I have a looooooooong and complicated history with Harry Styles. Like I got into One Direction in late 2012 and he was always in my rotation as a top 2/3 member. I have hated him, I have considered a moment at a concert where he splashed water on me to be one of my favorite concert moments of all times, I have written and read essays on everything wrong and right with him... for a decade now.

And I think his biggest issue is he is loooves to have his cake and eat it too. He loves the benefits of being perceived as X thing without the risk of openly being X thing. Doesn’t matter if he actually is X or just pretending he is, he thrives in the ambiguity which just ultimately makes him be very insincere. And also makes the “real” him that accidentally seeps through seem so much sharper in contrast.

For example, the ambiguity around his sexuality. Real, non-celebrity closeted people cannot toe the line with their sexuality and profit from it. But he exploits the ambiguity, the “will he won’t he” come out thing to hold a captive audience. Gay/bi or not, it feels insincere and shitty. But it also makes unfiltered slip ups like “I’m making REAL gay cinema that matters, unlike that horny shit” feel razor sharp because like... either he’s a straight man sexualizing gay media and harping on harmful stereotypes or he really is a closeted man so disconnected from his community that he can shove us and our art down to stand on our shoulders without feeling bad about it. Two very different forms of shittiness with no real way to figure out which one applies, so either criticism ends up being attacked by whoever believes the opposing narrative.

But this applies to... everything. He wants to be perceived as deep and open but refuses to say anything that would ever actually step on toes, so he says a lot of kind of empty, general statements. He’ll unleash 4 different explanations of one song to avoid revealing personal but then sell the album on being his most personal yet. Treat people with kindness but also won’t reign in his rabid fanbase when they attack other people, including his girlfriends.

He wants the reward, not the risk.

And so his entire persona becomes a very, very thought out way of finding the perfect balance of “What can I say/do to garner attention and a very niche brand without alienating anyone,” which ironically becomes alienating the more it continues and often kind of corners him into saying dumb shit like “I want to be in this movie because it feels like a movie you would see at the movies.” Because anything he could actually say about this liberal feminist, controversial-behind-the-scenes film he’s in might piss people off. Or, ironically, might expose how insincere he is.

But the only alternative in that situation is saying something so stupid and empty... people still get pissed off.

And I just don’t think he’s caught on to the fact that this risk vs reward balance thing he’s doing isn’t working anymore. Especially when it leads to him saying shit like “I just haven’t found a social issue that speaks to me yet” during peak BLM  while slapping on rainbow and BLM stickers onto his tiny guitar that only fans will see.

You just reach a point where it doesn’t actually matter what his truth is. What he cares about. If he actually wants to fuck men or not. It just becomes more and more clear he’d rather use a NARRATIVE around it to manipulate a fanbase than ever reveal anything.

And he isn’t unique as a celebrity in that way but it does become more and more cloying because he’s often juxtaposed as unique or more real for things that ultimately just feel like PR tactics.

And it just feels like the ambiguity is just a shield now. Like you can’t criticize me because you can’t be sure what angle I’m really coming from nad it’s like... really? Well I’ll fucking criticize you anyways.

midnight rendezvous

shout-out to the makers of NBC Hannibal for (clearly) reading all four books about Hannibal Lecter by Thomas Harris and going "hmm. actually we will make the gayest possible version of this" going on to COMPLETELY disregard the other main character and (canon) ?love interest? of the series and never even MENTION Clarice Starling. Like it's so funny to me that she never even appears on the show when book!Will Graham literally fucks off after The Red Dragon and wants nothing to do with any of this anymore and book!Hannibal is obsessed with Clarice in the same way that tv!Hannibal is obsessed with tv!Will. like they really took a whole book franchise, picked out the cherries, and made it their own personal little gay AU. that's so refreshing and should be a leading example in television adaptations. in this essay i will

Y'all ever think about Goodsir, Fitzjames, and Blanky?

Y'all ever think about those three characters in a show about every kind of consumption under the sun - physical, mental, emotional consumption, being eaten up by the landscape, by your own demons, by your fellow man. Those characters who don't resist it in the end?

Who die, in fact, with the express intention of being consumed?

I think about them. Not coherently, but I think about them.

It is funny that I spent 90% of btvs so happy that they just let Buffy & Xander be best friends while wholly believing it'd be a big mistake to put them together for many reasons (as someone who loves their friendship and loves Xander), but by the end of the show was like. well their love isn't any less significant or meaningful as best friends but also. they would be so good together romantically and at this point the fact he had a crush on her years ago is pretty irrelevant. They'd get and understand each other like no one else. Like if I had to actually pick anyone from the show to be with Buffy at the end in a positive way it would be Xander. Hands down.

I can't imagine it anymore // Neither can I

alt ver. under the cut

wig version cuz slay boy, hide those tears

I've been stalking Javier Bardem's filmography, and I'm just dying at the fact that his typecast in the 90s seemed to be hunky male whore, I mean, well deserved but 😭

If I see ONE MORE young Wolfstar and none of them as their middle aged selves I am going to lose it

Why does EVERYONE draw them as their younger versions!? We meet them when they’re older!!

real people cant queerbait. queerbaiting is the practice done by media creators, usually showrunners, of making what is essentially a couple of two people of the same gender but never confirming it, usually to keep viewership in less accepting places and at the same time keeping the viewership of those who love watching that couple, rooting for them to get together.

real people dont owe us their sexuality. they dont owe us anything, actually. especially not celebrities who are strangers to us.

"b-but theyre appropriating queer culture!" not really? men being feminine is typically in queer spaces, but i thought we wanted that to be normalized, for everyone to be allowed to express themselves however they please as long as no one gets hurt. i thought we wanted clothes and makeup and hair to be genderless, as they shouldve always been.

do we want cishet people to stop playing us in media? yeah, sure, but theyre still allowed to, its not illegal and they can still give decent performances. they dont have to match up to their identity on screen to play a role, even though it would be better for quite a few reasons. id prefer if they did but im not going to grab a pitchfork if they dont.

hell, even if someone was kissing people of the same gender in public but not confirming their sexuality, they still dont owe it to us. its their life, and literally if they are not hurting anyone, which they arent, then its not our business.

real people cant queerbait, they are not characters in a show, theyre not there for you to change and use as entertainment. theyre just as real as you and me and you need to consider real hard how it would feel to be on the recieving end of your behavior before you do something awful. hell, not even just in this situation of insisting people give their lives to us, but in any situation.

celebrities are still people, whether we like it or not. treat them like human beings, you weirdos. theyre not your friend, theyre not a character, theyre not there for you. theyre not a doll that youre playing with.

words have meanings. queerbaiting is a word for media discussion. it was made for that and it should stay for that. stop being cruel to real people because you think youre the center of the universe.

there’s gotta be an insane amount of gay sex happening at golf courses bc like. golf has a grip on 25+ year old men that can’t be explained and the only logical answer is gay sex

DID YOU EVER WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND WANTED TO BE LOUIS TOMLINSON????

One thing I really dislike about the question "Can (straight) men and (straight) women be friends?" is that it's usually approached from the perspective of romance. There is always the assumption that there will be a romantic relationship between these two people if they become too emotionally attached. However I find this to be a very hetero-centric view of relationships, and I would like to pose a question: can men and women be friends, not in terms of romance, but in terms of FRIENDSHIP?

I say this because recently I was hurt quite deeply by a male friend of mine. I won't get into the crux of the issues, because it's really not relevant. But I'd like to forgive him. I'd like to move on. However, he's not really providing any of the emotional support or reassurance that I need to move past it. His solution seems to be "Let's give it more time" when really, that's actually not fixing it. All that ends up happening is that I stew more and get even angrier. He hasn't done anything to actually make up for the problem. He told me that he couldn't reassure me that it won't happen again (which, well, THEN WHAT IS THE POINT OF HIM? WHAT IS THE POINT OF CONTINUING THEN?).

He basically threw our entire friendship out of balance, and I feel very exposed and vulnerable around him right now. I feel like I'm constantly in danger. Now, for full transparency, I have this feeling around a lot of people anyway because as an abuse victim, I often have a little voice in my head going "They're going to hurt you!" but since this has happened, I now have very real proof that he could hurt me that I can point to. And he hasn't actually done anything to reassure me or even meet me on the level that I am at. He doesn't seem to want to do any work to help get me through this.

And I think in his mind it's because I'm not his girlfriend. He would be making more of an effort if I was his girlfriend. And that's where I think this disconnect lies. I admittedly haven't been hurt this way by any of my female friends in my life, but I have had issues with some of them. And in periods where they actually wanted to fix the relationship, they actually talked to me and things changed between us, whether it was through changed behavior, an apology, or a gesture.

Each time, they've done a hell of a lot more than just "idk, man, let's take some time off". Because men and women just have different expectations on how to fix problems in friendships. I want to get to the root of what happened. He just wants to take some time off and doesn't want to reflect on his actions and do better. and THAT'S why (straight) men and (straight) women can't be friends.

write a When Harry Met Sally movie about THAT.

.

I love how organically weird conversations can get sometimes. Walked in on my husband writing an email to his dad where he was listing out the optimal size to cut potatoes, and then ranking them by how often we cut each size (mashed is apparently a cutting method here)

going to be honest, I dont think Kim Kitsuragi would want to be pregnant even if he was capable of it. he's 45 and has youth-related ptsd. if the geriatric pregnancy didn't take him out the teen years would. abort that thang

Me: Do I actually like men or do I just think I do? I feel like I don't experience the exact attraction towards men that my friends describe. Maybe I like women more? What if I'm not bisexual but actually really a lesbian?

Also me: *watches Harry Potter for the first time and sees Alan Rickman walking around with a long, black cape*

Yeah. I'm definitely not a lesbian. Oh, my God.