Overthinking It

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

Original thread:

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It WAS an interesting class. I quite enjoyed it even if it was fuckoff early in the morning. About halfway through the semester the professor, who was an Old Theater Nerd and looked Exactly like you would an expect a 65 year old gay theater dude to look, announced with some relish that next class we would be watching Rocky Horror Picture Show, and that we could go 'All Out' for the occasion.

This meant nothing to me. I had somehow entirely avoided the cultural zeitgeist attached to RHPS. I knew it was a cult classic and that was literally all. I figured that he was a fan and knew some of the students were and that was all.

The class, incidentally, was filled with exactly the sort of theater/film nerds you would expect to enjoy a film class. They reacted with glee. Someone asked if they could come in costume. The professor said 'of course'. I shrugged this off. I'd worn an elf costume to watch Lord of the Rings in theaters after all.

I was Not Prepared for the next Wednesday morning. I shuffled in with my coffee, half awake, and opened the classroom door to twenty people in costume doing the Time Warp in the front of the room. The professor was wearing a glittery gold tuxedo jacket and top hat. He did have pants on, likely because he was in a Professional Environment. They were also glittery gold.

I stood there in my sweatpants with my coffee, still squinty eyed, and wondered if it was some sort of weird dream and I was about to wake up and have to get ready for class all over again.

"Come on!" One of my delighted classmates yelled. He was dressed like Meatloaf. "Get in the spirit!"

"What." I said, kind of blankly.

This is how they discovered I had no idea what the fuck was going on. "A VIRGIN!" At least three people crowed, even more delighted.

Anyway the rest of that class went Exactly how a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show would usually go. I sat in my usual place, absolutely baffled, trying to figure out how the fuck this was earning me college credits. I wandered into my literature class later still looking, apparently, like I'd been hit in the face with a very unexpected brick. My teacher, upon hearing what I'd experienced, laughed for a solid 30 seconds.

1903 Aino Malmberg published the first known lesbian short story in Finland, named "ystävyyttä" ("friendship").

1963 Christer Kihlman publishes a break trough novel Den blå modern ("blue mother"). One of the book's themes is homosexuality, and the book ended up winning the national literary price.

1966 Ilkka Taipale publishes a book "Sukupuoleton Suomi" ("genderless Finland"). In it a lawyer Herbert Gumpler criticizes the law that criminalized gay acts, because it left gay people vulnerable to extortion and violence.

1968 Keskusteluseura Psyke becomes the first registered queer association. It later starts to publish a magazine "96" for queer people.

These literary works and formal associations might seem boring compared to the "first pride was a riot" we hear from America. But the truth is that these published materials slowly moved people's opinions, and in 1971 "gay acts" were no longer a crime.

Also reminder that our nowadays well known and beloved gay icon Touko Laaksonen, "Tom of Finland" started his career in 1956 by publishing his art with that pen name in a magazine based in USA, because that stuff was still illegal in Finland, and even publishing with his real name could have got him into trouble before the law changed. But damn it he found a way to get them published anyway.