Dragon Lair

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell

Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit

Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"

Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling

Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke

Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression

First five prompts in my inbox are guaranteed a ficlet of some kind (not necessarily today, but soon). Anything received throughout today will also be considered.

Easy as can be, perfect apartment dweller

Might take some convincing

Basically a coin flip

It will be an uphill battle but I might be able to, while saying goodbye to my deposit

No increased rent, deposit or argument could convince any landlord to let us in

I want to boost everything this person has said and add on.

The reason I call myself a tomboy now, despite it being seen as a childish word and having had someone swear at me over it because ‘tHeRe’S nO suCh thInG as BoY thInGs anD giRL thIngS sHut uP’ is because I couldn’t call myself that or be like that when I was a kid. It was seen as a negative thing and I was already bullied enough. “Looking like a boy” was the worst thing that could happen to a girl.

And I’m not even 26 yet. We aren’t talking 30+ years ago, we are talking 2000s and even 2010s. It’s only since trans people have become more accepted in the past few years that gender nonconformity has too.

And the people who helped me accept my gender nonconformity more than anyone else? Were trans people. They taught me, “there’s nothing wrong with how you feel. You’re still a valid woman no matter what you wear, how you have your hair or what you’re into ❤️”

And don’t even get me started on how people treat gender nonconforming men. JK Rowling has a lot of nerve to be like “uwu boys can wear dresses and only us gendercrits accept that!” when she has, even in recent works, made femininity in men a negative trait, as well as making masculinity in women a negative trait also.

A lot of people still don’t accept gnc people even now. Just last year I had someone tell me they’d never let their daughter “dress like a boy”, and I’m always terrified to walk into a bathroom in case the next JK Rowling is in there, sees my gender expression and pepper sprays me or worse.

After that, Tomboys go extinct forever, and you only see them echoed in the “girl disguises herself as a boy for military reasons” thing. A strange folding of spacetime: the idea of the “phase.”

The idea of fluidity and phases is occasionally enforced by the majority in surprising ways - you’ll note that it never really works in a minority’s favour. The revisionism of the legitimacy of a “phase” is interesting in political ways I haven’t fully thought through yet.

It's really helpful to share that information in an easily-accessible and permanent place because reblogging a post on tumblr or adding a tag to a post is only going to be seen by the people who catch that post when you put it up. Someone coming along 6 months or 2 years or a decade later will have no idea. Plus, you might have changed your mind in the intervening time.

It can be intimidating, difficult, or even impossible to directly ask someone if they'll allow you to create something based on their work, so a permission statement makes it all so much easier.

If you want to read more about permission statements, there's an article on Fanlore.

If you want to see what they look like, you can take a look at mine on my own AO3 account. Feel free to copy it and modify it however suits you.

Or you can make use of tools like @fanworkspermissionstatement that can help you build your own from the ground up.