#is incredibly important

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I'm with you on the understanding of reason for Patrick's arrest. I thought that was very clear in the book and they kept that in the film, didn't they? I only watched it once so far and without subtitles,and didn't get all of what Tom said to Marion about it but he said something about the alley behind the gay bar. Also the timing would seem a bit off for him to be immediately arrested based just on the letter. (I got the feeling at least some people in the museum, like the woman who informs Patrick of Tom's first visit, knew or had suspicions.) And it does make it worse because it shows the threat of being found out is everywhere and pointedly also with other queer people who are being pressured by the police. Bethan Roberts made a great choice to write it that way. The personal decisions of individuals do have an impact (Marion's guilt afterwards etc) but it's the social circumstances and especially the state violence that are the biggest villain, so to speak. I actually found that an important point in making the historical setting work in the book. One of the biggest wave of trials against hundreds of queer men in Germany after WWII (in Frankfurt in 1950/51) was triggered and based on the arrest of one guy they questioned over and over. That's what I thought of when I read the book.

Really glad to hear other people understood the book as I did, because I've seen a lot of people talk as if Marion's letter caused what followed and that's not how I understood it at all. It's hard to be definitive about anything, because the whole point of the book is that there are two unreliable narrators.

To me Patrick's explanation - that the man he'd met at the Argyle had got into trouble and grassed him up made perfect sense and didn't need any further explanation.

Whereas the idea that Marion sending a message to the Head of the Museum (who Patrick knows is not straight) would have ever got to the police, let alone the police then being able to reverse target Patrick through this guy, was incredibly farfetched. Sylvie explains this to Marion and I found her logic entirely convincing.

I think the changes they made - having Tom say that someone had given them up and it must have been someone at the museum, the cutting of the Sylvie scene and the slightly different way Patrick talked about it, were all about presenting a cause and effect that just isn't there in the book (and doesn't really make sense).

I do think there are really good pacing and story structure reasons why they'd make this decision in the film. On top of that hte film is all told from Marion's point of view, in a way the book isn't. So it sort of becomes a plot hole, rather than a point of ambiguity.

[the-moogs]

A little tribute to my favorite creator/influencer:

Now, I can’t speak from a Black audience perspective, but as an Asian (Chinese and Japanese,) I wholeheartedly accept and respect Jenna’s apology. To me, as someone who watches her and Julien’s videos every week, listens to their podcast, and even their Twitch streams, I personally didn’t even need to hear her say it that candidly, but I’m so glad she did—especially in this time of the BLM movement, and some of the racism we Asians have been experiencing surrounding the coronavirus. And that’s not because I follow her content and think she’s some “unproblematic queen” who can do/say no wrong. She CLEARLY understands the gravity of her words and actions, is truly humble, and even shows repentance (something imho few of these big names who are called out do) in that she AND Julien privated the majority of all their channels content. Not just that, but hearing the way they speak and how over the years, they’re continually open to being wrong and accountable, and willing to learn? That says so much.

Am I bummed that most of the videos I go back and watch, with this inexplicable healing and inclusive energy they both have, are gone? Yeah, of course! Do I think it was necessary they did this? Also yes.

I think that’s truly the kind of change that needs to be seen. Sure, people are calling out the toxic nature of “cancel culture” being the reason she did this, but I feel like that’s a half truth that discredits an example of someone who is willing to own up to their mistakes, be remorseful, calls for people to hold her accountable, and what it looks to actually care about these issues of racism. All of this ESPECIALLY as her and Julien are indeed, and they even have acknowledged it, white and benefit from that privilege.

Been watching her since she first went viral when I was in highschool over a decade ago; my Wednesday’s/Thursday’s will have a bit of a gap in them now. So thank you, Jenna, for sharing your life, dogs, and growth with us for all these years 🐶💛🌱

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Just wanted to thank you because I was one of those people for a long time who ignored and dismissed any engagement Harry had with masculinity. It ended up just making me (and people I followed who I agreed with) more upset and confused when he did things that weren’t compatible with that and I felt I was going in circles justifying things that didn’t need to be justified!! And I can now see how that was a story that didn’t work for me about Harry.

Thanks so much for this ask anon. I'm sorry you used to tell a story that made you so anxious - that's really hard. Even harder I think when the story you tell is entangled with the stories other people are telling and the anxiety becomes heightened. I'm so glad that you've been able to extract yourself from the tightening knot, see that Harry engages with masculinity and that you don't need to justify it.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I'm wondering your opinion on why Harry isn't considered out. I mean if one of my friends wrote something like "Medicine" and said "I mean we're all a little bit gay" I wouldn't consider them to be straight anymore. Do you have any idea why that didn't count as a coming out?

So there’s a couple of things I want to respond to here, but I’m going to start with the question you ask. 

Nothing about celebrities and the closet will make sense, without understanding the difference in what coming out means for a public figure and what it means for ordinary people.

Celebrity coming out in the press is very different from the ways in which ordinary people come out to the people around them.  Celebrities don’t just come out by signaling that they’re not straight; they also have to meta come out and make it very clear that they’re coming out.  There are a limited number of things that are recognised as coming out for celebrities.  Nothing indirect is treated as a coming out by the press or commentators.  Comments celebrities make need to be actively framed as a coming out before they are treated as such.

It’s worth noting that this might not hold forever.  A couple of reasonable high profile men who have performed heterosexuality before seem to be pushing the envelope for how gay they can be and remain in the closet.  You have Andrew Garfield going on drag race and talking about having sex with men, and Richard Madden being papped with specific boyfriends who he’s known to live with.  (There’s a long interesting history of this - before the formula of an official coming out happened - which was codified with Ellen - gay celebrities would talk about being gay in interviews and it just wouldn’t be published.  Ian McKellan talks about this in the interview with Jonathon Bailey that I was talking about yesterday.  But the dynamics are complicated - because if the press wasn’t waiting for official word, then tabloids would out people even more than they do.  Requiring unambiguous statements that someone is coming out, before talking about them as gay is both closeting and a sheild against invasive speculation).

There is another point, which is celebrities are not your friends - and most notably are not communicating to you the way your friends are.Efforts to understand them in the same terms as you understand your friends are almost certain to fail. 

Finally on the examples you give - I definitely wouldn’t understand them as you do.  I have never understood fandom’s response ‘we’re all a little bit gay aren’t we’.  I know specific context matters, but that sounds like such a straight thing to say to me.  And if someone said that to me I’d assume they saw themselves as straight (although not necessarily that they were straight).  Medicine is pretty ambiguous - and art can mean a lot of things - the ‘I’ isn’t always the author.  I tthink in general some fans tend to overestimate how ambiguous Harry’s public persona is and one way that happens is by reading things as both more ambiguous and more public than they are.

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

So I saw a post saying that pink was a 'boy's colour' that became a 'girl's colour' or 'feminine colour' after WWII when Hitler branded gay men with pink triangles. The internet has been wholly unhelpful in clarifying this for me, only agreeing that it is post WWII that pink shifted from boys to girls but without any explicit reasoning other than mentions of commercial marketing. Any insight for me? Thank you.

Hi anon

Since you sent this I’ve seen the post - and I have to say I’m very sceptical.  I don’t know anything more than common knowledge about how and why the gendered associations of colours changed.

But nothing about this idea fits with what I understand about gay men’s persecution under the Nazis.  After the war, their experiences were ignored, the laws stayed in place and some men had to continue to carry out their sentences.  Gay men were not acknowledged as victims of the Nazi regime, and in fact there were concerted efforts to suppress and silence that history. Part of reclaiming the pink triangle in the 1970s was to make the oppression that people had experienced visible. 

All this means that I would be incredibly surprised if the Nazis’ use of the pink triangle was well known enough to be any part of the switching colours in genderd baby clothing marketing in the US (which is definitely where it started from).

Now I could be wrong - and maybe there were specific people and connections - but it’s the sort of claim that I would need substantial evidence for and not believe because someone said it and someone else turned that into a .gif on tumblr.

[professorsparklepants]

Can we have a Harry Potter AU where Regulus Black is the Death Eater spy turned potions master instead of Snape?