Can't Change

Howard Ashman, who collaborated on the film’s score and had a huge influence on the movie’s story and themes, was a gay man who died of AIDS shortly after work on the film was completed. If you watch the film with that in mind, the message of it becomes clear. Gaston demonstrates that bullies are rewarded and beloved by society as long as they possess a certain set of characteristics, while nice people who don’t are ostracized. The love story between Belle and the Beast is about them finding solace in each other after society rejects them both.

Notice how the Beast reacts when the whole town comes for him. He’s not angry, he’s sad. He’s tired. And he almost gives up because he has nothing to live for. But then he sees that Belle has come back for him, and suddenly he does. In the original fairy tale, the Beast asks Belle to marry him every night, and the spell is broken when she accepts. In the Disney movie, he waits for her to love him, because he cannot love himself. That’s how badly being ostracized from society and told that you’re a monster all your life can fuck with your head and make you stop seeing yourself as human.

cry with me……..

Yeees, I just retweeted this as well! A comment from someone from the general public and 👏🏻 come 👏🏻 on 👏🏻 Harry is so fucking obvious, this PR stunt is so poorly executed, no one is winning here. Everyone listen to Barbara, let’s end this shit show before further damage, there’s still time.

Listen, he wore that Keith Haring mutual hand jobs shirt not just once (this time on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots)

But twice.

He wears penis themed jewelry

He has this piece of art hanging in one of his homes

He has other gay-themed art in his home(s)

He’s a constant source of gay innuendo including this nonsense

He literally joked about bottoming:

He enthusiastically sang a song, live on tour, about sucking dick

If that wasn’t clear enough, he told us again how much he likes doing it. 

I think we can say the boy likes dick. 

As someone who got sucked into this fandom because of how exhilarating it was to discover this pocket if queer culture and - not always, but powerfully - of queer joy, it’s a big thing to have to accept. I’m thinking it might be about realising that this queer safe space was built by the fans, so the fandom itself is the real homebase… not this whole thing that is out of our control. H and L have their own priorities and choices to make and they sure often don’t align with ours. 2/2

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I appreciate you making these points.

And I want to call out one in particular: the FANS made the safe space. The fans started Rainbow Direction. The fans created pockets of the internet. Harry and Louis have certainly given us material to work with but we took it and ran with it.

And, to me, that’s what’s changed my life.

I do believe that there is a real thing that happens when Harry runs around with flags AND when Louis writes lyrics. I’d encourage folks to watch this video and try not to cry (start at 54:20). Imagine being that person, coming out for the FIRST TIME, to your idol and 15,000 SCREAMING fans. I cry almost every time I watch it. Yes, it’s about Harry. But it’s about SO much more. To me, it’s about what it means to be celebrated in that space whether you’re out or not.

The piece that keeps sticking with me is that no one owes someone else a coming out. Yes, everyone who is public makes it just a little bit easier for someone else. But that doesn’t mean that people have to come out. And I’m troubled by the vein that happens in these parts (I’m not saying this is you anon) where somehow the only valid way to be queer is if you’re out and loud about it.

Will I cheer if and when they decide to come out? You bet. Is my love of Harry or Louis predicated on them coming out? It’s not. How Harry and Louis choose to live their queerness is their business. How I choose to live my queerness is mine. How I choose to relate to their queerness is also mine.

I do think you’re right about a grieving process. But I’ll frame it a little differently. It’s really hard to be tangibly angry at systems of oppression. They don’t have one specific face or address. It’s easier to be angry or sad at a person who represents that system of oppression. So, I’d imagine for many, that the stunts are a reminder of how far the entertainment industry has to go. It’s easier to direct ire there rather than the cis-hetero-patriarchal-white supremacist-capitalist system that made it necessary in the first place.

Across from the the crustacean tank was a small octopus tank. This little fucker squeezed out of a tiny hole at the top of his tank, walk across the hall, and get into the crustacean tank. He would then hunt and eat. After he was done, he crawled back out and get back in his tank

Octopus Escapes from Tank to Prowl on its Neighbors

Octopus Escape — 600-pound (272-kilogram) octopus wriggles through a passageway the size of a quarter

Legging It: Evasive Octopus Has Been Allowed to Look for Love

It was next to a sex toy shop

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