LGBTAitP #28: Come Taste the Rainbow!

[Unbeknownst]

so, you've never worn shorts during a hailstorm without any underwear on? or coarse shorts in particular? Wow I envy you

The wonder of well made linen pants.

Gods I love linen.

[supernerd]

Hey, I forgot to subscribe, and now I've missed 28 pages, hello to you new folk! Hugs where they are needed.

[Socratov]

The wonder of well made linen pants.

Gods I love linen.

I had a pair of white linnen pants once, after Sensation White and Dancevalley they were completely and utterly unsalvagable. they were indeed quite nice to wear except for the fact that looking at them produced wrinkles, let alone wearing them (and doind silly things like standing up and sitting)

[KenderWizard]

Hello again!

This time, I vanished because I was at a con. Well, first I was in that pre-con costume frenzy, at my friend's house, then I was at a con, and then I was sick/exhausted for a day. Anyway, I cosplayed as Lady Thor, and my friend was Loki, and it was AWESOME.

Me as Lady Thor:

Spoiler

Show

What you can't see very well is my make-up, I did crazy eye art. I haven't worn make up in ages, it was fun. I like doing eye art. I even glued silver-grey studs to my face! Also, I modded a pair of earrings to be silver wings that went up along my ears. And I made my Mjolnir! I made everything except dress, tights and shoes.

In other news, our Tainiste (second to the Taoiseach, who is like our Prime Minister) has started to make pro-marriage noises, and apparently the public is now something like 73% in favour of marriage for same-sex couples, so I'm hoping we'll make progress on this soon!

[Lentrax]

Hello again!

This time, I vanished because I was at a con. Well, first I was in that pre-con costume frenzy, at my friend's house, then I was at a con, and then I was sick/exhausted for a day. Anyway, I cosplayed as Lady Thor, and my friend was Loki, and it was AWESOME.

Me as Lady Thor:

Spoiler

Show

What you can't see very well is my make-up, I did crazy eye art. I haven't worn make up in ages, it was fun. I like doing eye art. I even glued silver-grey studs to my face! Also, I modded a pair of earrings to be silver wings that went up along my ears. And I made my Mjolnir! I made everything except dress, tights and shoes.

In other news, our Tainiste (second to the Taoiseach, who is like our Prime Minister) has started to make pro-marriage noises, and apparently the public is now something like 73% in favour of marriage for same-sex couples, so I'm hoping we'll make progress on this soon!

That is an awesome costume. I wish I had skills anywhere near that.

Too bad we can't see the eye art. I bet it looked pretty epic.

Also it's good to hear there is some forward thinking being done somewhere in the world.
there will be a meeting of the secret massage club tomorrow. Remember the knock.

[The Succubus]

I make absolutely no comment about the symbolism of Thor's Hammer in regards to the themes of this thread.

[Socratov]

I make absolutely no comment about the symbolism of Thor's Hammer in regards to the themes of this thread.

but by saying it you have allready did, albeit on a metalevel

Or is this skirting too close to existentionalism

[Lix Lorn]

I make absolutely no comment about the symbolism of Thor's Hammer in regards to the themes of this thread.

This statement is false.

[Asta Kask]

Awesome costume! Did you make out with Loki?

I make absolutely no comment about the symbolism of Thor's Hammer in regards to the themes of this thread.

Thor's Hammer was normally small, but it grew if you rubbed the head.

[Socratov]

Awesome costume! Did you make out with Loki?



Thor's Hammer was normally small, but it grew if you rubbed the head.

now that is just blunt. (and rude)

(and this joke needed no explanation whatsoever)

[Lentrax]

now that is just blunt. (and rude)

(and this joke needed no explanation whatsoever)

Huh?

[Asta Kask]

now that is just blunt. (and rude)

True, though. Thor had some functions as a fertility god, and a prominent male member is necessary to function as such.

[MesiDoomstalker]

True, though. Thor had some functions as a fertility god, and a prominent male member is necessary to function as such.

So your saying its hammer time?

[Lentrax]

If it isn't, then I don't know when it would be.

[Asta Kask]

I would quote captain Hammer, but I would just get smacked by the mods. And not in a good way.

[Lix Lorn]

I was tempted to link it myself. xD

[Lentrax]

I would quote captain Hammer, but I would just get smacked by the mods. And not in a good way.

It's not enough to bash in skulls. They have to bash in minds.

[Laser Frog]

I had a dream about this thread last night, so I figured I'd stop by and see how everyone's doing. And I see a lot of new everyones, so I include them when I say "hi!"

I don't have much else to say than that, so I'll probably just lurk. That way I'm less of a nuisance.

[Lentrax]

It's story time everyone. As we approach the worst time of year for me, I am reminded of a project I did for an English class two years ago. It is nonfiction. Every word in it is true, and I wish you to know the story. Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read it, though I know it is really long.

Spoiler

Show

A Requiem for Aria

“We long for what we cannot have, a sad, unbroken chain,
Of lovers who yearn for others, and loved who love in vain.” -Aria.

I stand before the grave, the windswept rain slashing the ends of my coat out behind me.
The grass and flowers bend over, as if in deference to the woman buried beneath the stone marker. My head bows in respect. The memories drift through my mind like water. A tear leaks from my eye, running down my face, and then is swept away, lost to the winds. The school dance ten years ago now, the waning light of dusk glimmering off her dress, sparkling and dazzling my eyes like the sun off a calm sea at sunset. Aria always was elegant in blue. Royal. Divine. I had eyes for no other. Alone we danced amidst the crowd of couples, the calm eye in a storm of teen angst. She sang softly, her voice barely a whisper heard over the din of couples dancing around the gym. Her voice touched me as it always has, reaching down to the hidden recesses of my heart, and gently caressing my spirit. Softly she sings, her breathtaking voice an angelic whisper over the tumult of the other couples. “I wish this song were pixie dust that I blow into your eyes.
To make you see the loveliness beneath my sad disguise.” Even today as I sing the words, my soul soars, reaching from the darkness of the abyss I live in, stretching its wings and, even if only for a moment, basks in the light of her love.

Chuck, Cathy’s father, drunk as always spoke to me before the wedding. “You’ll never amount to anything, you worthless bum.” He wants me to fail. He tries to make me regret everything. I began to shake. I stood before the altar, my knees shaking like the branches of the winter-bare trees outside. I was positive, as surely as the trees go bare in winter, that anyone could see the shaking. I could feel the congregation, feel their sneers, their laughing. I can still imagine my soon to be father-in-law, waiting with baited breath to see me collapse, or run, or do something to embarrass myself. I quickly stole a glance around the church, saw the faces gathered. The corner of my eye caught on a blue dress. Her blue dress. She was there. As she smiled, I could feel the warmth of her love, and my shakes vanished. My heart was steeled. I stood ready.

A scream pierced the beeps and trills of the operating room. I stood beside Cathy as she laid stretched out, a curtain blocking my view of anything below her breasts. Through the window I saw the trees, some of the branches dead, their leaves strewn across the ground, leaving the branches barren. She screamed again. I turned to the anesthesiologist, who merely shrugged and pushed a button and dispensed more medicine into my wife. When I turned, there was another sound. A gasping, struggle of a scream. Elizabeth came into the world, born in blood and fluids. Her struggle begins. She was placed in an incubator, to keep her warm in her newfound cold, bright world. More monitors added my daughters erratic tattoo of life to the din of the operating room. Then a sharp trill as her heart stopped. My heart ceased to beat as nurses tried to revive her. Her touch rested against my chest, and my heart began to beat stronger, as though to tell me that by pumping my blood faster, harder, it would start hers a-beating again. I feel her caress upon my heart, and the monitors beeped once more.

Once more, I stand at the grave. It has been so long that there is a crack there, looming through the name like the Grand Canyon, separating me from the one laying beneath the ground. Has it truly been four years since I last stood here? Leaves are strewn across the ground, skittering across my vision as the wind picks them up. I always felt naked standing here, defenseless. This place was the only one I dared let down the armor around my heart. “Aria, my love, I’m sorry I haven’t been here often. It’s just…. I…” I cannot find the words to express what I wanted to tell her. I feel the first drops of rain on my face as I stand there, lost in memories. Or were they tears? I cannot say. Why was it always rain? Fat rain, wet rain, soft, hard, slashing, tearing, cutting. Why was it always raining? It is impossible to tell what are tears and what is rain. They are the same now. When it rains, it is because I am crying. When I cry, it is because it is raining.
Through my choking sobs, I managed to speak my feelings. “I miss you, my love. Not a day passes where you are not the first thing in my mind when I wake. How do I keep going, love? ” The winds breezes almost lazily through my hair, casting strands about, even as they are flattened by the fat wet drops of rain. The wind carries her voice to me again, as though she were standing beside me, singing that same sad song. “I wish I could weave these words into a magic spell, That I could utter anytime, to make you love me well.”

I could feel a chill against my chest. A spot of utter cold against my warm flesh. The priest droned on about the union of souls. I hardly paid attention, my thoughts drifting to the band of metal, the two twists of silver on its chain about my neck resting next to my dog tags. “I do.” My reply to the priest as he asks me that one incredibly long question about opposites. The heat of my chest, the cool of the metal, fought as my emotions did. Lifetimes flashed before my eyes. I saw things that may yet come. I saw lives I will never be able to live.

Aria and I went camping after we graduated from high school before I moved to college for the fall semester. I broached the idea as last minute, though I had planned the weekend for months. The soft earth was damp from the last nights rain. The cold mud seeped through my pants, leeching the warmth from my leg as I knelt before her. My sword glimmered in the first true light of dawn shining through the trees as I held it up to her. That red-orange light reflected from the blade onto my face as I swore my oath to the queen of my heart. “To eternity, my love, till the end of time, I am yours. Everything I have, my love, my devotion, my life.” She blushed and turned away. I had planned that, counted on it. I knew when she would turn back, and was ready for it. I rammed the blade into the ground, the hilt swaying in the breeze as I grasped in my coat. When she did turn, instead of seeing my naked steel, she gazed upon a small, black box. She slowly lifted it up, opened it. She gasped as she saw what lay within. Her lips pressed together into that tight, thin-lipped smile she gave to no other. Her special smile. Again I spoke, my throat constricted as my emotions rose up within me, my rehearsed speech gone in the heat of the moment. “Everything I have, everything I am, it is yours. Will you take me as I am?”

“I do.” Cathy’s response to that same question. I saw a ghost of that special smile on her face. We are wed and Chuck’s sneer is gone. I feel her smile from the back of the church.

I stand in the graveyard, the memories flowing through my head, past my eyes, in my ears, as the water flows down my face. I had failed. I swore my oath to her, and now I am left as she lies there before me. She was gone, and I had failed. My world has fallen apart. My darkness eternal, no end in sight. I would have given anything at that moment to see her face one last time. To hold her, and tell her, one last time, that I loved her. I stand before her grave, the rain dripping softly off of the leaves of the trees. Everyone else had gone, the cemetery workers had finished replacing the soil over her casket and had left, and now the rain slowly began turning it to mud. The air, filled with the sounds of rain, now heralded the ring of steel arriving in the cool, wet twilight. The blade was cold as I kissed the bare steel.

The doors to the Emergency Room slid open with a boom of thunder. Lightning tore the heavens apart, as the deadly bolts sought out victims. My heart was pounding so fast, I could hear my blood rushing through my ears. I found her there, lying on the gurney. Doctors frantically tried to put things aright in her body. Strange, I thought, that the beds would have red sheets. But then I could see a stripe of pure white as the fabric was pulled taut, and I realized what was truly happening. The truth crashed into me, a wave on a stormy sea that threatened to drown me in its sorrow. The tan-tiled floor was colored with the same bright red that stain the sheet. I rushed to her side. She reached out with her hand, the fingers curled into a fist so tight that her knuckles were white. I took her hand, uncurled her fingers and held her hand in both of mine, my fear forgotten as my beloved lay there. Something hard pressed between our hands. She tried to shape words, struggled to speak three words that still today echo in my ears. I kissed her. The lights flickered. Thunder rolled through the room. Her hand fell from mine to dangle slack, lifelessly beside the gurney. I held my beloved Aria to me and wept, the rain and tears and sweat and blood running down my face.

I held her to me, gazing down at her little face scrunched up as she bawls that she is cold and hungry. Elizabeth. We named her Elizabeth Evelyn. I held my daughter to my chest and grieved tears that dripped onto her little face like rain. As my tears flowed, I passed it off as happiness, but in truth, I grieved for what could have been. The child I might have had. The child we would have had together.

No one knew of our engagement. People would have objected, especially as we had both just graduated from high school four months ago. Perhaps if they knew, they would have understood my intent. Maybe. I had to wait for everyone to leave, and as the day was moved on to twilight. I went back into the cemetery after everyone had left, carrying only my sword and the stone marker I would place there as my personal memorial. I didn’t plan on leaving the cemetery.

I am still on bent knee as she removes the ring, and she doesn’t even hesitate as she puts it on her finger. I tell her there is an inscription on the inside of the band. She asks me to tell her what it says.

I sink down to my knees. I lift the blade, press its tip against my heart. I wonder, briefly, if I would even die. After all, my heart, my soul was already dead and buried just in front of me,
wasn’t it? I begin to push the sword.

I lifted my hand up, still covered in her now extinguished lifeforce, it flowed down my fingers, tributaries to the river running down my arm to drip, a red waterfall to the ocean of ichor on the floor. There in my hand, was her ring. I gazed down at the words I had engraved there, now highlighted in the bright red of her blood. The lights in the ER flickered again.

Instead of the sword’s point, I feel the ring press against my chest. The sword thumps softly down on the mud as I pulled the ring from its place around my neck. I raise my head to the heavens. A solitary streak of light shines through the clouds, illuminating me. I feel the warmth, the power of her love, her devotion, her undying divinity. I feel warm as her caress brushes my face. The tears stream down as I cry uncontrollably. My body is wracked by spasms from the pain. I hear her voice drift from the sky, the stars. She sings the same song to me, as she did the night of the dance. “But alas my simple words are like a summer rain, that beats on far off hills then vanishes again.”

I place the stone in front of the one her parents bought.

I read the words. I knew them, felt them, believed them.

The same words are on the ring, the stone, my mind, and always on my heart.

I left the graveyard. The rain ended, and the sun shone from behind a vanishing cloud, its light illuminating my path. She smiles at me as I rise. The sword still lay upon the ground. I picked up the blade, sheathing it as I turned. The ring hung about my neck, a solemn reminder of my oath.

I left the cemetery that day, but never did I set a foot on the muddy earth, nor one of the rain-slicked paths.

Her smile comforted me in the church, even as her arms held me up to face my future.

She delivered me from the darkness of having to bury my child by the grace of her love.

I smile up at her now as she carries me from my battlefield of emotion.

Those two simple words, now immutable in steel, stone and flesh shall never be far from my mind, ever at the ready to be spoken aloud.

“My angel.”

*hugs for everyone*

[Irish Musician]

I have not had something touch my soul like that in a long time. I cannot thank you enough for sharing it with me, and us. Anything else I say will pale in comparison to your beautiful words and take away their great weight, so I will leave it at that. Thank you.

~Matthew~

[Heliomance]

Hello again!

This time, I vanished because I was at a con. Well, first I was in that pre-con costume frenzy, at my friend's house, then I was at a con, and then I was sick/exhausted for a day. Anyway, I cosplayed as Lady Thor, and my friend was Loki, and it was AWESOME.

Me as Lady Thor:

Spoiler

Show

You look nothing like I imagined :P

It's strange how we picture people as their avatars, isn't it? I honestly expected you to be petite and blonde.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It's strange how we picture people as their avatars, isn't it?

Not really. The concept of an avatar is to represent a person visually, so one usually assumes (if only subconsciously) that people choose an avatar that looks like them to serve as their representation, and are taken aback when that's not the case. And of course every person who does have an avatar that looks like them in real life just reinforces that assumption.

That discrepancy can certainly make talking about transgender issues interesting. I must admit, I've gotten a bit confused before by people talking about gender dysphoria when I haven't checked the thread in a while--it's like, "Why are you talking about having issues with a male body? You have a female body, I'm looking at your avatar and I can see that--ohhhhh, right."

Things would be so much easier if people just chose avatars matching their appearance. I mean, obviously I did, why can't you people do the same?

[noparlpf]

Not really. The concept of an avatar is to represent a person visually, so one usually assumes (if only subconsciously) that people choose an avatar that looks like them to serve as their representation, and are taken aback when that's not the case. And of course every person who does have an avatar that looks like them in real life just reinforces that assumption.

That discrepancy can certainly make talking about transgender issues interesting. I must admit, I've gotten a bit confused before by people talking about gender dysphoria when I haven't checked the thread in a while--it's like, "Why are you talking about having issues with a male body? You have a female body, I'm looking at your avatar and I can see that--ohhhhh, right."

Things would be so much easier if people just chose avatars matching their appearance. I mean, obviously I did, why can't you people do the same?

Yeah, that's why my avatar is an actual photograph of me.

[Lord Raziere]

well one of my avatars is actually what I really look like.

not saying which though, or feeling like showing at the moment. though I do like the concept of being pictured as an awesome pyromanic goblin pirate girl.

[Randomguy]

Yeah, that's why my avatar is an actual photograph of me.

You must be a ninja.

[noparlpf]

You must be a ninja.

I'm either
a) a ninja
b) a dark gelatinous cube
c)
d) the kind of guy who forgets his camera lacks flash

[KenderWizard]

That is an awesome costume. I wish I had skills anywhere near that.

Too bad we can't see the eye art. I bet it looked pretty epic.

I think my friend got a photo of my eye art, if she did, I'll post it! Also, thank you!

Awesome costume! Did you make out with Loki?

Spoiler

Show

But, like, two seconds before that photo got taken, it was looking good. That was the friend with the camera going "Now kiss!" but Loki wasn't into it.

You look nothing like I imagined :P

It's strange how we picture people as their avatars, isn't it? I honestly expected you to be petite and blonde.

... I am blonde ... and not enormous ... I suppose my hair looks kind of dark in that first photo. I'm a kind of dusty blonde but not quite on the brown spectrum, not KenderWizard-yellow!

I'm either
a) a ninja
b) a dark gelatinous cube
c)
d) the kind of guy who forgets his camera lacks flash

I'm pretty sure you're a solid black cube.

[Coidzor]

I imagined pigtails. Did anyone else imagine pigtails?

Also, like, stereotypical young-Irish-cusp-of-womanhood features.

So an elf with pigtails.

You can tell I never really spent much time on it, no?

[Laser Frog]

Kender's posted pics here before. Nobody remembers that one where she was cosplaying as Vaarsuvius? Although I rememeber her looking different in that compared to her Thor costume. Could be the makeup, and it probably is.

Also, Nope? Weren't you a salad at one point? Or was that just a rebellious phase you were going through?

[noparlpf]

I'm pretty sure you're a solid black cube.

Alright, you got me. I only aspire to being as cool as an awakened gelatinous cube from the plane of shadow.
Also, nice costume. For some reason when I tried to multiquote your post it went missing.

Kender's posted pics here before. Nobody remembers that one where she was cosplaying as Vaarsuvius? Although I rememeber her looking different in that compared to her Thor costume. Could be the makeup, and it probably is.

Also, Nope? Weren't you a salad at one point? Or was that just a rebellious phase you were going through?

I vaguely remember that pic. That was a while ago.
Yeah, that was in response to this.