#true + based + conservatives are weird

[lylahammar]

HUHHHHH

[girlitfeelsgood]

y'all are kinda pissing me off rn ngl

[catboybiologist]

So.

Re: tumblr bans of transfemmes.

Let's ignore PhotoMatt for a moment. Manbaby tech CEO doubling down on a stupid decision and making himself look like more of an ass doing so is not a new phenomena.

Tumblr has consistently said, in both public statements and leaked internal communication, that they're essentially running a skeleton crew.

They keep saying that they don't have the resources to moderate, manually review posts, have any kind of appeal process, or anything. So, as people have widely received communications about, they seemed to have automated a significant portion of the moderation to operate solely on the quantity of reports (probably with a basic filter, eg quantity of reports regarding a certain post, within a certain timeframe) to automatically ban or shadowban accounts.

And so, they wipe their hands, both to the users, the public, and their own consciousness, and go about their automated operations.

All of this is likely true. Tumblr, at this point, is essentially abandonware internally, a kind of weird vanity project/dumpster ground for server infrastructure for Automattic. Likely, they don't want the bad press of "shutting down" fully. Or maybe the trickle of revenue they get here just barely exceeds operating costs, so why not keep it around?

Whatever is the case, the bans are a result of an automated process working in the background. I'm giving them some benefit of the doubt here, of course, we can't know anything for certain- but it seems like the individual bans are not based on any specific, manual action.

And that doesn't fucking excuse anything.

Because at some point, multiple people sat down at tumblr, and decided how to cut costs.

And they decided that the bare minimum of report abuse prevention was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Before the boops. Before GUI reconfigures.

They decided to cut something that is necessary to manage online communities.

They decided to cut something that ensures any targeted group will have any kind of community online.

And then, after all of that, the only manual intervention is doubling down on the shitty decisions that the automated systems make, and plucking reasons out of their ass for why they were the right decisions all along.

It's pure silicon valley brain. Blame the computer often and always. Use it to shield the active decisions you made when designing the computer that way. Treat it as a fact of life as opposed to something they actively made decisions for.

Is tumblr staff hitting the banhammer on each transfemme one by one? No.

Is tumblr staff deliberately crafting a system that allows TERFs and other conservative bigots to get rid of the "undesirables" for them? Yup. But they sure as hell are trying to not say the quiet part out loud. If they can always point the finger somewhere else, to the advertisers, to the automated systems, to the TERFs, then they can always have juuusssttt enough plausible deniability.

But being the "queerest place on the internet" requires concious acknowledgement that queer people will be targets of harassment, and you will have to protect against that.

Side note, this is why I do try to keep my blog at least somewhat SFW. Its one of the main reasons why I choose not to reblog all of the posts I'm tagged in- if the post is overtly NSFW, I've probably seen it, appreciated it, and consciously decided my level of interaction with it mostly based on how "tumblr friendly" it is. Is that bowing down to them? A little. It's also my choice. I value the community I have here. The pushes that y'all have given me gave me the strength to transition, and honestly gives me a lot of motivation to research HRT biology as much as I can, among many other things.

Yeah, I post pictures that are clearly meant to be found attractive in ways that are generally not socially acceptable , but never actual NSFW. I would like to think that I'm pretty safe from bans, but hey. Who knows. I don't want to lose my follower base, and the community around it.

And yeah, I'm gonna annoyingly remind you of the other places to find me, make sure to check my pin. If you don't know where to go, just find me on reddit and go from there, I'll post about it if anything happens.

[gotinterest]

I'm gonna be honest the way people talk about people having weird ideas about sex as a symptom of not getting laid really irks me.

Most of the people on this website have had sex. Sorry to ruin your celebacy gif moment but that's just true. Sure, there is a large minority of people who haven't, but they are still just that- a minority. You cannot extrapolate whether or not someone has had sex based on how cringy or prudish or thoughtful the way they talk about sex is.

Some of the people with the most fucked up puritanical, regressive, conservative ideas about sex have sex regularly. Like I'm sorry have you really never met a married conservative Christian before? Do you really think they all have dry, sexless marriages?

Having sex does not magically impart any kind of special insight or knowledge on ethics regarding sex. It doesn't say anything about your priorities or preferences or even your beliefs beyond the mere fact that- at one point- you decided to have sex for some reason. That's it.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Heavy Topics: A Child's Vision of Evil

One of the first big “aha!” moments in my journey to retrofit d&d’s laughably bad lore was the realization that the way the game treated evil didn’t make much sense.  As a dungeonmaster I was asked to create dramatic stakes for my players but the out-of-the-box antagonists supplied to me were as laughably one note as the pollution loving villains in Captain Planet. Who would ever worship the demon god of killing everything that lives? Of torturing you for all eternity? Of being unpleasantly covered in slime? 

None of it really made sense until I started to understand the world and recent history through a political lens, at which point several things became clear: 

Despite how large a bogyman it played in the satan scare of the late 80s, the people who laid the foundations for the lore of d&d came from a background of conservative american christianity, and baked a lot of that ethos into the game. 

The conservative christian imagination can only see things in black and white. People who disagree with them can’t just have a different opinion, even if that opinion is objectively good, they need to be wilfully evil . In fact they must be trying as hard to be evil as the christian is trying to be good, because they’re a backwards person, a monster, a demon. 

This idea of the “Backwards Person” is the exact process that gave rise to the bloodlibel, to the witchpanics, to the redscare, and yes, the 80s fear that satanists lurk around every corner sacrificing babies and putting poison in candy because they love evil that much.  It’s the same thought that’s given rise to Q-anon and the groomer panic. “People who disagree with just can’t just have a different opinion, they must be demons.”

D&D’s classic enemies are similarly all “backwards people”, hardwired to do evil so that players always have an excuse to kill them.  While on the surface it seems harmless or even childish it leads to the default d&d world being one where peace is impossible and genocidal violence is the only correct answer.  

We can do better in our writing than a bunch of shut-ins who wanted nothing more than to play cowboys and indians while ripping off Tolkien. Whether you want to write a sweeping epic or a mindless dungeon crawler, there’s a way to reconfigure d&d lore. 

Join me below the cut for a discussion of different ways to use evil in your games.

Children cannot control their emotions nor their fear, they lack the life experience necessary to contextualize things beyond a surface level reading. If you ask a child to "imagine something bad" they're going to take something that scared them, something gross or unpleasant or threatening and imagine it blown up to cartoonish proportion. Tolkien got bit by a spider as a kid and the entire fantasy genre has never lived it down.

D&D is weird because it keeps these childish ideas about evil and drags them forward into an adult context. Those three demon gods I mentioned in the intro make a sort of sense when you realize they're fears of dying, pain, and uncleanliness made manifest. That said most of us having outgrown our childish simplicity understand that those things are neutral, Spiders might personally gross you out but we all understand that doesn't make them bad on a spiritual level. In the base d&d lore however that personal distaste is ALWAYS true: Evilness is synonymous with ugliness and monstrousness, drawing a thick crayon line between the good people and the bad things.

That's where we get our particular flavor of backwards people, because one of those fundamental (pun intended) fears d&d inherited from it's creators was xenophobia, fear of the strange, but also fear of the stranger. When the white, suburban, middle class, christian creators of d&d imagined the other they took all the bad things they had been told in their youth about people who were not them and made them into monsters: That's why the default thinking enemies of d&d are tribal primitives who squat in the ruins of greater civilizations worshipping demons while coveting the beauty and wealth of cultured people. It sounds hyperbolic, but there's a one for one parallel between between the weird sexual anxieties conservatives have about black men and orcs raiding human lands to kidnap women as breeding stock. Same fears about emasculation and race mixing and ethnic replacement, only d&d gives the good ol' boys a narrative vehicle where they can revenge themselves upon their imagined foe.

Most modern d&d is not like this, and I chalk that up to the demographic shift that's happened both because of time passing and the influx of new voices that came along with the 5e renaissance. We're all media literate enough to avoid the obvious racial pantomime... except in cases like the Hardozee when the devs port something almost word for word from an older edition and we get a thanksgiving uncle/facebook aunt screed about how the silly monkey people are really SO happy to work for the refined and civilized and white elves.

What's left behind however is that pervasive childlike worldview: Where perfectly natural things that creep us out (like rot) or frighten us (like pregnancy) are made universally villainous regardless of any themes that are going on in that specific story. Ask yourself why the creators of a piece of media made their badguys look and act like they did, rather than just accepting that it's that way because "the lore says so".

Anyway, that's my rant over, and I promised you guys some different versions of how to use Evil:

Classic demons or lovecraftian horrors make for good bossfights but are thin on character, one of the basic building blocks of story. To remedy this, pair your unremitting force of darkness and destruction with a troubled and nuanced mortal agent, someone who is trying their general best but has been forced down this low road by circumstances beyond their control. This gives your roleplaying focused players something to play off against while your combat focused ones battle a building sized monstrosity. Raw evil isn't interesting, it becomes interesting when we see what it makes morally grey people, even good people, do in reaction to it.

Extremity is one of the best ways to turn normal people into villains, a looming disaster or recent crisis that's putting the pressure on everyone and preventing anyone from thinking beyond protecting themselves and their own. Beyond the people acting rashly, you're also going to have a legion of opportunists offering to fix the problem as your higher rank of antagonists to overcome.

Similarly, if you're going to have your villain backed up by legions of faceless mooks you're going to need a reason for their loyalty. Your villain is offering them something worth dying for, which gives your heroes an alternate win condition for overcoming their numbers beyond genocide.

If you're willing to take a step into a more fanciful, cartoony universe, feel free to play with the idea of good and evil as arbitrary teams: It's the badguy's job to cause chaos and it's the goodguy's job to stop em, they're all working professionals and the dungeon is the workplace comedy. This is fun, but then lets you escalate the tension when someone doesn't play by the rules. What happens when a zealot starts executing evildoers who'd already surrendered? what happens when the villain summons something that is more interested in devastation than wacky hijinx?

Think of morality like a punnett square: There's the party, and then there's the villain who wants the opposite of what they want. THEN there's the villain who wants what the party wants, and the ally who wants the opposite of party wants. Suddenly rather than a simple binary, the party is forced to balance the interest of varying groups as well as their better judgment. This can be made even MORE complex by creating different categories of "what the party wants", which is generally how you get complex political dramas like game of thrones.

[creature-wizard]

So, I just read It's Not Impossible: Healing from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control by Svali.

For those who don't know, Svali is a conspiracy theorist who popped up in the early 2000s claiming to be a former Illuminati/New World Order programmer. Her claims are based on the stuff put out by the likes of Mark Phillips/Cathy O'Brien and Fritz Springmeier/Cisco Wheeler, which in turn derives from stuff like The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, blood libel, witch panic, Michelle Remembers, and Alexander Hislop's anti-Catholic conspiracy theories. It's full of your typical Project Monarch psychological pseudoscience that can effectively be used to blame literally any symptom or behavior on programmed DID, whether or not someone actually has DID at all. It's got all the usual stuff about an alleged global cult that practices the most absurdly complicated, messy, and risky forms of mind control instead of just using the regular ol' indoctrination and manipulation tactics that work just fine for your more typical authoritarian assholes.

She is regarded as a ritual abuse/alter programming expert by people such as Ellen Lacter and Alison Miller, and if you search through the citations on many ritual abuse/RAMCOA websites, you'll often find her name. If you didn't have any familiarity with Svali's outlandish claims before, I think after reading this you'll agree that no sensible person should ever be citing her as an authority on anything. Here are some of the weird and ridiculous claims she makes in this book:

Fetuses are tortured and programmed in the womb. They are capable of making choices presented to them in-utero. (Yes, according to Svali, fetuses can fully understand language and process questions.)

Children can be forced to forget things by threatening them with death if they don't. (Literally not how memory works. If anything, death threats would make it harder to forget.)

Toddlers are trained as assassins and sent to kill wealthy targets, because wealthy people tend to have, shall we say, a predilection for children. (Yes, some wealthy people are child molesters. But claiming they're all into this as a group is absurd. It's also two antisemitic conspiracy theory tropes with the serial numbers filed off.)

Alice In Wonderland programming includes games of croquet where the balls are the decapitated heads of children. (Always with the absurdly over-the-top programming methods.)

The conspiracy programs people from birth to have a visceral fear and hatred of Christianity. (The function of this claim is to deny the traumatic impact of Christian religious abuse.)

"Many occultic groups" hate Israel and aim to destroy its national security through infiltration. (Of course we're going to get Christian Zionism in this conspiracy theory.)

"Higher occultic groups" round up Christians "from prisons and camps in third world countries under oppressive regimes" to torture and crucify them. (Typical oppression fantasy of white American Christian conservatives.)

Genetically enhanced individuals were first produced in the 1940s. (Quite unlikely, given that DNA's role in inheritance wasn't even determined until 1943.)

Claims that "The Light of The World" is an occultic painting that depicts the Antichrist. (Actually, it just depicts Christ.)

Theta systems are trained to psychically kill from the time they're in the womb. Theta assassins have sex with the target, then use the resulting soul tie to demonically kill them. (You know you're into some deep far right shit when they're talking about "soul ties" like this.)

Chi is a demonic power. (Always with the racism.)

Kabbalah is used to open portals to install demons. (And of course, the antisemitism.)

Druids can shapeshift into animals and trees. (This is how druids work in modern RPGs.)

Mages can shapeshift into various animals. (So many occultists WISH this was true!)

Cult children are genetically enhanced for intelligence. (Meanwhile in the real world, not a single alleged survivor has ever demonstrated said intelligence.)

Saturn, Prometheus, and Vulcan are demonic deities. (Pure religious bigotry here.)

Mothers of genetically enhanced fetuses are brutally tortured and gradually dismembered throughout the entire pregnancy. Supposedly, miscarriage is prevented with the cult's "state-of-the-art technology" that's "at least 50-75 years ahead of what's publicly known."

Supposedly, "all videos, CDs, computer games and other digital media now have subliminals embedded, that are fed at 0.03 microseconds." She claims that you can't pause the video to see the message because the images will be blurry, as they're only visible when the media moves. How very convenient, Svali. (By the way, conspiracy theorists have been claiming media is full of dangerous subliminal messages for years, programming children to turn into mass murderers and whatnot. So far there is zero evidence that rock music turns you into a killer.)

Direct quote, "It is amazing how desensitized our population has become to sex, violence and the occult due to this mind control technology that sits in everyone's living room." (Literally your old-time Satanic Panic rhetoric.)

Direct quote, "I personally believe that we are very close to the “end times” of Revelations, and that the Occultic messiah (or antichrist) is alive." (Always with the End Times mythology with these people.)

Yeah, so this is one of the people that therapists pushing this idea that alter programming is a real thing regard as an authority. They're citing a far right conspiracy theorist who claims toddler assassins are sent to kill wealthy targets and that druids can actually turn themselves into trees.

I'd like to reiterate here that the type of alter programming people like Svali claim exist is not something there was ever any real evidence for, and the whole idea originated among conspiracy theorists. This was not a case of something that actually existed just being co-opted by bad faith actors. It is very literally a witch hunt, and one way we know this is that the early modern mythology of satanic witches and today's mythology of alter programming use many of the exact same tropes. And we also know that people can be coached into confabulating memories of events that never took place (you can see very obvious examples of this yourself here and here).

None of this is to say that human trafficking, sex abuse, religious abuse, institutional abuse, and so on aren't real; they very much are. But the kind of stuff that people like Svali push is not, and it's so full of pseudoscience and far right bigotry that it will harm survivors of extreme abuse even more. The function of this mythology, and the quack psychiatry that goes along with it, is to push people into hyperconservative Christianity and scapegoat the religious trauma it causes.

[dykeulous]

i remember i made this blog back in may, frustrated as hell by the utter bullshit i’ve been seeing in tra spaces, wanting to finally vent my frustrations out & be my true authentic self– just to encounter a bunch of piece of shit radfems, be faced with rape & death threats from tras, and unwillingly receive more attention than initially thought. i wanted this to be a silly little butch-celebrating gender critical blog, but then i realized that i was way too trans for the radfem crowd to handle. and way too feminist for the tra crowd. i hate it here!!! i hate being passionate about same-sex attraction while simultaneously respecting medically transitioning people. i hate acknowledging & putting emphasis on sex-based oppression while still being fucking normal about dysphoric & trans people, not giving into the conservative tendency to be violently gncphobic & homophobic like i’ve seen some radfems on here be. i was genuinely so sick of constantly having to Prove I’m Not a Bad Feminist while i wasn’t openly gender critical– but now that i’ve gotten myself more immersed in gender critical spaces, i hate having to Prove That I’m Gender Critical Enough. i thought “radfem conservative” was an oxymoron, but hell, even if some of you aren’t actually conservative– you are pieces of shit, to say the least. i don’t want to pander to either side. i’m not one of you, cause none of you want me. i have my own beliefs and i’m both trans enough and gender critical enough and neither cancel out the other. i’m not trying to “spread misinfo about radical feminism”, for fuck’s sake– i’m a random ass person using tumblr.com to vent my frustrations & voice my opinions. holy fuck.

one of my first encounters on radblr was a person coming to attack me for saying i found women on t attractive, claiming i was actually a fake lesbian for that. like. do you hear yourselves?? you’re gonna say lesbians are incapable of finding males on e interpersonally & sexually attractive (which is true), and then in the same breath claim finding females on t is somehow “fakebianism”. i wanted a safe space away from extremist tras who are incapable of being normal about feminism & sex-based oppression & homosexuality– but instead i found a space full of misery, hatred, and bigotry. no, calling people mutilated isn’t progressive. neither is calling people slurs & making fun of gender nonconformity in a way you find it to be feminist-acceptable. it’s weird as fuck.

[4dznsalamanders]

So I, like everyone else, am shaking the bars of my cage trying to understand what the hell 4Dawgz is DOING We've gotten a couple of wild facts for her character this episode and last weeks: 1) absolutely hates Riz SPECIFICALLY for some reason, despite him consistently being the most respectful towards her (he actually tries to say her name proper) 2) she has a lot of anger towards the Bad Kids (and Riz), and 3) she was very casual killing Buddy Dawn, even though that doesn't immediately help her... admittedly, it does threaten the Bad Kids by removing revivify, but homegirl saw Gorgug soloing a purple worm, Adaine being untouchable, Fig smiting as if she's been a paladin for years, and The Ball absolutely rocking this fight, Fabian was there, all while Kristin was being pretty conservative and prioritizing heal spells, so KipKettle has no reason to believe the Bad Kids are in true mortal peril. What does this all mean? Well, idk about you, but Kipper's absolute inexplicable rage, combined with a bunch of other weird minutia, has me pondering the Time Quangle again, and the fact the Bad Kids DID do some minor chronomancy pre-shrimp jump, I think we have more time shenanigans to go... ESPECIALLY since that girlfailure found the rogue teacher at 8:01 am, I agree with some of the theories I've seen suggesting she's stuck in a time loop. I think she hates Riz because he is consistently the one realizing, connecting the dots, and ultimately the driving force that thwarts her in her scheme, forcing her to do another loop. Her complete contempt might look unreasonable, but maybe she's been trying to complete her task for YEARS, stuck in highschool because some random hot goblin kid can't ever mind his own business. I've been sympathetic to the "BLeeM would never have such a blatant BBEG like this, there has to be a twist" crowd, and I think FishFlower RedPan callously murdering her party cleric DOES NOT negate this - as far as she's concerned, he might be the 57th Buddy Dawn she's met, so why would she care when this loop will probably fail again? If this theory is anything substantial, she literally has nothing to lose, because she can just start over again? Anyone would appear irrational and be incapable of seeing an unbiased perspective, so of course she would claim things aren't fair: she's witnessed the same group of clowns dunk on her repeatedly in every iteration. Why bother doing unique adventures that are unpredictable when you can be the RatGrinders and have the same base slate with less chaos to try and enact your grand plan?

[peachjagiya]

https://x.com/mistytaevi/status/1855949861956231328

I'm sorry (not sorry) but I agree with this person. Like how is Army so blind to the glaring 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 with Tae. It has to be straight up ignorance at this point if ambiguous lighting and lyrics is what counts as undeniable proof but a whole history of Tae associating himself with queer art and media, friends, role models, niche queer references, the list goes on and on, is just him being a good ally (please some of them don't even think he is a good ally they think he is straight up queerbaiting 😭😭😭). And you know what, it's okay if you think he is just a good ally but why get mad and defensive towards other people for seeing that goes deeper than that???

Because fundamentally, people still think gay is kind of an insult and heteronormativity runs deep.

"he's not even a good ally, he's queerbaiting" is just Tae anti language. He demonstrably is a person who places allyship over personal gain.

Real people can't queerbait. It's a cynical function of media in countries where the queer audience is powerful and loud. TV shows usually might code a character queer, take the audience on a queer coded tour, let queer enthusiasm build up, reap the benefits of queer rep in media and the audience that comes with that... and then drop that they were hetero all along.

Or if you wrote BBC's Sherlock, do all that to an extreme then have the creators and cast actively sneer that the fandom are weird for thinking it was gay in the first place. 🙄

Fanservice is quiiiite close to queerbaiting if you squint, I guess, but that implies the queer audience holds power. In a conservative country where homosexual content is still protested, I do not think you can queerbait. Maybe that's controversial thing to say, I don't know. Because all you gain is protestors, not profit. See the furore around Love In The Big City.

To think he isn't taking a stand by even talking about this stuff is to be privileged not to live in a country AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL noted as having a poor policies on same sex relationships, queer soldiers and queer humans.

On a different-ish note, I don't think it's good practice to assume an interest in queer media, no matter how intense and well-documented, means someone is gay. It's a safe-ish assumption but it is worth reminding yourself that if you're going on media alone, it really is an assumption.

But I also don't think it's good practice to assume straightness EITHER. Generally just don't assume. Queer media isn't only for queer people and queer people aren't contractually obligated to enjoy queer media either.

Based on what I/we believe to be true about Taekook though, COMBINED with the queer media... the assumption becomes even safer.

Ultimately, who he is having sex or romancing with is not that important in this particular conversation. What's really beautiful is that he's a safe space for queer people and we see ourselves in him and the things he enjoys.

[rotzaprachim]

one of the most consistently weird phenomena not just in American politics but British politics and Western European politics, French politics, Spanish politics etc is a tendency to hate perceived white (sometimes) liberals and “centrists” (or people Labelled as that, this part of the local political spectrum) and defend rural conservatives or the conservatives in the “cool” or oppressed areas like Appalachia, Yorkshire, Andalusia, Catalonia etc etc as being the real and true working class or politically explicable in a way liberals are not. Like a) no you should hate conservatives more I’m sorry it’s that simple but b) it runs into bizarre phenomena when people try to invoke whiteness but forget that coasts and major cities in the U.S. and major central cities in Western Europe are in fact where the majority of POC live and c) a good part of the reason WHY leftists and liberals try to take centrist positions and appeal to the center so that they want or need the votes of those same rural conservatives and are trying to appeal to them! That’s why! You shouldn’t hate anyone or assume things based on region but my god talking about hating a candidate for not appealing to the (rural, conservative) working class while specifically complaining about the policy or phrases designed to do exactly that is so ridiculous

[thestrangestthing89]

Part 1

Part 2:

To me, the thing that gives away that something happened with Will and Mike when they were younger is in the way that Jonathan is also treated by Lonnie and the rest of the town. We see Jonathan getting bullied at school by Steve and his friends in S1. He gets called the f word. We know Jonathan isn't gay so these comments are likely just based off of those kids being assholes. They think Jonathan is weird so they call him something mean. But they probably don't even really believe what they are saying. They are just trying to be mean. Will has a lot of the same personality traits as Jonathan - he's quiet and sensitive. So him also getting bullied at school for this makes sense. However, I don't think it's enough evidence for people to actually believe that it's true when they are saying it. The whole town thought Will was gay and that that was the reason why he was killed. They don't talk about Jonathan like this - It's only Steve and his popular friends. Lonnie also doesn't call Jonathan the f word. In fact, when Will's fake body is found he's all about moving back into the house so they can be a "real family" again. In his mind, Will was the problem.

Lonnie has a lot of problems with toxic masculinity that are displayed with both Will and Jonathan. He makes them both go hunting to toughen them up. He also tries to get Will to go to baseball games to get him to like "normal" things. It's unclear if he also did this with Jonathan. It's likely he did up until Jonathan got old enough and started to refuse. But Lonnie doesn't have a problem with Jonathan even though he is also quiet and sensitive. In fact, Lonnie seems to try to get Jonathan on his side when Jonathan goes looking for Will at his house. Jonathan doesn't get called the f word by Lonnie. Only Will.

The time period matters here. People didn't ever discuss being gay especially in a small, conservative town. It would not have ever been mentioned. Kids at school saying slurs probably don't even really know what they are saying (especially the middle schoolers). They just know that it's insulting so they call the kids who they think are weird those insults. It doesn't mean they actually believe it, they are just trying to be mean. But Will is different. Everyone knows this kid is gay. They believe it. It's not simply that he was different or quiet or sensitive. But the thing to me that says the most is that Mike and Will's parents know it. Joyce knew it was important enough to mention it to Hopper when she reported Will as missing. Karen tries to talk to Mike about his feelings when Will is missing and it's a conversation that is very coded. She doesn't want him to hide anything from her. She wants him to trust her with his feelings. Ted makes a lot of passive aggressive comments about Mike being gay throughout the series - "you see what happens Michael", "our son with a girl". All of these conversations came from something and weren't just because Mike and Will were a little weird and nerdy. They were close. People are sure of this in a way they aren't when they are saying slurs off-handedly to Jonathan.

Mike is also very desperate to have people view him as normal. It's what accounts for a lot of his behavior in S3. He's scared. In order for him to know to be scared people would have had to have said something to him. He changes his behavior to be what people like and part of that includes avoiding Will. This isn't just about him being bullied for being a nerd. That's the story that's on the surface. There is more to it than that.

This in no way takes away from either character arch or the LGBTQ story. Both of them being bullied by their entire town since they were little kids is very realistic especially for the time period. And Mike trying to adapt and change his behavior to fit in because he was bullied for this makes sense. This wasn't simply about them being nerds. The show is never what it seems like on the surface.

Edit: I ended up adding another part to this because the more I think about it the more it makes sense.

[justforbooks]

David Lynch: the great American surrealist who made experimentalism mainstream

From disturbing debut Eraserhead to his masterpiece Mulholland Drive, Lynch’s dark tales combined radical experiment with everyday Americana

No director ever interpreted the American Dream with more artless innocence than David Lynch. It could be the title of any of his films. Lynch saw that if the US dreamed of safety and prosperity and the suburban drive and the picket fence, it also dreamed of the opposite: of escape, danger, adventure, sex and death. And the two collided and opened up chasms and sinkholes in the lost highway to happiness.

Lynch was a film-maker who found portals to alternative existences and truffled in them like they were erogenous zones, moist orifices of existential possibility. He was the great American surrealist, but his vision was so distinctive that he became something other than that: a great fabulist, a great anti-narrative dissenter, his storylines splitting and swirling in non sequiturs and Escher loops. Lynch was unique, in that he took a tradition of experimentalism in movies such as Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s Meshes of the Afternoon and brought it into the commercial mainstream, mixing it with pulp noir, soap opera, camp comedy, erotic thriller and supernatural horror.

Who did Lynch most resemble? Maybe Luis Buñuel from the pioneering 1920s, Douglas Sirk from the Hollywood 1940s, Alejandro Jodorowsky from the counterculture 1970s. Or maybe Edward Hopper (whose painting Office at Night has something Lynchian to it) or Andrew Wyeth and his mysterious midwest tableau Christina’s World. But “Lynchian” could as well mean mainstream or even conservative. Lynch himself was not joking when he talked about his pride at being an Eagle scout in his boyhood.

And he could direct conventionally plotted (if generically freaky) films such as The Elephant Man, with John Hurt as the exploited Victorian fairground attraction, and his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s SF standard Dune – and even the emotional and gentle The Straight Story (whose title concedes its outlying quality), based on the true story of an old man who drove his lawn tractor from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his estranged brother. Lynch was always passionate about Americana, and Steven Spielberg shrewdly cast Lynch as the western movie legend John Ford in his film The Fabelmans.

Yet with films such as his disturbing, sepulchral debut Eraserhead and (what for me is his masterpiece) Mulholland Drive, a dark fantasia of Hollywood despair, he showed that the challenge to normality was itself erotic. He underlined it with the throbbing and groaning sound design and inspired musical scores from his longtime collaborator, composer Angelo Badalamenti. I will always remember after the first showing of Mulholland Drive in 2001, all of us dizzy and jittery with how very sensual and strange it had been, how witty and how erotic.

Perhaps most remarkably of all, Lynch’s ongoing smallscreen project Twin Peaks anticipated by decades today’s cultural prestige of streaming longform television. And in fact none of today’s Sopranos and Mad Men match Twin Peaks for auteur television. Watch the first two seasons of Twin Peaks from the 90s, the story of a straight-arrow FBI man (played by Kyle MacLachlan) investigating the metaphysical mystery of a violent murder, and see how the second ends with a promise to pick up the story in 25 years’ time – and it actually did. The brightly lit, theatrically soapy look of 90s TV drama was replaced in the third season by the darker, gloomier look of 21st-century high-class TV production. But it was Lynch, through and through.

“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top!” wails Laura Dern’s distraught Lula in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, anguished in her wretched motel bedroom, pregnant with her lover’s child – that is, the convicted killer Sailor, a Presleyesque figure played by Nicolas Cage. It’s actually not quite a description of the world as Lynch sees it. In the macabre Blue Velvet from 1986, the world is normal on top, weird underneath, but these layers can’t exist without each other. A clean-cut guy played by MacLachlan, walking home in a suburban American utopia, finds a severed ear on the ground: a symbol, perhaps, of the director’s own hypersensitive perception of underground stirrings and the hidden America. Soon this man is to conceive an obsession with a nightclub singer: part of Lynch’s own longstanding obsession with secret cabarets and occult theatrical rituals, and his particular rapture for the red curtain, rippling and stirring with the mystery it conceals. A Freudian image, yes, but maybe Lynchian is the superseding adjective.

Lost Highway, in 1997, was one of his doppelganger hallucinations, in which Bill Pullman’s troubled sax player and his wife (Patricia Arquette) are terrified by an anonymous tormentor who leaves video cassettes on their doorstep with footage of the outside of their house – an idea later borrowed by Michael Haneke in his movie Hidden.

But for me Mulholland Drive is his masterpiece of eroticism and despair, a brilliant riff on how in Hollywood disillusion is a toxic-waste byproduct of the dream factory. The relationship of Naomi Watts’s saucer-eyed ingénue and Laura Harring’s enigmatic troubled woman is one of the great fraught friendships of modern American cinema.

I myself met Lynch only once, and that was online: a video-linked Q&A for the unveiling of his photographs at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. One of the questioners was someone who had been a walk-on in The Elephant Man and Lynch was instantly hugely excited and insisted on her being brought up to the platform so that he could see her face; he could hardly be persuaded not to simply make the rest of the evening his reminiscences with her. Lynch was always plotting ways to smuggle his audience into new territories of fear, desire and pleasure.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[cedarnommer]

Queer music with trans undertones.

That's a topic that I've only breached recently. Call me a little baby queer, but I never knew the wealth of cool music done by very cool people before this. There's a wide range of genres and different types of lyrics to go along with it. In this post, I'll focus down on music that I personally like. It may not be for you and that's perfectly understandable.

Glass Beach is a very cool band and their first album, while unrefined, has 2 songs in particular which I'm obsessed with.

Bedroom community is such a fun song and really holds true to much of my life experiences throughout my life. Because I live in an environment that does its best to isolate queer folk, that meant that the only way I could explore my gender identity and my sexual preferences was through the internet. And while not the point of the song, the song really gets me pumped up to be an annoying blasphemous little gremlin to all the nasty christo-fasc out there.

This song brings me to tears every time. The lyrics are just insanely personal and I think many trans femmes could connect with this song. Being misgendered by your peers and especially your family. Needing a desperate escape. Tackling with adulthood. The little holiday feeling of getting your HRT. It's much. It's so much. I'm bursting into tears even as I type this out. This song is so powerful. I can't help it! It's a song about me! Just for me and me alone! It's so personal aa!

While this song doesn't bring the same reaction from me, the lyrics and the melody is so melancholic and it's such a wonderful song. One of their later and more "mature" works as a band. It's great.

Now I'll do some randomly assorted different artists. I haven't explored their music as deeply as Plastic Beach. But these songs are a highlight for me. And I'm usually a really chaotic listener anyway.

This song is simple but it rocks. While I'm a gender conforming and very woman identifying trans femme, I'm also aware of the absurdity of the gender binary. And I think that even someone like me is inherently confusing and terrifying to the social systems that uphold this nonsensical binary. This song is a good way to remind ourselves how absurd and pointless our divide between "males" and "females" is not based around chromosomes or other confused markers but purely on cultural indicators of identity.

This song's lyrics are wonderful. It kind of reflects my recent posts on Tumblr and my frustration on weirdo internet people obsessed with my genitals and being creeps. Because bigotry is creepy and weird. The chorus of this song is especially really good and I find myself humming it along sometimes.

I'm not into ska, but I really enjoy this song in particular from this genre. The lyrics are fun and the theme of breaking apart and mixing gender identities is fun. It's a fun song. Because once gender stops being used as an authoritarian tool to enforce a binary, it can be fun finding the way to express yourself.

This is some of the stuff I've discovered recently. I think the main reason I'm making this post is a bit more of a serious and grim topic that I've touched upon a bit. I live in the Balkans and I live in a city that's infamous for street fights and toxic masculinity. You can imagine that being a trans femme, even if I pass well, still sets me up for a bunch of dangers. My country's politicians are conservative enough to the point that any idea of rights to LGBT folk isn't even considered, with concepts of queerness being considered a "threat" to the "traditional" family structure. Of course, all of this is a bunch of nonsense.

But it means that spaces for queer people are difficult to find. Apparently people congregate on Facebook, but Facebook where I live at is essentially Twitter. I'm not interested in torturing myself with that. That's left me feeling very isolated. I've recently actually tried to join some local Discord servers, but they were overwhelmingly dominated by cis gay men that seem to only be interested in sex. That's just not for me.

I think listening to music like this helps me feel less alone and more hopeful for the future. If anyone out there is dealing with the same loneliness I am, please find music that reflects your feelings. You'll feel a bit better about the world, knowing that you're not alone and your ideas aren't as foreign as you think.

You're wonderful.

You're valid.

And you're rad as heck.

Queer, trans, non-binary, non-conforming and any fun mixture of sexual orientation. You're the best!

[gayleviticus]

i understand why the 'jesus was a radical socialist who hung out with women, preached wealth redistribution, and fought religious authorities' is a popular trope, especially as a response to the insane conservatism of american christianity, and i don't think factually it's wrong. but i have a few reservations abt the way it gets thrown around

main one is that it tends to become a thought-terminating cliche. if 'jesus was a socialist' is meant to be a clickbait summary of who Jesus was that encourages people to go back to the gospels and read with fresh eyes untinged by right-wing stupidity, great.

But I feel like it often gets used as a substitute for the text - and so rather than, say, going back to actually radical things Jesus said, people appeal to the popular construct of radical socialist feminist Jesus in a very vibes-based way. Jesus becomes defined as 'guy who shares all my exact political beliefs and can be invoked against hypocritical Christians'.

and i think that then means people don't seriously think about stuff he says that might actually be controversial. Is Jesus' hard-line anti-divorce stance harmful? Is 'turn the other cheek' endorsing silently submitting to abuse? Is his claim that looking on a woman with lust is just the same as adultery purity culture? Is 'carry your cross' romanticising suffering? Is the way the Gospel authors frame the Pharisees as corrupt religious authorities actually anti-Semitic and historically unfair? Is his relative silence about Roman colonisation problematic?

Obviously, these texts have historical context and are open to interpretation etc (as are the Old Testament and Paul, which get the opposite extreme from Jesus of being flanderised into consistently nasty). But I think the ideal socialist Jesus figure de-historicises him in a distorting way (for example, projecting anti-capitalism on someone who existed before capitalism did).

And lest it seem like I'm picking on Socialist Jesus, I think this is true of all the soundbite Jesuses. Meek and mild storybook Jesus, conservative 'love the sinner hate the sin' Jesus, unrecognisably mangled American Jesus, generic spiritual Jesus erased of his Jewish heritage. Some of these are outright wrong (American Jesus), some of these are entirely true but incomplete (storybook Jesus, who, in fairness, is aimed at literal children); I would say Socialist Jesus is by far one of the best.

But I think it's still a very static, flanderised way to understand someone who is a real, living person, who calls people into a relationship with him. and so i understand it from general secular society; I don't have strong opinions on the Buddha and so i generally stick to 'he seemed like a decent guy with weird ideas', so I understand people not having deep-dive opinions on Jesus either. but i think for Christians especially, we do have a bit of an obligation to go beyond just reducing Jesus to soundbites, even when they are true.

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Plant the flag: A story from the glorious adventures of the mixed species 17th Engineer Battalion

continuation of https://www.tumblr.com/niqhtlord01/651132984410456064/humans-are-weird-merging-multiple-species-into?source=share

“Here are the latest base reports, sir.”

Commander Zavar opened his eyes and saw the stack of files the clerk had laid on his desk. It was easily the length of his arm and contained every detail of events for the last week on his base. He sighed loudly and dismissed the clerk as he reached to the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of Nebulion liquor.

The bottle had been given to him by his then commander as a congratulation gift for being promoted to commander and given command over this military base. Zavar had told himself he would save it for a special occasion, but now with the bottle half empty it was the only thing keeping him sane these last few months.

It had been nearly two months since the “human” reinforcements had arrived to reinforce his base for the upcoming offensive. Before they had arrived his weekly reports could be summarized on a single page of paper. With the human mixed species battalion roaming his base the list of reports and incidents had grown to what he now saw dominating his desk.

He poured himself a glass and began to casually go through the reports; his glass needing refilling after making it every three or so reports in.

A report from the base head chef making complaints for the food requirements for the Drone warrior named “Dro”, with a citation of an incident were the head chef forgot to lock the meat locker and returned to find Dro devouring some twenty pound of frozen meat.

A report from the supply officer reporting an increase in missing equipment and supplies from the depot with a notation that they believe the Globnites are responsible. The supply officer entered the human contingent barracks and found several of the listed missing items, yet the human forces claim no knowledge as how they arrived there.

A report stating one of the unused training areas had been converted into a Combra battle pit and that several Combra soldiers held routine bouts against any challengers. Numerous humans have been seen congregating around the area and have begun placing bets on matches.

A report from the Valmorian medic requesting more medical supplies to treat the injuries from said battle pit fights.

A report comprised by several of his own officers refusing to deal with the Flinchestet communication specialist of the 17th citing numerous instances of unfruitful discussions that devolve into the Flinchestet mocking them for their “underdeveloped minds”.

Zavar read report after report after report, slowly chipping away at the contents of the bottle, until finally the bottle ran empty and the commander shoved the pile of reports off his desk in a loud clutter.

Ever since the human contingent of soldiers had come to his base it had been a never ending series of headaches. It was true that the engineers had expanded the base and reinforced it heavily with new perimeter walls, turrets, trenches, and automated drone alert systems; but for every improvement they made the battalion itself made two more problems. Worse still was the friction that they were creating with his forces. It was taking all of his command training to keep his own forces in line from turning their weapons on the human contingent.

The Galaxian’s were largely a conservative species preferring strict discipline within their military ranks. So being forced to operate alongside the mixed species battalion the humans had sent them, with their wildly different traditions and practices, they were put under a daily mental strain.

He had previously called in the human contingent’s leader, the Kliptec Lt. Colonel Reginal Seth, but their discussions over the matter were anything but fruitful.

“The human government has recognized all the traditions of its citizens,” the Lt. Colonel had begun when Zavar had called him into his office to discuss the seemingly out of control behavior of their allies, “regardless of if the genetics of said citizen.”

Zavar rubbed his eyes to ease the pain of remembering the meeting. It had been like talking to a brick wall.

“Your soldiers are out of control.” Zavar had stated bluntly. “Either you need to rein them in or I will be forced to do so.”

“You lack the authority to issue orders to me or my men.” The Lt. Colonel countered. “We may be allies here, but as I stated on the landing fields when we first arrived my battalion only takes orders directly from our government.”

The Kliptec could barely fit inside his office at the time. Though their upper humanoid body remained in front of his desk, Zavar had noted with mild interest that the lower reptilian portion of his body had continued to slide back and forth across the floor as if it couldn’t be bothered to hold still. It was frankly a disturbing and insulting.

“In the spirit of our alliance I will do better to, limit, my soldiers interactions with yours to prevent further conflict.” The Kliptec remarked dryly, “But understand that should you or one of your officers attempt to order them around I cannot guarantee that things will end well for you.”

He looked Zavar directly in the eye to show that he was deadly serious. “That drone that unnerved your men before, Dro, he in particular is not fond of strangers and I would hate for one of your men to be mistaken for lunch by him.”

That had been the last official face to face contact that Galaxian had held with the human contingent leader. True to their word the interactions between the human contingent and the Galaxian’s had diminished, but the friction was still there.

“Human contingent” Zavar thought to himself in disgust. What a confusing notion.

One would believe humans would use humans as their primary soldiers, and Zavar had heard many a tale about their professionalism. Yet when he was given reinforcements from humanity they turn out to be alien species that had settled in human territory and gained citizenship.

Instead of professionals he had been given squabbling children. Instead of discipline he had been given chaos in a bottle. Instead of-

“Commander Zavar, urgent message from Galaxian command.”

His clerk’s voice cut off the drunken spiral of depression and the base commander straightened up. “This late?” he asked as he pulled himself together and tried to shake off the grogginess.

The holographic projector built into his desk activated and commander Zavar listened with a dread he had not felt in some time. --------------------

The first signs Lt. Colonel Reginal Seth knew something was wrong was when he was awoken by the sounds of warning sirens going off around the base. The second and more obvious sign was when the door to his quarters was suddenly kicked in by his second in command.

“The Galaxians are up to something.” Colonel O’Brian stated as Reginal blinked his eyes clear. “They’ve not said anything to us but every one of them is assembling on the landing fields right now.”

Turning to see his clock listing it far too early in the morning Reginal let out a long sigh as he untangled himself and donned his uniform.

“I swear if this is another drill meant to show off Galaxian superiority I might just tell Dro to eat him.” This got a stifled chuckle out of O’Brian. He had served with the Lt. Colonel since the battalions founding back on earth and though he had been hesitant to take orders from a non-human the prejudice and suspicion gave way to trust and loyalty.

The pair left the officers barracks and went to the landing pads. Reginal was surprised to see O’Brian’s statement was far from an overstatement. Nearly every Galaxian on the base was seemingly standing at the ready on the landing pads while their commander Zavar was marshaling a series of ground transports loading up hardware.

Reginal tapped O’Brian on the shoulder and pointed towards the Galaxian commander and his second in command pulled the vehicle up alongside them.

“Commander” the Lt Colonel greeted as he exited the vehicle and snapped a quick salute. The Galaxian returned a quick salute but otherwise failed to respond in any other way.

“Would you mind telling me what is going on?” Reginal asked again, this time louder to be heard over the roaming transport vehicles passing by. Commander Zavar turned to Reginal, his face grim.

“Within the last hour I have just received intelligence that our enemies have broken through the front lines and are sending several military contingents to capture this base.”

Another transport drove by and Zavar waited before continuing. “I have been ordered to evacuate all military personnel and material to a safer location.”

“You do not intend to defend the base?” O’Brian asked. “What the hell was the point of our being here if not to hold this base?”

It looked like O’Brian was about to go into a further heated triad when Reginal forestalled him. “We have not received any such orders or intelligence with regards to these new developments.”

“Our intelligence network is superior.” The Galaxian commander stated much to the ire of everyone else present. “And since we do not share the same chain of command there was no need to share such information with you at this time.”

Reginal bit back a rather unbecoming remark at this.

Turning to O’Brian he gave the order for the entire battalion to assemble on the landing fields as well. ------------------------

Roughly two hours passed and both the Galaxian forces and the 17th Engineer Battalion were now both assembled on the landing pads within the base. Each eyed the other with a mixture of distaste but remained silent until Reginal stepped before his men.

“I imagine many of you are wondering why we are here right now.” The Lt. Colonel began as he addressed his men.

“Late last night Commander Zavar received a priority transmission stating that enemy forces had breached the frontline and were making for this base to capture it.”

This drew several murmurs within the 17th but Reginal held up for silence as he continued.

“In response to these recent developments Zavar has been ordered to abandon the base and retrieve as much military personnel and property as he can back to a safer location.”

It was here that the reptilian commander paused. He looked out over his men; soldiers he had known for some time now yet had never graced the fields of war in true fashion. Until now……

“We of the 17th will be staying.”

This drew several gasps from both contingents and Zavar made to step forward and openly question the Lt. Colonel’s decision but was blocked by a waiting O’Brian.

‘We have received no new orders from command, and so we shall continue with our original order to defend and hold this base until such a time as ordered otherwise.”

Reginal motioned to one of the soldiers in the front ranks holding the battalion colors. Zavar saw it was the Draxic who had originally been carrying the heavy weapons unit across his shoulders as easily as a child holding a frozen cone when the 17th had first arrived at the base.

The Lt. Colonel nodded to the Draxic who then took the flag pole, raised it high into the air, and then brought it down with such force that the pole broke through the landing pad concrete. The sounds of the impact made many of the Galaxian’s jolt in surprise while the 17th contingent looked on in silence as their commander spoke once more.

“There is a story of the first battle the 17thengineer battalion ever fought in that I wish to share with you.” Reginal started. “They had been surrounded and cut off from their allies. Their commander saw the shadow of defeat slowly creep in and so ordered their flag be planted into the ground that they stood upon.”

“He said to them “So long as this flag does not touch the ground we are not defeated. So long as this flag flies high our enemies will know the folly of their failure to think they could defeat us. I look out at you now and in every man here I see a hero ready to strike down a hundred men before they should fall and send the planet trembling with their passing.””

‘I look out to you all now and though many of us are not human I still see the heroes our forbearers spoke of within each of you. I see warriors gathered from across the stars from a dozen different worlds that can shatter mountains and move rivers with a brush of your arms. I see heroes ready to carve their names and deeds into the heart of the galaxy itself.”

“So we shall stay, we shall meet our enemy head on and not flee, we shall shatter them upon our defenses, and we shall emerge victorious and show them that the soldiers of the 17th Engineer Battalion are mother fuckers not to be messed with!”

A thunderous chorus of cheers came from the soldiers of the 17th. The Galaxians watched in disbelief as the voices of a dozen different languages cried out for the prospect of the coming annihilation as if it was the greatest moment in their lives.

Commander Zavar watched and grunted. The fools would be dead by weeks end.

[meraki-yao]

Ok I saw a post before saying what if we put all of Nick’s characters in one room (I can’t find op anymore) and after the last reblog it got me thinking so here’s some weird multiverse imagination

Note that I’m only gonna use the characters I’ve seen/know about, so that’s Henry (RWRB, duh), Conor (Handsome Devil, watched the whole movie and really liked it), Timmy (The Craft: Legacy, only watched Nick’s part lol), Robert (Cinderella, the first time I actually saw Nick, I watched… enough, plus a bunch of video essays on it because I am a musical theatre person and a fairy tale person), Jeff (Bottoms, from what I can get from the trailers), and Luke (Purple Heart, which I love you Nick but I will not put myself through that, based on what I’ve heard about it and reading the synopsis on Wikipedia) if you can think of more please join in on this mess

Let’s say some weird random ass multiverse magic got all of them into a room. After the initial “Good God is that what I look like with a buzzcut?” and “Why the fuck are they British- is that kid Scottish?” and “HE’S A PRINCE? OH THAT GUY WHO’S SINGING IS A PRINCE TOO? HOW AM I A PRINCE???” then someone (honestly out of the six I listed probably Henry or … Luke?) telling everyone to settle down and introduce themselves so they can figure out their differences, what’s gonna happen?

Well...

Luke and Jeff will definitely get into a fight at some point. Maybe Robert gets unintentionally involved too

I dread to imagine the conversation/confrontation between Luke, the conservative marine and Henry, now a gay icon in a loving, committed relationship with the bisexual POC son of a democratic female president (I’ve heard some folks call Henry the rainbow prince and oh my God I love that) interacting, but Henry is still a prince and a lot stronger and willing to stand up for himself and his relationship at the end of the movie, I want him to win in that argument

Henry and Robert will definitely judge each other. Robert on Henry’s clothes and how proper he is (think about his fucking line “dancing at these things are so mannered! And formal! And we look like fools!” and oh God I hate that I can quote that line) and Henry on Robert’s eccentric, borderline-childish mannerism, and wonder how on earth is this guy a prince (I know royal protocols are strict and Henry does definitely find them stifling at times but a large part of that is just… manner and etiquette? Like look at the pained face he makes when Alex devours the cornetto and then speaks with his mouth full of ice cream, he was definitely exasperated by his choice of men at the moment)

Luke and Jeff will get annoyed at Robert spontaneously bursting into song and tell him to shut the fuck up, but Henry might find it amusing and somewhat charming (come on I absolutely don’t believe that Alex and Henry don’t sing to each other, especially when they have Taylor and Nick’s beautiful singing voice in the movie verse) and maybe Conor starts shyly strumming his guitar to Robert’s singing

Jeff trying to bully Conor and Timmy then realizing these boys are no less strong than he is and gets his ass kicked

(The next couple of points are the main reason I wrote this post lol)

Henry recognizing Conor and Timmy’s struggles, seeing bits of his younger self in these queer kids that look like him, remembering what Alex said about getting to be someone his father didn’t see growing up, thinking he can do something similar for these two boys and taking them under his wing, pulling the both of them to a corner to talk

Conor telling Henry that he doesn’t believe there’s a place in the world where he could just be himself, and Henry remembering feeling the same until a certain American boy with fucking eyelashes, black curls and dimples stormed his castle

Timmy explaining how he feels like his bisexuality isn’t being validated (Nick did amazing in that scene please go watch it) and Henry gently telling him that that’s absolutely not true and that his boyfriend is in fact, bisexual, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with liking both boys and girls

Henry and Timmy sharing their grief over their lost parents

Conor and Timmy suddenly having a man who looks like them, who's in a position of power and in a committed relationship with another man in a position of power to look up to

Henry telling them his story and how he found love and support, giving the boys hope, and realizing that this is what making history can mean

I don’t know how my brain came to this but Henry as an older brother to Conor and Timmy now lives rent-free in my head, might write more on that alone

Very intrigued about how this is gonna be expanded when Mary & George comes out and we add George Villiers to the mix, Henry will pass out