#I don’t think they have a tumblr account otherwise I would link it

[its-oatmiel]

“In the worst of my despair on Wednesday I felt like human beings have always lived under the crushing boot of evil, and always wil. That the world we want is an ephemeral dream, not possible to achieve.

“The place that I got to on Thursday morning was that the achievements are not the point. They may be the guiding star, but they are not the measure of the value of our efforts. Whether evil can ever be defeated is not the point. The point is a life lived in resistance of evil.

“If the story of humanity from beginning to end was that we always lived under the crushing boot of evil, and we always resisted, that would be enough.”

- Marlowe Lune, via instagram (November 8th, 2024)

[thebandghostofficial]

[MESSAGE FROM THE CLERGY]

An important (and overwinded) announcement regarding this blog below the cut.

Hello everyone! This is Rawkin Ghoul/ Tumblr Ghoul/ Tumblrina/ Soda/ etc etc.

First thing’s first: no, this blog is not an official Ghost social media account.

I started this blog in late 2022 when ghost-official started blowing up (I do not believe this one to be real either, and honestly I won’t believe they have a Tumblr until it is linked on their official website) and thought, “wow, I could make a better Ghost blog than that. One that’s way better organized and actually advertises properly for them, and posts regularly!” So I did.

Originally it was meant as just that, a little joke between some friends, and wasn’t meant to really get farther than that. But then I thought, Ghost does have a lot of fans on Tumblr- a lot of exquisitely talented and devoted fans. Maybe I can kinda “roleplay” it for a while, build almost a bit of a portfolio, and then either offer the blog to management or offer to run it for them officially, for fun, if they were interested.

More time passes and more people followed. I thought “xofficial” as a username was a common enough joke/ gimmick that people would realize it wasn’t for real (and in fact, when I first searched the URL, I found that this username was once in use years ago! Sorry, previous owner), especially after posting that April Fools joke post- this was wrong of me to assume. There are a lot of roleplay/ joke “official” Ghost accounts all over the web but I failed to really properly disclaim that I was one of them.

I of course don’t plan to reach out to Ghost anymore and haven’t for some time, for multiple reasons including Tumblr just not being a good website for advertising. But another one is I got pretty loose on here. Tumblr is so different from Twitter and Insta and all that- you guys (and myself! I go here too) don’t want to have someone sell something to you- but you do love interaction and jokes and solving things together.

I think we can all admit it- when Ghost is dormant, the fans can get bored and even agitated, and can start to have a go at eachother. I’m certainly not guiltless there either. I wouldn’t say I’m notorious or even particularly well known in general but I’ve gotten into drama here and there. I figured the blog would be a fun way not just to distract the community, but really engage with it. The blog passed 5k a month or so ago and I started thinking, we could do something really cool with it. Smaller events like fanart contests and zines. But what if we did more? Organizing pre-ritual meetups. Larger community projects like fan-made music videos. ARG. Maybe even a short video game- there are so many incredibly skilled and hard-working Ghost fans and I wanted to try to bring them together because I think our love for Ghost, for whatever reason we love them, screams so loud and everyone deserves recognition (also a reason I started Fanart Friday as a regular thing).

You guys know I do my best to keep up with your tagging and what you’re saying and everything and I’ve seen the people pointing out the blog isn’t real from the beginning- I didn’t want to address it directly at first because I thought if nothing else people enjoyed the mystery.

But, more lately there’s been more and more people who are agitated, disappointed, and even a little scared to hear that this blog is not official.

I want to offer my very sincere apologies to people who I made feel that way. I should have made it obvious sooner- I know so well that there are a lot of very young Ghost fans especially who wouldn’t necessarily surmise that this isn’t real. I’m really sorry to those of you I disappointed.

I will never ask you for money here, or any personal information, or send asks anonymous or otherwise from here or my main personal blog as “Tumblr Ghoul”. I have had one person ask to message me so I messaged them to allow them to do that. If somebody contacts you claiming to be the person running this blog, they are lying. Please block them. My interactions here I aim to keep as public as possible, hence being increasingly liberal with replies and reblogs as the number of people interacting grew.

My only goal with this blog is to advertise for a band that I love and to entertain/ help the fandom when and where I can. I love and appreciate all the fanart and interest in the character of Tumblr Ghoul but I don’t want anybody to feel obligated to me and I especially don’t want to hurt anybody. I started this blog for fun and that how I want it to remain- fun for everyone.

People pointed out when I didn’t post for some time a few months back and it was because I had lost interest in the blog and was going through a rough time- and then one particularly bad day I got on to check it by chance and just seeing your guy’s tags and comments made me feel so much better. I tell people that I found Ghost when I really needed a friend and they fulfilled that for me, but the past few months you guys have done just the same for me. I am so sorry to have betrayed that and made you feel unsafe and lied to in return.

As of posting I do intend to still run the blog as I have been (with a disclaimer added to the bio regarding the legitimacy of this account)- posting about tours, chapters, merch, etc, as well as Fanart Friday. I 100% understand if anybody doesn’t want to be involved in that, so anybody who has tagged me in something and don’t want it on the blog now, I can open messages and you can let me know. I will probably close them again after a week or so if I get a large flood of unrelated messages.

Please do not message me asking me who I am, who knows about the blog, etc. Gaining popularity was never something I wanted from this so I will stay anonymous, for the time being at the very least. A very small number of people know who is behind the blog and to my knowledge only one of them is even on Tumblr and in the fandom.

Thank you for all the support you’ve shown me, Ghost, and eachother. It can be easy to see the bad parts of a community and roll your eyes electing to keep your distance, but since starting this blog I’ve been reminded what good community is even when it’s frustrating sometimes.

Thank you for reading, I won’t hold it against anybody who wants to separate themselves from this blog at this point, and please don’t let my oversight and general dummyness sour your experience with Ghost or its other fans. Enjoy the rest of this tour and whether it’s with or without me, please keep rawking 🤘 Be good to eachother.

Thank you.

[mediacircuspod]

AJ Crowley vs Forgiveness

I need to talk about Crowley for a minute so buckle up or move on.

"It’s not so bad once you get used to it” from Season 1 Episode 1 and an early chapter of the book is something of a throwaway joke. But being damned isn't much of a joke to Crowley, even if he makes jokes to cover it up.

The first thing to understand is that damnation doesn’t end after Crowley either saunters vaguely downwards or is dropped into a burning pile of sulfur(conflicting accounts from the demon himself). Being damned is a continuous state of being AND something that could very well happen to him again. 

He was too ambitious for heaven—too curious. Something that he now knows is distinctly not a heavenly virtue. It’s just that those traits are also not virtues in hell either. And on top of that—he’s good. 

Which in his particular role, is an extremely dangerous thing to be. So he isn’t good, and he isn’t nice and he doesn’t feel trite things like empathy or love. Except that he knows intrinsically that all of that is utter bullshit. And if anyone who isn’t Aziraphale realizes this, he doesn’t really know what falling from hell would be like, but he doesn't want to be the first. 

Another thing to remember is that Crowley doesn’t understand why he was cast out. He understands that it was the questions, that it was his ambition to try and suggest improvements, but he can’t understand why. And the shame of that being yet another question is not lost on him.

The resentment there that has festered for millennia is understandable and expected and HES RIGHT TO FEEL IT. And it’s the reason why he has such a negative reaction to the concept of “forgiveness” but has a relatively amicable relationship with apologies. And I know this is going to sound crazy after nearly 400 words, but this is the actual concept I want to dissect.

Because Aziraphale’s “I forgive you”s of the past have never gotten a good response, but they’ve also never gotten a “don’t bother”. Aziraphale uses that phrase specifically against Crowley when he needs to put distance between them. When he knows that Crowley is right. And Crowley knows that Aziraphale uses that phrase for exactly that purpose because they have being playing their parts for thousands of years. And he’s always been willing to wait in the past. The dance begins with Crowley challenging Aziraphale with something tempting. 

The Great plan is dumb. What if we just left together? You’re being dumb. (I need to link that one Tumblr post that inspired this, just look at this.) Here.

And finally, desperately, This is what you’re giving up. Because Crowley doesn’t actually think it will work. He may hope it does. But he has played his part for long enough to know exactly what Aziraphale’s next line will be. And it still devastates him. And well, it’s his decision to be done waiting for Aziraphale to catch up. Being “too fast” has been his insecurity for too long, and he’s done slowing down just so Aziraphale can try and forgive him. He still doesn’t know why what he is, is wrong. 

(He isn’t)(I mean he certainly makes some unhealthy choices, and he isn’t exactly completely in the right, but he’s NOT wrong.)(Running away together ISNT the right move, but it is the more romantic one so take that as you will.)

The part that makes my brain buzz is that this aversion to forgiveness does not apply to apologies. Specifically it does not apply to the phrase “I was wrong” or "you were right" or the little dance.

This. Is. Interesting.

He doesn’t have a problem with apologizing, and he doesn’t have a problem accepting apologies from Aziraphale if that wonderful scene is to be taken at face value. The fact that the 1941 apology dance wasn’t shown is actually a crime, and you can’t convince me otherwise. And I think this is specifically because he’s not actually averse to forgiveness on the whole. It’s the idea that he needs forgiveness for simply being who he is that actually bothers him. And well. I guess he was tired of Aziraphale pretending that the concept had merit, too. 

For four years he's had the freedom to be exactly who he is without the fear of damnation even if he still has the baggage that went along with the first time it happened to him. And even though Aziraphale doesn't realize it, he's asking Crowley to do something impossible for him. He's asking Crowley to admit that he needs forgiveness, and come back to heaven.

Aziraphale assumes that Crowley would not only want that, but that being with Aziraphale would make it even better. But what the angel has actually done, is give Crowley's deepest insecurity wings. And given him a reason to step away from their millennia long dance.

Because Crowley has finally, finally, finally, found something that he can't give up for Aziraphale. It's extremely poetic that that thing happens to be himself.

And okay now I’m done. I’m gonna go scream into a void.

[billlinguini]

lin’s official tumblr intro

main links:

decorate my tree! :3 my linktree!

what’s your name?

you can call me lin! it’s my pseudonym for all of my socials. it comes from linguini since my user is meant to be a play on the words bilingual and linguini.

what are your pronouns?

i don’t care all that much, but i prefer they/them and she/her.

how old are you?

i’m two decades old! freshly turned 20 this summer :) since i’m an adult, i want to gently advise people under the age of 16 to not contact me/ask to be mutuals.

what do you do with this account?

i mostly post art related to my interests. at the moment, i’m really into undertale and tadc!

(here are some examples)

if you want to skip my reblogs (i would too, honestly), use the following tag:

#linnie originie

that way, you can easily scroll through the things i actually post without having to filter out reblogs manually. i might consider making a tag specifically for reblogs and other stuff if this account does well in the future.

are your commissions open?

not at the moment. i’ll make an announcement when they become available. otherwise, please dm me before submitting!

can you tell us about your personal projects?

i asked myself this question. anyway, i’m currently developing a game! if i garner enough interest for my characters, i might dedicate a blog to them. for now, they’ll stay here with the rest of my art.

EDIT (12/14/2024): follow me on @pallas-productions to see my dev updates! i’ll be posting oc ish content there from now on :)

and i think that’s everything! if you have any further questions or just wanna say hello, please do tell me! i love interacting with the little people in my phone hahaha

[estrusheaven2]

Eastrusheaven got terminated

If anyone sees this I’m just letting you all know that tumblr has finally gotten around to banning my account @estrusheaven, I have sent in an appeal but I don’t think it will work. I made this sideblog to let people know what happened, I don’t plan on moving here to continue posting if the appeal fails, if it’s it it’s it. I had a fun run but it’s not worth that much effort.

I would appreciate if those of you that have any of my posts reblogged could send me a link to it though, I’m considering archiving some of it somewhere to keep it around since I know it’s been thoroughly enjoyed by the community, maybe start an account on Archive Of Our Own.

If this is the last post I make then thank you all for the years, I got to grow a lot with it and it was so much fun seeing how the community grew and enjoyed what I made. I want to continue to write and I might do it if I make that archive of our own account, if I do I will come here to inform you all and let you know which username it is on so stick around if that’s of interest. Otherwise thank you again for the experience, it meant a lot to me.

/estrusheaven, the original heavy trans man hardcore erotica tumblr

[reachartwork]

Hey I fundamentally disagree with you about the ethicality of ai art. But like whatever I’m not changing your mind and you’re not changing mine

I do think, however, that the phrase “you're never too old to make homestuck fanart” is INCREDIBLY misleading. Someone who is anti ai art but isn’t the best at deciphering what is and isn’t ai would 100% believe that this is human made based on that line and I don’t think that is fair. I don’t think you should be captioning ai art with something that sounds like you made the art by hand without also saying it’s ai in the body of the post (not just the tags). I don’t know. It bothered me to see that caption please just be more mindful about people who do not want to interact with ai art at all like myself

a bit of my addendum to my previous ask: I’m sure this is not your intention based on the rest of the blog but that phrase REALLY comes off like you’re trying to pass off ai art as traditional art which is not fair to traditional artists. There is a difference there and you know it. I am an artist and I do not appreciate that difference being minimized in a deceptive way. I honestly believe you have good intentions but this was not it.

respectfully: no.

a: that post is over a year old at this point, i tagged it as ai art, my blog mentions ai art in the bio, when you link the post (or my blog) from elsewhere it says that this is an ai art account. if you are getting "fooled" at this point you really only have yourself to blame.

b: i don't see what medium has to do with making homestuck fanart. would you get this pissy if i made a collage instead.

c: nothing in the post implies that i made it by hand. even if we're getting really pedantic almost none of the art on tumblr is "handmade", it's digital, but also assuming that me saying "you're never too old to make homsetuck fanart" implies that i handmade said fan art is kind of insane.

d: you said yourself that the art was tagged ai art. why haven't you blacklisted or blocked it yet. this is a solvable problem, and instead of solving it you're going out of your way to ask me to put a big fat "THIS IS BADWRONG AI ART, DON'T LET YOURSELF GET TRICKED BY THE AESTHETIC APPEAL OF IT" disclaimer on all my posts. do you not understand not only how juvenile but also how insulting this is to me?

e: moving onto your second ask, i need to point out here that you're literally inventing a problem and then getting mad at it. nowhere in my entire blog have i EVER, EVER passed off ai art as traditional art. any "deception" is, i am so sorry because i'm about to sound gaslighty here, something you are making up in your head. i have been straightforward from the absolute beginning, DAY ONE of this blog about what i do and how i do it. i have claimed many times that I am an artist, which is true, but i have never claimed a single time that i am an illustrator, photographer, painter, or traditional artist. nothing in what i said implied this equivalency that you are, and i repeat, inventing in your head. of course there's a difference between traditional art and ai art, dude! i'm literally dating a traditional artist.

this whole two-ask combo is honestly one of the most ridiculous things i've ever read. certainly not as offensive as that one dude from the other day who told me to kill myself but it's definitely up there in sheer absurdity. this is definitionally "making up a guy to get mad at in your head". all of the problems you are DEMANDING i fix are either problems with existing solutions that you have refused to implement or non-issues that you invented out of whole cloth by inserting nonexistent read-between-the-lines implications into my otherwise straightforward and blunt statements.

you are an unserious person. please do not return to my inbox.

cheers, -reach

[coldcrashpictures]

I could not have been more delighted while rewatching the Godzilla video to hear you mention a tumblr account and then discover that you’re still active on it. Unsure how I never noticed the link before. Sorry for the aggressive streams of likes and reblogs

I would just like to say thank you for everything you do. Your videos always leave me with a rekindled hope and joy for media and society as a whole. I love the validation of “sometimes this media is not the most well-beloved or critically acclaimed but I love it and here’s why” because it cuts right through elitist claims about film-making. Sometimes a good film or tv show is good just because you had a good time watching it and that’s enough. At the same time, I adore the deeper social and thematic analyses you talk about because they’re obviously well thought out and insightful but also because they reaffirm the meaning and intent behind overlooked pieces of media (Overlooked perhaps not in viewership but in terms of people not wanting to talk about effect and intent of story beyond ooh cheesy action film or dinosaur sit-com). I feel slightly less crazy for having complex thoughts about otherwise straightforward or surface level media and it means a lot that your channel affirms—intentionally or not—the inherent complexity of good storytelling. It’s a great reminder that films don’t have to be heavy-handed messageTM films to have a deeper goal and the best thematic achievements are made on the level of individual well-written stories and not just abstract metaphors. I don’t know if any of that makes sense and I’m so sorry if that sounds in any way reductive or incorrect about what you’re doing (in which case, ignore me; you’re accomplishing what you’re aiming for and I’m talking informed nonsense). Idk, your videos just feel like the best non-elitist but thoroughly passionate dive into media and it just makes me excited about the art of storytelling again. I am so rooting for you as a writer and director and person-who-makes-the-media-that-we-love-and-learn-from and the film/tv industry is better for having you invested in it. The hope and passion I get from your videos in statistically significant in my life

Basically this is just a really long thank you. Hopefully it’s also an affirmation that you’re doing great and meaningful things, both in the YouTube axis we get to see and in the work we don’t yet i.e. scripts. You have already succeeded in making media that has changed lives and impacted people and we’re all looking forward to your future work without expectation but with excitement

OMG I don't even know what to say... I'm so glad you like my work so much!!! It literally feels like I'm just grasping in the dark sometimes, so it's so great to hear from someone who thinks so much of it!

[goldensunset]

I’m not worried about missing anything related to Missing Link because I know you’ll flood my dash the instant we get a scrap of info

aaaah see that’s the thing i am Also. myself. relying on other people on here. bc i don’t use twitter or any other site that official kh accounts post on (i mean i think they’re on instagram but that site is impossible to use these days). and i also ideally would like to use tumblr less often than i do and i’ve been taking more breaks lately so like. i have told people if news breaks and i don’t react to it within the hour or two on here you should assume i’m offline at the moment and if so PLEASE contact me via discord if you happen to have my discord. i’m counting on people to do so. because otherwise i really do become too dependent on this site. but like yeah if that happens then i’m absolutely logging right back on and flooding your dash lol

[unquietspiritao3]

Interrupting Your Irregularly-Scheduled Fic-Related Content with An Extremely Long Note on The Situation in British Comedy

Hi there. If you don’t want to read about my thoughts on everything happening in the British comedy scene at the moment, feel free to give this a skip. I totally understand needing to take a step away from such things. But I felt it was important to address, given some of the characters in my stories are based on the people involved/being criticized. I’m also going to link this post in the author’s note of my next chapter update, but feel free to share it before then with those who might not be on Tumblr.

CW: non-detailed mentions of transphobia, sexual assault, and childhood sexual abuse

Okay. I think to start, I need to explain a few of things about me.

First, as I alluded to in the opening author’s note for Should’ve been obvious, I am just an American with a moderate obsession with British panel shows and not enough time to keep up with the entire British comedy world. I jumped into writing in this fandom with huge gaps in my knowledge, which was possibly not wise.

Second, as a way to protect my own mental health and under the advice of my therapist, I’m what you might call ‘terminally offline.’ Before I reactivated this blog for the purpose of sharing fic inspo, I had not been on social media for over a year. I still don’t use it outside of Tumblr, where I follow a very narrow selection of blogs that mostly post Taskmaster gifs (love you all, btw). I don’t watch or read the news. I have systems in place with my friends and family to keep me informed when something really big happens, but outside of that, I am purposefully oblivious. The consequence of this is that I did not know about the two situations I’ll be discussing until I saw some stray posts this past weekend, and that’s why I didn’t address it before.

Third, I always (to a fault, my friends would say) give absolutely everyone the benefit of the doubt and see the best in people until they prove otherwise—and even then, even while holding them accountable and removing them from my life if need be, I try to be compassionate. That’s not going to change; it’s just who I am.

Now for the two situations, my thoughts on them, and their impact on my writing.

The Richard Ayoade Thing

I’ve said before that I’m genderqueer (she/they, equally happy with both, btw). I’m not down with transphobia. But I’ve read that Richard is a separate-the-art-from-the-artist kind of guy, so his personal views aren’t entirely clear to me. That said, the blurb he gave makes me uncomfortable because to me it seems to imply he does agree with the views in the book. I don’t know much about Richard and haven’t consumed much content with him other than Big Fat Quiz and some random clips of various shows, so please point me to anything that would confirm or refute this. For now, I’ll leave it there. In terms of my writing, this isn’t as big of a deal, since the Richard character isn’t central to anything and could be easily retconned out if I wanted to, but I’ll talk more about the writing at the end.

The Noel Fielding Thing re: Russell Brand

Like most Americans, I was introduced to Noel through GBBO. (Well, to be fully honest, I watched the Buzzcocks spanking clips long before then, because those get passed around in spanko circles, but I didn’t know, or care, who the guy in both of them was at the time. It took awhile for my crush on him to develop.) I’ve actually never seen The Mighty Boosh or much of Noel’s standup; he’s just a bit too surreal and nonsensical for me to enjoy when he’s in complete creative control. I’ve watched interviews going back to the time he was promoting Luxury Comedy, all his episodes of Big Fat Quiz, and some episodes of Buzzcocks, in addition to GBBO. I knew he and Russell Brand and had good on-screen chemistry, but I had no idea they were off-screen friends to some degree (at least, they were in the past; more on that below) until this weekend. I also didn’t know that Noel was ever accused of being in a relationship with a 16-year-old when he was in his 30s. I experienced sexual abuse throughout my childhood. Obviously, if that accusation is true, it’s completely unacceptable regardless of the legality in the UK and I will no longer be a fan of Noel.

But rather than try to break down all my complicated feelings on this situation regarding Noel, I’m just going to link to this post, which I agree with 100%, including the part about respecting people who feel differently. The two follow-up posts on the same blog give some good additional info/thoughts. I’m working on doing my own digging, trying to find anything relevant, including the source of the claim that the then-girl in the supposed relationship denied it too. No luck there so far, [EDIT: shared what I found here and it’s in Noel’s favor!] though I have discovered that she (now a woman in her 30s) and Noel currently follow each other on Instagram, and that Noel doesn’t follow Russell Brand (nor can I find a time Noel mentioned him after 2020, right about when it seems like Brand’s right-wing conspiracy-theory crap started). Make of that what you will. Personally, it makes me give Noel the benefit of the doubt unless and until further info is revealed.

Somewhat of a side note: It seems like people are most upset about the lack of a public statement from Noel, specifically. However, what I find odd overall is how there hasn’t been a real statement from any big-name British comic. Lou Sanders was basically strong-armed into saying some stuff in an interview that was supposed to be about her book. Katherine Ryan is very clear she doesn’t want to speak about it despite being the one that called him a predator on Roast Battle years ago. There’s this article about the problem in comedy more generally which several female comics are quoted in, and this one from 2020 including Fern Brady (highly recommend you read both if you can stomach it) but no specific quotes on Brand from names I recognize even there. Radio silence. UK people, can you tell me, is this normal because of the libel laws you all have? From what I understand, it’s much, much easier to be sued for defamation against a public figure and lose over there than over here. Should we expect to wait for an arrest or conviction (if that happens) before people feel safe commenting? Or what is going on?

Impact on My Writing and Final Thoughts

I’ve been having a hard time mental-health-wise, these past few days, reconciling the human need to connect to art with the fact that all art is created by imperfect humans and you simply cannot know what is in someone else’s head or past. That includes my own art. I want it to be an escape for you all, for you to feel safe reading it, but like everyone else, I’m imperfect, and part of that imperfection is not knowing what to do.

At least for now, I’m going to be focused on More than that, and Noel and Richard have never been in the plan to appear in this fic. As for the future, I’m undecided. I feel like I need more info, but I also recognize that we might not ever get real answers.

The sad truth is that writing fanfic always comes with the risk that the thing you’ve been inspired by is later revealed to be problematic. Even if not with these two, something could come to light at any time about any of these people we base our characters on. That last Guardian article I linked should give everyone chills.

I think the best I can do with the info I have today is to say I’m writing about a fictional universe populated with fictional characters, and my use of real people to inspire those characters does not mean I endorse their actions or beliefs; past, present, or future; known or unknown to me at this time. I also want to say, though, that I respect anyone who feels they can’t engage with certain fandoms or fics. Trust me, I do understand.

Take care of yourselves. I care about you so much, internet strangers. 💜

edit: linked the wrong article quoting fern, so added that

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[queervegancryptid]

tl;dr – spoopy-valkyrie >>>>> queervegancryptid

update: 23 July 2024

Hi all. I’m Nik, and I’ve been on tumblr for a long time, mostly as spoopy-valkyrie. This blog is a new project, or a backup of sorts. I’m not sure yet.

A little about me: trans guy, age 35. vegan since age 16. disabled. PTSD, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, ADHD, and like, 80 more things. I love learning new things, and I’m a super curious person and enjoy gabbing about a variety of different topics, and I will if given the opportunity. But I also love when other people do that, even if I don’t share the interest in particular, because it’s awesome to see people get so enthusiastic. That’s the goal of this whole tumblr thing for me, in general.

This blog is not designated “explicit,” but anything NSFW will be tagged as such. I have done and continue to engage in sex work, and I don’t apologize for it. This blog won’t be focused on that primarily, but it may be discussed, so minors please DNI. Otherwise, all are welcome. But if you’re going to harass me or if you’re in the habit of spreading bigotry, kindly fuck off. If you can’t be nice, I will block you.

I’ll edit/add to this pinned post as needed. If you use tag filtering and would like something tagged that isn’t, just send an ask/msg, and I’ll do my best to accommodate it.

ETA: I'm struggling with anorexia really bad lately, and I'm doing what I can on my own, but I'm trying to raise funds for dietitian visits so I can get some proper help in terms of meal planning. I've applied for funding with Project HEAL and have been searching for weeks, but my insurance is Medicare and Florida Medicaid, managed in one plan by UHC... I have told this story so many times, and to no effect, for the most part. It's a very bizarre experience.

I'm putting this here because I'm hoping people might see it, and maybe those folks will know something that can help my situation. Probably not, but I'm not ready to give up, so I have to try.

Anyway, nobody has to donate, but I'm thinking about a GoFundMe or something. In the meantime, if anybody feels like helping, my links are below.

PayPal: @niksnotdead

Venmo: @Nik-Hartsfield

Cash app: $niksnotdead

[freespeechwyngro]

We are not affiliated with the wyngro!

So I’ve been getting more than a couple DMs from users on discord who seem to believe this blog is the official wyngro tumblr blog. That is not the case! We are a third party who just documents and discusses wyngro happenings.

If you DM me asking for help finding old wyngro pets or how one gets into the discord server or locating something on the website I’m still happy to assist. I just feel like I ought to clear this up. I don’t want any of our blog viewers thinking statements on this blog are some official wyngro statements.

If you want to contact wyngro staff [DO NOT HARASS THEM] I would suggest asking a question in the wyngro discord server, the link is still available on the group page. Otherwise you could possibly note the group(while that feature is still available) or you can note the wyngrew account. I would caution against messaging or sending a note the wyngro owner as she’s not liked this in the past.

Otherwise, I’m still happy to help with general Wyngro questions on my discord. Just please understand that I’m not Wyngro staff and can’t answer questions like why were you banned etc. I don’t have access to that kind of information.

My discord is freespeechwyngro . I don’t check it very frequently anymore but if you send an anon ask on here requesting that I check the discord I’ll do so swiftly.

[greengay]

craziest moment in gd fandom was when someone got so mad at people writing gd rpf that they sent a link to one to billie (that he never ever would have seen otherwise) so he would like personally get offended about it but instead he just watched both accounts stories arguing back and forth with each other and didn’t respond in any way

Omg it’s even wackier than that I think

SO… Billie was following Fan Account A. Fan Account A was mutuals with Fan Account B. Fan Account B was run by two hot girls who also wrote GD rpf. (GOOD STUFF TOO, BTW)

Fan Account C started frothing at the mouth about it and SUPPOSEDLY sent it to BJA, BUT… what I’m pretty sure actually happened was:

Fan Account B posted a Hot Girls Selfie and tagged some of their mutuals, including Fan Account A, and Fan Account A reposted it with some hearts, as one does.

Billie was going though the stories of the accounts he followed and, being the horny old man he is, clicked the reposted story from Fan Account A that featured the 2 hot girls that ran Fan Account B, which led him to clicking through their story, and they happened to be defending themselves from the Fan Account C lunatic.

They showed the screenshots of him seeing all the stories, which included stories getting into The RPF Situation defending their POV and… it obviously didn’t bother him because… fucking LOL, c’mon. If he was soooo offended he would have blocked them.

I actually don’t know if he went through Fan Account C’s stories, they never showed any proof, unlike Fan Account B.

I think ultimately like… I hope for Fan Account C’s sake that he didn’t actually look through their stories because I saw like 15 seconds of it and there were so many stories that the top was just all dots and it was like a half-hour of unhinged ranting about how rpf is the devil lol. That would be so embarrassing.

🙈

But yeah, Billie isn’t going on tumblr or AO3 looking for fic about himself to get angry at, that’s one of the dumbest takes I’ve ever seen LMAO.

[cherrycolanpoprocks]

It’s been a minute

Hello everyone. I was going to abandon this account all together because I’m traveling a lot more and overall happier not being fully involved in the GDC. HOWEVER, someone felt the need to speak on me AGAIN and not include the full story on what happened. If you were here last year, then you know. So lets address what happened last year shall we? On Instagram, I called out a group of people who were writing RAPE fanfiction about Billie Joe. For many reasons, this made me and others in the fandom uncomfortable, as those aren’t things you should even be writing about. So, I called them out. Others confided in me their issues with those people, I provided a safe place for them to rant to me and share with me more problematic things they’ve done. That made it to tumblr, this beautiful space where some people get praise where they don’t deserve it. Which leads me to Green Gay. They decided to DOXX ME. Which, someone today said they get their info from Indeed so they don’t view that as doxxing, but the info released about me wasn’t available on Indeed because I didn’t have an Indeed until later in 2022. I was doxxed and harassed for simply stating that RAPE FANFICS shouldn’t exist. They took that as “attacking” their friends. Which, I talked with one of them and we squashed the beef UNTIL i was doxxed. Consider the beef reheated. Let me address their post, step by step, shall we? This was posted on June 8, 2023 btw. A full year AFTER everything happened. The ask read as follows; “craziest moment in gd fandom was when someone got so mad at people writing gd rpf that they sent a link to one to billie (that he never would have seen otherwise) so he would like personally get offended about it but instead he just watched both accounts stories arguing back and forth with each other and didn’t respond in any way” Now lets address the didn’t respond, because he was hearting my stories and continued watching them (i will make a post with these screenshots and time stamps lmao) Now below is Green Gay’s response, lets debunk this because they weren’t even involved and got majority of it wrong since she wants to be a one-sided ass bitch and i’m tired of my mouth being in their fucking mouths.

I don’t care and never cared that Billie was looking through anyone’s stories, what he does is his business. However, I cared that they were writing rape fanfiction about Billie Joe and trying to play it off as he found them attractive, when he was just looking through stories of fans lol. Idk how self-absorded you have to be to think that Billie Joe, a 51 year old man (at the time 50) would be obsessed with you and find you hot when you’re likely the age of his son. (Idk their ages, dont care to know.) ANYWAYS, as we know Billie had deleted his Instagram later on in the year, but my main concern was with yall’s need to sexualize him. Like he isn’t a humanbeing. He see’s alot more than you think (WHICH WAS CONFIRMED TO ME BY HIM IN FEB OF 2023) Billie DID look through my stories then and even way after, hearting one where I talked about how gross it was to sexualize them. Seen below because I come with screenshots.

As seen above, you can see my original story, which had nothing to do with y’alls selfie or him scrolling through your stories. But you can see that’s his account and he heart reacted the message lmao. I did show this proof, which you wouldn’t know because you literally said at the end you only watched 15 seconds of my story. I never said rpf was the devil???? I said writing rape fanfiction and assuming peoples sexualities is weird. YOU have got to be the dumbest motherfucker on this app. I will drag the fuck out of you again, even if you doxx me again or send your damn minions after me. It’s gonna piss you off to know Billie had zero issues with me and literally made his way over to me in Feb to talk with me. Get fucked bro, honestly. I’ll be posting my experience meeting Billie Joe in due time, I just had to let y’all know that these bitches are calling me a lunatic when they’re still foaming at the mouth over something that happened over a year ago and was done and over with. Lets not forget Green Gay’s past with transphobia.

[thewhumpcaretaker]

Hi, I hugely admire your writing and blogging! I’ve been thinking all day about the issue raised of some assault/abuse survivors feeling dirty or erased due to increasing restrictions on sexual content, or even being attacked for writing content that may help them, but harm others.

IMO what is needed is greater acceptance that both safe spaces where certain content restrictions apply and uncensored/DLDR/“anything goes” spaces can exist, and a clearer separation/designation between the two. Because we do need both! Trying to make every space one way or the other is impossible, and inevitably hurts someone.

I think we also need a norm that if something is posted in a designated uncensored space, it should not be linked to or discussed, even for purposes of hating it, in spaces with content restrictions that it violates. Granted, this would take some fun away from those who are motivated more by feeling morally superior and harassing others than actually protecting anyone, but would help those who sincerely want to avoid that content. Because even just hearing about how awful this thing is and how evil this person is for writing it is still hearing about it, you know?

Thank you so much for being willing to have this conversation.

TW: discussion of SA and ethicality below

First I want to get really clear about what we’re talking about. We’re talking specifically about fictional, graphic scenes of SA in which there’s no prior consent and in which this would be traumatizing for the character either in the moment or long term, and yet it’s treated as erotica for the audience. We’re also talking about any fictional CSA shown on the page.

We’re not talking about personal accounts of real assault stories. We’re not talking about character backstories. We’re not talking about tactfully handled scenes that are meant to show the horror of rape and focus solely on its impact for the survivor. We’re not even talking about dark romance/yandare/dubious consent stuff where both characters are into it and it’s far removed from what actual assault looks like, because that’s basically just a BDSM scene idea with the BDSM framing removed for better immersion (this is a grey area for me, it depends how it’s handled, anyway I’m getting off topic).

Okay, so these are my thoughts:

Those divided spaces exist. They exist all over the place, including plenty of communities within tumblr. Heck, all of tumblr that is correctly tagged, because you can filter out words like SA.

This works great for things that are “icks” for many people, content like scat or bloodplay or even SA within character backstories. Some people don’t want to see that and others do and that’s fine. It does not work for content that is bad to create. I personally do think that some content is bad to create. I know some people don’t, but that’s my opinion. I think, even in the privacy of your own home, there’s something not cool about wanting to make and view scenes of CSA. Obviously I can’t stop you. Obviously you don’t have to care what I think. I was asked my opinion like a week ago about whether someone should create that kind of content and I said no. I wouldn’t have even given my opinion on that otherwise, just out of the blue. It’s not something that I want to talk about. I acknowledge that I may be biased, I’m not some moral arbiter, I don’t know what’s right any better than the next person. But to me personally, that does not sound right, and if someone asks me if they should write/draw that, I’ll say no. The space where they’re doing it doesn’t make it okay - to me, one random person on the internet.

I also want to make a huge distinction between saying that I think it’s a bad thing to do to create a certain kind of content, and saying that the person who is creating it is bad. I don’t believe in shaming. I don’t believe certain people are bad. I don’t believe in throwing away the whole person. It’s not helpful. Please don’t harass anyone over this. But if someone wants to have a conversation about whether they should make this content: again, my answer will be no.

Finally, I just want to say, please stop. It’s a request, you don’t have to. But I don’t want to talk about this and I’m not doing okay. I will continue talking about it if given thoughtful asks like this one, because I care about the people on this blog and want them to feel heard. I don’t feel I have a right to turn you away. But I am very distressed. You can talk about this on your own blog if it’s important to you.

[asherlockstudy]

this is all very weird, the way you talk about real life people rhett and link is weird. they're not characters you can theorize about. their wives are real people and not characters or props in some big story you seem to think is going on. using words like "canonically" is gross. they're real people. this isn't a tv show. the state of their marriages are not yours to theorize about.

this type of behavior is just a sign you don't respect them, their relationship, or their wives. ESPECIALLY if you listened to the male friendships EB and then continued on theorizing like this.

i'm not 100% against shipping them. it's funny to point out when they do things we would associate with acting gay, because a lot of the time they do act like that. but it's not indicative of some hidden romance. they don't act the way they do because they're secretly gay. they act the way they do because they're openly very good friends. it's reductive and disrespectful to say otherwise.

Okay I had received other (friendly) mail before that but I am gonna answer this one first:

If instead of “canonically” I had written “Link himself has CHOSEN to multiple times explicitly describe fights - including throwing phones - in several GMMs around 2014-2017 between Christy and himself” does that make it better for you? Does the meaning change? Cause that sure wasn’t my theory. Should I perhaps have closed my ears the times Link spoke? Should I close my eyes too? Isn’t Link accountable at all for all the things he chooses to say in public about his private life? Is it all on me and those who listened to what he said and actually, you know, had a thought process? Okay. Granted, not many in their fandom have thought processes, judging by a concerning percentage of the comments.

Again, it is not a theory. It is perception. I am not saying what should happen. I love them if they are just friends, I actually HOPE for them to be happy in their marriages as that honestly makes their life a lot simpler and happier than the alternative.

Rhett and Link have made their fair share of alienating the shippers (who were by large boosting their channel) and it’s great for them as long as they still stand by it. Since, however, they removed their presence from tumblr and did their best to insinuate the tumblr lot is some weird edge of their fanbase (despite at the same time doing pathetic bullshit like pretending to wack each other off for a fee from every single one of us - see GME - something not a single shipper asked for and I found, well, pathetic), I believe I have room here to talk to friends who might share my perspective hoping that my words do not ever reach them.

There are comments calling them gay or whatever on YouTube and other places they have direct access / engaging with. I have never been one of them as I consider this a low thing to do, as low as coming as anon and playing the “holier than thou” card while insulting people you don’t know. But this here is my blog, in a website Rhett and Link claim to have stopped engaging with entirely. I would sooner talk to my real life friends about it if those dummies ever watched GMM, would your astral projection appear there to tell me I am being disrespectful? This, here, is a social community too. With too little potency, mind you.

I am not gonna apologise for being one of the many who find Rhett and Link’s behaviour inconsistent with all known examples of strong platonic friendship. This is what I see. We could all be wrong. I could be entirely wrong in my perception. This is what I see. I discuss what I see. Do you not ever discuss celebrities’ personalities, affairs and other topics? Do you never have an opinion about how ideal or flawed a famous person is or did you never find yourself having a second thought about a statement? Are you really that above everyone else or do you take every random person’s words as words of gospel?

If you think I do not respect them, it’s your opinion and that’s fine by me. You don’t respect me, it’s also fine. If you can’t tolerate my “disrespect” for them, block me and get over it.

Whatever is happening or is going to happen to them, their professional and their personal lives, it will never be impacted by what I say here in my dark corner without ever reaching out to them. If they really dig so deep to find my posts of all things (which I downright doubt), well they are being very paranoid. They could have used all that time having sex with their wives or going out for a date. Wasted opportunity.