#I mean; who else is an openly gay A- actor?

[kimmykun]

Shawn and Luke Evans, eh? 

[darcytaylor]

Jonathan Bailey: Humble, Kind, and Hilarious (Vanity Fair)

A Humble Star with a Playful Side

There’s something incredibly refreshing about an actor who can rise to fame without letting it go to their head - and JB is the perfect example of this (I hope he never proves me wrong). In the interview, he comes across as grounded, witty, and aware of his own privilege. He jokes about his “dexterous toes” and speaks about the ups and downs of fame, showing that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. It’s not every day you hear someone with the kind of success he’s had talk about their imposter syndrome with such charm and honesty.

His humility shines through in everything he says. While he’s obviously proud of his career achievements, he never lets the glitz and glamour of Hollywood overshadow what truly matters to him. His ability to laugh at himself and stay unpretentious only makes me - and everyone else, I’m sure - love him more.

A Passion for Representation and LGBTQ+ Stories

One of the reasons JB is so beloved (at least by me) is his advocacy for LGBTQ+ representation in media. In the interview, he talks about Heartstopper and the immense impact it’s had on both LGBTQ+ audiences and the broader public. He makes a strong point about how crucial it is for older generations to see young LGBTQ+ love stories depicted so openly and positively. For JB, projects like Heartstopper aren’t just acting gigs - they’re opportunities to offer real representation for young people who need to see themselves on screen.

He also shares his thoughts on what it means to be a gay actor in an industry that’s still catching up in terms of representation. Through his work, he’s helping to create a world where LGBTQ+ stories are seen as vital parts of our cultural fabric, not niche or secondary narratives.

Philanthropy and Giving Back

It’s not just his acting career that makes him stand out - it’s his passion for using his platform to give back. Through the Shameless Fund, he has provided financial support for smaller, grassroots organizations that uplift LGBTQ+ communities, particularly those led by people of colour and trans individuals. As an advocate for visibility and justice, his commitment to philanthropy speaks volumes about his character.

In an industry where many actors focus on personal gain, it’s inspiring to see him prioritize social impact. His focus on creating positive change and supporting marginalized groups is a reminder that success in the spotlight doesn’t have to be just about fame - it can be about making the world a better place.

I just love Johnny and would love to have dinner with him and talk. That seems like it would be a good time!

Also, I'm so excited to go see Wicked!

[butch-bakugo]

Proshippers: omg why can't antis just leave us alone! 🙄 Don't like don't read! Cultivate your online experience!

Antis: ok. * Mass blocks you* *puts you on our DNIs * * Ignores you*

Proshippers: Wait no! I sustain myself on complaining about you! My identity is only based on how " weird" I am! You guys aren't even complaining about me making graphics harassing you guys telling you your assault was actually your fault! How can I complain about harassment and bullying when you guys don't harass or bully me! You won't even respond when I screenshot your posts and laugh at you? When I complain about the concepts of a dni because most exclude me?? Don't you get it! We're the real victims! Somehow your a puritan and a bigot and a Christian for not liking my art of two siblings fucking each other and drawing porn of an underage live action character using the likeness of the child actor who played them! Don't you understand?

I only exist as counter culture and you guys have to keep up our fight! If you disappear I'm just a sad weirdo! You can't just block me out and ignore me like I've been asking you to! Hello??? I only exist on twitter, Tumblr and Ao3 where my creepy rape mindset is normalized by other Nazis and Openly pedofil-i mean radqueers and paraphiles! If you guys let me fall into obscurity than how can I sustain myself! How will I exist in my mind as a cool nerd who fights censorship if you guys don't censor me and just let my art fail with zero engagement??

What do you mean I spend more time drawing porn of kids and defending my right to do so on the internet than actually getting the therapy I need to stop drawing sim cp period? What do you mean therapists in mass discourage fictional cp cause it often leads to offending and there's tons of documents and resources proving that available with a simple google search?? What do you mean my art isnt coping because its used to groom others and continue the cycle of violence because I make no attempt at hiding my art or content from children period but especially those in broken homes who assume its ok because my content aligns with their real abusive experiences?? What do you mean I became the villian and creep who caused me real harm and 32 year old women thirsting after teenage boys on the Internet are not the revered fandom elders i was told i should become? What do you mean I'm the type of fan no one likes and constantly has to bring up so other's know they arnt like me? What do you mean we've fostered a community that actively harms victims of abuse and children en masse and normalized it so much I'm completely tone deaf by sending traumatizing incest fanfiction to my friends? Arnt they the real abusers by not letting me retrumatize them over and over again and claim their silencing me because I cant send links to rape porn in their discord server??

What do you mean I can't compare my fetishization of sex crimes to fans of horror movies cause it's a false equivalency and only my contribution is condoning the violence by painting it as sexy and desirable and my tiny disclaimer at the bottom basically means nothing when everything else I say isnt aligned with it?? What do you mean I show my true colors when I'm faced with the reality the only people who benefit from my fictional cp are pedophiles?? What do you mean rape victims don't like it when I portray rape as some sexy coercion and I know I'm wrong simply by the fact I try to hide the real word for what I'm writing/drawling under inconspicuous shit I made up like non-con and dub-con??

I'm supposed to be the victim, not you!! I'm the real victim! Your a bully for ignoring me and blocking me! This is clearly harassment! You clearly hate gay people because you don't like my gay pedo incest art with no actual sensitivity and I exclusively made it to jerk off to and not catch a felony or address my own rotting morality by justifying my wank to child porn drawn in an anime art style because they are fictional and not real! I know I recently identified also as a paraphile and a ficto-zoonecrosomnopedo but not everyone who likes my realistic porn of animals and children also clearly have my mental illnesses that are going completely unchecked! I'm the victim in all this, don't you know! I'm the victim!!!

[misskattylashes]

I just wanted to share some thoughts with you about why celebrities don’t come out and why there is still a need for fake romances etc.

I will start this off by declaring that I am a heterosexual woman and in no way am I writing this from my experience as a gay person because I have none, only from the experiences of my friends. It is more what I have observed, especially doing my research as part of writing my Milex sagas.

For anyone who hasn’t read them, the first one Yours is the Only Ocean is set in 1785 and when I started my research, I was expecting to read of countless gay men being hanged or imprisoned for their sexuality. But strangely, even though sodomy was punishable by death, there were very few prosecutions. Molly Houses (male brothels) were raided, arrests were made, but no one was charged. The Georgians weren’t particularly gripped by moral panic and were quite sexually free and loose. The attitude taken that as long as something wasn’t affecting them, they would turn a blind eye. That of course didn’t mean that gay men could live openly – but a lot of them still can’t today (which I will come to later), but even fashions for men were ‘dandy’ consisting of powdered wigs and face paints to hide their pox scars.

By the way, I am only referring to men because lesbianism was never recognised legally.

But for my next novel The Fire and The Thud, things have changed somewhat,. Where previous laws only applied to sodomy, it now applied to all homosexual acts as they were an ‘outrage to public decency’. The Victorians were gripped by moral panic. Poor people were only poor because they were lacking moral fibre, alcoholics were weak and needed to be punished or else taken under the wing of the Temperance Society and encouraged to find God. Unfortunately attitudes that still prevail today.

In the Victorian era you were not executed for being gay, but you were sentenced to two years hard labour, and of course the shame of what you had done. Also, the roles between men and women were becoming much more defined, so any signs of effeminacy would stand out, so we see much more closeting happening.

The next book is going to be set in the 1950s and I have already started doing my research, and in some ways, it seems this era is even worse. Gay men were seen by some as subversive and a danger to the stability of society (this is the start of the Cold War era don’t forget), and homosexuality was now deemed as a mental illness and therefore considered curable. Advances in medicine and psychology meant that horrific conversion therapies could be carried out, or chemical castrations as Alan Turing suffered, to avoid going to prison. Gay men were pushed further underground, but at the same time, society itself had started to become more permissive and some gay men began to stand up for their rights, and the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957 led to the eventual decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men over the age of 21 in 1967.

So we reach 2024 and I can totally see why people find it hard to believe why gay celebrities don’t come out, and rely on fake relationships to distract from their true selves. After all being gay isn’t a crime, we have Pride, we have other openly gay celebrities and influencers whose careers are thriving, so how can it be that someone still chooses to stay closeted and go as far as having a fake partner?

Well for one, society is still a dangerous place for gay people. Homophobia is rife. See any innocent reel on Instagram about a kid coming out to their mum, or a same sex couple kissing, and you will find a hundred comments expressing either disgust, or telling them they need to find God, or else that some things shouldn’t be public (hello Victorians and your outrage of public decency).

But when it comes to entertainment, the biggest hurdle is their ‘Brand’. All entertainers have a brand. A ‘character’ actor would probably have little problem careerwise, coming out, because they are chameleons, they become the part they play then move onto something else and are equally convincing. But once someone hits the big time for playing certain roles, then they end up with a Brand, and I’m sorry, even in 2024 some brands are not going to be accepted by homophobes if they are played by a gay person. I honestly don’t know what would cause more uproar, a gay actor or a black actor being cast to play James Bond.

If your money maker is your looks or your hardman image or sex goddess image, then you’re not going to be encouraged to come out in your private life. When it comes to an actor, if they came out as gay, then served to play some tough guy, many people who wouldn’t even consider themselves homophobic would find their unconscious bias finding it difficult to take them seriously because of outdated stereotypes about gay men.

When it comes to musicians, it’s a doozie. The same young girls who love watching a gay influencer online telling all about his journey and sharing funny dating experiences etc, are not going to want their heartthrob favourite musician to be gay. For the influencer, being gay is their brand. Being handsome and sexy and available is the musician’s brand. Paint him to be a womaniser, or someone who can’t hold down long term relationships with beautiful women, and he becomes a challenge, someone who is just looking for the right woman to change him. Which by the way is not a criticism of young girls, I was one myself once and absolutely convinced I was going to marry my favourite musician and even when he got engaged, I convinced myself the wedding was never going to happen (they have been married 20 odd years now lol). It’s a natural rite of passage.

What is immoral is that the music industry feeds off this and just sees it as a way of making money. While their heartthrob is straight, they are available and this equals tickets sold, merchandise purchased. Quite often the fake girlfriend gains hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, meaning she becomes an influencer and brands fall over themselves for her to promote their stuff, knowing girls are going to want to buy it because it will make them smell like her or dress like her and X might find them attractive too.

Of course, the musician themselves makes lots of money and gets to travel the world and stay in the best hotels and eat the best food…but unlike the average person who can be seen out and about in a restaurant with their partner, they have to make sure the restaurant is discreet, or else carry Non Disclosure Agreements with them everywhere to make sure no one speaks about seeing them. Their friends and family are sworn to secrecy and often have to lead clandestine lives as well to accommodate it. They have to live in shadows, like their relationship is a dirty secret, like we are in 1954 rather than 2024.

So you are probably asking yourself why don’t they just stop it if it’s so restricting. Well normally they have to sign contracts that are so watertight they can’t break them without being sued for millions. There is also the moral aspect too. I am sure a lot of artists come to have good friendships with their fake girlfriends – after all they are expected to spend a lot of time with them. Well, if said artist came out and said his latest squeeze was fake, then everyone would look at all the girlfriends before and wonder about the nature of their relationship, and it would be humiliating for them. Especially ones who were mega famous themselves, or now in authentic relationships.

So yeah, that’s what I wanted to say really. Like I said, I have no idea what it is like to live as a gay person, but I do know a bit about how the media works, and so much of it is smoke and mirrors, and just because we might like to think we’re more Laissez-faire like our Georgian ancestors, so many of us still carry the moral judgement of the Victorians whether we like it or not, and now of course you can go on Instagram or X and tell everyone about it.

[williamrikers]

King of the Cardboard Castle

- thoughts on kanghan after episode 2 -

i just rewatched the episode (because it slaps so hard, i'm fully on board and invested in this show now), and i want to write a little something on kanghan because i see some people in the tag confused by his choices. why did he go to sailom's with a gun? why did he end up comforting sailom? i think it's all very understandable from his character's perspective.

so, to me, that cardboard castle tells us everything we need to know about kanghan: his power is an illusion, built on an unsteady foundation, and could be torn down at any moment. kang is intimately aware of this and does everything he can to try and consolidate the little power and influence he has by any means necessary.

why use a gun to threaten sailom?

but sailom isn't afraid or deferential. he never, EVER is.

kanghan needs to feel dominant. he needs to feel powerful, and literally the only guy at school who keeps defying him is sailom. sailom keeps coming out on top time and time again because he's smarter than kang and never actually starts shit, he just reacts to what's happening, making him basically immune to being ratted out to people in positions of authority. even kang's own grandmother sees through kang's shitty attempts at manipulation and chastises kang in front of the principal.

kanghan's only power is that over the kids at school, truly a king of a very small and incredibly meaningless kingdom. but it is effective in making him feel powerful: all of the other kids defer to kanghan or are openly terrified of him (we saw them all dutifully lining up to have the videos removed from their phones, none of them are ever going to challenge kang).

and kang resents that--has a deep need to put sailom in his place, because he wants that feeling of total power. he wants all of his classmates to defer to him, not just 90% of them. at this point, it's turned into an obsession for him: make sailom afraid just once. make him tremble before kang just once. make him get down on his knees JUST ONCE. (and no, there is no gay subtext at all to kang insisting again and again that sailom should get down on his knees. don't worry about it kanghan your secret gay fantasies are safe with me 😘)

like, he's tried everything else: threatening him physically, trying to get him fired from his job at the car wash, ACTUALLY getting him fired from his job tutoring, hurting his friends, trying to convince his grandmother to cancel his scholarship, taunting him about his home situation and lack of money, actually throwing money in his face/on the ground (from what i understand, a taboo in thailand). and none of it has worked to make sailom treat him with the respect and fear he thinks he deserves. sailom would rather have given up his scholarship than lie about what happened and wrongfully apologize to kang. at this point, i feel like kang is too far gone to be able to back out. he has set this goal for himself (humiliate sailom), and it's been eating his brain. he can't rest until he finally gets what he wants.

can i just put in a quick tangent in here gushing over CHIMON'S MICROEXPRESSIONS!!! god, this man is a joy to watch, just look at the money throwing scene in part 3/4; the depth of emotion chimon manages to convey with just the slightest changes of expression is incredible. i've said this before and i will say it again: chimon is one of the strongest actors on the gmmtv roster right now and i am in awe of his skill.

anyway, kang goes to sailom's house fully intent on humiliating him, but what he finds there is so much worse than any of his own bullying has managed to be. for all his talk, kanghan is not a particularly scary or successful bully: he's the king of the cardboard castle. his power is an illusion, propped up by his family name and his family's money. i don't think he would be capable of taking a hot iron and burning someone with it--the level of violence that sailom is subjected to (ON THE REGULAR, I MIGHT ADD) is completely out of kang's wheelhouse.

and i do think that at this point he genuinely feels for sailom. that he genuinely does feel sorry for him, because you can't be obsessed with someone to the point of going to their house with a gun without caring about them in some way. on the contrary, the kind of obsession kang has with sailom runs bone-deep, and i am absolutely team "kang is going to fall first and fall hard". he's already obsessed with the guy! he values sailom's emotional state in a way he doesn't anyone else's! (sure, initially it's because he wants to make sailom submit but all that obsessive energy has to go SOMEWHERE, right.)

seeing sailom cowering and crying does put things in perspective for kanghan, i think. the way he reaches out to him seems almost involuntary, the way he touches him is hesitant and unsure. but this does read as a very genuine and understandable reaction to me: no matter their differences at school, this is a person who kang knows and, in a twisted way, cares very much about. the normal human reaction at this point is to reach out, to offer comfort, no matter how you feel about the person. it would have been weirder to me if he hadn't, honestly.

also, a note on the use of "friend" by kang in this scene: i've seen people making a big deal out of this but it's absolutely not that deep. please correct me if i'm wrong but as i understand it, "puen" is also frequently used to refer to classmates/people in the same year at uni, no matter whether you're close to them or not. "friend" is just a translation choice which fits imo, because you wouldn't say "get away from my classmate" in english. you'd probably say "get away from my friend" instead, even if you're not really friends, and translation is also about what makes sense in the target language. so him saying that is not some big 180, he's basically just stating that he knows sailom from school.

anyway, where was i going with all of this? to me, kang's choices in this episode are all completely justified from his character's perspective. i neither find it odd that he tried to threaten sailom with a gun, nor that he ended up comforting sailom. because everything he is and claims to be is built on cardboard: the guy doesn't know himself. we know he has some deeply, DEEPLY repressed gay fantasies and that he gets obsessed with the first person to openly defy him because that threatens the stability of his cardboard castle. what if everyone realises that deep down, kanghan is a cringefail loser who is so starved for love and attention he would rather fill the hole in his heart with violence and cruelty than be honest about who he is? what if everyone finds out he's not as scary as he'd like to be?

the cardboard underneath kang is flimsy, and i'm pretty sure his castle is going to collapse pretty soon.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ben Appel

Published: Dec 26, 2023

In 2021, Harvard evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven stated on a television news program that there are “two sexes” and that ��those sexes are designated by the kinds of gametes we produce.” She added that “understanding facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect” when it comes to “their gender identities and use [of] their preferred pronouns.” Afterward, a Harvard graduate student, in her official capacity as director of the Human Evolutionary Biology Department’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Task Force, tweeted that Hooven’s “dangerous” and “transphobic” remarks made the department unsafe for transgender people. The Graduate Student Union took out a petition against Hooven, and, since no one would agree to serve as her teaching assistant, she had to discontinue her popular lecture course. This past January, under duress, Hooven retired from her position at Harvard.

More recently, I heard Hooven speak at a conference in Denver. She talked about academic freedom and her dedication to creating a just society. She said something I believe: that the truth is the way toward true social justice, and that the truth is what ultimately alleviates human suffering. After Hooven left the stage, I tweeted my thoughts about what she said, concluding, “Yep, I’ll die on that hill.” A Twitter user, in a now-deleted series of replies, responded, “Wish you would then. And quickly.” Later, this person elaborated, “Cis white conservative gays can all d*e. Please do, no one likes you.”

This might be the first time I’ve been called “conservative” for voicing my support of the truth and social justice. Right-wing homophobia is nothing new, though the enmity for “cis white gays” like me from the other side of the aisle has sadly also become widespread online. Here’s a very small sampling:

“[C]is white gay men are the weakest links and idc who knows it.” — @ann_forcino.

“ur rave wasn't ‘100% queer joy’ it was a warehouse party full of white cis gay men who want to dance and fuck each other lmfao [...] “that's not queer joy, that's f^g joy.” — @Maxies_back

“Chelsea and Hells Kitchen, more so than other neighborhoods in New York, produce nothing better than prissy, entitled cis White Power pretentious gay men, who don't respect diversity, or the rule of law.” — “LGBT for Change”

“Maybe they were right all along and white cis gays really do go to hell.” — Jerry Falwell @obssdwmlp

“Behind every bad man there is an even worse cis gay white man.” — @ANIMETWTDNI

“We need to realize that gay cis white men are still cis white men.” — @pettypiedpipertake

“Maybe homophobia against cis white gay men is valid.” — @heartIwin

“Noah Schnapp is also evidence that gays will truly go to h£ll. especially a cis white upper class gay like i genuinely, genuinely mean that and i’m sorry if that comes off as problematic.” [Schnapp is a 19-year-old Jewish gay actor who has spoken out in support of Israel in the wake of the October 7 2023 terrorist attacks.] — @brat6z

 “I love it when white gays erase the trans and black side of this flag [...] You faggots deserve to get hatecrimed to death.” — @daredevilshill_

Writing for The Nation in 1994, the gay playwright Tony Kushner argued that homosexuality and socialism are intrinsically linked. Homosexuals, he wrote, “like most everyone else, are and will continue to be oppressed by the depredations of capital until some better way of living together can be arrived at.” Kushner lamented the growing number of gay activists, like Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bawer, who advocated a more pragmatic approach to equal rights. The radical contingent of the LGBT community has long pejoratively described these types of gay and bi people — those who prioritize marriage equality, the right to serve openly in the military, and peaceful inclusion in Western society — as “assimilationist.” Real gay liberation, the radicals argue, will result from razing Western civilization and its capitalist, cisheteropatriarchal system and rebuilding it in their utopian vision. Like the gay journalist Donna Minkowitz once said to Charlie Rose, “We don’t want a place at the table — we want to turn the table over.”

The thing is, the pragmatic approach won. Today, gay, lesbian, and bi people get married, serve proudly, have jobs, own homes, and raise families. Like black civil rights leaders who preached nonviolent protest and a politics of respectability, discerning LGBT activists took the long view. We don’t want to exist on the margins of society, they insisted, we want to participate in it. LGBT people, just like black Americans, are a vital part of the fabric of this nation.

But the radicals haven’t taken this defeat lying down. After the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality the law of the land, the radicals pounced. “You got what you want,” they seemed to say. “Now it’s our turn.” LGBT rights organizations, either under the influence of impatient extremists or in an attempt to stay relevant (i.e., donor-worthy), refocused their missions to a form of revolutionary activism that purports to fight on behalf of trans people but in practice agitates for a revolt against Enlightenment ideals, liberalism, capitalism, and even basic biology.

Every LGBT organization seemingly became an extension of a university Gender Studies department, whose purpose was not to produce new knowledge but to interrogate — or, in their academic lingo, queer — existing knowledge which they spuriously associate with “whiteness”, colonialism, and Western patriarchy. Alongside this, a new social hierarchy of disadvantage was erected, where everyone was in competition to be the most “marginalized” — and therefore deserving of resources, a voice, and power in the revolutionaries’ value system. According to that value system, being gay or bi seemed to matter far less if one were also white, cis, and male, and therefore deemed to be in cahoots with the oppressors.

In 2017, while I was a student at Columbia University, I interned for GLAAD, one of the largest LGBT organizations in the US. Not only had their mission absorbed this new orthodoxy, it had filtered down to the interpersonal level. On campus and at GLAAD’s offices, I was regularly called “cis” in a kind of sneering, vitriolic tone that reminded me more than a little of the bullies who called me “fag” in middle school. The oddest thing was that much of the vitriol was coming from people who didn’t seem to be LGB, or even T, but who identified only as nonbinary or “queer.” Many of the people I encountered seemed to be profoundly homophobic. Any gay or bi man that didn’t at least adopt he/they pronouns, especially if they were white, was considered assimilationist, right-wing, traitorous upholders of the evil sex binary.

I never quite got used to being eyed with suspicion by other activists for my normative, gender-conforming appearance, or the constant bad-faith interpretations of anything I said. The only cis white gays spared this unfairly cold treatment were the ones who made a public show of being self-hating — the ones who renounced their ���cis white gayness” and frequently apologized for their white privilege.

It was alarming to be on the receiving end of such vitriol simply for being myself — for not shaving one side of my head, painting my nails, piercing my septum, and adopting plural pronouns. It was alarming especially because so much of the hate I received when I was young came precisely because I was way too sex-nonconforming (in fact, in middle school, my classmates would often ask me if I was a boy or a girl). I wondered if my peers cared that I had been mercilessly bullied as a gay kid, or that I had worked on a trans rights anti-discrimination campaign when they were barely teenagers. I knew that my volunteering for marriage equality wouldn’t earn me any points, since marriage was to them an antiquated Western institution and part of an “assimilationist” agenda. This attitude has become so entrenched in LGBT activist spaces, I suspect it partially explains why support for same-sex marriage among Gen Z Americans has dropped from 80% in 2021 to only 69% in 2023.

Last year, I got a little more clarity about this issue when I came across an article, also written in 1994, by Stephen H. Miller. The publishing journal, Heterodoxy, titled it “Gay-Bashing by Homosexuals,” although Miller’s original title was “Gay White Males: PC’s Unseen Target.” In the late 1980s and early 90s, Miller chaired the media committee of GLAAD’s New York chapter. In fact, Miller came up with GLAAD’s mission statement, which was to “fight for fair, accurate and inclusive representations of gay and lesbian lives in the media and elsewhere.” In the article, Miller wrote that he was “purged” from GLAAD in 1992 because he objected to the rising political correctness and censoriousness in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual movement. Similar to the cultural shifts of the past decade, Miller recounts how activist organizations began prioritizing race and gender (and of course, the Correct political views) over individual merit. New staff members had to attend “endless sensitivity sessions” which “identified white men (whatever their sexual orientation) as the oppressor class.” Suddenly, it seemed like there was more antagonism towards the “white males” within the LGBT rights movement than without. Miller, who described himself as a “political moderate who believed in dialogue with the straight world and a good-faith search for common ground,” found himself “shunned.”

The race and gender quotas that LGBT rights organizations began adopting, Miller wrote, included weighted voting that favored women and people of color. For example, after regional delegations of organizers for the 1993 March on Washington for LGB rights failed to achieve their quotas, it was decided that women’s votes would count for three votes apiece and non-white votes would count for two votes apiece. That decision — and the many others that have since followed in LGBT activist spaces — calls to mind some dark and creepy moments from American history best learned from rather than imitated.

Of course, this also raises the question: Who decides who is a person of color and who is white, and how? Will they apply the one-drop rule, the early 20th-century legal principle that deemed any American with even one black ancestor (“one drop of black blood”) as black? I suppose that would be illegal since the Supreme Court outlawed the one-drop rule in its 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision. And yet, I’m not surprised by these backward tactics. It was Ibram X. Kendi who recently wrote, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Around and around we go.

Then as now, as Miller wrote, anyone who challenged this illiberal orthodoxy was “deemed racist and sexist” and accused of harboring the belief that “white men are the main victims of discrimination.” Naturally, Miller notes, such accusations serve to discourage people who sense this hostility toward gay white men from voicing their dissent.

Then after AIDS decimated gay and bi male activist communities, lesbian radical feminists moved in, and a “critical attitude toward men, male sexuality, and ‘the patriarchy’” became the norm. “Male solidarity, once a hallmark of gay liberation, is now anathema.”

A direct line can be drawn from this upheaval in the early 1990s and the divisiveness in today’s LGBT activist spaces, where “cis gays” — and, in particular, “cis white gays” — are seen as upholders of villainous Western cisheteropatriarchy and its henchman capitalism. These modern activists are sure to include “white” not only out of an animus against white people, but because they assume that all people of color are helpless victims of Western capitalism who, because of their oppression, invariably hold the “correct” far-left politics. In his aforementioned article, Kushner invoked Oscar Wilde, quoting “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.” He added that he is “always suspicious of the glacier-paced patience of the right.” Writing for The Advocate, the gay writer Bruce Bawer responded that he and so many others are “impatient with models of activism that involve playing at revolution instead of focusing on the serious work of reform.”

This anti-“cis white gay” attitude proliferates in LGBT media as well. “White Gay Men Are Hindering Our Progress as a Queer Community” was the title of an article published in the magazine Them. “You had your time — now, we have other things to fight for,” read the subhead. “Let's Talk About People That Aren't Young Cis White Gay Men,” a HuffPost article was titled.

I could go on and on.

A few years ago, I attended a conference for LGBT journalists. There, I met a young, white, gay writer who would go on to work for a progressive news outlet in New York. He said his upbringing in a Southern state had made him racist, but since then, he has “trained” himself to be attracted to black and brown people, and now black and brown people are the only types of people he wants to sleep with.

If this is the “progressive” strategy for combating racism, I want no part of it. And any liberal cis white gay person who opposes racism won’t either. This is racism, operating under the guise of “anti-racism”, plain and simple. It attempts to end inequality by inverting it and, in the process, is attacking the foundations of the principles that have enabled the remarkable progress our society has made in transcending bigotry and prejudice. I only wish more people who saw this dogma for what it is were unafraid to voice the truth about it.

==

Homophobia and anti-gay hate are alive and well as progressive virtues.

[dwreader]

anyways interesting how a show made by gay people, based on a novel by a gay writer and starring two openly gay actors is totally fine being like lol yah this guy is such a bottom its just who he is but straight girls in fandom are like you have to be 50/50 switch activists or else its problematic i mean we all know its cause jacob is black but its still quite hilarious lmao

[ev1llesb1an]

Documentation of my comphet throughout the years 🧍‍♀️

Okay so I thought it’d be funny to talk abt my most intense male fixation eras as a lesbian (idk i’m just shitposting into the void again) judge me all u want (it is probably needed) but i need ppl to understand the real me 🙏

IT CROPPED HALF HIS FACE OUT but i just realised if you aren’t british ur gonna have no idea who he is anyone (he’s lachlan white from emmerdale) omg this was an ERA everyone around me thought i was going insane (i was) but like they just didn’t get it he slayed so hard at a level that will never be reached (literally) also tom atkinson on sex education was like a full circle moment for me omg but anyways i was like 11-12 here these were literally my formative years this changed me FOREVER don’t judge he slayed omg

THIS okay so u can’t even blame me for this one it’s just correct. yes he’s like walking masculinity stereotype BUT he also had depth and was interesting 😌 the fanfics were SO GOOD this is when i really got into fanfiction and accidentally read smut where someone get pregnant in the hunger games 🧍‍♀️i read this one fic that was like x reader AND THEY STRAIGHT UP BOTH DIED but anyways. i read fanfics abt literally everyone thg character (read abt women and convinced myself i was still straight lmfao) but he was the stand out for me. i recently revisited this era and the fics ppl write on ao3 r INSANE omg like what is wrong with u ppl ( i say this lovingly but also wtf )

OMGOMGOMG BEST ERA OF MY LIFE u actually don’t understand u just had to be there. a solid percentage of my brain even to this day is made up of this man. this is like the stupidest thing ever but when i was like 14 i would just mirror his personality (and tone down the arsehole part obvs) so that i could get more talkative AND IT ACTUALLY WORKED nobody in the whole world will ever understand how much he means to me (i don’t rly understand it myself tbh) and ik ppl literally fuckinf despise him but i will not tolerate the dandy mott slander bc he is literally part of my core identity atp i revisit him every few months just to fully reconnect with my inner being. did anyone read Companion? that shit was crazy also i wrote a fic abt him on wattpad and people actually READ IT so anyways best era of my life it truly never got better i rly hit me peak (i had 0 friends) the few friends i had literally told me i talked abt him too much and it made them like me less 💀

this was arguably my most chill era like yea i was pretty obsessive but with marvel it’s so normalised to be so intense abt everything i kinda just fit right in. there’s too much professor fanfiction r u ppl okay 🧍‍♀️ also more actor fanfiction than i have ever seen for any other man in my LIFE but the capitalism went hard during this era the fluff was so good. arguably my most comforting era? idk i can’t rly explain that one

okay so these two r kinda completely different but also (for obvious reasons) the exact same. gotham was my most openly gay era and for that i will forever be grateful HOWEVER the kristen kringle haters were doing WAY TOO MUCH like she’s already dead why u doing her like that constantly (u will see this sentiment echoed later abt someone else hmmm i wonder who) but yea and then YES i was a paul dano lesbian (literally wasn’t out as lesbian at this point lmao) honestly this is probably the era my friends hated the most they would either awkwardly pretend to agree/care abt the shit i was saying or straight up tell me i was delusional 💀 my friends even now still call it my worst era but i LOVED IT kinda solidified my position at the bottom of the hellish secondary school hierarchy but i still had a good time. the paul dani riddler fanfics r next level tho the way ppl would just post STALKER fics constantly with like zero warnings and it was never labelled as yandere 🧍‍♀️i also got in an argument with a writer on wattpad bc they made the riddler and the oc have like a 6 year age gap and they met when she was 10 and he was like 16 💀 other than that good vibes all round

tbh this era was pretty brief i can’t fully explain what happened here like the vibes were immaculate but also insane WHY IS THERE SM YANDERE FANFIC peter parker is so nice but then in fanfics it’s like 👹 but i rly like spider-man HOWEVER this then led me to my final destination on the comphet journey…

omg were finally at the final stop the peak of comphet ( i came out as lesbian within this era ) arguably not my finest hour bc i swore i would never watch criminal minds bc the number of seasons is WAY TOO MUCH but here we are i watched it bc i read too much fanfic abt this man. i have lots of criticism for the fandom but he in himself is acc a rly good character. this was supposed to be like my ethical era but he’s acc killed like a bunch of ppl and thomas gibson is MESSY (don’t cancel me pls i say that lovingly 🫶) the haley hotchner misogyny nearly killed me off i don’t think i’ve ever been so miserable in a fandom and the fanfics kinda take feminism back a few hundred years but pretty good besides that

anyways there is my brainrot i hope the two (at most) ppl who will read this enjoyed 🫶 LETS GO LESBIANS LETS GO im gonna say i posted this in honour of international lesbian day even tho that was several days ago

[denimbex1986]

'All of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott has opened up about the experience of filming gay sex scenes with fellow Irish actor Paul Mescal.

The pair play lovers in Andrew Haigh’s new romantic fantasy movie, which, according to its official synopsis, “follows screenwriter Adam (Scott) who, on a solitary night in his nearly vacant tower block in modern London, has an unexpected encounter with enigmatic neighbour Harry (Mescal), disrupting the cadence of his routine.

“As Adam and Harry grow closer, Adam is drawn back to his childhood residence, unearthing the astonishing truth that his deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) are both alive and unaged, resembling the day they passed over three decades earlier.”

Speaking to British GQ after being named one of the outlet’s Men Of The Year, alongside other queer favourites boygenius and Ncuti Gatwa, Scott recalled filming the sex scenes in All of Us Strangers.

“We had a laugh…Jesus, it’s f*cking 7:30 in the morning and you’re doing unspeakable things to each other, surrounded by men in three-quarter length trousers,” he said.

Reflecting on how the sequences translate on-screen, he added, “A lot of the time, the thing that is actually more provocative isn’t the sex, but the tenderness.”

Director Andrew Haigh echoed this, explaining that although the sex scenes in All of Us Strangers are “not explicit”, they are “really intimate, and that draws you in.”

In a separate interview with Vanity Fair, Haigh also stated, “I really wanted to feel the subjective nature of having sex and what it feels like—the nervousness and the excitement and the physical sensation of being touched by someone else, and what that does to you.”

Speaking about the Irish actors’ performances, the director added, “There was chemistry between the two of them literally the second I saw them together…Both of them were pretty fearless. There was no sense of them being afraid of approaching those scenes. They knew how important they were.”

The pair appear to have a good relationship both professionally and personally, with Mescal quoted in the GQ piece as saying, “Andrew is the kind of person who makes you feel better simply by being in their company”.

Scott touched on an array of different topics in his Men Of The Year feature, from playing the villain in Sherlock and the heartthrob Fleabag to his experience of coming out as gay.

On the latter, he explained: “I had a very happy childhood…But there’s an inevitable pain that you have to go through when you have to take a risk telling your family something about yourself.

“I really do think that that is a gift now, because to have to risk everything, and for your family and friends to say ‘we accept you no matter what,’ that’s a real feeling of love that you get confirmed at a very young age, that actually some people who aren’t queer don’t get. I mean, some queer people aren’t so lucky.”

He grappled with his sexuality during his teenage years, admitting, “There was so much of me that was quite fearful, actually, and ignoring that side of me.”

When he did come out privately, he was “encouraged” by people in the industry that he admired to keep his sexuality to himself. “I understand why they gave that advice, but I’m also glad that I eventually ignored it,” he stated.

Scott officially came out publicly in an interview with The Independent in 2013, and now, playing an openly gay character in All of Us Strangers, he says, “​There’s this expression ‘my burden has become my gift’…I remember when I was 22 reading that and thinking wouldn’t that be amazing? If something that you think is a shameful part of you is actually a bit of you that gives something back?”

He continued: “I think that’s maybe why (playing Adam) feels so gratifying and cathartic, because I did have to bring so much of my own pain into it.”...'

[pa-pa-plasma]

okay, I didn't see this until now (& op turned reblogs off apparently) but I'll address some stuff under a readmore just to clear stuff up.

"one piece has multiple queer characters" One Piece literally has a gay club that hands out free transitions to transgender people. I am not making this shit up. Also, Luffy is asexual & aromantic. "multiple" doesn't really do it justice

"the whole "tumblr crossing the picket line" thing in promoting it (i think? i've heard people talking about it at least)" tumblr didn't cross a picket line. tumblr is allowed to advertise, as they (as in the website & the people who run it) are not planning to be part of the writer or actor unions. this is just regular advertising that other movies & shows have done & are doing.

"the strangeness of what things tumblr decides to promote and in what intensities they do for which things" again, tumblr was paid to promote One Piece. yes, there are problems with what tumblr pushes & what it hides, but it was paid to do this. it isn't favouring One Piece for no reason. it is favouring One Piece because it was paid to. if Our Flag Means Death wanted to advertise on tumblr, they could.

"the fact that what little i know about the original one piece is sexism" the series started in the 90's in Japan, so yes, there is a lot that isn't great, but for a lot of us it was our first experience of seeing openly queer characters & women who can beat the shit out of you. for the bad stuff (basically just out of date shit) the live action series does fix this, but I think it would be good to consider that it was 90's Japan when Oda wrote it with queer & strong (as in, power level type shit) women in mind. this isn't fucking Harry Potter we're talking about, where all the bad shit is a fundamental part of the creator's worldview & personality. this is like, some old shit that didn't age good like everything else that exists ever. his art style is kinda fucky & I won't defend it but like. we're talking about the live action which negates all that. also, as someone else pointed out, the women are drawn sexy, but so are the men. have you seen Zoro's massive tits?

"and the fact that netflix remakes in the past usually aren't well received." the One Piece Live Action series not only has fans involved, but the creator of the original series working on it. they also made the physical sets (most of which are ships on the water) & only used CGI when they literally couldn't use practical FX (Luffy stretching, for instance). if you looked into it at all, you would've seen that this is not the same as, say, The Lion King. people tend to forget that it isn't the "live action" itself that is bad, but the execution. One Piece Live Action was executed very, very well with what it had to work with, & we could see this ahead of time, not just when the show came out. I literally teared up at parts because I felt like I was watching One Piece again for the first time. All the important scenes were 1:1 with the original, & they even played the original theme song We Are (instrumental version). That is how good it is. It was made with love & you can clearly see it.

I appreciate the apology, but the fact that you didn't know anything about it (you're allowed to look stuff up) before putting this post in the main tags is like. why. people (not just the op in the screenshots, as I've seen this multiple times in different fandoms) need to learn that if you hate something, block the tag, don't go into tag complaining about what you think the series is. this is how you ruin the experience for fans--& yourself. you are doing the exact thing you are complaining about tumblr doing, except worse, because you're just ignorantly shitting on it, & not even in a funny way.

anyway, go experience some childlike wonder & watch OPLA, or don't. I literally don't care.

[mikuni14]

Step by Step Ep 1

I liked the first episode a lot, the main characters made a good impression on me :) Pat is one of many similar office workers from the BLs, meaning he's at the bottom of the corporate ladder, he's kind, and as is often the case, his good nature and low position are taken advantage of by older workers. I like Pat, I also identify with him a bit, I had exactly the same situations in my working life 🙄 Jeng is obviously a “perfect man”, but he's likable, so he's not two-dimensional. Both actors play their roles well, they look good, I have high hopes for this series 😉 (but then again, I had high hopes after many other shows that had a great start only to disappoint me later, so I have high hopes, but I also don't have high hopes if you know what I mean)

What else I liked: - perfectly presented working environments. I literally met these people, they are so real - Pat's group of friends, their conversations, their dynamics - also presented very realistically - Poppy! - What about this Bible doppelgänger? 👀 - that Pat is gay, how his friends openly discuss his love life, encourage him, cheer him up. nice ✨ - their flirting is sweet, Jeng is charming and indeed very gentlemanly, Pat is adorable and clumsy. this is some really old-school yaoi stuff tbh

I'm a bit worried about the second episode, it seems that Pat's attempt to regain his dignity and defend himself will not be well received ... I hope it won't last long, I hate watching bullying and its victims who are also denied the right to defend themselves and they are still expected to “be better and to control themselves”. I hope so, because the series really has potential 😏 (and am I seeing correctly, is that Up? will it be a love triangle???)

[dojae-huh]

hey, hope u had a great easter!

the question im about to ask doesnt rly have anything to do w nct (directly) so feel free to ignore this if u want to.

jimin (of bts) has recently had a comeback and theres a lot of analyzations about the choreo and the photographs, that hint at him being bisexual. since park jimin is a household name i think that regardless if knetz see the hints at his sexuality its more likely to be (i dont want to say accepted, more like recognized) by the overall media. and if jimin were to actually come out as bisexual (its not confirmed he is, hes just been dropping a lot of hints, it can also be to make the cb ‘interesting’ and to draw in more fans, but that seems unlikely to me, since hes alr so popular and the korean society recognizes that, if it could open new doors for lgbt koreans, and maybe jaedo??

what im trying to ask is if a big celeb were to come out and the public wouldnt react terribly, do you think dojae would risk it? i know doyoung probably wouldnt settle for a ‘maybe’ so its unlikely but maybe that jaehyun will have a diff view?

looking back on this ask its all hypothetical so it doesnt rly make sense, but i hope my question came across

JaeDo already dropped enough hints. Look at their position among celebrity ships.

No.

Exo did a fanmeet recently, and Chen, who married his girlfriend some time ago and has a child, was met with cold reception. After all these years of "we want exo!" and "otp9!", one of the members was not welcomed because of his "betrayal". And he is what, 30 y.o? Till what age is he supposed to be "innocent" and "boyfriend material"?

Now, imagine fans finding out that not only Jaehyun is not the straight Prince charming, that he has been sleeping with a co-member for several years? Lying all this time that his lovers are the fans? How dare these two put their love over the safety and success of their group?

Taking on the role of an LGBT ally I can see. Like playing a gay role in a series. It's not something to surprise kfans with anymore.

The actors and singers who came out in US lost their insane popularity. In Russia we had a period with Tatu (fake, but still acting like lesbians), openly gay singers (they didn't label themselves, but the make up and the dress told what needed to be told), gender study professors in Moscow universities. It's all gone now. The professors and the stars dissapeared. It is benefitial for the elites to make a monster out of LGBT now, as "we are back to OUR TRADITIONS, which means patriarchy and the church".

So maybe there will be a period when Korean elites will be lenient about what happens on TV, look the other way. Comes a new president, a stonger push from the religious organisations in the future? Will the "new era" stay?

If you watch Korean variety shows you can notice some openly flamboyant or mannered judges, guests. They don't really hide, they just don't put lables on themselves, they stay "like everyone else" and "don't make a ruckus".

The participants of pride parades in Russia are bitten both by bystanders and the police. pride parades in Seoul happen with the police protecting the participants.

[thestangossip]

Teacher anon here! I wrote everything half asleep over pizza after Saturday parent semester meetings and after rereading what I wrote I realized I rambled a tad without circling back to my full thought and want to finish it while I’m not snoozing in pepperoni grease.

As a teacher, I’m flattered when my students want to jokingly call me mom or want hugs or comfort when things are rough. I’m absolutely okay with that as long as it’s clear that I’m not their replacement parent and any hug has to be with other people around and not full frontal body. I’m fulfilled as a person to not have my own kids with how much love I have for my students, I’d do anything for them. And they know this. Some kids photoshopped my face onto Rambo after the Uvalde shooting when I told them I’d take down an army on my own before I let anything happen to them.

But at the end of the day, I’m not their legal guardian. I’m an adult in power regardless of my gender who has to draw lines that they may not understand or know about now but will appreciate when they’re older. I’ve happily held a middle school male student who cried hard when his sister passed away unexpectedly and his parents gave me the okay. I’ve happily let kids eat lunch with me in my classroom with the door wide open and let neighboring teachers know, and I’m known as the fun openly gay teacher who wears witty t-shirts with fitted jeans and colorful blazers and costume jewelry who will always show up for all of their recitals and what not at school. I brag that I’m the proud mama bear of 332 kids in the 10+ years I’ve been doing this, and I mean it with how I keep their gifts and still hang up their drawings and letters on my wall far after they’ve graduated. Because I get how wonderful it is to bond with someone who looks up to you knowing you’re a safe place for them be themselves while being loved and accepted unconditionally.

Which brings me to Pedro. Again, I’m not a fan or a Stan and what I know is from this blog and glancing at other tumblrs when I’m feeling nosey. He seems like a genuinely good but greatly insecure man who appears to form really tight but unhealthy and fleeting relationships with people in his life regardless of age or gender. For that reason, his fans need to hold him to a greater standard with younger costars regardless of their legality. Would they be okay with this if it were Leo DiCaprio that Bella was doing this to? No. Thank you to that anon for bringing that video up cause it proved my point further that this bond Bella has seems to be with just Pedro and that’s a major red flag regardless if she’s a legal adult now. He knew her at 17. If any of my students held me and rubbed up against me like that as students or recent graduates I’d be fired. I’d have to go to meetings and a school appointed therapist to determine if I’m fit to be around kids and I could have my licenses revoked. And no, I’m not being overly dramatic. Being a teacher accused of inappropriate behaviors has major consequences that can ruin your career for life. And yes, even if it’s a former student because it makes the school wonder how long that was going on for and with who else.

Pedro and older actors of any gender need to step back and ask if they behaved like this at any other job, how would this come off? What would the consequences be? What can they do to form a healthy relationship while being responsible for their own accountability with a young ward who has mental illnesses and anxieties? Forcing this cute narrative because fans are projecting their image of fatherhood onto Pedro is unhealthy and is what leads to older people in Hollywood taking advantage of anxiety riddled young stars with codependency issues. If Bella is THAT anxious, she needs a support animal and therapist to give her the tools needed to form and enforce healthy boundaries with men like Pedro who don’t know how to draw those lines themselves. Pedro can trust himself all he wants, but that doesn’t mean we do as viewers and he needs to make clear boundaries on media platforms because yes he does owe us that as a responsible adult with a former child costar just like any adult working with kids and young adults. I know I’d never be inappropriate with a student, but I still keep my doors open and my boundaries clear to guardians and fellow teachers that I’m trustworthy and responsible rather than gaslight them for thinking otherwise. I’ll continue to side eye him and anyone else who tries to disagree, because Pedro is not an exception to any rule regardless of parasocial ideas of who he is when none of us know him or what he’s capable of behind closed doors and I really hope Bella can find the appropriate help she needs to maintain a friendship with Pedro or anyone as a legal adult without relying on them as a cure for her anxieties.

You bring up so many points.

[denimbex1986]

'Andrew Scott: do I want to be him, snog him, or just watch everything he ever appears in? I think it’s all three. Either way, from now on I’m going to ask everyone I meet if they agree that he is the greatest actor of our generation. If they don’t, sorry, we cannot be friends.

Not everyone loved the BBC’s lavish adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (I did), but everyone who watched it agreed on one thing: Scott, who played louche bright young thing Lord Merlin, lit up every second of his screen time. As we watched him dancing to T-Rex in silk pyjama suit with a harem of beautiful people following him around, we wanted to have a pyjama party in his honour.

He became a legend of this nation as Fleabag’s Hot Priest, the gin and tonic-drinking clergyman who ensured that the second series of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s hit show was even better than the first. It was an emotional rollercoaster: we sobbed and got hot under the dog collar. Paloma Faith spoke for us all when she infamously told Scott on the Graham Norton sofa that she’d needed “alone time” after watching the show.

But we bow down to him as the very best actor we have right now because of a long career of stellar performances, elevated by his own personal life philosophy. “Acting without humour is bad manners – it’s not the way human beings work,” he said last year in an interview for Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast. That’s the key to his brilliance: he brings both humanity and levity to all of his characters.

The first time I ever saw him was on stage in Birdland at the Royal Court, back in 2014 as a rock star going off the rails in a metallic jacket. He’d already played Moriarty in Sherlock by then and won a Bafta for being the best thing in the show, but I had no idea who he was (I don’t watch things about men who are really good at doing maths in their heads). I still remember sitting at the back of the circle and thinking: that man is a star. His performance was vintage Scott: manic charisma, sexy but in a way that felt a bit dangerous, all with a vulnerable tenderness at its heart.

He’s an actor who can do the biggies. In 2017 he played Hamlet, making the prince into a sensitive man whose life has become unmoored by grief. I saw the nearly four hour running time of Robert Icke’s production and went to the theatre with a visceral sense of martyrdom, but Scott made it feel like it wasn’t long enough. It was the first time I’d watched Hamlet and not fallen asleep; usually I wake up and everyone on the stage is dead. But Scott made it so that I could understand every word he was saying… suddenly I understood why everyone else liked it so much.

And as Garry Essendine in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter in 2019, he picked up a host of gongs including Best Actor at our Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Not only did his hilarious performance light up our summer, but the production had an important political meaning too, allowing the queer subtext in Coward’s work to be openly expressed. As Scott himself said in his acceptance speech, “I think sometimes [Coward is] accused of being a dusty old playwright but he smuggles through comedy really modern ideas about sexuality and gender. He sort of says it’s okay to live a life that’s less ordinary.”

But whatever he’s in, he always becomes the bit you never forget. Psychotic taxi driver in Black Mirror? Tick. Upper class World War One officer getting through the trauma with gallows humour in 1917? Tick. Welsh bookshop owner disowned by his family for being gay, who made us cry every tear in our body in Pride? Tick. Priest who would make you hotfoot to confession (even though you are an atheist) in Fleabag? As we know, tick, tick, tick.

His next project is playing Tom Ripley in a new mega-series about Patricia Highsmith’s enigmatic con artist, alongside Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning, and we already know Scott will make us forget every other Ripley depiction we’ve ever seen – apols Matt Damon.'

Andrew Scott been awesome

[qqueenofhades]

There is something that makes me a bit sad and is the lack of Ferdie/Hob during Promotion, he's not even part of the official poster and I get it they probably didn't think he'll be as loved as he was for someone that showed just half an episode but still wish we could get a bit more promo because as everyone else he did an amazing job.

Ferdinand did an incredible job, yes, and I would personally like to kiss him on the mouth for taking one look at the script and going "ah yes, time to play this as gay as humanely possible." The writer who did the interview the other day said that they didn't necessarily plan on Hob/Dream being romantic, but the actors had so much chemistry and they just went with it instead of resisting it. So yes, they were just like "what the hell, this is a show for the gays, just let Ferdinand and Tom make sex eyes at each other!" And I for one salute that decision.

Anyway, that same writer used both the Dreamling ship name and the words "fan favorite" to describe them, so they're clearly aware of the reaction and how nuts people went for them from half an episode. If Netflix wants to stop driving me to become a supervillain and renew the show for s2 ANY FUCKING DAY NOW, hopefully that would impact how they write it going forward. Because the people are Hungry. So Hungry.

Also: a) Hob is a supporting character in half an episode who doesn't appear again after that, there was no reason to put him on the promo, and b) you younguns need to remember that official/canon/Voice of God recognition, while it is always nice to get, has absolutely zero impact on what fans can and do enjoy, transformative works, and the whole process of fandom. People get so hung up on the idea of Official Status as the only marker of what's the Right thing to enjoy, and just like, I am over here as a Fandom Old going "shh, it doesn't matter!" I was shocked (and delighted, ofc) that someone on the writing staff openly acknowledged Dreamling and called them a romance, but I would be just as happy aboard the good ship SS Dreamling if they hadn't ever mentioned it or essentially confirmed it was intentional at all. Fans, especially queer fans, are so unused to getting Official confirmation of queer ships (which is why they have started relentlessly bullying and harassing creators for it instead, but I digress) but for a long time, it wasn't even thinkable at all.

Anyway: yes, Ferdinand is great, I am very happy that they both actively leaned into romantic Dreamling and admitted that they did, pre-release promo means nothing anyway (as does any other Official metric), fandom can do what they please but should try not to be dicks, and NETFLIX I AM NO LONGER ASKING. I AM ON MY WAY TO THROW BAGS OF FLAMING DOG POOP AT YOUR HOUSES UNTIL YOU GIVE ME SANDMAN S2.

[justjensenanddean]

More about Soldier Boy from GQ Interview.

Which means the big question in season three is something a lot of us are contemplating right now: When a would-be tyrant is finally toppled, what fills the power vacuum they leave behind? What if the venom that person injected into society has already sunk in so deep that there’s no sucking it out again? What can we do?

A popular answer on both sides of the real world political spectrum these days is looking for inspiration from an idealized, imaginary past. As conservative politicians try to drag everyone back to an America where white Christian men get to decide what’s right for everybody, liberal politicians fall back on ineffectual appeals to a bygone era of civility, decorum, and reaching across the aisle.

The show’s newest superhero, Soldier Boy, is an explicit throwback to the fantasy of an idealized past—a beloved, humble American hero who killed dozens of German soldiers in World War II, then refused the honor of his own national holiday, insisting the date should be used to honor all superheroes instead. (He also wears a combat helmet and fights with a shield, so yes, he’s The Boys’ Captain America.)

You will not be shocked to hear that the truth about Soldier Boy is a little more complicated than the official story. Believed dead for decades, he returns to a world he doesn’t recognize. For Captain America, being unfrozen meant catching up on stuff like Steve Jobs and Star Trek. For Soldier Boy, it means balking when he sees an openly gay couple walking down the street.

Eric Kripke didn’t need to look far for his Soldier Boy: Jensen Ackles was just finishing his 15-season run on Supernatural, the first TV series Kripke created. “He said, ‘I know that there are some actors that the studio and network and producers have in mind, but I'd be willing to go to bat with you if you want to do that’," Ackles recalls. “And I was like, ‘How big of a bat do you need?’”

Anchoring *Supernatural—*a TV show that premiered in the early days of George W. Bush’s second term—has taken up much of Ackles’ acting career, but he’s still managed to dip into more conventional superhero fare, squaring off against a young Clark Kent in Smallville and voicing Batman himself in last year’s two-part animated film Batman: The Long Halloween. (“Especially the Batman thing—that’s such a heavily painted lane,” he says. “You don't want to reinvent that too much.”) Even this funhouse-mirror version of Captain America wasn’t much of a stretch: “I've known Chris Evans for a million years, back when he and I were fighting for the same roles,” says Ackles.

But more than anything, Ackles was ready to show Supernatural fans what he could do on an Eric Kripke show that isn't bound by traditional TV's standards and practices: "I don't want to be a one-trick pony," he says. "I think I've got something else up my sleeve." Once unleashed onto the modern world, his Soldier Boy feels less like a superhero than a warning: Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

(...)

But like so much of The Boys, this ultra-dark worldview turned out to be uncannily well-timed. “Kripke is a fortune teller,” says Ackles. “He has some weird Kryptonian crystal ball in his office, and he's like, This is what the cultural landscape's going to look like a year from now, and he writes to it. I don't know how he does it.”

Trump was defeated, but he’s gathering strength for another presidential run, and we’re all stuck with what he unleashed—and there’s no sign that it’s going anywhere, or that the Democrats in power have serious plans to do anything about it. And maybe that’s been the real message of The Boys all along—the one that makes it stand apart from all the other superhero stories out there right now: No one is coming to save us, so we’d better figure out how to save ourselves.

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