#look I'm real gay okay

[brainwormcity]

As a short queer trans guy, learning that David Tennant is a foot taller than me makes me feel... Some type of way. 😌

[paradox-complex]

imagine having to hide your love towards a guy of your same sex, your family burning most of your letters to him and after like two hundred years, now that being homosexual is (somewhat) worldly accepted, people are just making fan art of you and your lover making out

[dangerous-disposition]

People: [read a Steddie fic]

Steddie Fic: [is about Steddie and the characters in it are largely focused on the Steddie aspect as it is... A fic about Steve and Eddie. Maybe hones in on Robin being the first gay person Steve has probably KNOWN he's fucking met in his entire life and plays on that for his Sexuality Crisis]

People: why do all the characters seem to only care about Steddie? Why do these Steddie fics that are about Steve and Eddie not show the women do anything that aren't about Steve and Eddie? This fandom has a woman problem.

[hershelwidget]

Electric Love!

THEY CAME OUT SOOO GOOODD!!!!

I wasn’t originally going to make them monochromatic, but I got too attached to their outline colours and now, uh, here we are! Guess I’m doing this for each team!

Also! These will be based off of scenes! Electric Love’s scene takes place outside as it gets darker, and it is their first reactions to the Hatred Duo, whom they have finally found. [Click for higher quality!]

[harrylovesspaezle]

been listening to one direction for like 3 hours(nostalgia reasons) and i honestly do now know how i still know all the words... 14 year old me one priority and one priority only and it was burning that discography into my brain

[transgender-catboy]

This is my girlfriend :3

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

Can we talk about how heartstopper is like. Not good. Like pretty sure it's. Y'know. Kinda bad. Mediocre at best. To be clear I don't actually want to talk about it because i don't want all the gen z's to flay me alive for being a millennial who just doesn't get their cool gay stuff like idk I just don't like this it feels so sanitized and so bland and safe.

[ssaalexblake]

absolutely fascinated by jodie’s post doctor gay up* in looks 

*by that I mean glow up but Gay. 

[ice-sculptures]

Why does the girl crying about her ugly boyfriend + the friend comforting her by saying she could dump her boyfriend tomorrow sound like El and Max? (Although the jury disagrees with the statement that Mike is ugly).

oh my god anon, you're a genius 😭

you inspired me, so here, i wrote 2k of elmax one-sided enemies-to-friends-to-something-more 👀 meet-cute with a hint of byler!!

and i just wanna include a disclaimer that the abundant mike slander in this is just for the bit!! i think mike is so very wonderful, and, of course, finn wolfhard is absolutely gorgeous :)

[scatteredshowersposts]

1. Hasta la Raiz - Natalia Lafourcade

Pienso que cada instante sobrevivido al caminar Y cada segundo de incertidumbre Cada momento de no saber Son la clave exacta de este tejido Que ando cargando bajo la piel Así te protejo Aquí sigues dentro (I think that every moment I survive this walk And every second of uncertainty Every moment of not knowing Are the exact key to this woven fabric That I carry below my skin That's how I protect you You're still here inside)

2. Habbaitak Be El Saif - Fairuz حبيتك بالصيف حبيتك بالشتي نطرتك بالصيف نطرتك بالشتي وعيونك الصيف وعيوني الشتي ملقانا يا حبيبي (I loved you in summer, I loved you in winter, I waited for you in summer, I waited for you in winter, Your eyes in summer, my eyes in winter, We did not meet my love)

3. No Voy a Decir Que No - Ximena Sariñana Pero si cruzas mi camino Con toda la intención Ignorando la experiencia No voy a decir que no (But if you cross my path With intent Ignoring experience I won't say no)

4. Say the Truth and Run - Meryem Aboulela

Throw out the truth and Face it widely Get your facts straight Think it widely Break the walls

5. James Joint - Rihanna How you live and love like 'fuck rules'? Don't care why just know I love you.

6. Te Regalo - Carla Morrison

Déjame quedarme aquí Déjame besarte ahí Donde guardas tus secretos Los más oscuros y los más bellos Let me stay here Let me kiss you there Where you keep your secrets The darkest, and the most beautiful

7. Victory - Janelle Monae

Oh, I'll keep singing songs until the pain goes If loving you means fighting till the end Then I'll fight harder, baby, just to win And if tomorrow shall come to me I'll count your every kiss as a victory

8. It's a good day (to fight the system) - Shungudzo The birds are in the trees They're singin' me a melody La-la-la-la, fuck the police

[loudmouthedllama]

Get a job go outside go touch grass go get laid

I'm getting laid more than ya, and that makes ya mad, huh?

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

[emptylotfiasco]

i will not buy infinite wealth because I bought gaiden and still haven't finished it and I'd feel bad about making another Big Game Purchase. I will be purchasing a gun to kill myself with though

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Pt I good omens but i've never watched it

i've never seen good omens but it's all over my tumblr dash so this is what I've gathered can someone please confirm if i've got it right

there's a demon named crowley

there's a biblically inaccurate angel named aziraphale but like it's very sexy when the demon calls him 'angel'

the demon and angel have been married for 6000 years and they still keep looking at each other all sappily

Neil Gaiman is somehow involved, I think he's the writer but also he's on tumblr (uh, @neil-gaiman) and people keep questioning if he's real

is neil gaiman like a fandom inside joke why is everyone asking if he's real

there actors are called michael and david and amazon prime thought they were the same

there is a bookstore and crowley is sad

they kiss and it is very nice and desperate and crowley says we could have been us. i have no context for this. someone is going to heaven i think.

there is a god, i'm not sure if they're good or evil though

the demon wears sunglasses

it's a comedy but for some reason everyone's crying after whatever the last season was, are you guys okay

things are on fire

they are very gay

there was a book and at one point they switch bodies

more fire and crowley screaming

they are called ineffable husbands i dont know what that means

they fight crime or they do crime or they fight crime by doing crime i really cannot remember which

gay

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

UPDATE What's up, it's the proposal guy. You said you wanted to know how this turned out, so I figured I'd tell you. First some context though, because I'm mean and I wanna keep you in suspense longer.

1- I don't wanna doxx us so I'm not telling you where we live, but suffice to say, neither of us are American, and gay marriage has been legal here for less than five years. For both of us, this is the first relationship we've had where marriage was even an OPTION, and I think that's where we've been getting some of that whole 'this has to be a REAL proposal with EVERYTHING' idea.

2- I gotta figure out how to explain this properly. So, I'm pretty used to being the GUY guy in relationships? I was always the one who did the nice gestures, not the one they got done for. Before I met my dream guy, I didn't really notice or care that it was such a thing, I just assumed that's how shit worked. Also, I promised I wouldn't talk a lot about his stuff here, but his last boyfriend before me SUCKED. Anyway point here is, it turns out we both REALLY like feeling swept off our feet sometimes, and a big part of finding each other has been getting to feel special for once? That's a stupid sappy way of putting it the point here is I think all that's what morphed into "I need to be the one getting proposed to, also it has to be completely perfect", and then our Petty & Extra genes got involved.

So I'm sitting in bed thinking about all that up there, and watching all the comments coming in basically being like "Dude, you are BLOWING this" on repeat, and telling me to compromise, and I look up and see him flossing in the bathroom and making all these doofy faces at the mirror, and it's like a switch just flips in my brain, and I'm like "Oh, I'd rather he gets to have his perfect proposal than we both have an okay one". I'm gonna do it.

Morning rolls around, and while I'm 'out for my jog like normal' I hit up a pawn shop for a temp ring (the ring pop thing is cute but NOT HIM). I found one I was at least confident wouldn't get ruined the first time he got his hands greasy (he fixes old machines as a hobby it's hot as hell), got back home, and hid the box in the toe of my nasty ass workout shoes in the bedroom closet, since I figured he'd check there last.

He was still asleep, because he stays up late no matter what and then is SHOCKED he's tired the next day, so I called and booked a table at our usual anniversary spot. (Side note about the 'he picks bad restaurants' thing. This isn't an 'I like Greek, you like Chinese' situation, dude's just BAD at finding places. He either assumes pricey is tasty and I get to eat some overrated gourmet bullshit, or he'll try and find something hip and underground and risk giving us food poisoning again, and he REFUSES to give up and pick somewhere we've been before when it's his turn to plan date night. I'm obsessed with him <3.) Date was set, I'd propose on the 21st.

Some of you might have noticed this, but fun fact! It's currently the 16th.

Last night I'm doing dishes and he's been sent to our room for mug collection duty, and he's taking FOREVER, so I go check just in case he found the ring, because the man's a gift tracking BLOODHOUND. Turns out he hasn't, he's found my Angry Box.

I assume other people have an Angry Box? Basically, we had this huge messy fight right when we first moved in together, and I never wanna let it get that bad again, so I have this shoebox where I keep a bunch of our stuff I can look at if we're fighting and hopefully cool off. There's one of those photo booth roll things, letters we wrote when he moved back with his parents for COVID, the wine cork from our first date, shit like that. Anyway, he's just sitting on the floor staring at it, and I explain about the Angry Box, and then he! Proposes!!! Kind of.

He definitely didn't have anything prepared, because by 'propose' I mean 'ugly cried & rambled at me for several minutes before I figured out it WAS a proposal', but once I got on the same page it was amazing. I said yes, and he had to admit he didn't have a ring for me because he was CONVINCED he'd win and I'd do it, so I grabbed mine because, yeah, he was right. He was like "this is the ugliest ring I've ever seen" and I was like yeah well the plan is to replace it later and he went "No. You can pry this off my cold dead fingers. After I'm buried with it." So I guess it's not a temporary ring anymore.

I'm just gonna go ahead and skip to this morning. I pointed out we still have the reservation, and he said I should propose there anyway because "We can get a free dessert. They have those creme brulee shot glasses you like. And for love, or something" and I said ok deal, but that means you gotta get me a ring to keep it fair, and his eyes LIT UP. When I swung by his work for lunch he was still on the phone with a jeweler and he had a whole page of notes on three other ones. Pray for me.

OH PS: I was RIGHT that he'd been the one behind the cat biting me, but it wasn't about the proposal stuff, it's because I paid my baby sister three dollars to shout 'fuck you' every single time he enters a room she's in for (if you ask me, he should be madder at my sister for charging so little), and he did it by giving her a bunch of treats for biting his hands too, so now neither of us can pet our baby girl without oven mitts on. HOLY SHIT I love this man.

Oh my goddddddd I love everything about this <333 I awwww'd out loud on a voice call, like, six times while reading. You two are friggin perfect for each other and so obviously smitten with each other and I wish y'all all the happiness in the world

PS Are y'all planning to have a big wedding? If so oh boy I can't WAIT to get that one in the inbox

Original post

[inkskinned]

so while i was writing the book, i became violently suicidal.

this was mostly due to the fact that i had a very bad reaction to some meds and my brain stopped producing any serotonin. also i was in the last semester of grad school where it's actually illegal to feel anything but dread. so it wasn't going well.

somewhere in the fog of it i became aware i needed help. nobody was taking clients or my insurance. i didn't want to do inpatient care - it wasn't right for my needs. there's not really an "in between" stage between "inpatient" and "no care," but i was trying to do the right thing. i was trying to activate the chain of command that was my emergency plan. i knew i needed help now.

i used betterhelp.

i know, i know. i'm a straight-A student and so smart and so clever, how could i ever use something so blatantly bad. to be honest with you, i didn't feel particularly keen on it from the getgo - things that seem too good to be true usually are. also, if something online is free, the price is usually your privacy.

the thing is that there was kind of a global pandemic happening at the time and i worked 5 jobs alongside of being a fulltime student and also like writing a book on the side. it is a miracle that i even thought about getting help. i would love to tell you i had the mental wherewithal to like, process whether this was the right choice for me. mostly i was desperate. i was so suicidal that i was trying to find a reason to stay inside of fortune cookies. i was the kind of suicidal that looks like splatterpaint. i hadn't been that bad in an entire decade.

they took my data. i gave them it freely. somewhere out there, they have a dossier on me. on everything i survived. my story in little datapoints, scattergraphed beautifully.

the first woman told me that really i should be grateful, because (and this is a direct quote): "at least you're not anne frank." i said that i felt that statement was antisemitic, as anne frank's life and experience shouldn't be compared to like, a nonbinary lesbian in western massachusetts. the therapist said that i should try to use lucid dreaming to try to picture myself in an actually scary situation, like running from nazis.

i applied for another therapist. i was willing to accept the possibility that there was a bad apple in the bunch. the next therapist and i even laughed about how inappropriate that statement was. and then, in our next session: the new therapist said if i was struggling with body image issues, i should just work harder on my appearance. she spent 3 sessions in a row talking about how she was grieving, and made me memorize facts about her grandmother so "she can live on through my clients."

i am a three's-a-charm kind of person. okay, so what if the last person made me uncomfortable. i figured it was just a misunderstanding of priorities - she had felt she was sharing with me, i had felt like i had to take care of her. i applied for another therapist.

the last woman asked me to help her pray. she bowed her head. i stared at her, frozen, while she said: lord, i beg you: cure her. take the pain of being gay away from her.

i spent somewhere between 2.5 and 3 months on betterhelp. in that whole time, i was not getting the professional help i so desperately needed, even though i was fucking trying.

in the end, i survived this because i finally could get off the meds that were literally killing me. a request for a real therapist finally went through. i survived because my friends saved my life. because nick let me sob myself dry in his arms. because maddie took the razors out of my room when i asked them to. because grace slept over in my bed for like 3 weeks in a row since nobody trusted me not to hurt myself when i was alone. i survived because i got fucking lucky. because even when i was desperately suicidal, i was too old and too self-aware to take "you need to be prettier" as good advice.

the thing is that there's a 19 year old me who isn't like that. who would have heard "just think about how grateful you should be" and said - oh, i see. i would have assumed that is what it means to be in therapy: the same thing my abusers used to tell me. that i am just pretending and lazy. that i am ugly and unworthy.

betterhelp positioned itself to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable community. it preys on desperation. it knows it is serving people who are not doing well mentally. it saw that there is a huge need for real, immediate, compassionate mental health care: and then it fucking takes your money and privacy.

i still get their ads on instagram. last night i watched as a woman in a pool pretends to talk to a different woman. they discuss her anxiety.

there's a 19 year old version of me, and she didn't survive this. she was too tired, and drowning. i almost fucking died. this thing almost fucking killed me.

in the ad, the woman playing the therapist takes a note on a clipboard and then nods once, sagely.

i have to admit it's a pretty scene. the steam and light coming off the pool water lands on the actresses. like this, it almost looks baptismal, holy.