#I never know when I should post my own thoughts. especially in a public forum

[kroklay]

It's interesting to see other trans people's experiences, and how I personally connect or do not connect with their experiences.

Now, I notice myself responding negatively to many of the statements here, and it is quite possible I just have the wrong interpretation, but I would like to talk about it.

The preface to the post proper is confident, stating that the statements following are signals of dysphoria (or dysphoria itself). And I want to draw attention to the "didn't realize" point, because that piece of the sentence colors the rest of the post with a tint of "even if YOU don't think this is dysphoria, I, from my enlightened position can determine with hindsight, that it IS dysphoria." And maybe this is just me being in denial about my own problems and trying to think I'm better than I am, but some of these statements listed that I experienced pre-transition and still experience post-transition do not seem like dysphoria.

The main thing I want to focus on is shopping. Shopping, especially clothes shopping, seems to be a common dread for trans people, and I certainly experience this. But by putting "clothes shopping is weird and uncomfortable for trans people" in this list of "things that ARE dysphoria" makes me personally feel a little attacked.

I, even post-transition, do not like shopping of any kind, and certainly not clothes shopping. The aura of stores, and spending money, and getting THINGS is just dreadful to me. And I find myself alone in this regard, the only other people I know who feel this way are certain stoic men (and even they desire to have things sometimes). Coupling that experience with shopping being a "woman activity", my own lack of interest and to be frank, anxiety, about shopping would seem to come from a place of misaligned gender: as a trans-woman, I SHOULD like going shopping, if I don't then I'm just like the men.

This shopping fear along with my general lack of desires --another statement made by the original post, would point to these experiences all being dysphoria. But the thing is, I don't want to change this about myself. Dysphoria is usually something that trans people want to get rid of, that's one of the major reasons to transition in the first place, but I don't want to get rid of these features about myself. I don't WANT to enjoy shopping, and I feel like this is just another mold I have to fit myself to to be able to fit in, and every time I see this sentiment displayed, it feels like pressure to fit in and be normal.

I relate to this so much. for years, even after I knew that I was trans, I thought that I didn't really experience gender dysphoria. it was only after I started transitioning that I realized how much it had affected me

[babycharmander]

If you think you have never stolen artwork, read this post.

So, art theft. If you've been a follower of mine, you've heard my barely-coherent rants about this before, but I thought it might be more productive to make a more coherent post on the subject.

If you're wondering about the title of the post here, it's because I feel like a lot of people aren't really grasping what exactly art theft is, and a LOT of people, even well-meaning ones, do it without even realizing it.

"But wait," you say. "I would never STEAL from an artist!! I never claim it as my own!" And that's all fine and good, but you're missing something here.

To start things off, what IS art theft? (It's not what deviantART said it was several years back, I'll tell you that much. *cough*)

We all know what art is, so let's talk about theft. Dictionary.com defines "theft" as "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny." Okay, makes sense, but what about that other word there, stealing? Dictionary.com defines "steal" as "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force."

From those definitions, we can go on to define art theft as, specifically, "taking art without permission or right." In the context of art, that typically involves reposting it (not reblogging--reblogging is different) or using it for other things.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

If something is taken or used without permission, it is stolen. Permission is the important thing here--if an artist says "oh yeah, you can go ahead and use this!" then it's not stolen. You have their permission. But if you DON'T have that, then it IS stolen. It IS theft.

"But I'm not claiming it as my own!" you say. But you don't have to claim it as your own--the act of taking it in and of itself is an act of theft.

"But I said 'credit to the artist!'" The "credit" thing is a whole other conversation, but here's the short of it: The entire point of credit is to direct people to the source of something. If you are not directly linking to where you got the art from, you are not giving credit. "Credit to the artist" is not actually credit of any kind whatsoever. (Also, Google and Pinterest are not sources.)

"But I DID link back to the artist!" Okay, now this is where it may get confusing, because you may think you're covered because you actually did give credit. Here's the problem: if you reposted it or used it without permission, regardless of whether you gave credit or not, it's still stealing.

I'm bolding this because it's a point that a lot of people get tripped up on. Let me explain it this way: If you went into your neighbor's house and took something of theirs without their permission, but you told people "oh yeah, I got this from [neighbor]'s house!" that that would still, of course, be stealing, and it's no different for art.

Another thing is that even when you credit, people don't always check the source. Very recently I found a case where someone had reposted a piece of artwork of mine to Pinterest that was deliberately made to look like it came from the source material (it wasn't meant to confuse anyone, though--the description of my original post made it very clear that it was fanart). The person who reposted had linked back to my original post. The problem? The comments had people asking if this was official, where it happened in the source material, etc. Despite the fact that the source was right there, no one thought to look at it.

Even if you link back to the source, if you did it without the artist's permission, it's still stealing, and still causes problems for us artists.

"But I just posted it to my Pinterest--" DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT POST AN ARTIST'S WORK TO PINTEREST IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

"But this artist friend of mine says they're okay if I post their work to my Pinterest so long as I link back to them!" Good for your friend! But the fact that your friend is okay with it doesn't mean that all artists are okay with it. For me, personally, I am very not okay with my work being posted to Pinterest, and say as much on my art blog description and posts (which people tend to ignore).

The problem with Pinterest--and reposting art in general--is that we artists don't know when it happens unless we're told, or unless we find it ourselves. It causes us to lose control of our art. And because of this, our art can spiral further out of our control, because when our works get posted to Pinterest or other similar websites, people who have no grasp whatsoever on how art works will just take it as "free art" and then use it for whatever they want.

That's how a piece I spent 20+ hours on was used as a poster for a paid event, without my permission, and without any payment or credit to me.

If an artist has said nothing about Pinterest (or other similar image sharing sites), your default should be to assume that they don't want their artwork posted there.

"Well I didn't repost someone's art, but I did use it for my avatar/RPing icon/video/fic cover/photo edit--" That's still stealing. If you're using it without their permission for any reason, that is stealing. Not to mention, the artist may not be cool with what you're using their art for anyway. (Looking at you, people who use platonic art in your shipping videos.)

“I MEANT to ask them for permission, but I forgot!” This can ONLY happen if you used the artwork BEFORE you asked for permission. You can resolve this by asking for permission BEFORE you use it, rather than assuming the answer will be “yes” and using it before asking.

"But it took me a really long time to make that icon/video/cover/edit!!" How long do you think it took the original artist to draw their piece? It doesn't matter how much work you put into modifying someone else's art--if you're doing it without their permission, you're still stealing.

"But I couldn't find the original artist! I tried to find them, I really did, but I couldn't. Is it okay to use their art then?" No, because you still don't have permission, and by reposting it anyway, you’re continuing to make the artwork spiral out of their control.

"What if I found the artist, but they speak a different language from mine? I can't ask them for permission, so is it okay if I repost their art anyway?" NO!! DO NOT DO THIS!! If there is a language barrier, use Google translate or find someone to translate for you and get a hold of the artist that way to ask them for their permission. The language barrier is NEVER an excuse to steal artwork. There are plenty of non-English-speaking artists who have taken ALL OF THEIR ARTWORK OFFLINE because the art theft was completely out of control. (And this isn't just exclusive to English-speakers stealing art from people who don't speak their language. It happens artists who don't speak English stealing art from English-speakers, too, but as this post is written in English it doesn't do much good for me to rant about this here.) If you can’t ask their permission, do not use it!!

"But what about reblogging?! Isn't that the same as reposting?? Should we not reblog art at all then?" No, reblogging (or retweeting) is not the same as reposting. If you reblog art, you keep all the information that we attached to the art, including our blog name and the description attached to the art. Reblogging/retweeting actually helps us artists A LOT, so as long as you're reblogging from the original artist (and not someone who's reposting their art), by all means, reblog our art!

"What if I just want to share someone else's artwork on Discord or show it to a friend?" This one's a bit different and is not actually as problematic. If you want to share our work on Discord or whatever, just link directly to where we posted it. Please don't post the art itself, unless you're doing it alongside a link because Discord won't show a preview or something.

"What about a forum or a site like Reddit?" This one's a bit different, since due to the way Reddit functions, if you LINK to the art, you have to go directly to the artist's original page to view it. (At least, that’s what it’s like the last time I was active there.) In a way it's roughly the same as with Discord--be sure you're linking directly to the actual post rather than just uploading the art on its own--but I would also ask the artist if they're okay with it, because they may be a member of the subreddit or forum and want to post it themselves, or they might not want their work shared to specific communities. (Some communities have a function where a bot will repost the artwork to Imgur, and some artists don't want that done with their art.)

"What if I'm saving it to my computer/phone to look at later, or making it into my desktop/phone wallpaper?" IMO this is fine, since your computer/phone files aren't public, and neither is your wallpaper. It's only a problem when you post it to public places without our permission.

"What if it's art I commissioned?" Well... like... in that case, it's art you paid for, so unless the artist you commissioned laid out very specific terms for you, you should be good to use that art. Like, at most, the artist may ask you to credit them somewhere in your blog description if they drew your icon or something, or credit them in a fic description if you commissioned a fic illustration from them, or something to that effect. It's really something you should have already worked out with the artist beforehand, but for the most part you should probably be fine to use art you paid for however you like.

"What about art I requested?" This is a bit different from commissioned work. Just because the art was drawn at your request doesn't mean it's explicitly yours (unless it's like, a drawing of your original character or something). Some artists take requests more as suggestions, so the art they draw in response to a suggestion or request is still theirs. Treat this as you would any other artwork and ask the artist for permission first before you do anything with the artwork you requested from them.

“What about NFTs?” ... Okay this one I can’t really go over too much because I barely understand it in the first place, but NFTs are BAD for artists and are a form of art theft. Do not turn people’s art into NFTs. This is a crappy thing to do. (If you want more information on this one, you’ll have to look it up yourself. It’s a form of cryptocurrency and it’s confusing.)

“If you don’t want your art stolen you shouldn’t post it in the first place.” This is fascinating logic. Try applying it to something else and see how it holds up. “If you don’t want your merchandise stolen, you shouldn’t open a booth.” “If you don’t want to get poisoned you shouldn’t eat food.” “If you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t walk outside.” Yes. Flawless logic. Truly.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?! I'm sharing your art because I like it! That's a compliment! Shouldn't you be happy?" Well, we're certainly glad you like our art, but the problem is... as I've said before, reposting our art causes us to lose our control over it. When we lose control of our art, that damages our livelihood. As I said before, other people have made money off of my artwork. As well, some artists lose jobs because when their potential employers check out their portfolio, they may find artwork that's been reposted everywhere online, so they cannot hire the artist because they believe they may have stolen the artwork in their own portfolio.

Your reposting an image you thought was cute to Facebook or Pinterest could cost an artist their job. Think about that.

So, tl;dr, keep this in mind: you need the artist's permission to repost or use their artwork. If you do not have it, it is stealing, even if you credit the artist.

I know this post is really harsh in places, but this is such an important thing for all artists, and there's so many misconceptions about art theft online. And I feel like one of the biggest problems is that when some people see posts on art theft, they ignore them, because they think they've never done it or would never do it, so that's why I worded this post the way I did. I'm not trying to hurt anyone--I just want people to understand what art theft is, how it affects us artists, and how you can avoid it. Thank you for reading.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Moments of "Disability Pride" when I was a witness: a Timeline:

1966: When I was two years old, and newly diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, a hospital psychologist, after a brief "I.Q Evaluation" (in a separate room, away from my parents) declared that I was "Severely Mentally R-t-rd-d," and told my mother I should be sent to live in an institutional home for the Handicapped. But when my mother came in, I answered all the questions perfectly. He retracted his diagnoses of me, but he put in my permanent medical record that my mother was "hostile and manipulative" (I don't remember much, but that institutional blue paint on the walls of the examination room stuck in my memory every time my mother retold this story).

1977: Section 504 is finally ratified, and put into law. I remember telling one of the teachers at my new school on the first day of class how proud I was that Disabled people are now a recognized minority with legal protections.

c.1982: I attend a protest at my local polling place, calling for election officials to make polling places accessible, instead of automatically mailing out absentee ballots, so that disabled people have a chance to be visible members of the community when we cast our votes.

1988-1989: I was among the people writing my senators urging them to vote for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and would yell at the news when interviewed "Business Leaders" would complain that the law would be too hard/too expensive.

May, 1991: I was one of a couple dozen students at my university protesting to keep ASL as an accepted fulfillment of foreign language study (I remember we were trying to meet with higher-ups in the Languages Department, but they kept changing their meeting location; we were basically chasing them around campus. It was a bit theater of the absurd, actually)

c. 1996: I move out to a house of my own in a different part of the country, and in one of my new social circles, there's a wheelchair-using woman with C.P. who's just a bit younger (I think) than I am. She was married to an abled man, and seemingly had a functional life. But she spent much of her childhood in an institutional home for the disabled. And though she didn't have a speech impediment, as such, she rarely spoke, and when she did, her voice was weak -- as though she'd never really had much practice using it. And I can't help but wonder if that's a glimpse of the fate I escaped.

26 July, 2010: I attend a local "celebration" for the A.D.A.'s 20th anniversary. The whole event is held within the grounds of the local Independent Living Center, mostly in the basement, out of sight of "The Public" (Though we gathered in the back yard to hear an address from the mayor before going back inside). This is when I first wish we were in the streets, waving a flag of our own.

26 July, 2016: On this date -- chosen because it's the anniversary of the A.D.A. -- a fired employee of an institutional home for the disabled in Japan broke in, murdered 19 residents, and wounded 26 more. I hear this on NPR at around 5 AM. By the 2 PM hourly update, this event is no longer part of the U.S. news cycle. It's this last bit that lit the fire under my butt to finally try and design a Disability Pride Flag.

July, 2021: When it turned out that my zigzag design for the Disability Pride Flag was dangerous, a bunch of people in the Disability Community here on Tumblr answered my call, and helped me redesign it into something wonderful. (Thank you, All!)

***

So when I've seen posts on Reddit's disability forums from disabled people angry at the thought of being lumped in with a disability community, or when I see videos from disabled YouTubers with titles like "I'm NOT proud of THIS!!" (especially if either of my flag designs are part of the thumbnail) it stings (or maybe it's more of a dull ache, like a bruise).

Logically, I know it's probably people assuming all "Pride" is loud, in-your-face, and Rainbow-colored ('cause that's what people see in media).

But emotionally, it feels like those with internalized ableism actually agree with the agents of oppression that want us to be either invisible or dead.

To be honest...

I know (and believe) that all disabled peoples' experiences with their own disabilities are valid.

I know (and believe) that all stories deserve to be told.

But--

I still struggle knowing there are disabled people who "Struggle with Disability Pride"

[anamatics]

Your opinion on old fandom forums vs, fandom today?

I didn't answer this one last night as I wanted to be able to type out a proper response, and one that's partly adapted from an essay I wrote back in 2016.

As a fandom old, I’ve spent a long time in fandom spaces. I did my time with writing slash and het ships, but I always loved writing stories for me about people like me. I have witnessed first-hand the rise and fall of listservs and live journal as places where people who liked femslash gathered to discuss their favorite shows. I know a lot of fandom history. When I comment on the events in fandom, it still comes from my position as a fan, not as a creative. I want to preface all of these thoughts with this.

Fandom used to be something that you didn't talk about. It was secret, never mentioned in public, zines and stories mailed back and forth across the country. The internet changed that, people's attitudes toward things like queer and trans identity changed that, people's want to see diversity on their screens changed that. Yet, at the same time, there is a whole new generation of young queer creatives emerging onto the writing scene who have grown up witnessing the rise and fall of these great, monolithic fandoms that exist beyond the space of shows themselves. More and more, networks, writers, and producers are paying attention to what the fandom says and to what they react to.

This is why I don't really like fandom these days, because I've seen both sides. I struggled with this working on Carmilla as someone who had been, and in may ways still was, a fan. I know fans have power, I've done things because I know fans have power. And yet, I felt like I'd lost my place in a community - in old fandom - because of this realization. And I myself asking questions about my place in new fandom. Questions that, most of the time, had no answers.

Is it valid to be both grateful for the acknowledgement of fan desires within the creative side of television and web writing and a little horrified by the amount of entitlement that any capitulation by those productions seems to engender within fans? Am I valid in feeling trapped by this feeling of wanting to be the best possible arbiter of representation and knowing that I can never be perfect because the perfection demanded by the queer community isn’t achievable? Does my voice even matter in fandom circles anymore because I’ve “crossed over” to the other side? Am I allowed to continue to speak critically about representation in shows that are not my own because I haven’t “fixed mine yet”?

I struggled with this when Carmilla was airing. I still struggle with it now, too, because I see how trolls on Twitter and Tumblr have reacted to folks like me speaking out about problems we see in our communities or within fandom. People like me aren’t allowed to criticize fandom, or fandom culture, because we’re no longer seen as truly a part of it: by being creators who can’t always live up to fandom’s sometimes unreasonable standards, we’re now considered just part of the problem. We can’t critique behaviors and call things out within this fandom community that should also represent us because when we do we’re hurting the fandom community.

Every queer creative out there has shouldered some of this hurt, I know I have. I stand by what I’ve said despite the backlash. If you cannot believe in the truth you speak, what good are you to a community looking to you for change?

Those who speak to the internal problems of fandom culture are shouted down. People with years of fandom experience, who are far more knowledgeable of the history of fandom (and especially the femslash corners of it) and presence in media than the present-day narrative setters, are shouted down and told that we are part of the problem. Creatives who speak out and criticize other works are treated equally poorly. The problem is that in refusing to look at the problems within our fandom spaces, and saying that everyone outside the group is to blame for the problems of poor representation, we are sticking our fingers in our ears and refusing to look at what’s wrong with us. We eat our own.

The queer community – and by extension the queer fandom community – functions like an ouroboros as far as I can tell. That’s the snake from Norse mythology that eats its tail, representing infinity but also representing the inevitable crush of our own bullshit as it comes down around us with the hopes of becoming a better community. There should be a place within this community for everyone, and yet it’s this same space that is preoccupied with gatekeeping characterized by constant infighting, identity policing, and silencing or invalidating opinions that don’t perfectly align with this vision of what is considered acceptable in the eyes of the thinking of the day.

Queerness is messy. There’s a lot of nuance to it. And there will always be people who want their own community within that umbrella of queerness. That’s a valid want. You want to be around people who are homogenous, because it’s when variety is introduced that feelings get hurt. But the existence of a community for marginalized people should not come at the detriment and degradation of other vulnerable people, nor should it come at the expanse of dismissing intersectionality within our community.

But instead, we eat our own. We dismiss trans headcanons like people in old fandom used to dismiss queer headcanons. We're doing the same bullshit, just rinsed and repeated, directed at a new set of people whose voices are smaller than the small specks of power new fandom has granted (cis, white) queer people.

We fight ourselves amongst because we feel as though we cannot fight the forces of our own oppression. We censor ourselves to make sure that we don’t say anything to upend the proverbial apple cart. We do this not because we’re afraid of the problematic elements outside of the community that could come into our community, but rather because we’re afraid of those within our own community who have the power to kick us out from under our own umbrella and back into the rain.

So when I think about fandom these days, I imagine this moment of losing community. I imagine the hurtful message sent, the dismissive post on the forum, the hateful tweet, actions that cost nothing when they are directed at creators, fan writers, fan artists. These people exist to create content that is to be consumed. They aren't human. They aren't even real. They're just the producers of content that fandom sucks up like a vacuum cleaner without bothering to engage with the creators except to demand more or demand better. Nothing makes you feel alienated from your community like realizing you only exist to produce for it and when you don't produce to standards, you are attacked.

What's worse is that a lot of folks in fandom don't even think about this these days. There's no risk in blasting off a message or a tweet. But social media is an echo chamber. It’s a hive mind, and it’s a place where people can get hurt, very badly, and very quickly. Social media should not be used as a weapon to badger the people trying to get into positions where they can create change, which is what I feel new fandom has done. But at the same time, new fandom has also become a space where voices can be uplifted, where people can be seen and heard who maybe weren't before.

So TL;DR, I think social media ruined fandom, I have a lot of baggage/trauma from working on a show as fandom was transitioning from old fandom to new fandom, and like... we have to be better to each other.

[ritsushinbro]

My Critique of Rebuild of Evangelion's Characterization: I originally wrote this post on the Evageeks forum and decided to post it here. It discusses the relationship between Misato, WILLE and the pilots and whether it is realistic and in-character. Warning this post contains spoilers and is very long. Also has references to self-harm and suicide.

With each revelation that comes out regarding the measures WILLE take against Shinji and their own pilots, it becomes more and more unrealistic for me to the point where it's almost comical. Let's go through some of them here:

They wear the explosive DSS chokers 24/7 which will kill the pilots should they risk awakening an Eva.

They are kept in a single room rigged with explosives.

In Shinji's case, he is (intended to be) put in 24/7 solitary confinement with explosives fitted as well.

Shinji is escorted around the wunder whilst restrained on a stretcher. (NOTE: The only time he isn't, is when Sakura takes him to Ritsuko).

It is confirmed in another thread that Misato gave clear permission to the crew for them to shoot Shinji on sight if they suspect he is attempting to get into an Eva. 

Now let me attempt to deconstruct these measures one-by-one:

It is understandable that Asuka and Mari wear DSS chokers because after all they are pilots and there is a risk of awakening. However in Shinji's case, he is forbidden from piloting and so there is no risk of awakening (remember Ritsuko did not think NERV would come after him, so they had no reason to think he would escape). So why place the DSS choker on him? Well we have already established it is simply because they have a resentment against him; there is no special, pragmatic reason. Is this realistic? Well I would say no for reasons I will explain later but I can certainly understand why others may say it is.

I don't think I will understand why they would keep their two main "soldiers" if you will, in an explosively rigged room. I believe others have  stated that from a tactical point, it's an extremely dumb move on WILLE's part. After all, if Asuka and Mari didn't have plot armor, what's to stop Gendo from tricking WILLE into killing their own pilots with these explosives? How would WILLE stop Gendo then? Will they use Shinji? No, for reasons I will state later. And another thing, we know that their rooms were already fitted with explosives so why on Earth would they add extra after the events of Q (when they stopped 4th impact). What do they hope to achieve with more bombs? Make the pilots more "deader" than they already are? In my opinion, this doesn't even come across as paranoid but just plain childish. Is this measure realistic from a story standpoint? No not in my eyes.

We know they intended to put Shinji in a solitary cell as this is what they do in Shin. If it was solitary confinement on it's own, then I believe it would be a realistic measure that would happen in real life. However I believe the writers did not factor in the effects of solitary confinement (especially one that is rigged to explode) on fully grown men; never mind a 14 year old who's just come out of a 14 year coma. Many people think solitary confinement is a walk in the park so I made another post a while ago highlighting why that's not the case:

"I remember when before Shin came out people here theorized that if Shinji stayed on the Wunder, they would eventually softened to him and let him help in ways that wouldn't have involved piloting. However with these revelations it looks like they intended to keep him in an isolated room far from everyone else that is (presumably) rigged with explosives as well as keeping the choker on his neck. Not even allowed to freely leave his cell without WILLE's permission (it is unlikely they would let him out judging from these measures). 

Even though Asuka and Mari were treated like this as well, at least they had each other and were able to leave as they had responsibilities in piloting. But Shinji was forbidden from piloting and was to be kept by himself except maybe being checked up on by Sakura now and again. So judging from these leaks (we will have to wait to properly see the full context) WILLE intended to lock Shinji in solitary confinement.

I have copied and pasted some of the effects of Solitary Confinement from Wikipedia below:

“Psychiatric: Research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary confinement may encompass "anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis." The lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression, permanent or semi-permanent changes to brain physiology, an existential crisis, and death.

Self-harm: According to a March 2014 article in American Journal of Public Health, "Inmates in jails and prisons attempt to harm themselves in many ways, resulting in outcomes ranging from trivial to fatal." Self harm was seven times higher among the inmates where seven percent of the jail population was confined in isolation. Fifty-three percent of all acts of self harm took place in jail. "Self-harm" included, but was not limited to, cutting, banging heads, self-amputations of fingers or testicles. These inmates were in bare cells, and were prone to jumping off their beds head first into the floor or even biting through their veins in their wrists. A main issue within the prison system and solitary confinement is the high number of inmates who turn to self-harm. Many of the inmates look to self-harm as a way to "avoid the rigors of solitary confinement."

Physical: Solitary confinement has been reported to cause hypertension, headaches and migraines, profuse sweating, dizziness, and heart palpitations. Many inmates also experience extreme weight loss due to digestion complications and abdominal pain. Many of these symptoms are due to the intense anxiety and sensory deprivation. Inmates can also experience neck and back pain and muscle stiffness due to long periods of little to no physical activity. These symptoms often worsen with repeated visits to solitary confinement.

Social: The effects of isolation unfortunately do not stop once the inmate has been released. After release from segregated housing, psychological effects have the ability to sabotage a prisoner's potential to successfully return to the community and adjust back to ‘normal’ life. The inmates are often startled easily, and avoid crowds and public places. They seek out confined small spaces because the public areas overwhelm their sensory stimulation.”

And this is just for solitary confinement. There are so many other things going on with and happening (or could happen) to Shinji such as the things below:

Shinji being only 14 years old.

Shinji being abandoned and neglected by his father.

Shinji being coerced/emotionally blackmailed to pilot Unit 1.

Shinji seeing girls he cared for "die".

Shinji being in a coma for 14 years.

Shinji being told he has a bomb on his neck.

Being told it is because he is being punished.

Being told he cannot pilot the eva anymore (he is effectively "useless" now).

Have his former co-pilot and friend try and punch him after he thought she was dead.

[Potentially] being told he started NTI and devastated the world.

[Potentially] being told that the girl he tried to save is "gone" and that she was a clone of his mother.

Being imprisoned in a cell (presumably) surrounded by explosives and not being able to freely leave.

Be completely isolated from everyone except when being checked up by a girl who's father he got killed. (NOTE: Mari might want to see him so Shinji at least has her, maybe). 

Have his mother figure (the woman who made him pilot the eva the most) threaten to detonate the choker around his neck and blow his head off when he tries to leave.

With the above list, is it any wonder his head is so messed up? I understand the purpose of these films is all about growing up and taking responsibility but expecting Shinji to willingly allow himself to be subjected to the treatment WILLE had in store for him is pure, unadulterated masochism. Much of what was is written here can safely be considered cruel, inhumane and arguably, torture. 

There is a massive difference between taking responsibility for one's mistakes and just letting the whole world torture you because you did something bad. My main fear and problem with Q and Thrice is that their main theme, which is accepting responsibility, is equated with accepting unreasonably cruel treatment. And I just think that is an EXTREMELY unhealthy message to send to people especially if they are depressed or live in abusive relationships."

When you take all these into account, does it place into perspective how messed up Shinji would have been had he stayed on the wunder? This is assuming that they thought they would never have a need for him, but as we find out in Shin, they needed Shinji in the end to defeat Gendo. If Shinji never left with Mark 09 and Misato successfully kept him "protective" custody, then one of three things would have happened when WILLE actually needed him to save everyone:

A: He would not have been in the mental state to pilot Unit 1 and Gendo would have completely wrecked him due to shit synch ratios. 

B: He would have told Misato and co. to fuck off and die. We've seen this nihilism before from Shinji (after the 5th angel). His incarceration alongside the humiliation and guilt from wearing the choker will have ratcheted up by a million.

C: He wouldn't have piloted because he would have killed himself. There's only so much a 14 year old can take and when subjected to a fate that causes even hardened criminals to resort to self-harm, genital mutilation and suicide, then what chance does Shinji have? 

Now back to my original point, do I think this measure is realistic? I would like to say yes if it was the solitary on it's own, however when combined with the other things, then I think the chances of Shinji commiting suicide is extremely high to the point where it's not believable for him to continue as an anime protagonist. You have to make sure the protagonist goes through difficulty in order to experience growth and change, however if you make it too harsh (to the point of committing suicide) then it seems less believable that they live to continue the story. On a separate note, many people think that Shinji was immature for leaving with Mark 09 the first chance he got and that this is proof that he is, in Asuka's words, a "brat". But let's be realistic, if this story is about Shinji's growth and maturation, then how exactly would WILLE's treatment of him be conducive to that? The truth is WILLE's sheer hostility towards him would have completely stunted any emotional growth and maturation in Shinji and it would have destroyed the point of the film. Also no-one can argue that WILLE would have eventually "come round" or "softened-up" towards Shinji because even after 14 years they still don't trust their own pilots. So yeah, Shinji most likely would have been stuck in solitary with a bomb around his neck until he either killed himself or the war ended (but even this doesn't guarantee his freedom).

Regarding the stretcher business. I don't understand why you have to restrain Shinji on a stretcher when the kid has already surrendered himself and has come voluntarily. Maybe WILLE are just full of bondage fetishists; it would certainly explain the chokers as well. 

If the DSS chokers and the explosive rooms weren't enough, Misato actually gave orders to the crew to shoot Shinji if they thought he was trying to pilot again. At this point, I just think this is just overkill. I mean the kid has a bomb on his neck that prevents him from awakening an Eva, you intended to keep him locked up even though he can't really leave the wunder except with outside help and now you intend to shoot him if you think he'll get into an Eva. The problem with this, is that piloting an Eva requires all the bridge-bunnies to sortie the damn thing. Shinji cannot enter Unit 1 by himself, especially since the thing is being used as an engine so why do they assume that Shinji is capable of being Sam Fisher and sneaking into Unit 1? We see that Sakura and Midori are actually willing to shoot Shinji in 3.0+1.0 and do so when he merely suggests that he pilot Unit 1. But seriously what harm would Shinji have done in Unit 1 considering the fact that Gendo was already going to start another impact anyway? Why actively try and kill (or injure in Sakura's case) the only guy that can save your ass? One cannot argue that they were just being "desperate or panicking" because in Midori's case, she actually takes the time to confirm her orders from Misato. This shows that at least, she was still of lucid mind. This particular altercation just beggars belief in my mind and the fact that Misato actually gave those orders on top of all the other measures is absolutely extraordinary. So as you can imagine, I do not think this was realistically executed.

However, I can already hear some detractors say: "So what? Misato hesitated to detonate the DSS choker and also took a bullet for Shinji. She redeemed herself from putting the DSS choker on him and the kill-order for if they thought he would try and get into an Eva." 

And to those people I say….not really. There is an idiom attributed to Benjamin Franklin and it goes like this: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." How does this apply to Misato and Shinji's relationship? Well Misato wouldn't have had to hesitate to pull the trigger if she didn't put it on him in the first place. Misato wouldn't have had to take a bullet for Shinji, if she didn't give permission for the crew to shoot him in the first place. Let's take this following dialogue for example:

916-929:

Kitakami: "It's a good thing we got Major Shikinami back. But why'd we have to take that disease along with her?"

Aoba: "Just leave it alone. Better than Nerv still being able to use him."

Tama: "If he tries to get into an Evangelion, all hands have permission to shoot on sight. There's nothing to worry about this time."

Kitakami: "Come on, that's all for show. The last time he broke out of here, the Captain couldn't put him down. I've got zero trust about this time either."

Nagara: "He was a kid. I can understand why she'd hesitate."

Kitakami: "That 'kid' caused Near Third Impact and murdered my entire family!"

Hyuga: "Near Third was a consequence of what he did, not his goal. The Captain's doing her best to atone for that too."

Takao: "That's right. She's who Kaji entrusted with Wille, and it's our job to trust the captain."

We learn a few things from this dialogue. Firstly, the older WILLE members are much more understanding to Shinji and Misato's situation: Aoba and Hyuga understand that it's better to keep an eye on Shinji and that he never meant to start NTI, Takao is one who always trusts Misato's judgement and Sumire understands that Misato would have found it difficult to kill a child, especially one that Misato was close with. 

Secondly, it appears that the younger WILLE members (Midori, Sakura and Tama) are the ones that are fearful/hateful towards Shinji (NOTE: Tama is a strange case, he strikes me as the sort of kid that just follows what everyone else is feeling. He might not feel anything towards Shinji beyond what you'd expect). 

Finally it appears that most of WILLE crew members are actually reasonable people and are not the extremely desperate and paranoid individuals some people on the forum believe. Remember this is AFTER Shinji started the 4th impact in Q. The fact that some of the WILLE crew members speak of Shinji in this way, show they are capable of understanding. Most actually trust Misato and respect her judgement except for Midori, who questions Misato's capabilities in following through on her threats. 

Which brings me to my next point. Misato has had no hesitation in pulling rank in the past. In 2.0, she even has an altercation with Ritsuko, her best friend, right before they fight the 8th angel. Misato is a woman that will tell even her best friend to STFU, when it comes to doing what she wants. Having said that, (timeskip shenanigans aside) there's no reason why she couldn't have done the same with the younger WILLE crew members. She could have nipped all of it in the bud by telling Sakura, Midori and the rest of them that Shinji was groomed to cause NTI and it was not his fault.

Instead, despite being the captain that everyone loves and fears, she kowtowed to the crew's paranoia and had the pilots fitted with explosive chokers, put in explosively rigged solitary confinement and gave the order to kill Shinji if they feared the worst. This is the sort of thing that drives fully grown men to suicide, never mind 14 year olds that have just come out of a coma. Imagine if Shinji did commit suicide in his cell. Who would Misato and WILLE have turned to in order to defeat Gendo in the end? What if Gendo tricked WILLE into killing their own pilots with the explosives? They would be properly screwed then. If Misato actually cared, as we are led to believe from her hesitation to kill Shinji, then she would have told the rest of the WILLE crew to fuck off, instead of alienating and putting Shinji and the pilots in that much risk. Are we really expected to believe that Misato placed such extreme countermeasures on Shinji just to appease Midori and Sakura? Not likely. This is why I believe that Misato would not have put the DSS choker on Shinji in the first place, and her doing so in Q was extremely unrealistic and out of character, even with anything that happened during the timeskip.

Some of you will say: "Who cares about realism? It's a show about aliens and growing up." While this is true, Anno has proven that he is able to pull the themes off much better when you look at the NGE series. Disregarding the self-contained narrative, it is obvious that the purpose of Q was to bring Shinji to the same point he was at after episode 24 of the series. If we look at how NGE/EOE handled Shinji's depression, we see that it is quite realistic:

The neglect and coercion by the adults in his life, almost dying to angels multiple times, the sexual tension with Asuka, almost killing Touji, finding out Rei is a clone of his mother, Misato putting the moves on him and having to kill Kaworu all culminate towards Shinji's mental state during EOE. Shinji is passively suicidal but it's due to the *situation* and his own introverted tendencies instead of people actively trying to hurt and isolate him. He finds the will to live again due to his mothers words despite knowing just how difficult living might be. If you remove all the Evas and the Angels from the story, the themes that are touched upon (isolation, neglect, misunderstanding) still apply and the audience can still resonate with them. 

The rebuilds however go about it completely differently. They bring Shinji to that same suicidal state by having all the characters/plot actively harm Shinji's mental health by:

Putting him in a coma for 14 years so he is completely clueless. Imagine how groggy you are when you wake up in the morning and then multiply that by a million. 

Have Misato psychologically castrate Shinji by telling him he won't do anything with a look of disdain on her face.

Have Ritsuko make Shinji feel dread by telling him he has a bomb on his neck and it's because he is being "punished".

Not tell him why he is being punished when he asks Misato.

Have Asuka try to punch Shinji after he thought she was dead.

Tell Shinji the girl he saved is "gone”.

Have his "mother figure" threaten to blow his head off for wanting to leave with the girl you just told him is gone.

Have Asuka and Mari attack Shinji in Lilith's chamber even though Shinji was seemingly willing to listen to them had Asuka not kept attacking. (Watch that scene again and you'll see when Asuka learns what Shinji is trying to do, she stops attacking but instead of explaining that he's being manipulated, she just calls him a brat instead).

Even Mari was willing to potentially kill or cripple Shinji with the Anti-AT rounds. (We don't know what the AA rounds are truly capable of because the only time they are used on screen, they don't work. The round cartridges state that they are armor and AT field piercing and have explicit restrictions on their use. The fact that Mari requires Asuka's explicit authorization to use them imply that they are most likely lethal and would have killed/crippled Shinji had he been in a normal Eva). 

Have Shinji's friend's head explode with the device Shinji's "mother figure" actually meant for him. Imagine seeing someone's head explode and then remember that your "mother figure" actually meant that to be for you. That would certainly mess anyone up.

Have Asuka then kick and manhandle him when he is catatonic.

Have Asuka force feed him to the point where he pukes whilst he is still grieving the death of his friend. 

Have Shinji only be escorted whilst tied to a stretcher despite him coming voluntarily.

Have Misato place Shinji in 24/7 solitary confinement in a cell rigged with explosives.

Have Misato tell the WILLE crew to shoot Shinji on sight if they think he's getting into an EVA.

Have people tell Shinji that he's being a brat the entire time for reacting badly to all this.

By having Misato, Asuka, WILLE reject and "punish" Shinji so harshly so it kicks off his isolation and desperation, it makes Shinji's "recovery" seem less believable. Anno himself didn't even know how to make Shinji recover psychologically in 3.0+1.0 and he actually had to ask the voice actors on how to make that happen. The story made the WILLE crew go full scorched-earth and in doing so made Shinji's "growth" and his reconciliation with Misato seem impossible. 

I have already stated that I believe Q represents "Condemnation" and Shin represents "Compassion" and I think both films pull that off brilliantly. But that doesn't mean I think the characters acted in a realistic manner. I do not believe that Misato would have placed such harsh sanctions on Shinji in the first place for the reasons I have stated above. And if she did, I do not believe that Shinji would have easily forgiven Misato (even IF she took a bullet for him) as we see he does in the film. I do not believe that WILLE were merely "scared and desperate" because as the dialogue above shows, they are surprisingly understanding (but still disapproving) of Shinji's situation despite him literally starting another impact. I do not believe that Misato would have bent over to Sakura and Midori's resentment and taken measures against Shinji, just to ease their minds. 

In summary, my main problem with the post-timeskip rebuilds is that I feel they gaslight the audience in thinking that Shinji was just being a "brat" the entire time by having Asuka and Mari say: "You have grown a little/You smell like an adult now." However, the truth is Shinji's been through so much mental suffering perpetrated by the people he cares about, that it's a miracle he's not killed himself. It would certainly break most of us on this forum. The movies seek to show Shinji "finally" taking responsibility when the truth is, the plot went so above and beyond putting him down in such an extreme manner in the first place.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous said: I didn’t know too much about the late British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton until I followed your superbly cultured blog. As an ivy league educated American reading your posts, I feel he is a breath of fresh air as a sane and cultured conservative intellectual. We don’t really have his kind over here where things are heavily polarized between left and right, and sadly, we are often uncivil in our discourse. Sir Roger Scruton talks a lot about beauty especially in art (as indeed you do too), so for Scruton why does beauty as an aesthetic matter in art? Why should we care?

I thank you for your very kind words about my blog which I fear is not worthy of such fulsome praise.

However one who is worthy of praise (or at least gratitude and appreciation at least) is the late Sir Roger Scruton. I have had the pleasure to have met him on a few informal occasions.

Most memorably, I once got invited to High Table dinner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, by a friend who was a junior Don there. This was just after I had finished my studies at Cambridge and rather than pursue my PhD I opted instead to join the British army as a combat pilot officer. And so I found out that Scruton was dining too. We had very pleasant drinks in the SCR before and after dinner. He was exceptionally generous and kind in his consideration of others; we all basked in the gentle warmth of his wit and wisdom.

I remember talking to him about Xanthippe, Socrate’s wife, because I had read his wickedly funny fictional satire. In the book he credits the much maligned Xanthippe with being the brains behind all of Socrates’ famous philosophical ideas (as espoused by Plato).

On other occasions I had seen Roger Scruton give the odd lecture in London or at some cultural forum.

Other than that, I’ve always admire both the man and many of his ideas from afar. I do take issue with some of his intellectual ideas which seem to be taken a tad too far (he think pre-Raphaelites were kitsch) but it’s impossible to dislike the man in person.

Indeed the Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen reportedly once refused to teach a seminar with Scruton, although they later became very good friends. This is the gap between the personal and the public persona. In public he was reviled as hate figure by some of the more intolerant of the leftists who were trying to shut him down from speaking. But in private his academic peers, writers, and philosophers, regardless of their political beliefs, hugely respected him and took his ideas seriously - because only in private will they ever admit that much of what Scruton talks about has come to pass.

In many ways he was like C.S. Lewis - a pariah to the Oxbridge establishment. At Oxford many dons poo-pooed his children stories, and especially his Christian ideas of faith, culture, and morality, and felt he should have laid off the lay theology and stuck to his academic speciality of English Literature. But an Oxford friend, now a don, tells me that many dons read his theological works in private because much of what he wrote has become hugely relevant today.

Scruton was a man of parts, some of which seemed irreconcilable: barrister, aesthetician, distinguished professor of aesthetics. Outside of brief pit stops at Cambridge, Oxford, and St Andrews, he was mostly based out of Birkbeck College, London University, which had a tradition of a working-class intake and to whom Scruton was something of a popular figure. He was also an editor of the ultra-Conservative Salisbury Review, organist, and an enthusiastic fox hunter. In addition he wrote over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, and religion, as well as finding time to write novels and two operas. He was widely recognised for his services to philosophy, teaching and public education, receiving a knighthood in 2016.

He was exactly the type of polymath England didn’t know what to do with because we British do discourage such continental affectations and we prefer people to know their lane and stick to it. Above all we’re suspicious of polymaths because no one likes a show off. Scruton could be accused of a few things but he never perceived as a show off. He was a gentle, reserved, and shy man of kindly manners.

He was never politically ‘Conservative’, or tried not to be. Indeed he encouraged many to think about defining “a philosophy of conservatism” and not “a philosophy for the Conservative Party.” In defining his own thoughts, he positioned conservatism to relation to its historical rivals, liberalism and socialism. He wrote that liberalism was the product of the enlightenment, which viewed society as a contract and the state as a system for guaranteeing individual rights. While he saw socialism as the product of the industrial revolution, and an ideology which views society as an economic system and the state as a means of distributing social wealth.

Like another great English thinkers, Michael Oakeshott, he felt that conservatives leaned more towards liberalism then socialism, but argued that for conservatives, freedom should also entail responsibility, which in turn depends on public spirit and virtue. Many classical liberals would agree.

In fact, he criticised Thatcherism for “its inadequate emphasis on the civic virtues, such as self-sacrifice, duty, solidarity and service of others.” Scruton agreed with classical liberals in believing that markets are not necessarily expressions of selfishness and greed, but heavily scolded his fellow Conservatives for allowing themselves to be caricatured as leaving social problems to the market. Classical liberals could be criticised for the same neglect.

Perhaps his conservative philosophy was best summed up when he wrote “Liberals seek freedom, socialists equality, and conservatives responsibility. And, without responsibility, neither freedom nor equality have any lasting value.”

Scruton’s politics were undoubtedly linked to his philosophy, which was broadly Hegelian. He took the view that all of the most important aspects of life – truth (the perception of the world as it is), beauty (the creation and appreciation of things valued for their own sake), and self-realisation (the establishment by a person of a coherent, autonomous identity) – can be achieved only as part of a cultural community within which meaning, standards and values are validated. But he had a wide and deep understanding of the history of western philosophy as a whole, and some of his best philosophical work consisted of explaining much more clearly than is often the case how different schools of western philosophy relate to one another.

People today still forget how he was a beacon for many East European intellectuals living under Communist rule in the 1980s.  Scruton was deeply attached in belonging to a network of renowned Western scholars who were helping the political opposition in Eastern Europe. Their activity began in Czechoslovakia with the Jan Hus Foundation in 1980, supported by a broad spectrum of scholars from Jacques Derrida and Juergen Habermas to Roger Scruton and David Regan. Then came Poland, Hungary and later Romania. In Poland, Scruton co-founded the Jagiellonian Trust, a small but significant organisation. The other founders and active participants were Baroness Caroline Cox, Jessica Douglas-Home, Kathy Wilkes, Agnieszka Kołakowska, Dennis O’Keeffe, Timothy Garton Ash, and others.

Scruton had a particular sympathy for Prague and the Czech society, which bore fruit in the novel, Notes from Underground, which he wrote many years later. But his involvement in East European affairs was more than an emotional attachment.  He believed that Eastern Europe - despite the communist terror and aggressive social engineering - managed to preserve a sense of historical continuity and strong ties to European and national traditions, more unconscious than openly articulated, which made it even more valuable. For this reason, decades later, he warned his East European friends against joining the European Union, arguing that whatever was left of those ties will be demolished by the political and ideological bulldozer of European bureaucracy.

Anyway, digressions aside, onto to the heart of your question.

Art matters.

Let’s start from there. Regardless of your personal tastes or aesthetics as you stand before a painting, slip inside a photograph, run your hand along the length of a sculpture, or move your body to the arrangements spiraling out of the concert speakers…something very primary - and primal - is happening. And much of it sub-conscious. There’s an element of trust.

Political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, defined artworks as “thought things,” ideas given material form to inspire reflection and rumination. Dialogue. Sometimes even discomfort. Art has the ability to move us, both positively and negatively. So we know that art matters. But the question posed by modern philosophers such as Roger Scruton has been: how do we want it to affect us?

Are we happy with the direction art is taking? Namely, says, Scruton, away from seeking “higher virtues” such as beauty and craftmanship, and instead, towards novelty for novelty’s sake, provoking emotional response under the guise of socio-political discourse.

Why does beauty in art matter?  

Scruton asks us to wake up and start demanding something more from art other than disposable entertainment. “Through the pursuit of beauty,” suggests Scruton, “we shape the world as our own and come to understand our nature as spiritual beings. But art has turned its back on beauty and now we are surrounded by ugliness.” The great artists of the past, says Scruton, “were painfully aware that human life was full of care and suffering, but their remedy was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation…It shows human life to be worthwhile.” But many modern artists, argues the philosopher, have become weary of this “sacred task” and replaced it with the “randomness” of art produced merely to gain notoriety and the result has been anywhere between kitsch to ugliness that ultimately leads to inward alienation and nihilistic despair.

The best way to understand Scruton’s idea of beauty in art and why it matters is to let him speak for himself. Click below on the video and watch a BBC documentary broadcast way back in 2009 that he did precisely on this subject, why beauty matters. It will not be a wasted hour but perhaps enrich and even enlighten your perspective on the importance of beauty in art.

So I’ll do my best to summarise the point Scruton is making in this documentary above.

Here goes.....

In his 2009 documentary “Why Beauty Matters”, Scruton argues that beauty is a universal human need that elevates us and gives meaning to life. He sees beauty as a value, as important as truth or goodness, that can offer “consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy”, therefore showing human life to be worthwhile.

According to Scruton, beauty is being lost in our modern world, particularly in the fields of art and architecture.

I was raised in many different cultures from India, Pakistan, to China, Japan, Southern Africa, and the Middle East as well schooling in rural Britain and Switzerland. So coming home to London on frequent visits was often a confusing experience because of the mismatch of modern art and new architecture. In life and in art I have chosen to see the beauty in things, locating myself in Paris, where I am surrounded by beauty, and understand the impact it can have on the everyday.

Scruton’s disdain for modern art begins with Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. Originally a satirical piece designed to mock the world of art and the snobberies that go with it, it has come to mean that anything can be art and anyone can be an artist. A “cult of ugliness” was created where originality is placed above beauty and the idea became more important than the artwork itself. He argues that art became a joke, endorsed by critics, doing away with a need for skill, taste or creativity.

Duchamp’s argument was that the value of any object lies solely in what each individual assigns it, and thus, anything can be declared “art,” and anyone an artist.

But is there something wrong with the idea that everything is art and everyone an artist? If we celebrate the democratic ideals of all citizens being equal and therefore their input having equal value, doesn’t Duchamp’s assertion make sense?

Who’s to say, after all, what constitutes beauty?

This resonated with me in particular and brought to mind when Scruton meets the artist Michael Craig-Martin and asks him about how Duchamp’s urinal first made him feel. Martin is best known for his work “An Oak Tree” which is a glass of water on a shelf, with text beside it explaining why it is an oak tree. Martin argues that Duchamp captures the imagination and that art is an art because we think of it as such.

When I first saw “An Oak Tree” I was confused and felt perhaps I didn’t have the intellect to understand it. When I would later question it with friends who worked in the art auction and gallery world, the response was always “You just don’t get it,” which became a common defence. To me, it was reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s short tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. In reality, they make no clothes at all.

Scruton argues that the consumerist culture has been the catalyst for this change in modern art. We are always being sold something, through advertisements that feed our appetite for stuff, adverts try to be brash and outrageous to catch our attention. Art mimics advertising as artists attempt to create brands, the product that they sell is themselves. The more shocking and outrageous the artwork, the more attention it receives. Scruton is particularly disturbed by Piero Manzoni’s artwork “Artist’s Shit” which consists of 90 tin cans filled with the artist’s excrement.

Moreover the true aesthetic value, the beauty, has vanished in modern works that are selling for millions of dollars. In such works, by artists like Rothko, Franz Kline, Damien Hirst, and Tracey Emin, the beauty has been replaced by discourse. The lofty ideals of beauty are replaced by a social essay, however well intentioned.

A common argument for modern art is that it is reflecting modern life in all of its disorder and ugliness. Scruton suggests that great art has always shown the real in the light of the ideal and that in doing so it is transfigured.

A great painting does not necessarily have a beautiful subject matter, but it is made beautiful through the artist’s interpretation of it. Rembrandt shows this with his portraits of crinkly old women and men or the compassion and kindness of which Velazquez paints the dwarfs in the Spanish court. Modern art often takes the literal subject matter and misses the creative act. Scruton expresses this point using the comparison of Tracey Emin’s artwork ‘My Bed’ and a painting by Delacroix of the artist’s bed.

The subject matters are the same. The unmade beds in all of their sordid disdain. Delacroix brings beauty to a thing that lacks it through the considered artistry of his interpretation and by doing so, places a blessing on his own emotional chaos. Emin shares the ugliness that the bed shows by using the literal bed. According to Emin, it is art because she says that it is so.

Philosophers argued that through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as our home. Traditional architecture places beauty before utility, with ornate decorative details and proportions that satisfy our need for harmony. It reminds us that we have more than just practical needs but moral and spiritual needs too. Oscar Wilde said “All art is absolutely useless,” intended as praise by placing art above utility and on a level with love, friendship, and worship. These are not necessarily useful but are needed.

We have all experienced the feeling when we see something beautiful. To be transported by beauty, from the ordinary world to, as Scruton calls it, “the illuminated sphere of contemplation.” It is as if we feel the presence of a higher world. Since the beginning of western civilisation, poets and philosophers have seen the experience of beauty as a calling to the divine.

According to Scruton, Plato described beauty as a cosmic force flowing through us in the form of sexual desire. He separated the divine from sexuality through the distinction between love and lust. To lust is to take for oneself, whereas to love is to give. Platonic love removes lust and invites us to engage with it spiritually and not physically. As Plato says, “Beauty is a visitor from another world. We can do nothing with it save contemplate its pure radiance.”

Scruton makes the prescient point that art and beauty were traditionally aligned in religious works of art. Science impacted religion and created a spiritual vacuum. People began to look to nature for beauty, and there was a shift from religious works of art to paintings of landscapes and human life.

In today’s world of art and architecture, beauty is looked upon as a thing of the past with disdain. Scruton believes his vision of beauty gives meaning to the world and saves us from meaningless routines to take us to a place of higher contemplation. In this I think Scruton encourages us not to take revenge on reality by expressing its ugliness, but to return to where the real and the ideal may still exist in harmony “consoling our sorrows and amplifying our joys.”

Scruton believes when you train any of your senses you are privy to a heightened world. The artist sees beauty everywhere and they are able to draw that beauty out to show to others. One finds the most beauty in nature, and nature the best catalyst for creativity. The Tonalist painter George Inness advised artists to paint their emotional response to their subject, so that the viewer may hope to feel it too.

It must be said that Scruton’s views regarding art and beauty are not popular with the modern art crowd and their postmodern advocates. Having written several books on aesthetics, Scruton has developed a largely metaphysical aspect to understanding standards of art and beauty.

Throughout this documentary (and indeed his many books and articles), Scruton display a bias towards ‘high’ art, evidenced by a majority of his examples as well as his dismissal of much modern art. However on everyday beauty, there is much space for Scruton to challenge his own categories and extend his discussion to include examples from popular culture, such as in music, graphic design, and film. Omitting ‘low art’ in the discussion of beauty could lead one to conclude that beauty is not there.

It is here I would part ways with Scruton. I think there is beauty to be found in so called low art of car design, popular music or cinema for example - here I’m thinking of a Ferrari 250 GTO,  jazz, or the films of Bergman, Bresson, or Kurosawa (among others) come to mind. Scruton gives short thrift to such 20th century art forms which should not be discounted when we talk of beauty. It’s hard to argue with Jean-Luc Godard for instance when he once said of French film pioneering director, Robert Bresson, “He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.”

Overall though I believe Scruton does enough to leave us to ponder ourselves on the importance of beauty in the arts and our lives, including fine arts, music, and architecture. I think he succeeds in illuminating the poverty, dehumanisation and fraud of modernist and post-modernist cynicism, reductionism and nihilism. Scruton is rightly prescient in pointing the centrality of human aspiration and the longing for truth in both life and art.

In this he is correct in showing that goodness and beauty are universal and fundamentally important; and that the value of anything is not utilitarian and without meaning (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s claim that “All art is absolutely useless.”). Human beings are not purposeless material objects for mechanistic manipulation by others, and civil society itself depends upon a cultural consensus that beauty is real and every person should be respected with compassion as having dignity and nobility with very real spiritual needs to encounter and be transformed and uplifted by beauty.

Thanks for your question.

[wookie92]

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO HAVE A MICROPENIS

My micropenis is approximately ½ to 1 inch long when flaccid and 3.3 inches long when fully erect.  When  fully erect it has an upward angle and a slight banana curve. It is also very thin (2.8), though proportional to the length.  According to calculations my penis has a volume of 36.19 ml / 1.22 fl oz (us).  Various studies suggest that the average American penis is 2.8–3.9 inches flaccid and around 4.7–6.3 inches when erect.  According to online information at SIZEMEUP, in a room of 1000 guys only 1 would be shorter than me.

In an adult, the average stretched penile length is about 13.24 cm (5.21 in.). An adult micropenis is a stretched penile length of 9.32 cm (3.67 in.) or less.  Growing up I remember reading that a micropenis was defined as any penis shorter than 2.8 inches in length.  But have been subsequently given new information that slid me well under the 3.67 inch upper limit.

Where Do I Stand On The Penis Size Chart?

All this to say: the majority of average flaccid penises are longer than mine when I am erect.

I cannot say that I am deeply ashamed of my micropenis, but certainly I have experienced shame with regard to my size.  I can say that I am extremely self aware of my penis size.  This is largely because of the of things I hear women and women say about micropenis, and people’s reaction to my own micropenis.

I can only speak from personal experience, but the number of times I have heard women making fun of men for the size of their manhood is staggering. At one time, I actually overheard three or four of my colleagues at work all agreeing that "men with small dicks should be required to wear a warning sign."

In school, especially high school and as an undergraduate, I was subject to a lot of hazing and bullying that was directly connected to my having a micropenis.  As a sophomore in high school I was depantsed at the pool by three bullies when I got an unwanted erection. They lifted me up and held my arms behind me to prevent me from covering my erection so the entire PE class present saw what happened.  The coach had left the pool area when it happened. While the three boys were penalized, the damage was done any my “secret” became known through out the school before the end of the day.  The teasing commenced immediately and was unrelenting.  Even my mother got calls from some friends who had heard about the incident (and my condition).  My mother reacted in anger at me that somehow I was responsible for the situation (and her subsequent embarrassment).  No empathy there.  I was depantsed three more times before I graduated from high school and it was clear to me why I was being targeted.

I was on the swim team and during a competition with a neighboring town, discovered that two of the players from that town recognized me as the guy with the “baby dick” which got shouted as I started my event.  So, word had spread.  I felt like a pariah.

Numerous scientific studies have suggested time and again that for the majority of women in the western world, tiny penises are simply undesirable. I am 28 and have had just only three sexual experiences (through personal choice) with women, two of which were very humiliating, to say the least.

In high school, my first consensual sexual encounter was with a boy named Billy.  I was 13 and he was 15.  He was interested in anal sex, and wanted to top me.  I was willing to bottom despite the fact that he was very well endowed.  He did tease me about my micropenis, but seemed to accept it.  I was not prepared for how painful the experience of bottoming would be, but he continued to be interested in me, and treated me well (we even kissed) so I was willing to continue to have sex with him as a bottom.  I fell in love.  Then he disclosed to his homophobic older brother that we had been having sex and that put an end to our relationship.  His brother let me know (rather violently) that I was to stay away from Billy or he would castrate and kill me. Billy, who had a black eye, never spoke to me again.

My first sexual encounter with a woman happened during my Junior year in high school.  She was a sophomore and I was a Junior. When I undressed I could tell she was “shocked” even though she was a virgin and had never seen a man naked.  She has seen photographs of naked men, and she had a brother in college.   She was well pleased with my digital and oral skills, and actually squirted into my mouth (something I didn’t even know was a “thing” that might happen). Unfortunately when I attempted to penetrate her, my condom slipped off, and my orgasm was triggered prematurely as I was trying to thrust into her.   She tried to push me off of her as I locked up and started squirting, and was furious that I had ejaculated into her vagina.  She said she could feel me ejaculating.  She got up and douched.  I was too embarrassed to speak more than an apology.  I helped pay for her “morning after” pill and discovered that she had disclosed the whole evening, including my premature ejaculation, and condom mishap, to her friends.

As a freshman in college I encountered a very attractive university student who seemed to be attracted to me. When I stripped, she stared at my micropenis, giggled, and put her hand to her mouth, muttering simply "OK" in a tone that suggested she was taken aback. When it came to actually performing, first I found that the condom wouldn’t stay on, but more frustratingly, my micropenis kept falling out every time I tried to penetrate her. She actually asked the traditional joke question, "Is it in?" mistaking my penis for my finger.  I wanted to die. It was clear that she was getting nothing out of the experience. I genuinely tried my best to make her happy via oral sex, but she didn't orgasm or enjoy that either.   I suspect her encounter with my penis through a wet blanket over the whole experience. When at last I finally thought I was making her content, she suddenly huffed in an annoyed way and got up, saying she needed to use the restroom. And that was the end of it.

I can only imagine the level of disappointment and frustration she must have felt. It must have been a horrendous experience for her.

I decided after that to become a master of cunnilingus so that any future women I encountered would be satisfied, if not by my penis, then my oral skills would more than make up for it.  And I did master the art.

While in graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin, I met and married a girl.  We had engaged in some sexual activity before our marriage, so she was aware of my micropenis.  However our marriage was short lived when I discovered she had been having sex with my then best friend.  When I confronted her with her lack of fidelity, she blamed my shortcomings as a lover and told me that my micropenis disgusted her.

Since that time I have mainly had sexual experiences with gay men, though I had a threesome with a woman that went very well.

Aside from personal experiences, the media doesn’t help my self-esteem either.  Men with small penis are an ongoing source of amusement in TV shows and movies.  I noticed that penis shaming was mostly reserved for villains and comic sidekicks who were never taken seriously.  There are more TV shows with “little dick jokes” than shows that don’t have them.   No shows make fun of women’s breast size, but targeting men with small penises as a source of humor seems to be socially acceptable.  All that tells me that the writers don’t really care if men with small penises are offended or hurt.

The way the media treats the body-shaming of men compared to the body-shaming of women is wildly different. When Donald Trump makes questionable comments about the looks of women, he rightly causes outrage. Lists and videos decrying his sexist remarks have gone viral. Yet when a naked model of Trump with a micropenis was displayed in public in New York City, it was treated like a punch line rather than an attack. Some publications even called it a wonderful piece of art. Hundreds of Americans now have selfies of them laughing at Trump and his micropenis. We defend Heidi Cruz and Megyn Kelly, but where are the people defending small penises?  I am no Trump supporter, but targeting him because of his small penis seems wrong.

GUYS WITH MICROPENISES KNOW THEY ARE NOT WELL-ENDOWED, THEY DON’T NEED REMINDING OF IT.

From my experience (having read hundreds of articles, forum posts, videos, and having spoken to hundreds of men and women online), it feels safe to say that the overwhelming majority of sexual partners aren't thrilled about the prospect of sex with micropenises. And if we don’t accept that these views are likely the majority, then we are never going to challenge this blatant discrimination.

I would like to ask people to think about this: If you are attracted to somebody enough to ask them to bed, and if the guy is kind to you, is it fair to write him off based on size alone?

So what do I plan to do about my love life?

Luckily I am bisexual and enjoy the company of men as well as women. I fear that straight men with the micropenis condition suffer worse shame than men in the gay community.  Let me be clear, a great many gay men are “size queens” and I have been rejected by more than a few gay men, but now that so many men can meet on line I have been able to meet men who actually “prefer” men with small dicks and so they are not surprised by what I have to offer when we meet.  Many of them enjoy SPH (Small Penis Humiliation), but in my life I have adapted to being the subject of humor and, in some cases, can even find that sexually arousing.

So the answer to that question is “nothing”. I try to focus my life on my work, my writing, working out, outdoors activities, sports, and other subjects that interest me. If I started to look for love, it would just make me feel down, and I already struggle with depression and anxiety secretly. I don’t need the humiliation and hurt that looking for love would bring me. Sure, everybody gets rejected, but usually for less hurtful reasons.  As a bottom, many men don’t care how well I am hung.  Instead they care about how I make them feel when they fuck me, and I have learned to be a power bottom.

Guys with micropenises know we are not well-endowed, we don’t need to be reminded of it. If I’m attracted to a sexual partner, then what they have in their pants doesn’t matter to me; I care more about what that partner has in his/her heart.  My extreme self-consciousness about my body makes me feel like everyone else's opinion must be right, that there is something wrong with my size. I just wish people could look past it, so I could too.  Because intellectually I know my size is just a variation.

I try to look at it this way.  Not everyone is attracted to red hair, or freckles, or blue eyes, or black skin, or hairy chests.   People are attracted to differing qualities.  As long as I can find some people who are interested in  the qualities I possess, and are also interested n me personally, than I am gratified.

[clairebeauchampfan]

NYT; wrongthink vs. groupthink

The resignation letter of Bari Weiss, an Op-Ed editor of the New York Times. My highlighting in bold. 

“It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I'm 'writing about the Jews again.' Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly 'inclusive' one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I'm no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper's entire staff and the public. And I certainly can't square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person's ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed 'fell short of our standards.' We attached an editor's note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it 'failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa's makeup and its history.' But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed's fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its 'diversity'; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the 'new McCarthyism' that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they'll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you'll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. 'An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It's an American ideal,' you said a few years ago. I couldn't agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don't still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: 'to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.'

Ochs's idea is one of the best I've encountered. And I've always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

Sincerely,

Bari “

It’s all there; the Left’s engrained anti-semitism (so often now cloaked by ‘respectable’ anti-Zionism), the refusal to admit of other opinions, let alone to acknowledge the possibility of  their validity, the narrowing of the mind, the cancel culture, the terror of the twitter storm and the mob in the street (”the people” as they like to call themselves) , the sheer spinelessness of the institutional ‘leadership’ unless it is in support of those people who have the ‘right’ opinions.   Sadly, exactly the same process is going on at The Guardian, the BBC and our once great universities. Only Illiberal Groupthink is allowed, and former bastions of liberalism close down independent thought, the better to signal their virtue. 

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

y’know i think the main reason that i believed that i couldn’t possibly have adhd (before it became a topic on here) is because some of the people i knew who definitely have it or possibly had it/have it are guys.

the first person i met with adhd was one of my guy friends in my group at public school, who had to give his meds to the office and go there at certain times during school to take them to help him focus throughout the day. he was the hyperactive type.

there was another guy friend in that group who had adhd as well, who always said his constant interrupting of our ancient history class and his needing the social worker who would come to class with him some days was because his having adhd. now if this friend talks to me he blames his adhd on why he hates everything in life and “why just why did i never try in school and you have to fix that for me” basically becomes the main gist of every convo with him.

also i think maybe a couple of guys at catholic school in high school had it too, but the school was much better at hiding it because we had a semi well supported special ed department; so sometimes those boys would head down there and not be in a mainstream class. but if they were in a mainstream class a lot of the time they weren’t in my classes (especially in english) but instead in the bottom class. but they were defs in my maths class because two guys (one of which i thought had absolutely nothing wrong with him but now i think he could’ve actually had adhd- but if i’d thought that in school i thought he was “faking it” somehow so he could be with his friend so he didn’t feel alone in class with a special ed teachers aide).

but somehow i managed to get through high school and uni... albeit falling out of postgrad. although i don’t exactly help pay bills at home (because my dad excuses me from doing it by saying to “save your money” even though i feel like i should be paying at least some form of rent or helping with the bills) i still do buy my own groceries and stuff at the chemist. but sometimes i go overboard with buying shit on afterpay, mostly in the form of impulse buying clothes.... and i was doing this frequently during undergrad uni and postgrad... as if the clothes would fill a hole in me or something and especially after turning in an assignment and when i’d received the assignment back. it got pretty out of control. like once i spent $150 on a vibrator and during on campus uni i was spending like $150 some pay weeks on clothes i didn’t really need except to show off on campus. and this was BEFORE afterpay and other “buy now, pay later” programs were a thing. like wtf did i need to spend $150 on a fucking asos brand trench coat???? ridiculous.

it was the same with tumblr. i remember once throwing a fit because the internet wasn’t working or some shit so i couldn’t use tumblr for a few days. like how stupid is that??? i was even using tumblr during classes in uni, and that creative writing professor i had in 2017 called me out on that during one lesson... being all like “why on earth are you on social media during my class, gwladys?” and i glared at him bc tumblr was basically my entire social life. and i’ve written before about how engrossed i’d get in clearing out my blog archive and likes archive on here, that is do it until 3am without realising how time had really gone by. and it got to the point that i was doing this during my classes (both lectures and tutes) and in my breaks at uni. like it was BAD. that i couldn’t not think about it. i’d also obsess over notes as well, if i made my own posts (and i admit that i still do that).

there was also further back in 2012 and 2013 where i was so stupid jealous at the people who i considered to be “popular” at school would get 50 likes on just one status about something as pointless as “i’m making toast 🍞” or something as equally banal and pointless. so instead i got bitter and started “an experiment” where i’d study who was online and how many people were online at a certain time of day (like 8am before school, 1pm while we were at school, 6pm at dinner and then like 10pm at night before bed) and post my statuses then to see how likes i’d yield on those posts and if it got close to 20-50 likes over the multiple posts. sometimes i was lucky to get to like 10-15 likes on one status at once, and those posts made me feels vaguely successful. finally, sometimes i’d post the same status posts on here to see which social media platform would give me better results. like it was super weird.

then even further back in year 10 i got fixated on getting over the “liked pages limit” on facebook which was somewhere around like 5,000 or something. so i’d spend hours upon hours on end liking pages.... some of which i deeply regret liking when they pop up in my feed for the first time in like 10 years 😂😂😂 then sometimes my friends would post on my wall to be like “DUDE HOW THE HELL DID YOU LIKE *enter stupid fb page title here* AND 645 OTHER PAGES????!!!!” THEN as far back as year 8, i obsessed over the word count (until i finally found it was about maybe 1200 words??) on one of my best friends myspace forum pages where i’d post really fucking weird messages to her sometimes about my week and stuff, when she went overseas for 5months.... and then i turned the word count cut off thing into a competition with my other best friend bc she couldn’t figure it out and i refused to tell her the word limit 😂.

i also did the above with texts on my phone as well, and especially with my web slider phone; because that would constantly conk out when i’d write like 20page messages to my friends. i’d throw it against my bedroom wall and cry when it decided to conk our during those absolutely stupidly long messages. looking back, i don’t blame it for doing that when the phones memory was literally only like 2gb (😂😂) and i’m sure a 20page message would take up like 645 megabytes of that lmao (ok probs not but you get my point lmao). like i basically had zero filter and would write novel length messages to people.... which i still do tbh based on who i’m talking to. i just don’t know when to shut the fuck up. and that’s the same on here lmao.

anyway. this is just another musing on how maybe i could have adhd and i’m not self-diagnosing at all. but it’s stemmed from going through my posts again and people saying that i should probs get tested for adhd bc my behaviour possibly sounds like adhd in girls/women. but the problem is i’ve only ever known guys with it.

anyway don’t reblog this please and i’ll probably delete this post soon.

i just needed to vent again.

[johns-prince]

Ok so this is going to be a long post but I need someone to explain something to me. I'm a guy, I'm gay and recently I just started to get obsessed with The Beatles and John especially. Let's say I have a mad crush on the guy. I was pleased to hear thanks to some blogs like yours that he was an lgbtq ally, and there is a chance that the man of my life was also a bisexual ( strongly leaning on the male side if I read some of your blogs including yours ). But my adoration for the man has been ---

shattered since I've read on various Beatles forums that he was very homophobic and shit it hurts me to hear that. I know that he has beat up a guy for implying that he was gay, trashed a movie on homosexuality in front of everyone ( I think the movie was called Victim ), that he would openly mock his gay manager Brian Epstein ( bless him ), has called gay people nasty names during a 70s interview like AKOMP stated, that he made fun of a musician by kissing him then pushing him away and called - him a " faggot " and other incidents I can't think of right now. It just hurts a lot because I adore this man, I'm madly in love with him but I'm starting to believe that all this support for the our community had been nothing but a shtick for the " peace & love " propaganda he and Yoko started in the 70s. He also said in a interview w himself that " bisexuality is trendy " which makes me believe that I'm right. I am lost & disappointed & I'm turning to you guys to clarify all of this to me pls.

Well first of all, hullo! I totally understand having a mad crush on John, as well as him being The Man of My Life. 

Yes, it’s true! The Beatles in general were very ahead of their time; none of them had any real issue with homosexuals, though perhaps a bit put off at times because of their upbringing and culture and all that, but they were supportive and never understood why these people were treated so poorly. They had a gay manager, it’d be weird for them to be homophobic while treating Brian like a parental figure, loved him and adored him [even if they did tease him a bit behind his back, or even in front of him-- they teased everyone, doesn’t mean they held any ill feelings towards Brian because he was gay] and being part of the music/artsy crowd, they all had gay/bisexual friends, open or not. 

I truly believe John was bisexual, and while he never outright stated it, I believe he would have eventually directly came out if he had not been killed. 

He was moreso testing the waters though, talking about that when he was 15 he thought he’d have to go and marry off some wealthy old woman or man to continue his passion for art/literature; frequented gay bars with Harry Nilsson, and while he claimed he did it to put off the press-- we know that what he did would have the opposite effect, the press would be constantly on watch, being that there was John Lennon going about gay bars! John could be a terrible liar; even during his Hamburg days, John was described as seeming at home in bars featuring drag queens, and was told he found it stupid how the ‘’culture’’ of gay individuals in industries like music or art, the “scenes” were championed, but the people in general were treated like shit; later on John says gay people are beautiful during an interview [in the 70s I believe]; he’s quoted saying that people should be able to love anyone, that it shouldn’t matter who someone loves; back to the Hamburg era, apparently John had been caught in a drag club/transvestite bar, you know, getting frisky with one by I guess the club runner? and he was all embarrassed of course, but the man didn’t judge him; John is described as someone who was always willing to experiment, after agreeing to a threesome with someone, again back in Germany, one female and another male [though the female was between them, not sure if anything happened between John and the other male]; yes I remember reading somewhere that John did kiss another male performer, before shoving him off and responded crudely; Yoko saying how she’d ‘’teasingly’’ call John a Closeted Fag; Yoko claiming John had told her he would have slept with a man, but he hadn’t found a man beautiful and intelligent enough for him to want to bed him [lies]; Yoko claiming that John had thought about having an affair with Paul; there’s rumors about John and David Bowie; that John had let Brian jerk him off and touch him during their trip to Spain [how John claims it wasn’t fully consummated, that is, no intercourse]; John in an interview saying how he hasn’t slept with a man-- but who knows? Life begins at 40!; John saying how Yoko reminded him of a bloke in drag, and how she was basically like a best mate, but it was easier because with her he could fuck her and love her in public; how he was found holding Brian’s hand by George and Pattie and someone else, and made it a note to showcase his holding of Brian’s hand, because being homosexual was still illegal then-- and there was John, trying to show that “yeah it’s okay.”; and there’s probably much more stories about John when it came to his sexual leaning towards men, though most have probably died with close friends and lovers.

Now, I think what happens is that these people forget the context surrounding John’s life; he wasn’t born in today’s world, he was born in the 40s and raised in the 50s-- being homosexual was illegal, and taught as something shameful, wrong, sick. Even though the boys were relatively very open and ahead of their time, they still grew up in all that, and so of course they still had ignorance and “fear” of homosexuality, of being anything but the expected standard of masculinity. 

John wasn’t the only one who mocked or teased Brian about being gay-- the other boys did it too, though moreso behind his back. John only did this when he was in a very sour mood though, as he did with anyone, he’d hone in on what was considered a sore spot, or weakness of theirs, and jab at it. He’d never mean anything by it though, and would often go talk to them afterwards an try to explain that-- his roundabout way of “apologizing,” that he never meant it, he was only joking, and he might hug them. No one was really safe from John’s sharp tongue when he got into those low points, aggressive and biting. John loved Brian, absolutely did, Brian was a very important paternal figure in John’s life as John never had a good one. When Brian died it devastated all of them, especially John, because again he had lost a very close male friend, too soon or too young, they’d always leave him. John loved Brian, and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they’re either lying or ignorant themselves. 

Now, I think it was actually pretty important for John to tell that story about beating up Bob Wooler, and be as honest as he could about the whole thing, and owned up to his rather intolerant reaction to someone suggesting John was “a queer,” essentially [this was indeed after going off with Brian to Spain, so really everyone had been making sly comments– but that time around, John was drunk, and Drunk John is not at all sensible or cool]

“Bob had been insinuating that me and Brian had had an affair in Spain. And I must have been frightened of the fag in me to get so angry. I was out of my mind with drink - you know, when you get down to the point where you want to drink out of all the empty glasses; that drunk. And Bob was saying, ‘Come on, John, tell me about you and Brian - we all know.’ You know when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man - if somebody had said it now I wouldn’t give a shit, but I was beating the shit out of him, hitting him with a big stick, and for the first time I thought, ‘I can kill this guy.’ I just saw it, like on a screen: if I hit him once more, that’;s going to be it. I really got shocked. That’s when I gave up violence, because all my life I’d been like that.”

- John Lennon, 1972 Anthology [x]

I think it says a lot, you know, John claiming he was afraid of the fag in him-- I mean, wouldn’t that mean that John knew a part of him was queer then? I think this was part of John confessing, though again, barely anyone caught onto it around that time. This is where I think John was projecting, and most of the ‘’homophobic’’ behavior he showcased was simply a product of internalized homophobia/biphobia. 

Also apparently John was INCREDIBLY, horribly remorseful and ashamed of what he had done to Bob-- I think he had gone to him and tried to apologize and show how sorry he was, how ashamed. 

I haven’t heard anything about John trashing the movie because of it being homosexual, so I can’t say much about that. 

So yeah, my conclusion is that a lot of what John did or said was a product of not only his upbringing/society and of internalized homophobia/biphobia. 

John grew up as a musician and individual in the “gay” scene, had many gay and bisexual friends from the industry, seemed to adore and love drag queens, was close friends with Elton Jon, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, loved and truly did look up to his manager Brian Epstein, thought it stupid gay people were treated like shite despite their contributions to the culture they all loved, thought Elvis was beautiful and was often caught commenting about it by friends, was always willing to “experiment,” his wife thought he was a bit of a closeted fag, that he would have slept with a man though he had never found one that met his expectations [liar], how his first love was Paul, that he fell for Paul’s looks like everyone else, thought Paul was the prettiest, Yoko claiming John had contemplated having an affair with Paul-- like, the list goes on. 

His support and acceptance of LGBT individuals was there long before Yoko-- so I wouldn’t really put the two in the same area, that being, yeah the whole political-era and “Peace and Love,” was brainwashing and influenced by Yoko, but not his beliefs towards the LGBT. 

Also, bisexual was seen as ‘’trendy’’ as, you see, bisexuality was actually considered a bit of a “new” thing; you were either gay or straight, even if you loved both men and women, you were considered a queer. I think that also messed with John’s already confused and frustrated view of his sexuality. And before that, it was considered a Bohemian Lifestyle-- try everything, sleep with men and women. 

I think if anything, John was possibility irritated with the fact bisexuality was considered a trend. 

I dunno, I try to remember the period and cultural context when talking about John, or anyone really, because it’s not very fair to judge them based on today’s culture and societal acceptance. It’s easy for us to judge them, not to try and understand them.

[mortuarybees]

most esteemed mr mortuarybees- having followed the few posts pertaining to the interaction b/w yourself and your mother, i applaud you for your calm nature and amicable reaction to the situation at hand. could a fellow ask you for advice on how to achieve that level of composure? i find that my dearest mother is also of the belief that i dress myself the way i do precisely to spite her (which is untrue, ofcourse, i do so to relieve my poor self of whatever amount of dysphoria i can) and (1/?)

unlike yourself, i find myself easily encouraged to rash behaviour, oftentimes accompanied by many tears. i am of a singularly excitable nature, and it seems as if my emotions have a way of getting the better of me. i am aware that this is a strain in my relationship with my dearest mother, and thus i ask you, nay, beg you to share some advice with this poor soul- how do i remain calm in similar situations? i so wish a reality in which my darling mother would just accept his son the way he is, and we could work on building a stronger, more precious mother-son relationship, but as is, our bond is strained by sentiments of betrayal and misunderstanding. anywho, thank you kindly for your time and i do hope i have not put myself forward too boldly in asking for advice- and if i so have, please feel free to tell me to back off, as it were, and a word from you shall silence me on this matter indefinitely. and thank you, my good sir, for the delightful content you put here.

Dearest Anon,

You will find my response below, both due to the personal nature of my reply, and its length.

You have not been too bold at all, sir, nor have you offended me; to the contrary, I’m very honored that you have sought my advice. Unfortunately, I fear the advice I do have will not be terribly useful. The relationship between my mother and I is fraught, and one I am often hesitant to speak on in detail in a public forum, but will describe, for your sake. At a young age, my family endured a rather difficult schism involving my siblings, which I believe was not handled well, and for much of my adolescence, my mother suffered from a very deep depression, and still does, though now she communicates more openly with me on the subject. I, too, have struggled with depression for as long as I can remember, and encountered some difficulties not long after the aforementioned schism which my mother is still not aware of to this day, nor, I think, will she ever be. All of this resulted in a rather distant relationship despite our co-residence, sometimes speaking only once in a day, and very briefly. Usually, these interactions were quite negative; often even now, with our relationship much improved, any kind words are certain to be passive aggressive, or what one might call a backhanded compliment. Though I love my mother dearly, and do not wish to give any impression to the contrary, I have some unfortunate resentment towards her for this emotional absence, and general suspicion of her intentions.

I made my journey with my sexuality and gender quite alone but for a very dear friend, as many lgbt+ people do, with my mother a very distant thought. She is not horrifically homophobic or transphobic, nor has she ever been, aside from occasional careless comments common to a southern conservative, and in this I am very lucky; however, she is afflicted with the suburban curse: a steadfast belief that if we do not discuss it, it is not real. I have not, truly, made a concerted effort to remain closeted, and I am fairly certain she knows, or suspects, that I am trans, and chooses not to remark upon it, aside from occasional outbursts or snide commentary on the masculinity of my presentation. These are the comments that truly distress me, and continue to do so. However, more often she simply makes comments on the absurdity or formality of my sartorial sensibilities, and these I find amusing, or in some sense validating, both given my lingering childish resentment, and because she is quite the parody of a suburban heterosexual, and so her disapproval is in some ways a compliment to me. If she did express appreciation for an outfit or article of clothing, I would feel it necessary to change, as clearly I am not dressing in such a way that Wilde or Welch would approve.

My advice is quite unfortunate: if your mother is not willing to change, the surest path to your own happiness and an improved relationship is to endeavor towards some emotional detachment from her and her approval. Do not mistake me, I do not advise disowning her, or necessarily even reducing contact with her, unless you wish to or the latter proves necessary for this aim. Taking a metaphorical step back from your relationship in your own heart and mind and surrounding yourself with others who validate and appreciate you and your wonderful gender expression will ease some of the pain of her rejection. In my case, the emotional distance due to other factors helped to keep her disapproval from ever overwhelming me too terribly much when I was younger. Now, as an adult who was separated physically from her for two years while living in my university’s dormitories, and as an overly introspective and analytical person (read: I overthink everything, and stew until I’ve worked something out), I find it easier to view her unclouded by my own hurt feelings, and see our relationship more for what it is: I love her dearly, and she loves me, I do not doubt, but it is very likely that we would not get along if we were not mother and son. When I realized that she did not especially like me as a person, it was admittedly very hurtful–especially because she has, drunkenly, essentially admitted to this–but as time went on, I realized that were she not my mother, it’s likely that I would not like her as a person, either.

In short (or, as short as I ever am), I accepted that we would never have an extremely close relationship–she will not accompany me to receive my first testosterone shot, nor will she be the person who cares for me after top surgery; she will attend my wedding, but she will not be overly involved in its planning; though I often call her when I am down and lonely because I love her and her voice and conversation cheer me, and I know she will pick up, she is not the person I will call if I need to talk about whatever it is that troubles me; if I am in danger, or legal or financial trouble, I will call her, and I know she will do her best to help, but if I am upset, if something has happened in my personal life, I’m panicking or depressed, I know I should not call her to discuss it, because she will not understand, and may be annoyed, and will likely unintentionally make me feel worse–and that has allowed our relationship to greatly improve.

It’s a very difficult thing, to accept that for our own sake, our parents should not be as important to us as they are, that they will not give us the approval and connection we long for and, being only human, require, but it has helped me a great deal emotionally, and it has helped our relationship. Being a step removed, I am able to brush off her disdain in a way I could not when I was fifteen and more desperate for her approval. Understand that though she is your beloved mother, she is also a flawed person, and her disapproval does not reflect on you, but rather on her own views and sensibilities. There are other people in the world who will give you the unconditional acceptance you wish for and deserve–and never doubt that. You do deserve it, and you will receive it. There are important aspects of your experience that she does not and will never understand, and that does not mean she doesn’t love you, or that you shouldn’t have a relationship with her, but for your own sake, I advise that you put some emotional distance between you. Of course, if you feel this advise is not especially useful to you, or not the way you wish to go about it, you are perfectly free to disregard it, as I can only speak from my own experiences.

With my fondest wishes,

Henry 🐝

[soulfulzebrablogs]

The new Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star series? Sure, we can talk about it.

An Introduction to the review of The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star series. 

I was born in the 90s, which means that my formative years began and mostly ran its course in the 2000s, the rise of the social media age. When the mid-2000s arrived, I was blissfully unaware of the social media platform that was about to change all of our lives. I remember the day distinctly, it was 2005, 12 year old me was at UCLA, not quite a college student yet but rather waiting for my mom to get off work with my sister and dad. I was on the computer minding my own business, probably perusing on a Kingdom Hearts forum site, and out of nowhere my sister comes to me and exclaimed “yo, have you heard about this new website where you can go to post videos of whatever?! It’s crazy!” And trust, this at the time was a crazy concept to comprehend. Perhaps I’ll get into this more another time but let’s just say there was no website like Youtube before and there still really isn’t one like it now. The competition has been light at best (I guess IGTV is the current closest competitor… Vimeo had a moment, still kind of does honestly), and with a website that’s all about Broadcasting Yourself, some wise individuals got the idea to become early stars on the platform. 

I remember at school the conversation went from “did you see that Chocolate Rain video?” to “Have you seen that Shane Dawson video?” Kids loved Shane and his edgy edge lord humor, not going to lie, I was not a huge fan. He had a couple of videos that amused me like the infamous video where he killed one of the earliest and biggest internet stars, Fred, and his Lady Gaga parody video, but aside from those, the whole edgy humor for the sake of being edgy never appealed to me and my musing, and that’s saying a lot because I’m quite easily amused by damn near everything. 

As for Jeffree Star, I used to hear his name all the time and thought for a long time that he was Chris Croker, the man behind the iconic “leave Brittney alone” video, classic mix up. But in recent years I’ve realized and heard things about him that were quite troubling, particularly the racial remarks he has been caught saying on video… multiple times (Note: Jeffree has since come out about this addressing his past racist remarks a couple of years ago). In their first collaborative series titled The Secret World of Jeffree Star, these scandals were talked about at length in one of the series’ episodes where both him and Shane shared their similar experience as being labeled extremely problematic in their early career to say the least. 

They both express their regrets for their past mistakes and realize the consequences of being in the digital space and age; everything you do somehow lives on the internet forever and when you’re in the public eye, your past discretions will be known to people who pay attention and hold on to the receipts. As a young black woman with big aspirations in the Entertainment Industry, for people like Shane and Jeffree, the question of if they are or were racist will always linger in the back of my mind as I watch their collaborative projects unfold. But at last, these reviews won’t necessarily focus on their past transgressions unless it comes up or makes since to bring them up, it all depends on how the content unfolds in front of us, in real time. 

The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star series is basically an idea that was suggested in the last series come to life: what is the process of creating and marketing a makeup line, products, and merchandise from start to finish whilst also examining the beauty world through the lens of Shane and Jeffree’s (and Andrew too, the cameraman and Shane’s co-editor) eyes. This is especially interesting that Shane, an industry outsider and one the most popular Youtube creators ever, come into this world, and collaborate with Jeffree Star, one of if not the top beauty and business guru. It cannot be understated how ingenious this move is and the absurd amount of money Shane, Jeffree and Jeffree’s company are about to make with this partnership. I have watched all of Shane’s person studies style documentaries since he changed to this format about a year and a half ago (eventually, I’ll do a breakdown of all the series, the people examined, the progressions, etc.)  but I must say, this one I am particularly interested in to see the scandal that rocked all scandals on Youtube that was unfolding while this series was being filmed, and Jeffree and Shane were in the middle of it. Most of you reading this probably know what I’m talking about. I won’t go into details about it now (but if you want the details of all the tea, check out these videos on from the Youtube channel Spill), I’ll wait for whatever episode or episodes discuss and show the drama, and so far it hasn’t happened yet, but Shane and his cameraman and co-editor Andrew have done a clever job of foreshadowing what they know will be the big event of the series. So much was left unsaid after that whole ordeal, that it left me and others wondering, with this series: 

Will we as viewers be left with more questions than answers? Will that whole fiasco be put to bed? What new information will come from this? What exactly was Jeffree and Shane’s involvement in it all? Why did they insert themselves into the drama at all? Was Tati influenced by them to break this scandal? And finally: was Jeffree Star in the right and if so how are Shane and Andrew going to make Jeffree look sympathetic? 

The only question I know for sure will be shown is the last one, for Shane has proven time and time again that a big focal point of these series is to show these seemingly irredeemable figures in a different light, giving problematic creators a platform to have their Redemption Arc narratives. So far, for good or bad, these series have been shown to persuade minds, especially when it comes to Jeffree Star (the other people in Shane’s other series are debatable at this point when we compare long term and short term effects they’ve had on Youtube audiences). But now I’m getting a bit ahead of myself for the first two parts of the series doesn’t really get into this tea yet. 

So with this not-so-quick summary and back story out of the way, we can get into the reviews, the format for them will be very much like this, free flowing thoughts and opinions on each episode. Since the episodes/parts 1 and 2 are already out, I’ll go ahead and merge those two parts together, especially since the first episode I felt served as an overview of the story and the tone of the series will be partaking in moving forward… also this introduction has turned into such an elongated analytical explanation that I think if you’ve made it this far, you’re a champ and I shall reward you by giving your sleepy, information overload eyes a break (also, let’s be real, this will help me stay on track and post more… it’s the little tricks we do to motivate ourselves). But if you want more, I should have my parts 1 and 2 review up sooner rather than later, unless some major life events happens like Dramagedon 3.0. With that, I digress, until the next episode.

[japanessie]

Hi Shelly! I'm sorry you're feeling blue! I was going to ask that about Taka and Hiro, too, but was worried I'd get too upset but since someone else asked anyway...It just kind of made me wince with hurt for Hiro when a few years ago Taka ranted on instagram about privacy (for his own life, not about his family). Like, where was your voice when your own fans were BULLYING your baby brother or when they posted on a forum after the ONE time Tomohiro finally showed his face, they asked if he was...

[2/3] Adopted! He already had issues being on camera (hasnt been on since, cant blame him). So, Hiroki looks too much like Taka but Tomo doesn’t look enough? They’re his little brothers, I think bullying BOTH Little brothers is when the time to speak up is. I’m not saying the bros cant handle themselves but I just feel Hiro, aside from mfs, has been on his own. It would be nice if his eldest brother took responsibility for his so called “fans” who attack his family and stood up… 

[3/3] Sorry it just hits close to home. I know what it’s like 2 not have your older bro there when u need him most. When he leaves u in a house burning with hatred (i got to hear my parents accuse each other of cheating while my bro was out smoking & drinking. It makes me wonder what Hiroki heard when no one thought he was listening). I dont mean to take it personally or anything, I just feel like Hiroki & I are very similar. It’s why I like mfs. I’m sorry, I just have no one else to talk about it to.

−−−−−−−−−−−−−− −−−−−−−−−−−−−−

Hi 😊. I combined your messages together into one for easier reading

First of all I’m sorry for the pain that you personally had to go through. I hope you’re doing okay 🤗. At the same time though, I see uniqueness besides similarities in everybody’s situation. 

1. Someone who is broken can’t be a crutch for someone else

In a traditional family setup in many cultures, even more prominent in Asian cultures, the eldest child is always the one assumed to carry responsibilities of looking after the younger ones. In a family crisis situation, while the younger ones theoretically have the one they can turn to, the eldest child has nobody and is usually left to fend for himself and everybody else. 

Some elder kids have the inner strength and maturity to carry it at young age but some really struggle with it and only develop at a later age. Your brother and Taka seem to be in the latter category. Like Taka, your brother walked out because he was hurting and that was the shortcut way he knew how to surpress it and to stay away from what was troubling him at home. He couldn’t be your pillar when he was broken himself. Just like Taka who took the quick way out and his story had been well documented. 

Also, a lot of times, someone who feels worthless doesn’t understand why anyone would feel hurt to see him walk away. I’m sure Taka himself only fully began to understand NOW, as an adult, the hurt he caused Hiro when he walked away back then. In his mind, he was a loser. Not doing well in school, stressed out over the parents’ marriage breaking up, not getting along with their father, very unhappy and not knowing where his future was heading. Certainly not someone for little Hiro to look up to. How would he look after Hiro when he could barely take care of himself?

* The Moriuchi brothers in those days when they used to be around each other a lot, before OOR moved out of Japan 😊

2. Some people need to pull themselves together first before they can love others

That dark period in Taka’s life was not something he’s proud of. He acknowledges it in interviews and his lyrics. Even OOR members admitted that Taka wasn’t exactly a pleasant person to deal with when they first found him. But once he got his life on track, things fell into places. He made amend with his father and got back the Moriuchi name. While Taka couldn’t give back the years with him that Hiro lost, he let Hiro hang around his friends and be a part of his life back in that way. 

Even Hiro never denied the perks of being Taka’s brother. The most significant was when one of Taka’s close friends K from Pay Money To My Pain befriended Hiro and how that friendship led to the formation of MY FIRST STORY. 

Think again, would Kei Goto a.k.a the late K simply befriend a random underaged high school kid just like that? I highly doubt it 🤔. Hiroki Moriuchi was NOT some random high school kid. K and Taka were buddies and Hiro the high school kid was Taka’s little brother. I doubt Taka would let his little brother hang around someone he didn’t trust. He knew Hiro was in good hands. All these happened only after Taka got his life back on track and was able to be the big brother figure he was meant to be for Hiro.

3. Taka publicly standing up for Hiro would be bad for Hiro’s image

Yes, it would be counter-productive for Taka to do so. You see, the ROOT of the hate and cyber-bullying towards Hiro stemmed from how easy things happened for him because of his family connection. If Taka had spoken out, it would make Hiro appear weak and ultra-dependant on his big brother. 

“Duh! Not only he got a band because he’s Taka brother. Now, he needs to be protected like a baby!” 

Hmm … does that sound good to you? We also need to see things from the haters’ perspective too, you know. Oh, with Papa being a multi-millionaire? Trust me. Hiro would get even less respect if any of his family members had spoken out for him. The bullying might get even worse. 

As for Tomo, anything his family members say would bring unnecessary attention to him. He appeared on TV that one time because of his job at the station. Otherwise, he’s very private. It’s unfair on him if his famous family gives more reasons for the public to scrutinize his life when that’s the last thing he wants. 

4. Being seen publicly as a brave independent fighter would be far more beneficial for Hiro

It worked well for Taka. He only started displaying his bonds with his parents AFTER he had firmly made a name for himself even though they had been on good terms since the early days of OOR. Likewise, Hiro would be less relatable to many fans if he is constantly being taken care of by his more famous and successful family members. Isn’t that the public perception Hiro is still trying hard to break away from? 

Not just the Moriuchi, I have never seen being publicly defended by family members work well for ANY celebrity in the world. It may work for ordinary folks but things work differently for famous people. 

I do support Hiro but I think even his most ardent supporters would agree that he somewhat gives off these “baby” vibes. MFS members themselves seem protective towards him. They let him be mischievious, loud and boisterous with them but they’re always there to hug him when he cries. Therefore, independence from his family would balance that out nicely.

5. Taka made a conscious choice to speak only for himself because he knew any reaction to it would be directed to him and ONLY him

As opposed to Taka speaking out for any of his family members, whom the public might hurl the hate and negative reaction to instead. 

Things just work differently for celebrities. In a way, to minimize the bullying towards their loved ones, staying out of their public battle a lot of times is the better way to go. By not bringing more attention to it. 

Likewise, none of Taka’s family members said anything when Taka had to face a barrage of criticism and angry reactions at the time. The ones who publicly defended him were his friends and peers. Guys like Mah (SiM) and Masato (Coldrain) among some. For celebrities, somehow testimonies from people they have worked with or even strangers they have encountered hold much higher values than family members. 

With their chosen careers, backlash and criticism come with the territory. That’s what their parents want to instill in the two brothers. “You have chosen this path. Learn to deal with it.“

6. Rude fans are rude fans nonetheless

Rude people don’t suddenly become angels just because their idols ask them to. Just look at the backlash against Taka. It was quite brutal. Just like how Hiro got pictures of a woman pooping by his haters, I saw a photo of a “hairy ding dong” for Taka among some, along with truckloads of really scathing words. By his own fans (or should I say “ex-fans"?). If this kind of fans are willing to treat Taka like that just from ONE social media post, then nothing good can come out of it if Taka had said or done anything about Hiro’s haters. The ones who would cheer him would still be the same ones who already support MFS anyway. 

Remember when fans were speculating that OOR’s song Right By Your Side as being dedicated to Hiro? Those who like MFS thought it was a sweet gesture but those who don’t like MFS used it as an excuse to say, “Look! Taka wrote a song for Hiro. Yet he still wants to call Taka his rival. What a low life!”. Yes, I’ve personally seen comments like that. So, see? Whatever Taka does regarding Hiro, mean-spirited people will still find a way to set fire to it.

7. There must be more than meets the eye

Fans went nuts when the brothers wore this pair of pants. I doubt it’s a coincidence that Hiro suddenly is comfortable wearing Taka’s look when he used to be sensitive about being called Taka’s copy before.

But that’s not even something new. in January 2018, Taka posted a photo of himself wearing this Monster’s Inc hoodie at Disneyland. That same month, Hiro was wearing that same Disney hoodie at his 24th birthday party.

Heaven knows what Taka had said to Hiro in private especially after MFS Budokan show 🤔. At the end of the day, they are family and though I also know many families who cut ties from each other, Taka and Hiro clearly are the ones who keep theirs 😉.

2 more cents

I feel that Taka is doing the right thing by staying away from Hiro publicly. Not responding to the negativity surrounding Hiro but still letting fans know that his little brother has his full support.

[geek-gem]

I’ve been working on this for some days. Because of Aawesomepenguin’s latest post. I know how the Sonic movie goes. While we have known some stuff of it already before. But not in that much detail. 

This is basically my what if idea for a Sonic movie. I’ve made two of these before. The first being with Metal Sonic and Silver Sonic, the 2nd I’d like to called the, “Chaos Draft” because it was a loose adaption of Sonic Adventure and borrowing heavily from the fake Reddit info leak I’ve talked about before. 

Really I’ll give my honest thoughts on the Sonic movie when I see it personally. Because I don’t wanna just slam a whole bunch of negativity on it. But I’m mainly disappointed by the fact of the direction it went. I might end up loving the film. Yet I would of liked something like a more serious take on the franchise. Let me talk deep here mate.

I’ve wanted to talk about this despite this has been said in my head. I would love if it Sonic was made cool again. Which is a intriguing topic because hasn’t Sonic always been cool? It depends on how you see it. Which is why I seem more serious on a Sonic movie adaptation than other video game adaptions. Because the franchise means a lot to me. Which is why I want the movie to be good and hopefully the reception gets better because of it.

Despite I’ve learned I shouldn’t do a condensed loose version of Sonic Adventure and whatever else. My biggest inspirations for this new version of my Sonic movie was taken from several things. Such as my love for the 2018 movie adaption of Rampage by Brad Peyton. Which helped inspired this vision in a weird way. 

Along with Paul W.S. Anderson’s RE films mainly the first because of well those films aren’t big. Mainly low budget. So I decided to not take a risk with Chris Pratt as the lead character. Especially there were other characters in actors and characters. But also the mis-mash of ideas which is risky. Considering the first RE movie took elements from RE 1 and 2 and I wanted to try something like that.

The other inspiration was Sonic Adventure 2. Such as using elements from that story but not all of it where it be a direct adaption. This is the reason why I’ve been playing the game more(Mainly if I recall on the Dreamcast). To get inspiration for this story. While Adventure 2 suffers problems such as with writing and other things, it’s a game I personally love. Including this is a reason why Rouge is here(Along with the reason I want Lisa voicing that character), and other elements as well. Also considering when the Sonic movie we were getting was getting written. The Adventure games such as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was an inspiration. Basically this classic image here. 

Including other info I’ve learned from here about Van. https://www.bumbleking.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7576&start=210&sid=2d070269a047bd57674d2db32b49a8f8 Gonna be honest I did not expect that image to be put here I was expecting a link.

Basically I wanted to make a outline while it’s not a draft. But a story I was happy with and I thought would make a good start off for Sonic movie. A story I felt would of been good as a stand alone in a way but it might get sequels anyway. Which is why it’s not just a simple origin story you have Sonic, Eggman, Tails, Amy Rose, Rouge, Metal Sonic, Silver Sonic, the GUN Commander, and the president(with his secretary of course). Especially that fake Reddit leaked story was in mind with the areas. But still it’s a story I feel personally happy with. Despite I have not written a script but it’s the outline I like.

In a similar way to the 2018 Rampage movie. Which while there are other nice and good video game movie adaptions as well such as Detective Pikachu. My direction for a film like this(it would be directed by someone else or whatever) is gonna be a lot more bad ass, a bit more serious, but most importantly a lot more emotional. 

Especially to aim for a PG-13 rating that older audiences can enjoy. Along with the other goal to understand who Sonic is as a character when he’s involved in a more serious situation where the world is kind of against him, he’s been framed, Robotnik and the, “Metal Brothers” are out to kill him. With Ian being this surrogate of like the fans that love Sonic(which may seem weird as hell), but also being a person that develops this close bond with this creature because they are very alike. Including Ian will risk his life to make sure this creature who has become his best friend, almost like a brother won’t die. But also with these other characters too such as Tails and Amy.

Including the other point is to make a surrogate better than well Chris Thorndyke because he’s a character that I felt should of been better. Yet Sonic is still the main protagonist with Ian being a deuteragonist. It’s to show in a setting like this humans can be pretty good characters if handled right. That’s why he’s there too in a way.

While I have thought of the idea people would look at the, “Make Sonic cool again” as a way of it being brought back to levels of Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic 06. But more so again like the Dreamcast era and some modern games and some classic games thrown in there a bit too. 

Besides I think I’ve made too many of these. I’m officially gonna stop because I’m kind of happy with what I did. With this idea because it’s I guess almost everything I want. It’s a reasonable starting point for a Sonic movie. Because it has things I like and would like to see in a movie. So I’m pleased with it. I’m being an annoyance to folks anyway making this shit. Because it seems disrespectful I make these while a movie is coming out anyway that’s already completed in a way. Despite we are getting a redesign. 

But again here’s my what if idea for a Sonic movie. Whether it could be at Paramount, or even at Warner Bros with Legendary Pictures. I’ve rambled on too long I talk too much. 

“Sometimes you gotta go fast! In a action packed adventure based upon the popular and iconic video game series, Sonic The Hedgehog.

The world is in serious danger when an insane scientist by the name of Dr. Ivo Robotnik(Jeffrey Dean Morgan) plans to take it over. His goal is to use the power of the mysterious Chaos Emeralds to power his machines. To ensure his victory, Robotnik has made certain robots that will make sure he is able to obtain his goal for world domination.

Now because of being mistaken for a villainous robot who looks like him. Sonic(Tom Holland), the world’s fastest hedgehog is on the run from the military. Along the way he meets a young GUN soldier Ian Andrews(Brenton Thwaites), a man who wants to help everyone the best he can. 

With them teaming up, on the run from the military known as GUN, and to get the Chaos Emeralds and stop Robotnik from achieving his goal. But during this time as they fight through a ever changing battlefield. Ian must make sure not only help stop a global catastrophe. Yet to also save Sonic who he’s developed an unshakable bond with. Especially from the horrifying threat of Metal Sonic”.

Characters.

Sonic The Hedgehog. Voiced by Tom Holland. A 21 year old hedgehog who’s cocky but kind and chill. 4 feet tall. The world’s fastest hedgehog who while being framed by Metal Sonic, wants to save the planet from Robotnik. Even if it means risking his own life helping these humans who don’t understand who he is as a person. Because he knows it’s the right thing to do/

Ian Andrews. Played by Brenton Thwaites. The 21 year old GUN Private who helps assist Sonic to save the planet. A young man who joined GUN because he wanted to simply helped people in his area. While only a Private assigned in his home area to defend it. He is courageous despite being afraid of certain enemies. Especially because he wants to simply help everyone the best he can. Including the blue hedgehog who he develops an unshakable bond with, almost like a brother. He knows Sonic is innocent and risks his life to reveal the truth.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The 55 year old scientist with an IQ of 300. Who wants to take over the planet, along with making Robotnikland a reality. While he may be hilarious, he is a rather cruel, narcissistic, and a very intelligent man who will do anything to get what he wants.

Miles Tails Prower. Voiced by: Noah Schnapp. A 14 year old two tailed fox. 3 feet tall. He’s an intelligent engineer and inventor who flies a plane, and Sonic’s best friend, who is like Sonic’s younger brother.

Amy Rose. Voiced by Maisie Williams. A 18 year old hedgehog. 4 feet tall. While she admittedly has a crush on Sonic. She’s like to make it as public. But she is a kind hearted young woman who wants to help her friends and will fight for them if needed. Especially to never give up on them.

Rouge The Bat. Voiced by Lisa Hannigan. A 24 year old bat who is helping Robotnik but is secretly a GUN agent. 4 feet tall. While a treasure hunter and even a thief. She’s actually much more kind than people think about her. Despite her narcissism, being strong minded, and flirtatious.

Metal Sonic. A robotic copy of Sonic himself and Robotnik’s personal enforcer. 4 feet tall. Inspired by Sonic’s skills and speed. Metal is Robotnik’s greatest creation. With a goal set in mind by Robotnik, to kill Sonic once and for all while being Robotnik’s personal enforcer and leader of his robotic army. But as time goes on, Metal becomes more obsessed with Sonic to where he thinks there can only be one Sonic.

Silver Sonic. Another robotic copy of Sonic and Robotnik’s powerhouse of a brute. 16 feet tall. While not as self aware as Metal. Silver Sonic’s doesn’t care and just would rather listen to his master Robotnik. Built to simply destroy anyone or anything that gets in the doctors way.

Abraham Westbrook the GUN Commander. Played by Idris Elba. The 53 year old commander who leads the GUN military. While trying to figure out what’s going on with Robotnik and Sonic. He’s trying to stop any possible threats to thw world.

Gabriel Ivan the President of the United States. Played by Oded Fehr. The 51 year old president of the USA. Who while trying to do what’s best for nation’s people and be against Robotnik. He understands Ian’s situation considering he was once a solider in the GUN military and just wanted to do the right thing. He’s also the one who sent Rouge to go undercover with Robotnik and to find Sonic as well.

To be honest I have thought about other characters. Such as being played by actors being like callbacks to stuff. Such as Deedee Magno Hall(Steven Universe), Jennifer Paz(Steven Universe), Shelby Rabara(Steven Universe), and Emilia Clarke. But I have realized there are too many characters if you don’t handle them right. Besides I think I just wanna post this after seeing that spoilers filled post. 

Including I’ll leave the little details under this with areas and the inspirations. Which I have talked already about. Other details are that I’d would love Andrew Lockington to do the score. 

I’ll also admit Ian who is not Gary anymore or he could be a younger brother of Gary. Ian is basically inspired by Leon Kennedy especially the RE2 remake version. Including I decided to make Ian’s Sonic’s new age because it might help them connect more or so.

I’m not gonna do a RT score because I don’t want to. Besides we haven’t even got the Sonic movie out yet with no score. I’m talking about Rotten Tomatoes. Hopefully you enjoy this or so. It’s just me rambling and yeah I’m done with these. Because I feel happy when I think about this story. Yet also it’s probably secretly annoying people now. Since I’ve just put down the tags, hope no one minds this in the Sonic movie positivity tag. Because I don’t really shit on the movie. Yet I want this to get some attraction. Despite I know my long rambling will turn people off.

Areas: 

Central City.

Green Hill.

Chemical Plant.

South Island.

Metropolis zone.

Inspirations:

Sonic Adventure 2.

[sht-ccshippers-say]

So since the tinhats have to follow each other with everything, kfs has followed Abby with their own essay response to the same anon ask. So time for another tinhat breakdown!

I was going to respond to an ask and reply found on @ajw720 blog (reblogged below), however, I thought I would do so as a post. 

Both the ask and the reply are brilliant and state the facts as we CCer’s believe. 

Just because CrissColfer shippers believe something does not make it a fact. A fact is something that is proven to be true. Nothing tinhats say can be proven. It is opinion and conjecture.

I found this transaction had a peacefulness to it which stimulated thought. To me this is what supporting D & C is all about.  The words are sincere and non-inflammatory while stating personal opinion. This is how, in my view, asks and replies should be – sticking to the facts as we know it, while trying keeping emotion out of it.

When have tinhats ever kept emotion out of anything? If you were keeping emotion out of it, you would not be so angered by the mere presence of a woman who has never done anything to you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know keeping emotions out of things is hard. We are all human after all. The question is, how do express them? Negatively or positively?

I have been advised by several CCer’s to ignore what many call ‘hate”, but I prefer to call it negative emotion. These types of emotions are often meant to provoke or will provoke an equal response. To be perfectly honesty, there are many of our posts which, I believe, impact us CCer’s in an adverse fashion. In my opinion, these emotionally charged replies or independent posts makes us look bad.

“I prefer to call it negative emotion”....is this tinhat trying to gaslight their own fandom? Is this what is happening here?

And FYI, every single Tinhat/ CrissColfer post makes you all look bad. Because every single one stems from hate and is based in insults.

That said, I have to admit, I found what I call CCland through a nasty tweet from M directed at @ajw720. 

Does anybody have any idea which tweet they might be referring to here? I haven’t heard this fabricated story from tinhats before. Seriously, Abby would be screaming about this 24/7, if Mia had tweeted her. Unless, of course, Mia was responding to something disgusting Abby had said. Also doesn't Abby constantly scream not to contact the “players” directly? This story here does not add up- like everything else in CC Fantasy land.

I do no know if @awj720 responded to that tweet, nor do I know what M was responding to (therefore you were making assumptions on something that you did not have all the information about)  however, it captured my interest. Such word (M’s) tend to be defensive and defensive people usually have something to hide. <---- This here is exactly gaslighting.

 I searched for @awj720 and what I found gave me reason to stop doubting what I thought about D’s sexuality and his love for C. 

You found other people willing to validate your fantasies without any actual proof. 

I have been involved long enough to see what is being said on the many sides of the CC discussion. Those who oppose us, call us ‘haters’ and we call them ‘haters’. They sprout nastiness and we sprout nastiness. Lately I have been considering my place in this fandom. A few weeks ago, I posted about ‘Hate’ and I found it disturbing how some in this fandom allow their ‘hate’ of one person or a group of people influenced their responses and posts. Hate is a negative emotion which consumes and blinds. As a Buddhist it is an emotion which clouds the minds to bigger and better things.

If you are so opposed to hate, then why do you engage with people and blogs who do nothing but hate?

We state we are here to support D & C. What is support?

But you are not actually supporting them in any way, unless we are talking financially when you purchase tickets, books etc. You are sustaining them in any way, or bolstering them or assisting them, because you are not a part of their life.

When I look at this list of words, I do not see negativity. I see positive. In my experience, I have found that negative emotion tends to breed two things: 1) usually negative emotion, 2) and, perhaps later, compassion. Positive emotion has a habit of breeding positive emotion. Anything that is negative can be made positive with careful thought and craftsmanship of words and deeds. It only takes one rash action to take something positive and make it negative. Reaction with emotion is easy but turning it into something positive can be difficult.

Let’s just add lots of words, when only a few would suffice, to make me sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Seriously, how long is this post?

Trashing a bar because of who owns it or ripping at what one person or photoshopping trashcans on someone’s face does not paint a good picture of us CCer’s.  All these things galvanize those who oppose our point of view making them angry and replying in kind. I am going to be blunt–it is childish. However, we can take the high road and make something negative a positive. That takes calm thinking and careful play with words. The idea is not to respond or post kind but to use calm, thought provoking words.

So you are calling out your fandom, but I bet you are going to continue to reblog the people doing these thing, thus reinforcing their choice to be cruel and nasty. This makes you no better than them. Practice what you preach, tinhat.

Supporting D & C is not trashing those who control him but rather by looking at these words and using them to advocate, sustain, bolster, buoy, stand behind the two of them. 

Yeah, again, you cannot actually do these things because you are not really there for them. Your platitudes are all for nothing.

 I see us doing this by highlighting the fact D loves to sing. C loves to write. They both love to act and have each won awards. Yes, D goes to that bar to sing but he loves to sing. I believe he is there as part of a contract, but it is love of singing and his fans which keeps him from losing it.

You do realise that you are speaking negatively about Tramp Stamp Granny’s by implying Darren is forced to be there? I thought that you said people need to be positive, not negative?

  Yes, there are things D (and perhaps C) must do for the sake of his contract and that is what is posted the most on SM. We do not see D or C out there enjoying themselves -It is only tinhats who never see these two enjoying themselves because your intense bias prevents you from doing so- (especially with each other- ummm, never with each other. Because they have nothing to do with each other.), or with friends unless it has been approved for release. (Well, we might if some passer by happens to capture it and post it.)

I have to remember that the media industry and the entertainment industry walk hand in hand, and they will not post or print things which hurt their brands. Thus, the common people see the PR story and they have to look elsewhere for the truth.

“Common people”. More gaslighting here. The common people, who are below those in CC Fantasy Land, right? Because anybody who does not subscribe to your version of the truth must be lower than you, right?

They find us, and then they see the negativity. Does that excite the or turn them off? I can’t speak to that, but we have to remember these things. We have to remember we CCer’s are part of the PR apparatus, even though we are volunteers and not backed by a massive industrial machine. We want to have the other side of the coin out there, but we have to play the game as well.

And now they bring in the tinhat inflated sense of self-importance trope. Believing that they actually play some kind of role in Darren and Chris’s life. You are not a part of the PR machine. You are a small fandom, sharing vile lies and insults. You are not playing any game. You are not making ant kind of difference. 

To that end, the ask and reply I noted above, is an outstanding example of good PR from our point of view. It did not make me angry.  It made me think. The result is this post.

When it comes down to it who is right, who is wrong. While I believe D is fighting to have a bigger say in his public life, he has an uphill battle on his hands. We must always remain aware that only those personally involved know the truth. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^!!!!!!!!!!!! In this whole long ass post, there is literally one sentence that makes sense.

They have seen the contracts and know what must and must not be done. Until we see these contracts, or it all becomes public, all we have is our interpretations of pictures, videos, and comments on SM. None of his will stand up in a court of law. But wait? Didn’t you start this post by talking about the facts that CCers believe? Are you now saying that none of you have facts?

Then I have to think, what D & C, their REAL friends and families feel about what we post? 

1. Real friends? You just said that only the people personally involved know the truth? You have no way of knowing who the real friends are etc.

2. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU POST. THEY DO NOT SEE WHAT POST!!!!!!

Do they laugh or does he cringe because he fears the backlash? We have to remember that what we post has a ripple effect and we already suspect there have been repercussions.

There is no ripple effect and there have been no repercussions. You are not that important. Sorry.

I and others, have concerns matters will become worse as those who oppose our point of view dig in. Let those who oppose our views speak with negativity, because it only hurts them. Let us show them the other cheek and be crafty with our replies and posts. Again, this is a public forum and there are others, reading along or silently observing, who may or may not like the negativity. There are those who are watching our words for legal reasons such a lawyer from all sides. We must always be aware of repercussions.

Wait? What lawyers do you think are watching your words? 

This does not mean we can’t state our opinions, but we need to do it carefully. If the end is truly on the horizon, we need to ensure we support D & C in a positive manner. A good PR team crafts the message with polish.

But when you state your opinions in a way that is cruel and insulting, that is a problem. And even if you don't say them directly yourself, when you are supporting those that do, you are validating them.

Now, to be clear, this post is a statement of my opinion and I know it may not be popular in some circles. However, I believe we be a positive force in support of our beliefs in D & C. If you feel your hackles going up, step back take a breath, have a tea and then go back to it. Craft your words well and with meaning. Do we always succeed in this, no. Am I innocent in curtailing my negative emotions? – HELL NO– Can I choose to change the way I respond to asks or posts – YES. Do I want to change – YES. I choose to do so because I think this is how we support D & C.

We have to remember, we are responsible only for ourselves, as individuals, because we have no control over what other individuals think or react.

Then stop putting yourselves in a position of responsibility over Darren, his team, Mia etc. 

[larriefails]

I was scrolling thru ur blog & I just read that post u made about Harry being more 'palatable' to Larries but that they don't really love the real him, could u elaborate on that a little more? Ur one of the only antis that's willing to accept Harry's sexuality instead of pushing it aside & only focusing on him & women & I think it's impt to bring that to the discussion as well. Ls really pushed Harry to be open about smth he probably wasn't ready for so early, that & the biphobia, whew chile

I’d written so much and tumblr just ate it up ugggh

Okay, here we go again. There’s so much to unpack

First of all, I want to clarify, because this has happened before, that I’m not comfortable with you implying I’m the “Not Like Other Girls” of antis. Don’t compare me. I like those blogs, so..

Second of all and in the same vein, I don’t think I’ve seen any antis that are not willing to accept Harry’s sexuality. None of them are out there calling him straight, if that’s what you’re implying (at least none that I’ve seen)

Third of all, I think you don’t realize how hard it is to maintain a line with a blog like this one, where people come discourse about Larries (especially when you yourself are bisexual). I was ecstatic when Harry expressed those parts of his sexuality because I’ve been a fan of his since my early teens and it’s just really cool to see yourself somewhat represented in someone you’ve loved so dearly for so long. But I understand that I have a responsibility to not project my own feelings and desires onto him, and especially not doing it in a public forum where it has the potential of snowballing

Also, Larries abstractly accept Harry’s attraction towards men (I say abstractly because they turn vicious at the idea of him with any man that isn’t Louis, and any potential boyfriend Harry could get in the future would definitely get attacked). So there isn’t really much of a point in mentioning it in most of the posts I make. I’ve shoehorned it in in several that didn’t really call for it and realized after posting, and that’s most likely because of my own projection. If that’s what you feel makes me “Not Like Other Antis” then that’s not really a positive trait of mine, so I wouldn’t really praise it

It’s much comfortable and easy territory to talk about Harry’s attraction to women because it’s been piling on for years. No matter how many times Larries try to claim all of it is a stunt, reality says differently. Harry has talked about girlfriends in interviews and on stage, he has expressed attraction towards women, often bringing it up himself, has written songs about women. And the point is that Larries refuse to accept it, attack all the women linked to him, attack his team for “forcing him” to talk about it, even go on to say that he didn’t really write a majority of his album, so it becomes important to say that’s not the case in blogs like ours

When it comes to attraction to men, it’s only recently that Harry’s been more concrete (if you can call it that) about the subject, and there really isn’t much of a solid ground for us to feel like we can discuss it as openly as we do with his attraction towards women. Not without verging on projecting (and sometimes tinhatting) territory. I’m not here to discount Harry’s expressions of his sexuality, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like I have to be a little more vague about it, because Harry has been a little more vague about it. I just want to follow his lead because ultimately, it’s really none of my business. Sure, he made jokes before, and as non-straight person myself they pinged to me. I’m not gonna pretend they didn’t. But at the time, I really didn’t feel comfortable doing more than acknowledging he’d made them because it just wasn’t enough to go on. Straight men joke about that too, sadly (and I say sadly because I don’t like it when straight people joke about not being straight). And it could’ve also been jokes that weren’t even meant to be taken that way. Obviously now in hindsight they ping even more loudly to me, but I still don’t think they’re “proof” of anything, just something that gets me “okay... so this happened.” They could totally be the typical “testing the waters jokes” that most non-straight people do when they meet new people, they could even be the dumb jokes you just can’t help yourself making that could out you if you hit the wrong tone but narrowly avoid it because you’re being funny. But they could also just be jokes with no ulterior meaning

The bottom line is that, personally, when Harry said he didn’t label his sexuality, he knew how many of his fans thought he wasn’t straight. He knew of all the rumors. And when he wrote Medicine and chose to sing it on tour after saying he didn’t label his sexuality and all those years old rumors, he knew what he was doing. I don’t think for a second he’s stupid enough not to realize what those two things would cause, and I don’t think for a second he’s malicious enough to queerbait. So to me, it’s another thing about himself, he has green eyes and dimples, trips over his own feet, has annoyingly good reflexes, likes tattoos, is attracted to men in some capacity, is attracted to women, likes rock music, and has a half silly/half dry sense of humor. I don’t feel comfortable making more definite statements than that or putting a label on him when he’s explicitly rejected them before, and I definitely don’t have headcanons about him with men

If in the future he decides to share more, then I’ll gladly accept it and discuss it, but I will go as far as he wants to go and nothing more than that. I don’t think that’s “pushing it aside” I think it’s just being respectful

With your last two points I DO agree but I don’t think other antis shy away from that, and I actually don’t think I’ve talked about either of those things, at least not as main subjects of anything

The biphobia among Larries is rampant and disgusting. Anything that isn’t 100% gay is labeled as “het”. Larries have called him saying “I mess around with THEM” instead of “HIM” in Medicine “het” which is ABSURD because “them” includes “the BOYS and the GIRLS.” But to Larries he’s a gold star gay and “them”, by including women, would “legitimize his past relationships” and that’s “het”. That and Harry making statements on his sexuality when Louis is “still forced in an iron closet” made their heads explode. This is why I feel it’s important to highlight that Harry isn’t in the closet. He hasn’t come out, but I actually have a feeling that he would never do that. I think he’s just living his life and expressing himself for who he is and it just so happens to include that part of himself, like it happens to include his quirky sense of fashion or other aspects of his personality. He’s not actively trying to hide it, his girlfriends aren’t beards, his song lyrics aren’t stunts or coded metaphors for the burden of his fame. He just doesn’t fit the definition of a closet. It’s just that society tells you that there’s an actual drawn line between those two states, when for a lot of people that’s not the case. And I think Harry is also very idealistic and would love for that to be everyone’s reality. Like when he said he doesn’t feel equality should be political. No, my child, it shouldn’t but it is. And no, people shouldn’t have to come out and make statements on their sexuality, but society is still very into boxing people anyway. Sorry, I lost my train of thought

Anyway, Larries can’t just have Harry and Louis in this idyllic romantic relationship that never broke up in nine years. They also have to have them both being 100% gay and allergic to women. I think it’s part of their insecurity in their own conspiracy, but also, a lot of internalized misogyny and a fuckton of biphobia. If they acknowledged Harry’s attraction towards women, then he’d be a flight risk because the bi stereotype is cheating (not calling Harry bi, btw, it’s a stereotype applied to everyone that’s attracted to more than one gender, but it’s simplified as a bi stereotype). It’s easier for them to rationalize that all of Harry’s expressions of attraction towards women (and there’s been A TON) are just jokes or stunts or things he was forced to say and do. It soothes them and makes them believe in their ship with more ease

And the last point of how they pushed Harry to be open about something he wasn’t ready for so early. I mean, I don’t think Harry started being open about it before he was ready and I don’t think he lets himself be pushed by fan entitlement. He might be a “fluffy cupcake” but he’s very assertive when he needs to be. He draws a line and doesn’t let you cross it. So I think he expressed himself how he wanted and when he wanted. But Larries did TRY to push him. They made assumptions very early on, used a ton of stereotypes, analyzed things he probably didn’t even realize he was doing, and were all around disgusting. We don’t know how Harry’s journey with his own sexuality has been. I know people that didn’t even think they could be anything other than straight until they were well into their 20s. I know others that knew it as children. Once again, I don’t feel comfortable having headcanons or analyzing how Harry’s specific case was/is because it’s none of my business, but yeah, it’s totally possible that a lot of the shit Larries have said and analyzed has caused him harm. Having someone speculate on that sort of thing when you’re not fully conscious of it yet can fuck you up. Having people making definite statements about such private matters when you’re not ready to make them yourself can definitely fuck you up. Larries think all this speculating is them being fantastic allies and showing support, um, no? The opposite?

Do you know how you show support? By supporting the LGBT community and openly LGBT artists. By donating time and money to LGBT charities. By being welcoming and loving towards LGBT individuals. It’s definitely not by speculating on the sexuality of an artist you think might not be straight when they haven’t said anything themselves. That’s the shittiest thing you can do