#it's still gay don't question me

[milolovesbmc]

The Dream (The Angel's Kiss)

Based on the sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1905)

(Censored just in case even though it's nothing explicit, uncensored under the cut)

"I remember you, something about you... coming to me, and sinking into me, and giving me breath again. . ."

[imaginerium]

Why were the Jane button ups only a thing in s2 & 3? Why did she stop wearing them? WHYYYY

[repurposedmeatlocker]

If you had to eradicate one B&BH ship from existence, which one would it be?

UMMMMM probably Butt-Head x Daria 🫣

I guess whatever floats your boat. I'm in no position to judge in regards to fictional ships. There isn't anything inherently WRONG with it, but I just find it EXTREMELY out of character on both ends. Daria doesn't give af about Butt-Head or Beavis. At most she tolerates them or sees them doing bullshit like "woah! That's crazy guys. Get well soon!" Butt-Head is much the same. At no point in the run of the show do I see a smidge of chemistry between them that would suggest something romantic. When it comes to indulging in fan content for things like this, I tend to have a preference for sticking somewhat close to canon. I just can't see it as something that works whereas something like Butt-Head and Beavis is implied enough in the show as a joke to build off a legitimate interpretation.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Of my 2% capacity to be attracted to anyone, my type is like 90% women, 5% pretty men and 5% men you would swear are super fucking manly, and never questioned being straight and cis, but are now suddenly *stressed* that they can't figure out why their attraction to me [fully socially interpreted as a woman and labelled that way up until relatively recently] feels incredibly fucking gay

[jadetheblade4]

What do I call these emotions? Are they wanted or unwanted?

[criscura]

Absolutely adore your OPM writing but I am also living for your recent takes about Dorian Gray. Easily one of the best books I’ve had to read back in school. I just love when I find other people who are also obsessed with jt!

THANKS FOR ACTIVATING MY TRAP CARD I'M GOING TO GO OFF ON WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT YESTERDAY

okay. okAY so like. so i finish Dorian Gray right. It still feels so cold and ruthless and bitter, and once AGAIN I'm left thinking "oh damn, Henry is probably gonna be a little devastated by this one, he spent the last twenty years hanging out with this dude who he was absolutely fucking almost daily, and THEN he's going to find out that Basil really is dead, AND his wife left him, he can't sardonic his way out of feeling for this"

and he's hot right like that's a plot-critical point, Henry is seductive. SO HERE I GO LIKE "okay tumblr let's try this again SUREly you have art of the fucked up sexy old bastard right"

AND FUCKING THEN (under the cut this is SO LONG and i'm not apologizing for it)

i go on and see????? like not only is there almost nothing of him??? people GENUINELY hate him??? but they LOVE Basil??? and I'm like no, no this CAN'T be right, maybe--like okay, Tumblr is a unique place, maybe this is one of those cases where my opinion falls more in line with the majority, so I go to google and I just. Type in "Dorian Gray Henry Wotton"

AND IT'S ALL THE SAME. ALL!!! ALL THE SAME!!!! He's awful, he's the villain, he's the worst, blablabla, and i'm like. okya. OKAY. ALRIGHT OKAY yes he was terrible but it was so painfully obvious he was in love with/obsessed with/infatuated with Dorian, S U R E L Y that's gotten him some brownie points there. Like. He sees Dorian, and then goes onto spend every single day with him if he can, morning, noon, and night, taking him out on dates and trips and giving him anything he asks, for EIGHTEEN YEARS, to the extent that when his wife divorces and leaves him he begs Dorian to stay with him.

Like even his whole issue with women, specifically romance with women, like---did???? did fucking no one???? ?DID FUCKING NO ONE READ THAT AND SEE A GAY MAN PISSED OFF THAT HE HAS TO PLAY A PART??????? HOW MUCH FUCKING CLEARER CAN YOU GET. All in all he does the EXACT SAME THING Basil does, just in his own way, so i figure there must, there MUST, there has GOT TO BE sympathy for him *somehwere*

AND!!!!! NO/!1!!!!! NOT!!!!1 NO!!!!!!!!!! EVERYWHERE!!!! i loook EVERYWHERE!!! for "Henry Wotton in love with Dorian" AND IT'S ALL LIKE!!! oh no, he just wanted power, oh no, he just wanted to see dorian fall, oh no, he NEVER felt ANYTHING for this guy he fucking DEVOTED ALL HIS WAKING HOURS TO IF HE COULD and i just. i.

so i go to my last recourse right??? i'm fucking desperate. i am DESPERATE. I go to Reddit. Surely, FUCKING SURELY--and at this point i just want to know I'm not insane, you KNOW you are in the absolute fucking trenches when you're going to reddit for opinions on literature but fuck at least if I can find a mirror in the cesspool i know that I exist right like i'm not some fucking ghost right SOMEONE will have seen what I saw--and

overwhelmingly

OVERWHELMINGLY

it's people talking about how much they hate Henry.

i. And like. SOME people are like "oh he was so interesting, he was the best part of the book," which yes, gratifying, but???? I????

As i was reading it, it was unbelievably--UNBEARABLY--again ****OVERWHELMINGLY**** obvious that a) both Basil and Henry were in love with Dorian b) they were BOTH older men taking advantage of him and dominating his time and attention so they could try to mold him into something for their own personal viewing pleasure c) Dorian was bare minimum a little bit shit from the start--as in, BEFORE WE SEE HIM he's introduced as someone who likes to hurt his friends because he enjoys it. This was so obviously a mean book about bad people and we're watching a train wreck unfold. a sexy, sexy, SEXY train wreck because wanting to fuck Dorian is a critical pull for the whole thing, but!!!!

BUT!!!!! ALSO CRITICALLY!!!!! ESSENTIALLY!!!!! HENRY WOTTON IS A SEXY ASSHOLE YOU NEED TO WANT TO FUCK

LIKE!!!!!! It's like the whole thing with stories about Satan, where he HAS to be hot so you understand why people would do what he says despite knowing it's bad for them. Henry is designed to be the dangerous, hot, older worldly dude stepping further and further into the shadows while beckoning for Dorian to follow after him, and to a certain extent you NEEED to understand that pull so you understand what Dorian is going through. AND THIS IS SO COMMON IT'S A MYTHOLOGICAL TROPE!!!

DO YOU HATE SATAN IN THE BOOK OF JOB. DO YOU HATE MEPHISTOPHELES IN MEPHISTOPHELES. Henry is performing the exact same role!!! All his lines are written sex!!!! it is fucking LEGITIMATELY some of the most sensual shit I have EVER read!! "talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. aND YOU!!! You're supposed to be pulled in!!! that's SO IMPORTANT. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU READ THE BOOK AND ENJOYED IT BUT HATED HIM AND DIDN'T WANT TO READ HIS LINES. WHAT DID YOU FUCKING READ.

But okay. Alright okay. EVEN DISREGARDING that Henry is a hot sexy bastard and that's necessary for the story and for Dorian's characterization. I would fucking GET IT if he was the ONLY person in the story that's like that. I would give it a pass if this is a story where everyone is good and sweet and everything is all daisies and niceness. FUCKING BUT.

THE ENTIRE NOVEL IS FULL OF ABSOLUTELY SHIT ASS PEOPLE FROM START TO END

Everyone uwu-ifies Basil, but that man is the same age as Henry. He saw this barely legal???? Not yet legal???? I'm not entirely sure how that works at that time with people of that status, but he saw the equivalent of a fresh-faced "i've been 18 for one day and have never left my house" angel of a boy who lost his parents young and was raised with family that fucking hated him and was like "yes well i want to look at him forever I'm going to keep him with me as much as I can and tell him how perfect and pretty he is so he does what i say and lets me paint him in whatever pose i can think of" and like

HE DOES TEH SAME THING AS HENRY???!!! IT'S TEH SAME THING???????

IT'S NOT BETTER JUST BECAUSE BASIL IS PATHETIC?

He does the same thing Henry does!!!! Henry is also a manipulative predatory asshole!! HENRY IS JUST MORE FORWARD ABOUT IT.

like WHAT??? what is it better when he does it because he's a sad wet cat of a man??? why, because he says he loves Dorian? He loves Dorian SOOOOOO MUCH he watches as he falls down a worse and worse path, refusing to believe any of the rumors he heard about him FOR TWENTY YEARS because they don't line up with how he personally sees Dorian, and only steps in to try to make a positive difference the HOUR before he was going to leave for an unknown amount of time???? he loves him THAT MUCH he just gives up every time he runs into legitimate resistance when it comes to helping Dorian out????

And!!!!! fuckin!!!! Everyone uwu-ifies Dorian too!!!!! ONCE AGAIN, LITERALLY ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS WE LEARN ABOUT HIM--no, I'm just gonna write out the paragraph:

"He likes me," he answered after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."

HALF OF THAT IS DEVOTED TO SAYING HE'S KIND OF A DICK. The *other* half is Basil saying being with him makes him happy, but, but, but, but, but. There's SO MANY conditions on that happiness. Dorian is NOT a purely good person--he's capable of good, but he's also capable of bad, and he chooses which he's going to be. He's capricious. And he's not an idiot!! He can tell Henry is bad news!! and he gets PLENTY of warning about it! But he's curious and he chooses to go back to Henry, over and over and over again.

AND THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT!!!!!

Dorian chooses!!!! DORIAN CHOOSES!! Basil and Henry are both different forks on the same kind of hedonistic, idolatrous paths. Basil wants to put him in art; Henry wants to put him into the world. They're BOTH fucking Pygmalion and Dorian is their Galatea--it's just that the medium they both use is different. And Dorian can tell!!! He can see!! He realizes that Basil sees him like a pretty thing to keep around to inspire him! He KNOWS that Henry's ideas poisoned him!! AND YET!!

HE CONTINUES TO GO BACK TO BOTH, depending on what he wants the most at that moment!!

AND IN THE END HE BECOMES A WORSE VERSION OF BOTH OF THEM BECAUSE HE CONTINUES TO CHOOSE BAD DESPITE HAVING SEVERAL OPPORTUNITIES TO STOP.

The manipulation? Using people for his own pleasure and then throwing them away when he's bored of it? The hateful, bigoted, judgemental thoughts? Ruining lives because that's convenient for him? The deaths of MULTIPLE people, probably considerably more than we know about? Dorian does ALL OF IT, again and again and again, because he wants to.

We revisit him throughout SEVERAL points in his life, all of which it's very apparent he wants for nothing and can do whatever he pleases. At ANY OF THOSE MOMENTS, or any of the ones between, he could have chosen to do good. But the same way he chose to hurt Basil because he enjoyed it, he chooses to fuck around and cause chaos because he likes it. The ability to do bad was always, ALWAYS inside Dorian, and both Basil and Henry were fascinated by it because it served different parts of their own vanity.

Basil liked Dorian the way you like a filter on a camera, and he thought Dorian left everything that HE made looking more beautiful. It's made abundantly clear that his biggest concern was the art he was creating, and Dorian was key to it. Henry liked Dorian the way you'd like a phonograph, where you can hear everything you've said reflected back at you, but in a different way with different tones. They are BOTH narcissistic in their approach towards Dorian, WHO IN HIMSELF IS NARCISSISTIC IN HIS RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER PEOPLE. No one is good here!!! No one is a purely good person!!!!!!!!

And everyone else, except fuckin' Sybil Vane, is bare minimum kind of shit. We don't meet a SINGLE other character that's a glowing representation of what mankind can be, who doesn't have some sort of flaw. And like.

THERE IS A LITERAL LIST OF RULES AT THE BEGINNING THAT MAKE IT CLEAR NOTHING IN THIS BOOK IS SUPPOSED TO BE MORALLY GOOD.

It says it!!!!!! Again and again and again!!!!!! It makes it SO FUCKING CLEAR that this isn't concerned with right and wrong and you need to abandon that at the doorstep!! There are no good characters, the same way there aren't any evil characters, because that doesn't apply here.

SO FUCKING. TO COME BACK TO IT. AFTER ALL THAT. AFTER!!!! ALL!!!!! THAT!!!!!!!

TO HAVE PEOPLE SAY HENRY IS EVIL AND THE VILLAIN OF THE BOOK!!!!

DORIAN IS THE VILLAIN OF THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. DORIAN IS THE BAD GUY!!!

Basil and Henry were paths!!!! They were choices!!! They were options AND DORIAN FUCKING CHOSE!!!!!!! And you're not supposed to feel good about it!! It's not supposed to make you happy!! We're supposed to see that Dorian was doomed from the start and we're watching his downfall!!

And it just!!!!! IT IS MAKING ME INSANE. IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY THAT I'M NOT SEEING THIS OUTSIDE OF MY OWN HEAD. Gosh even just!!! Even the way the "Henry is the antagonist" removes agency from Dorian, and everyone else, when it involves Henry?? As if they don't all willingly go to him and talk to him and want to be with him??

Not to get fucking spicy about it but it comes WAAAAYYY too close to the idea that thoughts and ideas are guilty/sinful/actions in themselves and they need to be shut up, and there's little to no responsibility on the shoulders of the people hearing them to dissect them and decide whether or not they're a) legitimate and b) something they want for themselves. It's the reason it drives me absolutely I N S A N E when people say the devil made someone do bad or it was just God's influence who made something good happen, as if there weren't real actual living fucking human beings who made choices and put in the work, good AND bad, to make those things happen. It's like throwing up your hands and going "well! everything is predetermined and there's no point in fighting."

Like. The complete villainization of Henry, and the hand-waving on what Dorian and Basil do, is just---TUM,BLR. TUMBLR!!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!!! I CAME TO YOU FOR HELP. I CAME TO YOU FOR NUANCE. TUMBLR!!!!!!!!! HENRY IS THE FOREFATHER TO ALL YOUR SEXYMEN!!!!! HE'S GAY!!! HE'S MANIPULATIVE!!!! HE'S HOT!!!! HE'S WEIRD AND OLD AND LURKS IN CORNERS ALL THE TIME!!!!! WHAT !!! THE FUCK!!!!!!!

[forcebookish]

if arkarm were really both supposed to be gay for you then why was arm made admin of a Hot Boy facebook page in the first place? shouldn't he just be gay from the start? sus writing choice tbh

[infriga]

Started watching The Fall of the House of Usher, and I'm only 2 episodes in so far but my main thought is that Roderick must have like rainbow sperm or something cause all of his kids are level 99 queers.

[thedndgoblinwholivesinyourwalls]

little ramble while my attraction to men is hanging around: I do find it annoying when people automatically are like oh so you're bisexual/pansexual, completely ignoring the way I told them about my attraction. Yes ik its not a 'proper' label but its how I identify and saying i'm bi/pan makes me feel like people just want to simplify my identity to something they understand. anyways. viktor from arcane <3

[altruistic-meme]

if you could... describe aftg in 5 words

oh this is not as easy a question to answer as it should be akfhsdkf bc like. i could describe its plot, or my thoughts on it as a fan, or how it makes me feel, or just make a joke, or or or and bc idk why you're asking it makes it harder :'))

but let's see...

plot: gay sports mafia found family.

fan: drama, familiarity, trauma, comedy, home

feelings: love, understanding, chaos, joy, comfort

joke: you know, i get it-

(as you can see, i couldn't pick which one to go with, so choose whichever 5 words you want lmao)

[liebelesbe]

I miss my Berufsschul-Klasse 😭 I was finally like. a tiny bit out. about to come out. comfortable with the possibility of being out. and then the universe said "haha I have given you a taste of something you've always wanted! now watch as I take it away!" *makes me get sicker*

[billygoat26]

Guys- moots who know me well enough kind of-

I'm not simping solely for fictional characters anymore-

...

I hate this, it's weird, I wanna say something to them or at least one of my other irl friends but I'm too scared that 1: they'll judge me and 2: they'll TELL HIM. Dear god I do not need that-

BUT IT WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE (aka it's been on my mind for a few hours too long)

Yesterday, pool party with friends, right?

I knew that he did some workout stuff but I still was NOT prepared- (me, who was fully expecting him to wear some form of his normal outfit but for the pool- noooooope! Shirtless- very unprepared)

And listen, I knew I at least sort of like-liked him before cuz you know, personality and all that stuff, but come onnnn- like- what do I do now??

And then they were playing chicken fights in the pool or whatever the game is called, and after that they were standing on each other's shoulders and pretending to walk on water (We all had just endured a bible unit in our English classes)

He had offered for ME to stand on HIS shoulders- and for that to happen, you know, they gotta swim under, right? Well, we both have the dirtiest of minds (I also just have shitty balance so I was not about to try that anyways. That was the main reason on my mind but I thought of the other stuff after).

I don't even know if I have blushed since elementary school, but if I did then, then thank god for the sun because sunburnsssss

And then he couldn't find his shirt after we had all gotten out, and one of my other friends said that he didn't need the shirt (jokingly) and dear god I wanted to agree (verbally) but I'm too worried about my whole bullshit being too obvious if I did, so I just had to stay quiet. (He ended up not finding it and just having to leave cuz his parents were there)

But that- that day- just... that. It's not. Leaving. My. Mind. Alone.

[theinfinitedivides]

i'm sorry what

[chaotic-history]

i am. thinking about the barbie movie

[sunnywalnut]

No but I'm still looking for the Denny's that is still in the middle of nowhere

having cis guy friends is so funny like youll ask if they wanna hang out and theyll send you to the dark woods

[nymph1e]

On Discomfort and Morality

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

The next time you see something and you automatically think it's disgusting, or wrong, or immoral, I invite you to ask yourself: is this actually wrong or does this just make me uncomfortable?