J.

⚠️ Warning for some spoilers for the fic!!!

@caitlynkirammansrifle

Enjoy the chaos which is my mind after reading a fic I enjoy 😂

Anon, ten years ago gay people couldn't get married in large parts of the US. AIDS was an almost certain death sentence when I was in high school. I was looking at job boards the other day and found a part time gas station job that had health insurance as a benefit, which NEVER would have happened 15 years ago. When I was a kid, hitting your child was extremely normalized in the US and my parents were the weird ones for not doing it. There is a vaccine for chicken pox. I didn't meet anyone who had transitioned until my 20s because it was so uncommon to transition in the aughts, and now there are some states that protect your right to have gender affirming care provided by your health insurance. It's not all states, but it's better than the number of states that had it in 2010, which was zero. THERE ARE TENANTS UNIONS NOW. WE HAVE A VACCINE AGAINST CERVICAL CANCER.

WE DON'T HAVE SMOG DAYS IN LOS ANGELES ANYMORE UNLESS THERE'S A FIRE AND IT'S BECAUSE OF CARB STANDARDS.

LITERALLY MILLIONS OF FUCKING PEOPLE TURNED OUT TO PROTEST POLICE BRUTALITY IN 2020 AND YOU CAN SAY "NOTHING HAPPENED" ALL YOU WANT BUT THE WAY PEOPLE TALK ABOUT IT NOW IS FUCKING DIFFERENT THAN THEY DID AFTER RODNEY KING AND NOW PEOPLE WILL STOP AND WATCH OUT FOR EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF GOING 'NOT MY BUSINESS'

The other night I was watching whatever random thing on YouTube, and I got yet more of the constant ads that irritate the fuck out of me. But this one was for an HIV maintenance medication. It was a long ad, probably 60 seconds, and so help me, I watched the whole thing. It talked about this drug (forgive me, I can’t remember the name) that would let you live a happy and fulfilling life (while mentioning that of course safe sex is important). And it showed queer couples, straight couples (to break the stereotype), people who looked single and happy, different races and genders and presentations and body sizes, going out to lunch or cuddling on a couch or going out for a date, whatever it was the scene was implying. Bright colors, soothing optimistic music and voiceover, physical affection including kissing—you couldn’t even tell who among the actor couples was or wasn’t portraying an HIV patient. It blew my fucking mind to just see a whole minute of this between ads for Pizza Hut and car insurance. I’m not even sure anyone would have shown a gay couple kissing, full stop, on TV in 1990. And this ad was just out here like, if you’ve contracted this illness, there’s help for it, and you can live a good happy life among your loved ones. But also, you deserve to have that happiness, out in the open, and there will be people who love you, unafraid. Even if, and especially if, you’re gay. This is a world where this is possible. Like I’m honestly tearing up right now. I could not have imagined this in 1990. I could not.

In 1971, Dr. Seuss wrote The Lorax, which included a line "their future is dreary... I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie." In the 1986 edition, that line was removed. Why? Well, Theodor Geisel (the real Dr. Seuss) wrote "I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish." I swam in Lake Erie as a kid, and it was nothing like the lake Dr. Seuss was describing. Things change. Things get better.

My first protest was in 2004. I was in middle school, and Ballot Measure 36 was being run statewide in Oregon, to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. We protested, we marched, we fought, and we lost. Ten years later, I was sitting in my apartment the day after graduation, when the news broke that Oregon would now recognize same-sex marriage. I remember sitting on my bed and breaking down in tears, thinking of my partner of a year and how maybe we could have a legal future together. Ten years beyond that, I'm looking at the save the dates on our kitchen table. I'm inviting the family who I swam with at Lake Erie, my parents who taught me to protest No on 36, my friends from all over the world, to our wedding. Things change. Things get better.

It's 2024. Oregon is a sanctuary state for trans people. My parents use they/them pronouns for my partner with ease. My sister called to check up on us the morning after the election. Things seem dire. Things seem like they're never going to change.

some silly collegiate basketball rivals based on this

A CaitVi Comic

//TW: Major Character Death

Artwork by @sky-ham

Story by @oxenfreeao3

I need to get this out, because this moment baffled me at first.

Vi is convinced that she's lost everyone, and it's not quite her lowest, but she is turning all the pain of having lost her sister and her happy little family from Act 2 onto herself. I always make the wrong choice and because of that I've lost everyone.

And she starts this little vent off with Go on, say I told you so.

She thinks Caitlyn is here to berate her for siding with her sister again, but Caitlyn surprises her. Caitlyn instead comes clean about having known all along that Vi was going to choose her sister.

And not only did she know, but that she supported it.

Caitlyn went "vi is going to try and break her sister out. i will remove the barriers to their reunion."

SO from Vi's perspective, she's just had her resurrected father die, her sister walk away--choose to leave--and now she might lose Caitlyn too because Vi "chose wrong" again, BUT instead she is met with acceptance. And this is more than Caitlyn accepting that Vi is always going to choose her sister, this is also Caitlyn accepting that Vi is going to fuck up (something Vander didn't give her much room for with all that leader talk) and accepting just how much Vi's family means to her. This one act washes away all that "its her blood in your veins" crap.

This was Caitlyn fully accepting who Vi is and who she's been and where she's from. And she did it with a smirk and some swagger.

zoom in on the smooches:

no caitlyn slander (but omfg does she need to get her act together)

Arcane as textposts/satire headlines : part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, part VII

Took this idea from this and a friend-