Pretty Pictures

The application for guardianship is filed at the same time, my mother did all of that on Friday [15 March]

This is solely to gain full control over me legally so that I can be forced into conversion therapy. I am, in fact, mentally competent. However, I live in a small town in the Deep South, my grandfather is loaded & a retired fire chief, my uncle is a lawyer, half the rest of my uncles & older cousins are either fire fighters or police. In other words they have a fuckton of connections and the uncle who is most directly assisting my mother with the process has guaranteed that they can push this through because he’s helped other people do it to their children before. Yes, this is illegal as all hell. No, I can’t call APS- local APS is in on it, a check by APS is literally part of the process to have someone declared mentally incompetent.

The only way to get me out of this is to get a legit psych eval. Bare minimum, I HAVE to have that. It will also help my case considerably to not be living with my grandmother, so no one can pull a “oh I provide care daily, x can corroborate my statement” and ideally far enough away that “I drive out daily to provide care” will also very clearly be impossible. I can’t just ditch out, there’s going to be a bunch of court ordered evals and appearances- they will find me and drag me back, completely legally.

Psych evals are expensive. Moving is also expensive. There’s a full breakdown of the costs over at my gofundme- https://www.gofundme.com/juzfrd-help-me-not-be-forced-into-conversion-therapy

Parenting.

my long-suffering friends and followers:

Realizing this guy

is going to help raise this guy

I don’t usually defend Tony Stark. But this “Something went wrong” bullshit really rubbed me the wrong way. Wanna know why? Because the “Something that went wrong” was Howard Stark. The man that Tony idolised, and the man that abused him. And don’t give me that crap that in the MCU universe, Howard didn’t neglect or hurt Tony — he did. It’s very evident in the tie-in MCU comics.

But in both universes, Tony was raised by Edwin Jarvis. In 616, he has a father — Howard — who is constantly aggravated with his son, both as a result of his own drinking and because of what he feels Tony should be.

While Jarvis might be sensitive, thoughtful, intelligent and occupy roles that aren’t traditionally occupied considered “masculine” (which is bullshit in itself) if Tony ever displays anything remotely indicative of  a “softer side” he is ridiculed, called a sissy, told that Stark men are “made of Iron” and abused by his father: 

In the MCU, things aren’t depicted of being much better: 

And in the MCU Jarvis, often, tried to soften the blow of Howard’s words an actions. But don’t think for a second that Tony didn’t internalise all of that. That he didn’t think that Howard Stark was the man he was supposed to be, and the man he wanted to be most like. 

Of course, generally speaking — when Tony is the most like Howard — like at the Stark Expo, or during the senate hearings — it’s almost 100% preformative. That’s not who he is, or who he ever was, it’s who he thinks people want him to be, because it’s who his father wanted him to be.

I would go so far as to say that a lot of Tony’s womanizing ways, his alcoholism, his struggles with self-identity and importance all stem from the fact that he is often torn between being the man that he assumed his father wanted to be, and who he actually is.  

If you look at Tony when he’s alone, or when he’s with the people he cares about the most, what you see is the caring, compassionate person who Jarvis raised, and that he is a lot more capable and a lot more loving than his father ever was. And it took him a long time to be okay with that, and with showing other people that that was who he really was

So yes… Just a reminder, Jarvis helped raised this man:

  Don’t confuse the armour….

with the man who wears it.

Queen ft. Groucho Marx

“For if knowledge is power, then a god am… I! Was that over the top? I can never tell.”

There is a reason this is the last scene in which Okoye appears before the credits roll. It speaks volumes about the power black women possess. Seeing anyone, let alone a black man, submit to a black woman on screen in this way is a rarity.

Gurira thinks the message in that scene is vital for everyone, especially women and girls.

This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.

The animated version of Beauty and the Beast is dedicated “To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful.”

Why?

Because the lyricist for the movie was Howard Ashman, a gay man who died of AIDS, only a few months before the release of the movie.

The version of the story you love has always had queerness in it.

It’s a story written by a gay man dying of AIDS, of someone who was cursed, whose time was running out and their death was coming, and the world wanted to hasten it along instead of helping, instead of loving him and understanding that he was never truly a monster.

It’s never belonged to you, not all the way. The soul of the Beast is queer.

“Oh, but the original version of the fairy-tale”

Fine, fuck you.

Gay version of the Little Mermaid, then.

You know, the one which was written by Hans Christian Andersen, a gay man who watched the love of his life marry a woman.

The original version story ends in tragedy, but with the idea that while the mermaid could not be with the man she loved, she does eventually gain a soul and find peace, when he was a gay man in a time when that felt denied to him.

Disney changed the ending of the Little Mermaid, the lyrics of which were also written by Howard Ashman, and gave her a true happy ending.

Now, let’s honour the inherent queerness of the story and acknowledge that we are in a time when gay people can be happy, they can be with the ones who we love, and make that the story.

Damn right that’s part of gay agenda. Gays in space. Gay mermaids. Gay Beasts. Gays goddamn everywhere there’s a good story, because it’s about damn time.

Watch as we take over every story that you thought belonged to you and make them delightfully, blatantly, queer, just to fuck with you, specifically.

Fairy tales and Shakespeare cannot be stolen.  (An argument can be made, given the way Shakespeare magpied his way through folklore, given the way his narratives have slithered into Western consciousness, that at this point, they’re the same thing.)  They are works transformed by the telling.

Would you tell Disney they stole all their stories?  How about Robin McKinley?  Stephen Sondheim?  Me?  All the people who work in fairy tales, who use them as building blocks, as common ground to set a stage, we’re not stealing, we’re continuing a grand and human tradition.

This isn’t “the gay agenda.”  If anything, this is “the straight agenda.”  Laying claim to a thing that human nature itself says has to change and shift and flux and grow to survive, and saying “oh, no, if you change this one thing, this load-bearing thing, the story is destroyed.”