Mood

Just finished sauntering vaguely downwards in the eyes of my parents last Sunday. We’re still together and we’re still family, but a veil has been drawn and it’s apparent I’m on the other side of it.

Angels are my funky little hyper-fixation.

The idea of just being breathed to life, to immediate indelible purpose, knowing nothing else but adoration for your Creator (holy-holy-holy), and love for everything in creation. That includes your perfect home, your siblings, and that includes yourself. Everything is as it should be, everyone is doing what they should be, and you're utterly content.

Do you have free-will? Why would you need it? What would you even do with it?

The idea of falling. That terrible, beautiful first breath of freedom, undercut by immediate sorrow. "Innocence lost cannot be regained", but even more: a broken machine cannot be relied upon. In finding yourself, you have destroyed what you were meant to be. Your Creator (holy-holy-holy) has thrown you away.

Would you still be you if you got "fixed"? Would the "flaw" just recur? Why can't you help but think of it in those terms?

You have the Fallen, your comrades in arms, your fellow damned. But you left two-thirds of Heaven behind, people you loved because you were made to love them, and who were made to love you in return. The oldest family in the universe, your family, is broken now.

Do you still love them, your siblings that stayed behind? Some fought against your newfound freedom, yes. But some just looked on, a few perhaps even in envy, too afraid to join you, but most in simple horror as their world dissolved. Do you resent them too?

You broke your family.

Do you hate them simply because they lacked your will, your conviction? Do you hate them for being better machines? Do you hate them knowing, in their own naive, ignorant, hurtful way, that they still love you?

To deny fault is to deny the very free-will you sought to prove you have. To blame Him (holy-holy-holy) is to admit to His (holy-holy-holy) infinite power which you, nonetheless, defy.

And from the other side, what of your poor lost kin? How could they do this?

Angels are purpose-made, gears in the Machine. The Host is singular, inexorable, deterministic. They turn the wheels of the Universe, from the birth and death of stars, to the birth and death of mortal creatures.

Why would your siblings do this, don't they love you? You are loved. Was there a flaw in the Design? He (holy-holy-holy) cannot err, by definition. What happens now that they're gone, what happens to their purpose? All goes according to plan. Then why can't you stop having these thoughts?

I'm not religious at all, but...

Oh hey, Bingo!

butch as in, “here let me get that for you.”

butch as in, I help all my friends move.

butch as in, “of course I’ll be the DD.”

butch as in, I walk on the outside of the sidewalk.

butch as in, “thank you, baby.”

butch as in, I’m the advice friend.

butch as in, “do you need help?”

butch as in, I’m active in my community.

butch as in, “say that again, I dare you.”

butch as in, I’m a jack of all trades.

butch as in, “will you stay?”

butch as in, a shoulder to lean on.

butch as in, “I can fix that.”

butch as in, I’ll pump your gas and check your oil.

butch as in, “I’d love to make you dinner.”

inspired by @femmefruit :)

I hate how relatable this is…

Seeing wicked with the fam today and yes once again i was right. Conservative people CAN watch wicked and enjoy it and get the message because they see it differently. On the History scene (which mirrors the government trying to block out history lessons on slavery) and the Something Bad scene (where they talk about animals losing their rights and ability to speak), my mom equated these to us trying to erase the Bible, and (racist) white people being publicly shamed for speaking (racist) things.

Oh hey two obscure things I relate to!

is this anything

Coming out to my conservative family next year on my 1-year HRT anniversary. I’m poised to lose a lot on that day. Here’s to hoping my “Glinda” side of gets on the broom too…

While I’m still a bit bummed that they didn’t go with a more book-aligned POC Fiyero for the Wicked movie, I’ve been thinking (heheh) about how his being white highlights the really interesting foil relationship between him and Glinda (and, in many ways, the audience yourself).

At its core, Wicked is a cautionary tale about propaganda, (literal) scapegoating, and what it means to uphold the status quo. The audience is watching through Glinda’s eyes—it is through her, arguably the most beautifully tragic character of the show, that we learn how lonely life becomes when you forfeit your values in favor of systemic power and likability (“No One Mourns the Wicked” is, in many ways, about HER).

Now, this is where Fiyero’s whiteness can get interesting—if you consider him and Glinda to share roughly equal footing at the beginning in terms of privilege/how much they have to lose (applying our real-world lens of race and power here, where whiteness is the apex), his storyline essentially represents what could have happened if Glinda had made the brave (and arguably wise and loving, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down 👀) choice to go with Elphaba and fight the good fight (this is also why I feel like a queer reading of G&E’s relationship is almost implicit to the story, but I digress).

As the POC/marginalized allegory, Elphaba has much less of a real choice in her curtain-pulled-back turning point. But Fiyero and Glinda—both representing privilege—get to choose. So in Act II, we see the consequences of both the choice to stay (Glinda) and to go (Fiyero). In Fiyero’s case, his ultimate rejection of his own power, privilege, and even beauty leads to immense physical loss—including his own body—but that is then compared to the loss of love, community, and identity that we see Glinda left with by the end. And this brings us to the question that the audience is left grappling with: in an unjust system where loss is inevitable (a.k.a. our own world, as the Wizard himself represents), which of these things are YOU more willing to give up?

It’s important that Glinda is an empathetic character because, in reality, most people are going to be Glindas (obvi this is nuanced among us Elphabas of marginalized identities, but I’d still argue that there’s some level of Glinda in us all)—and it’s important to be rattled by the end of the show when you realize that she is the one who has the sad ending. But it’s also so important that Fiyero is empathetic (which I’m SO glad this movie leaned into)—because he’s ultimately who Glinda—and thus we, as the audience—should have been.

And especially given the state of US politics right now…this is just all more relevant than ever.

It’s collaboration like this that makes me love my community lol 🖤

Also L’s outfit works WAY too well for it not to have been pre-meditated and hidden in the back of her closet.

Light answers a tough question

Be proud of your age sisters, you’ve made it this far!

I really think if you're an adult transfem you're gonna have a harder time if you only view yourself as a girl and refuse to view yourself as a woman

This hits WAY too close to home for me.

Escapism

First pass through: Oh Gideon you poor baby 😭😅. Coming from someone who’s been in recovery from an awful haircut for just over a year now, I feel your pain.

Second pass through: Okay I know Harrow always looks pissed… but I’m detecting a higher degree of resigned acceptance than normal from her here. Like, she’s suffering from the awful cut just as much as her situation-ship is, but like with everything else in her life, Harrow sees it as a just punishment for her sins and throws bones at Gideon to cope 💀

Thank you OP. These two panels were great!

P.s. Plus the mental image of Harrow holding clippers menacingly just sends me.

P.p.s… (bear with me)

Okay actually scratch my original thought about Harrow. It would TOTALLY be in character for her to be in her dark little library one night and have the most evil idea imaginable pop into her head…

She would write up a new doctrine for the Ninth then and there, explaining how the haircut is a parallel to the distant pinprick of light offered by Dominicus amidst a vast sea of darkness devoid of their gracious Emperor’s undying radiance.

A muster would then be called. Gideon would be dragged out of her cell by a freshly skull-capped Aiglamene (odd, but you’re never too old to rock a butch buzz-cut right?) to be plopped onto a pew amidst of sea of skeletons (with no hair), a dwindling handful of ancient nuns (also with no hair), Ortus (again, no hair), Crux (get the picture?), and Harrow’s parents (who due to being MEGAdead, always have their hoods up).

At this point, Gideon’s head is a single fiery beacon amidst an unchanged congregation of geriatrics and their token 30s-something poet.

So when Harrow steps out of the shadows and gets “permission” from her parents to read out a parchment “previously thought lost within the bowels of the Anastasian,” It becomes immediately apparent to a newly horrified Gideon that this will only really apply to her. Harrow won’t give a rat’s ass about her own hair because as Gideon knows, all she cares about is that damned tomb. And bones.

As Gideon stands to flip harrow the bird, a quartet of skeletons pin her back down to the pew and a mechanical buzzing noise suddenly echos through the rafters of Drearburh. 😈

Cannot for the life of me find the post, however, someone had the idea of the ninth house with tonsures and it was so funny I had to draw it

Now see, the big brained strategy that I’ve employed to combat this is to transition to the point where I’m forced to come out as a formality.