Hyacinth or Hyacinthus is a divine hero and a lover of Apollo from Greek mythology. His cult at Amyclae southwest of Sparta dates from the Mycenaean era (c. 1600–1450 BC).

O Hyacinthus!” Moaned Apollo. “I can see in your sad wound my own guilt, and you are my cause of grief and self-reproach. My own hand gave you death unmerited—I only can be charged with your destruction.—What have I done wrong? Can it be called a fault to play with you? Should loving you be called a fault? And oh, that I might now give up my life for you! Or die with you! But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips. The lyre struck by my hand, and my true songs will always celebrate you. A new flower you shall arise, with markings on your petals, close imitation of my constant moans: and there shall come another to be linked with this new flower, a valiant hero shall be known by the same marks upon its petals.”

Metamorphoses. Ovid. Book 10, Translated By Brookes More

eevee-morgan:

I will never not reblog this.

lyricwritesprose:

davidmann95:

veronicajames:

holyromanhomo:

kawaiite-mage:

helioscentrifuge:

mudkiphat:

marxisforbros:

“There’s a cure?!” asked the girl that kills everything she touches. 
“Hey shut up we’re perf” replied the girl that makes clouds. 

For real though. Storm has stopped an entire tsunami before. “Makes clouds my ass” she can conjure lightning and tornadoes and is revered as a god in her tribe. She literally changes atmospheric pressure and that’s how she flies. So fuck you. Storm is flawless.

I think you missed the part where the GIRL WHO KILLS EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES wants to NOT KILL EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES and everyone dismisses her incredible misfortune just because the lady who is the AVATAR OF THE STORM won the fucking SUPERPOWER LOTTERY

“Finally, a cure for my chainsaw hands!” decreed Chainsaw-Hands Joe.

“There is no cure,” said Johnny Five-Dicks. “There’s nothing wrong with us.”

The last comment literally always cracks me up

The X-Men are an extremely good metaphor for oppressed minorities until they are suddenly an extremely terrible metaphor for oppressed minorities.

The scale on which the first reply misses the point literally never ceases to awe me.

I gotta say, though, this is a place where the X-men are being a good metaphor for oppressed minorities.  Specifically, in this case, the disabled community.

“Yay, there’s a cure!” says the girl with depression.  “Cure for what, motherfucker, I’m not sick,” says the person with autism.

“Yay, there’s a cure!” I say, with my fibromyalgia and random bad pain days.  “Yes, because it’s easier to talk about eliminating us than talk about teaching sign language in school,” says the Deaf person.  “‘Cure’ is violent rhetoric.”

The problem is, of course, that a vast number of things have been aggregated under the label of “disability,” and many of them don’t even resemble each other.  Depression sucks in an objective fashion, whereas autism is just a way of being (which, like many ways of being, may suck at some times, and generally sucks worse when not accommodated).  Similar deal with chronic pain versus the Deaf community.  These things really should not be grouped together, but they are.  And since they are grouped so haphazardly, they will often be at cross-purposes.

It is ridiculous, in the X-men universe, to classify all “mutants” as one group.  You have ridiculously powerful people with little downside, you have powerful people with a major downside, you have people with very limited powers but few drawbacks, you have people with limited powers and massive drawbacks, and that’s not even getting into other divisions, like whether you look like a baseline human all the time, part of the time, or none of the time.  “Realistically,” if you can apply that word to a fantasy universe, Storm and Rogue belong to completely different minorities which should require completely different approaches.  But society has grouped them under one umbrella, or forced them to group themselves for self-protection, and thus you have conversations like the one above.

So it’s actually not a bad take.  Mind you, the X-men have had bad takes, and will do so again, and I’m skeptical about whether “powers” of any kind even work for a metaphor about minority representation—but this particular vignette has something useful to say.

Its also a good metaphor for being gay.

Gay person #1, who was raised believing being gay was a sin, got disowned by their family who they still love despite it all and just wants to have what their upbringing has told them is a normal love life: there’s a cure?

Gay person #2: who was brought up in an accepting area with supportive family: there is no cure, we’re not sick

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with being gay but its also obviously a lot easier to come to that conclusion if you’re person 2. All of us want Rogue to accept who she is and live her best life with her powers but she has an ability which to her eyes only distances herself from other people, just like someone’s sexuality can distance themselves from their family and friends. Can even distance you from other gay people because they can’t understand why you can’t just be happy about every aspect of being gay and tell your family to get fucked.

Or is it not?

:$

“only”

Cooma jail: Prison that was once ‘world’s only jail for gay men’

byGary Nunn, Sydney
BBC, April 23 2022

theemphasis is placed ‘incorrectly’

a worthy read exemplifying the erasure of queer history.

~.Art by SexualitySavvy.~

Millennium cross-over event

Millennium was DC’s third inter-company cross-over (preceded by Crisis on Infinite EarthsandLEGENDS, respectively). If the goal of Crisis on Infinite Earths was to sort out its continuity issues and the goal of LEGENDS was to re-establish the DCU, then I’d theorize that the goal of Millennium was to flesh out the characters and relationships within the DC universe.

The entire 56-issue Millennium event took place over a two month publication period (Crisis took about a year and LEGENDS took 7 to 8 months). Millennium itself was an eight-issue mini-series released on a weekly basis (each issue labelled as ‘week 1’, 'week 2’, etc…) that acted as a overview of the event - readers were encouraged to read all of the tie-in issues that ran through the DC titles to understand what was going on between the weekly installments of Millennium. This cross-over event was all-encompassing and seemed to involve all of the most popular DC titles at the time (ex: all Batman titles, all Supermantitles,Flash,Wonder Woman, whatever series Green Lantern was starring in, Legion of Super-Heroes, etc). Mega cross-overs involving all titles were still a relatively new gimmick at this point in time and DC was still testing the waters.

The Millennium mini-series was handled by the creative team of Steve Englehart,Joe StatonandIan Gibson. Prior to being assigned Millennium,EnglehartandStaton had raised the sales of tepid selling Green Lantern v2 to heights previously unseen in the publication’s history. Actually, the whole concept of Millennium was inspired by a plot device Englehart had used in Green Lantern v2 #200 (1986) in which the Guardians task the Green Lantern Corps to protect Earth because it would be an ideal breeding ground for immortals in the next thousand years. The Millennium storyline was centered around the Guardians of the Universe’s efforts to evolve human beings to the next level,  and the Manhunters who were trying to oppose them. As it happens, Englehart co-created the Manhunters and introduced them to the DC Universe back in Justice League of America #140 (1977). The Guardians of the Universe (said to be originally modeled after David-Ben Gurion) were originally created by John BroomeandGil Kane, but it was Englehart  who (while writing Green Lantern) had managed to tie the Guardians in with a mega cross-over event (going so far as to reveal the Guardians as the original cause of the Crisis) thus solidifying their involvement in all things cosmic in the DC Universe. [I remember hearing a rumor that editor Andy Helfer (who helped coordinate with the other DC writers while Englehart worked from his California home) retired from comics after this cross-over event due to all of the stress involved (he also edited the LEGENDS cross-over). However, I know that Helfer went on to edit several more DC titles before becoming editor of Paradox Press, so I don’t think there’s any truth to that rumor.]

If one were to breakdown the plot of Millennium into 4 acts, they would be:

• Act 1: heroes discover there are traitors/Manhunters among them
• Act 2: heroes rally and attack Manhunters’ earth forces
• Act 3: heroes attack Manhunters in space
• Act 4: heroes attack Manhunter HQ at center of world

It was the first act that caused the biggest commotion with the writers at DC comics - not only were they mandated by the 'higher ups’ at DC to work the Millennium event into their storyline, but they also had to select a supporting character to be revealed as a Manhunter in disguise. As you can see in the above ads, the whole idea of who will be revealed as a traitor was a major part of the marketing campaign. To their credit, it was left up to the writers to decide who the traitor would be. Some writers really went out of their way to make their series work with Millennium(ex:John Byrne who seamlessly integrated the Millennium event into his 1988 World of Smallville Superman origin retcon mini-series, Roy Thomas who took the opportunity to retcon the origins of the Dan Richards and Paul Kirk Manhunters in a way that was consistent with the Millennium storyline, and Paul Levitz who probably received a lot of hate mail from fans when he revealed who the Manhunter in the Legion of Super-Heroes was), and other writers easily modified their story lines so that it had something to do with Millennium(ex:George Perez and his “Challenge of the Gods” in Wonder Woman,Mike Baron reveals the traitor in Flash in a way that would make logical sense in hindsight), while other writers seemed to glaze over it completely (ex: Keith Giffen’sJustice League International traitor is quickly replaced with a carbon-copy duplicate and has no effect on the series). A few characters appeared for the first time during these tie-ins, but were not directly involved with Millennium - these included G'Nort (Justice League International #10) and the post-Crisis Toyman (Superman #13). The FirestormMillennium tie-ins mainly involved Firestorm dealing with the evolution of his powers.

I previously mentioned that all of the major DC titles were involved in this cross-over, however a  few were actually left out. These included:

• Swamp Thing,Vigilanteandthe Question (Because they were 'mature reader’ titles, and DC didn’t think it was wise to include them in a cross-over event that was targeted to general audience members. Yet The Spectre was included? Interesting.)

• The Teen Titans (At the time they were doing that 'direct edition/newsstand edition’ thing where one set of stories would have to be set 1 year in the future. Just a major continuity headache to figure out.)

• The Warlord (DC had promised fans that after LEGENDS they would never do another Warlord/DCU cross-over story due to negative fan reaction)

Millennium led to the creation of two new spin-off titles in 1988: the New GuardiansandJohn Ostrander’s the Manhunter. Likewise, Millennium saw the end of the Outsiders v1andBooster Gold v1, but the sales on these books were already dwindling - so in essence Millennium was just a convenient plot device they could use to wrap things up. (Blue Beetle would also be cancelled shortly after his Millenniumtie-in.)

Another thing that Millennium is infamous for is featuring the first gay super hero in the DC universe. I say 'infamous’ because the character is so poorly-written and stereotypical that he may have set the gay movement back 10 years. Extraño was a Peruvian magician who was empowered by the Guardians and made to become a member of the New Guardians. Englehart was panned by the gay community for his portrayal of the offensively flamboyant character, often receiving mail that went along the lines of “I am gay and that character should in no way shape or form act as a reference of what a gay person is like”. You need to remember that Englehart (for whatever reason) was not allowed to come out and say the character was gay, so he had to push the theatrics to the extreme so that the readers could pick up on it. For all it’s worth, Englehart really tried to introduce a gay super-hero into DC comics.(more on this some other time)

AfterMillennium, DC comics wanted to move Green Lantern to the new Action Comics weekly series (in an effort to generate interest in the new Action Comicsformat).EnglehartandStaton declined, since they didn’t want to be confined to a 7-page weekly format. Green Lantern Corps (the book EnglehartandStaton were working on) lasted a few more issues afterMillennium and was then cancelled.

I really enjoyed this cross-over event. Over time I have managed to find all 47 tie-in issues (discount bin hunting at comic book shops) and I absolutely do not regret it. This was the absolute BEST TIME EVER to read DC comics: we had John Ostrander’sSuicide Squad, Batman was teamed with Jason Todd Robin, the Superman books had just been rebooted by Byrne,Thomas was writing Young All-StarsANDInfinity Inc., Wally West Flash had just taken over Barry Allen’s title, Keith Giffen’s Justice League was at some of it’s best moments, George Perez’Wonder Woman was just revving up and the Legion of Super-Heroes was going strong. DeMatteis’ new Dr FateandMike Grell’sGreen Arrow even make a few appearances. I especially liked the Secret Origins tie-ins (re-explained and retconned numerous origins to characters in a way that seemed to flow effortlessly with Millennium and the new DCU) and Teen Titans Spotlight issues (which took the time to feature characters that didn’t really fit anywhere else but were important to the story regardless). I really like how this cross-over was able to incorporate a lot of elements from the Crisison Infinite Earths while still bringing something new to the table. I didn’t get why DC decided to expose all of the Manhunter traitors in the first issue of Millennium - I think that had they let the suspense build up for longer the result could’ve been more entertaining.

This event deals heavily with the idea of humanity evolving, which apparently is a theme Englehart likes to explore. Astute comic readers have drawn parallels between MillenniumandEnglehart’sCelestial Madonna storyline that ran in various Marvel comics’ Avengers books from 1974 to 1975.


*Dan Richards was the alter-ego of a Quality Comics character called the Manhunter first introduced in 1942. Coincidentally, DC also had a character called the Manhunter (alter ego Paul Kirk) who debuted one month after Dan Richards did in 1942. DC bought the rights to the Dan Richards Manhunter in 1956 when Quality Comics went bankrupt.

“The atmosphere in the Hollywood lesbian community began to change in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This change was a reflection of three important developments: (1) the increased adoption by the general public of the morbidification of sexual relations between women promoted by some sexologists; (2) the rise of the studio system in Hollywood; and (3) the onset of economic problems connected with the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The effect of the heterosexual backlash and the rise of the companionate marriage in the mid- to late 1920s was to push women who loved women further into the closet. The rise of the studio system meant that, were these women ever to venture from that closet and be caught in an embarrassing situation in public, the news media would not print the story. Hard economic times made these women vulnerable to the demands of the studio bosses who protected them—vulnerable enough, for example, to agree to date or even marry a man in order to appear heterosexual when they actually were not. Hollywood had become, in effect, a company town.

Many lesbians and bisexual women in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, especially those from Europe, gathered at the home of Berthold (1885-1953) and Salka Viertel (1889-1978). The Viertels were German émigrés who had come to Hollywood in 1928 to work in the film industry. Like Salka, most of the women who gathered at her home were “Gillette Blades”—that is, their sexuality ‘cut both ways.’ Some American-born actresses also fit into this category of actual or apparent bisexuality, while others were lesbians who adhered to the older model of the Boston marriage and lived with their lovers in what was purportedly a platonic relationship.

Following World War II, and with the rise of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the situation of Hollywood lesbians once again underwent a paradigm shift. After Communists, homosexuals were the favorite targets of witch-hunting politicians and bureaucrats, especially those of the House Un-American Activities (HUAC). At this same time, scandal magazines began to print articles that openly identified homosexual stars as such. The tabloid Confidential was directly responsible for the end of Lizabeth Scott’s (1922-2015) career in motion pictures when it accused her in print of ‘unnatural’ sexual activity. Many of the lesbians and bisexual women who were married began spending more time with their spouses, and many who were unmarried rushed to the alter. Some of the homosexuals in Hollywood reacted to this climate of fear by becoming reactionary in their politics and cooperating with those carrying out the persecutions. Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990) and her ‘beard’ husband (a spouse who is taken by a women who engages in homosexual behavior primarily to help disguise her lesbian activities) Robert Taylor (1911-1969) became archconservatives after World War II. Taylor, who was also gay, was the only actor to ‘name names’ in front of HUAC. Salka Viertel was blacklisted and left the country. The climate of fear and paranoia among Hollywood homosexuals was to last well into the early 1960s.“

-Excerpt from Encyclopedia of Lesbian and Gay Histories and Cultures by Bonnie Zimmerman and George Haggerty

“A 1915 Supreme Court ruling opened the way for censorship of film along many fronts, including sexuality. The Court ruled that movies were a for-profit business and therefore not protected by the right to freedom of speech spelled out in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Within a few years of this ruling, several states began to pass censorship laws that addressed obscenity and ‘inappropriate’ topics for film. But it was not until 1931 that the film industry began policing and censoring itself through the Production Code and the Hays Censorship Office. Reference to homosexuality, gay and lesbian characters and themes, and even words like "pansy” were out. Thirty years later, in 1961, the Production Code changed once again and homosexuality was permitted official visibility provided it was portrayed with 'care, discretion, and restraint.’ Despite these cautions, words such as 'fag, faggot, fruit, dyke, pansy’ were freely admitted on the big screen. By 1968, the Production Code was eliminated completely and homosexuality was, for the first time, fair game for filmmakers.“

-Excerpt from Media Messages What Film, Television, and Popular Music Teach Us about Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation by Linda Holtzman

And love is a terrible thing to hate.
/reblog if you agree/