#i realise i've been very active with fic writing/posting today

[wellbelesbian]

Seven Sentence Sunday

thanks for tagging me @youarenevertooold @artsyunderstudy @alexalexinii and @forabeatofadrum! there aren't many hours left of this sunday and i didn't think i would post anything as i'm super sick with a cold, but i ended up writing a little bit of Keris's POV for a bonus kerixie chapter of my COTTA fic. there's a while to wait before it will be published though!

"I've had to fight for my rights myself. I was at Greenham Common protesting American warheads and fought with the police there, and you know what? It was the most alive I ever felt! That's why the women are running the show, because we actually know what we're doing. And I know especially well. I bet those gay people know what they're doing too, they've been fighting plenty. So if people are going to laugh at you, I suggest you grow a pair and stand up for yourself like we've all been doing!"

i have... thoughts on how the Pride movie approached Lesbians Against Pit Closures, and many of the lesbian characters in general, which i will cover under the cut.

so. the film had a tendency to treat the lesbians as annoying and preachy, and make their attempts at independence seem at best laughable or at worst needlessly divisive. i never liked that, and reading the book on the real events only made it worse.

as the book explains, LGSM could be a loud, politically divided, male dominated group that many women felt they couldn't speak up in. LAPC was necessary for those who felt silenced in the original group or never joined to begin with due to a discomfort with men. the two groups eventually operated alongside one another and you could be a member of both if you were a gay woman, but there were plenty of women who were only a member of one or the other.

and this isn't to criticise LGSM. as i said, they still welcomed women and worked alongside LAPC. many of the men from LGSM stood picketing alongside LAPC when a bar stopped running women's only nights. LAPC twinned with a different village in the north of England, so the existence of the two groups overall helped more people and spread their reach further. the distaste the men have for the idea of a women's group in the movie was nowhere near as strong as it appears to have been in real life.

and we know many lesbians did indeed feel unwelcome around men. they reported being uniquely disliked by the straight men of Onllwyn. while the miners soon got accustomed to the gay men, having at least some common ground with them, they had no interest in lesbians. a sort of "you're not like me, or available to me, so why are you here?" vibe. eventually this attitude seemed to fade and disappear, but by then some women had given up trying to befriend them and had stopped visiting.

however, a lot of the women in Onllwyn were very happy to see the lesbians, as many were queer themselves. some of the lesbians of the group reported having relationships of varying degrees with the Welsh women, and one of the women interviewed in the book was sixteen at the time and came out later in life, being accepted due to LGSM's role in her family's life. today, the village seems very welcoming to lesbians, but that wasn't always the case.

the lesbians also brought with them politics and feminism. while many Welsh women were already politically active (see above when i mentioned Greenham Common, a real protest staged by women of all classes and sexualities before the strikes, and of course they were involved in the miner's strikes), the lesbians fanned that flame and introduced them to new concepts and issues.

Trixie and Keris are my tributes to those two kinds of women. the lesbians of London who got political and struck out on their own, and the lesbians of Wales who only realised they were gay once LGSM arrived and shook up their lives.

anyway. this wound up being longer than i intended.

i'll not tag anyone as it's late, but if anyone wants to share a wip and hasn't been tagged yet, consider this your tag!

[dean-winchester-is-a-warrior]

Thank you for reblogging and sharing that ask regarding being blocked by a blogger who didn't like the serial likes of their stories. That was me btw. Thank you for making me feel validated. I've been such a long time silent reader just bc I'm not a marvel account and I genuinely don't know what to comment on stories. I got excited at the thought of reading all the posts I liked and even tried following them thats when I realised I got blocked, it honestly made me so sad and feel bad, and tbh made me insecure. I didn't know it was such a bad thing? I've been on here reading a lot of stories for years now and never came across someone who would actively block someone liking their stories. Now I'm scared everyone who's friends with that person who writes fics also that I read also will block me too. Idk now I'm a little discouraged to read stories in that fandom that I have found such comfort and excitement over.

I'm SO sorry this took me so long to respond to. I have no excuses. Lol! I saw it when you sent it - meant to respond and then completely forgot till I came to my inbox today. 🤦‍♀️ As my mom used to say, "I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on tight."

But I'm glad I could make you feel less guilty (you should feel NO guilt, imo) about "serial liking" someone's fics. It's one of my favourite things when readers do that. I especially love it when I can see them making it through a series, chapter by chapter. Just makes me smile!

I don't really understand why that would bother someone. As I mentioned in my reblog of your original ask, interaction - with comments/reblogs - are always VERY appreciated. But I also get that not everyone has time for that, or feels comfortable commenting. Some people are shy, some people are nervous about reaching out to someone when they don't know what their response might be.

And I don't blame them. I have unfortunately seen a couple of asks answered by a fairly popular blog (who shall remain nameless) that I found to be quite rude. Of course, I may be wrong about the intention behind those seemingly rude answers. You never can tell, because getting emotions and sarcasm across in text only, can be tough. (I'm still lobbying for a universal "sarcasm font". 😁)

Anyway, I hope you will be able to still enjoy fics within that fandom, and that it can continue to give you the comfort it has in the past. We all deserve that.

Thanks for reaching out, and again, sorry it took me so long to get back to you. 🥰

[lit-in-thy-heart]

Elyan, before meeting Lancelot, had always hated strong wind. As a child it had carried the cries of the executions -- even though in hindsight they had been few and far between -- to his home, then when he had wandered alone it had always been a bitter companion. But when he had met Lancelot, there had been a source of heat to press himself again and a different breeze curling against his neck.

It was rattling the windowpanes, now, and Elyan looked towards the empty bed. He had lost count of the number of bitter nights he and Lancelot had fallen asleep entwined in one another on top of the sheets, shielding each other from the ferocious howling outside. Lancelot, tired but not wanting to force Elyan to get into bed too, would usually curl up on his side, limbs drawn close to his body, and allow his breaths to even out. Elyan, usually absorbed in a book, would absent-mindedly reach out and bury his fingers in Lancelot’s hair, stroking it back from his forehead, and would gradually inch further towards him as the wind threatened to slink in through the subtle cracks in the wall. The repetitive movement would lull Elyan towards unconsciousness and he would abandon his book to turn the pages of Lancelot’s pulse with his fingers and then, together, they would drift off into sleep with their dreams scattered by the candlelight.

The wind was screaming tonight and the bed was empty.