Another submission from your friendly marketing guru. I also submitted: https://www.tumblr.com/misssassy56/818445577242148864/i-work-in-marketing-and-have-a-masters-degree-in
First of all, congratulations to the Fandom.
Seriously.
This morning, while making my coffee before work and doing my usual scroll through Instagram to see what had been posted overnight before I logged into my marketing job at a large company, I noticed something interesting. Fan account after fan account was posting about how beautiful Hudson and Katelyn are together, how happy they look, and what a wonderful couple they make.
And it got me thinking.
An entire weekend of public appearances apparently wasn't enough to convince people that Hudson and Katelyn are the picture of relationship bliss, but one Instagram photo seems to have done the trick.
Let's review.
At the Canada Screen Awards, fans noticed there was no red carpet kiss, no red carpet hug, very little visible physical affection, and after the parties Hudson and Katelyn weren't exactly giving "newlyweds at Disneyland" energy. In fact, a lot of the discussion afterward centered on how much more animated Hudson appeared with coworkers than with his girlfriend.
Then came one Instagram photo.
And suddenly fan pages are full of:
"Look how happy they are!"
"What a beautiful couple!"
"Relationship goals!"
"They look so in love!"
As someone who works in marketing, I have to tip my hat. The Fandom has accomplished something remarkable: they've managed to make a single still image outweigh an entire weekend's worth of live, unscripted public interactions.
That's not even sarcasm. It's genuinely fascinating.
Because the actual event footage, photos, and eyewitness accounts became secondary. The narrative became the photo.
The fans are now doing the heavy lifting themselves, reinforcing the message that Hudson and Katelyn are happy, stable, and thriving together.
Whether that was intentional or not, it's objectively impressive from a branding perspective.
The lesson?
Sometimes a carefully chosen image isn't powerful because of what's in it.
It's powerful because people enthusiastically fill in the blanks for you.
So once again, congratulations to the Fandom.
You've accomplished something remarkable: you've managed to sell Hudson and Katelyn's relationship as a happy, stable, thriving union based on a couple of strategically placed Instagram photos, despite an entire weekend of public appearances that left many fans debating the exact opposite.
From a marketing perspective, that's impressive.
You successfully communicated a message that Hudson himself never quite managed to communicate through his own actions.
Truly, a team effort.
Welcome back, my lovely anon🥰
It truly is shocking, isn't it? Like we keep talking about this being the worst PR team of all time but if their half-baked attempts just fucking keep working on the masses every time, does it even deserve to be called bad PR? It's bad if people were paying any close attention to anything at all... but I guess they really are not. I'm truly gobsmacked...
I don't know how many more times I need to remind people to just remember what the fuck happened literally 3 days ago in front of our very eyes. There are short memories and there are memories worse than a goddamn goldfish🙄
Please everyone. I fucking beg of yall. Read this. Remember what we witnessed firsthand over the weekend. Remember the fucking Met. Remember it all. Then fucking make your judgements. Please.
Hudson, my brother in Christ, I love your consistency in the heart department and your ability to put on a blinding smile, just one question... clearly the prom photo had been taken before you ran away from her later that night, now... did she ever catch up with you later or did she blanket burrito her way straight onto her flight back home?
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⚰️I know we love to talk about how intertwined they are how ancient their connection feels. I am interested in knowing how does hudson match connor then? How does he match connors magic with his own? I have seen them as equal partners since the start even though it seems uneven sometimes. I guess im in a lovey dovey mood & I would love your musings on this. (Also used that emoji you said in your pinned)
i’d like to touch on what i think c’s famous intuition is first, outside of any mystical or otherworldly implications. i’ve come to understand intuition as a form of rapid discernment: your body and mind processing a million tiny pieces of information at once, making countless micro-decisions until the process becomes so automatic that it simply feels like you “know.”
in that sense, strong intuition is often learned rather than innate. it can develop in people who grew up in environments where they couldn’t fully be themselves, because paying close attention to others becomes a survival skill. for queer children, sensitive children, or children who are otherwise different, being able to quickly read a room can be the difference between belonging and rejection, safety and isolation.
taken from his own words, he was “this artist, sissy boy in west texas that didn’t want to play football.” that’s a heavy awareness to carry from a young age. even if you have supportive people around you, you still understand that there are aspects of yourself that exist in tension with the broader environment. that kind of social isolation leaves an impression on anyone, especially a child.
so you learn to observe. you learn to adapt. you learn to hold yourself a certain way depending on who’s in the room.
if you’ve read my other asks, i’ve talked a bit about gender performativity—the idea that we learn what masculinity and femininity are supposed to look like by observing, interacting with, and responding to the direct people around us. then we reproduce, negotiate, resist, or reinterpret those expectations throughout our lives
i think the same process applies here. c is perceptive because he has spent a lifetime observing. he watches people. he interacts with them. he understands the roles they’re playing and the pressures shaping them. he has done the difficult work of understanding himself both inside and outside of those roles early in life, which affords him a sui generis capacity to adapt, reinterpret, and inhabit different ways of being without losing sight of who he is
maybe that's part of why his acting—his job—feels so convincing, even when it's just his face. he understands people. he seems capable of recognizing the patterns that sit beneath the surface almost instinctively, because intuition is built on years of observation and once he recognizes those patterns, he can reproduce them in a way that feels authentic and human. he's embodying the logic of their inner world, that's what makes it feel like he's not just imitating a person. how saucy!
alright, back to the point: so when people say he’s highly intuitive, i don’t necessarily think they’re describing some magical sixth sense? i think they’re noticing the result of decades spent paying attention. his mind has become incredibly fast at reading patterns, filling in gaps, and identifying the underlying mechanics that drive people. by the time that process reaches consciousness, it no longer feels like analysis—it feels like intuition
then you meet a man who cannot seem to keep himself hidden. no matter how hard he tries, his interior world is constantly leaking into the exterior one, his thoughts and feelings surfacing before he can contain them.
after spending a lifetime learning to read people, connor encounters someone who is almost startlingly transparent—a person whose emotions announce themselves before they're ever spoken aloud. and all of it circles back to identity in a way that feels almost inverse to his own experience.
connor learned to turn inward in order to survive the external world; hudson seems to turn outward in order to survive his internal one
where connor's instinct is observation, hudson's is vulnerability. not because vulnerability comes easily to him, but because he seems to continually choose it despite the risks. connor learned discernment through repression; hudson learned that connection was worth pursuing in spite of it
he wants to be understood. he wants to collaborate. he wants to create with people rather than compete against them. even his ambitions often seem rooted less in recognition than in participation—in being part of something meaningful alongside others; good or bad, his sense of self appears to be fundamentally relational. he understands himself through others, through exchange, through conversation, through creation, through belonging: where some people seek validation by distinguishing themselves from others, hudson seems to seek it by finding ways to connect with them
and those values don't begin with connor. they precede him. they're part of the person hudson already was long before they met
for someone who grew up feeling isolated, who spent years aware of his own difference, who learned to navigate environments that didn't always embrace him, how could that not feel transformative? after years of learning distance, caution, and self-monitoring, you suddenly meet someone whose first instinct is openness. someone who extends trust where you learned vigilance, who seeks connection where you learned discernment, who moves toward people instead of bracing for them.
it's not just that he understands you. it's that he offers a way of being in the world that you've spent your whole life searching for without realizing it. he embodies the ease, acceptance, and belonging that always felt slightly out of reach
how could that feel like anything other than meeting your soulmate? not because he's perfect, and not because you're the same, but because he answers a loneliness you've been carrying for so long that it has become part of the architecture of who you are
so: how does he match connor's magic with his own?
by letting connor be connor—the real connor, the "artist, sissy boy in west texas that didn't want to play football"—and proving to him that that kid can be loved without qualification. not loved because he learned how to perform, not loved because he became perceptive enough, or successful enough, now, or careful enough before, or useful enough all along. just loved.
for all of connor's insight into other people, i imagine the harder task was always extending that same grace to himself. after all, discernment is often born from self-surveillance. there's something suffocating about spending every day with a mind that is constantly monitoring, correcting, and negotiating with itself: do this, don't do that, don't say that, don't feel that, and everything will be fine.
and yet you feel it anyway, because for all the logic in the world, there are parts of yourself that cannot be reasoned away even with time. if you grew up constantly reading a room, anticipating reactions, and adjusting yourself accordingly, it becomes difficult to separate who you are from who you've learned to be. and i imagine that's especially true growing up and entering an industry built on perception: you're expected to please. you're expected to become someone else. you're expected to look a certain way, speak a certain way, carry yourself a certain way if you want to succeed. even authenticity becomes something that can be curated and sold
and then here comes someone whose instinct is not to scrutinize or reshape him, but simply to embrace him exactly as he is
in that sense, hudson's magic is permission. maybe he doesn't possess the same level of discernment, but he doesn't seem any less willing to welcome whatever is placed before him. he isn't searching for an idealized version of connor; he sees the beautiful parts, the wounded parts, the parts that don't fit neatly into any category, and none of them appear to diminish his affection
he sees connor regardless. more importantly, he sees him and loves him. loudly, openly, and without embarrassment. there's nothing tentative about it; he seems to approach loving connor with the same force a bulldozer approaches a fence
hudson doesn't ask for a version of him softened for consumption; made more masculine or more feminine, less strange, less emotional, less himself. he treats the very qualities that once marked connor as different as things worthy of affection, not obstacles to overcome, but parts of the person he loves
that's the inverse of an act. an act is something you perform in response to the 'other'—an attempt to manage perception. it's a negotiation between who you are and what the world is willing to receive.
love, at its best, is what happens when that negotiation becomes unnecessary. when the performance can finally end, and you discover that the person standing in front of you isn't asking for a role at all. they're just asking for you
connor's gift is understanding people; hudson's is making people feel safe enough to be understood.
new thought—if i were being annoyingly tarot-brained about it, i can see that manifesting as pentacles to connor's swords and cups. maybe that's why they fit together so well spirituality as well. understanding alone doesn't always create safety, and safety alone doesn't always create understanding, but when the two exist together, people tend to flourish
how cool if true!
i have work to do now so beep-boop bompous logging off! i hope that answered enough? i am sorry if it didn't
If there is one single post you must read if you wish to understand the inevitability and depth of the soul connection between Connor and Hudson, this is it.
I could quote the whole thing, to be honest, because every single paragraph has weight and significance, but this...
"how could that feel like anything other than meeting your soulmate? not because he's perfect, and not because you're the same, but because he answers a loneliness you've been carrying for so long that it has become part of the architecture of who you are"
...this one hit hard, because it is true for all of us in a way.
@honeybomp I am forever in awe of your magical weaving of words and thoughts into something so profoundly moving and spiritual. 🤍
I just read from a reader that Connor and Hudson can never be together again because Hudson isn’t ready to commit and Connor doesn’t see any future plans with him anymore….and they are only going to be friends ,is it like that in your reading as well…
Buddy, I’m here to repeat the gospel of the early days:
Tarot does not work in absolutes.
That applies in both directions: the good, where a reader guarantees that two people will become more than friends, and the bad, like the person you mentioned, where someone insists they will always just be friends.
Think of tarot as reading momentum. Momentum with both magnitude and direction, the movement of energy as it exists in a given moment. It is not a fixed prophecy.
Here’s a checklist for Tarot readers who may or may not be exploiting you for engagement. If I'm guilty of these, take me out back like old yeller:
Like I said, Absolute language — “They can never be together again.” “He secretly hates her.” “This relationship will 100% happen.” Anyone presenting Tarot as undeniable fact instead of interpretation is already misrepresenting the practice.
Scarily frequent readings — Daily readings are normal, at least for people you personally know. If you choose to engage in that kind of content for celebrities, that’s your decision, but it is important to stay aware of how easily emotional reassurance can turn into emotional dependency, especially for more sensitive people. And if a reader is posting constantly throughout the day, repeatedly pulling cards on the same situation or person, that is usually a red flag.
So: Building dependency — “The energy shifted again.” “I need to check what he’s thinking right now.” Tarot should not make people feel emotionally dependent on constant updates to regulate themselves
Constant catastrophizing or blissfulness — Every reading cannot be a Tower moment and not every day will come with a Two of Cups. Watch for people who seem more invested in steering fandom opinion than actually interpreting the cards, especially readers who do not disclose their full sessions. That is not a crime, of course, but it is still something to stay mindful of: showing the thought process matters if you want people to engage with it critically. Otherwise it just turns into gossip with a weird air of superiority.
Treating cards like surveillance footage — Tarot is symbolic. It is not CCTV, which is why I tell people to wait after tense moments. Nobody can pull three cards as something is evolving and suddenly know the exact contents of a private situation of people they have never met. Be careful of readers who imply they are uniquely “chosen,” (unlike me, famously a half-angel.)
Punishing disagreement — If a reader reacts aggressively every time someone questions a reading, that is a problem. Interpretation is subjective. Readers who act spiritually superior or personally offended by skepticism usually want authority, not discussion
Moralizing every card pull — Not every awkward interaction is abuse. Not every distance card means hatred. Not every third-party card means cheating. Readers who constantly turn normal human complexity into moral drama are usually feeding audience emotions more than interpreting symbolism.
Pretending Tarot overrides reality — If observable reality consistently contradicts the reading, and the reader just keeps inventing increasingly convoluted explanations to preserve their narrative, that should tell you something.
Encouraging parasocial entitlement — Any reader who makes audiences feel entitled to invasive access (bodily health like injuries, trauma and family dynamics) has probably lost perspective on boundaries
At the end of the day, Tarot is a reflective tool. Some people will claim higher intuition or prophetic dreams, but those things cannot really be measured, so it is ultimately up to you to decide what you believe
Not everyone can be a psychic like me, user Bompous, famously a half-angel. But then again, not everyone can flop as hard as me, user Bompous, famously only half-angel, either.
If your inner peace has been hijacked by the hordes of tarot readers that have been sprouting up everywhere in the HC fandom, PLEASE read this. Especially after this weekend and the dooming that ensued (again).
There is a very good reason I've only been consistently following 3-4 readers that I trust - Bomp being the no.1 - not just with being as accurate as any person in any given moment can be, but with being thoughtful and empathic, having the knowledge to actually interpret what they see, not letting their own emotions and personal goings-on cloud their interpretations as much as possible, formulating their messages mindfully and considerately, and most importantly not exploiting my peace of mind or feed/trigger fandom drama.
imagine being a lonely young kid who wants a friend so bad that you put it on your YouTube channel with like 2 subscribers -- and now a decade later you have someone who dedicated his first award to you on national television and who wishes he could split it down the middle so he could give half of it to you. imagine
Nobody can convince me otherwise that if Connor had been seated next to him, we would have gotten a hug for a solid minute with emotions.
In tense, nervous situations the first impulse is to go for comfort and they gave us nothing. He looked for Jacob not her. He barely glanced at her and his first instinct was turning to Sophie.
The carpet gave notning.
The speech... "love ya" is very casual. The "wherever you are" is dismissive. And I just mentioned this in a comment elsewhere that I am intrigued by the "keeps me stable" in contract to "he's my stability".
One is passive like he is held back, needs to be tamed and tethered. The other is an active choice to lean on somebody for balance and support.
Presented without commentary because yes, I agree.
So... was this part of the "STORM THE SET" joke, to send EVERYONE in front of the fucking camera during the time THE person the live stream was for was on the carpet??? 😂😂😂
I appreciate CSA live streaming their red carpet for the first time ever, but boy, is it a shitshow! 😂 All these people with zero spatial awareness that keep blocking the only camera... 💀
(I work in events and with audiovisual technology suppliers, so this is killing me on so many levels)
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