I’m Tired Of People Not Appreciating The Intense Imagery Of Lena Waithe’s Met Gala Outfit, So Please

The truth

I’ve always been the type to hide my pain. I struggle silently for the most part. Very few have seen me cry. Though many have seen my scars. I’ve not been the one to hide after the fact. I try my hardest to be honest, but I almost never tell people the truth about my scars. They know that they’re self-inflicted, I’d never try to actually convince them otherwise anymore. Though I never really tell them the truth of the reasons behind them. I always give them basic reasons and they accept that. They don’t push so I don’t offer the real reasons. I doubt I’d tell them even if they did. I would not in a million years post this if I thought there was any chance of anyone I personally know seeing this. I’m not sure if I’d be able to post it if I knew more than like ten people would see this honestly. I feel like if I talk a little more about it, maybe I could help someone else. Or at the very least make sure they know they’re not alone in this fight. Most likely I’m going to regret this, but I’ll go though with it anyway. Let me start of with this, no this isn’t me trying to get attention or be all woe is me. If I wanted attention there are plenty of other places I could do that. Here I’m only ever going to be raw and honest. The same way I was with my first post. So I’ll start from the beginning and build up to the present. So when I was young my parents got divorced, though they still almost have always lived together, which means lots of fights, that my brother and I always witnessed no matter how hard they tried to hide it from us. We weren’t stupid, we saw and heard pretty much everything, or mostly I did. Though that’s probably the least of it if I’m being honest. I’ve always been bullied for one thing or another, sometimes for my weight, sometimes for being half black, sometimes for my parents and other things I honestly couldn’t tell you because I don’t even think they knew why. I had a lot of fake friends throughout my life, they mostly wanted my brother even as a young girl. Mostly I ended up getting adopted by my brother’s friends which was great as long as my brother and I were on good terms. When I was in I think second grade, my absolute best friend who was a year older than me and was completely infatuated with my brother, decided to experiment with my body without my permission to do so. I’d love to say that was the only time something like that happened to me, but that’s not true you’ll get to know what I mean later on in this post. So she raped me for lack of a better word while I was sleeping over at her house. I never told a soul until really recently. If you didn’t gather my brother was everything to me as a kid, he was, honestly still kinda is, but we moved the summer of my third grade year. I don’t know what happened, but after that my brother and my relationship really fell apart for a long time after that, still hasn’t been the same honestly. So I lost my only really friend, which made me very lonely and desperate for friends and a place to fit in. I got that, but I also lost that fairly quickly as well. The bullying continued even with the change of schools, not that I really expected anything different. There was a neighbor that lived across the street from me that worked at my school. He kinda became a family friend. Keep that in mind as I tell you the next part. Almost everyday during lunch for close to six months, he would molest me. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, hell I blamed myself about it, so I didn’t tell anyone about it. My friends noticed what was happening and knew it wasn’t right, so they went to the principal behind my back without my knowledge. The principal didn’t do much of anything about it, I mean the guy got fired, but she didn’t tell my parents or contact the police like she was supposed to. So she reinforced inside my head that it was my fault. Also his mother verbally attacked me for telling her other much younger son about it. So I didn’t tell anyone else for a very long time. Since both made me continue to believe I was in the wrong. Though I know now that isn’t true, it took me so long to get to that point. Three years later I told my mom about it and begged her not to tell anyone, then maybe a year and a half later I told both my brother and father about it. He still lived beside me and I still had to deal with him. He moved away finally maybe a year ago. After I had graduated high school. That was spread around school after I talked about it around the wrong person. Eventually everyone knew some version of the story. My entire middle school knew some small part of the story. I was horrified and that made the bullying worse. For a long time I felt completely alone even with friends, there were only two people that actually really made a difference in my life during that time and they both left me in very different ways. One was Harlee my best friend, she stood up for me or kept me away from the people trying to tear me apart. That was before 8th grade when her and her new best friend started bullying me using things only my friends knew. So it hurt so much more. The other one was the best friend I got after Harlee left me. Her name was Kelly, she was such a bright beautiful soul. She was amazing and really helped me begin to heal for the first time in my life. We had lost touch after 8th grade and the next I had heard about her was that she died. She meant the world to me and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her. She was barely 13 when she died from cancer, I never knew the extreme pain of loss until that day. I couldn’t move for an hour after I’d heard about her passing, besides the sobs ripping through my entire body. I still haven’t gotten over the pain of her passing. That was one of the times I really started to self harm, after that pain. I’d done it a few times before like when my aunt had gotten breast cancer, which she luckily survived, or when I had told someone new about what the guy had done to me. Things were kinda fine for awhile, there was still bullying, but nothing comparable to middle school. I had gotten into a relationship with my best friend and things were serious between us. We had really thought we were gonna get married. We both still live each other, but we’ve both moved on. He got into another amazing relationship, but I didn’t. I wanted to rebel against him which in hindsight made no sense seeing as I broke up with him, but I dated a girl he told me would be no good for me. He was 100% correct, she was terrible to me and for me. That didn’t stop me from staying in that terrible relationship for almost three years. She was abusive to say the least, but it was kinda okay in the beginning. She desperately was trying to buy my love, which I gave to her in a way. She spent a lot of money on me but she was truly awful. Though things never got physical in the beginning. It was over a year into it when she started hurting me. It seems like after we had sex she got so much worse. She would beat me, which I would fight back just as hard, but that I could handle mentally. It wasn’t until she started raping me that I truly knew this wasn’t going to change. I wouldn’t say I was scared of her, since I knew I could take her, but I was so lost by this point I didn’t know who or what I was anymore. I either needed out of that relationship or I was going to end up dead, whether it be her or me I didn’t know. Still it took me a very long time to get outta the relationship. It was the December after graduation I finally stuck to my guns and got out of it. I lost most of my high school years to that girl, but I learned a lot from that experience. I wouldn’t be who I am today without that terrible experience happening. I got a stalker soon after the break up since I almost immediately met a guy online and tried to become fwbs with him. We met up once, did a little bit, but he got almost as crazy as my ex. Eventually I honestly didn’t feel safe anywhere in my neighborhood or town because of them. I needed out, but I didn’t know how. I genuinely hate myself and I felt ugly beyond description. Those external things really destroyed me internally, for a long time throughout most of those things I wanted to die. I hated everything about me and nothing helped. I would self harm and it felt good to me. I know how that sounds, trust me. But for years all I really felt was stress, pain, numb and fake. As bad as it sounds self harm helped temporarily, though I do not at all promote it. You get addicted to it and it’s nearly impossible to quit. It’s not really worth it. Honestly if I could undo it I probably would. Though there isn’t anything I can do now besides fight the urge. Things got better and worse when I moved to the other side of the country. But I think I bore my soul enough for today. Now I’m in an amazing relationship with an even more amazing guy. I wouldn’t change a thing, as long as I get to keep him. He’s helped me heal in ways I never knew possible. I love him with every inch of my body and I wouldn’t trade him for an easier life. I really don’t know how I survived everything, but I promise you the fight to stay alive is always worth it. I’m proof of that. I had almost given up on life and love, then Josh came into my life. My love for him, began the slow process of healing. So I guess the moral is, no matter your history, you have a bright future ahead of you as long as you keep living to get to that point. It’s worth the fight I promise you that. If you ever need someone to talk to I’m here for you no matter what. I love you all and I need you to keep fighting, to keep living. Sorry for the long post, but I think it needed to be out there. I mean it, if you need someone to talk to I'm right here, I promise you that. Please feel free to reach out to me.

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

This is so beautiful

Jared’s not-so-solo Saturday JIB panel

Jared didn’t feel good on Saturday. He said it in the morning J2 panel.

Later, he mentioned not feeling great to several people in his photo ops. When they had autos, people saw him pull Jensen away and they held a private conversation that ended with Jared saying something like “No, I’ll be fine.” Right after that was Jared’s solo panel. Except it wasn’t a solo panel at all. Jensen left his autos and got Rich and Rob and they ALL went out with Jared.

And then this:

Which wasn’t even true really?

He then spent the entire beginning of the panel deflecting questions:

And providing a distraction for Jared who clearly didn’t feel great. He sang KISS acapella :

He blew bubbles at Jared:

Close up of that:

He said this after the first question got interrupted by all the joking around, which was interesting:

He cooled himself off with a fan:

And poured Jared water:

Which they both drank. Very sweet.

He played the guitar:

He flicked bubbles off of Jared:

And told him not to show off his butt:

Honestly? I think Jensen would have ridden a unicycle and juggled if it helped Jared.

And Jared clearly did need him there. 

When Jensen acted like he was going to leave:

Jared reaches out to stop him.

Jensen stayed there until Daniela showed up and LITERALLY dragged him off stage to go back to autos:

I know JIB weekend is hard on both of them. It’s the anniversary of a very bad time. It just warms my heart that Jared felt sick and Jensen went into full protective mode, even making sure Rob and Rich would still be with him if and when Jensen had to go. As my friend described it, Jensen was all MAYDAY MAYDAY ALL HANDS ON DECK JARED NEEDS US the second he realized Jared was a little off.

I think this gif of the big screen behind them sums it up best. Jensen over Jared’s shoulder protectively having his back:

I absolutely love this.

Having the absolutely breathtaking realisation that Teen Derek Hale would probably be fucking terrified of Stiles. Not in a physical way, obviously, he’s still a werewolf and Stiles is still human, but in a social ‘oh my god this person is so much cooler than me, how are we even interacting right now?’ way because if you think about it, Derek “Too School for Cool” Hale:

sits by himself at lunch

has absolute crap social skills

can quote Shakespeare

knows “The Crucible” well enough to know it’s an allegory for McCarthyism

knows about berserkers, kanimas, kitsune, wendigos, etc. 

had his first crush on a band geek

hung out with exactly one (1) person, and that was his uncle

And on the other side of things, we have Stiles “Fuck Around and Find Out” Stilinski who:

actively lies to the literal Sheriff (also his dad, but tbh that’s just double danger points)

steals and makes illegal copies of keys

knows police radio code and has (illegal) access to police files

can start a car with a screwdriver

gets drunk in the forest with his bestie

breaks in the school at least semi-regularly just to fuck with his teachers

went looking for a dead body for fun

What I’m getting at here is that “117″ should have consisted solely of Derek going through every stage of Bi Panic and then inventing a few more whenever Stiles interacts with him directly while Scott looks absolutely be-fucking-fuddled because ‘dude, what did you do to him, I can smell his nerves from outside’ as Peter’s laughter is heard in the background, and Kate Argent fucks off to rot in the lowest circle of Hell. 

The only acceptable reason for this is if this character is actually a demon who seduces men and then eats them. [source]

A Stiles Rare Pair Valentine Event!

Consider this working like a theme week. No pressure, no minimums, no maximums, and no restriction on what counts... just create and share on 2/14.

For this, we're going with any Stiles pairing under 1k on AO3. As of now, that means no Sterek, Steter, Stydia, Sciles, Stackson, and Steo. I probably won't check again later, so assume anything not on the list is fair game

If people want a collection, one of us can host it.

The rules:

It's a Stiles ship event so he should be in the main pairing.

The ship must have under 1k on ao3 (The ship doesn't need to be shown on the photo.)

Post on 2/14.

@teenwolffandomevents

scottish wildcats look as if a witch w/ glasses turned themselves into a cat

Yes

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