Thorn Wilde

Which is why I said 'in most cases'.

I guess they found some new ones? We keep discovering new celestial bodies within the solar system, so...

A full reversal would take between 1000 and 10,000 years in most cases, so no, it won't.

Hey, as long as you're reasonably healthy, it really shouldn't matter how you look. Skinny-shaming is no better than fat-shaming, IMO, and I've known plenty of girls who have roughly the same figure as the second model and are entirely healthy. All body-types are a-ok in my book.

Hey, Killing in the Name is a badass song. That thing makes you feel powerful, man!

I got a bit of a memory jog when people started talking about The O.C. the other day, because of the show's 10th anniversary. When that show came out, I was already a little done with the high school drama genre, and was moving on to anime, sci-fi, fantasy and horror themed tv-series. I used to watch Popular pretty regularly, and I even had time to, for a season or so, really like Dawson's Creek, though I was young at the time. But there was one high school drama type of series that stood out, and that was the Dawson's Creek spin-off Young Americans. Let me preface by saying that this is not an especially good show. It wasn't really surprising that the thing got cancelled after only 8 episodes. Most of the plot was passé and melodramatic, the writing was mediocre, as was most of the acting. With one major exception. The Jake and Hamilton story-line. I must have been about 12 when that show came out. I may have been as old as 13 when I started watching it, cause I don't know when it made it across the pond, but I wasn't old. The Jake and Hamilton arc was revolutionary for me. It was new and exciting and different, and it broke down everything that I thought I knew about gender and sexuality at the tender age of 12 or 13. One part of it was the fact that Jake had everyone fooled. Jake was really Jacqueline, played by the amazing and talented Katherine Moennig (who later went on to star in The L-Word). Jacqueline was a rich young girl with a mother who didn't pay attention to her. Her mum was an actress, and hardly ever home, and Jacqueline tried to do ever more extreme things to get her mother to notice her, to little avail. Finally, Jacqueline hacked into her mother's e-mail account, signed up for Rawley Academy for boys for summer school and became Jake, just to see if her mother would notice. She didn't. No one at Rawley believed for a second that Jake was anything other than a boy, including Hamilton. And here comes the best part, because even though he fully believed Jake to be a boy, Hamilton still fell in love with him. It was the first suggestion I had ever seen in popular culture of the idea that people fall in love with people, and that gender can be secondary or irrelevant, and it changed my entire perspective. It doesn't matter that Jake turned out to be a girl. For the first three episodes or so, Hamilton believed that he had turned gay. Even after Jake told him the truth, they still seemed most comfortable with each other when Jake was, well, Jake rather than Jacqueline. After a while, everyone started to think that Hamilton and Jake were gay, and what was so wonderful about that was how cool they all seemed with it. That was a world I wanted to live in. Jake was never trans. Jake was very comfortable about really being Jacqueline and did not mind being girly. I think, however, that if this show had been made today, the gender issue would have been a much bigger part of the story, and Jake's character would have been much more gender-fluid than it ultimately was. As it is, however, Young Americans helped break down the idea of the gender binary in my mind, it introduced the concept of 'alternate' sexualities to me, and made me feel so much less alone in a heteronormative television world.

I like it like it is now. Everyone should be welcome.

Not all rap and hip-hop is bad, dude. MIA's Paper Planes is a badass song, and Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name is still one of the best tunes pretty much ever. Oh, and Peaches. Peaches has made some magnificent rap songs, none of which it would be appropriate to link to.

That idea seems... really kind of dumb, to be honest. Last I checked, lesbians were also gay.

The Earth's poles move around all the time. The magnetic north pole is currently somewhere in Canada. *shrug* No biggie.

It's true that society puts pressure on all of us, but it still seems to me that as far as appearance is concerned, ladies still have it harder. A guy can mostly get away with not caring so much (and a lot of the time, the less he seems like he cares, the better, even though it's ultimately expected of him to put a lot of time and effort into the 'I don't really care' look). It's much harder for a girl. See, for instance, interviews with actresses vs. interviews with actors. Robert Downey Jr. gets asked about how he approached the role of Tony Stark while Scarlett Johansson get asked about what kind of diet and training regimen she was on to get fit for playing Black Widow. Okay, I'm gonna stop now before I get political.

I actually think it's kind of sad that society puts that kind of pressure on women... I understand the whole how it makes you feel aspect, but the idea that you need to have fancy, expensive, special underwear to woo someone, like it's expected... I mean, you're gonna be naked for the actual act anyway. If it makes you feel confident and happy, then all the more power to you, but I can almost guarantee that 99% of guys aren't going to care what underwear you're wearing as long as you take it off.

Well, one of the thingies in the first link was kind of like push-up underwear from what I understood... Adding support and enhancing shape.

Always fun to try new things.

I was born in the late 80s, and I like Glee. The O.C. should have been my show, but it wasn't really, cause by the time it started I was getting bored of high school dramas and moving on to sci-fi, fantasy and horror-based shows, and anime. As such I only ever saw the first season or so and then moved on to other stuff.

I think of it as kind of a story arc on a season of a TV-show. Usually, the head writer or executive producer will decide how the story is going to end, and make up a few plot points that need to be incorporated, and then other writers will write the individual episodes. That's if you want structure, of course, because that way there's sort of a plot to write around. It could be done more democratically, of course. If one creates a sub-forum for this thing, then we could all discuss what the story should be about and plot it out a bit (no huge detail, just so we kind of know where it's going and don't write ourselves into a corner) and then divide up the chapters between us.

Well, I figured since I'm writing it anyway and it's M/M, and since there is a Harry Potter section, I might as well put it on here too. Thanks for all your encouragement! I love your reviews. You're a wonderful human being!

I really like what you see. Thank you so much for all these reviews, they've made me really happy!

I love your reviews! <3 This chapter pissed a lot of people off, I got some pretty negative reactions towards Ben...

OMG, I remember this show! God, I feel old... Last year I had a job looking after a one-year-old in the daytime. While he was napping there was nothing to do but watch TV, and there were OTH reruns. I almost got into it then, but I never watched it when it first started. Oh! Does anyone remember Young Americans? It got canceled after, like, 8 episodes but I remember I really loved it!

My mum's a teacher, and she has Facebook. Posts all sorts of stuff, too. But she uses her nickname and the Swedish spelling of her surname, so she's not that easy to find for parents and colleagues. Also, with 30 years experience, she'd have to say something really very stupid to lose her job over it, and she's not that stupid.

Mark is a cutie and is really awesome. I'm glad I came up with Mark. He lives his own life, though. He's pretty special.

GA is awesome. Posting here has brought back my confidence in my writing. I feel like I belong, and that's a pretty awesome feeling I don't get very often. <3

Well, women have been buying expensive underwear for years. Guess it's the menfolk's turn. I honestly don't care what underwear I wear. I mean, come on, who's gonna see it? And if you're already in bed with someone, it's not like they're gonna kick you out when they get your trousers off and find your undies aren't fancy and expensive.