if you insist that anyone making queer art must be openly, loudly queer, or else it is some form of faking/baiting/etc for clout, you are a bizarre individual and i do not like you

i am a trans woman but i do not believe that the experiences of being a trans woman is so fundamentally and intrinsically alien that, say, a straight cis person couldn't at least understand me on some level

the insistence that media written by an "outsider" cannot be beautifully understanding and profound just because they haven't lived a specific experience is absurd. people love toy story but absolutely no one is an actual toy. people love shit with wizards and dragons but no one can cast spells and no one lives in fantasy worlds. a fundamental aspect of fiction is learning to engage with the author's "what if?"s and insisting that every person to ever write a story must have been part of that story leads to a lot of boring fucking stories.

i guess for a personal example, Simon vs. the Homo-Sapien Agenda is a book written by a straight woman from my understanding. Apparently it gets a lot of flak online for some reason? In no way do I feel like that invalidates the comfort I got from reading a story about me, a closeted queer kid who's only expressions of my sexuality coming from online spaces at the time. The author may not have literally lived my experiences, but it was the first time I read a book and went "oh my god, that's me" on the level I felt when I read that book all in one night. Insisting that the queer experience is SO alien and different that there's no possibility someone unlike us could EVER understand us is just a way to prevent people from ever attempting to understand and empathize in the first place.

i believe the person who wrote that book was forced to come out of the closet as bisexual due to the harassment they got from people doing exactly what you described in the original post

In addition to leading to harassment against queers for not being out enough for your liking and insisting that queer experiences are so alien no cishet could ever understand our bizarre freakish alien inhuman ways, this also has the fun side effect of giving bigots a bulletproof excuse to not have any queer characters: they don't want to be harassed. They may secretly be thinking "I hate all of you" but they can tell their friends "I just don't want to be harassed" and tell their fans "oh I don't want to misrepresent the queer experience!" and the end result is 0 queer characters.

Quick question: who is this helping? No, seriously. Who benefits from this?

Blorbo Felony Bingo

I'm taking @vacantgodling and @outpost51's open tags for this lovely game by @sarahlizziewrites <3

Rules: mark off the felonies that your blorbo has committed (not necessarily been convicted of)

To be honest most of my blorbos have committed maybe one or two of these, and in the least "criminal" way possible (such as forging their mom's signature on their permission slip). But I do have a few more active criminals out here:

ALT

ALT

I haven't completely decided what Marigold has done so the purple is for sure and the blue is possible. Also diversity win: they're both lesbians <3

I'll also leave an open tag!

Blorbo Felony Bingo

Your blorbos have committed so many crimes. That's what makes them a blorbo. It wasn't their fault, obviously.

Which crimes exactly?

Rules: mark off the felonies that your blorbo has committed (not necessarily been convicted of)

thank you @sarahlizziewrites for tagging me :DDD

the thing that makes the sense is to do amon because he's a criminal LMAO. also he's really just a glorified serial killer on the dl at this point cuz most of his crime is just yknow. battery and murder.

the reason there's the shrugging guy over identity theft is because like TECHNICALLY speaking amon using 'coriandrum farrah' as an alias is 'identity theft' but he's also like... stealing his own identity... in some ways. its kinda weird so like technically he has but also not really. depends on how you look at it.

i'll leave this as an open tag show me your criminals!

Nursing home staff finding ways to keep their charges engaged and entertained.

Slingshot on the walker is my fav I think.

Play is so important, and it keeps people active and having fun! Reblogging to show my occupational therapist mother the fun stuff she could do with her patients that might encourage them to actually do her exercises!

part of what makes tragedies tragic is the story being preventable from the outside but unpreventable from the inside

If they had done things differently they could have been happy, but to do things differently would require them to be someone else.

ToL Rewrite Excerpt

Chapter Two: Shadows of the Past

As I revisit each chapter, I am going to be sharing excerpts that I vibe with!

Right now I’m focusing on Killian, and how his words shaped the story. This is what Mara reads on the back of the map—and the reason she becomes obsessed.

She came from the trees, glittering and grim.

The palette of Caledon was spiritless until she appeared. Now, the world is violescent.

They call this place the Ancestral Forest—but our ancestors are not yet a century old. I have a new name for it now, a name that encompasses all it was—and all it ever will be.

It fell from her lips, that puzzling bear of crystal and cream.

“Follow me to Eternity.”

~from the journals of Killian Rameau

ToL tag list: @outpost51 @writernopal @avrablake @writingrosesonneptune @theroseempress (please ask to be +/-)