Faceted

Been practising my BG skills lately! process pics under the cut

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)

out of all 7000+ languages in the world, there is not a SINGLE one that doesn't deserve to be protected. from english to the languages on the brink of complete extinction. from the north pole to the south pole. the right to speak or learn your native/heritage language is a human right, regardless of what country you're from or what your opinions are. there is no language that is 'better' than another and i will fight tooth and nail to make sure that as many languages and dialects as possible are preserved until my final breath.

the death of a language is the death of millions of voices throughout history. a language goes extinct every two weeks, and it's alarming how few people are concerned about that on this site.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

forbidden and unwilling to leave riko’s side, i think kevin knew painfully well the influence his every word and action had on riko’s mood (and, consequently, on his and jean’s wellbeing). he also knew, though, that he was the best – perhaps the only – person able to tame riko’s ire, distracting him; pleading with him; catching a bad mood before it could fester. it didn’t always work (each time evidence of his own failure, he thought), but it was the only strategy for survival he had, and the only person riko cared about enough for it to mean anything. he spent 10 years perfecting the routine, watching riko’s every minute facial expression, every racket clutched too tight or locked slammed too hard, listening for that tell-tale dip in tone or hitch in his words that meant danger for them both.

anticipating what riko wanted before he even asked for it became a key tool in kevin’s arsenal, a way to manage riko’s violence and leverage the small bit of power he had in the nest. unable to express his own desires or agency, he learned to use riko’s wants against him, exploiting those things he knew mattered to riko – exy, his reputation, his status, his father, the master’s anger – to repackage kevin’s own desires: studying history, protecting jean, admiring the trojans, all justified through a carefully constructed raven framework that riko would accept.

it makes complete sense to me that kevin continues to use this survival strategy on other characters. he tells neil outright: ‘when you know what someone wants, it’s easy to manipulate them’ (p.339). jean echoes kevin’s willingness to exploit his desire in tsc, confessing that kevin knew he would ‘do anything’ for him and ‘used it against jean in the end, begging jean to distract riko’ while he made his escape (p.31). time and time again, kevin leverages what other characters want – kevin, for jean, a reason to live, for andrew, exy, for neil – to get them to do what he needs them to do: for jean to distract riko and allow him to escape, for andrew to play, for neil to do the kathy interview. all of which, ultimately, allows him to do what he really wants – which is to keep them all alive.

it’s this same logic that he inverses in keeping the knowledge of who his father is from wymack. kevin knows jean, neil, and andrew, he knows how to manipulate them and keep the ball in his court. he barely knows wymack, especially not when he turns up at his hotel room, and is terrified of him as a coach either way. kevin knows the power of the knowledge that he’s sitting on and has no idea how wymack will react to the information. he’s powerless as soon as wymack knows, with no way to anticipate or control his response, and no way to stop him from sending him back to tetsuji. even with a year of evidence to show him that wymack is a good person, as soon as his hand is forced in tkm to tell wymack the truth, kevin knows that he is at his mercy. it’s not a position he is eager to be in again.

wait hold on i never see people talk about this specific part of aaron’s bonus chapter and it drives me fucking crazy

“Someone like you wouldn’t understand the importance of hiding scars.” can we talk about how significant this line is???? aaron has andrew so on the backfoot in this conversation that andrew is trying to deflect by bringing up his scars. his scars, of all things. he’s seeing discussion of neil as such dangerous territory that he’s willing to risk aaron figuring out he has self harm scars

and aaron KNOWS he’s implying something, he just is so focused on his goal that he tables it for later. “There was something more there; he could feel a warning heat along the back of his thoughts.” he’s not stupid!! he knows andrew is trying to distract him with a secret!!! once he takes the time to focus on it, he’ll put the pieces together with a little effort

and andrew KNOWS this. he is banking on aaron putting it together and hoping it’ll pull the conversation off track. it doesn’t work, but that’s his goal. he doesn’t want to talk about neil with betsy so badly that he decides he’d rather aaron know he has self harm scars than allow the conversation to continue

everyone focuses on aaron’s snarky comments and the fact that he wins but i never see anything about the fact that andrew gives up this secret to try to avoid talking about neil. it’s crazy!!!

and on the next page we get the line “Andrew was picking idly at his jeans: an agitated tic that had mostly disappeared once his medicine was out of his system. Maybe he was a thousand miles from here, pretending this conversation wasn’t happening, or maybe he needed a few more moments to come to terms with their easy acceptance.” the whole scene is just andrew being uncomfortable and on edge when he can’t steer the conversation in the direction he wants. he’s so uncomfortable that he’s indulging in a nervous tic he has more control of now than he had in the past and using his own closely guarded secrets as bait to try to get control back

i’m going insane i’m like that one iasip “can we talk about the mail?” meme but with this scene (meme under the cut)

𓍊𓋼𓍊 My piece for "Together from Afar: a How to Train Your Dragon" tribute exhibition at Gallery Nucleus! The show runs from April 11-26 and opens tonight from 5-8pm (free + no RSVP needed) 𓍊𓋼𓍊

He would see him in crowds, in markets. He would face Andrew in the net but after his eyes drop down, he'll call it an early night and walk back to Fox Tower alone.

He'll stop speaking French because the accent sounds wrong as there is only so much some whispers in hell can do in trading a tongue for another.

He'll go professional and he'll get married and he'll smile in some Hall of Fame but.

One night when the bottle he swears he'll put down tomorrow I promise is empty he'll dream of a world where Jean Moreau lives. Where red means sunburns and Trojan's scarlet. He'll dream and dream and live in the five seconds on waking up thinking he should call him before regret hits his stomach with the aftershock of reality.