You were always so scared, even when you were being brave. How could I be mad at you for being so scared?! Every time you didn’t show up, I knew it was because you were just too scared and I never held it against you. There’s so much to be scared of in the world. All my friends are all terrified. All the time. My friends are afraid of being around other people. They’re afraid of being alone. My friends are scared to go to the store. My friends are scared that men are going to run them over on purpose. They’re scared to ride the bus. They’re scared everyone’s going to find out how to scare them and then scare them on purpose. I keep thinking about how scared you must have been. You left the house by yourself at night. Anyone who doesn’t understand how scary that is will never understand you or me or us.
Red Durkin on the death of Donna Ostrovsky - and the fear that trans women live with. (via sheknowshowtofly)

Today I read Topside Press’s tribute to Donna Ostrowsky, and tonight I walked into an independent bookstore and looked around and realized there would be no books written by trans women there, none, and I have been thinking a lot about Donna, and her book, the one we will never read, and I have been thinking about The Collection and how some of the authors passed their copies around signing them for each other, but I didn’t have a copy yet, and Kelsey said it was like we were signing yearbooks, but it meant a lot more, and I have been thinking about how I avoid connecting with people because I think I have nothing to offer them, and I have been thinking about the hard-hearted world, and its abuse, and what people think it does to us, and what it actually does, and I don’t really have anything to conclude, but I have been thinking.

this-disgusting-ribbon:

animationtidbits:

Frozen - First Look Trailer

so i am guessing this movie is a comedy caper focusing on these two goofballs yeah

there was actually some cute animation in there but it’s not giving me any princess-adventure vibes tho

or do we not want to exclude little boys by showing a girl doing stuff too early in the promotional stages

maybe i’m being too critical

maybe not

I’ve been reading a lot of criticism about this new disney movie and it’s legit but how has no one addressed how fucking creepy and illogical this living snowman character is??

how and why is he alive, how is he not constantly gaining or losing mass, what are his eyes made out of, does he have a central nervous system, why does he have teeth

Source: animationtidbits

I’m not reading another YA trilogy unless someone guarantees me no queer people die in the second act.

queerbookclub:

This post and its outgoing links probably contain some spoilers for: Divergent/Insurgent, Across the Universe/A Million Suns, Hunger Games/Catching Fire, Legend/Prodigy, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and more. Some of you may have already guessed the theme of this rant!

This post talks a lot about fictional dead queer people. If you’re sensitive to this, you may want to skip. I’m pretty mad and this may not be my best composition.

Remember that time I complained that there were no queers in the dystopian future? And remember that other time I complained that gay characters in fiction for youth are closeted and stoic and self-sacrificing and then die? And the other time I got really mad that Insurgent had the only queer character in its enormous cast thus far come out… on her literal goddamn death bed?

I’m thirty pages from finishing A Million Suns, the second in Beth Revis’ YA trilogy that starts with Across the Universe. A few chapters back, an important secondary character bit the dust, and - you know, I get it. We’re in the dystopian future, or on the ship run on lies, or whatever. Things are bleak, people are dying, that’s a theme.

But the similarities in timing between this death and the one I complained about in Insurgent are EERIE. The character doesn’t come out with her last breath, rather, her sexuality is implied - another woman gives her a tearful goodbye and kisses her corpse. I was complaining about it to my partner about it, and said, “Well, at least this other queer woman got to live.”
And he said, “You’re not finished the book yet, right? I’m just saying - she probably dies too.”

AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED.

When I sat down to write this post, I googled spoilers for Prodigy on a goddamn hunch, the second in Marie Lu’s Legend series, and guess what it has! A RETCONNED DEAD GAY MAN.

I think I’m going to give up reading YA dystopian and genre trilogies unless someone guarantees me that no queer people die in the second act. Are YA dystopian authors realizing they initially imagined a future without LGBTQ people, and in their second books trying to squeeze them in? Are they killing them off to make their inclusion less controversial, or to make their stories more moving? These are legitimate questions. What the fuck is up with all the dead, secret queer people in YA genre fiction?

This isn’t a problem because queer people don’t or shouldn’t ever die in fiction. This is a problem because it is a pattern. An OLD pattern. An old, shitty, damaging pattern.

This is a problem because queer people don’t just have deaths, they have lives. They have histories, they have relationships, they have desires, they have stories. If the only way you can think to portray a queer character is to kill them off dramatically, or if the only way you can think to make a character death more dramatic is to reveal they were queer, please don’t. Don’t write queer characters! Don’t write queer characters if this is the limit of your imagination or your integrity.

When your queer characters don’t express their desires and histories, don’t enjoy their relationships, don’t have stories, don’t survive because they’re sacrificed for the growth of straight main characters, what the fuck are you showing non-queer people about queers, and queer people about themselves?

For YA genre books and series that don’t fall into this trope, check out Adaptation by Malinda Lo, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, and Diverse Energies, a collection of diverse dystopian YA stories edited by Tobias Buckell, which includes a handful of LGB protagonists and a trans secondary character.

Books made me really mad and I wrote this.

queerbookclub:

thespiritwas:

Donna Ostrowsky reading “The Queer Experiment” from Topside Press’ THE COLLECTION at Barnard College. 

Today I learned my friend the prolific & brilliant Donna Ostrowsky passed away yesterday.  We were going to see each other tomorrow.  NYC has lost another brilliant trans woman. Rest in Power Donna.

I’m struggling with words. I only met Donna once, at The Collection release. I can’t make sense of her being gone, because it’s senseless. My heart is breaking for Donna and for her loved ones.

Source: thespiritwas

johndarnielle:

Yahoo’s Mayer: we’re committed to monetizing Tumblr | VentureBeat

“Tumblr prides itself on being a home for brands, established and emerging, we at Yahoo are all about brands,” Mayer said on the call.

not to be too too too cynical but I know all the people I follow on Tumblr and all the people who follow me are united in one thing and one thing only: their ravenous enthusiasm for brands. “I came for the sense of a new community, one with a keen feel for the visual but with a passion for language, too,” they say, “but it’s the brands that keep me here. Sweet Christ I love brands. Let the mountains collapse into dust and the oceans all boil, but give me brands,” they cry in the night. I personally remember, as a child, pleading with my parents to let me interface with my favorite brands. And interface we did. With the brands. The glorious, glorious brands