#i also told her that - like - through the years we had sO many lesbians email and be like

[thelaurenshippen]

oh! also! while we're on the subject of pride month and Damien and A Neon Darkness, that character of course would be NOTHING without the incredible voice behind him - Charlie Ian. the audiobook of AND is sO GOOD CHARLIE IS SO GOOD and also Charlie is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns and she and I both thought people might like to know that!!!!

[peskygirl13]

Pics or It Didn’t Happen

Mild salt and slight hints of Maribat, but mostly crack. 

I did get some ideas from @unmaskedagain‘s blog. 

Their ml salt and/or crack fics sustain me. 

~~~

Marinette learned pretty quickly that even if you had proof, not everyone will listen. It’s always better to have pictures than words, because more people will believe you that way. 

It was a slow burn, but Lila Rossi had successfully turned Miss Bustier’s class against the girl. It hurt when her once friends called her jealous and a bully. 

Her! Marinette! 

Did they forget that she had been bullied by Chloe for years? Why would she become a bully after being bullied herself?

And jealous? Jealous of what? Marinette’s crush on Adrien had long simmered out into nothing but cinders. The boy was a spineless coward who would rather pretend everything was ok rather than stand up and face the truth.

It hurt that this had happened, but, oddly enough, Marinette got some of her greatest allies through this. 

It started with Chloe. 

One particularly gloomy day, Marinette saw the blonde sitting alone while eating her lunch. Sabrina had long abandoned the blonde for Lila’s fool’s gold and, not for the first time in her life, Chloe felt alone.

Now, despite their long hated history, Marinette wasn’t heartless. The Ladybug in her compelled her to sit next to the blonde and eat. Chloe stared at her, surprised, but said nothing as she continued to eat herself.

That lunch started a truce and led to a friendship. 

Next was Moriah. 

Moriah was an exchange student from America. Marinette was surprised the day she walked into the bakery and saw her parents talking with a shy looking brunette girl with glasses. 

Her parents told her that Moriah was a transfer student from America  that they would be hosting for the next few years if all went well. 

Moriah was very shy around new people, so when they arrived at school the next day, she stayed close to Marinette. Lila saw this and tried to tempt her into her web of lies. 

Moriah was interested in Lila’s tales, but cautious. She looked up any proof of Lila’s stories and found no evidence. She looked up Lila’s name. Nothing. 

When she tried pointing this out to the class, she was shunned. Chloe and Marinette welcomed her with open arms. 

After a month or so, Moriah became much more comfortable. She was witty and funny, and she had no qualms about defending her friends and she always tried to remain to the side of justice. 

This was one of the reasons Marinette decided to give her a miraculous. 

After a week of living together, Moriah found out Marinette was Ladybug. The girls had to share a room and Marinette came back late in the night, still dressed as Ladybug, assuming Moriah was asleep and detransformed in her room. 

Moriah dropped the book she was reading and squeaked behind the Asian girl.

The next few days included Moriah beating herself up about not noticing that her roommate was a superhero.

About a month or two later, was when Marinette began debating whether or not she should give Chloe and Moriah a miraculous. 

Chloe, Marinette knew she wanted to give a miraculous too. The blonde had long ago proved that she was trustworthy and ready to re-wield a miraculous, but she didn’t want to risk anyone knowing that it was Chloe like with Queen Bee.

Moriah was a different story. Marinette was scared about risking something and making a mistake like she did trusting Alya. And the risk was much higher with Moriah since the brunette girl knew Marinette was Ladybug and the Guardian. 

It wasn’t until when Ondine was akumatized again that Marinette made her choice. 

Lila had manipulated Kim and convinced him to dump Ondine, to which she was akumatized into Syren again. 

Ladybug had to fight this one almost alone because recently, Chat Noir had been showing less and less. He blamed it on his other life, but Ladybug couldn’t help but get the feeling that it was because she kept rejecting him. 

It was a long hard battle and by the time it was through, Ladybug knew she needed help. If Chat Noir was going to be a little bitch, fine. But this wasn’t going to happen again. 

That day, Marinette decided to give Chloe the Fox Miraculous and Moriah the Bee Miraculous. They became the heroes; Vixen and Yellow Jacket.

(“This is why I’m a dog person.” Yellow Jacket commented, pointing at Chat Noir as he arrived late to their first fight with disdain.)

Miss Bustier’s class were both excited and confused about the new heroes. What happened to Rena Rouge? 

Alya threw her phone when she saw Ladybug announce that Vixen and Yellow Jacket would be the new, permanent holders of the miraculouses. 

Many mocked Chloe for being replaced, assuming that the girl would throw a tantrum, but she ignored them. 

What Moriah couldn’t understand is how nobody noticed how similar Vixen and Queen Bee looked. 

The next ally was Luka, who turned out to be the most helpful. 

He never knew about the tall-tales that the class had been told until one day when the girls came by to his house boat and was met with a disgruntled Moriah whose hair was cut.

Moriah had pretty magenta peek-a-boo highlights that were hardly noticeable, but Lila decided to complain that Moriah’s colored hair was distracting her. Mr Damocles ordered her to get rid of the colors from her hair or she’d be expelled. 

Moriah, while normally always respectful, especially to adults, looked stunned. She pointed to Alix and Juleka, yelling; “What about Alix and Juleka?! Their hair is more obvious than mine! Why shouldn’t they change their hair?”

She was not allowed back on campus until the color had been removed from her hair. Moriah was furious and called her parents, telling them what had happened, and told Tom and Sabine the same thing with Chloe and Marinette.

Both parties were furious, but there was nothing Moriah’s parents could do since they were in America and Tom and Sabine tried talking to Mr Damocles about the issue, stating that there was nothing in the school rules against dyed hair and why it shouldn’t be more important than the education, but the man refused to budge. 

Eventually, after three days of failing to get Mr Damocles to see reason and missed school, Tom and Sabine emailed the school board about the issue and, with no choice until they responded, Moriah was forced to get rid of her highlights.

She flat out refused to dye her hair because to get all the highlights out, they’d have to dye her whole head, so Moriah was forced to cut her locks short to remove the color. 

Needless to say, she was pissed. 

As was Luka.

The boy had grown to be good friends with the girl and liked her highlights. Seeing the rockin’ pink cut out sucked. When he asked what had happened, the girls told him everything, including Lila’s tabloid tales.

Luka was quick to pull Juleka aside and open her eyes to reason. When the girl found out the truth, the first thing she did was tell Rose. 

The blonde girl’s eyes were opened too, and were quick to fill with tears. Everything was a lie. How could they have been so stupid? Then they remembered that Marinette had tried to warn them and were overcome with guilt. How could they make it up to her?

Marinette, Chloe, and Moriah were watching Heathers (Moriah’s suggestion) in Marinette’s room with their kwamis when Rose and Juleka entered. (Tikki, Pollen, and Trixx hid before the girls could see them)

The movie was paused and the girls stared at each other, waiting for something to happen. There was a beat of silence before Rose burst into tears.

“Marinette, we’re so sorry! We should’ve listened to you!” 

Rose and Juleka told them that Luka had opened their eyes and that they never should have believed Lila’s stories and how they had tried to prove it to Ivan and Mylene too, but they wouldn’t listen. 

They ended their apology by saying; “We know we don’t deserve your forgiveness, but we are sorry and we want to make it up to you. Starting with this.”

Both girls handed Marinette two hundred dollars each. Marinette looked between the girls and the money in shock. 

“It’s payment for everything you’ve done for us. Every dress, outfit, accessory, baked good, everything. We know it isn’t enough, but it’s all we can afford right now. We promise to give you more once we have it.”

There were a few minutes of silence after that. Marinette blinked at the girls before tearing up and smiling.

“No. You don’t have to give me anymore. This will do.” She reassured. 

Rose and Juleka awkwardly nodded, but Marinette could tell they were somewhat relieved. There was an awkward silence before Moriah spoke up. 

“I know you’re lesbians, but do you want to drool over JD with us?”

Rose and Juleka blushed, but nodded their heads happily, rushing over to join the group.

It wasn’t just the girls though. Nathaniel never believed the stories, but was scared about what would happen if he spoke up. Seeing Rose and Juleka of all people step up made him join too. Marinette also had allies in students in other classes too, like Marc, Calude, and Aurore as well as in other schools, like Kagami and Felix. For the first time in a long time, Marinette felt much better. 

She should have known it wouldn’t last. 

That night she and Moriah returned to their room after patrol, she should have noticed that her sketchbook wasn’t where she left it on her desk. 

She should have noticed when she and Moriah got up in the morning, but they were so exhausted from the night before to think of anything more than food and getting ready. 

The girls met up with Chloe at the school gates and they had just walked into the classroom when they saw Alya talking with Miss Bustier, Lila and her sheep herded on one side of the room and the rest on the other side, looking murderous. Marinette almost instantly got a gut feeling that something was wrong.

Boy was she right.

When the girls were noticed, Lila’s sheep gave them smug looks while the girl herself gave them a faux innocent look. 

She did something.

Miss Bustier cleared her throat before turning to face the girls. 

“Girls, because of your behavioral issues, the class decided that it would be best if you three didn’t go on the class trip.”

Oh yeah, the class trip. 

During the third and final year, the seniors of the school were allowed a class trip. It was to be organized by the class, mostly the president, and the entire class had to do fundraisers to pay for it. 

To be completely honest, the last thing the three girls wanted to do was go on a trip with their class. Nathaniel and Marc had gotten an internship at DC Comics (courtesy of MDC) and that was taking place exactly during the class trip and Luka and Juleka’s mom decided that they were going to sail around the world this summer and Rose got permission to tag along. 

It would only be the three girls together with a class who hated them, but Marinette was the class president and had to organize it, and if she had to organize the whole thing then she was going to enjoy the fruits of her labor. And Chole and Moriah weren’t going to let her suffer alone. 

The bluenette had already begun planning the trip. Places to go and fundraising to do. She even decided to go ahead and book reservations. It was unfair!

Marinette opened her mouth to argue when her eye caught something in the trash that made her heart stop. 

Praying she was wrong, she slowly walked to the trash can and pulled out it’s contents. 

There was her sketchbook, tattered and torn.

She couldn’t believe it. Marinette started hyperventilating, looking at the scraps of her work.

Marinette had several sketchbooks, she filled them out rather fast, but that specific sketchbook was one filled with the design ideas she had for Jagged Stone’s tour that was happening this summer. 

Marinette felt the world around her spiralling. She felt dizzy. Distantly she could hear people calling her name, but couldn’t comprehend it. 

She felt sick. 

She was going to be sick! 

That was the last thing she remembered before running home, people calling her name as she left the school.

~~~

Always make friends with people who are loyal. 

A good friend will make you feel better after someone hurt you. 

But a best friend will skip beside you with an old, rusty bat singing “Someone’s gonna get it~”

After Marinette ran out, Chloe, Moriah, Juleka, Rose, and Nathaniel all screamed at their classmates and teacher, telling them how incompetent they were. Moriah, too angry to remember how to speak french, called them scum sucking creeps of the earth that Satan wouldn’t even want in hell. 

It probably would’ve gone farther, but the three competent classmates gave Chloe and Moriah a look and told them to go after Marinette. 

The girls listened with no hesitation. 

They ran all the way to the Dupan-Cheng bakery. They walked in and Tom and Sabine looked at them before glancing upstairs with sad looks. Both girls knew immediately what they meant. They went upstairs to see Marinette doing breathing exercises, trying to keep from crying or even being sad at all. Tikki was patting her wielder's leg. 

Moriah instantly ran over to Marinette while Chloe was quick to close any windows, doors, and cover any cracks and creases that an akuma could get through before joining them

Fuck Hawkmoth! There was no way the girls were going to let Marinette try and keep this bottled up so that she wouldn’t get akumatized. 

Chloe decided that the best thing for them to do was go to her father’s hotel and have a girls night, which is precisely what they did. What Marinette didn’t know was that there was a double meaning behind it.

The girls and their kwamis spent the night eating junk food and watching chick-flicks like Legally Blonde and Mean Girls. Rose, Juleka, and Nathaniel told the others what had happened, and Chloe and Moriah were met with numerous texts, asking if they needed to come over, but the girls reassured everyone that they had it covered.

Finally, Marinette had passed out. It was after midnight and Chloe and Moriah exchanged looks before getting to work. 

Tip-toeing out of the room, closing the door behind them, Moriah unlocked Marinette’s phone and opened her contacts. 

Scrolling down the list, taking note of a few names she wanted to ask the bluenette about later, she found the contact they were looking for. 

Jagged Stone. 

Hitting the face-time button, the girls waited for Jagged to answer. The rock star was currently in America, and should only be mid afternoon over there. Even if it wasn’t, he’d stop in the middle of a live concert if Marinette was calling him.

Sure enough, after two beeps, the screen changed to Jagged’s face.

“Marinette, love! So good to hear from you-” He stopped short when he saw the two girls, neither of which being his honorary niece.

“Moriah? Chloe? What’re you doing calling me on Marinette’s phone?”

That was all it took before the girls told him everything. Lila’s stories, all worthy of a lawsuit, what happened to Marinette’s sketchbook, they even emailed him pictures of the texts that the class had sent to Marinette, most of which encuriged the girl to comitte suicide, and a link to the LadyBlog to prove that everything was true.

About midway during their confession, Penny had appeared on the screen, reading the emails that the girls had sent her. By the time Chloe and Moriah were finished, the pair looked like they wanted to commit murder.

Jagged yelled in fury, wanted to take legal action immediately, but Moriah cut in before he could.

“I agree with you Jagged, but what Marinette needs is a break. She needs a vacation from her class and Paris in general.” 

Chloe nodded in agreement.

Jagged brought a hand to his chin in thought. The girls had a point, but what to do? 

~~~

It was Penny’s idea. 

The first thing the girls did in the morning was burn all the plans that Marinette had made for the trip. They cancelled the reservations and when they got to school, Marinette walked up to Miss Buster’s desk and said; “I’m resigning as class president. If the class doesn’t want Chloe, Moriah, and I to join them on the class trip, then I won’t plan it.”

And that was it. 

Lila had been chosen as the new class president.

To her credit, she did do a decent job. She had decent fundraising ideas, but she started late in the school year, so the class only raised enough money to go to Disneyland Paris.

Chloe snorted.

The class attended the trip in June. Their social media and camera rolls filled with pictures. Most of the captions read that they were glad to get away from the bullies at school.

It wasn’t till after the trip that they found out what happened with the girls. 

It was Alix who found out first. In the class group chat, save the three ‘bullies,’ Alix texted: “OMG, look at this!”

Underneath was a picture of the three girls at the airport with Jagged Stone, Penny, and Fang. The three were posing like Charlie’s Angels, wearing huge grins, with the caption: “Touring with Jagged Stone All Summer!!”

Penny was a genius. 

Lila looked at her phone in horror. This couldn’t be happening.

Oh, my dear liar, but it is!

The first stop was Gotham. Jagged was performing at a Gala hosted by Bruce Wayne, which the girls would be attending. But first, they got a tour of Wayne industries. 

The first picture in Gotham was taken by Moriah at Wayne industries. She was looking at the phone camera like she was on the Office while very clearly behind her you could see Marinette talking with Damian Wayne, the youngest Wayne son, and Chloe talking with a boy named Jonathan ‘Jon’ Kent, son of famous reporters Lois Lane-Kent and Clark Kent. Alya nearly snapped her phone in half when she recognized the boy. The pairs were obviously flirting. The picture’s captain read: ”First Day in Gotham and I’m already a fifth wheel.”

The next two pictures taken were a surprise to everyone. 

They were taken by Chloe in the late night streets of Gotham. The first one was a picture of Marinette sitting on the driver's seat of the batmobile looking like all her dreams had come true while Batman stood beside her, arms crossed, looking rather stern.

The second picture was Moriah holding two pistols with starry eyes with Red Hood standing beside her, explaining to her how to shoot them, with an alarmed Marinette and Nightwing running towards them in the background. 

The girls did take a selfie with the entire Batfam, but they decided not to post that one.

The next few days were mainly pictures of the girls sightseeing (with the occasional sneaky picture Moriah took of her friends with Damian and Jon). However, at one point the girls were adopted (kidnapped) by Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Chloe and Marinette both agree that the weirdest thing that happened in Gotham was Moriah bonding with a talking plant named Frank.

Eventually, it was the night of the Wayne Gala. None of the girls took pictures of the gala, but the entrance was on tv, which Miss Bustier’s class made a movie night out of. 

Sure enough, walking down the red carpet were the girls. Marinette had made new outfits for all of them, just for the gala, and they were stunning.

Marinette wore a long scarlet dress. It was fashioned like a traditional chinese dress, but more Marinette-y. There were intricate designs stitched in black around the bottom of the dress with a silk sash tied around her waist. Her hair was pulled up into a bun with a fancy stain glass rose pin in it. 

Chloe wore a glamorous gold mermaid dress. It shimmered with every step she took with glittering blue details on the top that matched her makeup. And if you looked down, you could see her wearing gold, literal gold, heels. Her hair was down in beach wave curls with blue strands woven into it.

Lila and Alya screamed when they saw both girls being escorted in by Damian Wayne and Jon Kent respectively. 

Jagged and Penny were linked together. Penny wore a v-neck, sleeveless shimmering silver dress, also made by Marinette, while Jagged wore a dark purple suit. It looked pretty monotone for the man at first, but when lights hit the suit, you could see that there had been music notes embroidered into the suit that turned it into a rainbow of color.

Moriah’s dress came as a bit of a surprise. Marinette knew Moriah was more comfortable in pants than a dress, but she still wanted the girl to wear a dress, so they compromised. Moriah wore a dress that was also crossed with a suit. Kind of like Garnet’s wedding dress from Steven Universe.

She wore a tuxedo jacket over a white, sleeveless dress that draped down longer in the back, shorter in the front. She had a red sash wrapped around her waist and black tights with red shoes to match. Around her neck was a shirt collar and bow-tie that she wore like a choker. Her hair was half up and half down in curls. Moriah wasn’t one to wear make up, but since it was a special occasion, she wore some mascara and a little lipstick.

The biggest surprise was her escort. 

Walking beside her was Fang, dressed in his own original Marinette tux that matched Jagged’s.

For the rest of the night, nobody knew what happened to the girls at the gala. It wasn't until the next morning that they found out.

Chloe and Marinette spent most of the night hanging out with Jon and Damian, but whenever they weren’t doing that, they talked with the other guests, most of whom asked for the designer of their outfits, which really boosted traffic on Marinette’s website. 

Moriah hung out around the dessert table most of the night, snacking on a bit of everything, while talking with the other Wayne sons. At some point, totally unclear on the how and why, Moriah and the oldest Wayne son, Dick Grayson, got into a dance fight. The gala ended before the fight did, so they had to call a draw.

Their next destination was New York, but they made a slight detour to Metropolis per Jon and Chloe’s request. They got a VIP tour of the Daily Planet and met Jon’s parents: Lois Lane-Kent and Clark Kent. 

Moriah recorded Lois tearing into the LadyBlog with a grin on her face, having no remorse in posting it online.

Alya couldn’t understand it as she watched her idol tearing into her life’s work.

Then the girls’ mentioned BugOut, the blog Aurore ran, and Lois was a lot more pleasant. 

Alya threw her phone when she got a text from Nino that Marinette got Aurore an internship at the Daily Planet for winter and spring break, and possibly summer if she did well.

The next picture posted was the first one Marinette took. It was of her two friends hanging off Superman’s massive muscles as he flexed. Chloe denies ever drooling.

After that, they left for New York. Specifically, the Avengers’ Tower. It was the anniversary of when the Avengers first became a team, and Tony Stark, an old friend of Jagged’s, highered the man to play at the party. 

Before then, they toured the Avengers tower. At one point, they walked in to see Captain America, Bucky Barns, and Thor working out. Shirtless. Moriah let out a quiet but passionate “Hell yes” when they saw them. 

After the three men, regretfully, put on their shirts, they showed off their equipment. Chloe couldn’t help but squeal when Captain America handed her his shield. Marinette grinned as she hung off Bucky’s metal arm as he flexed it. Moriah was once again handed guns, this time by Black Widow, which were once again promptly taken from her.

After all that excitement came the big guns. Per the girls’ request, Penny recorded them trying to lift Thor’s hammer. It was all fun and games until Marinette easily picked it up. It was dead quiet before Thor’s voice thundered across the room.

“She is worthy! I must take her to Asgard with me!” 

Tony took a step forward. “Thor, you can’t take a child.” He stressed.

Thor tilted his head at the millionaire like a puppy. Moriah winced, grabbing her heart. That face was too cute for a grown-ass space god.

“Then what is the spider-kid?”

Tony faceplamed. “He’s my intern and protege. I’m his mentor!”

“Then I shall be this child’s mentor!”

“No!”

“Miss Potts can be Chloe’s mentor, for they are both fit to rule!” Chloe preened at this. 

“Thor, no!”

Moriah raised her hand. “Can the kick-ass, Russian spy be my mentor?”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at the girl before smirking.

“Yes! Black Widow will become Moriah’s mentor! It all works out! Now, I must take my new protege to Asgard to meet the All-Father.”

“Thor, no!” 

“Don’t you take my niece!” Jagged ran into the phone’s picture, looking ready to fuck-up a god. 

The video ended with Penny dropping the phone and running towards Jagged who was now riding on Thor’s back, pulling his hair.

The video went viral in an hour. 

Lila’s hands trembled as she watched the video, feeling herself paleing. She had become enemies with someone who could lift Thor’s hammer.

This wasn’t posted, but shortly after Penny got Jagged off Thor, Loki appeared. He tried explaining that he felt powerful magic coming from the tower, but was cut short when Moriah tackled him to the ground in an aggressive hug.

While we’re on the subject of proteges, at some point, Peter came over. He heard that Jagged Stone was at the tower and wanted to meet him. He, Ned, and MJ were huge fans and he really needed an autograph. 

Friday told him that Jagged was with the other Avengers in the training room. Promptly saying thanks to the A.I, the spider boy practically ran to the room. What he didn’t expect was to open the door to see a short, brunette girl German suplex the Winter Soldier while wearing heels. (A trick Natasha had taught her. The Black Widow took being a mentor very seriously.)

Tony turned to see who was at the door and was met with a red faced, dazed Peter Parker who was clutching the area over his heart like it was about to beat out of his chest.

“Natasha, your kid broke my minion!”

(Now Marinette and Chloe got their fill of taking sneaky pictures of Moriah and Peter.)

The girls did normal sightseeing stuff around New York. They went to a town called Riverdale and Moriah met a guy named Jughead. They bonded over having friends with love issues that attracted endless people while they just wanted to eat burgers.

At some point they were in another dangerous situation, but this time they met some guy named Deadpool who would make this One-Shot Rated-R if I actually put anything he said in it.

While in New York, they went to two Broadway Musicals. The first one was Phantom of the Opera. (Jagged didn’t really want to see this one, but he was outnumbered one to four. (Five including Fang. The crocodile had a weird love for Opera music.)) They also had a backstage pass where pictures of Marinette conversing with the person in charge of costumes, Chloe complementing the actress who played Christine, and Moriah hugging the actor who played the Phantom were taken.

After that, Jagged took them to see Hamilton. What the girls’ didn’t know, however, was that this was a special show with the original cast. Moriah screamed when she saw Lin Manuel-Miranda on the stage as Alexander Hamilton and when they went backstage, Moriah started crying when the cast greeted her.

Mylene, who admired the man herself, felt her heart break when she saw the picture of a joy-crying Moriah hugging Lin.

After that, they went to Florida for Jagged’s next concert at Universal Studios. They didn’t meet anyone famous there, but the class were still envious of the pictures. 

Moriah was a huge Potter Head, so this was a dream come true. She hissed at Marinette and Chloe when they playfully mocked her Hufflepuff shirt while they sported matching Slytherin shirts. 

They also went to Disney World, which was also a dream come true. The funniest thing that happened there was while Jagged and Moriah were off trying to waste hundreds of dollars on ice cream and other junk food with Penny trying to stop them, one of the park’s managers thought that Chloe and Marinette were supposed to fill-in for two of the disney princesses. Jagged, Penny, and Moriah came back to find Chloe dressed like Elsa and Marinette dressed like Mulan. Moriah laughed hysterically at the two girls until the same park manager pulled her away and she came out dressed like Belle.

Originally, Florida was supposed to be the final place, but there was a last minute change. Turns out that Jagged Stone has a sister who lives in Japan with a daughter named Kyoko Jirou.

While they were on tour, Jirou and her classmates had done a performance for their school’s festival.

Jagged, of course, was inspired and requested Penny to schedule one last performance in Japan where he’d have Jirou and her band open for him. It would be a nonprofit concert since Jagged wanted it within the next two weeks, but that didn’t bother him. 

The girls had to check in with their parents, but they were allowed to go with Jagged to Japan. 

Since it would take every waking moment to plan the concert and write a new song for it, Jagged had the girls join Jirou’s class for the time being despite being a little older.

The first picture taken was Moriah performing the German suplex Natasha taught her on a hot, ash-blonde guy named Katsuki Bakugou who said that the girls looked weak. 

The next thing that was posted was a selfie of the three girls wearing the UA gym uniforms with the caption: “Training at the USJ.” With them in the picture were Momo and Hagakure, both of which were adorning new hero costumes.

Marinette took one look at their old costumes and went on a rampage. In the time span of two days, she managed to make both girls new suits (with the help of the support course). 

Momo kept her red and white color scheme, but it became a two piece outfit that was pretty similar to a female wrestler’s costume, but with knee and elbow pads. To avoid showing too much skin, they used strands of Momos hair as a way to let her creations move past the more intimate areas of her body. Momo kept her heeled boots because if Black Widow and Wonder Woman can kick ass in heels then so could she, but Moriah gave the suggestion of being able to snap the heels off and use them like throwing darts.

Hagakure’s suit was made out of reflective lenses that could turn her completely invisible without having to be naked, but also amplify any light she admitted. She got a chest plate tank top and pants with built in kneepads. Her boots were sound absorbent for stealth and she also got a pair of rocking goggles to keep her from blinding herself.

Needless to say, both girls were satisfied with their new looks.

For the next couple of days, they took pictures of Class 1-A. Marinette was the only one who could get a picture with the Class 1-A homeroom teacher, Mr. Aizawa. Probably because she made him a new sleeping bag as an apology for their intrusion.

Funny story: When he saw Jagged Stone, he paled, before muttering “Oh dear god, there’s two of them” under his breath repeatedly. The girls didn’t understand this until they met Present Mic.

Moriah and Katsuki somewhat got along after the german suplex incident and she hung out with the Baku-Squad. Chloe took a bit of an interest in a duel-haired boy named Todoroki who hung out with a boy named Izuku Midoryia and the Deku-Squad. Izuku and Marinette got along swimmingly, just don’t look directly at them. It’s harmful to look at the sun, let alone two.

At one point, they met Endeavor. All three girls called him out and chastised him for being a horrible father and human being. Chloe took the lead on this. (Todoroki started looking at her in a new light.)

The next big news that Miss Buister’s class got wasn’t from stalking the girls’ social media. It was the Japanese news. The class couldn’t believe it when they saw that Ladybug, Vixen, and Yellow Jacket were in Japan. 

Originally the girls were only planning on going shopping, but when they saw the villain attack, their hero instincts took over and they transformed and apprehended the perp. To avoid suspicion, Vixen cast an illusion to make it look like Marinette, Chloe, and Moriah were in the background in the crowd.

The girls were interviewed by the press. Well… Ladybug and Vixen conversed with the press while Yellow Jacket was giddily talking in the background with the pro hero Hawks, who the girls had aided, with a vibrant blush on her face.

Non Surprisingly, Izuku was there. Ladybug gave him the most attention out of all the interviewer's. (Block your eyes from the sunshine rays!)

The next day, things got even crazier. All three girls were kidnapped by the League of Villains. U.A, Jagged, and Penny were in a panic until Moriah posted a selfie, looking so done with the world, with a black haired, scared man with piercings beside her staring at the phone camera like he was on the Office. 

\In the background, Marinette was chastising the villains about how rude it was to kidnap people while Chloe insulted their base’s decor. The caption read: “These idiots didn’t even take our phones.”

They were found two days later by a group of pro-heroes, led by current No. 1 hero, Endeavor, but when the heroes burst in, they stopped short at the sight in front of them.

The heroes found a very smug Marinette demolishing a very pissed Shigaraki at a video game while Chloe, Toga, Magne, and Twice were doing each other’s nails in the corner while gossiping. In another corner of the room, Dabi had decided to give Moriah new, vibrant blue highlights that matched his eyes. 

The entire base was refurbished.

The heroes were stunned long enough for the LoV to escape.

The girls had to use the horse miraculous to return to Paris several times to deal with akumas, but it was worth it. 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Jagged’s trip was soon over and the girls returned to Paris. 

The moment they walked into the classroom they were met with glares ranging from weak to pure shade. 

While they were on the trip, Jagged had told every important person they came across every tabloid lie Lila had spun and she was met with a tsunami of lawsuits. As was the LadyBlog. Alya’s eyes were red and puffy, but she still gave a heated glare towards Marinette. 

The rest of the class wasn’t off the hook, either. With all the evidence Moriah and Chloe had shown Jagged, the entire class were sued for harassment. 

After finally getting to the email Tom and Sabine sent, the school board had found out about everything. Mr Damocles and Miss Bustier had been told to hit the road, and were promptly replaced with new, competent teachers. 

The girls gave a bright smile before sitting in the back of the class, high-fiving Nathaniel, Rose, and Juleka on the way.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

[darkenedreaper]

You Gave Up

Requested by @ecruzsalaz hope you enjoy

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader, ft Bruce Banner

Warnings: angst, lil fluff

You and Natasha had been together for a long time now. And instead of getting married, which would come after, you both wanted to try for a baby. The two of you had a conversation about having a child and Natasha was excited. You both knew it wasn’t right to get your hopes up however when the morning came you both shot off to Tony’s lab.

Due to Natashas background and her being sterilised it was clear who would be carrying and you didn’t have a problem with that. Tony had suggested IVF first and with the embarrassing help of his robots, within a few days you were ready for the implantation. Tony was standing by your head and Natasha was by your side holding your hand. You felt your cheeks burning bright red from the robot controlling its movements and doing its job. A slight fraction of the embarrassment went away when Natasha stroked your cheek softly and kissed your forehead. Tony made sure his robot double checked everything was in place and he sent you two of wishing you the best of luck for the next couple of days.

After those couple of days you and Natasha were close together nearly 24/7 and the day came. Natasha didn’t want to pressure you so she went to the compounds living room to hand out with the rest. And you were in the bathroom now waiting for the pregnant test results to come through. For the first 30 seconds you saw nothing and then 1 line appeared. You sighed and you couldn’t nearly feel the tear threatening to slip out. You had to work up the courage to go out and speak to Natasha and Tony. She saw you come in and she took in your slumped figure and saddened eyes. She didn’t need you to tell her what the test said as she already knew what the answer was. She frowned sadly and gave you a small hug. One that seemed a little short for a couple who had just failed to get pregnant. She left. Just left. Even Bucky gave you a longer hug.

Some days on and you hadn’t heard from Natasha. You hadn’t seen her around the compound or around the gym. Fury had called you in and he told you that he knew what had happened with you and Natasha. He told you to take 2 weeks off as he tried to understand how much stress your body must be going through. He really did have a sweet side. It really hurt knowing that Natasha was avoiding you and it hurt even more when every time you’d ask someone where she was they’d respond back, ‘with Bruce’. You had tried to reach her but your calls and messages to her phone weren’t working anymore.

It was finally time to check your pregnancy test. Tony had tried to help you and this was his 7th attempt at helping. He was grateful you allowed him to concur to help as he would do anything for you. He understood the joy and want of having a child and the beautiful bond it creates. Tony had suggested that tonight you don’t get your hopes up again as after you had found out Natasha and Bruce had a relationship together you had gone down, really down. And Tony thought that it would affect the eggs. Yes he still had some of her and her DNA and he confused to use it for scientific reasons apparently. And now the test read positive. You were pregnant with Natashas baby. And now she was with Bruce and hadn’t seen or spoke to you in 4 months. It was late at night and so you didn’t wait any longer to leave. You started packing your bags. You decided to send an email on your way to another country saying to fury you’ve just gone. You had the decency to also leave Tony a message. Not saying you were pregnant. But that you left and not to tell anyone.

The next morning, Tony being Tony, he opened his mouth and actually shouted it “Y/N IS GONE! SHE’S GONE!” And it was like Natasha had snapped out of a trance and she panicked. She looked at Bruce who had his hand on her waist and shoved him away. Had you left her because she distanced herself? Had you left because she abandoned? Because she didn’t consider your feelings? Because she had gotten together with Bruce?

She was storming out of the room. To go find you. Until she felt a strong hand pulling her back and increasingly getting stronger. She looked around to see big brown eyes looking angry and sad.

“Leave her alone Natasha. It’s all your fault. Your why she left!” He kept blurting out things to her before Steve pulled him away as even he couldn’t look at Natasha and he was a gentleman.

You had moved at least 3 quarters away from where you were and had found a little flat that needed to be rented out. So you unpacked your things and you were ok within a few days. Not great, not good. But ok.

It was 9 months later and you had gone through what was close to hell on your own. The struggle to tie your own laces, the struggle to sleep at night. Odd cravings that you didn’t have stored in any kitchen cupboards. 12 hours of pain but something beautiful was rewarded to you. Once you were handed your baby girl, you too in her features. Her face nearly mirrored yours, your hair roots and brows. Except for those green eyes and the same nose as Natasha.

You had raised D/N Romanoff Y/N all on your own. She had grown up to be like you and opposite from her other non existent mother as she wasn’t involved and made no effort to find you. You had told her stories about her other mother and showed her photos. But would never reveal her location or why she wasn’t here.

Her 5th birthday had just gone and it was a few days after that you had Nick Fury and Maria sitting in your living room. Maria hadn’t changed. She was obviously happy to see you with her warm embrace as a greeting. Then she went and sat with your daughter. Fury just offered you a smirk which was the closest to a smile. You offered the same back and sat opposite him.

“What’re you doing here Nick?”

You knew there was no point in asking how on earth he found you. Instead he lowered his voice to match yours so you both wouldn’t alert your daughter.

“They, I. Need your help. She needs your help L/N, the mission is too big, we need more skill. Like you.”

You sighed and looked down to the floor. Then Nick just had to go and pull at your heartstrings.

“In a few years, the kid is gonna start asking questions about Daddy or Mommy. What’re you gonna say?”

You knew he was right. But you were fully aware of yourself who was not in the wrong. She abandoned you when you were lowest. But you still had the team. If it was necessary you’d do it for them.

“How long?”

You soon found yourself stepping off of the jet Maria and Fury had brought you back in. Y/D/N had woken up with her head on your shoulder so her arms were around your neck and legs around your side. You were led to the compound sitting room and the Avengers finally could see you after 6 years, you were coming back. Coming back with a 6 year old, they didn’t know. They all stood up when they heard footsteps coming in and once they saw you they all smiled. Tony was the first to walk over to you and before he hugged you he looked at your daughter then back at you, then at Natasha and said,

“I knew it!” And he wrapped his arms around the both of you. Natasha didn’t know what he was on about as she was standing at the back, hiding the guilt, shame and sadness which was all she felt for these years. She only moved to the front to see who the voice came from that squealed,

“Uncle Tony and Uncle Stevie and Uncle Bucky. And, and Uncle Clint! Auntie Wanda!” They were all ecstatic but that soon went away when Natasha called your name. She looked at you and the child in confusion, thinking you were married and had a child with somebody else. Thinking that she had lost you. Then she saw her eyes, her nose, her lips. And she saw her face, her hair. And it was a mixture of Natashas and your looks.

Y/D/N was quiet now and she stared at the figure before wanting to be put down.

“Momma Nat?” The little girl started to walk over but you quickly grabbed her hand and held her to your hip. Natasha visibly winced and before she could speak her eyes were teary.

The team started to empty now until it was you three. You whispered in your little girls ear telling her to go sit on the couch and watch the quiet television. Natasha watched the little one with every movement.

“Y/N.. I..-“

“Yeah Natasha she’s yours. That’s your 6 year old daughter.”

She was speechless and she wanted to go over and hold the girl, ask for her name. Apologise.

“Y/N please. Please. I’m sorry. I.. I know that means nothing to you after all this time. Having to go through that on your own, I.. I hate myself! I’m so so sorry Y/N.”

She had started to cry and you weren’t one to dismiss someone who was once so close to you. Even after all the hurt. You tucked her face in your shoulder so Y/D/N couldn’t see her tears.

“You abandoned me Natasha. You gave up. Left me to deal with so many failed pregnancies. You were happy with Bruce and every night I was praying that one procedure would work. And it did. And she’s yours. But you gave up.”

More sniffles as she just listened.

“I can’t deny you access to seeing your daughter, but I can deny you ever trying to break my heart again.”

“I won’t Y/N. I can’t say anything to make you feel better but I will try. I promise.”

You weren’t sure that you wanted to back to where you where. It would take a lot of healing and time. But you were sure of the happiness on Natashas face as she cradled her daughter in her arms softly calling her by her name.

@natasha-danvers @imnotasuperhero @aaron-despair @confusinggemini612 @thewidowsghost @ecruzsalaz @fcbarcelona-and-marvel-4-life @gaytrashgoblin @capmarvelq @nat-romanoffdanvers @lesbian-x-blackwidow @emilyprentisswife @captain-josslett @fayhar @oblivious-horny-lesbian @trikruismybitch @summergeezburr @username23345 @xxxtwilightaxelxxx

[yellowocaballero]

Desolation Destroyed My P****: Web!Jon, Gertrude/Agnes Repressed Homoeroticism, and Gerry faking his own death

Another installment in the slowly complicating Web!Jon AU based off The Convention on Chronographer Lane/The Monster at the End of This Book. You don’t need to know anything about the other two installments, the main story, or the actual Web!Jon story that will get WRITTEN once I’m done with Space Cadet. Full story under the cut. GERTRUDE POV BABY LET’S GO DON’T BE A COWARD AND EMBRACE THE GERIATRIC LESBIANS. 

CW for body horror

2002

People did not call Gertrude for favors. 

Somehow most of the community had fallen under the impression that it was a bad idea to owe a favor to Gertrude Robinson, because she always came to collect. Gertrude had worked hard to enforce this. Most of those in her...field knew better than to ask an enemy for favors, and Gertrude made a habit of collecting enemies. She was not in the habit of collecting friends. 

Allies, maybe. She could count her allies on one aging hand and have fingers left over. Unfortunately, Agnes Montague was one of them. 

Also unfortunately, Agnes disliked and distrusted the Institute so severely she only ever called when she knew Gertrude would be in her own home - so, at one am, on a Saturday. The shrill blaring of Gertrude’s almost unused home phone startled her from her nightly reading, and she was forced to bookmark her place before picking up the phone. 

She never spoke first on the phone, and old precaution, but Agnes knew that. “Don’t worry. I’m only calling for business reasons. I need another favor.”

Gertrude’s lips thinned. “Agnes. It’s been a while.”

Six months and a week, not that Gertrude was counting. The last time Agnes had called her up asking for a favor was the first time they had ever spoken: a request for help escaping her cult. It had been a long, messy business. The burn scar had only just healed. 

They had a moment of sentimentality, then. A moment of sentimentality that had begun so many years ago as their lives were tied together in that forest, and stretched forward in time and space to culminate in a single mistake. It was a mistake Gertrude was afraid she was still making now. 

“I would have called, but it was still dangerous,” Agnes said cheerfully. She had been a morose and sulky woman, when Gertrude first met her. She had brightened considerably since they had won her freedom: like the turn of winter into spring. “It’s settled down quite a bit, which is why I need the favor.”

“You still haven’t paid me back for last time,” Gertrude said mildly. 

But Agnes just laughed, warm and soft, despite the cold welcome. “I feel like we both got something out of that arrangement, don’t you?”

They did. Gertrude wasn’t sure which arrangement Agnes was referring to. “Fine. What is it you need? Within reason, Agnes. I’m not sure I have another great escape in me.”

“I need three false identities,” Agnes said, shocking Gertrude deeply. People only tended to call Gertrude when they need something murdered or blown up. Not that she minded. “You know everybody, and I’ve been a bit cloistered these past few years. I have a source who knows some people, but the person that we’ve been avoiding also knows those resources, so they’re right out.”

“Running an underground railroad, are we, Agnes?” Gertrude asked archly. 

Agnes laughed again, and despite herself the sound still rang something buried and cold in Gertrude’s heart. “I figured I’d try my hand at the good guy thing. What can I say, Gertrude? You were a good influence on me.”

“Don’t mock me.” But Gertrude sighed anyway, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ll get you in touch with who I use. If you give me your email I can connect you.”

“...what’s -”

“Never mind. I’ll pass your phone number along. Goodnight, Agnes.”

But the line crackled and fuzzed, and Agnes didn’t hang up. Neither did Gertrude. When Agnes spoke again it was soft - not hesitant, Agnes was never hesitant, but gentle. Agnes, Gertrude had found, could be more gentle than anybody else. “We never visited that lake.”

“Those are just dreams, Agnes,” Gertrude said - harshly, maybe unkindly. She didn’t know how to be anything else. 

“Not to me. I - no, John, don’t eat that, you don’t know where it’s been!” Agnes sighed, sending a crackle of static over the line and catching Gertrude’s attention severely. “I have to go. Goodbye, Gertrude. Thank you for your help. Call me sometimes, will you? For personal reasons. I gave you my number for a reason.”

Gertrude hung up on her, deciding not to dignify any of that with a response. She hardly had the time to make - personal phone calls. 

 What foolishness. Agnes had infected her with such foolishness. 

Gertrude went back to her book, mind working furiously, trying to remember if she had ever read of a ‘John’. 

*****

Unfortunately, ‘John’ was about as common a name as they came. 

Gertrude herself scarcely had any time to follow-up. Judging from Agnes’ words and tone, John was a child of some sort - had Agnes kidnapped somebody else’s child? Her child? (Gertrude had a very ridiculous thought for a moment before dismissing it, before grudgingly accepting that Agnes was made out of wax and that nothing was technically impossible). She gave Agnes her guy’s phone number and wished she could wash her hands of the matter. What Agnes did from now on would hopefully be none of her business. 

Gertrude wished she could delude herself into believing that. 

But Gertrude’s work was picking up, the rituals coming in faster and faster, and she found herself running about much more than she should at her age. Emma was invaluable, Fiona worked hard in research, and Michael was...sweet, but she trusted them with little information and trusted them less to watch her back. She couldn’t dedicate the amount of time she wanted to a hunch.

To make matters worse, Mary Keay had seemed to misplace her child. She was torn up about it, in her...own way. Gertrude wasn’t concerned. The boy was seventeen. He’d be back in three months with another two piercings, a Grateful Dead shirt, and no money. Goodness knows Gertrude had done it enough at his age. Did kids still trail along at Grateful Dead concerts? What was Gerry always listening to these days, Green Day? Green Day concert. 

As such, it was two weeks before Gertrude even had time to follow up with her contact. It only took minimal application of her blackmail before he spilled what Agnes had him make, and the full details therein. Most importantly, her new listed address. That, at least, ought to be real. 

As Gertrude rode the Underground to the humble London neighborhood where Agnes had apparently escaped her followers, sneering at young men who tried to give her their seats, she flipped through the paperwork. Agnes Montague, twenty seven - my, wasn’t she vain - born in London, England. All of her details seemed fairly legitimate. New NIN, credit score, false history, the usual. So it wasn’t her she was trying to hide. 

The second file was more interesting. There was her mystery John. Jonathan, apparently. Jonathan Montague. 

Gertrude’s eyebrows crawled up. What was her game?

The announcement of her stop echoed smoothly through the train, and she quickly folded up the papers and stuffed them back in her purse. It was a short walk from the station to the flat complex where Agnes was now staying, and she found herself ridiculously wondering what Agnes would look like. 

Would her hair be the same color, the color of licks of fire straining into the night sky? Her eyes the same forest green, a rainforest any woman could drown in? Her skin rosy and soft, with full appearance of youth and longevity, never to age or decay? Gertrude was only barely sixty, but she was feeling her age with every year. Her living had been hard, and it was finally catching up with her.

What else would catch up with her, once she knocked on Agnes Montague’s door?

Apartment number 426,  1446 Frederick Street. The strange thing about it was the welcome mat set outside the door. There was a little smiley face. It was so incongruous with Agnes, yet so oddly fitting, that Gertrude found herself smiling. 

She knocked once, twice. Her lockpicks were up her sleeve. Hopefully Agnes wasn’t home and she could snoop, but - 

The door opened to reveal Gerard Keay, looking down at a loose crumple of bills in his hand. He was so busy counting them out that he didn’t see who was standing at his doorstep.

“Thanks, mate, we -” Gerard finally looked up, and his face whitened. “You aren’t pizza.”

“So I’ve been told,” Gertrude said dryly. “Are you going to let me in?”

He let her in. 

******

So that was where Gerard had gotten to. 

Agnes, who had been pulling soda out of the fridge in their small kitchenette, was much happier to see her than Gerard was. It was the first time anybody had been happy to see Gertrude suddenly turning up at their doorstep in a very long time, and it made Gertrude almost uncomfortable. 

“I’m here for business reasons,” Gertrude felt the need to tell her, as she glared Gerard into sulking miserably on the couch. He had dyed his beautiful hair some nasty black color, which was either for disguise purposes or for...what was the word...goth? Goth purposes? Gertrude was very thankful she did not have children. 

But Agnes just smiled at her, as if she saw straight through. Which was ridiculous. There was nothing to see straight through. “It would be pretty strange if you stalked me until you found my address and showed up at my home in the middle of the day holding lockpicks for business reasons, Gertrude!”

“It’s for personal reasons.”

“There we go. I would offer you some pizza, but it seems that it’s not here yet.”

“So it seems.” Gertrude turned her eyes on Gerard, who wilted. “I hope this is a valuable lesson in checking to see who is at the door before you answer it, young man.”

Gerard mumbled something. 

“I know for a fact your mother did not raise you to be this careless.”

“My mother barely raised me at all,” Gerard grumbled. 

“Fine. Then I did not teach you to be that careless.” That got an actual flinch out of him, and Gertrude sighed. “What is going on here, you two?”

“It’s a very long story,” Agnes said. 

“Containing very many events I am under pain of death not to tell you about,” Gerard added. “Are you going to tell Mum I’m here?”

Gertrude sighed. 

The flat was small, clearly newly rented. They had very little furniture, and what they did have was clearly liberated from charity shops and kerbs. Their living room held a battered television, one of those gaming consoles Gerard liked so much, a scuffed and thoroughly singed coffee table to match an equally singed couch, and a pair of overstuffed bookshelves. A cutaway wall revealed a small kitchen, with a nook that held a rickety kitchen table.  None of it seemed particularly out of the ordinary for two young people, strongly resembling Gertrude’s own first flat. 

She cautiously sniffed the air. No smell of candles. Hm. 

She was just about to push the matter of how exactly the Messiah of the Eternal Flame and a bookseller’s son met and became flatmates when a crash and a thump echoed from the hallway. Gerard jumped off the couch, and Agnes bit her lip. Another rattle echoed from the hallway, and something deep in Gertrude’s mind recognized the sounds as those of a caged animal. 

“What is that,” Gertrude said flatly. 

“I’ll check on him,” Gerard said quickly, fleeing into the hallway. He knocked on one of the doors - Gertrude noticed that there were two on each side, three bedrooms and a bathroom - and said something quietly against the door, before cracking the door open a few inches. Gertrude couldn’t see what was inside, and she couldn’t maneuver herself closer without alerting Agnes. 

There was another crash, and Gerard slammed the door shut quickly. He grinned broadly yet anxiously at Gertrude, tittering a laugh. “It’s nothing! Nothing to see here. Would you like a cuppa, Gertrude!”

“Hm,” Gertrude said. 

They gave her a cuppa. She sat on the couch, Agnes and Gerard anxiously standing in front of her wringing their hands, and pretended to sip the cuppa. 

“Promise there’s no human flesh in it,” Gerard said. Gertrude arched an eyebrow at him until he sighed, took it, took a small and exaggerated sip, and then passed it back. 

It was only then that Gertrude tried some. She couldn’t help but smile. Agnes’ tea was always perfect. 

“Can one of you tell me why, according to the government, you are now legally siblings?” Gertrude asked archly. She put one hand down on the cracks between the sofa cushions beside her, pretending it was for balance. “Without lying, please.”

Agnes shrugged helplessly. “Gerard didn’t want to live with his mother anymore and I wasn’t doing anything important.”

“We thought about faking a corpse but was afraid that would just excite her,” Gerard said, depressed. “Hopefully when I don’t turn up she’ll just assume I was eaten by a book.” He affected a faux-nasally tone that did, admittedly, sound a lot like Mary. “ ‘If he’s too incompetent to survive he’s no good to me as a son. Good riddance to bad rubbish, his whole line’.”

“Gerry won’t let me immolate her,” Agnes said seriously. 

“She’s my mum, Agnes!”

“Immolating parental figures is very therapeutic.” Agnes patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. “When I set everybody who ever loved me on fire, I felt great about it.”

“It seemed very cathartic,” Gertrude said dryly. She dug her fingers deeper into the crack between the cushions until something soft and thread-like rubbed between her fingers. Bingo. “Why the false identities? Why not simply let Gerard live with you until he turned 18?”

“We want him declared dead,” Agnes said simply. “And we want him to have an actual identity for when that happens. This is the best way to keep him away from his mum. Besides, Gerard Montague has his A Levels and a diploma for uni. ” She shrugged. “And hopefully he’ll be staying with me for quite a bit longer than a year.”

Interesting. They really did know each other. Maybe they were even really friends - although Gertrude was forced to wonder what a woman in her sixties and a teenager had in common. Gerard had mentioned wanting to go to university, but they had all known it was a pipe dream. Dreams like that often were. Gertrude neatly withdrew her hand from the cushion, folding her hands over each other in her lap. She rubbed the thread between her hands, satisfied when she felt its loose, sticky elasticity. 

 How interesting. 

“And Jonathan?”

Both of them froze. 

Gerard broke first, laughing nervously and high pitched. “Who’s that?”

Gertrude lifted her hand, showing both of them the thin strand of spider-silk pinched between two bony fingers. Both Agnes and Gerard whitened. “I imagine it’s whatever Avatar of the Web you have locked in the back room that is responsible for these.”

They winced simultaneously, glancing at each other. Doubtlessly trying to come up with a cover story. Gertrude sighed, standing up from the couch and straightening her skirts. Nothing for it then. Her Glock was still strapped to her thigh, and a hunting knife at her other. 

Gertrude knew very little about the Web. Just, she suspected, as it liked. It had no rituals, and held no explicit threat to the safety of the world. It was a threat, for sure. Even worse, a threat that Gertrude knew infuriatingly little about. But it was not the most immediate threat, and as Gertrude spent every day drowning under more and more immediate threats she held very little time for those which weren’t promising to end the world anytime soon.

Maybe that was why Gertrude was fully planning to leave this flat and never mention its inhabitants again - not to Mary, not to Dekker, and not to whatever scattered remnants of her cult that Agnes had left alive. Whatever Agnes wanted, it seemed to be closer to a normal life living with her friend than anything world-destroying. And whatever Gerard wanted...well, he was a good boy. He wouldn’t do anything dangerous to anybody other than himself. Mary didn’t have to know. Perhaps it was even for the best.

“You really don’t want to go in -”

“Gertrude, please, he’s in a rather delicate stage right now -”

Another thump against the door. As Gertrude left the living room, crisply walking down the thin and crowded hallway until she stood in front of a thin and battered-looking door, she could slowly begin to hear the faint but distinct sounds of...chittering. Skittering. It was a sound she had heard only once before, during a brush with the corruption.

Gertrude raised a hand to knock at the door. 

A hand shot out, pale and thin, and clasped Gertrude’s wrist in its grip firmly. Despite herself, Gertrude’s breath caught. Agnes’ touch still did that to her, it seemed. When she glanced to the side, she saw Agnes standing next to her, mouth stubbornly set firm. Her long and silky orange hair tumbled over her shoulder, glimmering under the soft lights.

“The world’s a cruel place, Gertrude,” Agnes said. “We’re just trying to look out for each other.”

“We all chose this life,” Gertrude said, voice tinged with reproach. 

But Agnes just set her jaw stubbornly. “We didn’t.”

It was a we that didn’t include Gertrude - but, of course, so little of Agnes’ life did. 

Gertrude let her hand drop to the doorknob, and she didn’t meet Agnes’ eyes as she twisted the knob and let herself in. 

Some part of her felt it very idiotic, to walk into what she knew was a spider’s lair. A ridiculous part of her mind couldn’t help but hum the little nursery rhyme she had learned as a girl. But if it was truly dangerous Agnes would have prevented her from going in, instead of asked her to. Some part of Gertrude trusted that, a part of Gertrude that somehow still survived despite everything. 

It wasn’t that Agnes appealed to the softer side of Gertrude. It was more that Agnes appealed to the hardest and cruellest parts of her, her tough outer shell, that ached for a reassurance that even a woman raised in utmost cruelty could make the choice to be kind. That there was still goodness in the world. If even a Messiah of the Eternal Flame could smile like that, could look at Gertrude with those deep and unfathomable eyes, then maybe all of Gertrude’s efforts weren’t for nothing. 

The room was white. No, not white - just covered in long, ropy strands of spider-web. Different shapes and sizes, different lengths and thicknesses. Some of it was wispy and gentle, like cotton fluff, while some of it was closer to rope. It wasn’t arranged in a spider’s beautiful pattern, an elegant nest: it was more like an explosion, as if it was thrown anywhere and everywhere without regard. 

The webs didn’t cover everything in the room. A bed was clearly visible, draped with webs as it was. There was a closet, and several boxes stacked in the corner with loose clothing draped over them. That was every piece of furniture and personal item in the room. It was a minor miracle that the living and dining rooms didn’t have more spidersilk in them - a testament to Agnes and Gerry’s tidiness, or a sign that the inhabitant rarely left the room. 

The inhabitant of the room was curled on the bed. It - he, perhaps? - was sitting upright against the wall, knees curled up against a chest, forehead resting on the knees. He was half-obscured by webs, but Gertrude could immediately tell that the figure wasn’t very old. Gerard’s age, or perhaps a bit younger. 

The webs did little to obscure the four arms - two flesh, two hinged and black and hairy - curled around the boy’s body. 

The boy didn’t look up when he saw her. Gertrude wondered if he even noticed. She was only just beginning to wonder what the thumps were when one of the spider arms lashed out and crashed against the wall, shaking the room. 

Hm. This was Gertrude’s first Web Avatar, but if they all looked and acted like this then she could only assume that they would be much more obvious than they are. New, then. Maybe as new as those identities Agnes had applied for. 

Normally she’d torch it and go home, but with both Agnes and Gerard in residence that option was out of the question. Her curiosity had been satisfied: she could turn around now and leave the room, knowing what it was Agnes and Gerard were protecting. She could let the inhabitants of this flat fade into obscurity, secure in the knowledge that none of them wished to harm her or the world. 

But Gertrude was a bit too curious for her own good, or perhaps a bit too soft, because she found herself stepping forward.

Her low-heeled boots didn’t slide on the web, but it did stick. When she lifted her feet they tracked up thin spiderweb, and she resolved to burn this outfit once she made her way back to the Archives. After a few breathless moments, Gertrude found herself standing in front of the boy, who hadn’t seemed to notice her yet. Poor situational awareness. He’d fit in well with Gerard. 

“Jonathan.”

The boy looked up at her, and anybody else would have bit back a scream. 

He had eight eyes - black, glistening, unreal. Bulbous and unsettling, they skittered and twitched in strange directions, as if uncertain how to work or how to see. New, brand-new. Uncontrolled. The boy’s mouth parted in slight surprise, but it was obviously difficult to read any sort of expression. 

He didn’t say anything. Gertrude found herself absently wondering if spiders had tongues. 

“Do you know what is happening to you?” 

The boy stared at her, long enough that Gertrude found herself wondering if he still clung to sentience, before slowly nodding his head. Good. 

“Then you know how to stop it,” Gertrude said sharply, and the boy sat up straighter. “Stop moping about, now. Look around. You’ve destroyed your room.” She gave the boy a moment to look around, expression still inscrutable, before she went back on the attack. “You’ve sulked long enough. Put away those arms, now. Go on.”

The boy stared at her, coarse black spider arms twitching and curling. 

“You know what’s happening,” Gertrude said firmly. “It’s your body. Not theirs. It’s your body, Jonathan. Bend it to your will. Not theirs.”

Slowly, disgustingly, the arms began to recede. They slid back inside his torso, sucking into his ribcage, shifting and clicking and chittering, until there was nothing left but an ordinary chest. Gertrude was even now able to recognize his shirt. It was one of Gerard’s. Green Day. 

“Your eyes now. Come on, hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”

The eyes pulsed and twitched, bubbling strangely. One of them whirred, glistening with a thousand fractals. 

The boy opened his mouth, and garbled speech came out. “I can’t...I can’t…”

“You have no choice. You must, so you will. Come on, Jonathan. Listen to me. It’s your body. It’s not theirs.”

The eyes melted back into Jonathan’s face, and that was so disgusting Gertrude politely looked up. She had seen worse, but no point in subjecting herself to it. When she looked back down she was shocked to see, for all appearances, a teenage boy. 

He had a thin, severe face, and large cloudy grey eyes. His hair was curly and matted, and despite his posture Gertrude could tell that he was the kind of short and built that was straining up against an imminent growth spurt. His skin was a light brown, with thin lips and features that suggested mixed ancestry. He looked very much like a regular, if somewhat striking, teenage boy. 

“There you go,” Gertrude said, “that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Who the fuck are you,” the rude child said. 

“Jon!”

She had been so focused on Jonathan, that she hadn’t noticed when Gerard and Agnes entered. Gerard practically jumped onto Jonathan’s bed, mindless of the spiderwebs, and folded him into a tight hug. Jonathan clung back desperately. 

“Don’t worry us like that,” Agnes said. She had appeared at Gertrude’s elbow, and moved forward to sit on Jon’s other side and give him a tight hug too that he returned just as fiercely. She looked up at Gertrude over Jon’s shoulder and mouthed ‘thank you’ to her, which she waved away. It had hardly been anything. 

“I think I’m rather owed a full explanation now,” Gertrude said pointedly. “And I think young Jonathan needs a bath.”

“What? No, I -” Jonathan separated from Gerard, and sniffed his shirt. He pulled a disgusted face. “Ew. Yeah, okay.”

******

They did not give her the full story. Gertrude wasn’t sure what she was expecting.

Oh, they gave her the broad strokes of it. All three of them were ‘old friends’, despite one of them being sixty and the other two being actual teeangers. Gerard and Agnes, especially, gave off the air of having known each other for years. They both seemed less familiar with Jon, though no less affectionate. Gertrude felt like she was trying to put together a puzzle with mittens and no idea what the final image would be. 

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Jon for a while,” Agnes said apologetically. They were all sitting around the rickety kitchen table now. Gertrude passed her teacup to reheat, which she did with a smile, and Gerard was at the door accepting the pizza from a confused deliveryman. Judging from the amount of takeaway containers, these two hadn’t been doing a lot of cooking. “He ran away from his grandmother’s a month ago. He made it to London and lived on the streets for a few weeks until I finally tracked him down. He’s been staying with us ever since.”

“When Agnes got in contact with me and told me that she found Jon, I figured it was time to bounce.” Gerard put some plates on the table and slid the pizza box into the center. Agnes eagerly grabbed the pizza and put a slice on her own plate. At Gerard’s look, Gertrude held up a hand in a ‘no thank you’ motion, and he shrugged. “Agnes has been trying to get me to stay with her since she lost her cult, but I figured I would just ditch Mum once I hit eighteen. Then...stuff happened...and I don’t really trust Agnes alone with a teenager anyway, so I left. Easy.”

“Thank goodness she’s only left alone with two teenagers now,” Gertrude said. She glanced at Agnes, who seemed unrepentant. “Is anybody looking for Jonathan?”

She shook her head. “Parents long dead. His Gran...she won’t look for him. Nobody will. I doubt any of them remember he exists. ”

“Did Jonathan make sure of that?”

Abruptly, Gerard looked very uncomfortable, but Agnes just nodded calmly. “Yes, likely.” At Gertrude’s ticked eyebrow, she continued, “She’s alive. But Jon...he’s convincing. We think. So far as we can tell. Nobody’s going to be looking for him, even the police.”

“Did we tell you how he was getting money while he was on the streets?” Gerard asked gleefully. “Apparently he can walk up to Canary Wharf bankers and convince them he’s their cousin visiting from out of state and ask them for spending money. They just believe him! Isn’t that wicked?”

“It’s easy. All you gotta do is make them feel guilty for forgetting you were coming.”

Jonathan, dripping wet from the shower and dressed in some cleaner hand-me-downs, appeared in the doorway. He walked forward until he was leaning against the kitchenette wall, accepting the pizza Gerard quickly passed to him. Clean and human, he looked like any other teenager. The only thing that revealed him for what he was were his eyes: empty, lifeless, and dull. 

“Hey, you’re still human!” Gerard said, perking up. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Yeah, tons.” Jonathan masticated his pizza, grease dripping down his chin. He locked eyes with Gertrude, who was careful not to blink as she stared back at him. “Who’re you?”

“The Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute,” Gertrude said crisply. “Gertrude Robinson.”

Jonathan’s mouth slowly fell open, revealing the primordial mass of globby cheese. Gerard was nearly bouncing in his seat, mouthing ‘It’s her!’ over and over again. 

“I told him about you,” Agnes said quickly - so quickly that it could have only been a lie. “Only good things, believe me!”

“I’m sure.”

“Wait,” Jonathan said, eyes darting back and forth between Agnes and Gertrude - who, Gertrude was somewhat embarrassed to find, were sitting somewhat close. “She’s the girl -”

“Girl who helped me get those new IDs for you guys,” Agnes said desperately. “Although she’s more of a woman. Say thank you, boys.”

Both boys mumbled thank-yous through mouthfuls of pizza. 

“How did it happen?” Gertrude asked Jonathan carefully. She was careful to keep that - pressure off her words. Very few reacted well to it, and she didn’t want to deal with a rampaging spider teenager again. “Your transformation. And don’t speak with your mouth full.”

Jonathan sassily made a show of swallowing the whole mouthful of pizza before he spoke. “I trapped my entire secondary school in a nightmare web where they all got turned into flies and eaten by spiders,” he drawled. “Oh, wait. I got bitten by a radioactive spider and ran away to London to fight crime.”

Gertrude gave him a very, very unimpressed stare. Jonathan smashed more pizza in his face. For a boy that must have been raised by his grandmother, he had no manners. 

A grandmother that he had likely done something to, to guarantee that she wouldn’t look for him. To ensure that an entire town wouldn’t search for him. Wiping a life off the map like that - what kind of teenager would do that without a second thought? 

A boy who found himself turning into a monster, fleeing the people he could hurt so he could reconvene with friends that understood?

Or a newly born monster that shed its old skin the minute it could?

Gertrude, as a younger woman, would have tended towards the latter. As an even younger woman, a child, she would have said the former. Now, she knew better than anyone how it could be both: a boy’s motivations propelled by a monster’s impulses, until even limbs of flesh were puppeted by silken threads. 

The Web was the fear of manipulation and being controlled, Gertrude repeated to herself, a mantra so familiar that it had worn grooves in her mind long ago. Jonathan had already proved adept at the art: swindling money to survive, erasing the imprints that a life left behind. 

Was she being controlled now? Was it any coincidence, that Jonathan ran into the arms of the one supernatural force in England that Gertrude wouldn’t shoot on sight? That he was lying in wait with the disappeared son of two people who had once been prominent in Gertrude’s life, a little boy she had seen grown up into a kind man despite all odds? 

Jonathan had inserted himself neatly, cleanly, and absolutely into Gertrude’s life. And he had done it almost even without her noticing. 

Of course, it was also the nature of the Web to make one ask these questions. It wasn’t just controlling - it was the fear of being controlled. By even thinking about this, Gertrude was playing straight into his hands -

“Gertrude.”

It was Agnes, sitting by her, looking at her with a softly sad expression. Her hands were in her lap, but they were twitching as if she wanted to reach out and take Gertrude’s hands in her own. They would be so different - they had always been different - but occasionally it felt as if whatever warmth they carried was the only heat that warmed Gertrude at all anymore. 

“If you don’t trust him, trust me.” Something flickered deep in Agnes’ eyes, like a hearth. Maybe that was Agnes: a hearth, house and home. “You can trust me.”

“Can I?” Gertrude asked, mouth unexpectedly dry. “How can someone like me trust someone like you, Agnes?”

Agnes smiled, baring teeth white and perfect as wax. “There’s nobody on Earth like you, Gertrude. You know that just as well as I do.”

Both boys had their hands slapped over their eyes, horrified. 

Maybe that was what convinced Gertrude: not Agnes’ promise of a safe place to rest in a tumultuous and dangerous world, but the fact that both these boys found that promise horrendously yucky. It wasn’t human - Gertrude had the feeling that no emotion from Jonathan could truly be human - but at least it was benign. In this world, sometimes that was the best you could ask for. 

“Fine. I put them in your charge, then, Agnes.” Gertrude drained the rest of her tea, eyeing the leaves critically in her cup as the boys whooped and Agnes exhaled heavily. Her tea leaves read a bad omen. That was comforting: she liked to know what was ahead of her. “If I hear any statements about a strange boy swindling businessmen out of their salaries then I’ll know exactly who is responsible. Am I understood?”

“They weren’t missing it,” Jonathan grumbled, before Gerard elbowed him in the side. “Fine! Fine, you won’t hear anything about it.”

Not what she had said, but she’d take it. The supernatural was at its least dangerous when it felt scared and hidden. Nothing was more dangerous than an Avatar who felt themself above human laws and rules. Or, at best, Gertrude. 

They never tended to live long. 

“Uh. Ms. Gertrude.” Gerard awkwardly creased his greasy napkin, expression tight. “Are you going to tell Mum?”

“Tell her what?” Gertrude asked archly. “I hardly think what Gerard Montague does is any of Mary Keay’s business.” As Gerard broke out into a relieved smile, Gertrude added, “Don’t give me any reason to charge after you, Gerard. You’re impulsive and reckless. Your mother’s kept you safe from yourself so far, but you’ve decided that you no longer need that protection. Don’t make me regret keeping my mouth shut.”

Jonathan snickered, ignoring Gerard’s flush. “Whipped.”

“I’ll speak to you outside, Jonathan.”

This time it was Gerard’s turn to snicker as Jonathan flushed and straightened away from the wall. “You’re in trou-ble!”

Good lord. This was why she hadn’t had children. 

But he followed her out the flat anyway. The flat complex was smaller, just a few buildings connected by sidewalks and catwalks, and the flats opened into the fresh air. As they emerged onto the first story, Gertrude let Jon lean against the railing and turn his head towards the sun. The wind blew softly, and Jon exhaled softly as he closed his eyes. Issues controlling a human form meant that he likely hadn’t been outside very often lately. 

“Tastes weird,” Jonathan decided finally, as if they had both been waiting solely for his judgement. “Air back home always tasted like salt. Everything was fresh and clean. It wasn’t anything like dirty, smoggy London.”

“Go back home, then.”

Jonathan snorted bitterly. He had turned his back to Gertrude, leaning on the railing to stick his head out. As if she wasn’t a threat. “Can’t. Gran doesn’t know I exist anymore. Trust me, nobody’s missing me back home.”

“How can that be? There must be school records, any kind of documentation. You must have known dozens of people.”

“Ah, that’s the genius of it.” Jon turned around, grinning lazily at her. He leaned against the railing, elbows back and resting on top of the metal frame. “All I needed to do was implant a few strategic suggestions. Just on the people who interacted with me the most, or the people most responsible for me. Gran, Mr. Heathcliff, Ms. Robbins, Dr. Yung.” He wriggled his fingers experimentally - like a magician doing a magic trick, or a puppeteer pulling strings. “Every time someone asks them where I am, they tell them that I never existed. And, you, know, wouldn’t they know? Jon’s Gran would know if Jon existed or not. So they doubt themselves too. Maybe Jon was never here, not really. Maybe he was just...a faint dream. The kind you forget the moment you wake up.”

“And the papers?”

Jon shrugged. “A person’s in charge of those papers. Ms. Hastings, school secretary. When she sees my student file, she’s going to ask my headmaster about it. And he’s going to say - who? And she’ll remember that I was nobody to remember at all. And those papers will become just so much garbage. When the cop, the government clerk, whoever, remembers that there’s no Jonathan to remember, that’s it.” Jon grinned at her, a proud kid showing her a perfect score on a report card.  “Anything is beatable, Ms. Gertrude, if there’s human error involved. You can build the most perfect machine in the world, but so long as a human’s involved in any step of that process then it can go wrong.”

 “Did the Web tell you that?”

“My Mother trades in lots of secrets, Ms. Gertrude,” Jonathan said, and in the turn of a second his eyes hardened into beetle-black shells, black and inhuman, before he forcibly pulled them back in again. Jonathan grimaced, gritting his teeth as he kept the transformation at bay. “Sorry. Sorry. I - I don’t want to hurt anyone. I won’t. Agnes and Gerry are going to help me. I’m going to choose what kind of mo - person I am. I’m going to choose right.”

“See to it that you do.” Gertrude stepped closer, and she knew that her face was stony and cold. Revealing nothing, with no weaknesses or cracks to exploit. She had lost every weakness long ago, save one. “I know where you live, Jonathan. I know what you’re capable of - even more, I suspect, than you yourself do. Mind yourself, and I won’t have to find a solution to your problem.” She let her eyes glint, just once. “I’m very good at finding solutions, Jonathan.”

Jonathan looked away first, of course. He swallowed heavily. “Mother told me about you.”

“All good things, I’m sure,” Gertrude said dryly. 

“She says I’m not ready yet. She said we have someone else for you, but I’m not ready yet. She says I’ll be the King one day, maybe, but not today. I’m...still hatching. It’s uncomfortable. It’s so -” Something haunted flashed through Jonathan’s lifeless grey eyes, and he shivered. “It hurts. So much.”

“So I hear,” Gertrude said, no trace of sympathy in her voice. “Good day, Jonathan.”

She left Jonathan there: shivering, alone, and human for now. 

She would see him again, she knew. A frightened teenage boy who promised her that he’d be king of the Web one day was a warning sign if she’d ever heard one. But if it was a warning sign, then it was one Gertrude was meant to hear. A shake of a rattlesnake’s tail: a creature that wants to go through the energy of biting you as little as you want to be bit, so save us both the trouble. 

And maybe Jonathan’s comment, so offhand he may not even have realized that he was making it, was a warning of its own: a spider in her own camp. Who?

Agnes was waiting for her, by the Underground station. She didn’t know she got there before her. Young people moved so fast these days. She smiled and waved when she saw Gertrude, as if they both had arranged to meet there. 

“What is it now?” Gertrude asked, exhausted. “Another favor?”

“Just a thank you for helping me keep the boys safe,” Agnes said cheekily. She stepped up, carefully, brushed a kiss to Gertrude’s cheek. Gertrude, idiotically, let her. “Call me, okay? For personal reasons.”

“Maybe,” Gertrude said, to the hearth that burned low in her heart, “if it’s for personal reasons.”

It wasn’t until she was halfway home on the Underground, thinking about noting down the address of Agnes’ apartment, that she found herself wondering what the address even was. Thomas Street...No, Jackson? 144...5?

What was she trying to remember?

No matter. Getting old again. Gertrude continued making notes in her notebook, reminding herself to search for a spider’s web, as the train rattled on for home, and the warmth of a kiss lingered on her cheek. 

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Dr. Lauren Beach was 14 years old when she/they first came out as bisexual. Beach revealed the truth to friends and curious classmates at her/their suburban Michigan high school. The reactions varied, but not many were affirming.

"I experienced a lot of people who eroticized my attraction to femme people. It's like, 'oh, you're bi. That's so hot,'" says Beach, who has a Ph.D. in molecular, cellular, developmental biology and genetics.

Other friends asked Beach if she/they were doing it for attention. Beach says only three people, including Beach, at her/their school were openly out as queer. Instead of being embraced by them, Beach received flak for her/their sexuality.

"One of the other people there who was queer was like, 'You're a fence sitter! You're a switcher. You can't be trusted, you might date men after dating me," recalls Beach.

This kind of biphobia, which perpetuates stereotypes, hatred, and prejudices about bisexual people, is not uncommon — even (or sometimes especially) within the queer community. Stigma against bisexual people stems from a larger culture of homophobia, Rory Gory, digital marketing manager of the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, wrote in an email to Mashable.

"Since bisexuals often move between straight and queer spaces, they are subjected to both homophobia and biphobia," Gory explains.

Bisexual people make up a sizable population within the LGBTQ community, given more than 50 percent of queer people in America identify as bisexual, according to the Williams Institute. The think tank does research on sexual orientation and gender identity to ensure stereotypes don't influence laws, policies, and judicial decisions. To be clear, bisexuality means a person is attracted to more than one gender. It doesn't mean bisexual people are more sexually active than others or going through a phase (two common myths).

As a teenager, Beach bought into stereotypes about bi people. But now 22 years later, she/they are a professor at Northwestern University where she/they focus on the health of bisexual people and works to dispel myths about them. Additionally, Beach co-founded the Chicago Bisexual Health Task Force, a coalition that advances the heath equity of bisexual people.

Mashable spoke with Beach, and representatives from advocacy organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, and the Trevor Project to learn about the unique challenges bisexual people face and how to be an ally.

1. View bisexual people as individuals

It's easy to lump a single group together but resist that trap. Like anyone else, bisexual people are individuals and their personalities and preferences vary. As Beach says, "there's not one single experience of bisexuality."

For example, Beach is asexual or ace. This means Beach doesn't experience sexual attraction, but she/they are romantically attracted to people across the gender spectrum. One can be both asexual and bi, with some asexual people preferring to identify as biromantic. Although many asexual people are not interested in having sex, some may choose to engage in sexual activity; asexual people can have varied preferences and experiences. Beach's experience doesn't mean all bisexual people feel the same way.

Getting to know more bisexual people can help scrub away your pre-conceived notions. You could already have friends who are bisexual and not know it. Be open about your intentions to learn so you can tear down your misconceptions about bisexual people, Beach recommends.

"You'd be surprised by how many people are like 'Oh, I'm actually bi. Let's talk," says Beach. "From understanding the breadth of experience, you personalize people."

2. Challenge negative stereotypes

As you expand your knowledge about bisexual people, speak up when you hear people perpetuating harmful misperceptions. Sometimes we don't even know we've absorbed negative stereotypes if we're not informed, says Mackenzie Hart, coordinator of GLAAD's Media Institute, which advises media, television, and film professionals on accurate LGBTQ representation.

An easy way to interject when you hear a myth about bisexual people is to say, "Actually, that's not true, my friend who is bisexual does not fit that stereotype," suggests Hart. It can also help to arm yourself with accurate statistics to further back up what you're saying, says Madeleine Roberts, HRC's assistant press secretary. HRC is a helpful resource for these stats.

"Barsexual" is a hurtful label often used to demean bisexual people. It refers to the incorrect belief that bisexual people will only interact with certain genders when they are intoxicated, explains Hart. It upholds the myth that bisexual women are actually straight as it implies they only flirt or make out with women when drunk. It also contributes to bi erasure, which GLAAD says happens when "the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright."

You should also push back against the harmful stereotypes that bisexuals can't be trusted to commit to a relationship, says Gory. "Embrace bisexuals as valid members of the [LGBTQ] community, rather than referring to them as 'allies' of the community."

Additionally, you can be an ally by understanding certain words and promoting proper usage. For example, you can clarify the difference between bisexual and bi+. Bi+ is an umbrella term inclusive of people who are pan, queer, fluid, and those who don't prefer labels. Use the full acronym of LGBTQ rather than gay as an umbrella term for queer people, explains Roberts. By taking these steps, you can "create spaces where people are hearing these words," says Hart.

3. Healthcare providers need to educate themselves

One time, a clinician asked Beach how many sex partners she/they had.

"I was like, OK, what do you mean by sex?" says Beach. The practitioner questioned why Beach would ask this. Beach told the clinician she/they are bisexual and, therefore, needed clarification about what sexual behavior she was referring to.

"She got really uncomfortable and said 'deep vaginal penetration,'" says Beach. "She started off guessing. She said, "you seem like a nice girl. So what is it, like one or two people?"" says Beach. The provider then said, “So, what you’re saying is more than 30 or 40 people.”

"It shows how someone [in a healthcare setting] can make this jump based on biphobic stereotypes of what my sexual behavior would be,” explains Beach.

After that encounter, Beach never went back to that doctor. To this day, Beach doesn’t have a designated primary care provider.

“I have to work up the emotional energy to want to go put myself through that potential experience," Beach says about seeking out healthcare.

Beach's experience isn't uncommon. Biphobia may discourage bisexual people from going to the doctor, with 39 percent of bisexual men and 33 percent of bisexual women reporting that they didn't disclose their sexual orientation to any medical provider, according to a 2012 study by the Williams Institute. Comparably, 13 percent of gay men and 10 percent of lesbians did not share their sexual orientation with a doctor.

Providers shouldn't presume anyone's sexual behavior because they know their sexual identity, says Beach. Hart echoes this advice. A doctor once asked Hart, "Are you seeing anyone?" Hart said no. She then asked, "If you were seeing anyone, would you be seeing a woman, a man, either, or other?" It wasn't perfect, Hart says, but asking open-ended questions that are inclusive of gender nonconforming people made Hart comfortable enough to see her again.

"Even if you aren't sure of certain words... you can make it clear you aren't going to be judgmental and you understand there's a wide array of experiences," says Hart.

4. Uplift bisexual people of color

Roberts recommends following prominent bi+ people of color on social media such as singer and actor Janelle Monáe, NFL player Ryan Russell, writer and transgender rights activist Raquel Willis, and politician Andrea Jenkins to become familiar with their lives. The next step is to share their stories with your friends and family.

At last year's Academy Awards, actor Rami Malek won Best Actor for his portrayal of British singer Freddie Mercury. Malek described Mercury as gay during his acceptance speech but Mercury was actually bisexual. Willis called out the bi erasure in a tweet.

Of the four people Roberts listed, two (Willis and Jenkins) are transgender. Just like one can be asexual and bi, one can also be transgender and bi. In 2015, the National Center for Transgender Equality surveyed 27,715 transgender people from every state and D.C., U.S. territories, and U.S. military bases abroad and 14 percent of respondents described their sexual orientation as bisexual.

To ensure you're not erasing transgender bi+ people's identities, always use inclusive language like "siblings" instead of "brothers and sisters," says Roberts, when addressing people as if they're family. This guarantees you're not assuming every bi+ person (or anyone generally) identifies as either male or female.

Taking into account the role intersectionality plays in the lives of bi+ people is important — especially when you're looking to amplify their voices.

[softestsaddestbitch]

December TC Challenge

stole this from @elder-edda (sorry for creeping! just, given the usual demographic of the tc community I was excited to find another 20-smthg)

1) what color is your tc’s hair?

He has just, simple brown hair but he’s starting to go grey which, no lie, is 100% doing it for me.

2) is your tc married?

Yes? He doesn’t wear a ring and I believe she kept her last name which makes me think it’s more of a civil partnership since they’ve been together since the early 2000s at least. But he also will refer to her as “my wife” and was telling me once that they waited until “after they got married” before moving in together.

3) if yes, do you care? would you do something with them regardless of their marriage?

I know these questions are general but I do take offense at the idea of being a homewrecker/other woman. I’ve met his wife, she’s really nice.

4) what’s your worst memory with your tc?

I put my foot in my mouth SO OFTEN. Good lord. Especially my last semester at that school? He was acting weird and I had just realized after fucking ... four years?? that I romantically liked him. So I kept bringing up my weird age fixation and other bs bc I have adhd and am possibly autistic?? and can’t read a room to save my life.

5) what’s your best memory with your tc?

One year we had a really bad snowstorm, so bad in fact that I had my first-ever snow day. The college that I used to go to has four campuses across as many cities, and C has to drive in twice a week to my (old) town from his. Now, morning classes had been canceled but afternoon classes had been given the go-ahead. C, who does not check his emails until he arrives at campus, evidently did not get this message until he was already in town and therefore didn’t have a morning class, but did have an afternoon class. On this day I had a late morning class that had been reinstated, but my prof didn’t get that memo so I also was on campus but didn’t have a class. So I went to visit his office, which I had been doing throughout the semester (I didn’t have a class with him at the time) and we just ... hung out for like 2 hours. It was so nice and one of the anecdotes he told me still haunts me lol.

sidenote: at the time, I hadn’t yet realized that I liked him, but I still went out of my way to visit him. Damn I was a dumbass.

6) does anyone in your school know how you feel?

ish? I told a classmate but in a “haha joking” kinda way. And a friend who went to that school knows. No one at my current school knows.

7) does your tc know how you feel?

I think he might? might have a lil inkling which would explain why he started acting so weird my last semester. Or at the very least was told/realized how bad it could look that he was getting so chummy w/ a student.

8) do you think there’s any chance your tc reciprocates your feelings?

He and his wife have been together for around 20 years now. No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe in an alternate universe.

9) are you getting your tc a christmas present? if so, what is it?

I have in the past! Specifically like, a tin of cookies lol. I’ve also given him an actual present when I left. I do intend to send him a Christmas card every year but not this year because ... you know ... the apocalypse.

10) have you ever flirted with your tc?

Flirtation inherently has intent. So, no. How he interpreted our interactions I don’t know.

11) how long have you had a crush on them? what began it all?

SO! TIMELINE!

I was at my old school from September 2014-April 2019, I had C for the first time in September 2015. Like I mentioned above, I did not realize I had a crush on him until literally the middle of my final exam of my class with him December 2018, so I’ve only consciously had a crush for about two years now. However, as I also mentioned, I went out of my way to stop by his office, even when I didn’t have a class with him. And my relationship with/feelings towards him are complicated so I’m not going to say I did so solely because I like him, but I would put it maybe closer to somewhere in 2017. You don’t plan your schedule around someone you don’t feel strong feelings for.

12) do you believe you’ll get over them shortly after you stop taking their class/have the chance to spend time with them?

As of today, it has been been exactly a year and a half since I last him in person. In the time since, I have cried over missing him, routinely gone back to keep up with his current research projects, and made his picture a part of my home screen. I almost exclusively listen to the playlist I made for him -  so much so my Spotify Wrapped is pretty much that playlist with a few extras.

13) what kind of grades do you get in their class?

Haaaaaa pre-supension I was failing his classes. My first semester back I got .... a mid/high 70? and I finished my last class with him with an A+ and the essay I had written for his class had the highest grade between the two classes so..

14) does your tc ever do any tiny, little things that you adore?

When he puts a hand in his pocket and leans against the wall. When he tucks his hair behind his ear because he keeps falling in his face (he has long hair, a little past his shoulders). When he can’t stop himself from googling something even if its in the middle of class. How you can ask him anything at any time. The way he would chuckle at my jokes. How his handwriting hasn’t improved in decades. How easily he brushes off toxic masculinity. His candidness and willingness to share little anecdotes. The way he used to always smile whenever he saw me. That he goes home everyday to have lunch with his wife.

15) are you their favorite student?

I was! And it was obvious to other students that we had a friendly, casual relationship too. For a time, if his other students had questions about him they would ask me, and I usually had the answer. I didn’t matter in the long run, but I was. 

16) do you two share any tastes? movies, books, music, etc.

He’s a legal historian, I’m a baby legal/political historian. We also like the same historical cooking youtube channel.

17) is your teacher religious?

I doubt he would say he’s religious, but I feel like we have a similar relationship to religion which is to say no formal association, but had profound effects on our childhoods and subsequently, presumably, how we view things as adults.

18) do you masturbate to them?

Yes.

19) do you communicate with them outside of school?

I sent him a meme once. And asked about the socialist uprising scandal he was apart of. I also almost emailed him while at a museum exhibition with my history friend. These are all through email.

20) do you have any tc songs or songs you relate to your tc? what are they?

SO my number one song this year was “You are the Reason” by Calum Scott because, you guessed it, of him. But also:

I Lost a Friend - Finneas When You’re Ready - Shawn Mendes You Are in Love - Taylor Swift Break My Heart Right - James

& given the season, especially w/ what transpired last year, Last Christmas by Wham!

21) what’s your favorite thing your tc has said/memory you have with them?

One time he kinda trailed off in the middle of lecture after stating that he thought of xyz a particular way which contrasted one of the popular schools of thought, and the way he plainly said, “well, yeah, which I guess ... is I’m arguing it” almost like he was semi-surprised with himself has always stuck with me. 

But also, in addition the memory I shared earlier, we spent an hour and a half talking about grad school and what to expect and how to get there. 

22) do you plan to continue a relationship with them after you leave school?

I trid, I really did. But he doesn’t “socialize with students part or present” so I can’t exactly see him. But I did get some academic-related from him at the beginning of the year.

23) how will you deal during the summer? will you see him/her?

He’s a hermit who used my last vacation before I moved to go on all the vacations he had to postpone because he was working on his last book. And this past summer ... Covid. This question is obviously directed at high school students, but in general, he lives in the back of head always, and when I’m in my hometown for the summer my heart aches because theres a none-zero chance I’ll see him, but I know I won’t.

24) does your tc support gay rights?

Yes. He’s never been put in a position that I know of where he had to outright condemn homophobia, but in one of his classes, he actively made the choice to make the very first reading of the semester about how women in ancient times had more agency than assumed, and also how the woman in the case study was a lesbian.

25) what class do you have with them? And what period? Do you have them every day?

History classes. I won’t get into specifics because it’s kind of an eclectic mix and I’m paranoid someone from the area could come across this. But I had him twice a week every semester that I had him. Again this kind of question is more so applicable to high school students, not so much university students.

26) have you ever drifted out during a lecture thinking about them and missed information?

No. In his classes he is too enthralling, and I’m a good student otherwise.

27) have you stalked them online? what did you find out?

In theory. He’s a fifty-year-old history professor whose reaction to a description of the big lipped/tiny face filter on snapchat was “that sounds disgusting.” The man doesn’t have social media, and if he does those privacy settings are on so students can’t find him he thinks he’s very professional. I do visit his mini-bio section on the college website fairly often tho.

28) have you ever run into them outside of schools? what happened?

I did once. He introduced me to his wife, who said “oh you’re E! C has talked about you” and it apparently he had done so positively, and blew my mind because this was back when I was failing classes and also, as a person, I don’t believe that people think about me when I’m not there. They gave me a restaurant recommendation and afterwards his wife surprised me a they were leaving the restaurant because ... we had listened to them, and they also went there for lunch that day.

29) has your tc ever spoken of teacher-student relationships? what did they say?

It had recently come out that it had been found out that another professor had been in a relationship with a student and he’s the one that brought it up before class one day (with all of us not just me). He didn’t say anything for or against it, just that it was generally discouraged, but that most schools did have policies in place to handle the situation.

30) do you regret telling anyone about your tc? if you’ve kept it a secret, why have you done so?

Absolutely not. I can’t tell my best friends because they’d do nothing but give me shit for it and it would call every time I mention him into question. But the friends that I have told ... its been so freeing, and like a weight has been lifted from my heart. One friend in particular I unloaded on her all my emotional shit pertaining to him this past summer and she was so understanding it legit since then I’ve been less distraught when thinking about him. It still hurts, but it feels less like I’m suffocating now.

[xseildnasterces]

that won’t save us.

The current pelvic pain I am experiencing is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I am well aware that I can be dramatic, but this is exceptional pain. I have been asked before during IBD appointments if I experienced any pelvic pain, and I always said ‘no’, because I never really understood what was meant. Now that I lay here, unable to sit on my butt, with stabbing pains in my stomach, lower pelvis, and also in my butt, I realise that I do indeed experience pelvic pain related to IBD. I have experienced pelvic pain before, but clearly was not aware that that was what it is. Yet this that I am experiencing today is excruciating. I cannot sit, I cannot stand, my face is in a constant look of screwed up pain whilst I have also found myself shouting ‘ouch’ at numerous times today when I physically couldn’t continue what I was doing anymore due to the pain. In short: it really f*cking hurts.

Since moving to the US I also seem to have developed allergies. I have woken so many mornings feeling incredibly congested, sneezing non-stop and just generally feeling a bit sh*t. I actually thought I just had constant cases of the common cold, but it appears that is not the case. I clearly have allergies. I woke up like that today. The inside of my nose is so itchy that I would love to just remove my entire nose until the allergies stop. I took anti-allergy tables this morning in the hope that they might help a little. I already had some due to needing them to combat medication allergies which seem to arise every time I start new topical medication.

Despite all of this, I’ve actually had quite a productive day. I’ve crossed a few things off my list that needed doing, sent numerous emails that I hadn’t done earlier and also did some cleaning. I’m currently half laying, half sitting on the sofa in the only position that appears to help the current pelvic pain. If I had a picture, I would share, considering the current position is interesting to say the least, with almost half myself on the sofa, and the other half balancing in mid-air!

My skin has been reacting pretty well to my new acne medication, but since upping the dose last week, my skin has become so incredibly dry, itchy, sore and peeling. I know this is normal at this stage of treatment, but regardless, it sucks, and I am simply lathering on as much moisturiser as possible to simple bring some form of moisture and hydration back to my poor skin. At least the treatment is doing as it is supposed to. It is renewing the skin and removing the old skin, I almost feel like some form of reptile that sheds its skin throughout the year. I guess it’s a similar type of process, although it doesn’t happen quite like that. Imagine that, a full layer of your skin coming off in one piece. Urgh, that sounds gross.

Although it’s Easter weekend, this is not something that we get off in my current organisation. It seems very odd to me, as thought-out school and all my previous jobs up until this point I have always had easter off. I usually always took the long weekend to head home and see family, so as with last year, it seems a little odd to be spending it alone. However, my friends and family have come through, and during the week I received a wonderful parcel from my mum full of easter chocolate treats, my birthday cards from my parents, sister and grandma, easter cards and a cute little note from my mum. I also received parcels from C and A, both full of chocolates as my UK chocolate supply is very much at its end. I was incredibly grateful. My family really are wonderful. I was also sent another parcel but that is lost in the post and I am currently in the middle of a huge argument with the postal service here to try and locate it. It seems very unlikely; despite the fact it was sent tracked. So yeah, that sucks.

I took yesterday off regardless, as I had worked so much overtime that I had the time to take back. I, H, F and M went to the National Arboretum which was wonderful. Unfortunately, despite it being incredibly sunny, with wonderful blue skies, it was freezing. The wind was icy cold, and it was impossible to spend too much time outside with such a small child. To be totally honest, after an hour or so I was also ready to get warmed up I the car because it was just far too cold to be walking around in such a vast open space. We fully intend to go back once all the flowers are in full bloom and I hope whenever my mum gets to visit I can take her there too – because I know she would love it. I also found a flower that I thought was the cutest, most adorable thing ever, so I used my geeky plant app to find out what it was. As I guessed, it was a type of snowdrop, but was actually called a summer snowflake. I thought that was adorable. I must admit that I have become quite the plant nerd. I have always had such a huge love and appreciation for nature, but that has grown so much, and I very much enjoy having my lovely plants inside. I also would really love to start growing fruit and vegetables once I have some place to do so. Yesterday I re-potted my snake plant as it had had a child and the child was beginning to outgrow the pot. So now I have two!

I was determined to head down to the Tidal Basin this year to see the cherry blossoms. My mum was visiting to see them last year, and then covid happened and the National Park Service shut the Tidal Basin to the public completely because of covid regulations. This year, they said they would keep it open until they felt it was becoming too busy and then they would close it. So, me being me, decided that I was going to go anyway. I got up at 05:45 and got myself ready, before waiting for the sun to come up a little as I didn’t fancy walking through certain parts of town whilst it was still pitch-black dark. I reached the Tidal Basin at around 06:30 and began to walk around the loop. I had the most wonderful time and took some incredibly beautiful photos. I got to see the sun rise at the Lincoln Memorial and although there were still numerous people with the same idea at the Tidal Basin, it was still quieter than if I had gone later in the day. After taking a slow walk around and admiring the flowers, I finished the loop and then began my walk to work. I arrived at the office at 08:58 and by that point I had already walked six miles! I was very proud of myself, and just felt really good. It was a fabulous way to start the day and walking in nature just makes me so happy. I very much enjoyed taking photos and it once again made the urge to attend a photography class or course come to the forefront of my mind. I think after covid I will definitely look more into this. I do not want to become a professional photographer or anything like that, but I would love to know more about editing and the technical side of things. It would be a new skill that I would like to learn for myself. I’m excited at the prospect, yet I still need to buy the new DSLR camera that I have been talking about for the last 5+ years. I am always like this about any big purchase. I am so scared of making the wrong decision.

Next week I finally have a OBGYN appointment to finally address my PCOS and see what options are available to me. The UK didn’t seem to treat my PCOS as something that needed treating. I was pretty much told that it was not a concern until the time I decided to have children (if I ever made that decision). Seeing specialists here, I hear that they approach it much differently. There is treatment, so I am looking forward to hear about what they are. I have also been talking to R a lot recently about possibilities of freezing my eggs. I do not believe I want children, but I do not want to get to a point where my body no longer works at all and I regret not giving myself that option. I feel that I am perhaps getting a little ahead of myself as I do not even know if everything is even in working order, and I have a gut feeling that it’s not, and I would not be able to have children anyway. This is something that has never bothered me before, but the thought of it actually being confirms scares me, and actually really upsets me. I don’t like things being closed off to me. I want the option to be there, even it is unlikely that I will use it. Anyway, I guess we shall see. Perhaps that will be a whole other journey that I will find myself on.

In 20 days, I turn 29. Twenty-nine years old! Now, that is scary as hell. One more year till 30. Genuinely, the thought of that makes me feel sick. I feel grateful when people try to guess how old I am and actually think I am still in my early 20s. I assume dressing like an early 2000’s lesbian emo kid. I do like that I can do both though. I can be my grungy inner child who I have always been, but should I need to dress up for work and look professional, then I can do that, and I’m more than happy to do so. It’s funny though, I actually haven’t worn any work clothes for over a year, and I hate it. I would love to go back to wearing office wear, blazers, tailored trousers, shirts and smart dresses. I do hope we one day go back to looking professional, even if it is just for a few days a week.

[Blog title: Against The Current - that won’t save us].

[queermediastudies]

Creating Identities: The Coming Out Narrative of Love, Simon

Love, Simon is a 2018 film adaption of the book Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, written by Becky Albertalli. The film follows the life of Simon Spier, a seventeen-year-old closeted high school senior and his relationship with his parents and younger sister, his friends Nick, Abby, and Leah, his blackmailer Martin, and his anonymous crush who goes by the alias of Blue. Simon himself knows he is gay and has known since he was thirteen. However, he has never had the opportunity to engage in this part of himself, as he has been in the closet for the last four years and surrounded by assumedly only straight friends and family (I say “assumedly,” because, later in a companion novel the audience learns that Leah and Abby are both bisexuals). Love, Simon, both as a book and a movie, explores concepts centering mainly around aspects of coming out and being gay in a heteronormative society, the production and engagement of queer identities amongst queer people who are in “the closet,” and finally touches on issues surrounding who is allowed to create and produce queer stories.

The movie begins with Simon narrating his life, explaining that he is a typical high schooler with a great family and amazing friends. However, Simon then reveals he has “one huge-ass secret,” he is gay. Moments up to Simon revealing this secret to the audience, we see him looking longingly at a boy across the street who is doing yard work and is interrupted by his dad, who jokes about Simon being in a relationship with Gigi Hadid. While this moment is deceptively simple, throughout the film, many characters make similar comments about sexuality. For instance, later on, when Simon and his family are watching the Bachelor, his father makes numerous comments about how the Bachelor is gay and describes him as “so fruity.” While Simon knows his family would still accept him for being gay, it is moments like this that queer audiences can relate to, and the exact reason that Simon does not feel comfortable coming out to his father. These scenes and jokes reflect both the dominant, mainstream ideology of heteronormativity and the reality many queer people face daily. Additionally, scenes such as this or the one between Simon and Leah, where they are guessing the identity of the anonymous gay classmate and Leah, assumes a classmate is gay because he likes Les Mis, which demonstrates contemporary stereotypes of gay people and the reinforcement of gender roles that support these stereotypes.

While we do see instances of Simon’s queer identity, it is not until Simon discovers Blue on the school’s blog, Creek Secrets, after reading Blue’s post about the ups and downs of being closeted, that Simon finally gets to engage queer identity work (Cavalcante 2017, 12-15). Queer identity work is “the collective labor of crafting, articulating, and performing LGBT identities” (Cavalcante 2017, 13). Throughout the film, we learn how Simon and Blue can engage in crafting and performing their identities as gay teenagers in the closet through their developing relationship over a series of shared emails. The boys have conversations about the dynamics of coming out being only for queer people (there is a hilarious, imaginative sequence where Simon’s friends come out as heterosexual out to their parents), college as a fresh start to be open, and the difficulties of being in the closet.

 Although it is cute to see the developing relationship between Blue and Simon, at one point, Martin, another classmate, screenshots the emails and weaponize Simon’s sexuality against him by blackmailing him into helping him win Abby’s affections. Ultimately Simon agrees, fearing that if the emails and his identity were leaked, Blue would be scared off and goes through with interfering with his friends’ lives. Predictably this all goes wrong, and a hurt Martin exposes Simon’s sexuality anyway. As a consequence of being out to the whole school, there is an instance in the lunchroom where Simon and Ethan – an openly gay classmate – are bullied. Although the teachers and vice principal are on Simon and Ethan’s side, their bullies are told the school expects them to be tolerant. Walters (2015, 2) states, “it doesn’t make sense to say that we tolerate something unless we think that it wrong in some way.” This quote is important in its relation to Simon’s fear of coming out because he does not want to be treated differently or “tolerated,” Like many other queer people, he just wants to be himself and accepted. After this, the film quickly wraps itself up, with Simon becomes more confident with himself after some heartfelt conversations with his parents, reconciling with his friends, making a public post about his sexuality, and asking Blue to meet him at the Ferris wheel. In general, the last half of the movie does feel rushed, which is a shame because Simon seems to lose everything and get it all back too quickly.        

While overall, I think the film succeeds on many marks relating to a more positive coming out story save for the part about blackmail and outing someone, there are moments in the film that can be perceived as problematic. Firstly, while I disagree with many of the points made in Ashley Kim’s (2018) review of Love, Simon whereby she explains why she sees it as a poor representation for queer stories, I can agree with her that the scene in which Simon learns Blue’s identity does feel like a “spectacle,” as she calls it. While it is nice that Simon has support, the fact that so many of his peers are watching him riding the Ferris wheel waiting for Blue felt strange, especially when one girl – who thankfully the other characters stopped – tried recording the whole event. It just felt odd that so many people were intruding on this personal experience, especially since I feel like having that many people watching would have made it difficult for Blue to want to reveal his identity to Simon (since this was a conflict throughout the movie of Blue being not ready to do so).

Another issue with the representation in this movie is that although there is a diverse cast in Love, Simon, it would have been nice to see a focus outside of the one placed on the coming-out narrative. In Dow’s (2018, page) analysis on the visibility politics on television, she mentions that there is a refusal to “recognize the existence of organized, systemic, or politically oppressive homophobia.” Similar to the Ellen episodes, I think while coming out stories are still necessary forms of representation, the lack of intersectionality with any other issues (besides two instances of Simon and another gay character getting bullied), there is no discussion about the repercussions of being gay in a heteronormative society. The biggest issue for Simon is coming to terms with himself and his identity, and the fact that he was outed to the whole school. Although the film does address that Simon is privileged with having an accepting family, I would have loved if this theme was explored more.

Finally, the last issue is about my point on how Love, Simon represents a debate about who can produce queer movies and stories. At the time of the movie and book, Albertalli was assumed by many to be a straight, cisgender woman. However, since then, Albertalli (2020) in a post called “I know I’m Late,” discusses how at the time she was questioning her sexuality, but so many people had already assumed she was just a straight, cisgender, white woman writing about a community she isn’t apart of. Albertalli also brings up how it is fair to question the production of queer stories and want more queer authors, but asks audiences to recognize not every queer author is out of the closet. Going forwards in our studies of queer media production, I wonder how we can reconcile queer content made by people who are in the closet and those who are straight and profiting on a community that is not their own.

References:

Albertalli, B. (2020, August 31). I know I'm late. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://medium.com/@rebecca.albertalli/i-know-im-late-9b31de339c62

Cavalcante, Andre (2017). “Breaking into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences With ‘First of Its Kind’ Visibility in Popular Media.” Communication, Culture & Critique, 1-18.

Dow, Bonnie (2001). “Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 18(2), 123-140.

Kim, A. (2018, April 06). Stop praising Love, Simon. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from http://cu-sentry.com/2018/04/04/stop-praising-love-simon/

Walters, Suzanna D. (2014) “Introduction: That’s so Gay! (Or is it!?)” in The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality, 1-16.

[alarawriting]

Inktober 2020 #17: Storm

Iris was laughing as she got in the car. “Weather reports say it’s gonna be a big one!”

Caitlyn had just met this woman. This was a ridiculous idea. Chasing a violent thunderstorm had to be the dumbest idea any human ever had, surpassed only by chasing tornados, which apparently Iris also did when she was further west. There was no way in which it was a good idea to get into the passenger seat of the car.

Caitlyn slid into the passenger seat. “Just so you know, I feel like this is probably a dumb idea.”

“Of course it’s a dumb idea!” Iris started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. “Humanity only progresses by having dumb ideas!”

Her laughter, her cheer, was infectious. Iris was nearly six feet tall and easily two hundred eighty pounds, her hair buzzed short and her arms tattooed. She was everything Caitlyn’s mother would have told her to be wary of. She was also sunlight in human form. Her force of personality was blinding, overwhelming, but warm, and it lit up the world.

On the interstate, the miles per hour crossed the 55 line and continued to go up. “Where are we going?” Caitlyn asked. “I mean, yeah, a thunderstorm, but physically where?”

“We’re going south to intercept it. Probably hit it near the Maryland border, so we’ll take the bypass to the wild side of Delaware and follow it down on local roads.”

“This is crazy. You know that, right? It’s just a storm.”

“They’re never just storms, Caity.” Caitlyn could have gone a long time not knowing how Iris was spelling that, but unfortunately, Iris had addressed her by name in the text she’d sent to provide her number and email address. “Storms can kill people. They don’t have to be hurricanes. They knock down trees, they take out the power, they cause accidents. So I hunt them down.”

“That… really doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, you’ll see! It’ll be fun, I haven’t had a friend along on one of these trips in a year!”

Iris cut off a tractor trailer, causing the bellow of an air horn behind them. Small wonder no one wanted to go with her. “What happened with the last friend?”

“We broke up. She thought I was reckless! Can you imagine?” The smile Iris briefly flashed at Caitlyn before turning back to the road knew exactly why her ex thought her reckless, and was self-mocking about it.

“No, I can’t imagine it,” Caitlyn said, deadpan.

“But you know I’m reckless and you got in the car with me anyway, so if sometime in the future you say to me, ‘you’re too reckless’, I can say, ‘you knew that about me on the first date.’”

“This is a date?”

Iris’s laughter this time was almost a bark. “Pretty sure it must be! You’re not in love with storm chasing and you don’t like the way I drive, so you must have gotten in the car on the strength of my beauty and charisma, or something.”

“Something,” Caitlyn agreed, though in fact that was exactly why she got in the car. There was no way Iris could be considered beautiful by airbrushed Hollywood standards, but Caitlyn had always thought those women seemed somehow plastic, unreal, and now she knew why. Iris was realer than real, larger than life, and since they’d met and started talking at the mixer less than an hour ago, she’d known she was willing to get in Iris’s car and go anywhere. Including to Maryland to find a thunderstorm.

“You must be looking to add some chaos and recklessness to your life. Every woman who gets in my car is looking for that, or they wouldn’t get in the car.”

“How many women have gotten in your car like that?” Caitlyn asked, somewhat taken aback.

“Oh, only three.” Iris wove in and out of a wolfpack of cars. “Four, now, counting you. I don���t exactly run around luring all the women in with my siren song.” She laughed. “How about you, any ex-girlfriends? Or boyfriends, I don’t judge.”

“One boyfriend when I was fifteen, back before I knew I was a lesbian. One girlfriend. We were together for ten years.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

Caitlyn shrugged. “She thought I was boring. And not very good in bed. She wasn’t rude enough to say it in those words, but I can read between the lines.” Strange; Caitlyn hadn’t told anyone else that, and would normally have thought it oversharing. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was telling Iris, now. It didn’t seem like a great idea to warn a woman you were interested in that your last girlfriend thought you were boring in bed.

“Well, my philosophy is, if your girlfriend is bad in bed, it’s usually because you’re a lousy communicator and you never told her what you wanted, or else you’re a picky picky princess and you have a very narrow range of tolerance for what you like. At least, if she’s a cool human being in the first place, which you seem like you probably are.”

“No, it – she was wilder than me, and she wanted more than I could give.”

“Then it just sounds like you were incompatible,” Iris declared.

She glanced down at her tablet. “Huh. It’s changing course. We’re going to take the highway all the way down, Caity, be faster that way. I think we’ll be able to intersect it at Delaware House.”

“At where?”

“It’s a rest stop on I-95 near the Maryland border. I’m gonna need somewhere to pull over and it’s not a great idea to do that on the highway itself if you have any choice in the matter.”

“What’re you going to do when you catch it?” Caitlyn asked.

“I’m gonna punch it in the nose!” Iris laughed.

Caitlyn chuckled. “Okay, but seriously. You take pictures of them? Do you send them to NOAA or something? What do you do when you catch the storm you’re chasing?”

“You’ll see!”

***

An hour later and they were inside the storm, according to Iris’ tablet, which was set to a live feed of satellite imaging from weather.com or someplace. They’d just crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and it was raining hard. The tablet said it was eleven minutes to Delaware House, but that was probably assuming normal highway speed, and despite the rain, Iris was still driving at least 75 miles an hour.

“So you wanna get some food or something after we’re done here? Delaware House has a Popeye’s, we could get fried chicken.”

“Sure, why not.” Caitlyn had spent the past hour talking about herself, which was weird, because usually she was quiet and would hang back in any conversation, and she usually preferred to listen rather than talk. And you’d think Iris’ boisterousness would make it so she’d always be the one talking, but in fact she’d said almost nothing about herself. She’d talked a lot, but mostly questions for Caitlyn, who’d found herself as a result telling Iris her entire life story. “Maybe you can tell me some things about yourself. I feel like I’ve been talking and talking. You must be sick of hearing my voice.”

“I would never get sick of that voice, Caity. You have a lovely voice.”

“Most people don’t think so. They think I’m quiet and monotonous. Or, sometimes, loud and monotonous.”

“Some people have no grasp of subtlety,” Iris said. “Oh, good, the timing’s perfect. Looks like the center of the storm’s going to be passing over here in minutes. If I speed up just a little, we should get to Delaware House in time.”

“Why is the center of the storm so important? Does it look any different than the rest of the storm?”

“Not to most people,” Iris said cryptically, and leaned forward like a race car driver, her foot presumably turning into a block of lead from how the car sped up.

“Uh, aren’t you worried about hydroplaning?” Caitlyn yelled over the sound of the engine revving as they accelerated.

“Water knows better than to do that to me!” Iris yelled back, grinning.

“No, but seriously--!”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got the car under control!”

Caitlyn held onto the handle above the car door, awkwardly – it really wasn’t positioned well to be a safety handle – as Iris raced through the storm, only slowing down when she reached Delaware House. She coasted onto the left-side exit and allowed momentum to carry her to the parking lot, only braking once she was there.

As she pulled into a parking spot in the back, she said, “I don’t know if you wanna stay in the car or come out with me, but you can do whatever you like. I gotta get a move on, though, the storm center’s almost here.”

“I’ll stay in the car for now,” Caitlyn said, wondering if all of this was a terrible mistake. Maybe Iris was right and she was looking to add some recklessness and chaos to her life, but maybe this was too much.

“Okay.” Iris got out of the car, and looked up at the sky. The rain was coming down in sheets so thick, it was hard for Caitlyn to actually see her through it – she was a blob of color, not a clear human shape. But she heard Iris’ voice with surprising clarity.

“OKAY, MOTHERFUCKER! IT’S ON, NOW!”

What.

“COME ON, YOU LITTLE PISS TRICKLE! YOU CALL THIS RAIN, MY MOMMA DUMPED MORE WATER DOWN MY THROAT WHEN SHE GAVE ME A SIPPY CUP TO DRINK FROM! GET OVER HERE, YOU COWARD, AND FACE ME!”

The wind moaned, making the car creak.

“YEAH? YOU WANNA SAY THAT TO MY FACE, YOU DUMB SHIT? COME ON! LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!”

And then, as Caitlyn stared in absolute shock, Iris punched the sky… and the sky reeled, the clouds parting for a bare moment, before thunder rolled and lightning slammed down, hitting a nearby tree.

“YOUR AIM’S WORSE THAN A BLIND GRANDMA THROWING A DISHRAG! THINK YOU CAN HIT ME? COME AT ME, FUCKER!” Iris punched the clouds again – impossibly, because they were however many thousands of feet in the air and she was here on the ground, but the clouds roiled as if they’d been struck. Then she went to the ground, rolling, and came up to a sitting position next to an oversized pickup truck. Lightning struck the truck, and Iris sprang up and swung her fists at the sky again, her body language suggesting that she was putting all of her body’s force into the punches, and meeting resistance. One, two, three punches, and a gap opened in the clouds and stayed that way. Lightning came down again and hit a tree in the picnic area.

“OH, YEAH! GOTCHA ON THE ROPES NOW! GIVE IT UP, YOU SUMBITCH, IT’S ALL OVER FOR YOU!”

She swung her left arm out in a blocking gesture. A moment later, lightning struck inches away from the arm. Iris followed up with multiple punches, clearing more of the sky. The rain had significantly diminished, making it much easier to see what she was doing. “GET OUT OF MY GODDAMN SKY, MOFO! DID I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO BE HERE? WELL, DID I, DIPSHIT?” More punches, more clear sky. Another lightning strike, and an increase in the wind, blowing hard enough that the car actually rocked in it. And then Iris swung her arm out against the wind, and it dissipated. “THAT’S RIGHT, YOU LITTLE SHIT CREEK, WHO’S YOUR MAMA? WHO’S YOUR MAMA? I’M THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING RAINBOW, KIDDO, NOW GET BACK TO YOUR FUCKING PLAYPEN AND DRINK YOUR BABA!”

There was, in fact, a rainbow glittering in the sky, as the storm turned to mist.

Iris pulled the car door open. She was completely drenched. “Well, I kicked that thing’s ass,” she reported gleefully. “You up for fried chicken?”

“How – how did you –”

“Hon. You are the Greek mythology expert. How do you think? I said I was the goddamn rainbow, and I know you heard me, right?” She grinned widely.

“Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, and messenger of the gods,” Caitlyn said, mechanically, “but there was nothing in mythology about her fighting storms.”

“That’s because the Greeks were a bunch of patriarchal assholes. They saw Zeus throw some lightning bolts around one time and decided he was the god of storms. Never thought about the fact that rainbows come out after a storm’s over, did they?” She took a step back from the car and shook herself, like a dog, sending raindrops flying everywhere. “So. Do I drive you home now or do we go get fried chicken?”

Caitlyn took a deep breath. “Fried chicken. I have so many questions.”

“And I’ve got so many answers, so this will work out great!”

The storm had turned into nothing but a misty drizzle. Caitlyn got out of the car and followed Iris toward the glassed-in building that was Delaware House.

------------------------------------------------

While this is far from the only story idea of mine inspired by it, I definitely do have to credit “Fear for the Storm” by Jessica Best, from the podcast series “Starship Iris”, for inspiring this story. Also the Holly Near song “How Bold”, but with a happier outcome.

[suspiriu-m]

Examining Youth Culture

Youth Culture in television in cinema is a theme we’ve all seen before. In some way or another, we’ve all probably related or even seen ourselves in something we’ve watched. A lot of experiences we see in these coming of age style pieces most of the time have something to do with at least one of three recurring themes. Sex, drugs and alcohol. Character archetypes are also an important part of these stories too. To sum it up, we’re generally confronted with Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Popular Kids, Pot Heads etc.

A major point to take into account when looking at this type of media is the perspective the story is told from, and where it’s taking place. For example, Barry Jenkins’ 2016 film Moonlight, is completely different from 2018’s Love Simon, directed by Greg Berlanti. Moonlight tells the story of a young Black man named Chiron. Through three different time periods in his life, we see him come to terms with his identity and sexuality, all while living with his drug addicted mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Miami. Throughout the film Chiron not only faces the struggles of his sexuality within himself, but how his unaccepting peers react, his mess of a mother, and maneuvering masculinity without the guidance of his missing father. In a review written for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw says that Moonlight

“is a film about masculinity, the wounds and crises of which are the same for all sexualities, but conditioned by the background weather of race and class” ((Bradshaw Moonlight review – a visually ravishing portrait of masculinity).

Love Simon however, is a completely different ballgame. The juxtaposition between the two films is extremely noticeable, even from just from looking at their promotional images. While Moonlight is more of a serious, realistic and emotionally charged movie, Love Simon has more of a young adult, coming of age, happily ever after tone to it. In the film, the main character has to find his way through growing up, high school, coming out to his friends and family, but most importantly figuring out how Blue is. Blue is the person that Simon has formed a connection with through emailing each other. The only problem? He has absolutely no idea who Blue even is. One of the more important aspects of this film when looking to compare it to others is the fact that the main character and most of the cast are all white. Not only that, but it takes place in a much more suburban setting compared to that of Moonlight. Simon’s relationship with his parents is very strong, his friends are all super close to him and the impression is given that they would obviously support him once he comes out. Surprise, they do.

In terms of which character I related to from the selection of films and shows assigned, I don’t really feel like I can truthfully say that I felt some sort of connection with them. Being gay myself, there wasn’t a crazy amount of representation in terms of queer youth in the films. Yes in Mean Girls you had Damian but he was kind of underutilized and exaggerated. In Euphoria you have Jules who is a trans woman but that also isn’t something that I’ve experienced and won’t pretend to. Could I relate to a few aspects of her character? Of course, i’m sure anybody can. But am I able to say I identify with her? Definitely not. That’s not a bad thing though, trans stories need to be represented in the media. More importantly they don’t always have to be represented in some tragic story or situation. Even though we’ve seen more queer representation today than ever before. We still have a long way to go. Rachel Bays wrote an article for The Advance-Titan stating

“Out of 109 major studio releases in 2017 researched by GLAAD, roughly 13% had LGBTQ characters. Of these films, about 64% featured gay men, 36% featured lesbians, 14% featured bisexuals and 0% featured trans-inclusive content”(Bays The complicated history of queer representation in film: The Advance).

It’s imperative that we see more queer representation mashed with Youth Culture in our media because not every single person experiences the same thing, especially queer kids. In terms of Kids, Saved By The Bell and Mid 90’s, I don’t specifically remember any particular moments in which I personally felt any sort of strong connection.

Now, if we’re gonna speak about common themes in a lot of these stories, then here is where I can say I definitely connected with some situations more than specific characters. Sex, drugs and alcohol are topics we see come up in a lot of coming of age or youth centered stories. In Kids, the main cast is basically parading around the city smoking, drinking and fornicating multiple times throughout the entire day. In Euphoria, one of the main characters Rue suffers from drug addiction. Kat comes to terms with her sexual awakening and a lot of her storyline is focused on her coming in touch with that side of her, whether or not it was the best way to portray it. And most of the other characters are all seen smoking, drinking out having sex at some point in the series.

Growing up, especially in our teen years, we’ve all had the opportunity to partake in at least one of those activities previously mentioned. I know for a fact that I have definitely been to parties, drank alcohol, smoked weed. I’ve encountered hookups and the whole nine yards. Something that really stood out to me in Euphoria was the episode in which Jules ends up meeting with an older man in a hotel room late at night. We shall not name the character for sake of spoilers but those of you who watched know exactly who i’m talking about. That entire scene was just gut wrenching for me to watch and I know it was for many other young queer people as well. Everything about that scene was purposefully uncomfortable to watch from the cinematography, music, acting and the location.

Speaking of music, the soundtrack to a film or TV show is super important and a lot of the time helps the creators in getting their point across. Euphoria specifically used a lot of modern music but also threw in some classics as well. The singer-songwriter Labrinth played a big role in adding music to the show’s soundtrack. He even collaborated with Zendaya in making All For Us, the show’s theme and closing track. It was premiered in the last episode of the series and incorporated into the storyline with a performance by Zendaya herself. This song specifically is so important aside from the rest of the show’s music because it aids in showing Rue’s downfall at the end of the season. She goes through so much in her recovery and relapsing and her relationship with Jules that when Jules finally decides to hop on that train and leave even though Rue tells her it’s not the best idea, it absolutely crushed her. In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine, Labrinth stated “When you look back to your teenage days... it feels semi-magical but semi-crazy and semi-psychotic. I wanted to make sure the music felt like those things”(Marks How Labrinth Created the Perfect Soundtrack for HBO's 'Euphoria').

To help convey how certain songs can help in telling a story, I created a short playlist with songs that I felt matched certain plot points in the show. Without going into too much detail in an attempt to avoid spoilers, I want to give you guys a short explanation of each song about how I feel it can fit into the show. In no exact order, the first song I chose was Regulars by Allie X. The song is about trying to fit in with society and the people around you when you feel out of place all the time. Personally, I feel like this is a good representation of Rue when she comes home from rehab and has to try and blend back into society knowing that everybody knows where she was. Halsey’s Beautiful Stranger is about meeting somebody after being hurt so many times, or just being in a bad headspace and finally feeling like this person could be the one. This is a good explanation for how Rue feels about Jules when she first meets her. She’s hesitant but slowly starts to fall in love with her before Jules starts acting out. Contaminated by Banks is a piece about loving somebody but having their history or the other person's actions make you feel not so good about the relationship you have with them. This is how Rue feels after her first little fallout with Jules. They kind of have an on and off relationship throughout the season and Rue subconsciously has doubts. Simmer by Hayley Williams is a song about suppression. Suppressing your emotions, especially the bad ones like anger, fear, sadness, rage. Nate in the series suffers with a lot of mental suppression. He suppresses his feelings about his relationship with his father, his questioning sexuality, his feelings for a specific character. Although he does lose his cool multiple times throughout the show, it’s not until the end of the season that he really bursts and lets everything out. Another song from Hayley Williams with her band Paramore called Fake Happy is also on the playlist. Fake Happy, to put it simply, is exactly what the title suggests. Pretending to be okay when you’re really not. In the show Rue relapses a few times whether that be big or small, and she has to hide it from her friends and family.

Maddy and Cassie are both the pretty popular girls of this show, leading me to choose Rina Sawayama’s XS as a representation of them. The title XS, otherwise interpreted as “excess” is literally about money, appearance and materialistic items. All of which Cassie and Maddy display throughout the show. The popular cheerleaders with the nice clothes and toned bodies, the pretty makeup and done up hair. It’s a perfect representation of their characters in my opinion. Even though they do have storylines going deeper into their minds, this is what they portray on the surface level.

Hallucinogenics by Matt Masson is a song about going somewhere else most likely due to drugs, and feeling like a different person. Although the song is a bit lighthearted in terms of sound, I think it fits with the scene with Jules and Rue taking drugs together and tripping in her room together. Rue was wary about doing it especially after the fact that she just got clean, and she already has this war in her mind going on but she does it anyways because she likes Jules. Attack of Panic by Aly & Aj heavily focuses on anxiety, which is something Rue deals with multiple times throughout the show. Especially the episode when she’s in school and pretty much has a mental breakdown and runs to the bathroom and hides. Even though the character Kat isn’t the primary focus of the show, her storyline has a bit of line shined upon it multiple times. For her storyline i chose Doja Cat’s Cyber Sex. Kat becomes a cam girl at one point in her sexual awakening and kind of goes full throttle into it. The song talks about having sexual relations with somebody over the internet and that’s exactly what Kat does, except she sees it more as a way to make an income.

Last but not least, I of course had to choose Labrinth and Zendaya’s song made for the show All for Us. The song represents Rue’s feelings of not wanting to let her family down, knowing the struggles and pain they have gone through and not wanting to upset or disappoint them again. Everything she’s done to get clean and sober up has been because of them. She loves her family so dearly but in the end she just broke down again, all because of Jules and the mess that she got herself involved with pertaining to many of the other characters she meets throughout the show. I hope you guys enjoy the playlist and take a good listen to the lyrics and themes in each song! They might not be perfect, but to me they have a lot of commonalities with themes and specific moments and themes from the show!

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/playlist-for-euphoria/pl.u-AGAaiylr2l

[lblwlw]

Hello!

First post here, but I have a long history with tumblr. Tumblr has always sort of been a place for me to escape because few of my friends ever had my URL/followed me. This time it’s a little more important.  

CW: Brief mentions of sexual occurrences with men, brief talk of depression, nothing too serious or graphic

TLDR; I’ve suppressed my gayness on accident for basically my whole life, identified as bi, married a man, realized I’m gay, am now figuring out my life.

Warning, this is a LONG post.

I have always been been fascinated with sexuality, more specifically same sex relationships. I was always interested in the idea of being in a same sex relationship but told myself, “no, that’s not me”. Eventually in middle school I played with the idea of being bisexual when I learned what that meant. I said, perfect. I can tell my internet friends I like girls, too, but I won’t have to tell anyone else and I can just worry about boys then at school and for my parents. I had a few crushes on boys, but the thought of actually dating them terrified me and so I very rarely did more than think about them a lot and just tell my friends that I was “too ugly” or whatever else, or “too awkward.” What they didn’t know was that through MySpace I met a girl and had a huge crush on her. We talked a lot and we said we were dating. I never really told anyone. That eventually fizzled out. 

Over time I got bullied a couple times because classmates found my MySpace and found that I identified as bi. I quickly learned it was something I didn’t want to talk about. I dealt with a lot of anxiety and depression throughout all of school. In high school I steadily crushed on one boy almost all four years, but looking back I think I really just enjoyed and wanted to be his friend. Or I just kind of picked him as the one I liked the most so I had a crush to be a normal girl. I dated two boys the entirety of high school, the first one I broke up with because once he finally asked me out (after I “liked him”) and we did relationship things, like kissing, I was not all about it. It didn’t feel right. I thought, maybe I just didn’t like him. Next boyfriend, I wasn’t entirely objected to kissing him but it wasn’t my favorite. It got more frustrating when he wanted to do more. I wasn’t so opposed to him touching me, but when it came to touching him I was like “this ain’t it”. I stayed with him anyway, hoping I would “get over it” until he broke up with me. I wonder now if he could tell I wasn’t into it.

There was actually a time in which I thought, maybe I should date girls? One of my friends was dating a girl, and I thought that was wonderful. I went to her to tell her that I had been thinking maybe I’d rather date girls. I totally blocked this conversation out of my head until recently.

Once I was done with high school I was discouraged but tried to date a few different guys. None of them went that fantastically. If I met them online, I usually came up with a reason we couldn’t meet. “Maybe this just won’t work” It was fun to talk and flirt but when it came down to bringing it into real life I’d panic because that meant kissing a guy again, and possibly having sex. It made me totally uncomfortable. Finally I said, “I wish I was just into girls, ugh.” Remembered that I was, and that I should try it finally. I matched with this sweet girl that was about a year younger than me. She seemed so put together and so kind. We went on a few dates, getting ramen, fancy cupcakes, riding on a trolly in the city, etc. I remember when I got to kiss her in public and I was SO pumped to be seen doing that! Another time, I believe I drove her home but we parked away from her house and made out in my car. I still remember so much of it vividly. 

Eventually I realized that if I was seriously dating her, she would want it to be known. I’d have to face my fears and tell my family. For some reason, this absolutely terrified me. It shouldn’t have but it did. I thought through my options, and decided I should just find a nice guy that will love me and spend my life with me so I don’t have to do this anymore. I did the unspeakable act of basically just ghosting her and pursued a guy from work who, realistically, kind of freaked me out. Thanks to good old compulsive heterosexuality, I read this as my attraction to him. Thankfully, he was pretty easily attracted to me. I recall early in the relationship wishing I hadn’t done that awful thing to that girl, and that I wish I was still dating a girl. Nothing was technically wrong with my relationship that I had now, but something felt off. Like I was missing something. I tucked that away somewhere in my head and enjoyed building an amazing friendship with this man. I did love him, and I still do. He’s kind, he’s sensitive, we have a lot of shared interests and he’s taught me so much intentionally and unintentionally. 

We got married last year and while I felt grateful I had this amazing person beside me, I remember a part of me wondering if this was right for me. I had this weird little empty pocket somewhere in my heart. That I had given up my young adulthood maybe, and that I could have experienced being with... a woman, for real. I thought, I wish I could have met my husband later in life, maybe. Maybe then I’d have gotten my desires for women out of the way and then been with him forever. Because I do love him, he’s a good person and deserves to be loved. I enjoyed the wedding as a big party that I got to have with my family, but I just remember wondering where that extreme excitement was that everyone always described. Was I broken?

Now over a year later, I was sitting at home one day feeling lost and depressed. I had been on TikTok and saw all these young people having fun and I wished that I had spent more time trying to have fun in the past, before I got married. I thought, I could do it now, but what if something happened and I somehow I fell for one of these girls while being with my husband? Wait... why would I even think that? I started to really analyze this thought. I thought, if I was bi like I had always identified, why could I not be happy with my husband? Well, I was, but something was missing. This thought popped into my head: Oh no. What if I am gay? 

What?! Why would I think that? That’s crazy. I would have known as a kid like everyone says. Right? That’s how that works. I chalked this up to feeling like I was missing out and tried to stop thinking about it. It was hard not to, though. And so I googled one morning while out listening to the birds, after escaping bed before my husband rose to avoid his intimacy: “lesbian married to a man”

This article came up about a woman who had been married to a man for many years and they had kids. She started to question herself, and her attraction to him. I don’t remember all of it but I remember getting really uncomfortable but also having this weird sense of calm. That finally, I felt like I identified with something. I wasn’t really sure though. I sent a message to the lady who wrote the article. She replied a week later telling me that she had a podcast called Lesbian Chronicles. I said, okay, I need to listen to this. I listened to about two episodes or so when they mentioned this thing called “The Master Doc” and the reddit sub called Late Bloomer Lesbians. I was like “Holy crap, a community??”

I logged onto reddit for the first time ever. I saw all these women posting in similar situations to me. I found “The Master Doc” and “Straight women don’t say...”

It was like a light bulb went off. Oh my god, everything makes sense! Maybe I’m NOT broken! I remembered all the women that I had crushes on. All the times I thought about women but told myself I was just “weird” and tried not to think about it. I always thought, no I can’t be gay because I wasn’t sure of it as a kid. Now I realized that women especially are fed a straight narrative. It’s “normal” to not be attracted to men the way they are to you. It’s normal to not totally enjoy sex with men... When I learned that we’ve been told this, and it isn’t really true... I wanted to cry. Now I was in the biggest “pickle” ever. I have this man who loves me, who I said vows to swearing I loved him the same forever. Did I just accept who I was and what I did and live with it? Did I break up with him? That seemed to harsh. I heard a lot of women in the same position say they spoke to a therapist. I immediately googled therapists in my area that specialized in LGBTQ+ issues, sent an email ASAP, and felt a little bit of relief. I knew this was real because after years of playing with the idea of seeing a therapist, this came so naturally when I needed help with this.

Now I am here. I feel very confident that I am gay, and my dad knows now. I tried to bring it up with my husband but it didn’t go very well. He currently thinks that maybe I’m just a sad bisexual who hasn’t been able to express her bi-ness. I am at a point a conversation needs to happen again. I told myself when my lesbian flag and pin came in the mail, I would talk to him again. It’s being delivered today. I am terrified, to say the least. It feels so wrong to “betray” this man who has dedicated to much time and work to giving us as good a life as he can. But I need to live my truth. It will come. I’m low-key excited for it. I hope maybe this helps someone going through the same thing.

-Anonymous Married Lesbian

[dcnativegal]

Day 55 of Pandemic, & I’m sick

Monday, May 4, 2020. Day 55 of the global pandemic (declared by World Health Organization on March 11th.) We as a planet hit 3,500,000 cases today, and 250,000 deaths. There are many more than that, but the planet doesn’t have enough tests.  But then, there was this announcement:

So obviously we’re in good hands. [Sarcasm alert.]

 The entire planet has slowed down, such that seismologists can detect the quieting of the earth: less shuddering of industry, cars, construction. Check out the drop in electricity usage:

Here’s a bit of perspective from Instagram:

The Lesbians of Paisley have been fertile ground for viruses. Valerie is nearly recovered from the viral pneumonia she was diagnosed with on March 26 at the emergency room at Lake District Hospital. She’d begun to feel feverish and achy, with violent coughing on March 15th, 2 days after what turned into my last day in my office at the hospital’s primary care clinic, and a day and a half after we’d dined with our friends Toni, Al, Bonnie and Bruce in person, sans masks. We began 100% isolation from the outside world the minute she felt sick. She recounted the ER adventure to a friend thusly: We drove in and they have organized a system that resembles getting on a [military] base after 9-11. We sat in the pickup at the checkpoint until a somebody in protective attire had taken my temp and saturation levels and asked a bunch of questions. Then they slapped a red sticker on the dash, told us to park in the ER lot and "don't get out of the pickup." Five hours later I had donated blood and been CAT scanned. I had two pneumonia shots that were current and two flu shots, also current. They checked the blood against 14 different virus strains and came up blank. The chest showed white lungs and my saturation levels were iffy. So they used one of the tests they had been sent, gave me antibiotics (just in case) and sent me home. Took me three days to sleep off all that fun.”

Me and Griffey the poodle waited in the pickup for her. At every sound, he got up from the passenger’s seat and looked at the ER entrance where she’d disappeared. No Valerie? Back to sleep. I walked him 3 times.      Hope, her RN daughter, told us that her flow through the ER was great practice in maintaining distance and perfect hygienic process through the CT scan, taking blood, even pushing her food on a tray to her. Lake Health District Hospital is prepared, and still, technically speaking, zero cases in the county.

I was so anxious about her health, her ability to breathe, that I gave up all thought of working from home. I listened to her breathing and coughing, brought her tea, and finally, asked her to write out her last will and testament. She did, and put it away. I figured, her kids are wonderful and won’t fight about stuff but, better for her to express her wishes, even if the paper wouldn’t be legally binding.

Apparently, I get the FrankenDodge (the pickup which has hit one too many deer and who’s grill is sewn together by wire). I’ll take it but I’d much rather have her.

We waited 10 days for the nasal swab results. While we waited, she got better. Never had that cytokine storm, nor that respiratory crash. Storms and crashes; pretty apt words for the medical horror of end stage COVID-19. Once her test came back negative, despite the warning of her PCP who says that nasal swabs miss between 30 and 47% of positive cases, I was able to go to town on the 10th of April, get some software downloaded onto the computer so I could work from home, and hit Safeway while wearing a mask. I also dropped off one of Valerie’s homemade masks to a friend, along with some toilet paper illustrated with Trump’s kissy face. The moment of levity was greatly appreciated.

I started feeling lousy six days after my jaunt to Lakeview (April 16th). Cough and release of gook high up in my chest. Headache. No fever. Who knows if I have COVID-19. We listen to a British gentleman, Dr. Campbell, daily, as he reviews what’s going on globally, and he interviewed a woman who had exactly my illness course, before she moved on to fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. She never got tested. Too much hassle. Which is so ridiculous, criminal really, and in the USA, a direct result of American hubris and incompetence. Fine. Anyone with any symptoms of any illness is isolated until we have a vaccine and treatment, is my prediction. I’m still feeling shitty, though better. Started taking antibiotics just in case and in the hopes of recovering SOMEDAY.

 My son Jonah and his girlfriend June escaped just in time the terrible plight of New York’s COVID19 deluge of infections and hospitalizations. They’ve been in Baltimore at June’s mother’s beautiful home. He spent his 26th birthday in the basement because they were still in quarantine. See adorable picture, below. Now they’re allowed upstairs, enjoying the quiet. Apparently, writing and directing music videos is not an essential service during a pandemic, but he’s writing pitches and living off the most recent lucrative gig with Kesha, thank goodness.

One of the most moving things that is happening in the USA during this time is the 7pm clapping ritual for medical workers and first responders in New York City, in all the boroughs:

There’s a firefighter in DC who’s going to hospitals and nursing homes to play the bagpipe.

That’s where my daughter Clara lives, in DC, but right now she’s staying with a friend in Laurel, MD, since her group house dynamics are stressful and had a symptomatic guest at last report. She’s working from home to make sure the Latinx school children are getting the tutoring they need now more than ever. We worry about her husband Jose and his country, Guatemala, since there are COVID-19 cases down there, and refugees seeking asylum are being dumped there, with and without the virus. Over 700 cases in Guatemala as of today. We hope he will get to the USA this year. However, Trump referred to it as a shithole country, which doesn’t bode well.

My sister and her husband are well, thankfully. They work fulltime from home in the company of Pepper the cat and Darcy the chocolate lab. Yuuki, 25, stays there, too, mostly in their room; they are out of work and applying for unemployment. Kohji, age 28, works from home in DC and makes more money as a web designer than I ever will after 34 years as a social worker, but who’s counting. (I remember well the admonition of a field instructor back in 1987: don’t go into social work for Power, Pay or Prestige.) His girlfriend is probably out of work; she works for a nonprofit that plants trees in DC. Probably not essential work right this very minute. Makoto, 23, is out of quarantine and looking for something to do; he’ll be a senior at the University of Delaware this fall. As far as I hear on Facebook and email, the rest of the folks with whom I share DNA are well. So that’s good. I worry about my Aunt Mary Lee who is 87. But she says not to:  she’s fine and her ritzy retirement community in McLean, VA is on “lockdown.”

Psychologically, in the experience of quarantine and ‘social distancing’, there’s me, and then there are my clients.

My moods go up and down, but a little further down than usual. The terror that Valerie might die of COVID-19 has passed, but I figure I will always need therapy.  I have “Facebook messenger” video chats with my therapist, Darcy of Bend, every other week now, which helps. Having ‘Generalized Anxiety Disorder’ and a tendency toward major depression, I find therapy to be a corrective. A bimonthly tune up. Without it, I naturally veer toward negativity and neurosis, and a hypervigilance that served me well when I was a child, but is exhausting, overwrought and over-thought as an adult.

Psychologically, Valerie is always fine. Seriously. She was once told as a young woman by a therapist who’d tested her with the MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) that she was outrageously and puzzlingly normal. Now that she’s feeling mostly well again from the pneumonia, she’s been tearing up the joint, fixing the sump pump that apparently keeps this little house from drifting down main street on the wetlands it’s built on. Digging out the leaves from our irrigation ditch, chopping and clearing the wood from our front yard.

The BEFORE picture:

The AFTER Picture.

 And this happened one morning in March. Just a cattle drive past our front door.

Valerie’s planning a garden at her daughter’s place, which has a deer-proof fence and lots of sun up on the hill above us. A delivery of horse manure is scheduled, and the garden bed has been rototilled. Val’s granddaughter Jessica and her husband Alan are living up there now, working from home for their Portland-based gigs. They’re almost finished the 14-day quarantine since they moved down here. The new normal: anytime anyone leaves one locale for another, they disappear into strictest quarantine, not to leave their abode. Groceries are delivered to the doorstep. A recent day turned out to be Jess’ 25th birthday: I’d bought a canvas bag with a picture of a pug on it, like her dog Archie, and Valerie found something gluten free flour mix with fresh jam to give her. Birthday gatherings are suspect at the moment.

Here’s a lovely idea for quarantined birthday celebrations:

What a kind and generous offer.

Even in isolation, Val and I do socialize, on zoom. The one pictured below is church.

We ‘visit’ with our fellow parishioners from St. Luke’s on Sunday evenings. Then we say Compline together, from the Book of Common Prayer. My favorite prayer of all time is this one from that service.

Yes, shield the joyous. Because joy is fleeting.

Our writers’ group, Easy Writers, ‘meets’ on zoom every Monday now. I wrote this bit about my yarn for the prompt, ‘write something in your home that means a lot to you.’

I am doing a great deal of crochet and a little knitting.

Yarn is my comfort and my joy. It is the raw material I create blankets and scarves and hats with. My tools are hooks and needles made from wood and plastic and metal. My fingers are also my tools.

Some of the yarn is like cotton candy: spun mohair from a goat is said to have a ‘halo’ or ‘aura’ because of the gentle cloud of color you can see an inch or two away from the spun thread. Some yarn is like twine: you can see every string of ply. My favorite is merino wool and single ply. A unity of color that will not split. All for one and one for all, the fuzzy stuff is twisted and bound into a single string of strength…

My clients are stressed out. The pandemic adds a layer to the stress they were already experiencing. I listen and knit, from within the cocoon of the yarn room which my folks can see behind me.  One of my clients wanders about with her phone in her hand while I get slightly dizzy. I like this kind of counseling since I get a glimpse of my clients’ homes. Reminds me a little bit of being a geriatric care manager. You can tell a lot about a person from their home. From my home you can tell that I have a lot of yarn, and I work multiple projects at a time because there are piles of them alongside my recliner.  

One of the sad weights of being present for my clients is their level of estrangement for most if not all social connections, especially people with whom they share DNA. And every single one has what is called in the mental health world “complex PTSD” from multiple traumatic experiences.  I sit with them, on the phone or via video. I hope to model for them what Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard.’ I breathe deeply to release my own distress at their sadness. We explore one tiny step toward reducing their isolation, the sense of trust. All during a pandemic where other people could be carrying a potentially deadly virus.

It’s no wonder I’m pawing mohair out of screen for my own comfort.

Sometimes I email clients links or articles on how to keep their spirits up, or about good things that are happening instead of the dire predictions they’re listening to or watching. There is much to share that is hopeful.  I sent one to a client on creative ways to care for everyone and she shot back:

“I believe this is Liberal rhetoric. 

Esp the paragraph below:

 This current emergency provides the possibility for a new emergence—the birthing of a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people and the living Earth. “

Oh well. We can’t have a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people, now can we?

Sigh.

 Brilliant writing is being penned right now, since the entire planet’s human inhabitants are barely one degree of separation away from this virus, which is apparently ‘barely alive’ and therefore hard to kill, as it spreads onward to make millions miserable and hundreds of thousands die.

I’m saving articles from The Atlantic, The NY Times, and the Washington Post, and following a historian named Heather Cox Richardson who writes a daily blog called Letters from an American. In a recent post she writes:

“The big news … has been the ‘protests’ of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus …These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative. The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. …These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s... The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.”  [Emphasis mine]

I am so glad someone smarter than me can reveal the interconnections of what’s going on politically.

There is food for thought on Facebook and Instagram: in the guise of a rewrite of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, this poem.

Mary Oliver for Corona Times (after Wild Geese)

by Adrie Kusserow

You do not have to become totally zen, You do not have to use this isolation to make your marriage better, your body slimmer, your children more creative. You do not have to “maximize its benefits” By using this time to work even more, write the bestselling Corona Diaries, Or preach the gospel of ZOOM. You only have to let the soft animal of your body unlearn everything capitalism has taught you, (That you are nothing if not productive, That consumption equals happiness, That the most important unit is the single self. That you are at your best when you resemble an efficient machine). Tell me about your fictions, the ones you’ve been sold, the ones you sheepishly sell others, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world as we know it is crumbling. Meanwhile the virus is moving over the hills, suburbs, cities, farms and trailer parks. Meanwhile The News barks at you, harsh and addicting, Until the push of the remote leaves a dead quiet behind, a loneliness that hums as the heart anchors. Meanwhile a new paradigm is composing itself in our minds, Could birth at any moment if we clear some space From the same tired hegemonies. Remember, you are allowed to be still as the white birch, Stunned by what you see, Uselessly shedding your coils of paper skins Because it gives you something to do. Meanwhile, on top of everything else you are facing, Do not let capitalism coopt this moment, laying its whistles and train tracks across your weary heart. Even if your life looks nothing like the Sabbath, Your stress boa-constricting your chest. Know that your antsy kids, your terror, your shifting moods, are no less sacred than a yoga class. Whoever you are, no matter how broken, the world still has a place for you, calls to you over and over announcing your place as legit, as forgiven, even if you fail and fail and fail again. remind yourself over and over, all the swells and storms that run through your long tired body all have their place here, now in this world. It is your birthright you be held deeply, warmly, in the family of things, not one cell left in the cold.

-Adrie Kusserow

 Not one cell left out in the cold. Yes.

There is so much to be grateful for. I have a place to live, and even while paying off my bankruptcy debt, I have plenty. Enough that I can make small donations here and there. Here’s one cause I found: supporting foster children who were in college and now have no place to go. (Terrible visuals for the logo: it’s “Together We Rise.”)

Soon, the nights of below freezing temperatures will pass, and both Lesbians of Paisley will be healthy at the same time.  Perhaps I’ll get my Tricycle-for-Grownups serviced and toodle around for exercise. Perhaps the Stitch & Bitch knitting/crochet gatherings will resume, maybe in a park for physical distance and social connection.

And maybe I’ve already had Covid-19, and so has Valerie. Looks like 50-70% of all the people on the planet, not quite 8 billion humans so maybe 4 to 6 billion people, need to catch this thing in order to give our species herd immunity. Or WILL catch it because we have no way to stop it, only to slow the infections so that health care is not overwhelmed. We live and Love in the Time of Coronavirus, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I maybe a libtard, a snowflake, a lily-livered liberal, who’s heart bleeds. But I agree with this sentiment, found on Facebook, our American ‘commons’:

Love absurdly and abundantly, my people. And wash your hands. 

[oddcoupler222]

I'm in love with the little ficlet that you wrote about Ned, I wish all dads were like him... but yeah I'm kind of in love with everything you write for Sansa and Margaery, thank you for sharing! :) PS: I'm still extremely curious about Jeyne and Mya and what's their deal

Ned is very much an ideal dad. What he lacks in observance, he makes up for in heart.

OMG how could I have forgotten to share the Jya?!

Saddle up (kinda) for good old enemies to friends to lovers tale.

Of course, they met the year prior to TWW, and instantly disliked one another. Mya is a very private person - like extremely so - and very dry, low-key. Like, she would consider Sansa one of her closer friends, but even then, Sansa doesn’t know a ton about Mya’s personal life (Sansa also never pries, and Mya likes that). She enjoys a drama free existence, being organized, and values having security.

Fairly needless to say, Jeyne, right off the bat, is not her favorite person. She’s extremely nosy, decently loud, loves the hot goss, a bit unorganized, and still isn’t sure at this moment what she wants to do with her life. And honestly, Mya’s brand of exasperated condescension isn’t Jeyne’s cup of tea, either.

But - it’s fine. They’re generally, “ugh. whatever” around each other, as we all know, through TWW.

Things start to change a bit post-TWW because my god! they become roommates!

And tbh it is a bit rough at first. Because all of the things that they don’t quite agree on are right in their faces. I mean, off the bat, Mya sent Jeyne a “roommate agreement”/set of rules (to which Jeyne was like wtf, we will just live together and figure it out?) and in response, she wrote, new email who dis? … and that was about as far as their roommate agreement went (as far as Mya knows).

Jeyne doesn’t do well with not having someone around, you know. Like, she loves living with Sansa; if she had the choice to live alone in her own place or with Sansa (or like a friend in general), she would choose to live with Sansa/a friend. She likes to talk and share clothes and meals and talk and watch movies/shows together. She listens to her music loudly when she cooks/bakes, and when she showers, and when she is getting ready to go out.

Mya… is very much used to living alone. She’s been in and out of foster care since she was a child, and has been on her own since she was 17. She appreciates having quiet and her own space, and she’s worked her ass off to have moved to King’s Landing and to put herself through school – which is why it also sometimes baffles and irritates her that Jeyne’s father works closely with Sansa’s, meaning she comes from a comfortably wealthy family, and that she is just kind of flitting away her life (aka dropped out of college, just decided she was going to move to KL, working in the cafe without really thinking about what she seriously wants to do, etc)

So. It’s rough for the first couple of months while living together. Jeyne is fairly willing to put aside any issues she has with Mya in order to spend time with the person she lives with, as a social creature. As such, she also has some boundary issues (you know, all the times walking into Sansa’s room whenever she wants because that is how it is between them, etc.Not that she does it to that extent with Mya, but still. And she has some trouble seeing how she oversteps).

And Mya has very little patience for Jeyne overstepping her boundaries, and if anything, it makes her feel even more snappy/serious about maintaining her own privacy. (there may have been a Serious Argument, when Jeyne sort of went through some of her boxes to try to help unpack. Jeyne intended for it to be a good deed, but Mya walked in to Jeyne sitting in the middle of some of her stuff, including the few things she has of her mothers, which she is very protective over).

Meanwhile, Jeyne doesn’t want to tell Sansa the WHOLE of the issues she’s having in her absence, because she wants Sansa to not stress about this while she’s loving Volantis. So, this is when she and Margaery sort of start to become friends. She asks Marg, eventually, what she thinks she should do to try to bury the hatchet with Mya, because she can’t take living like this for the months to come.

And Margaery advises her to do something nice for Mya, “For the sake of the seven, don’t be wildly over-the-top. Keep it simple.”

“What, I’m supposed to not be myself?” She’s half-asking for real, half-teasing.

And Margaery smirks, “Exactly.”

So, she decides she will be simple. She will surprise Mya with dinner – cooking, another thing she misses about Sansa. Yes, she can cook. But Sansa enjoyed it, and now that she’s not around, she has to cook for herself, blah. But it’s kind of nice, because she is focusing on making food she has realized Mya likes after having shared a kitchen with her for a little while.

And she will not be loud while doing so (no singing, playing her music softly) and that she will clean as she goes, since Mya has had fits about her leaving pots and pans and silverware and food out (which, for the record, she truly was going to clean. She was just going to do so after she ate and relaxed; what is the rush). Bonus! She picked up a book-to-movie adaptation of some novel Sansa loves (and she has seen Mya reading it, too), that she is going to suggest to watch; a nice peace offering, she thought.

When she gets to the apartment - she had told Mya that she was going to be out late in order to make the dinner a surprise - she is the one who is in for a surprise when she sees a woman, wearing only Mya’s short robe, walking out of the bathroom. The woman screams. Jeyne screams and drops the bags of food she was holding.

Mya comes running out and is pissed at Jeyne because “I thought you weren’t going to be home tonight! You told me you weren’t.” And Jeyne is so, “There’s a girl in a robe??? Who is that?!”

The woman leaves in a hurry. Mya and Jeyne end up having a tense argument about Jeyne clearly lying about being out about about and for being so fucking nosy and Jeyne for being like, this is my apartment. It evolves into something bigger, about how Mya needs to loosen the stick up her ass - especially since it seems to only be there when around Jeyne - and about how Mya thinks Jeyne is far too flippant and frivolous and intrusive about everything and can’t she just take anything seriously for once, even if it’s just keeping a schedule (which hits somewhat hard, because. well, Jeyne knows she doesn’t have her life “together” and all, and it is a Big Conversation she has with her father relatively often)

It leads into a Jeyne not making dinner, tossing the ingredients into the cabinets and throwing the movie on the table, before staying in her room.

And Mya kind of cooling down in her own room for a bit before going into the kitchen and seeing everything, and sort of putting together that Jeyne meant to be doing something nice for her. Plus she thinks about the many times Sansa had told her about the good aspects of Jeyne, and she starts to feel like. Somewhat guilty. Which is a first for her when it comes to Jeyne.

Going to her room, she knocks on the door, and Jeyne has her come in. They do talk some stuff out, Jeyne apologizing for not always recognizing when she is crossing a line and Mya apologizing for being… prickly, sometimes. It makes Jeyne snort a laugh, and there’s a few moments of peace, until Mya mentions that having/keeping schedules was in her roommate agreement -

And Jeyne cuts her off, quoting back to her why the scheduling part was number 2 on the list.

Mya stares at her for a few seconds, “You… actually read it?”

“I mean, I thought it was kind of ridiculous that you were trying to map out living together before we even spoke about it face to face, but of course I read it,” Jeyne rolls her eyes.

“How was I supposed to know! You send back a ridiculous response!”

Jeyne just kind of laughs at that, and the look on Mya’s face. And for the first time, Jeyne laughing at something like this doesn’t piss her off, and she can’t help laughing a bit, too.

A little later, after they made dinner together, Jeyne - truly unable to help herself - asks, “So… who was that girl?”

And Mya sighs, and tries very much to not get prickly about Jeyne asking an understandable question, “She was a woman. That I used to date. Who is back in town for the weekend.”

Jeyne stares at her in shock, “You’re -”

“Bi. Yeah,” she knows Jeyne is staring at her and she fastidiously avoids staring back.

“But! You…” she is shouting but she can’t help it! “Sansa - does -”

“No,” she cuts her off, sighing, as she wipes her hands on her apron, “She doesn’t know.” And she leans against the counter, pouring herself another glass of the wine they’re drinking because this is personal and she doesn’t like to share personal but she knows she really isn’t getting out of it, and she doesn’t want to make anything between them worse.

She explains that sharing very personal things is… uncomfortable for her, and that Sansa had come out to her for the very reason that she knew Mya wouldn’t make any sort of deal out of it. Mya hadn’t wanted to make it about herself, either, and honestly had been a little worried that Sansa might try to lean on her a bit… and that made her nervous because she has a good amount of insecurities about her ability to really be there for someone, after having not had any serious/lasting connections in her entire adult life. (well, she doesn’t go too deeply into that personal shit, but the gist is explained)

“But when I tried to get you to go to speed dating you said it would be giving women false hope!” Jeyne insisted, her mind still spinning.

And Mya can’t even help but laugh, with the serious bafflement and outrage on Jeyne’s face, “Yeah, it was false hope because I don’t want to date anyone from lesbian speed dating.” she lifts up one finger, then adds a second as she says, “Plus, Sansa did not want either one of us there.” And a third, with a smirk, “And I had to stop you from going.”

Overall, that is a big turning point for them. Jeyne starts respecting space more (trying, anyway, she will never be great at it), and they form different schedules and roommate traditions than Jeyne had with Sansa, but it’s a nice different. She enjoys Mya’s cynicism and snarky comments - when they aren’t directed at her - and finds that she is truly, really hilarious tbh.

On the other hand, Mya learns how to share her space and open up a little bit with Jeyne - who often times doesn’t give her a choice, and weirdly, Jeyne is very good at getting her to say things that she ordinarily wouldn’t ever say to other people. She kind of, reluctantly, ends up enjoying the injection of Jeyne-drama-loudness-exuberance into her life.

They’re strangely, actually friends? It’s, weird? Friends but not like friends the way they are with Sansa (or most of their other friends). It’s a comfortable closeness that they’ve formed, and when Sansa is coming home from Volantis at the end of the seven months, they both are excited to have her back but are honestly a little sad about their roommate-ness ending.

Sansa returns (Jeyne literally tackles her to the ground in excitement at seeing her) and Mya moves into her own place. Her own place feels a little quieter, now, and it’s… weird. And Jeyne loves having Sansa back but she misses some of the stuff she did with Mya as a roommate, especially now that Sansa is with Marg and spends a good amount of time with her.

A couple of weeks after Sansa returns home, a few weeks before Christmas, Jeyne and Mya hang out. Jeyne asks Mya what she’s doing for the holidays - she knows more about Mya’s childhood than Sansa/anyone does, really, at this point, and knows she doesn’t have family to go home to.

Mya shrugs, “I have a week off from work. I’ll probably just enjoy some peace and quiet,” she jibes with a smirk.

And Jeyne just rolls her eyes, “If you have time off, you should come home with me.”

Mya is… well that isn’t something she does with anyone. Not ex-girlfriends. Not Sansa, who has invited her to her family’s place and to their NYE party. So she says no.

But Jeyne has a way of wheedling (and brow beating) and ends up getting Mya to agree to come with her.

So, she goes North with Jeyne and Sansa - who is amazed that she came - and stays with Jeyne, and feels a little off kilter at first. But then eventually, with Jeyne’s intensity and excitement and just everything feels so normal… it kind of starts to feel nice? To be there with a family rather than on her own, like she has been ever since her mom died when she was ten.

On that Christmas morning, when Jeyne is talking quickly and going over plans for the holiday and including Mya in future holidays in an off-hand comment, sitting there with wrapping paper all around her on the floor and messy hair from sleeping… it’s where Mya’s heart skips a beat and - oh. Well. Fuck.

(because Jeyne is kind of now her best friend, totally unexpected, and also very straight)

In true Mya fashion, conceal don’t feel, and never says anything, trying to live her life as normal. Even if - UGH - she lets Jeyne in so much easier than she wants to, because it’s not something she wants. But it’s fine. Jeyne doesn’t know and she’s just acting as Jeyne, and that’s - it’s scary but also not.

This continues on for another year and a half, when Sansa finally moves in with Margaery officially, and Jeyne exaggeratedly bats her eyelashes at Mya, “Gee… I wonder… who could possibly want to put up with me and move in?”

So, they end up moving in together again. Which makes Jeyne ecstatic because she’s become super close to Mya in the last couple of years, and itt’ll be nice to live with someone who isn’t staying at her girlfriend’s place for like half the week (though she IS Sansa and Margaery’s number 1 fan, make no mistake).

While they live together this time, though, they have some Moments. Jeyne has forgone the whole boundaries thing, now that they’ve come so far. There are times of cuddling. A lovely time where Jeyne (who is in the shower) calls for Mya, who thinks something is going on… and then goes in and see’s Jeyne who is like… silhouetted in the shower curtain and is also almost halfway leaning out of the shower (because she has 0 shame or inclincation to hide her body) and Mya short-circuits before spinning around and, “You’re - naked!” “Well you knew I was coming to take a shower.” “I didn’t think you… why did you call me in here?” “Oh. I wanted to ask if you would order dinner so it would be here when I’m done.”

(needless to say, living with Jeyne does not help her feelings. but she’s resigned)

Unnnntil!

The night of Sansa’s planned proposal to Margaery, where she has Jeyne and Mya both in on the plan and helping her out. When things go awry, Jeyne returns back to their place, arms full of the flowers and the champagne that she’d gotten back from Sansa and Margaery’s place.

She and Mya, instead, drink the wine together, discussing Sansa/Margaery’s proposal-that-wasn’t and the election and how Jeyne worked with Marg on her campaign and is thinking about going back to school to something she might enjoy (but she’s a little nervous).

And Mya shakes her head, tipsy, but she thinks she probably has a lot of stars in her eyes when she looks at Jeyne even sober, but she is very serious, “Jeyne, no. You would be amazing, doing anything you’re passionate about. You… you are so…” she trails off, gesturing at Jeyne, before she uses that hand to twirl some of Jeyne’s long, glossy dark hair around her fingers.

Jeyne scoffs, “So flippant? So much?” It’s a rare time for her to feel genuinely, openly insecure.

And Mya instead slides her hand down and turns to look at Jeyne completely, “No. Well, yes, you are a lot. But not… bad. You are so smart. And so unafraid to say what you want and what you feel. And so good at getting other people to do the same. You are amazing, Jeyne Poole, and don’t you dare be afraid to do anything you want.”

Jeyne turns to look at Mya, too, and realizes in that moment how absolutely close they are. Like she can see how the dim lighting of the room reflects in Mya’s vibrant blue eyes and makes them almost mystical, and she can feel her breath wash over her cheek and her hand feel so strong and warm, stroking her thumb over the back of her hand. And her words… she can feel how much Mya means them, and it makes this heavy, warm, tingling feeling shift inside of her that…

is so strange. Like almost like the feeling she’s had in the past when having interest in a guy, but like more and it’s unfamiliar and a lot and good and… she doesn’t pull back but doesn’t move forward, and squeezes her hand around Mya’s as she manages a whispered, “Thanks.”

And the next morning she wakes up with Mya curled around her (she does get amusement from the fact that everyone would assume she is the primary cuddler between them but it is in fact Mya who gets all cuddly during sleep). And it’s not like they haven’t cuddled together many times in the last couple of years (it took her TIME to knock down that wall, and she is very proud and honored to have done so).

But it’s the first time she’s ever felt like this. Like something sliding through her that feels a lot like want and maybe like more-than-like, and she doesn’t know what is happening or where it’s coming from, exactly? But like. It’s here. And Jeyne isn’t one to avoid how she feels…

So she goes to her number one trusted source, going to see Sansa the weekend after Sansa and Margaery actually got engaged. Does the genuine and appropriate squealing. Before she thinks about Mya, again, and sighs, and Sansa is like, “What was that sigh about?”

So she confesses, of course, “I think I like Mya and maybe love, in not a friend way!” she bursts out.

And Sansa is shocked, staring with her mouth open, before, “WHAT?!” comes out on a shout.

“I DON’T KNOW! WHY AM I FEELING LIKE THIS?!” Jeyne screams back, and they stare at each other for some long beats, before Sansa shakes her head before they calm down and have an actual talk.

Sansa is still shocked, but is always Jeyne’s best voice of reason and sounding board, and Jeyne ultimately leaves feeling convinced that she does actually like-maybe-love Mya? And she has been spending like every waking moment thinking about this, and going over all of their interactions and like. Gods. What if they’ve been basically dating for years and she hadn’t even realized it?! That’s kind of what it feels like.

And because she’s Jeyne, she goes home in a whirlwind. Sees Mya in the kitchen and marches up to her, determined.

Then kisses her because she is Jeyne and she isn’t going to not go after what she wants, even if it’s uncharted territory.

And holy fuck, was it worth it, when Mya - shocked still for a long moment - slides her hands into Jeyne’s hair and responds.

(Margaery, for the record, totally told Sansa months before that there was something between Mya and Jeyne and Sansa was like, “No way!”… she is very vindicated now)

aaaand for the record (i posted/mentioned before, but it’s been like over 2 years, so), Jeyne:

Mya:

[freckliedan]

ayyee den!! airports, preshow playlist, gtpwtw, and memories :)

hi leo!!! ty for the ask!!!

airports: how many countries have you traveled to?I’ve been to canada a few times-I was born in michigan so we visited ontario sometimes when i was a little kid? i don’t really remember that very well but i do remember driving through british columbia & yukon on our way to alaska bc when we moved here we drove &.. as a seven year old that’s the most boring thing in the entire world fdskjldsk. 

i also was a part of people to people international’s student ambassador program when i was 13? & i was like.. 100% offline then, but i did go on a trip thru england, ireland, scotland and wales for 19 days in the summer of 2009 & in conclusion i think that just being in the same country as dnp when they became facebook friends was enough to turn me into the giant lesbian i am today due to proximity 2 their gay energies. 

preshow playlist: one song that reminds you of dnpthere’s so many oh my god but i haven’t really been able to stop listening to one direction since seeing ii a month ago in la and while 18 is a song that like. fucking makes me cry sometimes bc it also reminds me so completely of me & my gf? amber @freckliephil and i were talking the other day & she told me that ready to run by 1d is the current, 2018 mood for dan and phil bc it really does seem like they might be coming out at some point not long after the tour and i just.. im a mess. i’m also working on making a 2009 playlist n thats fun & also ruining my lifee

gtpwtw: how long have you been a fan of dnpsince.. 2012? i looked it up the other day and i very first watched a video on november 27th that year, which i know bc my now-girlfriend-then-just-becoming-friends-ex-nemesis emailed me dan’s i will go down with this ship video then! which means i joined the fandom less than a month after the vday leak but not directly bc of the leak so.. honestly an incredibly messy time. i was engaged w the fandom on deviantart in 2012 and 2013, it was my main fandom & kind of my introduction to fandom? & then like rejection sensitive dysphoria & life stuff kind of steered me away frm having dnp as my main fandom for like.. a while? but i never stopped being fully demon in my heart, and i made this blog in april & i’m so so so happy that i did. i have another older tumblr that i’ve had since 2013 but having a blog just dedicated to dnp feels so nice & like.. being in the community is overall so good? my year has been so fucking incredible since starting to meet ppl & have friends through dnp? so thanks 2 amber for convincing me to take the plunge n make this blog honestly.

but yeah i’ve been here since 2012, dnp proved to me that love was real after my parents’ divorce, i realized the other day that i saw the first radio show live and i had no idea what to do with that information but my heart is so full of happiness n pride for dnp at how good they’re doing this year, thank u so much for asking me this question i didn’t even realize i had this much to say?

memories: what is your happiest memoryi have a few that are tied? i have a million soft happy memories with my gf, our love is. the exact same kind of love as dan and phil’s like i believe in soulmates bc of them but also me & my gf,,,, but my happiest memories?

one of the best memories would be like, so, for backstory? my girlfriend and i wrote and produced a musical out of spite at our old highschool during her senior year/the year after i graduated, and that includes like, being the teachers of a class full of  other students between the ages of 11-18? and we did the entire thing in about a year entirely on our own, so just? hugging in the lobby after the opening night show ended with the incandescent and impossible sense of we did that and knowing it was just the beginning for us? was incredible. it’s incomparable to anything in the world. 

a 2nd happiest memory is being in portland for a week in may 2017 with my best friend miles, and getting to meet amber @freckliephil & piper @asterlark after about a year of talking online? they’re my soulmates in a friend way and even though i’ve only had the chance to spend time with them in person during 3 periods of time in the last year and a half it feels more right to be where they are than to be in a different state than them it’s like. more calm and natural and relaxing to be in the same space? like, idk, i need to be alone to unwind sometimes but they’re some of the few people in the world i can be alone with and still calm down/recharge.

& a 3rd happiest memory is the 4 days i spent traveling to see ii this summer, i flew to portland & stayed w amber & piper for a night (& got my septum pierced bc i was doing my best to be living my truth to make dnp proud) & then we all flew to LA met a bazillion people from our gc and just? from meeting @plateho at the airport to seeing dnp live and literally full body sobbing when welcome to the black parade played right before the show (bc i knew every single person there including dnp backstage were probably all feeling the same exact overwhelming happiness and excitement please forgive me im a pisces rising We Just Cry) to staying up until literally 4:20am smoking weed & having conversations & just.. living for the moment? i’ve been a better happier more assertive version of myself since that week and i really, really like the new me. so. yeah. 

i’d have to say those 3 are tied pretty dang thoroughly. 

[griffonage-arts]

The Day After Pride

Yesterday I walked in my city’s Pride Parade with one of our local united churches. I am both proud and honoured to have had the opportuntity to do this- despite not considering myself a Christian. I think it’s funny how welcoming it was, being a part of this church march because as a bisexual transgender pagan, I would think a church- any church- would be the last place I could feel happy and at home. For some background, I am not technically a member of this church, but my best friend is as her mom is one of the ministers. They invited me to march with them.

I was born into a Mennonite church. When I realized I was gay was also when I realized that this church, this group of people who had been family to me my whole life, had quite openly condemned the queer community by rejecting the one Mennonite church in the city who accepted them. Us. Me. When I came out as a lesbian, I stopped going to church before I had a chance to be rejected. I didn’t hear what they said, I didn’t know, except for what my family has told me. When my mom emailed the pastor and said that she didn’t know how to go to church when it felt like our family was being judged at every turn, he replied that as long as I never had sex with a woman, they had no reason to judge. I was seventeen, but I had lost a huge aspect of my support system. I got through it by making jokes, not really processing, and it’s only been in the past months, three years after the fact that I’ve begun to process the loss I felt then. It’s only been in the past months that I’ve begun to recognize my anger, and allowed myself to feel angry about it.

I think this is why it means so much to me to not only see churches march in pride, but to march with a church that is loving to everyone. I was nearly crying before we even started marching because there were so many religious people willing to open their hearts— that is what my idea of Christianity is, and the fact that isn’t the Christianity being practiced so often is part of why I turned from it. My church- though I don’t think I can call them my church anymore- would not ever march in Pride. Expressing that love to some of the most vulnerable people is not a value they are willing to practice on the grand scale. But yesterday, I had the honour of marching with a Church for whom that is a value they practice. Yesterday I had the honour of pounding on a djembe and starting chants of “God Loves Gays” over the bigots, and I hope I shouted loud enough that kids questioning everything heard and knew that they aren’t alone.

-Griffon

[comingouttoteach]

Week 9

‘Twas the week of formal observation and meltdown. Lessons learnt this week: if you wake up at 3am from stress do not attempt to eliminate the stress by planning lessons or doing work of any kind at this hour.

The week started well. I had been away visiting family at the weekend. I had completed two lesson plans for my year 7s. On Monday I organised the year 7s into groups and set the work: write a group poem. It was raucous, there were political divisions, some mutiny, but also some leaders emerged, some good listeners and mediators arose and many interesting ideas were heard ‘miss can we write a poem about two gay turtles called “gay is ok”??’ Yes you certainly can. It soon became apparent that the groups would not be ready to perform the following day (for the observation) so I spent the rest of the afternoon altering my lesson plan. This left me with little time to plan the year 10 & 9 lessons which were the next day. Error indeed. These should have been planned at the weekend but I was too busy strolling through coastal scenes and buying chocolate. I put together a rough plan for year 10 in the evening and gave up on year 9. I had a half a mind to spring the lesson on the teacher but I had done that once before and didn’t want to abuse that kindness.

The formal observation went well. As I know the year 7s well I could let myself go a bit in the lesson and didn’t think too much about being observed. The recurring issue of low level disruption (chatter when working or re-focusing the group) rose its head multiple times. I knew this would happen as I haven’t set and reinforced clear expectations with them about silence and listening. This is partly because I am still at the point where I can’t see the long term effect of these boundaries being set. Yes, I can imagine that over a year it would be very annoying if they chatted over me and others often but at the moment I am just trying to get through lessons. The reasons to be firm have not yet been proven to me, although I am well aware of the rationale behind being that way. Also, I think this is linked to my confidence issue: I am still not yet sure that what I am telling them to do is the best way for them to learn. If I was 100% sure that it was I think I would demand their full attention and be less accepting of deviation and disruption. Do I know best? Does this matter? 

After the formal observations I did take the year 9 class despite my doubts. I told the students we’d be reading a bit, doing some short activities and then watching the film. I started by fielding some queries about the homework, then we went straight into reading. I had already read through the scenes and made annotations, so I wasn’t totally clueless. I invented a few short activities for them to do along the way and asked questions based on my annotations. We got to the scene where Juliet goes to ask the Friar’s advice and he tells her to take this here potion and play dead. I got the students to pretend they were Friar Lawrence and give Juliet advice about how to get out of her scrape. I am not entirely sure what the point of this exercise was, although they did have to demonstrate that they understood what had happened in the plot, but darn did they enjoy doing this! One made the sensible suggestion that she become a nun, another had the same idea but with the addition of her being a lesbian nun. Great. Most other ideas involved murder of some kind. My favourite plan was that the Nurse should dress up as Juliet and marry Paris. I think the Nurse would be happy with that option, Paris not so much but who really cares about Paris. We then watched the Zeffirelli film version of the same scene and the lesson finished. 

With the year 10s I tried to get them thinking about introducing a character through actions. I used photos again though. I really need to move on from this tactic. Even so, I am continually pleased with my photo selection skills, as is the class teacher. This time I found an old black and white photo of a coal miner with a gloomy look on his face. I named him Jeff. The class took to Jeff so that was good. I set them homework to introduce and develop their own character through actions. My regret in this lesson is that I didn’t give them a WAGOLL. What A Good One Looks Like; for those of you who don't know. I did give them sentences and went through with them how one could change the verbs and add adverbs to show the reader what the character was like, rather than telling. However, I could have found an example paragraph from a novel quite easily. I had even selected the opening of a Nick Hornby novel but was unconvinced that I could explain it properly (returning to the lack of confidence theme). 

I went in on Wednesday and heard my year 7s perform their group poems. It was quite hit and miss but the students were definitely enjoying themselves. I am pleased that one of the low-attaining girls who I encouraged to speak, even if it was just one word, read a whole stanza! The teacher was even surprised. They gay turtles poem was a bit of a disappointment unfortunately. They’d only picked one rhyme for the end of EVERY line, which was ‘arry’. They said they wanted to say that the turtle smelt like curry but that didn’t rhyme with the ‘arry’ theme so they just changed it to ‘smells like carry’. I think I should have stepped in sooner with that group. The world peace poem group who had done a practise performance the day before were definitely the strongest. They’d learnt it off by heart for their second performance, except the slightly absent looking boy. I got the students to score each other’s performances. The turtle poem won. I think I should have pretended the world peace poem had won but I didn’t want to lie. Overall the lesson went ok. It was the most raucous out of the lot though. The teacher, who hadn’t been with me for any of the group work lessons so I think the setting and noise came as a shock, said it was a shambles though. This is the harshest feedback I’ve had. I think she felt bad, she tried to retrace but also started to dig of a hole. She said there was lots to learn from, that I’d never do that again, that I needed to be firmer (true) etc. I think my lack of sleep and low energy meant I couldn’t really face this feedback at that moment. 

I spent the rest of the day feeling quite low and gradually more and more ill. By the evening I felt a full on cold/fever coming on. I awoke at 5am in with a fever and emailed to say I wouldn’t be coming in the next day. I also took Friday off. I did absolutely no work on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, except reading. Although I still feel ill I feel rejuvenated and less tired. Today I went for a massage and a tapas lunch. After the three days of no work I am finally feeling ready for the final two weeks of placement 1. Let’s hope my croaky sore voice holds out.

My aim next week is to remain as calm and fluid as this stream: