#queer coes

[nysocboy]

Did the "Solar Opposites Valentine's Day Special" really change everything?

Discussing the Solar Opposites Valentine's Day Special, showrunner Josh Bycel noted that holiday specials are usually stand-alone episodes, with no plot or character development: "So we love the idea of [this one] tricking people into realizing like, ‘Oh my God, the end of the episode is actually the biggest thing that’s ever happened to these characters short of landing on Earth!"

Co-creator Mike McMahon adds: "it really changes the dynamic of the characters."

Left: Mike McMahon, but he might not be the same one

Spoiler alert: Korvo and Terry, have sex.

Solar Opposite is an animated comedy about a group of aliens trapped on Earth: team leader Korvo, the "let's do this by the books" micro-manager; the effervescent goofball Terry; their teenage replicants Yumyulack and Jesse, and the Pupa.  Korvo and Terry find each other's habits annoying, and often argue about how assimilated they should become.

In the special, the group tries to order cold, wet tuna in a restaurant, only to discover that it's Valentine's Day, so only romantic dinners are available.  Should they come back tomorrow, or use their alien science to eliminate romantic love from the world.

They decide to eliminate romantic love.  But that turns everyone into Jimmy Buffet fans: they walk around in Hawaiian shirts, with parrots, drinking piña coladas.  Then the parrots become sentient and go to war with the humans.

To fix the mess, the aliens have to find someone who still experiences romantic love, and use them to beam love down to the planet.  There are no humans left, but what about penguins?  Nope, they are pro-parrot, and won't help the humans. 

Terry asks: "Couldn't we love each other?"

No, all Schlorpians have is teammate affinity.  But maybe that will be enough.  They have to try.

Terry hates teammate affinity: "It's so annoying that I miss you uncontrollably when you leave the room."

Korvo agrees.  He hates "the way it makes the prickly bumps on my arms stand up when you bend over to pick something up from the floor."

Um..guys, that's erotic and romantic desire.....

They get it on.

I know it's just cartoon alien sex, but to be on the safe side, I'm moving the pictures to the NSFW site.  

It works!  Lesbian and heterosexual couples start making out, and the world is saved.

Cut to the two getting married, by AISHA, their AI device: the Roman Catholic Church has given her permission to conduct a same-sex marriage by "today only."  It always bugs me that no tv, only Catholic churches exist.  Also that all churches are homophobic. 

So how did this "change everything"?  We use queer codes, actions or statements in the tv texts, to indicate that two guys are a romantic couple.  All of them have some degree of deniability -- you could argue that "straight buddies do that."  But the most undeniable codes are identifying statements such as "we are boyfriends" and acts of physical affection.  

Korvo and Terry may have started out as teammates, but by the second season, they are calling each other "husbands,"  They get jealous when someone else intrudes into the relationship. Terry was devastated when Korvo had sex with another male being.  They kiss.  They have discussed "a blow job," "putting things into Terry's butt," and rimming.  Terry is turned on by Korvo with a British accent and wearing a v-neck t-shirt.  He has stated that he is in love with Korvo. How does having sex changes the dynamic? 

McMahan claims that previously they were "just teammates," with little "are they or aren't they" hints.

He thought getting a blow job was a hint?  

The NSFW version, with alien sex and Mike McMahon's butt, is on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

[rosetylerlesbians]

My partner said “love Clem’s olfactory gaydar”

[moonmoonthecrabking]

mad about a tweet of an article portraying something technically true but basically wrong

[ocean-not-found]

Im now *officially* a follower of Jesus Christ!

I got baptised today!

I got to have the Salve Regina as my baptism song.

Im gonna miss my church. My family, my friends i've made there. Everyone has been incredibly kind to me. So thank you to all of them. Going as far as to make me a cake! I'm leaving for care next week. But i will never forget them. My family in Christ 💙

-your local, Gnostic christian.

[vague-humanoid]

In the past, Aniston said, “you could joke about a bigot and have a laugh — that was hysterical. And it was about educating people on how ridiculous people were. And now we’re not allowed to do that.”

“There’s a whole generation of people, kids, who are now going back to episodes of Friends and find them offensive,” she continued. “There were things that were never intentional and others… well, we should have thought it through — but I don’t think there was a sensitivity like there is now.”

Friends has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years thanks to the show’s availability on streaming platforms like Netflix. At the same time, however, it has been criticized for its lack of diversity and for its treatment of LGBTQ+ characters. The series rarely featured people of color in prominent roles, and cultural critics have noted a consistent undercurrent of homophobia in the show’s portrayal of two recurring lesbian characters and in jokes about the show’s male leads, particularly Matthew Perry’s character Chandler.

The show also consistently made a punchline out of Perry’s character’s transgender parent, frequently misgendering the character, who was initially played by a cis male actor in early seasons and later by Kathleen Turner. Both Turner and series co-creator Marta Kauffman have expressed regret about the way the character was handled.

As mentioned, Aniston’s comments come as she’s promoting Netflix’s Murder Mystery 2. The streaming giant has also faced criticism in recent years for platforming comedy specials from Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais that featured transphobic jokes. Both comedians have blamed so-called “cancel culture” for criticism of their transphobic comments.

Aniston’s assertion that jokes about bigots educate people and reveal the absurdity of bigotry is also worth noting. Research has indicated that satirizing bigotry rarely changes people’s attitudes, and authors Malcolm Gladwell and Jonathan Coe have argued that laughing at satirical portrayals of political problems like bigotry can actually diffuse the discomfort with them that could lead to actual political action.

Aniston’s comments suggest an anxiety on her part about what can and cannot be said in a comedic context that echoes Chappelle and Gervais’s rage against “cancel culture.” But that anxiety neglects the way comedy functions, and in particular what the undercurrents of homophobia and outright transphobia on Friends implied about queer and trans people. The show’s jokes about Chandler, Ross, and Joey’s casual discomfort with queerness, their frequent panic at being considered gay, may have—as Aniston implied—been intended to reveal how ridiculous homophobia is.

But those jokes also normalized that discomfort, portraying it as harmlessly laughable rather than toxic. The show did little to dismantle the notion that queerness is shameful, instead making its 90s audience comfortable with laughing it off rather than interrogating why grown men would be so fearful of being considered gay.

Friends’ treatment of Chandler’s transgender parent was even worse, consistently portraying her as an oddity, a freak, someone whose experience of herself and the world could never be understood by “normal” cisgender people.

What we laugh at and why matters. Is it so much to ask that comedians take that into account, that they be more “careful” with their comedy?

Kids these days—to recklessly paraphrase Aniston—are right to be uncomfortable with the way Friends handled queerness. They’re perhaps more aware of the impact that type of careless humor can have on attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community, and perhaps allowing for that discomfort—rather than laughing it off, rather than dismissing it as just a joke—will lead to more positive social impact.

this is alll true, but also fails to mention freinds is literally a white ripoff of a black show, and thus is inherently racist by its existence

[transbookoftheday]

Disobedience by Daniel Sarah Karasik

Shael lives in a vast prison camp, a monstrosity developed after centuries of warfare and environmental catastrophe. As a young transfeminine person, they risk abject violence if their identity and love affair with Coe, an insurrectionary activist, are discovered. But desire and rebellion flare, and soon Shael escapes to Riverwish, a settlement attempting to forge a new way of living that counters the camp's repression.

As the complexities of this place unfold before Shael, Disobedience asks: How can a community redress harm without reproducing unaccountable forms of violence? How do we heal? What might a compassionate, sustainable model of justice look like?

This is a remarkable work of queer and trans speculative fiction that imagines how alternative forms of connection and power can refuse the violent institutions that engulf us.

[bottlecap-press]

From Coe Colette's chapbook, Maladaptive Daydreams, available from Bottlecap Press!

[theangelshavethephonebox]

I finally watched it. CoE ep4. God, that hurt.

This ep response won't be told in a funny shitpost like last time- I'm about to get real here. I read this post recently about how Ianto's death was an analogy for the lives lost during the AIDS crisis- a queer man who died of a virus due to the government. And watching him die like that made me think, all these feelings came crashing over me. Fuck, that hurt. This is what we're facing. This is what people will do. This is how strong we have to be.

It hit me, all at once. I'm sorry if this is emotional or non coherent or whatever, but this was an important thing I just felt: this is who we were, who we are, and who we still will be. This, Jack, carrying on, that's who we have to be. That's what we're up against, and that's how strong we must remain, day in, day out.

In a thousand years time, our fight will be remembered, because it has to be. Because there will still be someone, in a thousand years, someone like me, and someone like you, someone who doesn't call themself queer but feels the same way, who remembers our fight. The way we remember our lost loved ones, and the Public Universal Friend, and Marsha P Johnson, and Achilles, fighting by his boyfriend's side. Of all the fictional people, and all the real people they were based on, who fought this same battle.

The battle continues, and we can't let it stop, so we remain strong with their memories. Day in, day out, we'll be strong.

[princesscolumbia]

🌟

*cracks knuckles, does that thing in martial arts movies where the fighters tilt their heads and a series of pops can be heard* Alright, let's do this!

Excerpt from Code of Ethics, ch. 12 - Being Lost

Previously, in Code of Ethics: Dylan is the American Republic's best cyber-agent in the 22nd century, employed by "the agency" to track down and eliminate the existential threat to humanity known as 'rogue A.I.' The agency gets word that some of these rogues are using a new VRMMO game to hide, and so secures one of the hugely popular "pods" used to do deep-dive immersion gaming, once in the game the player's mind is in their character's body, experiencing everything as though it were real. Dylan's briefing on hunting the 'rogues' in the games indicates they prefer to 'come out' to members of the queer community. Since he is NOT attracted to men and couldn't fake it to save his life, he creates a woman character from a species consisting entirely of women named Morvucks. Shortly after activating her new station in the game, Diane learns she needs a part that is no longer made except for a small custom parts house on the home planet of the Morvuck's, Mortan. She decides to take a walk in one of the big cities on the planet while there and...

Her attention was drawn back to the girls in the schoolyard who were all babbling excitedly and looking around and, surprisingly, up. Diane, confused, cast her gaze upward herself, just in time to see movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and spotted something truly massive flying through the metal and glass jungle of the downtown area, and part of her felt the instinctual need to flee a flying predator and hide. She consciously reminded herself that this was a game and tracked the movement, spotting, as best she could tell, a long, sinuous body covered in scales and held aloft by titanic bat-like wings.

One thing I like to remind people of is my writing process is extremely "seat of the pants." The following is what was in my original outline for CoE for the part that this chapter would come from:

Diane’s first ‘mission’ is at the request of the creator of Katrina’s program, taking her to her (character’s) home world, discovering that she’s feeling perfectly at home in a world entirely composed of women, even if about half of them have dual sex organs and 100% of the population is capable of giving birth. The mission is a diplomatic trip, boosting her ‘Alliance’ skill tree. She discovers her ‘Ethics’ tree has already unlocked some nodes based on her initial actions.

As you can see, nothing in there about a downtown walk, a class of children, or the signature event that would define this particular mini-arc and would craft an entire character. This isn't to say this scene didn't come from somewhere, one scene I still want to write would turn out to be, in context, extremely anticlimactic compared to the rest of this one chapter. Diane was going to go to Mortan, meet some nice ladies, have the concept that "sex is not gender" (reference for the adult fans of my Ranmafics) hammered home a bit harder, and pick up some officers for her station, then go to a megafauna reserve where she'd interact with some Morvish dinos. (I'll probably get this scene written for my "cutting room floor" entry on AO3) What I realized a little late in the story-writing process was Diane was having a lot of downer moments, and the problem with that was her time in the game was intended to help her unlearn the cult-like worldview from outside the game. (And, btw, this was my purpose for her time in the game, not [REDACTED].) (...the problem with writing spy thrillers is you wind up having to be very careful about what you want to talk about earlier on that you plan on being a major plot point later on. There's, at this point in the story, two entire plotlines happening behind the scenes that the reader isn't aware of because they must, by necessity demanded of the genre, be held close to the author's chest until such time as The Reveal happens.) Now, obviously Daffyd wasn't Katrina's creator. He's about 200 years too young for that. When I was cobbling together the outline I had the notion that the in-game story for Katrina would be a special brand of A.I. gifted to Diane and this would help her with the requisite plot armor to make her a protag...until I remembered that Diane is going to be on a hair trigger for anything named "A.I." and would probably distrust Katrina from the word "go" if that had been how things went. Ultimately, Katrina's origins would be just, "One of hundreds, nothing special other than she's the most recently fully activated by a seed station commander," and the justification for going to Mortan was, "Golly, these are old systems, too bad only this one specialty shop on this one planet that's magically important to your character makes that part, and oh...golly, you're going to have to go get it yourself instead of mail-order."

Diane’s awareness of her surroundings told her the girls in the schoolyard spotted it, too. Their babblings turned into excited shrieks and cheering, a few shouting attention grabbing phrases like, “Over here!” or “We see you!” Part of her wanted to turn to see why the children were so excited, but the majority of her attention was on whatever was approaching.

She didn’t have long to wait, though, as one of Mortan’s legendary megafauna banked around one of the skyscrapers and started heading down the building-lined canyon of the street she was standing on. The excited shouts reached a crescendo as a massive creature with an almost catlike body flew up to one of the ledges formed by the bottom most layer of one of the towering buildings and settled to land. It…she took some ginger steps forward, using her snake-like tail to balance as she stretched her neck up and sniffed at the air, seemingly on the hunt. The creature’s head was wedge shaped, graceful horns curving aerodynamically back from where they grew out of her temples. Fins articulated almost like cat’s ears, sweeping up and down as she sought her prey. Her snout was more like a beak but instead of being a hard, bone-like material that sharpened to a point, it formed a full, almost crocodilian jaw, though with the smooth scales and sleek musculature of a snake. She shifted her eyes about, taking everything in with a raptor’s awareness.

Diane was looking at a dragon.

That's right, in a move that surprised precisely zero people, I put a dragon in one of my fics. One thing I hadn't managed to put into the narrative is how Diane knew the dragon is female. And the answer is that Diane isn't sure at this point how she knows the dragon is female, she just knows. The intent is that she's letting her created body's instincts guide her more and more the more comfortable she gets. She isn't aware of it quite yet, but she's started to really sink into being this person she's never had a chance to explore being before. She doesn't know it, but she's relying on her scenting ability to identify things that her sight doesn't pick up right away.

Diane was looking at a god-damn dragon in the middle of the downtown of a major metropolitan area.

She watched as the massive being took a deep breath through her nostrils and then bellowed a shrieking roar that could probably have been heard from orbit.

There was an answering shriek, much quieter, from the direction the bird Diane could no longer think of as very large. She glanced off in the direction but didn’t see anything, so snapped her head back to see the dragon snorting with what she could swear was a satisfied smirk.

A few breaths later, the creature’s entire bearing seemed to change, and it let out an almost barking chirp, not nearly at the ear-splitting volume of her earlier call. Diane felt like she was jumping out of her own skin when, led by (to her absolute shock) the schoolyard full of girls, every Morvuck in the area let out an echoing shrieking call of their own. The dragon leapt down to the street and for the first time since becoming aware of the megafauna, Diane realized that all traffic had drawn to a halt. Women were stepping out of building entrances and climbing out of cars to view the creature. For her part, the dragon very deftly maneuvered around cars and any other vehicles, obviously very aware of the space she was taking up and accounting for the Morvuck built obstacles with her body movements.

I mention this in the next chapter, but this cultural integration was directly inspired by some legends of the peoples of Iceland and Greenland forming cooperative partnerships that lasted generations...until the European whale hunting ships came along and destroyed the bond between humans and whales. I imagined a society where such megafauna were airborn and thirty billion times more dangerous than the average person and capable of tearing apart whole armies if it wanted...and what a world where two apex predators might be like. A species that would be so culturally interlocked with something so ancient and powerful and so obviously present as a dragon IRL would be would create a reverent mutually protective bond.

The dragon stopped next to the school, which also happened to be about fifty yards from Diane, and looked down into the schoolyard at the extremely excited girls that were all clambering to the fence to try and get closer to it. It let out another, only slightly quieter vocalization, this one more of a throaty, almost coughing sound. The girls replied as best their much smaller throats could, a sound that was echoed by the watching (and smiling) women around her.

Apparently satisfied at the girl’s response, the dragon started to move in the direction of a longer boulevard when it stopped and sniffed the air. Diane noted that the women around her were confused, as though this was aberrant behavior, but they weren’t showing signs that this was something to fear.

This school, btw, is directly based off an elementary school about four blocks away from my apartment which, as you may guess, is in a major metropolitan downtown area.

As she sniffed the air, the dragon turned her head first one way, then the other. Finally, she seemed to zero in on what had caught her attention and her eyes scanned the ground to settle on something in Diane’s direction. She turned to see what the dragon might have spotted, in case of some threat like the raptor that had tried to snatch a child, but upon seeing nothing she turned back around and realized that the dragon was moving straight at her.

She felt her heart hammering as her brain suddenly seemed to go blank. She may be a pretty impressive specimen of Morvuck biology, but she absolutely paled in comparison to this beast that had to be at least the size of a private jet. Even her human instincts seemed to have given up on her, freezing up when she wasn’t even remotely in any sort of camouflaging surroundings.

A number of years ago Vsauce released a really interesting video on dragons:

Watch the whole thing if you haven't...and then watch it again when you're finished reading the entirety of Code of Ethics once I'm done writing it. I 100% promise you're gonna sit back and go, "...whoah!" Here's the tl;dw context for this post - Dragons that I write are biological and behavioral combinations of cats (ambush predators that are all points), snakes (ambush predators that slither on the ground), and raptors (ambush predators that fly). Diane's very human instincts will be exactly on-point for how one should behave if a dragon were real...and you were a small-ish primate in the African savanna surrounded by tall grass or trees and being hunted by an apex predator many, many times your size.

Very slowly, the massive snout neared her, deep breaths in to capture scent turning into clothing-ruffling breezes as the mega-predator investigated whatever about Diane caught her attention. She could see the pair of huge eyes focused entirely on her; each eye bigger her torso.

Of course, readers of Code of Ethics will know what's about to happen, and this Matron has scented one of the helpless little baby dragons under her protection and discovered... "Oh no, she's sick! She doesn't smell of a mother! Is anyone going to adopt this lil' creecher?" ...and didn't wait for an answer.

A low, quiet croon came from the dragon’s throat as it nuzzled her. With the physical contact her brain seemed to reset, and as she shifted her feet to catch herself her hands reached forward, and she wound up steading herself against the dragon’s nose.

“Uh…hi…” she said oh-so-intelligently.

This, apparently, was encouraging to the dragon, she huffed a warm breath through her nostrils (again ruffling Diane’s cloths) and made another vocalization, this time a sound like a deep, tripping drumbeat.

Deciding to take her cue from what she’d witnessed earlier, she inhaled and tried her best to mimic the dragon. It came out…rather weak.

Giving Diane a look as if to say, You can do better than that!, the dragon made a louder noise, this one sounding almost like a train’s whistle with the register dropped about six octaves.

Confused but less afraid, she breathed deeply in and shifted her voice into a singing modality, but aiming for as low a note as this particular throat was capable of producing. It wasn’t, of course, nearly as impressive as what the dragon had done, but it was far better than her first attempt had been.

She saw the corners of the dragon’s mouth turn upward…and surprised herself when her own smile turned into a matching, almost challenging expression.

And, once again, Diane's falling back on Morvuck instincts instead of human. Again, she doesn't realize she's doing it, and doesn't understand that everything she's doing is designed and intended to happen to creatures of Mortan genetics.

The creature settled its legs like she’d seen cats do when they were intent on a hunt and her gargantuan hind legs shifted like she was about to pounce, which was all the warning Diane had when the creature opened her jaws and roared in Diane’s face.

One foot moving instinctively back and her hands coming up into a martial arts stance she’d been taught during the agency’s boot camp drills, she inhaled and thrust out her chest before shrieking at the dragon, obviously nowhere near as loud nor as powerfully, but the higher pitch cut through the deeper notes the dragon was producing.

Their combative roaring stopped at nearly the exact same time, the sounds of the street having gone completely quiet. The dragon’s smile seemed to grow wider just before she pressed forward and stroked her snout against Diane, all the way from the tip of her nose to the eye ridges at the base of her horns. The dragon abruptly rose to her full height and bellowed to the heavens, and if Diane were to guess at the emotion behind the sound it would have been something akin to victory.

She didn’t even realize she was echoing the sound with a ululating cry of her own until she registered that every woman and girl in the area had joined in as well.

The dragon’s roar finished, she looked briefly down at Diane with an extremely satisfied expression and made a quick skip-hop to launch herself into the air, and within moments was out of sight, lost in the steel and glass jungle.

She heard the sounds of running feet just before Norma and Russe came up from behind her, Norma firmly grabbing her arm as Russe gently (as gently as he could going from a run to a dead stop, anyway) put his hand on her shoulder.

“Diane! Are you okay?! What was that about?!” gasped Norma.

It wasn’t until she tried to answer that Diane realized she was crying. “I…I don’t know…” she sobbed, huge smile stretching across her face from ear to ear.

Okay! Intense part done, didn't want to interrupt that! 😁 This is Diane's "touched by an angel" moment. She's never, ever considered the divine as anything more than, "Something the pastor talks about on Sunday." Meanwhile, her Morvick instincts are screaming at her that she just got Mom back and Everything Will Be Alright™. For those coming in late or this is their first exposure to Code of Ethics, Diane's mother died of cancer when Diane was nine (and, of course, going by 'Dylan'). Astute readers will notice that Diane's mother has the same political leanings that Aisling's mothers do in Illegal Alien in a MMO World, and so might be tempted to speculate that the cancer was 'arranged' by the agency...but no, it's just one of those stupid, awful, freak occurrences where a good person who deserves to bless the world with their abundance dies tragically and horribly through no fault of anyone. Compounded by the loss of her father to suicide only a couple years later, an abusive step-mother, and a teenage-hood plagued by unidentified dysphoria, Diane is exactly the type of person to would fall victim to what we would call today the "alt-right pipeline" and be very easily manipulated by pretty much anyone who says, implicitly or explicitly, "You're one of us, we can make sure you're on the right path." It's also due to her mother's influence, almost entirely, that underneath the brainwashing and indoctrination that made her a perfect weapon for a fascist dictator state there's actually a good person who truly wants to help. And when you tell a good person who wants to help that they can be an even better(morally) person by Stopping Those Bad Guys Over There™, you'd really, really better hope that the good person doesn't bother checking behind the curtain. (I am, of course, teasing future events)

Well, that was fun! I enjoyed that, thank you @azura2298 for the 🌟 in my ask box. I'll do this again for another scene if someone leaves me another like that. 💖

(Yes, @azura2298, you can do it again, I don't mind. 😉)

[swarmkeepers]

happy sleepover saturday, sola! i recently read a book called the frangipani hotel and it made me think of you; it's a book of short horror stories inspired by vietnamese folklore. have you been reading anything interesting these days?

ooh that sounds awesome, i'm not usually a huge horror person but it seems i need to take a look!

rn i'm reading you never forget your first by alexis coe (a gendered biography of george washington - it's weird and fun and historical) after we read part of it in my historiography class + ace by angela chen (a book that i can already feel is going to rewire my brain like gender queer by maia kobabe did) and deeply recommend both!

[riverdamien]

Watch!

Keeping Watch on the Streets of San Francisco!

In ages past Mary began her long journey to Jerusalem with Joseph, to oblige the state's  census while growing "Emmanuel (God- with -us)  within her!

Today Mary is continuing her journey on the streets challenging each of us to wake up and "Watch!" To "Watch" and see what is around us.

She calls us to "Watch!" Listen!" and let "God with us!" reach out to each person we see!

As I stand on the streets I hear the same call to "Watch", and in watching I move forward with clean socks, food, and clean needles, but more importantly simply standing and "listening!"

Listening to their joys, sorrows, loneliness, and day to day chatter I do not see "homeless people", "criminals", "dirty and smelly people," I see the face of the broken body of Christ revealed in human flesh.

Yesterday, Julian, and I sit with "Agnes" for an hour as she ate a meal we provided, she spent all of her time talking and we "Listened!" and "Watched!" Like Our Lady!

I see the face of Christ in the young girl trying to clean herself on a street corner, I see the face of Christ in tattooed arms and shaved heads, they are white, black, brown, Queer, and straight, all are the face of Christ. "Watching, Listening" we can see the broken body of the face of Christ and love them!

Our Lady and her son  do not care what they believe, their color, or political persuasion, they are simply the broken body of Jesus!

"Watch"! "Listen"! Jesus reminds us  to stay alert, and attentive to his presence!

In the week ahead I urge all of us as we go about our day to day business to "Watch!" and "Listen!" and to meditate on the following from:

Keep Watch With Me: An Advent Reader for Peacemakers,

Whitney Kimball Coe

What would Love have me do in this moment?

"The call of Advent is to practice putting down our desperate, human need for approval and fall in love with Jesus all over again, and to remember that nothing short of God's love claims us. We are children of God, and that is enough.

The culture of the moment demands our allegiance to political parties, ideologies, and hashtag movements to save our lives. We are encouraged to be thought-leaders, innovators, producers; to build power, to organize, to be woke, to be the fire or put it out.

Our world is heavy with tragedy and injustice that sear and break our hearts, and the work of overcoming evil sometimes overshadows the true call to be love in the world. in the face of suffering, we too often surrender Christ's light to reactionary grief, anger, and Twitter, and we forget to ask, What would Love have me do in this moment?

Advent reminds us that the work of love is a practice, not a competitive sport. It's not a win-lose or a zero-sum game. For Christians, seeing Christ's light in another is a way of being in the world, a practice that manifests as peacemaking, relationship-making, and reconciliation with the people right in front of you.

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

Fr. C. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

P.O. Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

Snap Chat: "riodamien2"

pay pay can be found on www.temenos.org

415-305-2124

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

"From the desire of being esteemed. .of being known. .of being praised. . .of being approved, O Jesus deliver me.

From the fear of being humbled. .of being despised

being rebuked. .of being forgotten. .O Jesus deliver me.

That others may be esteemed more than I. .that others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus grant me the grace to deserve it."

[roxy206]

Canada’s Drag Race Season 4 — Meet The Queens

watch on YouTube

Aimee’s promo look is so fucking good like!!

Okay Aurora we love a theatrical queen, we love stunts. I’m also really excited to see their Chinese heritage inspired drag!

DENIMMMMMM YESSSSSS literally love

Kiki Coe!!! Fucking stunning look oh my god

I’m really interested to see Kitten’s drag & lowkey I’m kind of obsessed with her already

Luna looks so damn sophisticated & I’m here for it

Melinda’s laugh after saying messy lol

Nearah is so pretty

Honestly Sisi’s goth take on the promo look — the gold & black is a great combo

The Girlfriend Experience is a trans icon — we love

Having this many trans & non-binary contestants on one season & it being CDR is going to open up the potential for some great mirror chats

I’m representing the Two Spirit indigeni-queers — so so happy to see Venus representing her communities

[sureuncertainty]

Tell about your coe retelling?? 👀👀 I love an “I could make it better” Shakespeare retelling (this is @fweet-prince btw, I saw your tags on the bard poll post! when will tumblr let us send asks from side blogs)

OH MAN YOU JUST OPENED UP A WHOLE CAN OF WORMS I'M SO SORRY

i'll try and make it as brief as possible, but my comedy of errors retelling/reimagining is literally my entire life (it's where my url comes from since the original title was Sure Uncertainty)

it's called That Makes Two Of Us, and it's a teen coming of age comedy set in the 80s (1988 to be precise) and it's also queer as shit and i'm currently working on writing the screenplay with my partner @drama-dick ! here's my art of all the main characters in one place!

it's basically like, the vague story of comedy of errors (identical twins/mixup, etc.) but in our version their family is separated bc of queerphobia (the parents are queer, their dad is trans and their mom is bi) and that's a main theme in the book. it's mostly focused on the love square between the Antonys (Antipholuses) and Addie and Lucy (Adriana and Luciana), similarly to the play, except in this case, without the cheating and misogyny and they're dumb teenagers instead of grown-ass adults. Also Angelo is genderbent to Angel, a goth lesbian who sells jewelry and the light of my fucking life, and the Dromios are also genderbent and instead of just being comic relief, they have their own arcs and everything

it's basically comedy of errors without all the problematic/dumb elements and with actual heart and themes to it, it's about identity and finding yourself, and the way others perceive you not matching up with who you really are, in both a queer/trans way and a being-mistaken-for-your-twin-sibling-you-didn't-know-existed way

[youllbejudgedeitherway]

I've been limping painlessly for a short while now, I've been on strict one walk every two days rule where I would still run like a loonatic 🙄 but now mama thinks a week of rest, recovery, and try a walk again next week to see how my limp is 💖 no marks or obvious ailments, right shoulder is slightly swollen than the left, but no pain, no mobility issues (other than the slight limp), no breaks or fractures, mama can still massage me ✨️ just a sprain or pulled muscle that isn't healing as quick as mama would hope bc I'm such a ball chaser 😅🐶 ______________________________ #dogmum #beauceron #staffy #staffordshirebullterrier #basrouge #busterbox #nationaltrust #queer #naturaldoggytreats #tailsdotcom #makefetchhappen #beauceronstaff #staffybeauceron #explore #dailydog (at Wilton, Wiltshire) https://www.instagram.com/p/Coe-cocIC5V/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mentalnahigijena]

"Ako ste diskriminisani u svojoj zemlji, dođite u Crnu Goru i sklopite istospolno partnerstvo sa svojom partnerkom" Kako su naveli na svom Twitter nalogu, pozivaju Brnabić da sklopi partnerstvo sa svojom partnerkom u Crnoj Gori, kao što to rade mnogi državljani Republike Srbije i da nakon toga one svoja prava zatraže pred sudovima u Srbiji koja je kao članica Savjeta Evrope u obavezi da obezbijedi poštovanje prava istopolnim parovima. Queer Montenegro, crnogorska LGBT oranizacija, pozvala je premijerku Srbije Anu Brnabić da sklopi istopolno partnerstvo sa svojom partnerkom Milicom Đurđić u Crnoj Gori. Kako su naveli na svom Twitter nalogu, pozivaju Brnabić da sklopi partnerstvo sa svojom partnerkom u Crnoj Gori, kao što to rade mnogi državljani Republike Srbije i da nakon toga one svoja prava zatraže pred sudovima u Srbiji koja je kao članica Savjeta Evrope u obavezi da obezbijedi poštovanje prava istopolnim parovima. „Premijerka Srbije je juče, nakon što je njena Vlada zabranila održavanje Euro Pride-a, izjavila da je i sama diskriminisana i nije privilegovana, te je podsjećamo da može aktivistički djelovati i zatražiti ostvarivanje svojih prava kroz pravosudni sistem“, napisali su iz Queer Montenegro i pozvali Brnabić da sklopi partnerstvo u Crnoj Gori. Pozivamo @anabrnabic da sklopi partnerstvo sa svojom partnerkom u , kao što to rade mnogi državljani i da nakon toga one svoja prava zatraže pred sudovima u SR koja je kao članica @coe u obavezi da obezbijedi poštovanje prava istopolnim parovima. — ️‍️‍️Queer Montenegro️‍️‍️ (@QueerMontenegro) September 14, 2022 Dodali su da Queer Montenegro pruža besplatnu pomoć i podršku svim parovima istog pola prilikom sklapanja partnerstva, kao i ostvarivanja svih povezanih prava po tom osnovu, „te je ovaj servis koji nudimo Brnabić dostupan i stranim državljanima/kama“.

[heartslobbf]

hiii so me and @eloisetheartist have been having unhinged discussions about bbc ghosts for a while now and they’re absolutely gonna come out with a very professional essay about all this stuff at some point, but in the meantime i have some things to say about ghosts, trauma recovery and the rejection of traditional values.

bbc ghosts is actually so genius though because it chooses to explore trauma recovery in the most fascinating and relevant way. like, first of all choosing to portray trauma victims as literal dead people is. yeah <3 and then, having all those dead people come from different historical periods that actively shaped their trauma?? for the ghosts to process their trauma in any capacity, they have to be introduced to the values of modernity, cue alison and mike. i mean, you only need to look at fanny to understand what i’m talking about: she’s raised in edwardian aristocracy, and she is homophobic because edwardian aristocracy Just Are. her closeted husband murders her because she finds out he is gay, and there is a huge nuance to fanny unlearning her homophobic values in 2x06, because she is given no sympathy. no one says ‘you shouldn’t be homophobic but like you’re justified because your gay husband who didn’t love you murdered you’. no, fanny is forced to confront the fact that she has upheld homophobic values imposed on her by society throughout her entire life and death, and it is those values that caused her murder in the first place. she immediately recognises how bullshit that is, how those irrational values made both her and george miserable, and that’s the whole fucking point of ghosts, in a way. these people would not be dead, or traumatised, or both, if they had been alive in the 21st century.

mary is another great example of this. she is burnt at the stake for being a witch. hello?? cap, again, whilst homophobia is still a very real issue for people globally in the 21st century, it is better than it was in the early and mid 1900s. and there’s an argument to be made with thomas too, what with duelling culture and the expendable nature of thomas’ life to francis, in return for a house. the traumas the ghosts endured are born out of conflict centring around traditional values from their times. and that’s why mike and alison are so important, because with them they bring every contemporary ideology that can help these people heal; just look at 2x06, how hosting weddings and exposing cap to the mere existence of gay people living their lives positively impacts him. look at the closure fanny receives when she finally lets go of her old values. by introducing these ideas of acceptance and self care, by demonstrating there is less stigma around mental health and nonconformity, by showing that found families are just as real as any other, things mike and alison have to put no effort into doing because it is just how they live their lives in modern society, they provide the ghosts with a safe environment to finally begin that process of healing and it’s just. i just think it’s so neat

i also want to add on though, i do appreciate how ghosts has already addressed the issue of getting sucked off moving on with pat’s little moment in 1x03, because if you follow the analogy of the afterlife being the life of a trauma victim after they’ve experienced a trauma, the ghosts shouldn’t move on. because you don’t just wake up one day and go ‘wow, finished processing and healing from my trauma.’ you live with it forever, and whilst that doesn’t mean you are miserable forever, it also doesn’t mean these things just go away. i think that ghosts ending with the ghosts moving on would be such an unsatisfying conclusion to an exploration of trauma, because it implies the process of recovery ends. it doesn’t. you have your better days and your worse ones, you experience healing in an entirely nonlinear way. it is so much more powerful to end the narrative with the sentiment of the ghosts and mike and alison as a found family, constantly supporting one another in their recovery with their newfound values and realisations, with the realistic notion that these things happened. and it was traumatic and it was complete bullshit, it was life-ending. and that isn’t okay. but despite that, they’re still trying, and with support from one another, with a rejection of tradition, they are going to be okay.

tldr: traditional values are the root of all evil in bbc ghosts and the only way the ghosts can recover from their trauma (which is a process that is nonlinear and constant) is through rejecting them in favour of modernity, something introduced to them by alison and mike, reinforcing the idea that found family and acceptance are the most important values of all, particularly for trauma victims