In The DeepFish, He Said Softly, Aloud, Ill Stay With You Until I Am Dead. Ernest Hemingway, The Old

In The Deep “Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I am dead.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Tag game

I was tagged by both @zzledri and @drarry-picrew! Thanks for the tags, y'all!

Favourite color: Blue! I love most shades of blue, but right now I'm really into sky blue and periwinkle.

Currently reading: Published fiction, I'm reading Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon. It's really cheesy, but it's not too bad. Fanfic-wise, I'm reading Into the Deep by Ars_Matron. It's a Yuri on Ice fic, and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's a pirate AU! But fair warning, it's also an a/b/o fic if that's not your thing.

Last song: If We Can Get Through This We Can Get Through Anything by James Arthur

Last movie: Weathering With You (SO GOOD)

Last series: The Good Place (If you haven't watched this yet, I highly recommend it.)

Sweet, spicy, or savoury: sweet

Craving: macaroni and cheese

Tea or coffee: tea!

Currently working on: I am stalled out on a ficlet for a friend. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into it soon. It's a Drarry with the prompt: veritaserum.

This was fun! I'll tag @avaeryn, @bronwenackeley, @lastontheboat, and anyone else who wants in!

Hello love.... once you get this you have to say five things you like about yourself, then send this to ten of your favourite followers, SPREAD THE LOVE 💖🧡💛

This is notoriously late because I’m answering three of the same ask, one from the lovely Elan and @tigerlilycorinne and @ahhhnorealnamesallowed were also kind enough to send me one. So, five things I like about myself, eh? Well, here we go, in no particular order:

My smile - I get more compliments on this than I think any other aspect of my appearance, and while I generally struggle with self esteem, I’m actually rather proud of my smile. Oddly enough, I never smile with teeth showing, so I’m not talking about my teeth being super even or white or anything. I mean my actual smile, the way my lips curve upward and how it shows in my eyes when I’m really happy.

My vulnerability - I am a huge ball of feelings, and I experience things deeply. While this can be a double edged sword, I honestly wouldn’t change it. I think it makes me more compassionate, more open-minded, and probably a better person than I would be without it.

My objectivity - This ties in with my vulnerability in that what I really mean when I say this is my ability to give good advice. Even if I lean a certain way on a subject, I can still put myself in someone else’s shoes well enough most of the time to see a lot of different sides to an issue, and I’m also good at breaking that down for people in a way that makes sense and comes across as fair in most cases.

My face - This is slightly cheating because my smile is generally part of my face, and I already listed that. But to be fair it’s also valid because I’m not smiling all the time. I just like it. I think it’s a nice face. I like my cheekbones, my eyes, the overall shape and structure. I even have a nice nose! So while I have various issues with other parts of me, I’m fairly confident from the neck up!

My imagination - It is both an escape and a source of creation for me. I love how vividly I see things in my mind’s eye when I’m reading a great story or watching a cool show or movie. It makes it very easy to immerse myself in the media of my choice. I also love making up my own stories in my head, and sometimes I even manage to write them down! Haha.

So that’s that. I hope it satisfied the ask, and thanks for sending me those, y’all!

queer is literally a slur. like you’ve never been called that in a derogatory context like most lgbt people? you think your experiences escaping homophobia make it okay to justify the use of a homophobic slur?

queer is an identity.

it has also been used as a slur. there is no denying that. but using a word as a slur does not make it a slur. because before queer is a slur it is an identity. before it is derogatory it is a label. the use of queer as an identity is infinitely more important than the use of queer as a slur because the people who identify as queer are infinitely more important than the people who use queer as a slur.

say a lot of people decided they hated me. despised me. were disgusted by me to the point where my own name became a slur. would you tell me not to say it? would you tell me i could no longer be helena, and instead must come up with a euphemism for the name that belonged to me decades before it belonged in the mouths of bigots?

because that would make you an enabler.

you would tell me i can’t say my name anymore because some lowlife decided he could use it to insult me?

you would tell a gay man that he can’t be gay anymore because some teens in the early 2000’s started calling everything they didn’t like “gay”, and now he has to say “same sex oriented male identifying individual”?

does that enrage you? because it should. that’s exactly how you sound.

you are telling me i cannot use my label. you are telling me that when my great-uncle shouted until his face was red and he spat tobacco and the word queer at my feet, he was right. he was right to insult me, and i was wrong to say my name.

you are shitting on every single one of our predecessors. you are slandering every person who fought for their rights to exist and and be tolerated and be celebrated in their countries, every person who was lost to the aids epidemic, every person whose country criminalizes love and gender expression, every child whose parents abandoned them for straying from the norm, every person who was born and will die in the closet longing to be themselves. the queer umbrella is a safety net, a security blanket, the comfort of being known without being pressured to tell. it is near and dear and important as fuck to every member of the lgbt+ community and you are a blight upon the earth you walk.

how dare you speak upon my experiences with homophobia. how dare you disguise your own homophobia as activism. and how fucking dare you have the audacity to come to my blog and hide behind an anonymous ask and preach to me about how i’m oppressing myself. go look at the fucking wikipedia page for queer and read about how 1980s lgbt+ activists, especially lgbt+ people of color, fought to call themselves queer in a world that still hates peculiar things. and here you are forty years later spitting queer back at their feet.

i don’t give a fuck if people start using my name as a slur. my name is still helena. i will not change it. i chose it, i like it, and it belongs to me. it does not belong to bigots no matter how badly they want it. your discomfort with my identity is not my fucking problem.

i am helena. i am queer. die mad & go fuck yourself

"Wake up."

Harry twitched, then snored.

"I said wake up."

Consciousness slowly spread like pins and needles on the inside of his head. Harry groaned.

"Get up."

Harry groaned again, keeping his eyes closed. "'t'd'you want?"

"I'm hungry."

"Go find something to eat. I need to sleep."

"No. Get up. Make me breakfast."

Harry whined, nasal and plaintive. "Please, it's Saturday."

"So what. I'm hungry."

"Draco, please."

"Get up or I'll bite you."

"No you won't."

"I will."

"Fine. It's not like that'll kill me anyway."

"...you're not scared of my bite?"

"No, go ahead and bite me."

"Fine, here I come."

Harry almost fell asleep again as he waited. Nothing happened.

Then something damp tickled his ear. He jerked away with a gravelly chuckle and buried his face into his pillow. "Stop. That tickles."

"Get up and give me breakfast."

"You're old enough to go find breakfast yourself."

"You told me never to leave the flat."

"I told you to be discreet."

"You told me people are scared of me."

"Yes, well, they don't know how sweet you actually are."

"I am not sweet."

"You are. Let me sleep."

"No. Fucking get up."

Harry choked out a laugh. "Where did you learn that kind of language?! You're not even two!"

"Get up and make me some fucking breakfast."

"Stop it, you aren't allowed to swear."

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck--"

Laughing helplessly now, Harry finally forced his sticky eyes open. Dark, beady eyes stared at him from a mere two inches away.

"Good morning, Draco," he said fondly.

"Breakfast."

"You look very nice this morning."

"Shiny?"

"Very shiny," said Harry, pushing the duvet off himself and the tight spiral of thick coils beside him. He reached out and rubbed Draco's head with one finger.

The tiny, forked tongue shot out in a flash. "Will you take me to the park again today?"

Harry grinned, scratching his bare chest. "Sure."

"Will my namesake be there again?"

"Oh. Er. I don't know..."

"Pathetic."

"Pathetic?! Me?!"

"You couldn't even ask him out to dinner like you were supposed to."

"Fine. Watch me as I ask him today!"

"I hope you do. Then these forty five minute showers you take, grunting and moaning to yourself, can stop."

Harry felt himself go purple in the face as the white ball python next to him uncoiled and slithered away. "You-- you're just-- That's just my muscles relaxing--"

"Yes, I know which muscle. Now get up and feed me breakfast."

*

Seeker’s Games