed by saying, "a community that I'm not a part of." There are lots of communities that she could have been referring to, but she crafted the sentence in such a way that makes it unclear which one. She could have been talking about the trans community. She could have been talking about the poc community. She could have been talking about the ace community. She could have been talking about the gay male community. There are lots of possibilities. In this carefully worded sentence, she deliberately avoided naming the specific community she's talking about.

Another thing to consider is that many, many closeted people don't consider themselves part of the queer community. They don't feel like they belong because they're not out and proud. And even once people come out, it often still takes time before they feel like they're part of the queer community. That was certainly my personal experience. Cara Delevingne said something similar in her Hulu show when discussing her own coming out.

Let's move on. The link anon provided isn't the source. It's an article quoting the source. The actual source is the 2019 Vogue cover article. And the full article is important because there are lots of interesting things that give context to this quote.

First, there's a great deal of conversation about gay stuff and lgbtq+ rights. And the writer makes a point of saying about this subject matter that Taylor seems to enjoy that part of the conversation "as much as she’d enjoy a root canal." Wouldn't a straight ally be eager to discuss this? They would. And a closeted queer person would be uncomfortable and panicking at the thought of having to talk so blatantly about this subject. The writer also makes a point of saying that once the conversation changes to music, Taylor lights up and her demeanor and speech patterns relax dramatically.

The other important context that the Vogue article discusses is Taylor's very long history of supporting lgbtq+ rights. Everything from the Mean mv of a gay boy being bullied to the "boys and boys and girls and girls" line in WTNY to donations to lgbtq+ organizations to giving out queer awards to queer people to dedicating Dress to Loie Fuller, an openly gay artist. There are plenty of other examples of Taylor advocating for the queer community that aren't mentioned. All the way back in 2008 she participated in the LOGO queer anti-bullying PSA. In 2009 she was in Seventeen magazine taking a stand against the slaying of a teenager for being gay.

Why is this important? Because it proves that Taylor is lying in the quote in question. "I didn't realize until recently that I could advocate…" girl yes you did. You've been advocating for years and years at this point. She's lying. She's lying. She's covering herself up. She's hiding in the closet and hoping desperately that no one notices.

And this isn't the first time she's done this either. During the 1989 press tour she gave an interview where she was asked about the "And you can want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls" line. As the interviewer is starting to speak about this, a look of pure panic immediately takes over Taylor's face:

And then she starts stumbling around trying to give a coherent answer. At one point she stutters out, "And also I wrote this song, um, I wrote this song, kind of, kind of following, the, uh, when gay marriage became legal in New York." This interview was in October 2014. Gay marriage had been legal in New York since June 2011. Sooo three years later is "kind of following." Right. Sure, Taylor. Nice closeting. You really nailed it.

Okay let's review. She doesn't actually say she's straight even though this was a perfect opportunity to do so. She doesn't name the actual community she's talking about, giving herself cover if she ever comes out. She's closeted and probably doesn't think she's part of the queer community anyways. She full-on lies about not knowing she can advocate for others. And the writer states Taylor seems deeply uncomfortable talking about lgbtq+ things even though the context of the article was that blondie wanted to make it clear how much of an ally she is.

None of this remotely adds up to hetero. And none of this comes even close to Taylor saying that she's straight.

[sol-insidious]

Doodled my favorite space gays last night. What are they talking about? Gay stuff, probably.

[frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe]

@steddie-week Day 3 - mutual pining

i'm challenging myself to keep each of these at 660 words; see day one for more of an explanation!

Eddie's campaign notes:

Front:

Broad-chested paladin named steve stephano stevas with immaculate golden skin and chestnut hair, oath of the crown watchers, who decides to come along when he finds out the party is heading to

young rogue meets the party and wants to tag along but their overprotective older brother stolas (stop with the st names!!) insists on coming along in order for the rogue to join

jeeves carrington, eventual big bad who butles for the party while they're at the

Asshole King prince stefan havisham (great job getting away from an st name, idiot) who wants to join the party on their quest and get out of the palace for a while

He’s part of the kingdom of the sun so he takes his family’s heirloom, the Sun Blade along with him (he's trained as a knight and is already proficient in long swords) ((1d8 +2 bonus to attack and damage, radiant not slashing undead = + extra 1d8 rad. damage.))

Back:

He butts heads with all of them at first but learned a lot from the party and becomes actually a good dude)

The prince ends up falling for a tiefling bard they meet in passing on the road

Prince would’ve been an asshole to the tiefling at first, but when the bard saves him from a very obvious trap, he starts to back off “Watch where you’re stepping, sunshine.”, “Why do you call me that?”, Edmund (needs to be something different or they'll catch on!!!), who’s fallen head over tail for the prince already: “Because i’m a creature of the night and hate the sun, obviously”

him and Stefan butt heads the whole time he's along for the journey but when the bard is gravely injured it’s revealed how much he cares for the prince. The prince too has fallen for the bard and rides off with him to the nearest village to a healer

The prince and bard get married and live happily ever after

ugh, gross. too much, eddie

Steve's (L to R, top to bottom):

May 25th

It’s been a couple months since spring break and Eddie and Max are finally out of the hospital. We got lucky, I think, our plan working out and all, but seeing them both there really sucked.

Max’ll get her cast off eventually, and Eddie's “heroics” cost him a pound of flesh but they’re alive and so is Hopper.

Now we just gotta get Eddie's name cleared.

July 18th

I think there’s something wrong with me.

The assholes were over again today and that meant Eddie was too. Shirtless... In the pool.. Wet.. tattooed…

You’d think that seeing his scars would make me sick, make me think of the blood, the crying, that goddamn place.. But there was a whole different kind of swirling in my gut about it

Ew! Gross!

Robin, stay out of my journal

Oct 11th

Ok. yep. I definitely want to kiss him.

I want to kiss Eddie Munson on that stupid pretty face of his.

Robs and I went to indy and found this bookstore heading back to the car from that cafe we like and it was a gay store. it had books and pamflit pampflet brosures booklet things about gay stuff and the cashier was super nice.. we spent hours there. 

I’m bisexual.

Nov 5th

Gross!!!

ROBIN STAY OUT

Ok, this isn’t fair.

Every single thought in my brain recently is about him. How would he kiss me? Would I make the first move or would he? What would it feel like if it was his hand instead of mine? Would his rings hurt? Nope. they’d feel amazing.

I want to hug him, i want to hold his hand, i want to fuckin marry him..

Steve Munson Theodore Harrington? ❤ (<- can you believe that’s actually his first name?? I couldn't believe it when Wayne told me).

Wait. You can combine names when you get married (no, I haven’t been researching anything, shut up) So Harringson? Munington?

We’ll have a fall wedding.

it was still 660 words on wordcounter.net too 😌

on AO3 here!

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

You're Ignorant

This is going to be a lengthy post. Or I will manage to short form this.

So it does not matter if you are on the left or on the right in the United States. However, over the past 15 years, the prominence of this problem seems to happen far more frequently with those that vote for Democrats. IT DOES happen with republicans, but it's not as frequent or with the same fervor.

So public perception of Bills that go through the senate and the house is normally based on the name, or what the people putting the bill out tell you that it does. However since around the time of the Obama admin, bill drafted by democrats have been getting longer and longer and longer, so much so that they are massive enough to be wheeled out on a little red wagon.

Bills that are quite literally 100's if not 1000's of pages long. The reason people that are "Blue no matter who" voters actually piss me off is because they don't care if the bill actually kills people so long as the NAME is good. To paraphrase someone from a different post when this topic came up. "A bill could come out called the "Don't kick puppies act". And when it goes through the legislative, some republicans will vote against it, and then Democrats and the media will come out saying 'X amount of republicans want to kick puppies'. What they don't tell you is that on line 2 of the bill, it says it will send 2 billion dollars to Brazil to teach gay dance theory."

And that's the point. It's not about what the bill is called. It's not about what they WANT the bill to do. It is about what the bill will ACTUALLY do. What does it say? What are the legal implications? Does the legal jargon of the bill do something other than what is specified in bill? But it gets a little worse than that with all of this. Politicians lie. Not only do they tend to lie, they normally do it by misrepresenting intent. This can be seen with both parties as well but happens far more often with people that vote democrat because they are far easier to manipulate.

Take the "Don't say gay bill". It literally had nothing to do with talking about gay stuff. What it did disallow was talking about sexual identity and sexual orientation as a class discussion or part of a curriculum. Funny enough that also includes talking about being strait as a point of class discussion, or curriculum. People kept talking about use of pronouns but that had really nothing to do with the bill. What the bill was actually even created for was because a teacher, behind the back of the parents of the kid, started to transition a kid, after convincing the kid that she was trans. During the process, the kid was not getting mental or emotional health help at all. The teacher helped the kid get on hormones I believe and was aiming to find a way to help with surgeries but the teen girl tried to kill herself. After the parents found out what happened, they removed the kid from the school and started getting her mental health help.

After she started getting the help that she needed she pretty much came to realize that it was just a combination of (initially) mild depression, pressure from her peers and, pushing from the teaching and administrative staff that convinced her she was trans.

So yeah. THE BILL IN QUESTION called the "Parental Rights in Education Bill", had nothing to do with "Not saying gay". Hell the bill did not even stop kids from talking to teachers or counselors about being gay in private. IT DID however stop them from hiding important things about their kids from parents.

Fact of the matter is, just because a name of something is good, does not in any way imply that is good. Just because the democrats LIE and say that something "should be called" something, does not mean that it is. Or we can talk about the Restrict act. Which YES was the spawn of certain Republican lawmakers but had some support from the democrats as a Patriot Act 2.0. Ya know another bill that would strip more freedoms from us and remove more of our privacy. All under the guise of "Banning TikTok". Which I agree with only the ban.

Mostly because the app is a spyware app, that is causing legitimate mental illness in today's youth. That and the algorithm used for the US's version of the app is actually pretty damaging over all to people. More so with the sensationalism it tends to spread.

Long story short. If your preferred reps push a bill over 100 pages long, you MIGHT want to believe that you are being lied to about its contents. Or understand that what you are being told about it is not the whole truth.

Because fact of the matter is this. You might think Democrats have your best interest in mind and every bad thing is the fault of the "EVIL MAGA REPUBLIANS", but look at California and New York. Rampant homelessness. Removal of several safety offices. Policies that claim to help minority communities but hurt them more and more every day. And excess spending and misappropriation of funds. And both of these states have been under full rule of Dems for YEARS. Meaning that ZERO republican influence makes their laws. HELL, California I believe tried to remove their own discrimination laws so that companies in the state COULD IN FACT discriminate in hiring practices.

It's time you start looking past the names of things, and start look at intent. You start looking at effects. You start looking at the results of. Get your heads out of the sand, and stop being ignorant. Your pursuit of "doing good" "being inclusive" "spreading diversity" yeah all of that is normally damaged more and more every day by people like you because the Dems and Reps (at least 90% of them) don't give a shit about you and only make you believe that they do.

[roguemonsterfucker]

I must have Gay Vibes because the woman doing my sonogram today just told me she had a gay daughter without any prompting from me. Like we met two minutes prior and suddenly I know everything about her daughter's girlfriend's stepfather not being accepting of the gayness.

Like, in this area, it's not necessarily very safe to just talk about gay stuff with strangers. It's in fact very unsafe. But something about me must have made her think I'm okay to talk to.

Maybe it was my shaved head. Or flannel shirt.

Or maybe she just liked to talk and didn't think of potential consequences lol.

Either way, I hope her daughter and her daughter's girlfriend have a very merry christmas.

[klondyke-the-bear]

Hi, I'm Klondyke! ❀

I'm a closeted teenage lesbian who made this blog so I can post about gay stuff without anyone I know irl seeing it. I named it after my gay teddy bear, Klondyke.

❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈

This is Klondyke (she/her) and her butch Ricky the Raccoon (he/him). They are both lesbians. They are in love.

❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈

If you're queer, please consider giving me a follow! Also, feel free to send messages or asks!! Ty!

❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈✾❈

[realbestfriends]

i think what makes this dan and phil comeback feel sooooooo good is that like -- they are just being themselves ! and in their closeted era they couldn't be, not fully. they had to be careful or at least mindful of everything they said and did on camera and especially dan let's be real

and realizing just how much they were holding back of their genuine, funny, silly, gay selves is wild!! i'm regularly shocked and delighted at just how gay and funny their jokes are now. and tbh how much fucking funnier they are FREE to be because they can chill and joke about gay stuff now~

and that lightness and freedom and queer joy and humor is flooding through the screen into our lives too and i'm just like. wow. thank you dan & phil <3

[strawbebehmod]

Ok I've had enough of this "Alastor doesn't know about gay stuff" I keep seeing around. As a history nerd I honestly can't take it anymore.

Kiddos it's time to learn you a few things. First of all, compared to subsequent decades,

The 1920s were incredibly gay

Was it still illegal to perform homosexual acts, yes. Were gay people still abused and lost jobs for being gay, and were even socially excluded from cishet white society? Oh absolutely. Did most individuals have to stay closeted? Duh. But you know what wasn't a wide spread thing yet? The medicalization of homosexuality. Conversion therapy wasn't fully approved of by psychiatrists until the 40's. Crossdressing wasn't considered mental illness, scandalous, yes, but not mental illness. The haze codes were not implemented yet, and the combination of prohibition, the two decades prior of progressivism, and the horrors of world war one left the youngest generation with a rebellious spirit and a desire for breaking the law. And if you lived in a big city, being LGBT in the twenties was often better than being LGBT in the 30s, 40s, or even 50s.

Young rich kids would seek out queer cruising spots in cities as a form of tourism. Harlem was famous for it's yearly drag balls, and many of the most famous black artists at the time were infact lgbt. Broadway and Hollywood were full of individuals who people knew were not entirely straight. Hell, jazz was born in red light districts home to black queer people. In places like New York there were people famous for being openly gay and despite sodomy laws police would not care in the slightest about them.

And though the South was as fucked as it ever was with Jim Crow Laws and the race riots, New Orleans has always been one of the more progressive cities in the South and has always had a very large gay community. Between the inherit campiness and debauchery of Mardi gras to being the birth place of jazz, to new Orleans being the easiest place to get away with breaking prohibition laws in the south, Alastor as a mixed race black radio host playing jazz in New Orleans in the 20s ABSOLUTELY is familiar with the LGBT community of the time.

The thing is, the language used by the community at the time was so fundamentally different that alastor would not know what you are talking about if you spoke to him about modern LGBT issues. The pride flag did not even exist yet. Gay still meant happy to him in his age. "Bisexual" at the time was more akin to the term "trans" than being attracted to multiple genders, and transgender didn't exist yet as a word. But if you called yourself "a confirmed bachelor" he would understand you were a man who liked men. If you called yourself a "fairy" he would know you weren't cis. If you were a woman and told him you liked sapho or Peter pan, he'd know you liked women. And if you were wearing lavender, or a green carnation, a red bowtie, a violet (if you were a woman), or were a man with a peacock feather in your ensemble he would give you a knowing nod. He's not ignorant of the lgbtq. He's a man out of his time. He speaks a different language entirely to modern gay slang, so it seem he doesn't know anything about it. But he does. Gay and trans people have always been a thing and as a radio host, literally being on the forefront of mass media at it's beginnings, in arguably the best decade to be gay in the 20th century before the 60s, in a city so comfortable with what was considered debauchery that it gave birth to "devil music" and embraced it before anyone else, yes he knows what they are. He just doesn't have the modern language to express it.

[laundrybiscuits]

(young man what do you wanna be tag)

“I’m pretty sure Steve is trying to kill me,” says Eddie.

“I’m pretty sure he’s not,” says Jonathan. 

“He’s always, like…lurking.” Eddie gestures, fingers fluttering to indicate the shadowy depths of villainy to which Steve Harrington has now sunk. 

Jonathan shrugs. “I think he might just be trying to date you, man.”

“Ehh.” Eddie gives this an appropriate amount of consideration, which is to say none whatsoever. “I’m just saying, last time we had a movie night, he followed me into the kitchen. Just to hang out. You can’t tell me that’s not suspicious.”

“I mean…do you want him to stop? Because I think he’d stop if you said something.” 

Obviously Eddie does not want Steve to stop. Obviously Eddie would very much like Steve to continue being close enough to touch forever, please and thank you. It’s just—Steve keeps saying stuff, completely random shit, like you look really, uh, metal today and tell me about that song you’re working on. It always leaves Eddie off-balance, which he loves and hates with every ounce of his shriveled soul. 

“I can talk to Steve,” Jonathan offers. “Get him to back off.”

“That’s, um. You don’t have to do that,” says Eddie weakly.

“No, man, come on. I told you we’re in your corner, right? For everything, not just the big stuff.” 

Eddie groans. “Okay, Byers, I get it. Jesus, I’m gonna get hives from all this sincerity. Thanks, I love you too or whatever, shut up. And please don’t—um. Please don’t talk to Steve.”

“What, like, ever?” says Argyle, which makes Eddie jump a little; he’d been pretty sure Argyle had been dozing quietly with his head on Jonathan’s lap for the last twenty minutes. 

“Actually, yes,” says Eddie, prodding at Jonathan’s foot. “Please never talk to Steve again for the rest of your natural life. Do this for me, to demonstrate your sincere commitment to supporting the gays.”

“Sorry.” Jonathan kicks back at Eddie, somehow managing not to dislodge Argyle. “If those are my options, I guess I’m homophobic now. You have to be the one to tell Will, though.”

———

“Hey, can I talk to you?” 

“Jonathan’s not actually homophobic,” Eddie blurts out.

Will blinks. “Okay. I mean…good? Wait, did he not know about you?”

“What, no, he knew before any of you little shits did.”

“That definitely isn’t true,” says Will dryly. He sounds a lot like Jonathan right now. “But this isn’t—I just had a question about gay stuff. Sort of.”

“Ask away,” says Eddie graciously, trying to sound wise and benevolent like an ancient gay wizard with all the gay secrets of the gay universe at his disposal.

“It’s just…” Will sighs, looking down. “You’re really, uh, loud. About everything, I mean. And I don’t get why you’re not trying to be…quieter. It just seems like asking for trouble.”

“Here’s the thing about trouble and safety, my young friend,” says Eddie. “There’s nothing we can do to make ourselves easier to swallow. They’ll lie about it and say they’ll put up with us if we just cut off the parts they hate the most, but they hate all of us, so you’re just gonna keep cutting until there’s nothing left. There’s no magical border between the friendly forest full of fluffy bunnies and the deep dark woods full of monsters, because it’s all the same thing.”

Eddie pauses. As gently as he can, he says, “You already know this, Zombie Boy.” He doesn’t miss the way Will flinches. 

“But,” says Will. “Isn’t it, like, a little bit safer?”

“Maybe. Sometimes.” Eddie mulls over his next words, feeling the weight and sharp edges of them in a way he might not have, a year or two ago. Finally, he says, “I think—you gotta decide for yourself what that’s worth. And you also have to know there’s no such thing as completely one hundred percent safe. You can end up making a bunch of little choices that feel like you’re not giving up that much, and end up trapped in a life you hate, just waiting to die. There’s not gonna be one right way to do this, there’s just gonna be ways you can live with yourself and ways you can’t.”

The part he’s not saying to Will is that he’s also loud so other people don’t have to be. 

When he was a freshman, so many years ago now, there’d been this girl—a real bull dyke, you know? Buzzed hair and men’s shirts and work boots. Her locker had had filth shoved in it and written on it pretty much every day, and one time—well, one time, some bad stuff had happened. Almost happened. A teacher had come along just in time, from what Eddie had heard. She’d walked into school the very next day wearing a leather jacket draped over her stocky frame, gorgeously defiant. 

To Eddie, she’d been a beacon of survival. A walking, talking proof that if you’re willing to pay the price, you can be yourself without compromise. 

She’d seemed so mature and worldly to him back in 1980, but now Will’s almost as old as she’d been at the time. Eddie would burn the fucking world down before he let anyone try that shit with Will, and he knows Jonathan and Argyle would too, but they can’t follow him around like guard dogs for the rest of his life. 

So instead, he can just be the thing he’s shaped himself to be, and draw fire. Better to be a lightning rod, standing tall, than to let some other poor sucker get dragged into the spotlight before they’re ready. Nobody’s gonna fuck with Eddie too bad, probably. He’s already got a reputation. He’s Eddie fucking Munson, he’s a cockroach, he survived the worst the underworld could muster and he’s got the scars to prove it. He can take whatever shit they want to throw at him. Wants it, even, because it means something to be the guy they hate. There’s power in that: in walking back into the lion’s den wearing a leather jacket, head held high. 

He doesn’t think Will’s going to learn to relish it the way Eddie does. They’re too different, at their cores. But they’re similar enough that Will’s nodding slowly like it makes sense to him; like he gets what Eddie’s trying so clumsily to say. 

“You don’t have to be the way I am,” Eddie says. “But whatever you decide to be, do it on purpose, and do the hell out of it. Don’t fucking settle for some halfway kind of life. Think you can manage that, Byers?”

“Probably not,” says Will. “But—I’ll try. Thanks, I guess.”

This mentor shit is easy, Eddie thinks victoriously. No big thing at all.

[transsexualfiend]

I haven't been active much for about 2-3 weeks but now that it's pride and everyone's talking about gay stuff I have HIGH expectations that everyone I interact with will be CENTERING Palestine this pride alongside their queer vocality, and if not, GET OUTTA HERE!!!!!!

[walrus150915]

Since you liked my rambling abt my random Nimona headcanons, here's part 2

- Starting off with the queen (rip), I think her white hair is actually a wig and she has some gorgeous greying tight curls under it

- There was a thingy "the Boldheart project" which was created when Bal got accepted into the Institute's knight program. "The project" followed his progress in training to figure out if commoners were able to train as good as nobles. If he completed the course successfully, the reform would be set (sry I like talking abt fantasy politics- yea, putting responsibility on a literal child to become a figure of "equality" is... Sure a strategy)

Let's stop with the politics amirite

- Ambrosius sings in the shower. First it was like quiet humming n stuff but when him and Bal start living together this guy's shower was akin to opera (hah- soap opera- get it-)

- Ambrosius would be a type of a rich dude who fantasizes about living on his own and providing for himself and having this sweet humble suburban way of life with his husband until he actually starts living this way (he's a literal nepo baby- cmon the habits will be there even if he tries being independent)

Ambrosius: Bal, I don't get why I keep burning my bread! It's the second time I fail!

Ballister: Practice makes perfect, darling

Ambrosius: But these KitKoters make it look so easy😭😭

- He catches up gradually tho. Bal is very understanding, Nimona is having a lot of fun with this

- Does fun include bullying Ambrosius for not knowing how to remove plants to the bigger pots?. Yea kinda

- Nimona's hanging out with the kingdom's kids from time to time. She goes out of her way to make them laugh or make them feel happy in general. It heals her inner child, in a way

- Even though she hangs out with them from a perspective of a cool older shapeshifting punk sibling, she still feels like their peer and can't help but transform into her child form sometimes

- idk I think Nimona shapeshifts into a child pretty often if she feels overwhelmed or emotionally devastated or just wants to be taken care of

- Ballister does take care of her

Wow this got sad fast. Anyway

- Ambrosius is left-handed but was forced to relearn because the perfect descendant of Gloreth cannot be left-handed, it's abnormal🤓

- Ballister can't help but go 😬 when either Ambrosius or Nimona take food with their left hand while eating. Yeah technically eating with his flesh hand would be easier for him. No he won't do that for the life of him (saying hi to all Muslims out there)

- Ballister decides to grow out a real beard and Nimona thinks it's the coolest thing ever to play with during their family quality time. Ambrosius also likes this change in his looks but for rather uh... gay different reasons😁

If we're talking about gay stuff I might just as well talk abt some Goldenheart hcs

- When they've only started dating Ballister had a really difficult time with the eye contact bc Ambrosius's loving gaze was too much to handle for him. He'd see how gentle and soft his eyes are and how they're filled with complete adoration to the top and just look away all blushy and smitten

- I think we as a fandom agree that Ambrosius's love language is arm chopping physical touch. Have you considered how important kisses can be to him in expressing his love tho

- Ambrosius LOVES kissing Ballister. He's probably kissed him everywhere if you think about it-

- But yea. He steals kisses from Bal as often as he can. Boo goes to work? Kiss him goodbye. Boo gets back? Kiss him goodhi - doesn't matter where😉

- His favorite place to kiss is probably Bal's neck bc he just likes nuzzling into it and making him all flustered

- Ballister loves kissing Ambrosius as well. His favorite thing ever is press kisses into Ambrosius's hair while they're lying down on the couch, Ambrosius's head on Ballister's chest n his arms around Ballister's torso. It makes them both feel very soft and warm and safe❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

- (teenage years) You know this type thing when kittens playfully fight each other and jump onto each other and bite and stuff? Yea that's teenage Goldenheart

- (a little older than teenage years) current sparring trend in the writer part of the fandom. That's it. You know damn well what I'm talking about

- At some point their private training sessions became the reason they succeeded in combat and got the highest of marks

Okay gay stuff is over

- Nimona has some pretty dark humor but draws the line at the things that could really trigger her or other people. Joking about burning everything down? Of course. Joking about... Well... The act 3 of the movie? Nope, never

- Nate Knight (do ya remember him?) does drag in his off-duty time haha RuPaul hi

- Ballister snores in his sleep bc he's a dad like that

- Ballister also is a type of dad to sleep on the couch while watching TV, and when you turn it off he wakes up and tells you he's been watching it this whole time

- Both Nimona and Ambrosius encourage Ballister to speak his mother tongue more often bc he used to hide it at the Institute

- Nimona scrunches her nose when she tries to remember things

- Ballister snaps his fingers while remembering stuff, especially in "Huh... What's the word for..." situations (he just like me fr)

- Nimona loves biting pencils and pens but sometimes she bites too hard and they break in half or something

- I feel like her stomach is iron. This punk can eat an eraser or swallow a knife or drink lava-hot water and all she'll do is burp maybe

- After leaving the Institute Ambrosius would have one hell of existential crisis. All he's dedicated his life to for all these years were lies and propaganda, what's the purpose of his life now? He tries out as many new things as he can - baking, painting, singing, playing musical instruments, photography, even science (with Bal's help ofc) my dude has tried it all. He sometimes felt worthless bc his life had no greater purpose but Bal and Nimona would reassure him that living happily with people who love him is more than enough and that you don't have to be the greatest person ever to live the best life. Find joy in the smallest of things n stuff😌

- Ballister has found ways to renovate his arm and made a bunch of new prosthetics for different purposes. I feel like he'd use a hook as well sometimes (as I've heard from the disabled community, hook is a very comfortable aid). No I'm not talking about that one post about his prosthetic's... renovations (😳) from the fan acc I follow

On this quite interesting note I'll end the post😁

Gn!!

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

There is a massive disconnect in my brain over my sexuality lately.

Even with my ex I didn’t get this and I think it’s because I wasn’t with her for very long and the furthest we got to was kissing.

But before where I could talk about gay stuff online and joke about gay things and “lolol straight people” and when most of the gay stuff around me was in the fictional realm. I faced homophobia but it was different.

Now I don’t feel gay. I feel like a homosexual. Like a dyke.

I feel like the type of person people flip off in public or randomly come up to scream at me and then walk away.

I love lesbian sex but now that’s happening, now that it’s a thing and not an idea or dream, it really hits me. I feel so different. I feel like a pervert. I feel so different to other women. And I think being a top as well just adds to it all. I feel so self conscious in a way I haven’t since I was a young teen. So out of place. So small. So different. Like it really hits me oh my god I’m a homosexual.

[lifesizecorpsekit]

my father who has been watching house md almost since the release and never saw anything gay about it is now complaining to me how because of me he can ONLY think about gay stuff when he sees house and wilson interacting. we watched like- half an episode together