The Lovers

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL3

one day some of you will actually go outside and go to pride and you’re going to meet old black queens who refers to themselves as femme, you’ll meet people from small towns who still use the word transsexual, you’ll see that your local activist organization set up a stall about your local LGBT history that includes leather bar’s history, you’ll see lesbians in groups refer to themselves as “guys” and “boys”, you’ll see someone with breasts and pasties and little else have “he / him” painted on his chest, and you’ll be so caught up with your terminally online attitude that instead of appreciating the wide diversity of people who exist in the LGBT community who are brave enough to share themselves you’ll just be formulating posts and tweets in your head for when get home about how “problematic” it all was and it’s honestly tragic

harrow the ninth is really like. what if orpheus didn't turn around. what if he wasn't going to turn around. what if he kept his face pointed resolutely ahead and trusted that she was there even not knowing what he was hoping for. what if orpheus had to be cajoled and threatened and eventually forced to turn around. what if eurydice hadn't been told the rules and also had a crippling fear of abandonment and spent the whole time pleading with him to look at her. what if orpheus trusted that she would follow him but eurydice couldn't trust that he would care. what if orpheus was told point-blank that eurydice was almost certainly not actually behind him and he chose to keep walking anyway. what if eurydice touched sunlight again and orpheus wasn't there. what then.

My rationale for House planets is as follows:

First: Earth. Only planet with water, birthplace of humanity.

Second: Mars. The military core of the empire, Ares/Mars is a war god.

Third: Neptune. Tridentarii, Neptune/Poseidon had a trident.

Fourth: Saturn. Mostly process of elimination, but makes sense to be close to the Fifth.

Fifth: Jupiter. Described as the house with the greatest size and metaphorical gravity. Magnus quotes Fifth poetry describing a great red spot.

Sixth: Mercury. The Sixth is closest to Dominicus (the sun).

Seventh: Venus. Cytherea is the birthplace of Aphrodite, Greek counterpart to Venus.

Eighth: Uranus. Also mostly process of elimination, but the objectively funniest planet for the Eighth house to center on.

Ninth: Pluto. The most distant house, a house that was never meant to exist on a dwarf planet kicked out of the formerly nine planets.

tlt characters as cats....

i think the thing about griddlehark is that i don't actually see a future for them where they're like. healthy. like independent partners in a sustainable symbiosis. i don't see that for them. they're always gonna be kinda codependent and weird about it but like. i do see a future where that's kinda ok for them? they walk around with gideon's carabiner clipped into one of harrow's belt loops. when they must be separated in public gideon wears like. a bracelet or a choker or something because harrow said "no" to dog collars in public. if harrow gets home and gideon isn't there then she gets separation anxiety that spoiled puppies can only dream of. she likes to do discrete checks to make sure gideon's heart is still there, her blood pressure is ok, her hormones levels indicate good sleep and relative calm. gideon pretends not to notice. and then one day when they're both very old and maybe one of them gets sick, they simply throw themselves into the sun together. and it's not healthy but, you know, it works for them.

how many people could be working on actual problems in the world instead of being forced to do jobs that they are over-qualified for just because they dont want to go homeless and starve?

so as a third world transfem there's a bit of a parallel that ive noticed and it goes kinda like this:

if you live in the Imperial Core (or maybe even first world countries in general tbh), you never have to consider the third world in your worldview. what i mean is, you can be born, have a long, rich, fulfilling life and then die of old age, never having thought of any of us beyond the 5 minutes after you get shown some sort of news piece. there's vast, vast swathes of people that think of mexico, or nicaragua, or argentina, or or or or - as basically just names on a map, if that much. we're not people to them, not really. and when we stand up and say "no actually, we are human beings, people worth just as much as any citizen of the Imperial Core", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

and there's not necessarily any malice involved! like, obviously some people that feel like this are malicious, but their personal feelings are irrelevant. the point is that their position insulates them both from knowing us and from any consequences of not knowing us, while we most assuredly are not protected from either of those things in response.

if you are not transfem, even if you are also queer in some way, a similar concept applies. you can have a full, rich, fulfilling queer existence while never having to take us into account! you can go to queer and inclusive events, watch queer and inclusive creators and shows, read queer and inclusive books, and so on and so forth, where we don't feature at all, or if we do, we are a throwaway! and so, when we stand up and say "hey actually we deserve as much space and respect as anyone else", they get upset! because we are shaking the fundamentals of their worldview.

im not saying they're related but ultimately both of these worldviews stem from a position of privilege, and can only be eliminated by destroying that privilege. i dont really know how we do that but this is mostly meant as an observation rather than a solutions post.