#thesignofjohnlockhell

i hate you oh my god!!! this is such a drag hghjkds these are my actual speech patterns god damnit

I’ll add it to the list :)

icon: not my thing | good | great | i love it | poe dameronurl: not my thing | good | great | i love it | padme amidalatheme: not my thing | good | great | i love it | leia organamobile theme: not my thing | good | great | i love it | jyn ersoposts: not my thing | good | great | i love it | luke skywalkeroverall: not my thing | good | great | i love it | cassian andor

You’re such a nerd omfg

Relationship Status: Dating a Nerd with a Shit Christopher Walken impression

Dog or Cat: CATS!!!!!!!!!!!

Text or Call: Texting because then I can’t stutter but phone calls with people I know are ok

Chapstick or Lipstick: Chapstick so I can lipstick!  Can’t put lipstick on dry lips no sir-ee!

Favorite Colors: I always said red and I love red but I looked at my closet the other day and I have so much army green????

Pets: A cat back home named Alice with a back left leg that won’t bend but she has pretty green eyes and is Soft and Lovely and white and brownish stripes but no cat at my dorm which is Sad :(

Wake-Up Time: 8:30 every day for classes this semester then on weekends usually 9ish then I fall asleep again till like 11 cause I go to bed at 2am every night which is Bad but oops oh well

Last Song You Listened To: Delilah by Florence and the Machine they are my Aesthetic

So first, there was a workshop on writing queer characters in (historical) fiction held by Kate Worsley, author of She Rises. Even though the other events were very popular, Nicole and I were the only ones to attend this one, which turned out to be extremely lucky for us. Kate was mentored by Sarah Waters, which gives you an idea of what her writing is like and the themes we got to discuss at the workshop. She talked to us a bit about her research method and how she wanted to focus on queer characters in a time when they didn’t have the same kind of language for or understand of how they felt. We then got to look at and try on some clothing from the period she was writing about (replicas of course) and then we used those materials to start our own pieces of writing. It was just an exercise but I’m really excited by the ideas I came up with in that session and I’m planning on expanding them into something more significant. Kate was really supportive of us, she talked to Nicole about the work she doing research for right now (check out her writing blog for updates! @shebroughtmeviolets) and about the ideas I put forward today, and she even asked us to keep in touch (and she’s now following me on twitter, holy hell). The whole session was so much fun, and as I want to write a lot of queer historical fiction in the future, it meant so much to me to be able to talk to a respected and published author on such intimate terms.

Next we went to a talk about women at sea. It turns out there were so many more seafaring women than popular media would have you believe. We talked about the well known ones, like the pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read, but also others I’d never heard of, like Hannah Snell (author of The Female Soldier, 1750) and Mary Lacy (author of The Female Shipwright, 1773). It was all very gay and empowering, and I hope they make it a more permanent talk because I’d recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go to the museum.

Then we went to a lecture held by fashion historian Amber Butchart (author of Nautical Chic) exploring the homoeroticism in maritime fashion and it’s part in queer culture. It was so much fun and we all learnt a huge amount, I wish I’d recorded it! Amber talked about the standardisation of naval uniforms, the representation of them in art, the development of the image of the sailor first as an example of christian masculinity, then a national and imperial symbol, then an increasingly sexual figure and eventually a gay icon. One of the best parts of the lecture was when she explained the importance of sailors’ tight trousers in art and how that helped to sexualise the uniform. It was loads of fun and I’d recommend picking up a copy of her book if you’re interested in maritime fashion (looking at you @holmesianpose​).

The last lecture we went to was interesting, but ended up going a bit downhill. It was held by Jo Stanley (the historian, not the tv presenter) and was called ‘Queering the Sea’, focusing on LGBTQI people in maritime history. It was pretty good from the 16th to the 19th century (although her approaches to queer identity were a bit old-fashioned and Foucaldian, which I don’t entirely agree with) but the 20th century was a bit of a disaster. She focused on the treatment of queer people in the American and British navy, but almost exclusively on white gay and bisexual men, with very little mention of lesbians and bi women at all. The few times she mentioned trans women (there was no mention of trans men) she referred to them as ‘men who transitioned’, then went on to briefly mention the sex industry in Thailand but only how it benefitted travelling white sailors who discovered themselves there, completely ignoring the massive issues with the fetishisation of trans women of colour in that industry. Me and Nicole were there with two of my friends who are both gay trans men, and at the end of the talk one of them pointed out the issues with this and thankfully the lecturer did apologise and they later talked it out further (which I wasn’t present for). It wasn’t a great ending to the day but the other events were wonderful, and someone who worked at the museum explained that this was the first year they’d held these events and she’d work on making sure this didn’t happen again. So next year I’ll definitely be going again, and I’d recommend you give it a go too if you’re in London!