#dare I say? a little homophobic of Hollywood

[shushmal]

i need andrew!Spidey and Deadpool on my screen fucking nasty YESTERDAY GET ON IT MARVEL

The fact that Ryan Reynold and Andrew Garfield sucked face in front of the entire world and NO ONE has made it happen??? Capitalism really is the most useless system of economy 🙄

[popculturebuffet]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 Review: Still Possesses Turtle Power After All These Years

Cowabunga all you happy people! I freaking love the Teenage Ninja Turtles. I grew up with it from Turtles in Time, which was my first video game, to the 2003 cartoon, which I covered the first three episodes of last month, and on to present day as I re-read the idw comics after finally reading the original eastman and laird run of mirage, and impatiently waiting for Shredder’s Revenge to come out after a LONG drout of no good TMNT games. I”m a fan of these heroes four, their dynamic as a family, the endless possiblities that come from it’s long history and ablitlity to go anywhere in any genre, and the wonderful goofy shit that happens when you have a franchise about mutant turtles learning ninjitsu from a rat and fighting a dude covered in knife covered samurai armor. 

So with me finally covering the guys after almost a year last month and with a new movie set to debut at some point this year, I had the bright idea to revisit the FIRST TMNT movie after way too many years of not watching it. This movie is anear and dear to my heart: When I first started getting into the boys big as a kid with the 2003 cartoon, I badly wanted more turtles. But back then it wasn’t nearly as easy to glom onto some more of the sewer shock pizza kings: Streaming sites with all the cartoons on them weren’t all that accesable, dvd’s were expensive for the 87 cartoon, Mirage wasn’t reprinting the comics in any meaningful way and my local comic shop didn’t have any at all and I could only play the SNES when my brother had it set up on occasion like at our Grandma’s farm. 

As you probably guessed though there was one exception: the original 1990 movie, which I got at Walmart for 5 bucks and haven’t let go of since. It was one of my first dvds and is still one of my most precious. Said film hit the spot just right as like my beloved 2003 series, it was a mildly goofy but still fucking cool adaptation that stuck closer to the mirage comics, even more than the 2003 series would, while taking a few queues from the 87 series. This film is as precious to me as the 2003 series and a with a brand new movie coming up, I figured it was the exact right time to dig into this classic: what makes it still good to this day, what’s fun to point and laugh at, and how the heck Jim Henson got involved in this. So join me under the cut as I take a look at my boys first theatrical outing and why I still love watching a turtle. 

No One Wanted To Make This: Before we get into the film itself some background. As usual I struggled a bit, but thankfully found some help in the form of this Hollywood Reporter article.  It’s a fascinating read worth your time, providing an oral history of the film from the people who worked on it. 

The film was the baby of Gary Propper, a surfer dude and road manager for the prop comic Gallagher, aka that guy who used to smash watermelons but now has instead opted to smash what little’s left of his career by being a homophobic douchenozzle. He found an ally in Showtime producer Kim Dawson who’d produced Gallagher’s special. I don’t think there will be more of an 80′s sentence than “Gallagher’s surfer dude agent wanted to make a teenage mutant ninja turtles movie”. Propper was a huge fan of the comics, and with Dawson’s help convinced Laird and Eastman to let them option it to studios. 

It may come as a shock to you but the road agent for a homophobic watermelon man and a producer at a niche cable channel wanting to make a movie based on an underground comic book about masked turtles at a time when the two most recent comic book movies were Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Howard the Duck, did not go well. Every door in Hollywood got slammed in their face, even Fox> Even the eventual backer of the film, Golden Harvest, a hong kong action film studio, took months to convince to actually back the film. 

Things did not get easier from there: The films writer Bobby Herbeck had trouble getting a story agreed on because Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s working relationship had deteroiated horribly from the stress so naturally the two could not agree on a damn thing and argued with each other. Peter Laird  made a tense siutation even worse by constnatly sniping at Herbeck and feeling he was a “Hollywood outsider infringing on his vision and characters”

Granted the script was apparently not great... but Pete still comes off as a pretnetious ass who views his weird indie comic as THE HIGHEST OF HIGH CALLINGS HOW DARE YOU SOIL IT. And continued to be kind of a prick like this throughout the rest of his time with the property. 

Thankfully the film found i’ts voice, vision and director in Steve Barron. Barron was a music video guy who knew the producers and while reluctant, eventually dove into the project rightfully thinking the film would need to be a mix of the mirage comics and 87 cartoon, keeping aprils’ reporter job, the turtles lvoe of pizza and their iconic color coding from the cartoon but adapting several stories from the comics as the backbone of the film. The guys liked barron MUCH better and things ran smoother. 

Barron also brought in one of the film’s biggest selling points and it’s most valuable asset: it’s triumphantly awesome Jim Henson costumes. Barron had worked with good old Jim on the music videos for Labyrinth, and while it took some convincing since the comics were violent as hell and that wasn’t Jim’s style, Barron eventually got him on board. This naturally doubled the budget, but given Henson’s costumes STILL hold up today and look better than the cgi used in the platinum dunes films... it was a good call. And this was brand new tech for jim, having to invent tons of new ideas and mechanisms just to make the things work, and said things still were absolute hell on the actors. Jim later ended up not liking the film for being too violent... which I find hilarious given how many muppets got eaten or blowed up real good on his show but regardless, I thank this legendary and wonderful man as without him this film WOULD NOT have worked. The costumes here look great, feel realistic, and you can’t tell the actors were dubbed much less horribly suffering in those suits. Much like Disney Land. 

The film would get picked up for distribution by New Line, and despite i’ts weird as hell origins and the long shot it had.. the film was a MASSIVE hit at the box office, owing to a combination of Batman 89 the previous year having proved comic book movies can work for audiences, the cartoon’s runaway sucess, and a massive marketing campaign. The film made it’s mark. So now we know how we got here let’s get into the film itself. 

What’s the Story Morning Glory?:

So the story for this one is largely cobbled together from some of the more notable arcs Eastman and Laird did before handing off the book to others full time as the stress of the company and the mounting tension with each other made it near impossible to work together on the book itself. 

To Save time i’m just going through what hte movie takes from the comics plot wise now to save me the trouble later:The movie takes elements from the first issue (The Turtles, Splinter and Shredder’s backstories, Shredder being fully human and the main antagonist, Shredder’s design and the final rooftop showdown that results in Shredder’s death), second and third, (April’s apartment over her dad’s old store and the turtles moving in when their home is ransacked and splinter has gone missing), the rapheal micro series (A tounge in cheek way of cashing in on the Mini-Series craze of the 80s, a one shot by modern standards and something that’s tragically been underused as an idea as only TMNT and MLP have used the idea at IDW, Raph meeting casey and their fight with one another), the return of shredder arc (One of the turtles being ambushed and mobbed by the foot and then thrown though a sky light (Leo in the comic and Raph here), the turtles being horribly outnumbered by them, Casey coming ot the rescue and metting the non-raph turtles for the first time, and them being forced to escape when the place goes up in flames), their exile to northampton (April writing in a journal, casey working on a car with one of the guys and one of hte guys looking over hteir injured brother), and finally, their triumphant return which was very loosely adapted as there are no deformed shredder clones and shredder not being dead yet in this version was not brought back by a colony of super science worms. 

So as for how this all comes together: Our story takes place in New York: A crimewave is high with muggings mysterious. There are a ton of phantom thefts going around and at most people have been seeing teens responsibile. And the police.. are at about this level of useful:

The only person doing something is April O’Neil, played by Judith Hoag. Hoag is easily the standout of the film, giving us a strong, confident woman with a wonderful sense of humor. She honestly might be my faviorite April O Neil, and given we’ve had some great ones with 2003, 2012 and Rise, that’s not something I say lightly. I honestly wish I’d recognized her in more stuff as she was both on Nashville and the mom in the Halloween Town films, and most recently was on the ScFy show the magicians. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad she’s still goin. 

April is a reporter for Channel 3 like the cartoon, though for some weird reason her boss from the cartoon is replaced by Charles Pennigton, played by Jay Patterson, whose currently dealing with his troubled son Danny, played by Micheal Turney. Pennington is horribly useless at both jobs: At work he tries to ease April off calling out Chief Sterns, who refuses to listen to April’s evidence gathered from japanese immigrants that the crimes resemble similar ones in japan in favor of trying to get charles to shut her up. Danny meanwhile is a member of the foot becase his dad thinks shouting out him and talking about him like he’s not there and generally being a dipstick will actually do anything to help him. 

I love the concept for the foot here. In addition to being a Ninja Violence Gang as always, they now recruit new members by finding kids without families or with troubled family lives and giving them a sense of family with the foot, and sweeting the bargin with a giant cave filled with arcade machines, a skate ramp and general late 80′s early 90′s kids goodies. Is it rediculous? Yes. Is it also clever as it gives Shredder an easy army of plausably deniable theives that he can pick the best out of to put in his elite that will be tirelessly loyal to him and him alone? Also yes. 

So April being public about this stuff gets her attacked, which naturally leads to our heroes coming in, first in the shadows and later directly when April wont’ give up on the case and Shredder sends some ninjas to go shut her up.. which he does weirdly as the guy jsut slaps her and tells her to cut it out like he’s on a domestically abusive episode of Full House. Raph saves her, and we get the turtles origin.. though weirdly they cut it in half. We get the ooze portion but Splinter’s past with Saki, Saki’s murder of his master and his master’s partern Tang Shen is left for later in the film and the fact Shredder’s saki is treated as a big twist despite the fact the biggest audience for the film would be kids... and kids would’ve been familiar with the cartoon where the giant brain monster routinely screeches out saki at the shredder. Maybe Barron just thought he was an alcoholic I don’t know. It just would’ve made more sense to have it all at once and let the audeince put it together. 

April becomes good friends with the turtles over a night of frozen pizza and camradrie, but the Splinters return home to find it ransacked, Splinter kidnapped by the foot, and are forced to Stay with april. Charles meanwhile tries to get April to backoff because he made a deal with the police to clear Danny’s record, without TELLING her any of this mind you, but I will save my rage on that little plot point for in a bit as Danny who he drug along sees the turtles and tells the Shredder. 

So we get the return of the shredder arc as Raph goes through a window, our heroes fight valiantly, and Raph’s friend Casey who he met earlier shows up, the two having bonded as all true friends do.. by beating the shit out of each other ending with raph shouting DAMNNNNNNN really big and dramatically into the sky for some reason. The Turtles and friends escape with an injured raph from April’s burning second hand store. She had a second hand store it was poorly established and only there because she had it in the comics. 

Our heroes retreat to a farm April’s grandma owned in Northampton, Massachutes, where Mirage was located at the time the original comics where they were exiled to the place were written and a location that has been a staple of the turtles ever since. The turtles slowly recover, lick their wounds, talk about who hooked up with who on gilligans island etc, before Leo connects with Splinter via meditation, who tells them to come back. Splinter also starts to connect with Danny and convinces him to swtich sides.. or at the very least squat in the boys old home. 

The boys return home, find danny, and prepare, Danny goes back and ends up giving away the Turtles are home.. but the turtles are ready and in an awesome sequence kick the fuck out of the foot squad sent for them with some well prepared steam vents. Casey goes to get splinter since Danny told them and with Danny’s help, finds him, since Danny found out they were gonna kill him. Casey beats up Tatsu, shredder’s right hand man, and they get him out. 

We get our final fight which is awesome up until the climax.. which is splinter casually tripping shredder with nunchucks and thier bloody history being kind of rushed and unsatsifying. Casey crushes shredder with a garbage truck, April gets her job back, more on that in a moment, she and casey hook up, and we end with the fucking awesome song T-U-R-T-L-E Power by partners in cryme. Seriously check it out it’s fucking triumphant. 

The song is just good.. cheesy? Sure but that’s half the fun. It’s the gold standard for movie theme songs for them and stacks up handily with the various animated series themes.. all of which slap. Okay... ALMOST all of which slap. Fast Forwards is aggressively medicore, which is doubly suprising to me since 4kids was REALLY damn good with theme songs. It was one of the three things they were best at along with finding VERY talented voice actors and setting japan based works in america because merica dammit.  

The plot is very solid: It skilfully packed half of eastman and laird’s run on TMNT into 90 mintues while adding things like April’s job at channel 9, the way the foot recurited kids etc. The plot flows well for hte most part and apart from one annoying subplot we’ll get to never has a moment that feel unecessary or dosen’t pay off later. And the stellar plot and fun pacing of it helps boilster the characters that do work... and help paper over the ones that are so thin the’yd fall down a grate...

Our Heroes, Villains and Annoying Middle Aged Guys:

Yeahhhh character is hit and miss here. Some are rather strong, others are the bare basics for the character their adapting and most are just to serve the plot but some work some don’t,  So let’s talk about it starting with our boys:

Raph is the most fleshed out of the turtles, being the main focus of the first 2/3 of the film, and having his anger be part of what SHOULD be a character arc, learning to temper it. And while granted MOST TMNT properties do this, to the point that Rise Raph is so loveable in part because his boisterous bruiser big bro attitude is a refreshing break from the usual grumpus we get. But at the time this hadn’t been done in every version but the 87 cartoon, so exploring it was valid.. but despite saying this should be a thing htey just forget about it and the most plot relevance he gets is going thorugh a window. He dosen’t really get a resolution.. his arc just kind of stops dead for the final half and it’s one of the film’s weaker points, one I only just now noticed on this rewatch. He’s still the most entertaining. 

Leo is the weakest of the turtles. He really lacks a personality here mostly just being leader and while his spirtual side is touched on, it’s  mostly a plot device. He’s just kinda the leader because he was in the comics to the point Partners in Cryme called Raph the leader. His role in getting taken out by the foot was taken by Raph, so he just has.. nothing to do for most of the film other than gripe at raph ocasionally and say orders. He’s probably the worst Leo i’ve seen outside of Next Mutation. I prefice that because after watching Phelous’ review it’s VERY clear those four are the worst versions of the characters, and no personality is still better than either having your team do nothing or yelling at them as your personality. I chalk this up to the Mirage Leo, and the mirage turtles to a poit being kind of bland. Not TERRIBLE characters, especially for the time, but not nearly as fleshed out or individualized as they woudl be in other adpatations, and with most traits LEo DID have, like his badassery flat out gone, he’s just.. nothing here. 

Mikey and Donnie are a double act here with both sharing a brain. Interestingly instead of his normal genius character, Donnie is Mikey’s best friend and the two simply trade jokes and schtick together. The two are interchangable.. but easily the best part of the film and a lot of the most memorable gags and lines, from Ninja Kick the Damn Rabbit! to “Do you like Penicllin on your pizza”, are from them. Thier there almost entirely as comic relief but it works, with both clealry being more modled ont he 87 cartoon turtles, a move that helps lighten the mood in darker moments. Their just genuinely charming and it’s intresting to see such a diffrent version of Donnie, and other incarnations, specifically the 2003 and Rise versions, would retain the sarcastic edge. 

Splinter is splinter. That’s about it, he’s peformed well and the puppet is amazing but he gets kidnapped a half an hour in and outside of influcencing Denny, more on that in a moment, and finishing Shredder he dosen’t do much but spout exposition. He’s not bad or anything, but he’s essentially a rodent shaped plot device. He was also puppeted by Kevin CLash, aka the guy who does Elmo. So there you go. 

April on the other hand.. is truly excellent. This might be my faviorite April. Judith’s april nicely blends the cartoon and mirage versions: She has the cartoons energy and job, but the comics sheer will and casual nature. Judith just oozes personality and her April is just a joy to watch, from her breezy chemistry filled interactions with the guys to her confrntation with Chief Sterns, knowing she’ll get thrown out by the asshole. She’s confident, and even when afraid dosen’t back down to her attackers and even helps out during the sewer ambush. I mean it’s a pot on the head but still it’s neat. She’s easily the best part of the flim and the most fleshed out of the cast. The worst I can say is they kinda shove her store from the comics, Second Time Around, in there for no other reason than it was in the comics: It dosen’t come up until it’s needed for the foot’s assault on her place. But overall.. she’s just fantastic to watch. 

Speaking of fantastic to watch, Elias Koteas is fantastic as Casey. Seriously he’s only second to the 2003 version in my eyes, getting the concept of a testorone filled average guy who decided to just go out and hit people with sports equipment after watching too much A-Team.. I mean that part of it’s not in this version but it’s implied, just right. Like judith, Elias is just really funny to watch and his big scenes, showing up just in time during the foot assault on april’s place and his fight with Tatsu are some of the best parts of the film, the former taken directly from the comics. This version isn’t without problems: His friendship with Raph, his most endearing aspect and one that has been carried throughout eveyr version Casey’s important, with the only exception so far being rise and we have a movie to fix that, is absent here. HE does save the guy, but they don’t really bond or anything. In fact he disappears for about half an hour after his big fight with Raph. But... again he’s just so damn entertaining, down to his JOSEEEEEEEEEEE Conseco bats (There was a two for one sale!).

Shredder is just a LITTLE better than splinter, if only because his actor projects a true aura of menace and I feel this version had some influence on the pants crappingly terrifying 2003 version. And the idea of the foot recurting teenagers like I said is a good one: He gives them home and a cause, they give him plausably deniable backup. And his fight with the boys in the climax is really awesome... the conclusion sucks but otherwise h’es okay. Not the deepest villian, but he has enough presence to be enjoyable.

His right hand man Tatsu, whose been adapted ocasionally since this and reimaigned as Natsu in the IDW comics, a female version, is also fine. He’s your standard grimacing goon but has enough presence to work. 

So that brings us to the penningtons. Charles, april’s boss at the station and his son Danny who’s joined the foot as he feels his dad dosen’t love him. Charles..is about as interesting and likeable as a dog turd and is the worst aspect of the film. No debate there, he just sucks. He sucks so hard he’s classified as a black hole.  The film wants you to see him as a put upon wokring dad whose frustrated with his son’s increased moodiness, skipping school and crminal undertakings and just wants to help him and loves him deep down. The problem is his actor’s delivery instead of concerned.. is just pissed. He just seems pissy and upset about the whole thing and comes off like he’s only mad about Danny doing this because he’s embarassing him and not because you know, it’s bad. When confronting Danny about stealing, he dosen’t consider MAYBE he’s part of a gang or needs help, but just wonders “Why are you stealing when I give you stuff”. Because, Dipshit, sometimes kids do crimes not because they need the stuff but because they WANT to, and because they want to act the fuck out. 

The most he does for the kid is agree to try and get April to back off the police when Cheif Sterns offers to let Danny go and not put him on record in exchange for it. The problem.. is this makes him even MORE unsympathetic. While I do get wanting to help your child, I do and it’s a sucky position... he again should be sympathetic.. but he handles the thing so badly it sucks. He just tells april to ease off, with no reason given, then fires her when she SHOCKINGLY dosen’t give up taking the guy whose refusing to take her hard work seriously or actually solve the crime wave problem to task for his shitty behavior as ANY person facing a shitty, corrput cop would. She just wants to hold him acountable and get him to actually do something. He clearly knows her on a personal level too as he talks about his issues with his son freely with her, something you don’t do with an employee unless their also a friend on some level. 

He could have TOLD april what was going on. She’d be furious at Stern’s naked corrpution and prioritizing shutting her up over actually solving crimes.. and thus put at least some of that energy into shutting him down or finding a way around it, going to the papers or something like that. Even in 1990 pre-internet, there were ways to get around Sterns blackmail and expose him so someone who’d actually do the job could get the job. Instead he just comes off as a selfish coward who rather than try and fight the guy blatantly abusing his power and using Charles own son as  barganing chip, goes along with it because it’s the easier option to simply bow to him instead of TRY and stop this. And it’s not like he’s even going after a beloved public figure or someone who could hide behind his rep: Sterns was blatantly failing a crime wave, April had called him out on his failrues and coverups multiple times. The public was against sterns.. finding out he tried to blackmail the media into shutting up about him would PROBABLY end him... I only say probably not because the public wouldn’t skewer him, but because police tend to escape consequences for blatantly murdering someone on a daily basis and Andrew Cumo is STILl mayor over in new york, the same city this movie takes place, 31 years later, depsite EVERYONE asking him to resign over a long history of sexual harassment and a more recent but still horrible history of hiding death numbers. I don’t doubt people being stupid enough to ignore this or the bilaws with cops being stacked enough for him to get away with it, but just because someone gets away with a crime dosen’t mean you shoudln’t try and go after them in the first place. Fuck. Charles. Pennington. 

Danny on the other hand is FAR more interesting and I think gets way too much flack when it comes to this subplot. Unlike his dad, whose dead weight, Danny is intresting: He provides a POV character for the foot’s MO in the film of taking in wayward teens, and his character arc is pretty engaging, slowly realizing the foot dosen’t care and that hte turtles are the good guys. HIs actor does a great job and while not the biggest presence, he’s not a bad addition to clan hamaoto and I wish other adaptations would find a way to use him. The pull between doing the right thing and his found family is a good struggle. My only real issue with his plot is the moviies flawed aseop about family. It tries to contrast shredder and his using the kids blatnatly with Splinter and Charles really loving their sons. And it works with Splinter and the kids because despite being a tad strict, Splinter clearly loves his sons and works with them to help them. The problem is ENTIRELY with Charles and Danny. As I said Charles love comes off as transasctional: He either thinks he can buy it or just expects it because he shot a bunch of goop into Danny’s mom after two minutes of disapointment. It dosen’t work with them because neither option is good for Danny. His father is neglectful, chooses throwing his jounralistic integrity out the window over talking to his son or his best friend about another way, and abrasive. Danny is no saint, he does do crimes, but it’s clearly a result of a shitty upbringing and the shredder and co actually offeirng him the love he desperatly craves. Danny goes to the foot because his dad is bad at his job but the film never adresses that and just expects Danny to go back to his dad because the plot says so. Danny would HONESTLY be better off with Splinter. No really. Sure he’d have to live in the sewers.. but he did so for a few weeks in the course of the movie. He’s fine down there. Splitner actually cares about him and took an intrest to him and knows how to raise a child. Let him become the fifth turtle. An aseop about family is not a bad thing: Loaded subject that it can be given how many outright abusive families exist, i’m one of the lucky ones who dosen’t have that issue, family is an important thing and can be a source of comfort and support. But this film tells you you should love and respect someone who does not love, respect or value you because he spent a minute in your mom’s vagina and that’s not how family should work and is outright dangerous to kids in an abusive situation. Love the film otherwise but fuck this aseop skyhigh. 

Final thoughts:

Overall though.. the film is bodacious. It’s funny, well paced, has an awesome cast, and outside of a certain bald asswipe... it’s a really good superhero film. Is it the best i’ve seen? Nope. Not even close and character wise most of them are as thin as a wet paper bag covered in ranch dressing. But it’s still a fun as hell with awesome corepgraphy, a killer soundtrack, seriously the soundtrack is damn excellent and only didn’t get it’s own section because I didn’t have enough to say and some of the best effects work i’ve seen in a film in the turtle suits. If you haven’t seen it I urge you to check it out: it’s a breezy 90 minutes, it’s on hbo max and it’s a shell of a time. Will I do the next film? 

We’ll see how this one does like wise and such, but I will be doing the rise film whenever it comes out this year. So look for that and keep possesing turtle power my dudes. If you liked this review subscirbe for more, join my patreon to keep this blog a chugging, comission a review if you have more turtle stuff you want me to cover, and comment on this. What do you think of the movie, what are your thoughts on the review, what can I do better, what other turtle stuff would you like me to cover/ Let me know and i’ll see you at hte next rainbow. 

[ebenenoir]

The reason why I disagree on Pedro being unable to come out if he is queer is because Pedro’s early career consisted of him playing flamboyantly gay characters on stage and in movies. He moved on to other roles because of how masculine he looks, talks, and acts and I just think that even if he came out as queer it wouldn’t hurt him because of that.

He’s played so many rugged, dad figure roles that I have a hard time believing he’s in a place in his career where saying he’s queer would hurt him. I think maybe 10 years ago or so, maybe? But we’ve come so far here in Hollywood that men and women can be out and still get roles but may be pigeon holed into a role based on their looks like any other actor.

Elliot Page will always be cast young because of his youthful looks and height. The Rock will always play macho characters. Michelle Rodriguez will always be the token tough Latina chick. Billy Porter thrives on queer roles, and Neil Patrick Harris is married to a man with kids but still gets straight roles because he’s straight passing, and Luke Evans still brings women to his shows because even if he is gay he’s fun to look at. Gay doesn’t stop women from wanting to look at the menu even if they can’t order anything. I’ve worked on film for 10 years and the people affected by coming out are the ones who are new and are worried about falling into the same roles and being labeled as the new woke gay best friend actor. But Hollywood is way more progressive behind the scenes than a lot of you think. And a lot of you pretend this isn’t the same man who refuses to back down being friends with problematic people online, I doubt he’d suddenly feel like he can’t show off his person regardless of gender like he has with his siblings and nephews and friends. And if he HAD something with SM, him constantly showing us his work was maybe his own way of showing him off subtly without starting rumors if he’s not ready to go red carpet official. A lot of us need to chill with speculations.

Pedro has been stereotyped already into rugged male roles since Narcos and I strongly doubt that’ll change if he ever went public with a male partner. That’s just my opinion and speculation. However, I don’t think it matters because fan speculations is doing more damage than not because of how many of us suspect he’s queer, and at this rate I feel like even if he came forward and said aggressively he was straight, a lot of fans would bully him into admitting he’s closeted and Hollywood is oppressing him. So it may be healthier to just say something then let fans run him and his career ragged. Cause we definitely will if we don’t let him figure his own shit out.

Thank you for your input 😛 You have made some interesting points. It's true that some actors are categorised into certain roles but I think that's their choice too. Those actors like these comfort zone, that brings them money. I am specifically talking about The Rock, Michelle Rodriguez and Billy Porter. I know what you mean about Pedro being stereotyped since Narcos, (dare I say since GoT?) but I don't necessarily think it's related to his looks imo. I am realizing now that he does a lot of stunts/action in movies : Equalizer, GoT, The Mandalorian, Triple Frontier, maybe The last of us, Kingsman. So I think it's good that he's chosen to play the role of Maxwell Lord, to play a different role for the Bubble. I hope he will be more versatile in his career. Maybe his career won't be affected but I think his mind will be affected a little bit. There will be a lot homophobic reaction from the gp if he ever dates openly with a man.

You mentioned the fact that he defends his problematic friends. As much as I agree that he's a stubborn person, who won't hesitate to defend what he thinks is right, I'm not sure he's immune to criticism. Just the fact that he followed fans on Twitter onlyvbecause they defended him proves it. (Jåm3s Gunn and GG drama). Also, during an interview in connection for the wine commercial, a journalist had mentioned that people in Chile liked him. He reacted by saying "please keep liking me". Imo he was much more serious than his tone made him sound. Could you give me some concrete examples of queer inclusion in Hollywood bts? 😊

"at this rate I feel like even if he came forward and said aggressively he was straight, a lot of fans would bully him into admitting he’s closeted and Hollywood is oppressing him."

You're right. I wouldn't go so far as to think he'll announce he's straight (if you know you know) but there was an overreaction when he mentioned a relationship with women in an interview. Some fans said he was forced to say that but they didn't have legit proof to say it.

Thank you again for sharing your opinion! 😛

[hoynovoy]

What Happened To Paul Prenter? The ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Villain Had A More Complex Relationship With The Band IRL

Bohemian Rhapsody largely functions as a biopic about the legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, but the 2018 box office hit was also a major Hollywood motion picture. With that being the case, the film predictably takes some liberties with the truth in order to make Mercury's life story more dramatic and, well, more like a movie, and that includes the casting of a villain. That role is mainly filled by Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) in the movie, as the singer's former manager is not presented in the best light. But what happened to the real Paul Prenter? Spoilers for the movie ahead.

In real life, Prenter was a radio DJ from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who eventually met and became involved — both personally and professionally — with Mercury. It’s widely believed that Prenter first met Mercury at a bar in 1975 and then became his manager in 1977. At some point during this time, Prenter and Mercury had a sexual relationship — something Prenter later allegedly used to blackmail Mercury, who wasn't technically out of the closet at the time. Their business relationship was thought to be largely positive for about the first five years of Prenter working for Mercury, but things started to head south in 1982, according to Metro UK.

Prenter is not known to have gotten along well with any of Queen's other members, and their fractured relationship reportedly came to a head with the release of the band's 1982 album Hot Space. According to Metro UK, band members Brian May and Roger Taylor disliked the record's sound and blamed Prenter's influence for it coming out the way it did. Still, Prenter remained in Mercury's employ for several more years.

In the film, Mercury finally fires Prenter in 1985, with the main reason being that the manager failed to inform Mercury about the opportunity for Queen to perform at the now-iconic Live Aid concert. In retaliation, the jilted Prenter then gives a television interview where he outs Mercury. In reality, Prenter was fired the following year, after the Live Aid concert, according to the Belfast Telegraph. As for Prenter's most well-known “villainous” moment, he didn't actually give a TV interview outing Mercury. Instead, he sold a story to The Sun tabloid in 1987 where he revealed Mercury's sexuality and also outed the singer's relationship with Jim Hutton, much to Mercury's chagrin, according to Slate.

So the movie mixes up some facts regarding Prenter, possibly making him out to be more of a villain than he was in real life. But unfortunately for him, he won't be able to tell his side of the story. That's because Paul Prenter died in 1991 due to complications from AIDS, per The Belfast Telegraph. Coincidentally, that's the same year the disease took the life of Mercury.

In 2019, Prenter’s brothers Stephen, Gerard, and Ray spoke to The Belfast Telegraph about his portrayal in the film, which they were not fans of. “The film was like a Disney movie with all these good characters and then one villain in the shape of Paul,” said Gerard. “They would never have dared to do it had Paul been alive. It is a cowardly way of going about things. They set out to destroy his name knowing he is dead and can't answer back.”

Ray shared a similar sentiment, telling the publication: “Paul didn't have a nasty bone in his body. He was a very gentle and kind guy. The film has blackened Paul's name.”

Stephen expressed similar thoughts. However, he also denied the long-held belief that Prenter and Mercury were in a relationship — and used an outdated term to describe their sexualities. "It's ludicrous. Paul and Freddie were best friends, that is it. They went everywhere together; they went to gay clubs together,” he said. “They were both queens. They liked to chase after masculine men — that was their type. They definitely weren't into each other.”

He continued: "I heard Paul's side of the conversation, and they would gossip about the band, about men in their lives. They would laugh, but they were never lovers... I can say 100% categorically Freddie and my brother were not involved sexually in any context. Anyone who knew them knew that.”

Another part of the film that upset the siblings is the portrayal of their parents as homophobic towards Paul. “My parents knew about Paul being gay since he was 16... He'd come back on holidays with his boyfriends and stay at my parent's house in Dublin with his partners staying in the same bedroom,” added Stephen. “So there was never any issue. The only person who had an issue with being gay was Freddie. Freddie never once in his life admitted to being gay. It was an open secret, but never once did he say, ‘I’m gay,’ whereas Paul was very open about it.”

Gerard also pushed that their parents were accepting of Paul’s sexuality long before he met Mercury. "Paul had boyfriends when he started DJ-ing. He never lived in fear of our father. Both he and my mother were ordinary people and very liberal-minded, really good parents,” he said. “He ended up burying his son after he died of AIDS, so for the makers of the film to portray the family like that is a disgrace.”

As far as Prenter’s decision to out Mercury to The Sun, the brothers said he was upset that the band had fired him, leaving him unable to pay for his AIDS treatment. “Paul was very bitter. He felt they let him down, and he was hurt. He worked for them for years, and he got very little from them,” said Ray. “That was when he decided he had to get a few bob for his own treatment. So that is why he went with the papers.”

All movies need a villain, and that includes biopics. Prenter is presented as the bad guy in Bohemian Rhapsody, but having worked as Freddie Mercury's manager for nearly a decade, it's hard to believe that all of those years were as contentious as the film shows. Prenter is gone now, but his legacy lives on in the film. It just may not be the legacy he wanted.

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[whats-that-interest]

I just finished AGENT CARTER season 2! (Actually a while ago, my bad)

SO IM GONNA TALK ABOUT IT (again)

FUCKING DAMN IT

SERIOUSLY??

We’re left with THAT CLIFFHANGER BULLSHIT???????

D A M N

Only because ABC wanted to put Carter’s actor in a generic law drama that was cancelled after 13 episodes

uugghhjkgkkkkgjhh

Okay okay, I actually liked the season!!! though a bit less than the first, albeit,,,

The introduction of zero matter gave it a nice sci-fi element, but for me, I personally loved the first season because it didn’t have much of that, and it focused more on the war

Don’t get me wrong!!! I’m basically a slut for sci-fi shit and robots, but it felt a little off-putting because of the vibe the first season was giving

Nonetheless, the storytelling was great and I even though the introduction of it was less than ideal for my tastes, the show still managed to get my interest and made it work!!!!

Also the counsel brought up some infesting plots with the corruption of the SSR and other stuff

ALSO also, frost is a bitch idk bout you fellas but like

damn

she ended up in a MENTAL HOSPITAL????? ok boomer we knew you were screwed up in the head but D, and I cannot stress this enough, AMN

Anywho, I did enjoy the general plot! (even though I DETESTED the love triangle)

(Seriously Peggy, it’s been like three episode and you’re smOOCHING IN A TELEPHONE BOOTH GOTDAMN)

Also

GET ME A MANS LIKE JARVIS HOLY SHIT

If I Get Married He Better Be Like Him

Jarvis best husband 2020 fr

I did really like the plot!!

Some interesting twists that were interesting to see unfold, and I had fun theorizing with my dad

My dad was also a little upset and the technology in the second season because he was like “no they would NOT have that how DARE they-“

It was funny to watch disodnskfnfkk

Also for the time period they conveyed the racial stuff relatively well! Which you don’t see in a lot of shows due to them trying to put a modern twist on it despite the time period of said show (kinda like how stranger things made the ice cream lady [whos name I can’t remember atm but she was a good character!] a lesbian, but back then [even though it was only a few dacades ago], someone would’ve been shunned for it, and people were far less vocal about lgbt matters [of course that doesn’t mean people WEREN’T vocal]. That’s just how it was, unfortunately, but it didn’t change my perspective on the show! [realizing later as I’m editing this that what I’m saying sounds kinda homophobic— that’s not my intention!])

The ending was, like the episode title claimed, “A Hollywood Ending”, and I liked it!!! Even if my dad found it a bit cheesy

I would’ve loved to see the return of leviathan, and I’ve got a feeling season 3 would’ve dealt with that if the show wasn’t cancelled, so I’ll be looking forward to the fics that I dig up!!

(Also thank you to the person who sent me a dm with some fic recs!!! i’ll def be digging into those soon!!!)

[safetypinkerton]

Hollywood Propaganda by Mark Dice 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hollywood-propaganda-mark-dice/1137833508

Christianity Under Attack

In order to destroy America, the conspirators are determined to eradicate faith in God and dismantle organized Christianity. Attacking Jesus and Christianity is a sacrament in Hollywood because the far-Left hates Jesus and everything He stands for. It’s not an overstatement to say that many in key positions of power in the entertainment industry (and politics) are Satanists who will someday openly embrace Lucifer as the rebel angel kicked out of Heaven for defying God.

  “I’m glad the Jews killed Christ,” ranted comedian Sarah Silverman in one of her comedy specials. “Good. I’d fucking do it again!” she declares, as her audience agrees in laughter.158 While accepting an Emmy Award one year Kathy Griffin said, “A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn’t help me a bit…so all I can say is suck it Jesus! This award is my god now!”159

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be able to make fun of Christians, but no mainstream celebrity would dare make such insults or jokes about Muhammad because Muslims (and Jews) are vigorously protected against any criticism or mockery and only wonderful things can be said about them. Even a slightly edgy joke ignites a barrage of attacks with cries of “Islamophobia” or “anti-Semitism” and gears start moving in the well-funded and massive smear machines like the ADL and the SPLC which quickly move to destroy the person’s career before they can utter another word.

Hating Christians is almost as necessary as believing in climate change if you’re going to be a mainstream Hollywood celebrity. There are very few open Christians in Hollywood, most of them are has-beens like Kevin Sorbo and Kirk Cameron who have been basically blacklisted since being open about their faith.

  Kevin Sorbo was banned from Comicon because he’s a conservative and “pals with Sean Hannity.”160 He and other Christian actors are stuck doing low budget films that get little attention. They’re allowed to exist (for now) as long as they never point out the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. Only watered down and generic Christian messages are allowed to be said.

After Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and happened to discuss his “spirituality,” many online began attacking him for being a Christian and attending a church. Actress Ellen Page (a lesbian) from the X-Men and Inception tweeted, “If you are a famous actor and you belong to an organization that hates a certain group of people, don’t be surprised if someone simply wonders why it’s not addressed. Being anti LGBTQ is wrong, there aren’t two sides. The damage it causes is severe. Full stop.”161

Singer Ellie Goulding threatened to back out of her scheduled performance at the 2019 Thanksgiving NFL halftime show if the Salvation Army didn’t pledge to donate money to LGBT causes. She got the idea after her Instagram comments were flooded with complaints from her fans because the Salvation Army was sponsoring the game to announce their annual Red Kettle Campaign (bell ringers) fundraiser for the homeless.162 Since the Salvation Army is a Christian charity, Goulding’s fans freaked out, accusing them of being “homophobic” and “transphobic.”

They quickly bowed to the pressure and “disavowed” any anti-LGBT beliefs, which basically means they’re disavowing the Bible because even the New Testament denounces homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27 and 1st Corinthians 6:9-10. Many critics claim that only the Old Testament does, but the Book of Romans makes it clear that just because Jesus came to offer salvation doesn’t mean God’s law regarding homosexuality changed.

The Salvation Army also removed a “position statement” from their website that had made it clear “Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex,” and replaced it with one saying “We embrace people regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”163 One of the world’s largest Christian charities whose very name “The Salvation Army” refers to the salvation of Christ, cowardly bowed down to the Leftist activists out of fear they would be branded “homophobic.”

Christians are easy targets since they’re much more passive than Jews and Muslims when attacked, and Hollywood loves to stereotype them as a bunch of superstitious bigots who don’t know how to have fun. In the rare case that there is a movie favorable to Christianity that gets widespread distribution, that too is attacked.

Passion of the Christ was deemed “anti-Semitic” because it depicts the story of Jesus’ arrest, sham trial, and crucifixion.164 It was the most popular film about the events to be made and wasn’t a straight to DVD release like most others. With Mel Gibson behind it, the film became a huge success, which caused a tremendous backlash.

The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] denounced the film, saying it “continues its unambiguous portrayal of Jews as being responsible for the death of Jesus. There is no question in this film about who is responsible. At every single opportunity, Mr. Gibson’s film reinforces the notion that the Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob are the ones ultimately responsible for the Crucifixion.”165 That’s because that’s what happened!

Technically, the Romans did it, but at the behest of the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem at the time. The Bible makes it very clear what led to Jesus being crucified. Pontius Pilate is quoted in Matthew 27:24 saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” and “It is your responsibility!” meaning the Jewish Pharisees. They were the ones who conspired to have Jesus arrested and killed for “blasphemy” and being a “false” messiah. Pontius Pilate even offered to release Jesus, but the crowd demanded he release Barabbas instead, another man who was being detained for insurrection against Rome, and for murder.166

A critic for the New York Daily News called The Passion of the Christ, “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of the Second World War.”167 Many others angrily denounced the film when it came out in 2004. Some in the media even blamed it for a supposed “upsurge” in anti-Semitic hate crimes.168

When the History Channel miniseries The Bible was released in 2013, the same cries of “anti-Semitism” rang out.169 The New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss went so far as to say that it’s a “conspiracy theory” that Jews killed Jesus.170

Even though most Christmas movies aren’t overtly Christian and instead focus of the importance of families reuniting and spending time together, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to come under attack. As the war on western culture continues, the Marxists have set their sights on Christmas too.

Online liberal cesspool Salon.com ran a headline reading “Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda,” and complained they promote “heteronormative whiteness” because there aren’t enough LGBT characters or people of color in them.171

“Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world,” Salon said, “which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive White nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.”172

The article went on to say that because the Hallmark Channel airs so many Christmas movies, it is promoting, “a set of patriarchal and authoritarian values that are more about White evangelicals defining themselves as an ethnic group, and not about a genuine feeling of spirituality…The very fact that they’re presented as harmless fluff makes it all the more insidious, the way they work to enforce very narrow, White, heteronormative, sexist, provincial ideas of what constitutes ‘normal.’”173

The article wasn’t satire. Salon.com has a deep-seated hatred of Christianity, conservatives and families, and is another cog in the Cultural Marxist machine working to destroy the United States.

Comedian Whitney Cummings was reported to the Human Resources department of a major Hollywood studio after she wished the crew of a TV show she was working on “Merry Christmas” when they wrapped up for the year. She made the revelation while speaking with Conan O’Brian the following December. “Last year, I was working on a TV show, [and] got in trouble with Human Resources for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to an intern,” she began.174

Conan asked her if she was being serious and she said it was a true story, elaborating, “I was leaving, like on the 18th or whatever…and I was like, ‘Bye guys, Merry Christmas.’” When she returned from vacation after New Year’s she was called to HR and scolded. She joked, “I don’t even care how your Christmas was. It was just a formality. It’s what you say when you leave.”175

Conan O’Brien then replied, “In these times we’re in, that could trigger someone or offend them if it’s not their holiday.”176 She didn’t say which network it was, but she’s been involved with some major shows like NBC’s Whitney (where she played the main character), as well as the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, which she created and was a writer for.

While today it may seem impossible that Christmas movies may become a thing of the past, nobody could have ever guessed that reruns of the classic Dukes of Hazzard would get banned after the Confederate flag was deemed a “hate symbol” in 2015, or that Aunt Jemima pancake syrup, Eskimo Pie ice cream bars, and Uncle Ben’s Rice would be deemed “racially insensitive” and pulled from production a few years later.177

Once someone reminds liberals that the word Christmas is derived from Christ’s Mass and that it is actually a commemoration of the birth of Jesus, they may finally go over the edge and deem Christmas just as offensive as Columbus Day or the Fourth of July. And with the Muslim and Sikh populations increasing in the United States, the American standard of Christmas music playing in shopping malls and retail stores all month long every December may one day come to an end because it’s not “inclusive” and leaves non-Christians feeling “ostracized.”

[migleefulmoments]

So... Abby responds to her family's intervention by obediently telling them she'll stop (ie. lying to them). She then immediately tries to find ways to keep the blog in secret, hiding behind various usernames, lurking on her coven's blogs, more time deleting posts from both blogs we know about. Meaning, instead of getting help, she spends even MORE time online engaging in more batshit crazy crap to cover her ass. Yeah, sure, that doesn't signal dire need for mental health intervention AT ALL.

It looks like that is what is happening.  We will have to see what the future holds. What does Abby do? 

So far the fandom is flailing. Cassie got a couple of anons- one that reads like those anons Abby used to send herself as it covers all the issues they are most upset about so perfectly well (My comments in parenthesis and italicized:: 

Anonymous asked: Even if I am unsure about CC itself, I don't buy M*arr*n. I just don't. And the other side is using doxing and the fact that you and others say things they don't like about M as an excuse to do so and as a way to detract from the fact that their couple goals have some pretty big, glaring plot holes in their love story. I've not seen anyone on this side of the fandom out or dox anyone publicly as a way of humiliation. M gave up her privacy by dating D, but Abby didn't and they were wrong. Period. 

cassie1022 answered: Nonnie, I swear every time they diagnose us as mentally ill or say we’re bitter hags, an LGBTQ angel gets his or her wings. We all know my beliefs, but there are MANY people that are like you and don’t know for sure about CC but sure as hell know Miarren isn’t a normal, healthy relationship. (Funny thing, I don’t remember anyone diagnosing Cassie as mentally ill. Cassie is alwasy the wallflower that nobody wants to dance with and she tries so hard to be part of the fun people. Last week she was sad because I hadn’t sent her a “hate” message (See comment in last post below) 

Even if I remove D from the situation, I would still think M is a lazy, spoiled toddler with no discernable work ethic coupled with a superiority complex that rivals the Cheeto in Command of the US.

You are absolutely correct. Our fandom just wants to be left alone. We don’t send hateful asks to the other side. We don’t have to. They feel they have the right to dox CCers because they don’t like what we say about M, a woman that would light a cigarette from the flames engulfing them and not call 911 to help them. I mean, honestly, it doesn’t get much lower than mocking someone’s death. Plus, as you correctly said, M put herself in the spotlight “dating” D. If she didn’t want that attention, she would have stayed in the background. There are plenty of celebrities married to non famous people and we don’t see them at every event like we do M. (It is BAFFLING to me that they can’t comprhend something as simple and obvious as the reasaon they “see Mia everywhere” is because they fucking stalk her and they hyperanalzye every photo Darren is in looking for her. If they started stalking Ben Feldman they would see his wife just as much as they see Mia).    

Bottom line is what they did to Abby was deplorable, but, just like their kween, they feel justified in doing whatever they want. This isn’t the first time they’ve crossed a line with regards to my friend, but it was the worst.

notes-from-nowhere Anon, they love to throw the guilt of their actions on our shoulders, it’s how they justify what they do to themselves. They need us to be the bad guys otherwise what is the only option left? (I never know what the hell Notes is trying to say- throw the guilt of our actions on their shoulders? I’d love an example of that. I can’t imagine what guilty action I put on their shoulder. As for needing them to be the bad guys or what do we have left? OMFG are you kidding me? We critcize the cc fandom for being misogynistic, homophobic, bullies who attack  Mia, Darren, Ricky and their own Nonnies. They have viscioulsy attacked people in their own fandom who dared to question them. But the biggest reason we push back is because THEY LIE. All the damn time. So what do we have left? Being on the right side, being correct, not lying, not needing to lie, and the joy of watching Darren live his best life)   

Leka got a couple of asks but her answers were weak, confusing and pointless. It’s clear she isn’t ready to take over as their leader. She repeated Abby’s main talking points, tried to use big words to sound smarter and basically ended up not making a lot of sense:

Anonymous asked: I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but I think the character on the HW poster holding the girl is D's character, it would fit if you look at the other guys on the poster, maybe this is already the first hint to show D's character is not gay and so technically not breaking the no more queer roles rule his team set for him. It won't make it any better because it's still a career on the bag of LGBTQ+ people with it's teams but it's technically not a broken rule. I just really need for things to change, I want them to so bad, it kills me seeing someone so kind in a situation like that, and I truly believe D is one of the kindest people in that horrible town. He deserves better than M, I wouldn’t even mind if he goes onto another beard but she and RR just need to go. I really think it’s crazy people still think everything HW is real and PR relationships don’t exist, I wished that place was just better and had a moral compass, people deserve more it kind of shows just how jaded this situation has made me, I can’t even enjoy amazing promo material without directly twisting it into something negative, I don’t want to be this way and if I feel like this I can’t even imagine how D must feel. He is stronger than I’ll ever be living through hell every day, even if he’s not ok he’s still here and holding on, I don’t know if I could in his position. Sorry for the long message and the unneeded negativity, I guess I just had to vent a little

*********************************

Leka answered: So let’s look at the way HW is described:

“Each character offers a unique glimpse behind the gilded curtain of Hollywood’s Golden Age, spotlighting the unfair systems and biases across race, gender and sexuality that continue to this day. Provocative and incisive, HOLLYWOOD exposes and examines decades-old power dynamics, and what the entertainment landscape might look like if they had been dismantled.”

I do consider this the very intriguing thing about the news. (And it just goes to show that believing everything you’re sold is being utterly and completely ignorant.) Let’s say you’re right because ofc it’s possible. How does R/aymond fit in here? Given the excessive way team shit has pushed that article, a technicality won’t be good enough. There has to be a better plan. This doesn’t match what’s been said in his name.

What I think is this doesn’t necessarily have to mean much. You know very well what you see doesn’t have to be the (full) truth. That doesn’t just apply to the real HW. Especially considering the time period of this show. And let’s not forget the pap pics we got at a gas station. This doesn’t rule out SB as an inspiration. I would advise anyone to read up on him. We don’t know at this point. As we keep saying, the best thing to do is to wait and see. I’m certainly interested in finding out more.

As time goes on, the danger of this situation keeps becoming even clearer to me. D deserves much, much better. He’s incredibly strong, but the most toxic person in his life needs to go and she’s more than welcome to take the jumping jackass with her. That’s definitely the most important thing right now. (I’m curious what the danger of Hollywood is?)

awesome-fanfictionada: @leka-1998I’m just wondering - it must have been D who got himself this job on HW, right? Couldn’t this have been done on purpose to counter that ridiculous statement - which wasn’t even accurate, if the source was that interview where he stated that he wouldn’t want to be a casting director? Could in this case RM be a friend?

leka-1998:  @awesome-fanfictionada Yes, he did that himself. Again. And he said the show’s been sold late in 2018. According to an article that came out later, it happened in February 2019. Not true.

HW has been a thing before that statement was made, which is indeed very different from the answer D himself gave during the interview. That’s what makes the article seem like sabotage by team shit. And standing in RM’s way is never a good idea. So while I will obviously never like him, I’m reserving judgment on his current role until we know more.

Anonymous asked: The underlying issue in general is really that social media has made it so people think they get an accurate glimpse into the lives of celebrities, when in reality social media, like everything else that is publicly released about them, is used as a marketing tool. People are actually more inauthentic than they've ever been because they feel pressure to maintain a certain image for social media at all times. So anyone who decides D is living honestly, it's because they want to believe he is.

Leka: True, nonnie. Just look at the text lines that are becoming more popular again. Not nearly as genuine as people want to believe. In D’s case, what has to be brought up? M. Oh Halloween and her amazing shopping skills praised on SM. The work fam honeymoon pic promoting the place they stayed at. Coa/chella for the H&M ad. Mardi Gras posted shortly after the mockery to promote the designer. I could obviously go on. Most of what we see on SM shows the person the 10 year crew wants him to be. And what looks like a split personality if you compare certain posts. Which brings me back to ‘they want to believe’, as what you’re saying clearly isn’t a secret. Anyone can choose to ignore it but at this point, if that’s the case even though you’re more or less paying attention, it’s really a conscious decision.

Oh btw, there’s a HW IG account now and it already has a D follow. Imagine that. R/oyalties co-stars, anyone?

Flowers didn’t get any asks. Amazing since she has more followers than I do and she bragged about getting more “notes” than me.  She did answer azscc who posted an odd rant that baffles me.  Who the fuck is azscc and who is posting anything about her? I realize I am not the only person in this fandom posting about ccers But I just checked all the blogs that I know of and nobody is talking about her; 

azsc  its so weird how chillarrens call me a bully while i only say something rude towards them if they write bullshit towards me. and its just ironic how chillarrens go around calling people bullies while they are the reason why tons of cc accounts use their accounts private or don’t post their opinions and etc. the real threat to the fandom are people like you. so instead of going around throwing shit on people and calling them “mental, delusional...” get a life. no cc believer goes around hunting for chillarren pics and insult the account owner so why don’t you all grow up and realize no one has to agree with your opinions. every crisscolfer blog/twitter page/insta acc basically stan accs never asked for your opinions on their pages so why don’t you just let it go? no one cares about what you all say or do so why are you forcing it this much?

call me a bully i am pretty much okay with that. its obvious that people are unable to understand basic sarcasm and irony and i am not judging because to actually understand what people say you have to at least have an average IQ level. and if you don’t have it, it’s okay but that doesn’t mean you can twist people’s words and post them all over the internet. but its lowkey really funny that i only had my instagram acc for something like 4/5 months and i received over 300 hate/insult/blackmail/death wish messages and etc. and who are you people to call us bullies? (Nobody is a Chillarren. Darren and Mia are married and Chris and Will are in a long-term relationsihp,  Nobody has to “ship” them in order to believe they are together. In America, we accept that when someone introduces their wife or their boyfriend they are telling the truth. It is customary to address that person as their wife or boyfriend respectively. The crisscolfers on the other hand, must use a fandom ship name because they are shipping two people who are not in a relationship and never were. All evidence indicates Chris and Darren are no long friends; they are nothing more than former co-workers-friendly and polite when they see one another but no longer involved in one another’s lives. Chris and Darren both have denied (more than once) that the were ever in a relationship).  .   

flowersintheattic254 I have never in my whole time here posted an anon to a Miarren account. I have no desire to. I’m confident in my beliefs.

The interesting thing for me is that I’ve been here for about four years now and in that time I’ve seen the head of the fandom disappear, other people disappear because their families have been doxed, established long-term cc blogs with a wealth of history deleted without warning. I myself have had my daughters threatened.  This sort of stuff doesn’t happen anywhere in the fandom but here here. If we are a bunch of delusional crazy middle-aged women then this shouldn’t happen. (Who was doxed? Who dissappered? It’s all “liar liar” with everything ccers say. In the last 4 years Abby has been the only leader of the cc fandom. Michelle left between 4 and 5 years ago because her outrageious cc comments threatened her ability to raise money for her little Klaine-fanfic rip-off movie. I vaguely remember someone asking flowers how her daugther’s would feel if they read what she writes- hardly a threat. If there was something more she never posted any proof. As for blogs being deleted- so was D-Criss News.  It happens. The only cc blog that I know of that disappeared was DisneyPrincessModelWorld’s original blog which had was a hot mess of lies and catfishing. She visciously bullied Mia. Hardly someone to mourn their blog being deleted). 

It’s shocking that an actor may lgbt causes such drama. (HUH?)

Flower’s comment is so disingenuous. While it is technically true -she hasn’t sent me anons, she HAS instead publically ridiculed me and frankly, I can’t see how that is any different? I’d say it’s worse because they wanted their followers to see what they wrote and the only way to ensure that is to post it on their blogs. Flowers and Abby posted many public “Michy” posts.  Here is her most recent: 

flowersintheattic254Oh and I guess Michy sent us all some hate today.

I guess I have way more followers than you and only about 4 that send hate. You haven’t for ages.

I think I have over 70,000 hits currently to my blog. I must be saying something interesting.

He’s been married allegedly for a year and people still doubt. That’s gotta hurt you. Anyway......

✌️

ajw720 Michy told me today today that the outing couldn’t possibly be promo, because JS was only cast in September!  What a moron who clearly doesn’t know how HW works.  Sweetheart, it was ANNOUNCED in September;)

I was waiting for a few more months, but in 4 years, since i have been tracking, i have almost a million! (976,695 to be precise).

It is amazing that so many people care about what us bat shit crazy, irrelevant, psychologically unstable, threatening, hateful tin hats have to say!  And that does not include people reading on their dash or that hit you on the app!  So yep, Michy, clearly what we are saying is being monitored by someone.  And clearing making people think!! But you keep wasting your time writing for your audience of 4:)

cassie102 I feel left out, Michy didn't come at me today. Must hurt like hell knowing you're a joke that perpetuates a bigger joke.

leka-1998 Birds of a fake feather flock together. When the right person says tomorrow’s Christmas, tomorrow’s Christmas. Get ready, everyone.

If I narrow it down to the last six months, about 10,000 btw. Hm strange.

flowersintheattic254 @ajw720 the number of hits you have give me oxygen. If Michy thinks they are haters then she is delusional. People know when they are being sold something fake and they look for answers.

[imagining-supernatural]

Risk Being Seen

Summary of anonymous request: Just after beginning to hunt with the Winchesters, the reader hears an out-of-context conversation leading her to think they’re homophobic. After growing up in a very homophobic environment, she keeps her long time girlfriend, Charlie, a secret and continues to hunt with the Winchesters. (Full request at end)

Word Count: 3300

Warnings: Homophobic themes, implied/referenced smut

Version en Español: Arriesgándonos A Ser Vistos

“Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.” ~Jim Carrey 

Hunting with a new partner always required a lot of changes. And hunting with two new partners was even worse. Plus, the two partners were also brothers who had been hunting together their whole life, so you were definitely the third wheel.

But the Winchesters had offered you a spot in their car and who were you to turn down a chance to hunt with the legendary Winchester brothers? You were sure that just a week with them would expand your working knowledge of the hunting life. And if you could stay with them for a few months? Well, you would definitely become a much better hunter.

You really wanted this thing with them to last because not only were they amazing hunters, but in the short time you’d known them, you also saw that they were genuinely nice guys. Good people. It wasn’t too often you found people you got along with and who knew about the life.

A few days after you officially claimed your spot in the backseat of the impala, you were walking up to the booth after sneaking away to the bathroom and overheard part of a conversation that dropped a giant boulder right in your stomach.

“—And those gays are in everything now. They’re taking over Hollywood. It seems like every show has to have some character be gay now.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah. That’s stupid.”

Luckily, neither brother noticed you coming back, so you had enough time to back away and dash into the bathroom again. Your chest felt tight as tears of disappointment gathered in the corners of your eyes.

Before you could dive too deep back into your past self’s pit of darkness, you pulled your phone out of your pocket and scrolled through your contacts until you found Charlie’s name. A quick tap of your finger and her picture filled your screen while your phone dialed her number. Just the sight of your beautiful red-headed girlfriend made you feel a little better.

“Hey bitch, what’s up?” She greeted happily. Even her voice was calming, but not enough for you to convince yourself to go back and join the Winchesters.

“Y/N/N,” she said in a quieter voice when you didn’t reply right away. “What’s going on?”

“I thought they would be different,” you mumbled.

“You thought who would be different?”

“The Winchesters. I thought that I would be able to be myself and we could be a happy little trio of monster killing badasses. But if I tell them about us, then I think that’s the end.”

Turning down a shot at learning from the best of the hunters would be one of the worst decisions of your life. And it wasn’t like hiding your sexuality would be such a hard thing. You’d had years of practice before coming out to your family and consequently getting disowned.

“What’d they do?”

“Just some stupid comment about how they hate that the gays are taking over the entertainment industry.”

Charlie scoffed. “Yeah. Isn’t it such a horrible time? How dare Hollywood actually represent a group of people who exist? That’s just the worst.”

Her sarcasm made you feel a little better, as it always did. God, how you loved that woman. She always knew just the right thing to say whenever you needed to hear something.

“Exactly. There’s absolutely no reason for Hollywood to do anything with anyone other than a group of straight, white, males. Those are the only people who really matter in the world. The only group that needs representation.”

“Those Winchesters don’t know what they’re talking about,” Charlie broke the chain of sarcasm. “Look, honey, if they can’t accept you for who you are, then it’s their loss. Because anyone who turns down the chance to get to know you is insane. You’re the best woman I know and that’s why I fell in love with you.”

Her compliments always made you blush, and this time was no exception. “Thanks, C. I love you too.”

“But… but you said that these two morons are the best of the hunters, right?”

“Yeah,” you grumbled, mind flashing to the time they saved your life on a hunt that you had totally researched the wrong monster. “And, well, it’s not like they need to know every part of my life. I won’t be with them 24/7, so I’ll definitely have time to come visit you.”

Charlie’s heavy sigh on the other end of the line matched how you felt exactly. “Baby, you do what you need to do. I’ll love you no matter what, and we’ve all been in these situations where we need to hide this part of us. And if these two idiots will help you learn how to stay alive while saving other people…”

“I hate that I have to. I just want to announce to the world that I have the hottest, sexiest, smartest, nerdiest girlfriend ever.”

“Well, you just told me, and I’m your entire world, right babe?”

That earned a laugh from you. “Oh my God, you’re so cheesy!”

“I stole that from one of those bro memes.”

“You love those memes.”

“Not as much as I love you.”

Honestly, every time you talked to Charlie, it felt like your heart dissolved in your chest and the warm particles found their way into your bloodstream, making you all warm and fuzzy all over your body. This conversation was exactly the fortification you needed to put up a wall before heading back to the Winchesters.

“Aw stop, C. You’re making me blush.”

“Skype me when you get to your hotel room tonight and I’ll make you do more than blush. But until then, you do what you gotta. If being with those Winchesters will help you learn how to kill monsters better and save the world, then I can handle being your secret girlfriend.”

What in the world had you done to deserve such a perfect angelic girlfriend like her? You were seriously the luckiest girl on this planet. “I love you so much, C. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

~~Three Years Later~~

“I found a hunt,” you announced. The hesitancy in your voice made both brothers instantly alert.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s a haunting or something at Richard Roman Enterprises. Figured we could look into it.”

Bringing the Winchesters onto this hunt was risky, but something told you that you would need the backup. And when it came to protecting your girlfriend, you would do anything.

“Isn’t that around where you sneak off to every few weeks?” Sam asked, and Dean immediately perked up.

“Did your boyfriend tell you about this ghost? Are we finally gonna be able to meet the lucky guy?”

At Dean’s suggestive eyebrow wiggle, you just rolled your eyes. He was constantly teasing you about the guy that you frequently snuck away to meet. It wasn’t hard to guess that you definitely had a significant other. After all, you always came back much happier and Dean was correct to assume that you’d had a week of mind-blowing sex.

It just wasn’t the kind of sex that he was imagining.  

“My friend did. So I’m heading that way, and I would really like the backup.”

After hunting together for three years, the brothers trusted you enough that they didn’t need to ask too many more questions before agreeing to come along.

“So,” Dean started once you were on the road. “This friend of yours. Is she hot?”

Oh God. Not this.

“She’s way out of your league, Dean. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

“So that’s a yes on the hot thing. Single?”

“Not even close. Seriously, dude. Just forget about her. There are plenty of other women in the city for you to glom onto.”

You finally managed to get the conversation back to your normal routes and the rest of the drive passed relatively quickly. Of course, you started overthinking about how you should act with Charlie around the boys. Girls who were just friends hugged, right? But, like, how long should you linger? And how close should you stand to her so you don’t draw any suspicion? Cheek kisses were also normal things, right?

Damn it. You hated this. After leaving your family, you thought you’d never do this again. That you could always be open about who you were dating.

Three years with the Winchesters… maybe they would be more understanding now?

Better to not risk it.

Dean pulled up to the park that Charlie told you to meet her at, and the three of you got out of the car. Almost immediately, you caught sight of the red-headed beauty waiting for you and an instant smile lit your face.

Normal friends hugged.

So you quickly made your way over to her and pulled her into your arms.

“I’ve missed you,” you whispered into her ear.

“Show me just how much you’ve missed me when we get some alone time tonight.”

And there goes your heart. Dissolving and sending warm bursts throughout your blood stream. However, you would have to control that until later when you were at her apartment and the boys were at the hotel room. Because girls had sleepovers with their friends who were also girls. That was normal.

Friends.

That’s it for now.

You stepped back from the tight hug and motioned towards the Winchesters. “C, this is Sam and Dean. Guys, this is Charlie.”

“So you’re the Winchesters.” You caught onto the judgement in her voice, but hoped that the boys didn’t. Charlie wasn’t their biggest fan. She understood why you stayed with them despite them not accepting all part of you, but she still hated them.

But after a few minutes she cooled down enough to lead everyone over to a restaurant where you ate and talked about the ghost or whatever it was that was haunting her work. The boys managed to focus entirely on the case, but Charlie had her hand on your thigh under the table and you couldn’t handle it anymore. “Hey, C? I gotta go to the bathroom. You wanna…”

You didn’t have to ask twice, and the boys didn’t even raise their eyebrows. Women always went to the bathroom in herds. It was a normal thing. But as soon as you were in the bathroom, Charlie’s hands were on your hips and she was kissing you with all of the missed kisses from the last two months since you’d seen each other. Her cheeks were so soft under your fingers and you pushed her back until the wall was holding her up.

“You’re staying with me tonight, right? They won’t make you stay and research?” Her voice was already breathless and you’d only had her alone for less than a minute. “Because if they try to keep you away from me, I might just have to gank them myself.”

You pulled away from where you’d been peppering kisses down her neck and grinned. “Hey, you used ganked right!”

“Well, my girl’s a super badass hunter, so I figured I better get all up in the lingo.”

“Aaaaand you ruined it,” you teased. “But yeah. I’m staying with you.”

“Good. We’d better get back out there, then.”

The ghost was dead. Well, dead again. Gone. The ghost was gone. The hunt was over. And since you’d come with the Winchesters, you had to leave with them too. Well, you supposed, you could hitchhike back to Kansas, but it would be easier to go with them now and come back for a longer visit later.

“Okay, I get what you’ve been saying. They are nice guys.” Charlie was lounging on her couch while you took one last look around her place to make sure you weren’t forgetting anything important. “Maybe you read them wrong before? They could be cool about you being gay.”

Your eyes landed on a framed picture on a bookshelf and a bittersweet sigh escaped your lips. You and Charlie had gone to an amusement park a few years ago and spent the day laughing, screaming, and enjoying each other’s company as you went on every ride you could. As you did every time you were together, you took selfies liberally. Everywhere you could, whenever possible, you documented your lives together. This picture had been taken at the top of the Ferris Wheel. It had been a wonderful view. The bright colors of the amusement park were laid out behind you two like a child’s board game.

But it wasn’t the park that kept your attention.

Charlie had been laughing when you took the picture. You couldn’t remember the exact joke you’d just told her, but you could remember the magical sound of her laughter as you leaned in and kissed her cheek just as you snapped the picture.

It had been a good day.

“They might be. But I just… I don’t know, C. I don’t want to keep hiding,” you plopped down next to her on the couch, picture still in hand. “But I’ve never had hunting partners this good before. We just click and I don’t want to risk it. But I hate keeping us a secret.”

She reached over and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. You leaned into her touch, knowing it was going to be a long few weeks before you would feel it again.

“You consider them your friends, right?”

You just nodded.

“Then they should accept you for who you really are.”

“That’s what everyone said about my family,” you mumbled, remembering the major disaster that had turned out to be. But before Charlie could say anything comforting, you kept talking through it. “But… But I was happier after I told them. Well, not right away. And I still miss them. But it was freeing after a while. Realizing that I didn’t have to sneak around and I didn’t have that weight of their judgement on me. I… Okay. I’m going to tell them.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. If they can’t accept me as I am, then they don’t deserve me.”

“Damn right, bitch!”

“I’m not going to hide anymore.”

“Oh, sweet Sansa Stark, you’re turning me on right now,” Charlie breathed and the next thing you knew, she was pushing you back on the couch. “I love when you get all determined and shit.”

Carefully, you set the picture down on the coffee table before wrapping your arms around her shoulders and pulling her on top of you. “Just how turned on are you?”

“More turned on than Amy was when Jake took charge and planned that party at the cop convention in season four.”

“Oh, god,” you grinned. “You are turned on!”

She wasted no more time with words and crashed her lips into yours. With her weight on top of you, your hands exploring her body, and the intoxicating taste of her on your lips, you weren’t aware of anything else in the world. It didn’t even register that someone had opened the front door until they spoke.

“Hey, Y/N, we got a call from—oh.”

“Dean!” Both you and Charlie had frozen, but when Sam came in and raised his eyebrows at the sight, you both scrambled to sit up. For a brief moment, you faltered in your resolve, remembering the horror after your family found out.

But then Charlie scooted away a few inches and you panicked. You needed her, the Winchesters be damned. So you grabbed her hand to keep her from moving further.

A small grin covered Dean’s face and he folded his arms. “So this is who you’ve been sneaking away to see all these years.”

“Um, yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Sam asked, pushing further into the room and taking a seat on the coffee table. He picked up the framed picture of you and Charlie beside him and studied it with careful eyes.

“Because… because…”

“Because she overheard you two being dickheaded, homophobic jerkasses, but you guys are the best in the biz so she wanted to stick around and learn from you,” Charlie supplied for you.

“What?” Sam’s head jerked up in disbelief. “When did you hear that?”

“Um, three years ago. It was at a diner and Dean said something about how he hated that the gays are taking over Hollywood and you agreed that it was stupid, Sam.”

Dean’s lips moved silently and he stared off into the distance like always did when he was trying to conjure up a memory, and Sam looked just as confused. Then Dean’s face cleared and he came to sit next to Sam on the table.

“Y/N, I was telling Sam about a conversation I had with some other dickheaded, homophobic jerkass who thought that. Sam agreed that it was stupid and offensive that he said that. We don’t think that. I swear.”

“Really?” Was that all this was? A three-year misunderstanding?

“Yes, really,” Sam said. He turned the picture around so you could see your girlfriend’s laughing face. “You love who you love and look at how happy she makes you. You shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise. I’m sorry if I’ve ever done anything else to make you feel like you weren’t welcome.”

A quick perusal of the past three years didn’t bring up anything else. “You didn’t. I just don’t have the best history at coming out to people and so that one conversation just kinda… cemented everything.”

“Well this conversation changed it, right? We’re good?”

Their acceptance brought tears to your eyes and you nodded before slipping your hand out of Charlies to hug both brothers. It was the complete opposite of your family. But, what was it that Bobby always said? Family don’t end in blood. This was your family now.

“’m glad we cleared this up, kid.”

“Me too, Dean. And I’m sorry I thought you guys were…”

“Dickheaded, homophobic jerkasses,” Charlie piped up and you glanced back at her with a tender smile.

“Yeah. Thanks, babe. Sorry I ever thought you were dickheaded, homophobic jerkasses.”

“No need to apologize. But I actually came in to tell you that I got a call from Taylor. He needs some backup on a hunt in Tennessee. But Sam and I can take it if you want to stay here for a bit.”

You shook your head. “Nah. Taylor’s an idiot so you’ll need backup just to deal with him. Besides, I’ll be back here soon enough.”

“You better, bitch,” Charlie grabbed the lapels of your jacket and pulled you to her for a quick kiss. After so long of hiding from the Winchesters, the PDA was a little stilted, but you pushed past it and let your heart dissolve.

“We’ll meet you at the car in five minutes.” Sam and Dean gracefully excused themselves and Charlie smiled at you which sent your neurons firing off like fireworks.

“I’m glad that worked out.”

“Me too.” After another not-so-quick kiss and some goodbyes, you stood and grabbed your bag. You were on the porch when you heard Charlie calling for you.

She handed you the framed photo from the top of the Ferris Wheel. “Take this. I’ll print another for myself, but you should keep this one. Put it in your room at the bunker.”

Your smile couldn’t be contained as your fingers closed around the simple black frame. “Thanks, C. I love you so much.”

“Love you too, baby. Now go save some lives and be the badass Diaz to my lovely, eccentric Gina!”

“Oh god, they’re so perfect for each other,” you couldn’t help but gush about your favorite ship on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

“So perfect.”

You pulled her in for another kiss, fully aware that Sam and Dean could see from the Impala. That anyone, really, could see. “I’ll call you tonight. Love you.”

Full request by anon: Lesbian reader starts hunting with the Winchesters, but after hearing a conversation out of context she assumes that the Winchesters are homophobic. Since she grew up in a very homophobic environment she doesn't think of leaving and instead doesn't tell them about it or about her girlfriend, Charlie (kinda AU where they don't know Charlie). Flash forward couple years and they're on a hunt and run into Charlie, who is still reader's serious long distance girlfriend. Bonus points if she knows about the hunting life and totally gets it, but kinda hates Sam and Dean bc she thinks they're homophobic and so messes with them by acting ignorant. THANKS, this is a really personal request for me right now. 

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[sparrowsapling]

Please Listen

There was an article making the rounds recently titled, if I remember correctly, "I don't know how to explain that you should care about other people." It was a good article, but that's not what I want to talk about now. I remembered the article title today in the midst of many other frustrating thoughts, and what I came out with was this:

I don't know how to explain that you should care about Jews.

We are not some distant hypothetical, some Hollywood stereotype, some far-removed historical figures. We're not just a religion that celebrates Chanukah instead of Christmas, or basically all just white Europeans. We're a diverse, distinct people in a world that simultaneously wants us to shut up about it and will never let us forget that we're different.

We are not your rhetorical device. "You wouldn't get away with saying that about Jews." But people do, make no mistake; maybe you just don't pay attention when it's about Jews. "The ____ holocaust," you say while wondering why Jews talk so much about their own Holocaust. "It's like being a Jew in 1930s Germany," you say, not thinking for a moment about what it's like to be a Jew now.

We are not your ultimate villain, the whitest of white people, the bankers, the conspiring media, the puppetmasters behind every evil of the world. We are rich and poor people, successful and unsuccessful people, people in positions of power and people who are struggling. We do good things and bad things, just like everybody else, and the bad things are not representative of every Jew or part of some vast conspiracy.

We are not pretenders, trying to claim victimhood. We are people who have stubbornly survived through centuries, millennia of oppression and have the memories of it in our stories and our own DNA. We are people who remember when our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and on back for generations saw the winds turn and found themselves no longer welcome in the places they called home, and often in danger. We understand the subtleties bigotry can take, the way anti-Semitism is so woven into the fabric of society that it's often easy not to see it if you have the privilege not to.

There are many just causes in the world, and there are many Jews who fight for them, but who will fight for us? When you talk of Nazis, white supremacists, the alt-right, will you remember that Jews are a target too? When people rail against bankers and the media, against globalists and corporatists, or descend into more overt conspiracy theories, will you remember how those concepts have been and still are weaponized against Jews? Will you speak out against them?

And when Jews say that we are scared, will you listen? Or will you shrug off our fears because the problems we face are more subtle than those of people of color or Muslims or other minorities? Will you ignore that Jews account for a vastly disproportionate percentage of hate crimes because those crimes aren't violent, or if they were, nobody died, or if they did, it was in another country and it wouldn't happen here?

When Jews say that something is anti-Semitic, will you hear us? Or will you listen to the people who say that it's an overreaction or an excuse to silence criticism, forgetting for a moment that privilege can mean not seeing oppression or prejudice right in front of your face? Will you insist that it's only anti-Zionist without stopping to consider why so many Jews outside of Israel experience "anti-Zionism," or why you think it's unequivocally correct to hate Israel, or whether you even know what Zionism is?

And what about when Jews dare to speak positively about Israel? Many Jews live there, or have relatives there, or have visited there, or simply believe that the country has a right to exist, which is all that Zionism means. That doesn't mean we think the Israeli government or its citizens have never done anything wrong, or that we don't think Palestinians have rights too. But the situation is complicated, and if you can't believe that, perhaps you should consider why you're so willing to accept that once again, it's all the Jews' fault, and that once again, we need to pick up roots and go. If you think that Israel is uniquely evil in the world, or uniquely worthy of constant criticism, perhaps you should consider why people spend so much time and energy hating the one tiny little Jewish country in the world. If nothing else, consider why Jews who are doing nothing but being Jewish are so often expected to answer for Israel before they can be a part of spaces on the left, let alone bring up anti-Semitism.

I would hope that non-Jews who claim to care about social justice will listen and care and speak up for us, but my experience and that of many other Jews is that they often won't. There will be millions of "Je suis Charlie" tweets and barely a word about the attack on a Jewish supermarket, to say nothing of the attacks on Israeli Jews that are sometimes even celebrated, no matter who the victims are. There will be, appropriately, anger at politicians who make racist or sexist or Islamophobic comments but ignoring or even justifying of anti-Semitic remarks.

The same people who insist that it's not for white people to say when something is racist or straight people to say when something is homophobic and so on will suddenly argue with Jews about whether something is really anti-Semitic. People who normally say that intent doesn't matter if you hurt someone suddenly insist a person isn't anti-Semitic unless they really meant to be. Besides, they're just telling the truth about how Jews are rich and powerful, plus Zionism is such a great evil that Jews deserve everything they get

Right-wing anti-Semitism is a frightening thing, but left-wing anti-Semitism is frightening in a different way. It's people who say that we should care about and fight for all oppressed groups forgetting us, or outright saying, "No, we don't need to fight for you." It's telling Jews that we're not allowed to speak out, and not allowed to be ourselves. It's telling us that all the standards which apply to other people don't apply to us, sometimes in words and sometimes in actions. It's telling us that because Israel exists, Jews around the world are not worthy of protection. It's showing us that when the Nazis come for us again—because to them, we're not a part of the white world they want—our supposed allies will just look away.

This may seem melodramatic, but you have to understand: Jews have been expelled from one country after another, over and over throughout our history. Jews have faced discrimination and fear and violence, and fled only to experience the same thing somewhere else. If we're worried, it's because history has taught us that it's not paranoid; it's realistic. We've learned the hard way that when it comes down to it, most non-Jews won't fight for us.

I keep hoping I'm wrong about that. I keep talking about my Jewishness so that people who don't know other Jews will see that we're people, different in some ways and the same in many. I keep pointing out anti-Semitism and keep trying to educate people who seem to have good intentions but don't understand how anti-Semitism works, how it hides itself away. I keep telling people I'm scared and hoping they'll listen and care.

But the silence is so often deafening and I don't know what else to do, let alone how to convince the larger world to care about Jewish struggles and Jewish fears, and to talk about them. I don't know how to make people so aware of other types of privilege understand how privileged they are not to see anti-Semitism, and to leave their unconscious biases about Jews unnoticed and unquestioned. I don't know how to explain that Jews deserve to be taken seriously and to exist and to feel safe. I don't know how to get non-Jews to care, and sometimes I wonder if there's any way I can.

[scix-in-the-back-row]

Neon Demon (2016)

Neon Demon (2016) directed by Nicolas Winding Refn; Starring Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Jena Malone

Right from the start, the cinematography is driving me nuts. The opening scene where the model is fake-dead on the divan is a centered shot. Which is fine, I guess, sometimes. But the right side is dark, which has a heavier “weight,” making the whole shot feel unbalanced. I actually had to put my hand on the screen to block the right side because the composition was bothering me so much.

Most of the pics I found on the internet cropped off the right edge, too!

Throughout, the shots are centered when they shouldn’t be. This either makes for a lop-sided shot as above, or leaves dead space. Waste of screen. Of course, there are some good centered shots as well, but that doesn’t really save it.

Color is pretty cool, and the shots are composed well if you change the framing. The dialogue is stilted in a way that I think is supposed to create tension, but it just sounds like an old video game to me.

About fifteen minutes in, and those fucking strobe lights are terrible, and I don’t know what the movie is about. Presumably more than slightly-homoerotic mean-girls taunting in a posh restroom bigger than my apartment.

Okay, that’s only fifteen minutes in. Surely something is about to happen. Diving back in.

So, the “show” is slow strobes, boring music and a pale person in shibari suspension? It’s sort of being presented as this edgy, transgressive perversion, and it’s just not. I may be missing something because I am so distracted by the damned strobe.

Then cutaway to the motel. The “show” doesn’t go anywhere. Might as well be a chandelier. The cutaway from posh and pseudo-dark and decadent with strobes to grotty Americana has a Lynchian flourish to it, but mostly it just made me say, “what?” And not in a good, sexy Lynch way. Jesus. Only sixteen minutes. This is going to be really long if I gripe about each and every scene.

And often it’s only roughly centered. Now, I know, maybe they’re doing it on purpose to keep people subtly unsettled, but personally I find it annoying. Compose and balance the shot fully off-center, or center it precisely and make it damned-near symmetrically balanced. It’s not like there’s any motion in any of these shots to complicate things (with one or two notable exceptions, but even then they tend to start or stop on a badly-centered shot).

I think I get it! The shots are composed for a different aspect ratio. I was just looking at a shot and realized, it’s nicely composed using rule of thirds and everything -- if the screen were more square. I wonder how that happened. I bet if I put masking tape on the sides of my screen it’ll look perfect.

Okay, I take it back. The CGI moon hanging in the upper-right corner like a kid’s drawing would be out of frame. 

Still good use of color, though. And I’m still not sure what the film is about. A minor getting a new job? 

Oh hey, something happening. And suddenly the cinematography is better. Almost like Keanu Reeves got the GOOD camera operator. And ... is this going to be Cat People?

This thing is TWO HOURS? Cut out half of the pauses between lines, it’d be forty minutes.

Heeeey, she said that was her natural hair color. Those roots, man, [insert catty comment on dark roots. Something about Alex Haley?]

I like this shot. It’s centered, and the density of the models is uneven -- heavier on the right. But the spaced-apart ones on the left carry more authority. The whole shot is balanced, especially as it pans from right to left. And it’s using the whole screen.

This movie has that Hollywood thing where every character is gaga about how beautiful the ingenue is, but ... honestly, she really looks no different from any of the others. A little short, in fact. But hey, a model among models, what can you do? 

(I just looked up, the cinematographer is Natasha Braier. She’s done a lot of work, but I don’t recognize a single title.)

I could have sworn this was going to be a horror movie? Or a thriller, at least? The only scary part was less than three minutes. The rest is ... tension ... expressed ... by ... long ... pauses.

So ... the washed-up model is a vampire? I feel like when the pauses get old, the movie just slaps us with a red herring to distract us. The younger photographer who tried to kiss her, the older, colder photographer who seemed dangerous, the cat, and now the blood-drinking. And Reeves is too big a star to not do anything important eventually. Go ahead, Refn. Make it all work. I dare you. 

This is a nice shot, actually, but a little self-indulgent. Which is entirely unfair of me, but there we are. (Not quite halfway through.)

“I don’t think I’m his type.”

“Why not? You look pretty masculine.”

And why do we think the designer is gay? Because he’s a designer, or was there some secret signal only beautiful women know? Honestly, he practically creamed when he saw her. In other words: fuck you, movie.

...And now she’s hallucinating the Triforce. You know, I am a big fan of weird. Look at the other films I review. But there’s “What the hell’s going on?” weird and “fuck you” weird. Sometimes this movie feels insulting.

A pink Triforce at that. Do people still use pink triangles? Anyway, this scene just made me yell, “get on with it!”

...And they skip the runway? What the hell? The only reason I was sitting through that hallucination was to see if it affected her runway walk, because it certainly wasn’t going anywhere (ooh! She kissed her reflection! How sexy/edgy/symbolic!).

And if that mountain lion turns out to be nothing, I shall be very disappointed.

Oh, I get it, I’m a little slow. It’s a “small town girl gets corrupted in the big city” cautionary tale. 

Something interesting about that bedspread. Before she turned the light on it looked splashed with blood. It looks like she has a better room, too, but it’s the same one. This is just a new camera angle. Nice touch. 

Oh, good. Raping a child. Content warning there. And ... call me kooky ... phone the police?

Evidence suggests we’re playing the predatory lesbian trope. H’ray. This was 2016, folks. Refn’s from Denmark but works here. This is some ooooold homophobic cliche working here. And Jesse’s a minor, remember.

Stuffed leopard in the background ... are we doing something clever, maybe? I sure hope so. Some Dario Argento colors, too.

 The music cues in this part seem ridiculously gratuitous. Only about a half-hour to go, Scix, and part of that will be credits. And stuff ... sort of ... seems to be finally ... happening ... but ... very ... slowly.

...And of course someone can’t work in a morgue if they’re not a necrophile. I shake my head at you, movie. And what is this parallel scene? Magical realism or just metaphor (for what, really?) -- “Hey, I have an idea, the lez molests the hot corpse that kinda looks like the model, and the model masturbates on a fancy couch like the lez is doing it to her! We can have our hot chick on chick action and Jesse’s character remains totally hetero, bro!” Some things can be visually interesting but just ... thoughtless and useless in an actual film that theoretically should be conveying a story more aptly than a music video. “Gratuitous” is really the word for this scene.

Also, why does the model have such terrible taste in clothes? And the makeup is dreadful. Ugh.

MURDEROUS predatory necrophile lesbian. Just great.

I think that’s more blood than one skinny girl’s body can carry.

...Oh, now that was gratuitous. And that.

And we’re done. The big cats came to nothing (unless they represent Ruby being a “cougar”?), Reeves was a bit part, and it’s unclear who this movie is for. Lots of gratuitous female nudity for the end, so you think, maybe that’s eye candy for the str8 dudes, but then the gusher kinda ruins that. And one killer gets remorse, but the other two get ... youth? There’s just no takeaway to this movie, besides “lesbians are terrible.” Even the “nice guy” was wooing a minor. Maybe the message is, “everyone is terrible.” Or going literal with “L.A. will eat you up.”

Just ... disappointing. Sorry you had to sit through me sitting through this movie, if you got this far. Now I am going to read the TVTropes page for it. That’s always good for a laugh (and to point out stuff I missed).

[newyorktheater]

Cynthia Erivo singing “Stand Up” at the Oscars, the Oscar-nominated song she co-wrote for “Harriet,” the movie for which she gave an Oscar-nominated performance. Erivo is the Tony Award winner for The Color Purple — she also won a Grammy for The Color Purple album, and an Emmy for singing from it on TV. Had she won either of the two Oscars for which she was nominated at the 92nd Academy Awards, that would have meant an EGOT for her. But the Oscars were not a night for black people, or women, or Broadway veterans.

For the fourth year in a row, the Trump budget proposes shutting down the National Endowment for the Arts, along with many other cultural agencies — the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) — all, so the proposal states, ” as part of the Administration’s plan to move the Nation towards fiscal responsibility and to redefine the proper role of the Federal Government.”

Details from the Performing Arts Alliance and what you can do about it

Week in New York Theater Reviews

Border People

Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)

Two different shows about immigrants are traveling to all five boroughs

Fandango for Butterflies and Coyotes

The audience is invited to sing and dance along with the performers in an actual fandango, which is a lively, spontaneous, communal musical celebration. But that’s only after the 100 minutes of “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes),” a play that depicts a fandango as practiced by immigrants from Latin America who have brought the tradition to New York.

Border People one can be forgiven for assuming that “Border People” will be about the worldwide refugee crisis, like a spate of other New York theater this season, or at least about the tension over immigration in the U.S. Some of the monologues are indeed in part spot-on commentary on these issues…If Hoyle has a political purpose in “Border People,” it’s less about piecing together a ground-level look at a specific urgent issue, as it is to undermine popular assumptions based on a range of identities. That big black guy living in the Bronx is actually a chess master. That farmer in Arizona tells us he might have been a redneck except that he’s gay.

The Confession of Lily Dare

As he’s done for close to 40 years, Charles Busch sprinkles his latest campy melodrama with Oscar Wilde wit, Barbara Stanwyck grit, Marlene Dietrich glamour and Mae West shtick: “I don’t usually meet the wives…. except in court,” Busch as Lily Dare vamps in one of her many incarnations. “The Confession of Lily Dare” offers an overlong, convoluted tale that simultaneously pays homage to and parodies a genre of early talkies …

Riddle of the Trilobites

Trilobites were actual crab-like creatures of the sea who lived on earth 150 million years before the first dinosaurs – and, like dinosaurs, are long extinct. But they remain as sturdy fossils for scientists to study….and theater artists to imagine.

“The Riddle of the Trilobites,” running at New Victory Theater through February 23, is being billed as a musical for kids about climate change. That may be the most marketable way of describing a show that is also about puppets and paleontology.and puberty.

The Week in New York Theater News

Has @theebillyporter become essential to every awards show?#Oscar2020 pic.twitter.com/SjjI7aodWV

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) February 10, 2020

The two obvious questions from #Oscars2020 1. When will Parasite be made into a Broadway musical? 2. When will any of the four Oscar-winning performers make their Broadway debuts? pic.twitter.com/9FQn3bAhWT

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) February 10, 2020

AP: “The TV ratings for this year’s Oscars ceremony were the lowest in history. The Nielsen company says the audience of 23.6 million people who saw “Parasite” win best picture was down from 29.6 million in 2019.” (The Tonys would kill for that number.)

  Thirty rush tickets (at $40) and 30 lottery ticket (at $30) will be available for every preview performance of “Six the Musical, “which begins performances Feb 13 and opens March 12 at Brooks Atkinson Theater

Finalists for this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for outstanding play by a woman dramatist

The third annual “Women’s Day on Broadway: The Decade Ahead and How Women Will Shape It” on March 10 at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Free, but make a reservation.

Jeremy Jordan will be the third Seymour in the production of Little Shop of Horror at Westside Theater March 17-May 10

Williamstown Festival summer calendar

Audra McDonald and Bobby Cannavale will star in A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, directed by Robert O’Hara opening the festival.

From high art to tipsy night out: has immersive theatre sold its soul? 

j

Theater criticism jargon, translated, by San Francisco Chronicle critic Lily Janiak: eg. Dated: “This show is painfully racist, sexist, homophobic, heteronormative and/or nationalist, and quite likely very boring in the moments when it’s not making you wince…”

Edgy: “This production was created by people who are younger than I am.”

Experimental (of a genre): “I did not know what was happening in this play.”

How Nathan Lane avoided coming out to Oprah Winfrey (but did so on The Advocate three years later)

  I am locked in the bathroom at Lincoln Center. I have been banging and yelling if you see this tweet send help!

— Lynn Nottage (@Lynnbrooklyn) February 6, 2020

    Rest in Peace

Orson Bean, 91, familiar face on TV, nine-time veteran on Broadway, who recently played a cardinal in a local California production of Bad Habits. “My secret to longevity is gratitude. The longer I live, the more grateful I become.”

Paul Ford as Harry Lambert, Maureen O’Sullivan as Edith Lambert and Orson Bean as Charlie in Never Too Late, 1962

Orson Bean, 91, was struck and killed by a car Friday night in Venice, California. The veteran of Hollywood and Broadway (Tony nominee for Subways Are for Sleeping) was still a working actor.

Kirk Douglas on Broadway in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1963, opposite Joan Tetzel as Nurse Ratched. He optioned the film rights but eventually gave them to his son Michal Douglas, who produced the movie directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson.

Kirk Douglas on Broadway

Kevin Conway, 77, memorable turns in the 1970s in the plays “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” and “The Elephant Man,”

Paula Kelly, 76, movie and TV actress, an four-time Broadway veteran who made her Broadway debut as Mrs. Veloz in the 1964 musical Something More!, alongside Barbara Cook.

“Time heals everything,” Bernadette Peters sang at the Jerry Herman memorial, as she sang in the original Broadway production of his Mack and Mabel (which is getting an Encores production this month at City Center.)  Let’s hope time really does heal everything. We miss Jerry Herman and his optimism.

Killing Culture. After Oscars. Immigrants on Stage in All 5 Boroughs. #Stageworthy News of the Week For the fourth year in a row, the Trump budget proposes shutting down the National Endowment for the Arts, along with many other cultural agencies -- the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) -- all, so the proposal states, " as part of the Administration's plan to move the Nation towards fiscal responsibility and to redefine the proper role of the Federal Government."

[worthyoflovelh]

I Knew It Would Happen Sometime

I’m not going to name the excuse for my absence,just gonna jump right into it! I’m quite firm about the way I was raised..I always knew one day a time like this would find me..just wasn’t expecting it to happen this way...I see a lot of things on my social media,but there have a been few things lately that I was taught to never follow. Pride and LGBTQ was one of them. Now I know exactly how you’re going to respond:

*FFH Spoiler* Homophobes don’t get to enjoy movies

If you don’t support that,you shouldn’t run a Tom fan page

The fact that you say we’re attacking you makes me cackle!

This is just a few of the remarks I’ve received within 48 hours.

Now I’m going to share an article by Cissie Graham Lynch:

In today’s society, I assume most of us love or know someone who is part of the LGBT community. I believe this is the reason most Christians and pastors don’t want to teach on the subject. The sin has become personal for so many, and the lines of what’s right and wrong—of what truth is—have become blurred.

I have watched many of my Christian friends struggle with this conflict in their hearts. But if you call Jesus your Lord and Savior and you believe in the Bible as the Word of God, you have to believe it in its entirety. Even the parts that are confusing, even the parts we don’t understand and the parts we have questions about. There are times our hearts can break over some of God’s truths, but we have to believe in His sovereignty. We cannot ignore Scripture.

Romans 1:26-27 says: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

God is love and God is truth. And when we’re confused and don’t understand, that’s when He tells us to lean not on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) but on His perfect and infinite wisdom.

There are people in the LGBT community whom I love with my whole heart, and I will never stop loving them, but they have been blinded by the lies of the world to believe what they’re doing is OK. And the church is failing to provide them with truth.

I’ll never forget watching a television interview with a very well-known pastor who was asked about homosexuality. And in that moment, he decided not to proclaim truth in the world of darkness because he wanted to give an answer that was pleasing to his viewers. He said, “I don’t speak about homosexuality because Jesus doesn’t talk about it or define it.”

But Jesus does talk about it. He defines what marriage is in Matthew 19:4-6: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’”

Unfortunately, in past generations, too many Christians were full of truth and hardness, without grace.

In Randy Alcorn’s book “The Grace and Truth Paradox,” he reminds us that Jesus Christ is 100 percent grace and 100 percent truth. You can’t have one without the other. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

My generation is filled with love and grace, but they don’t proclaim truth. We cannot neglect the truths in God’s Word, because we then neglect to tell lost people about sin, and they won’t know the greatest love story of all, the Gospel, that Jesus died on the cross for our sin.

If Christians and churches are not doing this, how will the next generation know what’s right and wrong? According to a Barna study, only 24 percent of churched Generation Z Christians, ages 13-18, believe that homosexuality is wrong. If we’re not careful, by the next generation no one will think it’s wrong because they won’t know what God’s Word says about it.

In today’s world, almost every television show and every movie promotes the LGBT agenda. Hollywood, our government, our schools, and now even many churches, try to define truth based on their sinful human opinion. Generation Z can’t find their truth in Hollywood; truth can only be found in God’s Word and through those who unashamedly proclaim it.

The LGBT community, which claims to be a community of acceptance, has become very aggressive to Christians who dare to disagree with them. They label us hateful. I personally received hundreds of hate comments after watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. One of the acts in the parade was two girls going to prom together and kissing at the end. When my little girl asked me why there were two girls together, I turned the television off and later tweeted about the incident.

We have to take a bold stand against what Satan is using to destroy a generation. The world tells us we can’t have an opposing view and love someone at the same time, but they are wrong. Acts 4:33 talks about us speaking truth and God’s grace falling upon us. The same grace that fell on me when I asked Jesus to come in my life can fall on people in the LGBT community.

I’ve had many friends who through the years have come out as being gay. My love for them has never stopped. My text messages on their birthdays have not stopped. My random texts telling them I love them continue.

I see the sin of homosexuality the same as I see my own sin. I’ve never treated my gay friends differently, because my sin nailed Jesus to the cross just as much as theirs. They are no different than anyone who has had sex before marriage, lived in adultery or any other sin. We as Christians have to be bold enough to proclaim God’s unpopular truth in a world that will come against us.

The lines between right and wrong cannot be blurred. Remember, Jesus calls us to be light in a dark world. Being a light doesn’t just mean love and kindness or love and grace. It means love and truth. Jesus couldn’t be one without the other. Neither can I and neither can you. If you love someone, you tell them the truth.

Witch is exactly how I feel about this. 🙏🏻

[catastrophizinglife]

TransWa??

This is an interesting post (from an actual person on my FB friend's list, and not some link to god only knows where) that makes a guy like me stop and think...

The wording of this post actually had me slightly confused as to whether this individual was born male or female, and of course I had to ask for clarification assuming full well that I'd most likely get about a million lectures (from the wonderful world of gender benders) but I didn't (yet.)

Most transgender people I’ve come to know online (don't really know any in person that come to mind, currently) get atrociously, and unnecessarily angry when you ask them questions like "what kind of junk have you got in your pants?" or "Were you born male or female?" I mean these (most, not all) transgender people pretty much bark at you from atop their giant (pink and blue - depending on FTM or MTF status) soapboxes, and try to belittle our "simplistic," "backwards" and, "ancient" ways of thinking. "How dare you ask me that!? It's none of your business!" And they go on to claim that "people like me" should just accept them for who they are.

Now here's the problem with that... If the junk in your trunk is meaningless, and pointless, and shouldn't be discussed, pondered, or imagined because it's not the meat that makes the mack, then why the hell are you "trying to live life" in a gender not assigned to you at birth? Why would you MTFs care about women's clothing? women's makeup? Fancy french manicures and up-doos if the sex didn’t matter? For years, women (not men) have broken their backs (sometimes quite literally due to heels) to do one of 2 things either own the fact that they have boobs and rock-em well, or try to fight and claw their way out from under the metaphorical glass ceiling (and all other boxes MEN try to keep them in.) They did that. They continue to do that.

But here YOU come along with your PENIS yeah, that's right, ya do got one bro, and try to take their spotlight for your own personal desires. With your oh-so-wishy-washy, and pompous attitude. Wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have that "I'm entitled" attitude, like the world owes you something. Like you had to work through years of inequality and housewife-hood. Guiding Light, As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless weren't made for YOU, they were made for the oppressed women in this country (because women couldn't work outside the home, it was a woman's job to care for the home and the children and the husband. Hollywood catering to slaves in the home was the very LEAST they could do for women.) It was the Women's Rights movement that pretty much paved the way for blacks (even helping (however accidental) black men get the right to vote before even themselves were granted that right) and gays, and now YOU. Yes the YOU I'm referring to is the T in LGBT (or as most of the "I'm politically correct when I have to be, and not when I don't have to be” individuals would point out, you need to tack on about a million more letters to that, to actually be inclusive.) Trans people are just a "blah" to me. I try not to be judgemental toward them (I too once wanted to be a woman) and for the most part (this post notwithstanding) am successful in being kind and respectful toward them. It's when A) "they" (sounds prejudice right? LoL) it's when they get that "I'm offended if people don't know how I expect them to treat me" mindset. Bitch, I'm a gay man. I was born one, and I'll die one. It ain't my business to know how you think I should be treating you. (And FYI, most of the T's that throw a stink are just in a phase. No, it's true. Even if they're already taking hormones, or just dressing in ladies clothes, they're going to eventually (for whatever reason) come to realize that they're fine just the way they are. Be mad at me, but I speak the truth.)

So why then do we (as a society) have to one day use a different set of pronouns, and a different set the next to address people? It is my humble opinion that we shouldn't have to. I am not your daddy and I shouldn't have to walk on eggshells and get grilled every time you wake up with a sudden chemical change in your head that makes you want to be a girl today, or a boy today. In fact, ya only got one mommy and one daddy in this world, and they're the only ones who should have to do that sort of bending back and forth to accommodate your mental instability, not the whole rest of society. The world does not revolve around you, so quit trying to piggyback on MY RIGHTS as a gay man, or HER RIGHTS as a lesbian.

I mean, it was fine when the T was a small manageable figure. It was okay when I (or many of the other little gay boys out there) dressed up in their mother's or sister's clothes and makeup and pretended we were girls. The good parents let their children live out their FANTASIES, and the bad parents beat them into submission (I was raised in a homophobic, black-phobic, pretty much everything-phobic household). Some of us even went on to live out our fantasies of being born another gender by performing in bars. This came to be known as drag. In either case we all eventually came back down to Earth realizing that we are who we are, and that there's nothing wrong with that. Now I'll admit, some, not all transgender people, actually live their lives in the role of a SEX they were not born as, always wanted to, and always will 'til the day they leave Earth. Those are the ones I will grant "expected" proper pronouns to. Those are the ones who are actually trans. But this guy, the one who posted this picture, he is not trans, and like I said, he, like all the others, came back down to Earth after he played out his fantasy. He is now content being a man, as he was born.

Anyway this is just me soapboxing (join me, wont you?) In closing I'd just like to say this: The "regular" trans people have (however unknowingly) opened the door to not only confused "I'm a girl, I'm a boy" gay people wanting everyone to bow down and serve their allusive junk, but straight people are gender-bending now too. And THAT IS ANNOYING AS FUCK! I bet you the first transgender individual didn't foresee that happening. I guess I personally don't get it. I mean, I understand a gay guy and a gay girl wishing they had been born with different junk, but it goes way over my head why any straight person would ever want to live life in another sex. I mean, you FTM straight people, do you really think that a gay guy like me could ever wanna bone you? Seriously? You were born a girl who likes guys, and want to be a guy who likes guys??? What planet are you from? Who's your doctor? I needs ta get me one-a-doze yo! You make not a bit of sense and are a mockery of my community, whose only purpose seems to be to set us back a few dozen years.I love the show Shameless, but that whole gay guy & trans guy storyline just isn’t reality.

Anyway, I invite logical, thoughtful comments, but get rude wid me n u gonna get cut da fuck off yo lol

PEACE