blows up a random stranger with a rocket launcher for no reason then falls to the ground weeping histrionically & receives the tender attention & support of everyone present
• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony
Butch is a specific subculture among lesbians. It does not need to be separated from lesbianism. Everyone and their mother loves separating from lesbianism. Instead, we should uplift masc women of all sexualities; not make butch into a broader experience that it describes. Like masc women?? Id kill for them regardless of if they’re butch or lesbian or bi or straight
babychild if you want butch to not be an experience shared by a broad group of queers than you are a few decades too late. de-radfem your understanding of lesbian culture & cope
……butch was part of BALLROOM CULTURE in the 60s and was BLACK INVENTED and could describe any man or woman engaging in a masculine or psuedo-masculine role, from cis gay drag queens to trans men to what we’d now call butch lesbians to gnc straight women and further. Butch has NEVER strictly been lesbian-only.
And when black butches felt like they were getting pushed out of butch spaces, they made stud a thing instead. Both butch and stud have been used in the black community to mean more than just “masculine lesbian”, some of these folks are bi and some are trans.
Butch in lesbian culture dates back to at least the 1940s. It does not originate from ballroom culture and predates your theory by at least a couple of decades.
There are multiple running theories as to the origin of butch, including Polari and lesbian bar culture of the 1940s.
There is no known, attested, provable origin of butch as a queer word. Anybody who tells you they know the real origin has found one of the Holy Grails of modern queer scholarship and should be asked for citations, because, again, every current theory is a theory only. It meant “tough kid” around the turn of the 20th century. It might come from Butch Cassidy or from “butcher” as filtered through Polari.
We don’t actually know. We don’t.
What we do know is that it was used in lesbian bar culture in the 1940s. We know it was used in ballroom culture from the ‘60s on. We know where it has been used but we genuinely don’t know where it came from.
But that just comes back to the main point: there is nobody who can act as the ultimate gatekeeper of the word 'butch,’ unlike a lot of other terms (like stud, as mentioned above, and stem) which have really well-documented and well-known origins. Butch is not something that anybody can say: “You can’t because it’s ours.”
It’s deep in the warp and weft of this community.
I’m so tired. This has been going on for… G-d. At least 30 years. About this one word.
Staaaaaaahp. I’m begging, anon. Stop.
And for those who don’t know the history, it’s useful to remember that ‘butch’ did not originally come from the LGBTQ+ community; it was adopted by LGBTQ+ people, but it did not originate there. So to say “only this one slice of the LGBTQ+ community can use it because It’s Our Word” is just flat-out wrong. I’ve known what ‘butch’ meant since I was a kid, but I was in my twenties before I heard it used to refer to an LGBTQ+ person. In the late 19th/mid 20th century it was a term for a masculine guy who was pretty tough (a cishet guy, not a gay guy or a trans guy). And often used as a nickname. (Butch Cassidy’s real name was Robert .) And it is still used that way in a lot of places.
I used to know a guy (now dead) who was a redneck truck driver from rural North Dakota, born in like the 30s I think? And I have no idea what his actual legal name was, because nobody used it. Everyone called him Butch, and had for pretty much his whole life. He was very straight, very cis, very homophobic, and would have been furious to learn that ‘butch’ is sometimes used to describe queer people.
We may not know exactly when LGBTQ+ people started using it; my guess is, they started using it to describe masculine/tough LGBTQ+ people around the same time as it entered the general lexicon as “a masculine/tough man.”
Butch may not be a common term among straights, these days, but there are still straight cis men called Butch around. So trying to claim it’s only for lesbians? uh. no. It’s not even only for LGBTQ+ people.
Hi! My mum and I had a conversation in the car where I mentioned how funny I found this bit, because I had read it as Anathema thinking that she had, in fact, just been run over by a very campy gay couple, and a campy gay couple wouldn't harm her. But my mum read this as Anathema, who she thought could feel that Crowley was a demon, realizing that she was also in the presence of an angel, and an angel wouldn't harm her. And I guess I just wanted to know which was the intended message?
The version that Terry and I had in mind when we wrote it was the former.
Reading the comments I realize that things that were perfectly obvious to readers in the UK 33 years ago don’t land the same way now.
If anyone has been in any doubt about what Anathema was thinking the line that would have made it utterly clear would have been..
…the “two consenting cycle repairmen”.
In the UK the 1957 Wolfenden Report recommended that ‘homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should be no longer a criminal offence’. And the phrase “consenting adults” became a euphemism for gay men once the recommendations of the report were put into action and male homosexual acts were decriminalized. (It took a decade and happened in 1967.)
So, yes. She thinks they’re gay. And she was safe.
You’re a regular office worker born with the ability to “see” how dangerous a person is with a number scale of 1-10 above their heads. A toddler would be a 1, while a skilled soldier with a firearm may score a 7. Today, you notice the reserved new guy at the office measures a 10.
You decide it’s best to find out what you can about this person. Cautiously, you approach his desk. He’s a handsome man, tall, but with a disarming smile. How could such a friendly guy with such cute, dorky glasses be dangerous?
You extend your hand. “I noticed you’re new here. What’s your name?”
He shakes your hand warmly. His gaze is piercing, as if he’s looking right through you. “The name’s Clark,” he says. “So, how long have you worked for the Daily Planet?”
It’s been a few weeks, and one of Clark’s friends shows up. She’s pretty and all, enough muscle that she must work out. First thought would be that she should be maybe a 6.
Clark’s introducing her around. “This is my good friend, Diana, she’s in from out of town.”
You blink, and take a step back in fear. You’ve never seen an 11 before.
The day Bruce Wayne shows up for his long promised interview with Lois Lane, you can’t help it, the mug your holding drops from your fingers and sends a shock of hot coffee and ceramic shards across the floor.
Clark stops a few feet away and squints at you worriedly from behind those ridiculous glasses you’re 99% sure he doesn’t actually need, and asks tentatively, “Everything all right?”
You ignore him in favor of staring at the inky dark numerals hovering over the beaming fool gesticulating some fantastic yacht story for a gaggle of secretaries and minor columnists.
That’s it. Your gift has officially gone haywire. There is no other explanation. Because there is absolutely no way that Brucie Wayne is a 10.
At this point, you’ve seen it all. Miled manner reporters and billionaires at a 10 and a model-like woman at 11. You were really starting to doubt your power. The day you really stopped believeing in it was when Bruce Wayne came for another visit, and this time with a kid. The kid couldn’t be more than 10 years old, a bit on the short side.
The day you started believing in it again was when you saw on tv the formation of something called the justice league.
There were those same numbers over superman, batman, wonder woman and robin. That’s when you put two and two together. You wonder how nobody at the daily planet noticed that Clarke was Superman with glasses. You wonder why you didn’t notice. You wonder why nobody put two and two together that Diana Prince and Wonder Woman looked exactly the same. You look in the mirror as the realization hit you and you see your own number change from a 3 to a 9.
Despite this, you go about your life. You don’t talk to Clark – Superman? – and kept out of his way. His girlfriend Lois Lane – she was a five when you first met, but now she’s a nine just like you – tries to get you to interview Bruce Wayne, but you refuse. You meet other people in Clark’s group of friends with high numbers. The daughter of the police commissioner from Gotham. The forensic scientist from Central City. More and more people to avoid and worry about.
Meanwhile, your paranoia gets to you. You start working out. Training in self defense. Studying the Justice League, trying to find its members. Finding out all their identities so you can be ready.
One day you wake up with a ten above your head.
That day you get a call. You recognize the area code. Gotham. Your heart is in your throat. You should throw the phone away, run. They’ve found you. You’re doomed. You might be a ten, but you can’t beat them all.
You pick up the phone anyways.
“Hello?”
“Hey, this is Clark Kent. I was wondering if we could talk.”
Your mouth goes dry. “About what?”
Clark’s voice goes quiet. “Well. About the Justice League.”
You stiffen in your seat. Your adrenaline kicks in, and your eyes dart around the room. You can hang up, pack, grab a plane ticket to wherever and disappear. Your passport hasn’t expired, and you’ve been talking to Perry White about a vacation anyways. You could say it’s a family emergency and never come back.
But they’d find you. You know they’d find you. They’re goddamned superheroes. They can carry buildings. They could probably manage finding you.
“Hello?” Clark’s voice returns, tinged with concern, and suddenly you stop. Calm down. They’re the good guys. At least they’re supposed to be.
“Yeah, sorry, just a little shocked you–”
“Caught up to you?” Clark asked. He laughed a little, but it wasn’t teasing. His voice had his regular ease, the same casual tone he would employ to talk about the weather in the break room. “Yeah. Lois noticed your odd behavior, actually. We didn’t realize it was linked to the League until you refused to interview Bruce, and then we knew something was up.”
“Speaking of Bruce Wayne, are you using his phone? Your area code is Gotham, not Metropolis.”
Clark laughed. “Damn. Lois wasn’t kidding when she said you were the best investigator working for the Daily Planet.”
“I just notice things is all.” You laughed nervously. You still can’t shake your general unease. This guy could kill you without any effort. You’re no match for him, or for any of his friends for that matter. Hell, Batman didn’t even have powers and he’d still fuck you up.
“Yeah, and that’s a skill we could use around here. Would you like to talk about joining? Bruce can send you a car, bring you here–”
“No,” you say, sharper than you intended. “Sorry. I’d rather meet in public, if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course. Lunch or coffee? It’s still early, but it’s a bit easier to cram all of us in a restaurant than a coffee shop.”
“Lunch, I guess. And no superhero stuff.”
Clark pauses, then sighs sadly. You’ve heard this sadness before in rare amounts. When bad things happened and fear and greed overtook people, he’d always frown and sigh, like someone watching their best friend self destruct, unable to help or save them. “You’re afraid of us. Aren’t you?” His voice is concerned and hushed.
A pang of guilt starts to replace the fear. “You can throw around buildings like a sack of potatoes, Clark. Your friend is powerful on an impossible level, Bruce’s kid is a fucking eight–”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Clark said, the sadness disappearing. “You have a number system for us?”
“Look, it’s a whole thing. I’ll talk about it over lunch.” You grab your laptop bag. “Where are we meeting?”
Clark said something to someone else. “Got any restaurant ideas? They want lunch.”
Bruce Wayne – you’ve heard enough interviews to recognize his voice – said, “Saffron’s pretty good.”
“Jesus,” someone else said. You’ve heard the voice, but you couldn’t place it. “I keep on forgetting you’re rich.”
“You don’t think it’s a little much, Bruce? The pay at Daily Planet is good but not that good,” said Clark.
“I’ll cover their tab.”
“Okay…” Clark returned to the call. “Saffron, in…thirty minutes? You’re downtown, right?”
“You can get a table to Saffron in thirty minutes?” said the strange voice. “Boy, am I glad I made friends with you guys.”
“Yeah, that works.” You’re a bit hesitant, but you swallow your nerves. At least for now. Your thoughts about threat levels made you forget that Clark is a decent guy. All you could do is hope that he thinks you’re decent, too. “See you then.”
“See you then. Be safe. Bye.” Clark hangs up, and you’re left in your room. The worry is starting to turn into something different. Excitement.
You shove the phone into your pocket, grab your keys, and head out the door. You’re so full of restless energy you walk the whole way there. Once you arrive, you catch your reflection in the mirror and notice that you’re starting to suit that ten above your head.
The hostess takes you to a hidden corner of the restaurant. It’s mostly empty, as though it’s only just opened. Sitting at a long table, chatting politely, was the Justice League.
They aren’t wearing masks or uniforms, no bright colors and costumes. Clark Kent is in his usual office wear, Bruce Wayne is wearing a tailored suit, Diana Prince dons a nice blue dress, and Oliver Queen wears a nice button down. You don’t recognize two of them – a twenty something in jeans and a hoodie, a man in a green shirt, and a burly guy in a baggy t-shirt and old jeans who looks like he had just washed up from the sea. All of them, aside from Diana, are tens, of course.
Clark Kent stands, shakes your hand when you come in. “Glad to see you made it.” He introduces you to the others, and they all shake your hand quite happily and greet you like a friend. You learn that the guy in the hoodie is Barry Allen, the dude in green is Hal Jordan, and the beach dude is Arthur Curry. Waitresses, all ones, twos, and threes, come in with drinks, and one plops a mug of coffee in front of you, along with a small menu. Clark Kent gives you a knowing gaze.
Once the waitresses clear out, Bruce sits up straight. “Clark, would you rather I do the honors?” His silver watch glitters in the light from the windows.
“No, no, Bruce,” Clark says, setting down his glass of water. “I think it’s best if I ask them myself.”
Within a moment, you piece it together. “You want me to join the Justice League?”
Clark Kent cracks a smile. “How’d you guess?”
“You call me out of the blue, mention the Justice League, invite me to Bruce Wayne’s place, and then here, where you introduce me to a group of people who all look strikingly similar to the members of the Justice League.” You take a sip of coffee. “Subtlety is hardly your strong suit.”
Barry Allen laughed. “They got you there on that one.”
“Well, you’re right. At first Bruce wanted to handle the situation himself,” – you’d rather not think about what handle was a euphemism for – “but I insisted we do some more digging. We did, and what we found was…surprising. To say the least.”
You look at him oddly. You aren’t normal – no one else saw numbers floating above people’s heads – but you weren’t surprising. Your parents were the only ones who knew about your ability, and they’re long gone. You’ve got no checkered past, no odd history–
“You have powers.” Clark’s voice was clearly impressed.
“How did you find out about that?” The fear comes back, forming a knot in your stomach. “I’ve never told anyone else about it.”
“It’s not hard to notice,” Barry Allen says in between sips of soda. “Most of the information we got we got from Lois after she’s hung out with you.”
“I’ve never her told her anything about the numbers, though.”
Oliver Queen sits up, flashing you a confused look. “Numbers?”
Okay, something’s not right here. “The number I see over everyone’s heads,” you say, keeping your voice low. “It ties into how dangerous everyone is. Usually it’s just a one or two, maybe a three or four or five if they’ve got some kind of training or if they work out or whatever. Almost everyone at this table has a ten.”
“Almost?” Diana furrows her brow.
“You have an eleven,” you add.
Diana nods, smiling with a bit of pride and making an “I told you so” face to Bruce Wayne, who rolls his eyes. Oliver Queen clears his throat as Bruce and Hal pass him a couple bills.
“Ignore them,” Barry says, rolling his eyes at the three of them. “What you said was interesting – I might have to ask you a few questions on that later – but it wasn’t what I found. Remember the sensory and memory study you did when you were ten?”
You do remember it. Your parents were contacted by a scientist friend of theirs who needed kids to run a study on memory and stimuli. You remember it clearly. The large sterile room, the tests, the person conducting them, a handsome woman with a four above her head, the questions, the smell of latex gloves and fresh bleach. But you don’t remember the results. You were never told the results, other than that they were good, though with a test like that it was hard to say.
“Well, I found the tests. And they were superhuman.”
You go home, head in a whirl. There’s just…too much you need to process (did you really meet Wonder Woman? Did you shake hands with the Flash?? You’re a Superhuman??!)
You need to stop thinking. Passive input. You need passive input.
So you turn on the news.
And land right on a channel that’s streaming a fight between the Penguin and the Bats.
It isn’t…relaxing, exactly. But you can see, quite clearly, that those kids are powerful. Their numbers, constant tens, reassure you that they can handle this.
Until you notice Robin. Damian’s score is noticeably lower- flickering between a 7 and an 8- and you don’t understand.
Your head isn’t in the best space right now but you’d bet money that he was a 9 every other day these past few months. He’s the youngest one out there- just ten- but he’s precise and fast and even though he’s just a kid, he’s also Batman’s kid. What’s going on?
Why is he letting himself be…more vulnerable?
A yelp draws your attention back to the screen and you tense.
Some two-bit criminal has his hands around Robin’s neck. But that isn’t what’s worrying you.
Red Robin’s 10 shifts. He’s a 14 now. Spoiler’s number changes as well, bouncing back and forth between 14 and 15.
Red Hood doesn’t bat an eye as more goons spill onto the mock battlefield, but you can see the 10 spike to a 15.
You swallow. Those numbers… you’ve never seen them soar like that before.
And then you notice Batman.
His number is climbing. And climbing. And climbing. The longer Robin struggles, the more the number surges.
He’s been holding himself back, you realise. This whole fight, maybe his whole life- he’s held back his strength. But not when it comes to his kids. Not when his kids need him.
No wonder Robin let himself trust his team. Because he must have known that with them by his side, there was nothing to be scared of.
Bruce Wayne clocks in at 25.
But it’s not him you fear.
He’s not the most dangerous one on the field.
From the corner of your eye you can see Dick Grayson. And Nightwing’s numbers aren’t visible anymore.
Listen man, its a work week, you just got done your shift at the dollar store, youre in a rural area and the local waffle house is a 35 minute drive away and driving from the waffle house back home will be another 45 minutes, so what youre gonna do is youre gonna pick these four bad boys up from the dry goods aisle, drive home, cook some Carolina long grain rice with a little bouillon cube stirred into the cooking water, and in a separate skillet, youre gonna add a tsp of veggie oil or if youre lucky some butter and cook down some of that garlic. Then add a little extra oil and if you have spinach or any hearty greens, youre gonna throw them in your skillet with some salt and cook them down, if not thats okay. But youre also gonna transfer your rice from the pot into the skillet with your garlic (and veggies if youre lucky) and stirfry that rice for a minute or so. The bouillon cube didnt quite season your rice to your liking, so youre gonna throw a little extra pinch of salt. Perfect. Then youre gonna turn off the flame and add parmesan to taste. You take a look in your fridge and you see that you have a little parsley left from the last time you were able to clock out early enough to stop in at the local Food Lion and its still in good condition. Youre gonna wash that parsley, dry it, give it a quick chop, and finish your fake risotto with it and a couple splashes of lemon juice.
You have some rice left over so you know whats for dinner tomorrow night and you can sleep soundly. Country girls make fucking do.
I genuinely can’t comprehend the uniquely Christian urge to see someone at their lowest and think “Now is the perfect time. I should tell them about my religion.”
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