#it's none of our business

[vanmarkus]

I feel like we're slipping into the realms of discussing Oliver's sexuality, so I just wanna say: please do NOT even go there.

[linoguy]

i think w lee know, we've been dealing with his joking indifference vs his actual indifference, and i think for a while we had actual indifference, which is why it started to feel weird to joke around about him in the way we like to

[10minuta]

Sometimes I see people's comments and I'm like... does no one actually realize that, that man that does these sus things maybe in fact is not straight in some way, and who actually cares? *You* just don't know that he's not. Why do people act like it would be impossible or shameful to even think that for real. Who actually cares? Let people be gay.

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[shouyuus]

was thinking about it this morning as i was making tea and i think there's a fundamental gap in the advice we give to writers/creators to "first and foremost create for ourselves", bc yes. in the beginning, i am almost always writing for myself. i write all the time, and im sure that artists doodle and paint all the time too. there are things i've written that will never see the light of day and are truly just for me.

and then there are things that i choose to share, because i want to share them. because i'm proud of a story, and want to put it into the world. the act of sharing it is, above all, an invitation.

its me inviting you into a corner of my mind/heart/soul, opening the window and throwing open the curtains and waving, holding up a sign that says "hi! do you like this too? let's talk about it!"

what im asking for is a connection, a conversation. a shared space. digital or otherwise. and the so-called "harm" of "ghost consumption" is not that artists will stop creating art or that writers will stop writing -- no, that's not quite how creativity works (thankfully, and sometimes unfortunately). we will always create.

we just might not be inspired to share it anymore.

[halorvic]

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[marisatomay]

ppl dont assume tom cruise is in the closet like they used to

Like have we lost recipes this badly….there’s an entire chapter just on him in the David Ehrenstein book “Open Secret (Gay Hollywood 1928-1998)” … Gregg Araki openly called him the “Rock Hudson of the 90s” in Totally Fucked Up (1993) … he’s alleged to have worked at Studio 54 when he was 17 … he’s had pretty substantial gay rumors surrounding him since the early 80s including more than a few that have made their way into my DMs from people who knew … everyone should read the 1999 piece “Cruising Cruise”

[touchlikethesun]

sometimes, ngl, i do find myself wondering what it was that made lan wangji fall so desperately in love with wei wuxian - they really are so different and wei wuxian does represent in many ways the antithesis of everything lan wangji lives his life embodying, even if the audience knows how great and amazing wei wuxian is (we also read mainly from his pov and he is basically handcrafted to appeal to modern fandoms), we the audience are not lan wangji, lan wangji isn’t privy to all the same information we are. and then a scene will come along, where wei wuxian will be so earnestly and painfully good, to someone else or to lan wangji himself, and it all makes sense again. like, of course lan wangji was going to fall in love with him how could he not fall in love with him??? really he’s completely powerless when it comes to wei wuxian how could he not be

[introspectivememories]

best ending: they talk it out after lewis wins his 8th wdc and we end up with brocedes in each other's lives again. lewis shows up on nico's yt channel. nico is on lewis' insta. vivian dogwalks both of them for letting the divorce last that long. i join the convent because this is clearly a miracle from god and reblog gifsets of brocedes interacting from the chapel. rinse, repeat.

ending we're most likely gonna get: whatever the hell we have now. nico talks about lewis. lewis will say karting is the best time of his career. for two seconds out of the year, lewis will say nico's name. i will sob, rinse, repeat.

worst ending: they shut the fuck up about each other forever. they process the divorce and move on with their lives without each other. i will go on tumblr and reblog angsty web weaves about their relationship and what could've been. i take psychic damage. rinse. repeat.

[gayofthefae]

Thinking about the queer experience of "platonic" possessiveness in Mike Wheeler in season 2 like on Halloween when because he's mad at the others, he's the only one "allowed" to comfort Will.

But it's not just season 3. It's season 4, he was actively excited to meet El's new friends and was even the one to ask about them himself it seemed. But what did he do before they moved with Will? Express active excitement at the prospect of Will NOT making new friends.

He was happy for El and wanted to meet Stacy and Angela, asking about them and engaging. But no one is Will's best friend in the way that MIKE is, not even another member of the party, and thank God he's not planning on replacing him in Lenora!

[mothmans-cumrag]

All "we need to know less about each other" jokes aside, isn't it crazy that there are still people out there denying that these two are "more than friends"? Not trying to dunk on anyone, just amazed at the amount of hoops some people jump through in order to hold on to their beliefs. Truly noone doing it like them.

[shedontlovehuhself]

I know I'll get hate for this but I really hope no one asks him any of those questions.

1. He's a private person. he tends to tell certain stories about his kids, Darius, etc over and over.

2. It's truly none of our business. We have no right to his dating life. If he wants to share that's his choice, but we're not owed that.

3. Vickie and Misha were open about the polyamory within their marriage. They had partners as a couple and had a relationship with one woman they both were in love with(it didn't work out and they ultimately ended the reletionship with her). This has all been said in Vicki's book and Misha talked about it during his interview with Larry King and brought it up once in a panel in 2019. He even mentions their other partners it in a few of his poems in STISCTY. He doesn't talk about it now, which is perfectly fine.

4. Misha being seen with a woman was from a tweet back in 2021. During the weekend of a us con(not CE) a rando fan stated they saw Misha on the street hold a "bad bitches" hand. That tweet had people in the fandom losing it! Some even saying it was Michelle from stands(Michelle is an attractive lady, but bad bitch she is not). Alaina was at that con that weekend so her, Misha and the others could have been hanging out when the fan spotted him(Alaina is definitely a bad bitch). Honestly, who knows. ��💙

oh there was a poem (that Misha confirmed he did write) that was edited out of the English edition of 'Some Things I Still Can't Tell You' but somehow made it into the Russian edition. It seemed to be about him meeting a woman on a plane. I think people have taken that to mean he fell in love with another woman while he and Vicki were still married and that is what lead to their separation and divorce. That and the fact that some people have apparently seen him out and about holding hands with an unknown woman (confirmed not to be Vicki or one of his half-sisters or Michelle from Stands, etc). I don't think there has been any definite confirmation, aside from his confirming that he and Vicki are separated/divorcing and that he is a straight man. He has alluded to having had sex recently, which (one assumes) means he is in a relationship with someone in at least a sexual capacity. Or maybe he's just casually dating. Maybe someone should ask him at the next con! "Hi Misha, my question is: are you single right now? If yes, can i give you my number? If no, how's divorced life going? Are you happy? Is it weird getting back into dating after being married for so long? Do you think you'd ever get married again? Any advice for people going through a divorce right now? How to stay positive, how to keep things friendly, how to tell the kids, etc?"

Who are these people who have seen him? And I want to read that poem

And the questions... he will avoid like the plague

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

[godhasheardtruthfully]

A lot of people love to call individuals from the Torah / Bible / Quran trans but when a trans person is spiritual they’re treated like an alien.

It feels vindictive that you’d wanna use my gender to “piss Christians off” without considering that God loving trannys are real

& brave persecution from both the spiritual & queer communities we try to find family among from the disdain of wider society.

(it’s transphobic to level the breadth of our personhood &

weird you’d use our vulnerable existence to “stick it” to communities we also inhabit)

[july-19th-club]

episodes of psych you can tell are written by a raised-catholic bc father whatsisface refers to sunday school as "CCD"