lonelyboyscc - Tumblr blog

[lonelyboyscc]

Choices Survey final results

Thank you to everyone that responded!!! Over 500 people answered and it would have been even more if my survey site hadn’t limited my responses. I would love to create smaller more specific surveys if I think people enjoy seeing this. Thank you all for the support!

tagged: 

@cream-ray @gavryllo @cpt-indigo @frugalchoicer@dreamarvelous @lifeof314universe @sucker4aslowburn@referencees @malyceaduncastellan @idontevenknowreally @alona-kaiser@save-the-sky @zekei-sentry @inthequietgalaxy @certifiedmusicnerd  @squablingoflife-blog @jbgyllen @kidyouhavenoidea @starlight-so-bright@stilesbatinski @saikoneko @messrprongs @spongemarie@iwearheeelsnow @yesimacerealkiller @flyawayboo @samara-rani@shortandpsycho @doozysuzy @timmagicktoad @emomoustache@robbiessutcliffe

[lonelyboyscc]

His beauty is literally overwhelming for me. He’s a character in the series Broken Souls in the Secrets: Game of choices app. And this series is queer, FIY.

[lonelyboyscc]

book review: E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ (or a defence of Clive Durham)

Strap in. I’ve got a lot of feelings about Maurice. 

I thought this was going to be a coming of age novel about a young gay man’s sexual awakening, but it was really a meditation on loneliness and how much loneliness a person can endure. Without rehashing the whole plot, at the centre of the novel is the relationship between Maurice, the title character, and his friend Clive who fall in love at Cambridge and have a platonic love affair for three years until Clive’s feeling change and he decides to marry, leaving Maurice heartbroken and completely alone.    

In his Terminal Note Forster admits to being unfair to Clive and I have to agree. I read Clive as a biromantic asexual. I don’t believe he was suppressing his true nature by marrying, I think he was yielding to it. I’m not convinced his decision to marry Anne was any more calculating than his decision to be with Maurice. He didn’t enjoy a physical relationship with Maurice and, even though they consummate their relationship, he doesn’t enjoy sex with Anne; the difference is, Anne doesn’t enjoy sex either! Unlike Maurice, that kind of intimacy is unimportant to her, making her a more ideal partner for Clive.

While Maurice’s loneliness is characterized by lack of human contact, Clive’s is more cerebral. Even when they were together, Clive sought passion and companionship in classical texts rather than human contact, whereas Maurice had no need for those texts once he found Clive. When he’s older, Clive’s love of ideas manifests itself in society and political aspirations. I think you can read this two ways 1. He’s a snob willing to betray a lover to maintain his social status or 2. His one true love is and always has been a communion with ideas, not any one person. 

If Clive is guilty of anything it’s not leaving Maurice but remaining his friend and banishing him to a purgatory where Maurice couldn’t have Clive but wasn’t given the emotional space to get over him either. This was the most compelling and convincing part of the novel and what I loved most about it (the angst! dear god the angst!). Toward the end, however, when Clive becomes a villain and blatantly prejudiced, it felt disingenuous of the author, like I was reading Forster’s prejudice against Clive and not Clive’s prejudice against “the unspeakable vice of the Greeks.” 

I have a soft spot for frigid intellectuals so I thought I was just biased, until I watched the movie where they clearly try to remedy this discrepancy in the novel with the Risley-arrest subplot to give Clive a clear motive–fear–to cowardly back out of his relationship with Maurice. But fear was not the motive in the novel nor was the motive a deep attraction to women. In fact, he even tried to enter a sexual relationship with Maurice before he left for Greece! 

I don’t know what a satisfying resolution for Clive’s character would be. I can say what I wanted: I wanted Clive to feel grief. I wanted him to grieve Maurice’s decision to run away with Alec, not because he thought it was morally wrong but because he didn’t want to lose him.  

I 100% wanted Maurice to end up with Alec but I think the ending could have honoured his love for Clive and Clive’s love for him. Their love story was central to the novel and not all great love stories involve sex or last forever.

[lonelyboyscc]

About That Clive Durham

One of the things I’ve come to notice after reading and watching Maurice several times is the varied opinions on Clive. Which is something that really intrigues me, and I have some input. I’ve crafted my own opinion, which has changed several times, and now is pretty permanent.

After you watch Maurice once, you hate Clive. He’s awful. Scumbag. Douche. After you watch Maurice a few more times, you start to understand Clive, and you sympathize more. With the pressure from his family and mother, to marry and carry responsibilities he can’t possibly escape from. He realizes the consequences of being homosexual in that time and place. He has so much to live up to, with so much weighing on him, and he falls apart, and in recollecting himself, makes a change. And it hurts Maurice, but you can sympathize more. You might have done the same thing. Poor Clive.  However, after READING the text, and watching deleted scenes from the film that were CUT (GOD KNOWS WHY) that show Clive’s hostility, you understand. The entirety of what Clive put Maurice through is h e a r t b r e a k i n g. Clive introduces Maurice to his own views about the greeks. He shapes Maurice into his own views. All the while in love with Maurice, yes. But he awakens Maurice in what can almost be realized as manipulative (later on you can see this more clearly). And that’s what Clive is. He falls for Maurice, strings him along out of his own fear and blunt fading interest, starts to back out (note: Risley’s arrest had NOTHING to do with Clive backing out, it wasn’t even in the book). Clive simply lost interest; realized life could be better. He traveled to Greece, saw his own past views in a tangible form, and realized they were no longer valid, and couldn’t be. So, he “changed”. He was an A S S H O L E towards Maurice, who took care of him when he was falling apart. After reading, you can see this. He treated him like shit. He’s a snippy, smartass, pompous, spoiled douche with the way he treats Maurice. After stringing him along, Maurice investing his LIFE in Clive, Maurice is dropped after Clive simply becomes repulsed by anything even remotely related to Maurice because he simply DOES NOT CARE, he purposely (which is in the text) seeks out someone completely unlike Maurice and Clive marries a woman who feels uncomfortable watching her own husband dress because he’s so cold and empty. The relationship is empty. He parades it in front of Maurice and flaunts his “straight” lifestyle. Clive is a cold fish on a marble slab. THAT relationship is platonic! There is no love. And the best part of the entire novel, and I am furious this scene was cut out of the film, is when Maurice stands up to Clive at the very end, and disappears with Alec, leaving Clive alone to withstand all the emptiness he has filled his life with.

I’ve had someone put that on me. My first love decided he wasn’t gay anymore, for other reasons, and it d e s t r o y e d me. So I get it.

I’m not convinced Clive “changed”. I’m sorry. That doesn’t happen. You don’t hit the undo button on the gay factor. Clive was a coward. Clive was empty. Clive was heartless. And I do believe that E.M Forster ends the novel in the perfect way; I do believe that’s an “oh shit” moment for Clive. Where he realizes “maybe i did love you, maybe my life is empty, maybe i made some wrong choices, maybe i was a huge bulldog dick to the one person who was able to deal with me and my smart ass speeches, ever”. I do believe that is the moment where Clive actually becomes un-empty. Where he feels. Where he regrets. But it’s too fucking late because you were completely and utterly awful. And this realization of Clive makes me appreciate Alec and, ESPECIALLY Maurice, so much more, and when I watch the film now, it’s not the same, because I know. I don’t have pity for Clive. I don’t feel sorry for him. 

This has been the ultimate rant about Mr. Clive Durham. Thank you.

[lonelyboyscc]

Don't worry, everyone deserves to keep their musical legacy in every way. We love you Taylor and none of those bulliers out there is gonna be able to even touch your hair.

[lonelyboyscc]

We love you Taylor <3 don't know what else to say but we actually do. I'm thankful that you got out of sth that would have caused you so much trouble. Always with you, Taylor <3

For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums. 

Some fun facts about today’s news: I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world. All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years. 

Like when Kim Kardashian orchestrated an illegally recorded snippet of a phone call to be leaked and then Scooter got his two clients together to bully me online about it. (See photo) Or when his client, Kanye West, organized a revenge porn music video which strips my body naked. Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.

This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it. 

When I left my masters in Scott’s hands, I made peace with the fact that eventually he would sell them. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine the buyer would be Scooter. Any time Scott Borchetta has heard the words ‘Scooter Braun’ escape my lips, it was when I was either crying or trying not to. He knew what he was doing; they both did. Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever. 

Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create. Thankfully, I left my past in Scott’s hands and not my future. And hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation. You deserve to own the art you make.

I will always be proud of my past work. But for a healthier option, Lover will be out August 23. 

Sad and grossed out,

💔

Taylor

[lonelyboyscc]

I can choose to be straight, hooray

tips to become a heterosexual: a guide by Clive Durham

• be nursed by a nurse

• try to hit on your crush’s sister because she looks exactly like him

• go to Greece

• grow a mustache

[lonelyboyscc]

Just look at how Maurice helps Clive with the cigarette. So tender, so condescending. And Clive is the one to just enjoy it. Always.

JAMES WILBY & HUGH GRANT as Maurice Hall and Clive Durham in Maurice (1987)