you can always start over. you can always catch up. you can still be who you dream of being. itâs not too late for you.
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DEAR READER
NASA
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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tannertan36

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RMH

Kiana Khansmith
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
ojovivo

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dirt enthusiast
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Peter Solarz
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

titsay
Misplaced Lens Cap

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@radiantpatronus
you can always start over. you can always catch up. you can still be who you dream of being. itâs not too late for you.
Tom Hiddleston for Steve Schofield 2021
my only advice to all the girls out there is to wear weird shit. just do it
Benefits
Men are more likely to be put off and thus, leave you alone.
Women who are also weird may be inclined to start up conversations with you and befriend you.
Little girls will feel safer around you because they are also weird.
Small children may ask you if you are a fairy/princess/mermaid, and that's just a really good feeling.
You get that much closer to being a fairy/princess/mermaid.
6. You make your inner child happy and every time you do that, you heal.
this applies to men too because they deserve the chance to be weird too :)
And all my enbies as well ^^
my night manager (who is a gay man) and i sometimes sit down and exchange stories and tidbits about our sexuality and our experiences in the queer cultural enclave. and tonight he and i were talking about the AIDS epidemic. heâs about 50 years old. talking to him about it really hit me hard. like, at one point i commented, âyeah, iâve heard that every gay person who lived through the epidemic knew at least 2 or 3 people who died,â and he was like â2 or 3? if you went to any bar in manhattan from 1980 to 1990, you knew at least two or three dozen. and if you worked at gay menâs health crisis, you knew hundreds.â and he just listed off so many of his friends who died from it, people who he knew personally and for years. and he even said he has no idea how he made it out alive.
it was really interesting because he said before the aids epidemic, being gay was almost cool. like, it was really becoming accepted. but aids forced everyone back in the closet. it destroyed friendships, relationships, so many cultural centers closed down over it. it basically obliterated all of the progress that queer people had made in the past 50 years.
and like, itâs weird to me, and what i brought to the conversation (i really couldnât say much though, i was speechless mostly) was like, itâs so weird to me that thereâs no continuity in our history? like, aids literally destroyed an entire generation of queer people and our culture. and when you think about it, we are really the first generation of queer people after the aids epidemic. but like, when does anyone our age (16-28 i guess?) ever really talk about aids in terms of the history of queer people? like itâs almost totally forgotten. but it was so huge. imagine that. like, dozens of your friends just dropping dead around you, and you had no idea why, no idea how, and no idea if you would be the next person to die. and it wasnât a quick death. you would waste away for months and become emaciated and then, eventually, die. and i know itâs kinda sophomoric to suggest this, but like, imagine that happening today with blogs and the internet? like people would just disappear off your tumblr, facebook, instagram, etc. and eventually youâd find out from someone âoh yeah, they and four of their friends died from aids.â
so idk. it was really moving to hear it from someone who experienced it firsthand. and thatâs the outrageous thing - every queer person you meet over the age of, what, 40? has a story to tell about aids. every time you see a queer person over the age of 40, you know they had friends who died of aids. so idk, i feel like we as the first generation of queer people coming out of the epidemic really have a responsibility to do justice to the history of aids, and we havenât been doing a very good job of it.
Younger than 40.
Iâm 36. I came out in 1995, 20 years ago. My girlfriend and I started volunteering at the local AIDS support agency, basically just to meet gay adults and meet people who maybe had it together a little better than our classmates. The antiretrovirals were out by then, but all they were doing yet was slowing things down. AIDS was still a death sentence.
The agency had a bunch of different services, and we did a lot of things helping out there, from bagging up canned goods from a food drive to sorting condoms by expiration date to peer safer sex education. But we both sewed, so⊠we both ended up helping people with Quilt panels for their beloved dead.
Do the young queers coming up know about the Quilt? If you want history, my darlings, there it is. They started it in 1985. When someone died, his loved ones would get together and make a quilt panel, 3âx6â, the size of a grave. They were works of art, many of them. Even the simplest, just pieces of fabric with messages of loved scrawled in permanent ink, were so beautiful and so sad.
They sewed them together in groups of 8 to form a panel. By the 90s, huge chunks of it were traveling the country all the time. Theyâd get an exhibition hall or a gym or park or whatever in your area, and lay out the blocks, all over the ground with paths between them, so you could walk around and see them. And at all times, there was someone reading. Reading off the names of the dead. There was this huge long list, of people whose names were in the Quilt, and people would volunteer to just read them aloud in shifts.
HIV- people would come in to work on panels, too, of course, but most of the people we were helping were dying themselves. The first time someone Iâd worked closely with died, it was my first semester away at college. I caught the Greyhound home for his funeral in the beautiful, tiny, old church in the old downtown, with the bells. Iâd helped him with his partnerâs panel. Before I went back to school, I left supplies to be used for his, since I couldnât be there to sew a stitch. I lost track of a lot of the people I knew there, busy with college and then plunged into my first really serious depressive cycle. I have no idea who, of all the people I knew, lived for how long.
The Quilt, by the way, weighs more than 54 tons, and has over 96,000 names. At that, it represents maybe 20% of the people who died of AIDS in the US alone.
There were many trans women dying, too, btw. Donât forget them. (Cis queer women did die of AIDS, too, but in far smaller numbers.) Life was and is incredibly hard for trans women, especially TWOC. Pushed out to live on the streets young, or unable to get legal work, they were (and are) often forced into sex work of the most dangerous kinds, a really good way to get HIV at the time. Those for whom life was not quite so bad often found homes in the gay community, if they were attracted to men, and identified as drag queens, often for years before transitioning. In that situation, they were at the same risk for the virus as cis gay men.
Cis queer women, while at a much lower risk on a sexual vector, were there, too. Helping. Most of the case workers at that agency and every agency I later encountered were queer women. Queer woman cooked and cleaned and cared for the dying, and for the survivors. We held hands with those waiting for their test results. Went out on the protests, helped friends who could barely move to lie down on the steps of the hospitals that would not take them in â those were the original Die-Ins, btw, people who were literally lying down to die rather than move, who meant to die right there out in public â marched, carted the Quilt panels from place to place. Whatever our friends and brothers needed. We did what we could.
OK, thatâs it, thatâs all I can write. I keep crying. Go read some history. Or watch it, there are several good documentaries out there. Donât watch fictional movies, donât read or watch anything done by straight people, fuck them anyway, they always made it about the tragedy and noble suffering. Fuck that. Learn about the terror and the anger and the radicalism and the raw, naked grief.
I was there, though, for a tiny piece of it. And even that tiny piece of it left its stamp on me. Deep.
2011
A visual aid: this is the Quilt from the Names Project laid out on the Washington Mall
I was born (in Australia) at the time that the first AIDS cases began to surface in the US. While I was a witness after it finally became mainstream news (mid-85), I was also a child for much of it. For me there was never really a world Before. Iâm 35 now and I wanted to know and understand what happened. I have some recommendations for sources from what Iâve been reading lately:
And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts is a seminal work on the history of HIV/AIDS. Itâs chronological and gives an essential understanding of all the factors that contributed to the specific history of the virusâ spread through the US and the rest of the world, the political landscape into which it landed (almost the worst possible)*. Investigative journalism and eyewitness account. Shilts was himself an AIDS casualty in 1994.
AIDS at 30: A History by Victoria Harden
The Origin of AIDS by Jaques Pepin for the science of it all.
Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UPâs Fight against AIDS.
The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America.
Larry Kramer is a pretty polarising figure and he had issues with the sexual politics of gay New York to begin with (see: Faggots) but heâs polarising for a reason: heâs the epidemicâs Cassandra. Reports from the Holocaust collects his writings on AIDS.
I donât think I can actually bring myself to read memoirs for the same reason I canât read about the Holocaust or Stalinist Russia any more. But I have a list:Â
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience
The Quilt: Stories from the Names Project
Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival by Sean Strub
Borrowed Time: And AIDS Memoir by Paul Monette
Read or watch The Normal Heart. Read or watch Angels in America. Read The Mayor of Castro Street or watch Milk. Dallas Buyers Club has its issues but itâs also heartbreaking because the characters are exactly the politically unsavory people used to justify the lack of spending on research and treatment. Itâs also an important look at the exercise of agency by those afflicted and abandoned by their government/s, how they found their own ways to survive. Thereâs a film of And the Band Played On but JFC itâs a mess. You need to have read the book.
Some documentaries:
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) [hard to find]
How to Survive a Plague (2012)
We Were Here (2011)
Everyone should read about the history of the AIDS epidemic. Especially if you are American, especially if you are a gay American man. HIV/AIDS is not now the death sentence it once was but before antiretrovirals it was just that. It was long-incubating and a-symptomatic until, suddenly, it was not.
Read histories. Read them because reality is complex and histories attempt to elucidate that complexity. Read them because past is prologue and the past is always, in some form, present. We canât understand here and now if we donât know about then.
*there are just SO MANY people I want to punch in the throat.
Theyâve recently digitized the Quilt as well with a map making software, I spent about three hours looking through it the other day and crying. There are parts of it that look like they were signed by someoneâs peers in support and memoriam, and then you realize that the names were all written in the same writing.
That these were all names of over 20 dead people that someone knew, often it was people whoâd all been members of a club or threatre group.
Hereâs the link to the digitization: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/aidsquilt/
As well, there are numerous people who were buried in graves without headstones, having been disenfranchised from their families. I read this story the other day on that which went really in depth (I would warn that it highlights the efforts of a cishet woman throughout the crisis): http://arktimes.com/arkansas/ruth-coker-burks-the-cemetery-angel/Content?oid=3602959
Iâve had several conversations recently with younger guys for whom this part of our history isnât well known. Here are some resources for y'all. Please, take care of one another.
http://www.aidsquilt.org/view-the-quilt/search-the-quilt
Updated link to the quilt
this is so hard to read or even think about but⊠itâs so important. itâs so important to understand just the âŠoverwhelming SCALE of this. how many people died while the government did NOTHING.
Reblogging for pride
Never forget your fallen. Your people were nearly annihilated in an epidemic. Never forget how lucky we are, never forget how they tried to let us die.
I grew up hearing about the Quilt all the time and this post reminded me how long itâs been since Iâve heard about it. Kids, go out and learn your history.
Iâm a trans woman and Iâm 38 now. My grandfather was a gay man living in Florida and he died of AIDS in the mid 90âs. He was in his 50âs.
My parents took care of him as he died, but they go to church 5 times a week to this day and though grandpa died saying he had no regrets my parents still insist that he must have ârepentedâ for his âsinâ before he died. The thought comforts them, apparently.
Meanwhile Iâm in Florida right now for the first time in a decade and I canât visit grandpaâs grave because I donât remember where it is and I canât ask my parents because they disowned me for being trans. 30 odd years after the crisis began and weâre still dealing with the trauma of it. The response to the AIDS crisis was practically genocide against the queer community.
me remembering that luke and rey didnât even have a good relationship and we didnât get to see them as a parental relationship or even as friends
cant believe they expected us to believe luke saw rey; a lonely kid from a desert planet dreaming about finding her parents, struggling with her identity, and dealing with the weight and pressure of bringing back the jediâŠ. and he didnt want to help her. not only that, they also made them argue the whole time. SICK
the real luke skywalker would meet rey and be like oh i know you. iâm your dad now. i can teach you three things: how to Force, how to make the perfect cup of hot chocolate, and how to destroy fascists. letâs go do barrel-rolls in x-wings
the way the real luke skywalker would have taken a single glance at that feral desert girl and been like. "my child now." come here girl I'll teach you how to build moisture vaporators so you never have to exploit yourself for water. yes this is more important than jedi training. yes we can cover that later. oh you want to fight kyle? oh you're struggling with the idea that he might still have a soul? ok learn from my mistakes and don't lose a hand in a fight you can't win, but also did i tell you about the time i beat my dad's ass so hard he bounced back to the light side? funny story actually,
all of this in the 10 minutes after she gives him anakin's lightsaber
Rey: i was abandoned by my family on a backwater desert planet and waited for them for most of my life before a droid and the man who would become my best friend showed up and i chose to leave everything i knew behind in order to help save them and help the rebellion. i am very strong with the force and want to learn in order to protect the ones i love but my own capacity for darkness scares me. i need help understanding who i am and what my power means
Luke:
the force: here, have an apprentice who's a metaphorical narrative mirror for you. she needs guidance and a mentor figure.
luke: oh you mean my new daughter
the force: what
Rey: here dad meet my friends
Luke, meeting orphan mechanic rebel rose tico, pilot with a flair for drama poe dameron, and man who chose goodness in the face of overwhelming evil and is powerful in the force finn: oh you mean all my new kids
luke, talking to the force ghosts of the jedi council: so my first apprentice grogu has a mandalorian dad right? and he told me about how he rescued him and adopted him and how that's custom for mandalorians, right? to adopt the children they rescue. so THEN i got hit with a tax bill for religious organizations and i thought you know what doesn't get taxed? children. like when you have a child. you're not paying the government for having a child. SO i thought you know what i ain't payin the government shit-
force ghost obi-wan: but isn't leia the chancellor?
luke: EXACTLY imagine paying taxes to your sister!!! i'd rather die. anyway that's how i ended up with 15 children. they're all skywalkers.
yoda: force-sensitive, some of them are not.
luke: yes. your point?
the real luke skywalker is a devoted father and a tax evader thatâs all there is to it
Yet another way we were utterly ROBBED with the sequel trilogy
I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad
In case you're curious here's what I mean.
Renaissance(distinct lines, stability and the individual man):
Baroque (bold, chaotic, dramatic):
Romantic(romanticize the simple hard working life):
Do you see the difference?
op is a vampire who painted works in all of these times
baroque gif
âunder the same sunâÂ
âŠstill waiting for IceAdo
Please, everyone, go outside. Breathe in fresh air. Expose your skin to sun. Touch some bloody grass. I get so worried when I see people spending their entire lives indoors on social media and then basing their entire mindset, personality and world image on whatever they see on social media. Trust me, things are completely different in the real world. A lot of the âdiscussionsâ and âhot takesâ you see online have no real bearing or precedence on life in the real world. So please, use your phone less and live your real life more, for your own good.
Heart mouth
Rewatched Yuri on Ice a while back and I forgot how absolutely wonderful it is. Even knowing how insane it is to animate ice skating, I had to do it after watching the show again lol. Cleaning up and coloring that jacket almost destroyed me asdfkjhlsdfh. Working on another one rn with both Yuri and Viktor, but itâll be a while till I have time to finish it. Reference gif I used is of Yuzuru Hanyu btw (in case anyone is curious)! EDIT: DID YâALL SEE THE TRAILER FOR ADOLESCENCE?!!!!! I ACTUALLY SHED A TEAR IâM SO HAPPYâ€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïž ITâS BEEN SO LONG Â
LOKI APPRECIATION WEEK âł Day Four : Favorite Character (or Variant) - Loki Laufeyson
Suddenly missed YOI so had to draw a Yurio! Especially since all my old artworks of him are super ugly haha
itâs been years and iâm still thinking about how tatiana maslany did that with orphan black
Itâs fine to want nothing to do with Harry Potter now that JKR is being regularly and publicly terrible (Iâm listing that way myself even though I donât want to because the association is just overpoweringly distasteful), but seeing the shift in how people discuss HP on this website to be like, âIt seems obvious to me that this franchise was always poorly constructed, derivative drek littered with red flags anybody would notice with a cursory glance - thereâs absolutely nothing genuinely appealing about it.â âŠThatâs just very funny, sorry. Like yes that is unfortunately not how the relationship between a personâs moral character and their skills works, but mostly I was alive and had a developed consciousness between 2000 and 2008, so I cannot take this seriously. It wasnât the biggest literature phenomenon of recent times because it had a uniquely strong marketing strategy, guys.
The books are well written with engaging characters, great worldbuilding, and a story that captured people like no other. There is literally no overestimating the phenom the books were. And no the movies did not make it. They were MASSIVE even before the films. Before the films even came out, the NYT made a separate childrenâs bestseller list because a ton of people complained that âkidâs booksâ were taking up too many sports on the NYT bestsellers lists. Itâs honestly ridiculous to argue that HPâs popularity was made by the movies. Come on.
And the thing about red flags, is that most things that are legitimately problematic in the books are fantasy staples. JKR didnât invent the anti-semitic portrayal of goblins. Itâs an old as hell trope thatâs in countless fantasy stories. The house elves were based on Brownie folklore, even down to the tradition of their freedom coming from a piece of clothing being given to them. People were not talking a lot about the casual transphobia in doing things like describing Rita Skeeterâs hands as âmannishâ because casual transphobia was so ubiquitous that it was the norm, and that transphobia was often actively violent. I just donât think it crossed many peopleâs minds that âwow JKR described Rita Skeeterâs hands as mannish once in the year 2000, so I think sheâs probably a T*RF.â And this doesnât make it okay, and it doesnât mean these aspects of the books arenât problematic! But it does mean that like, no it wasnât âso obviousâ even to MANY progressive minded people. And I also donât think it makes her a terrible person. What makes her a terrible person is what sheâs doing NOW.
The idea that theyâve âalways been awfulâ and we âshould have knownâ is really and actually just⊠kind of cowardly? Instead of acknowledging that unfortunately yes, bad people can make good things, people are taking the easy way out and going âwell obviously a bad person makes bad art. itâs ALWAYS been bad, and my brain is so huge I know thisâ, because god forbid we have a more nuanced view and donât see the world in the most simplistic terms possible. It sucks when bad people make good art, but youâre not special for not ever liking Harry Potter.
also likeâŠ. as a trans person who adored harry potterâbecause god what little baby queer DOESNâT daydream about escaping their terrible mundane home life for a world where they can have friends and adventuresâthese takes are really frustrating. like why are you calling ME stupid because SHE betrayed a whole swathe of her fanbase. like youâre really using the heartbreak and hurt of thousands of trans hp fans as an opportunity for internet clout? you must really care about trans people
Loki Appreciation Week
Day 4 » Favorite Character » Mobius M. Mobius