it is all temporary

Alice, 27, France. This blog is a weird mix of TV shows, science and politics. Yeah just that. Oh and shit tons of lesbians PS: I'm your CCIA/IACC devoted captain (x)

[itskyalenotkyle]

Dance to anything

[basedtaka]

wave studies feat miss korra and her gf

[strawberry-crocodile]

There is no shared white history. Europeans all hated each other from the first settlers up until the 1500s. No Italian has even fucking heard the word “Odin” until long after (”white”) christian missionaries nearly eradicated that religion. If  you and I are both white than our ancestors probably fucking hated each other. Hell, if you’re a white mutt like me, various roots of your own family tree fucking hated each other and considered each other foreign savage barbarians. The only thing that unifies the white race is skin color and privilege, and neither of those things fill me with any kind of pride.

[project-alice]

Naya River Memorial Music Scholarship Fund

Help inspire the future the way she inspired us.❤️

Naya Rivera Memorial Music Scholarship Fund organized by Jaimie McGovern

On July 8th, 2020 beloved actress and musician Naya Marie Rivera, best kno… Jaimie McGovern needs your support for Naya Rivera Memorial Musi

[cosmoslions]

Please donate if you can, let’s make her legacy last long and strong!

[shesthedoctor]

doctor who + period clothes » YASMIN KHAN in Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

[sapphic-enigma]

Heather's post to Naya

[proudlyunicorn]

I’ve been trying to think of what to say. There is so much inside of me right now, so many memories and feelings that I’ve been trying to organize in my head in order to put them into words. The only way I could think of to do that is to start from the beginning of my own story, so I hope you’ll indulge my need to do so as I wind around to Naya and her impact. Feel free to skip through as needed.

Once upon a time, I was nineteen. I had started college the year before and had slowly been coming to the realization that I might not be 100% straight. I think it was one of those things I knew about myself beforehand, but I had never really come around to accepting or letting myself believe until college. I guess when you step away from all the people you’ve been familiar with your whole life and everyone and everything is brand new, it’s a little easier to accept those truths about yourself that you’ve kept buried for so long. Or at least, you can start to accept them. 

I was big into RPing (had been since I was very young), and had begun dabbling in creating gay lady characters to kind of experiment with and express my newly realized sexuality. I joined an RP group at one point, auditioned for a character that was written as gay, and was accepted. I don’t know how much y’all know about RPs, but typically characters are assigned celebrity faces in group RPs so that you have gifs and images to use for edits etc. At the time, glee had just aired and I wasn’t watching it yet so I had no idea who Naya was, or who Heather was, but I wanted to play a gay lady character and there she was. There weren’t a lot of images of them. They were background characters still, they had very few scenes, but the person who played the Heather character was excited to tell me all about the inherent queerness that was Brittana, even in background moments. I was intrigued, but kind of brushed it off as “not my kind of show.” The RP was a short-lived one and I moved on to another.

Eventually – following sophomore year when I was home and bored for the summer – I did end up watching. And my eyes were glued to Santana Lopez, to Brittany and Santana together. I couldn’t stop seeing parts of myself in Santana – the defensiveness, the snark that acted as a shield, the desperate need to show my attention was on some guy or another so that I wouldn’t be recognized as what I knew I was. I was desperately attached by the time I finished season 1 and dove immediately into season 2 when it began. I didn’t think anything would come of it because as far as I knew, there weren’t really gay characters on TV (besides the token gay white boys like Kurt), but I was desperate enough to continue enjoying those brief background moments of Santana and Brittany that had drawn me in. 

Little did I know.

How could I have known that Naya Rivera advocated for Santana – for our community – behind the scenes? How could I know that when I threw glee watch parties in my on-campus apartment (rules: no singing along to songs, no speaking when Santana speaks), there would be so much content for my girls? How could I know that I’d have like eight people crammed into my tiny living room one day as a camera slowly panned up the long, tangled legs of two cheerleaders making out in bed? How could I know the heat and cold that would shoot through my body at the same time as I fell into shocked silence, staring at two girls swapping “Sweet lady kisses” as I’d only ever imagined they would in my imagination? I never would have believed it, and chances were, I never would have gotten that without Naya Rivera’s advocacy. 

The show progressed, and though it oftentimes failed us in its content and presentation, Naya never did. Santana and Brittany gave me hope and inspiration. They were the first ship to draw me into fandom. They were the first ship I ever wrote fanfic for. They brought me friends from all over the world, brought me a community that helped me to love and accept who I was, brought me people who would forever change my life. And all of that – this entire new chapter in who I became and who I am now – was because of Naya. 

I am now twenty-nine. It’s been ten years since I started that journey of self-discovery. For those who don’t know me or the minute details of my life, I am married and am currently nine months pregnant as I write this post with my first child due in four days (!!!!). The woman I’m married to? I met her through the Brittana fandom. When I walked down the aisle to her, my best friend sang Songbird. It was the only song choice we’ve ever wanted for that moment. When we danced at our wedding, one of the songs we made sure the DJ played was the glee version of “I wanna dance with somebody” because we wanted those pronoun changes present. 

So, to Naya Rivera, I want to say: thank you. Thank you for my friends, for my family. Thank you for the beautiful moments I shared with them on my wedding day. Thank you for the child I’m carrying, the life I’m living, and the pride I have in myself and in being part of my community. Thank you for your raw and honest portrayal of a character that guided my life to where it is. Thank you for fighting for us, for being an advocate and ally, and for being just a beautiful spirit. I did not know you, but I know what you did for us, for me, and I can honestly say that I’ll never forget it, or you. 

Rest easy. 

[lyjerria]

as you get older, you realize that you’re not always right and there’s so many things you could’ve handled better, so many situations where you could’ve been kinder and all you can really do is forgive yourself and let your mistakes make you a better person.

[murdershegoat]

look, we give glee so much bullshit bc it turned into over-the-top farcical nonsense but the fact of the matter is that for three days all over social media i have seen hundreds and hundreds of young women talking about how watching santana lopez be out and proud on glee was a formative part of coming to terms with their sexuality. there’s an entire generation of women who watched and who felt comforted by this character and felt as though maybe they, too, could be happy and gay. 

santana did that. 

naya did that. 

[louisandthedagger]

💔

[littleoases]

I remember being 22 years old, overwhelmed by my first year of teaching, terrified to come out of the closet, living my life on shaky ground. I watched Glee as a form of escapism without really caring about the characters or their storylines. Then one night in March of 2011, I folded laundry and watched the episode where Santana confesses her love for Brittany. I froze and tried to steady the wild thumping of my heart, but it was like someone had reached through the screen and squeezed my chest until everything inside spilled out. I felt suddenly and irrevocably seen.

Santana’s journey to embrace her sexuality was life changing for me and many other young women who were struggling to know and love ourselves. We have Naya to thank for that. She knew her own worth and she knew queer women’s worth. She took a throwaway background character and poured spirit and spark into her until Santana was real and revolutionary and so very human. Naya was intentional and generous with her performance. She didn’t have to take up the mantle of queer representation, but she did, and she changed lives by doing so.

I started writing about two girls falling in love because of Santana and Brittany and the online fan fiction community that sprang up around their romance. It was a way to uncover the workings of my heart in a safe and intimate but still revolutionary way. There would be no Her Name in the Sky, no Late to the Party, no She Drives Me Crazy, without those early Brittana fanfics that I wrote from a place of emotional and spiritual starvation.

Sometimes readers tell me that a character I’ve written makes them feel seen. I understand, because Santana made me feel seen. Naya did that. So please know that when you read my novels about young women falling in love, and when you feel seen by them, that it’s only because another brave young woman made me feel seen first. I am gutted by her death and I will be indebted to her forever. I hope the collective gratitude of the queer community reaches high into the heavens and cradles her in love. I will be praying for her family and sweet little boy for the rest of my life.

I didn’t know her, but through her heartfelt work, I came to know myself. Rest in love, Captain.

[gleerant]

being a city kid, I’ve always taken being openly gay for granted. while it hasn’t been without some opposition, that opposition was so nominal — and nothing compared to what other folks face in less-accepting places — that I only considered being gay an incidental part of myself. it was a part of me, sure, but I was encouraged to act like it was not the ONLY part of me. the subtle message there was that it was not a part of myself to celebrate loudly.

but then came the Brittana fandom.

I watched the first season of Glee at my best friend’s insistence and didn’t think much of it. but at a college party, the episode “Duets” aired. as the camera panned left and upward up two pairs of legs clearly belonging to women, I saw two women canoodling in a manner befitting more than “just friends.”

It struck 2 things deep within me that I didn’t realize were there. Because, first of all, until that point, I didn’t realize I hadn’t seen on such a popular show queer women displaying any sort of intimacy. I didn’t realize that that was something missing, something that was sorely lacking in the media I consumed. being gay was all well and good. but to ask to have it seen widely in popular culture? was I asking for too much? or wasn’t this the part of me that existed in others as well but we were supposed to celebrate it quietly?

fandom is not a place where you celebrate quietly. and thank god it’s not. we asked and fought to see more of these two cheerleaders as we made a celebration of every glance, every background touch, every bit of subtext. we asked that these things be brought to the forefront for everyone to see because WE wanted to be seen.

second of all, I realized that being a singular person “who just happened to be gay” was not enough. against our individual desires to forge ahead alone, we are undeniably connected, and that is something to embrace. we are stronger together in the fights we battle side-by-side, the laughs and inside jokes we share, and the support we give each other. in joining the Brittana fandom, we celebrated more than just love blossoming between two best friends. we celebrated the wonderful nuances of the queer experience together. we supported each other and shared stories during tough times related to not just the show but our own personal lives. where there was a lack in our personal lives, we found and formed a community based on love and a shared part of us that makes us special. and we were able to do that because naya asked that we be taken seriously, because she knew this was something important to us all.

this is what I have learned during my time here, because of naya, and because of all of you: love loudly. celebrate yourself and all parts of yourself loudly. and most definitely, love and celebrate loudly being part of something that makes you special

[gleerant]

it’s just surreal to see all of the old familiar brittana blogs resurface

it’s been years and this is not how i would’ve wanted us to circle back, but leave it to naya to get us all back together

i don’t miss the part about us being starved for representation but i do miss the community we formed

so many years later and look how naya has helped change everything for the better

[castleoflions]

It’s been nearly a decade since I last drew Naya. I didn’t think her death would be the reason why I would be drawing her again.

Thank you, Naya, for sharing your beautiful talents with us and for embracing so many young queer fans who saw themselves in Santana Lopez and for fighting to make Brittana a real thing. Thank you for playing a character that led to me meeting so many wonderful people and fellow fans over the years, a large handful who I still remain good friends with a decade later and will for many years to come.

You’ll be sorely missed, but never forgotten. RIP Naya.

[cosmoslions]

Tbh it is hard for me to pause and realise Naya is gone for good. I hadn’t even thought of her much in the past years as I moved on with life, as many of you I’d guess, before the news of her missing went trending. When she was recovered (which i am thankful for, as it’s going to be easier for her family and for us to find closure), the news really struck me deeply and I was almost astonished by the intensity of the blow. It’s almost as if I had forgotten how deeply impactful her acting and persona in glee was to me and so many others at the time. I still remember the night episode 15 of season 2 aired, it was on 8th of march, in 2011, i still know this date by heart. After that episode I cried my eyes out for a solid day. My 17-yo self was still struggling so much with her lesbian identity and her monologue in front of the lockers to Brittany was laying out loud all my insecurities. It was so cathartic to see a character on screen going through your struggles and overcome them, overcome the stigma, shame and fear. Naya’s acting gave me the little push at the time to fully come out to my friends soon after that episode aired, then to my close family a few months later, all during highschool, 10 years ago. She was such a beast, in acting and singing that she was able to give chunks of courage to many of us. That’s incredible and I’d almost forgotten about it. I am sad to be remembered this in such circumstances, and sad as well retrospectively, as i wished for her a long career in acting or singing that she deeply deserved... At least, during her time she managed to gather us all. Thanks to her and HeMo, I made friends with lots of you on here, even met a few of you IRL. To this I’ll always be grateful, as her legacy is big and has been going strong already during her living.

May she rest in peace

[fratboykate]

they found Naya Rivera :(

I hadn't been online except to complain about my email bullshit because I'm trying to finish something I need to send off to my reps so you're legit how I found out and then immediately fell down a twitter hole. While we knew this was the outcome since day one, the confirmation on the 7th anniversary of Cory's death is just...A Lot.

That picture broke my soul a little.

Look, Glee was a nightmare. Those of us who lived through it have come to see that show as a bloody war we barely survived and I wouldn't go back even if they paid me cold hard cash but what Naya did back then, embracing a queer character and its fan base so openly when people were STILL running away from it, made her a shinning star amongst the mess that was that cast. As a queer Latina myself, Santana will always hold a fond place in my heart.

Naya was one of the most talented people on one of the most infamously iconic shows of the last few decades. She was a real star. Naya was a hero in life because she stood by those who were often overlooked when she didn't have too and, right on brand, she also died a hero. To know that with her last bit of strength she managed to get her son on the boat and save him is heartbreaking but it's also SO Naya. She said "fuck you world" and made sure that even if it took her, it wasn't going to take him too.

Rest easy, Naya. We're all sure you're singing somewhere.

[cosmoslions]

Hey! Just wanted to say that I'm really proud of you for almost being done with your Ph.D! I've been following you since you the OB days when you were in university. Wishing you all the best with your thesis defense.

... Oh wow... <3 thank you anon, it means a lot! Ive been thinking of OB lately and how i’d look up to be in Cosima’s feet back then, doing a PhD and all. Ive always known i wanted to pursue in science and be a researcher of some kind. Im not in Evo Devo, but materials science applied to aerospace applications is a nice fit as well! Hoping to be able to pursue in a space-related field and why not enter a space agency someday, it’s definitely been a goal for a long time now.

Also, you’ve been around here for about 6-7 years then... congrats! (i know, i know, it hurts to remember it’s been THAT long)

Take good care of yourself anon, hoping your family and loved ones are doing well, wherever you are!