thekoalapus - Tumblr blog

[thekoalapus]

Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.

It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.

On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.

I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"

That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.

Never.

These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.

And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.

Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.

You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.

But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.

That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.

It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.

Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.

Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.

Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.

They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.

But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.

I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."

(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.

Fucker.)

But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.

I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.

But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.

The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.

That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.

The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.

[thekoalapus]

some of you might remember that in my 2023 art summary the september piece was pixeled out due to being part of an unfinished project. this is the painting in question!

it's one third of a series of Essek portraits, inspired by a conversation with @saturdaysky about the universe needing more Esseks wearing fun colors. black & purple is a timeless classic, but i like to think that Hot Boi can and does rock colors outside of what would be considered nude tones for him 🤭

hence,

part 1: peach! 🍑

one of my favorite colors, and one that was a fun challenge to make work with Essek's lavender skin tone. as i was drawing i was thinking of Essek bringing a basket full of fresh peaches from his travels to his partner, and the kitties being the first to greet him as he arrived home 💜

tip jar!

[thekoalapus]

Vax, Scanlan & Percy vs The Door™

[thekoalapus]

For @mareastrorum's prompt, "what Caleb and Essek did with their cats while they off are saving the world."

(Incredibly bold assertion, I know, that Yussa is not already trapped in a jar on the moon or otherwise In A Situation, but maybe herding cats would keep him occupied.)

Detail shots under the cut:

Yussa, the aggrieved:

Mitzi, the unrepentant:

Assorted orbs and imminent danger to tassels:

[thekoalapus]

The Magician - Caleb Widogast✨🔥

More details below cut:

The chalice, wand, sword and pentacle represent the suits in the tarot

The Adonis’ flower in his hair symbolises ‘painful recollection/sorrowful remembrances’

Widogasts web of fire is such a visually and technically cool spell I couldn’t not draw it

[thekoalapus]

👁

[thekoalapus]

[ID in alt text]

It's been so long since I watched CR1 that I totally forgot J'Mon Sa Ord existed! Thanks to the CR sexyman poll for reminding me haha. Sadly I can't try and convince people to vote on them anymore, because they already lost to the Gentleman, but technically they're not a man anyway. Someone should organize a CR sexy enby poll, as there are plenty of them :3

[thekoalapus]

Make sure your babygurl get enough kisses before he got busy contemplating the minutia of death cult office politics.

[thekoalapus]

I understand Yussa now that was too good to keep in the tags friend, I cackled.

So Caleb's acquantance with bells hells so far has been like:

Step 1: meet them in passing on a mission, talk for ten minutes, exchange phone numbers.

Step 2: they are hanging out at your house with your boyfriend who is performing high-level dangerous magic for them. They just saw a movie together. There's wine and mutual sharing of backstories. They know what clothes you wear at home.

[thekoalapus]

he is beauty he is grace, casting lightning bolt into a demon's face (resistant to lightning damage)

once again thank you mr Mercer for the great Essek expressions, can't wait for the ep to be up on yt so i can redraw more of them

[thekoalapus]

Look. Apple guy had me at this moment so, had to draw him.

[thekoalapus]

Are you here to take me to Mama?

—

Rewatching ep3 and every time I think about the Emissary I get choked up, so I painted them again! He’s going home, and there will be light 🍎

[thekoalapus]

When there’s only tea to remember…

[thekoalapus]

for how much Caleb has changed Essek, i can never stop thinking about how much Essek has changed Caleb. Caleb looked at Essek and thought, this is a man whose knowledge i might be able to use to change my past. but when Caleb convinces him to share that knowledge, the first thing Essek teaches him is how to control his future

tip jar

[thekoalapus]

fascinating parts from this brennan interview about downfall

downfall was recorded in one week and brennan described it as "one of the most intense roleplaying experiences [he's] ever had"

if avalir was showcasing the age of arcanum, downfall will showcase the actual calamity

even though avalir and aeor seem similar on paper, brennan says the stories could NOT be more different. the themes, player motivations/briefings, and genres are completely unique

downfall embraces the nuance and complexity (moral and otherwise) of the gods and digs into the idea that the gods "called a truce" to fell aeor and what that actually means

brennan says aeor actually has a large population of refugees from the calamity by the time downfall takes place. however, they didnt have a large impact on the city's architecture and so by the modern era their cultures and presence in aeor (and wider exandria) have been almost entirely lost

overall downfall seems to focus on the ways that small errors in history can change a lot

brennan describes his experience with dm'ing in exandria as "going into a sandbox and creating the toys you're gonna to play with there"

the population of aeor is "demographically meaningfully different from who was living in aeor at the height of the age of arcanum," according to brennan. basically, not every aeorian will have bolo's accent (sad)

aeormatons will be in downfall in some way

setting, plot, and character backstories were worked on in tandem

on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of tragedy, brennan said downfall would need an entirely new axis. there is a "different kind of horror" in downfall, something that is distinct from "xenomorph chasing you horror"

brennan said "there are moments in downfall where i could feel my stomach wanting to drop out of my body"

[thekoalapus]

Sceleritas wants a different job

Twitter version :)

[thekoalapus]

Karsus crown heist with the bois.

30 secs later: