#I CANT HELP IT I JUST FIND THEM SO INTERESTING

[good-to-drive]

Cause you seem to be the best at psychoanalyzing the beats, esp with the anon answer about potential childhood abuse with mccartney, i wanna know what you think about George and his sex habits, primarily with being a "homewrecker".

Maybe its just the asexual in me who thought the circumstances of losing his virginity wasnt the healthiest thing in the world, but i cant help but think of a link between the story of him losing his virginity to his later exploits. In my mind, i think of this as a subconscious way of one up-ing other men. Or maybe something else in his life that led to this behavior with others wives?

And yeah if you think this is bs go ahead and tell me, lmao.

Hi anon! That’s a super interesting question (and thank you so much!! I really really appreciate that <33333)

This got kind of long and rambling, so the TL;DR is that I think that's a really strong theory, and it got me thinking more about the relationship between intimacy, masculinity, adulthood, and misogyny. More under the cut.

I do find George’s philandering a little harder to make sense of than John and Paul – not so much because they eventually found relationships where they could be loyal as because the reason for their disloyalty seems so much more straightforward. I talk about this in the context of Paul and Linda here, but there’s this phenomenon where men who are deprived of emotional intimacy by social pressure or their own internal fears will substitute sexual/physical intimacy. This can lead to a much deeper and more present need for sexual intimacy, an almost obsession with it. Y’know, the whole “men are dogs” thing.

I think that, with both Paul and John, they were such enormous black holes of emotional need and were so resistant to expressing any kind of need/vulnerability in anything but a sexual context that they, well, cheated like dogs. That is, until they found a person willing to subjugate every single one of her own needs and desires in order to dedicate herself solely to caretaking her husband’s emotional wellbeing. And in both cases the women seemed pretty okay with that arrangement, so I’m not judging, I’m just saying that I don’t think either of them grew out of the mindset that led to their chronic cheating. I think they just found a different way to satisfy that mindset. 

What’s odd about George is that he didn’t seem to fear emotional intimacy or vulnerability in non-sexual relationships, at least not to the same degree as Paul or John. This is the guy with “romantic friendships” who won’t let you leave the room until he hugs you for ten minutes and tells you how much he loves you. The idea that he was doing the classic boomer male thing and substituting sex for emotional vulnerability doesn't really hold up. So it’s not at all clear why he felt the need to sleep with everything that moved. Or, for that matter, why he did seem to specifically pursue women who were already attached. 

With women who have a fixation on being a homewrecker, I think it often has to do with experiencing or witnessing gendered abuse. The thought process is something like “if I can get men to choose me over other women then it proves I’m better and more important than they are, and that means men won’t hurt me the way they would hurt those other women.” Angelina Jolie has been pretty open about holding this mindset in her youth and predicating her entire sense of self-worth on her ability to attract married men. 

With men who have a fixation on other people’s wives…. honestly, your theory makes a lot of sense. The way he lost his virginity was SO weird to me – I know “the beatles had weird boundaries” isn’t a fresh take, but holy shit, it is so bizarre to me that this fifteen year old boy had sex in the same room as all of his friends and then they all applauded. Yeah, you can read it as typical teenage boy humor, but you can also read it as sort of a humiliation ritual designed to initiate him into the “older boys” group. 

And, speaking of that, I always found it interesting how fixated they were on George’s age. I do wonder if it had to do with his relative lack of sexual experience; if, like most teenage boys, they viewed sexual encounters as the definitive mark of True Manhood and so they infantilized him because he made it all the way to 15 years old without having sex (and they apparently did not). Paul still goes out of his way to tell people George is his Baby Brother, which is cute if George liked the term and pretty nasty if he didn’t, and there are some interesting stories about George joking that he’s the little baby of the group. Astrid’s comments are revealing:

“He was a lovely little boy,” says Astrid, telling of their Hamburg days. “He was just little George. We never judged him in any way, the way we used to work out how intelligent or clever Stu, John and Paul were. He didn’t develop as quickly as the others had done. But he wasn’t stupid. No one thought that for one minute. He made lovely jokes at his own expense, sending himself up for being young. I gave them all their Christmas presents one year, all wrapped up. John opened his first and it was an Olympia Press version of the Marquis de Sade. George picked up his and said, ‘What’s in mine then, comics?’”

(x)

So not only did they see George as a little boy who wasn’t "developing" as fast as they were, but George saw himself the same way. Or at least, he was aware he was seen this way and was willing to joke about it. And I definitely think men tend to see masculine prowess as a hallmark of manhood, so being characterized as childlike and immature is another way of saying he’s not a Real Man like the rest of them.

It’s honestly crazy to me that I never realized his relationship with gender is probably related to his relationship with adulthood/manhood, but now that you bring it up, it makes SO much sense. And then of course his identity was so deeply shaped by being a beatle, so deeply shaped by the role he played for the other beatles, that in some ways he probably never could stop feeling like a Baby Brother. Or at least, couldn't stop wondering if he was seen that way.

So I can definitely imagine a world where George views sexual conquest, especially at the expense of other men, as proof that he’s as much of a Man as anyone else. A way of rejecting the characterization as a slightly inept, slightly unnecessary little boy, because sexual prowess is the antithesis of a failure of masculinity, and therefore “stealing” a sexual trophy from another man is proof that you’re more Man than he is.

All that being said, some of this is definitely just a pure lack of respect for women. The ability that some men have to hold one moral code for their interactions with men/nonsexual relationships, and a completely different moral code for their interactions with women/sexual relationships, will never cease to amaze me. And I think it goes into overdrive when they have something to gain from it, like being a real Manly Man.

And, actually, it kind of annoys me a bit that we don’t talk more about how badly it beat Pattie down to be disregarded over and over again, and how it drove her to Eric. I’m not saying it’s George’s fault she ended up in an abusive relationship, I’m just saying that women in abusive relationships often have a complex trauma history, including previous relationships where they weren’t treated with respect, and I think we owe it to Pattie to understand her experience with Eric as one chapter in a larger story with many different characters who contributed to her understanding of herself and the world in general. 

George once told Pattie that he would financially support her no-strings-attached if she decided to leave Eric, which seems sweet until you realize that this heavily implies George knew something was wrong between the two of them and continued to call Eric one of his closest friends. Which isn’t remotely shocking, of course. He was close friends with John, Paul, and Ringo, too, and there are accusations (and admissions) of physical abuse there as well. I think it’s just more evidence of how easy it is for men to disregard how other men treat women, and how this often reflects their own internal belief systems around gender and sex. How these belief systems are often predicated on lifting men up while using women as tools to meet men's needs.

To be honest, a lot of women view men and women this way, too -- including, I suspect, Pattie, Jane, and Linda. But that's a conversation for another day.

I don’t think George knew for a second Eric was abusive – abusers are too good at hiding it – but abusers will show just a little fucked up shit in public, just enough that people will think they know the worst of it and won’t look for more, and it’s a shame that George’s continued love for Pattie didn’t include reassessing his feelings about the man who was hurting her.

[loveanddeeptrash]

I was casually scrolling through Tumblr on my phone, looking for new fics to read, when I found one that was interesting.

It was about you getting hurt but acting like everything's fine before the boys find out you're actually in pain, and it triggers them as they try to help you through it. I had just started reading it WHEN TUMBLR DECIDED TO SAY "NAH FAM, YOU GOOD," AND CLOSED THE APP ON ME!!

I wanna read it so bad but I can't seem to find it at all! Please help me find it!! I think the one who posted it had their username go something like "loveanddeepspaceprompts" or something, the name of the post was something like "Resonance and First-Aid" or Bandaid or something BUT I CANT FIND IT

Sob sob please show pity on me...

...I had this in my drafts for like a week and I forgot to post this otl...

[liloinkoink]

I'm a little bit scared to ask hoenstly.. what IS artimators?

a discord server for life series artists to share art, as well as get art/animation/design advice or references, mostly! i joined a little after it started, but the main idea of the server is just artists supporting / cheering on other artists in the fandom and helping each other improve. tbh, most of the discord server is just sending art and chatting about mcyt vids

(you might be thinking, lew, you aren’t an artist, why are you in an art advice server? the answer is, technically there’s also a few writers in there, tho tbh it’s mostly that cherri snuck me in thru the back door)

that said. there is also a minecraft server (simply named artimator smp) which is attached to the discord server. it started a few weeks/months(?) after the discord server was made, and a few of the members who are interested in content creation / video editing decided to stream it and record videos for it. after all, video editing is an art of its own, and everyone in the server is into mcyt, so of course some of em wanted to try it out

some of the more “famous” members in the video/streaming department i can think of off the top of my head are cherrifire or tibbycaps, though there are quite a few others who also stream/record artimator smp, and you can probs find them if you search artimator on youtube. that said, most of the players don’t stream/record at all and just play on the server normally (and some actively avoid being filmed or streamed). there are also plenty of members from the main discord server who don’t play on the minecraft server at all and are mostly there for the art resources and chatting

(i am not among the people who stream, but i’ve been thinking about it since we started a new season of the server recently!)

there’s also like… spin off stuff? i guess you could call it? some of the artimators also like doing other content creation stuff. like the artimator team from mcc rising or the autumn life series. a few of the artimators are using artimator smp to branch out into making mcyt content in general as well as art and making a proper Thing out of their channels, which is pretty cool. like how cherri will be on cowboys smp soon, and how tibby has been in a few fan life series. i know quite a few of em have been in events like tipsy tourney and biome battle as well, tho i cant remember everyone who has off the top of my head (while im actively watching a show w my parents)

but yeah. because the minecraft server is the only public-facing part of the server, most people assume the discord is for/about/mostly the minecraft server, but that’s not really accurate. tho the minecraft server’s kind of an add-on to the actual discord itself. the minecraft server has a fandom and a tag and stuff, which is neat. i think there might be fic for it maybe? i haven’t looked at it too closely, but it’s cool seeing fanart of my friends sometimes!

i do think it’s good to point out the server is actually mostly just like… artists sharing their work and giving each other advice tho. i think it helps demystify the whole Fandomized aspect of the thing a bit to point out it’s mostly like… a discord for chatting and art advice

[floorpancakes]

Are you excited about xxxHOLIC Rei coming back in less than a week?? (Also, a lot of blogs got flagged lately, you can read more about it on the wip blog!)

my answer is yes. but also no. but also im terrified. but also im so fucking excited. but i will be WATCHING CLAMP LIKE A HAWK... lemme explain.

the main run of xxxholic is almost untouchably impressively perfectly good. i change my opinion depending on the day but rou is simultaneously insanely impressive and real as fuck but also where a couple of the endgame decisions really begin to feel like the wrong ones - I fucking LOVE it especially how it portrays barely restrained want and depressive decay with adult characters, but we all know how I feel about how utterly optional and avoidable the kohane thing was (they could've done the exact same non romantic oomf marriage agreement that watanuki inevitably chooses to misconstrue to beat himself up thing w the same effects w hima and it would've been more interesting but we know how much clamp likes to shove teacher student age gap into shit even when it ISNT romantic and they would not fucking do that...) and I don't like that the moral of the story for 99 percent of chapters is 'watanuki fucking suffers with no end in sight and retracts into himself instead of growing from trauma', but also I love tragedy and angst and mental health and mutual situationship metaphors and watanuki in this era is more relatable to me than ever before unfortunately so I hold my mixed feelings but I also enjoy it super super hard for the most part. Pls note that the moral dilemma I have about rou isn't that watanuki is suffering at all, but that he's suffering seemingly with no ...exit??? In sight? Like. We don't have any relief for him in his future, so I guess that's what sours me on some of it as a whole rather than actually abt the media quality itself. Long story I hope this makes sense. We all know how much I love rouposting so I hope it checks out.

So I was already very much a fan when Rei became a thing. I remember watching new stuff come out so I was one of the people 'fooled' in the beginning by the fake reboot setup. I knew something was happening but I wasn't sure what, and the series slowly showing its hand was super interesting. I famously love the ominous chasing hands and the thing with the phone, and imo the STRONGEST part of rei that we found out later is the interactions between characters influenced by their adult selves jumping out (think watanuki clearly leaning in to yuuko's jabs, watanuki taking the wife jokes with way less resistance, watanuki having a more platonic stronger bond with hima, watanuki accidentally slipping into the slutty boss persona then fucking exploding blushing while talking to doumeki LOL, among other things). I find that aspect really interesting and it's something only clamp could do in this specific situation which is rly rly fun. So umm. I guess we knew this would end eventually but when the end of arc was approaching I think I had my first real time groan with the series: yuuko is saying watanuki can choose, and noone will judge, and either choice is ok, he can stay with the people he loves or he can go home to his old life: but is that really true? Perhaps yuuko thinks so, but the way the story shows it to us, watanuki HAS to reply to those hands. There's so many, they're so in need, they need his presence in the universe too badly, they put pressure on him and weigh the decision so it's like 'go into the dream world and get what you want and just let everyone else get fucked up forever', it just feels like. He doesn't really have an option if he wants to not come off like a dick, and that's quite weird to me, it paints him in a weird light if he wants to choose happiness for himself, even if it's a slightly more hollow one. It feels like the sort of thing holic wouldn't typically do since it's a series that likes to play with the idea that choosing things for yourself and your own happiness is a kind of selfishness that's often VERY necessary, especially if you're someone that's hurting and needs their people around them.

....So imagine the look on my face when it turned out all of this was a massive fetch quest for tsubasa reservoir chronicle.

I've never finished tsuba, I read like half of it a year or so ago and unfortunately it hasn't clicked with me yet, and neither have most of the characters. I plan on finishing it eventually and I know it gets juicy in the back half, but I've always had mixed opinions on holitsuba being marketed as a pair, especially when especially on the western side people like both but tsuba is their ACTUAL favourite, or they like both but tsuba gets more attention, or more discussion, or more merch, or more whatever. I'm aware I'm a bit of a hater about it but it's mostly nothing personal and I do really WANT to like it, but they're fundamentally very different kinds of stories and inevitably people will have their preferences or perhaps be more into one than the other yaknow. I'm aware all of my oomfs are tsuba enjoyers. I promise my haterdom isn't that serious. I'm happy for yall.

HOWEVER please imagine me in 2016 reading the chapter when it dropped and you can imagine the worlds biggest crash out of all time. Mind you I'd still feel weird about this even if I loved tsuba to death, and maybe one day I will, but holy fucking SHIT the impact of them weighing all this on watanukis shoulders only to essentially be like 'oh, watanuki got put through ALL of this to grab a Thingamajig for Some Guy (ik he's not just some guy ik the lore but narratively speaking)' . ..... I am sure even if you like tsubasa a lot this is probably a strange fucking thing to do, and this combined with clamp DROPPING THE SERIES FOR LIKE 8 YEARS immediately afterwards...??? I am still fucking baffled by this. It lowkey ruined my trust in clamp forever. What did they mean by this. Why did they think this was a good idea. What the fuck were they cooking ?:?:?:?:

Fun fact: i know there's a small handful of chapters that come after the arc ender. I have not read them since they came out. I barely remember them. I have been avoiding them out of spite. I will re-catch up soon obviously but jesus fucking c hrist 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 clamp you can't just do that to people!!! It makes it look like you hate your characters and your fans!!! Good lord!?

so basically that brings us to the present. I'm super excited, because I love xxxholic and even during Rei the chapter to chapter content was super impressive (my problems are mostly big decisions) but it also makes me think: where do we have to go from here? Where do THEY want to go from here? We've lost almost all of our main characters aside from yokai who brush in and out of watanuki's life and his shop mascot oomfs, watanuki is still depressed, arguably far more now , he has no way out, none of the doumekis have used the egg and we can't see a use for it (in canon at least) where it will even change anything now. There's many directions this could go, but unless they get really gutsy with some deus ex machina (please please please please here's how doumeki could still win please) it's hard to know what they even want to do to round this off or revive it from where it stands.

Unfortunately most of the options I can think of that I think clamp MIGHT do are things I don't really like . I can't tell how much of this is me being overly cautious or if any of this will actually happen but here's some horror stories I have rattling about in my brain that I hope WON'T happen:

- all doumekis are secretly doumeki (i don't like this!! I think they're more interesting as separate people and it would be weird as shit to act like say sayaka x watanuki is the same as shizuka x watanuki. i like the idea that the sameface doesn't mean they're the same kinda people, a la haruka)

- watanuki is secretly clow (please god no. please god no no thank you i don't like that)

- watanuki is egged and just let loose onto the world with no support system (this would be the worst payback for all of his suffering)

- watanuki remains here forever with no hope of seeing anyone of the main cast he loves again (kill)

- im actually someone who prefers yuuko coming back agnosticism to her reincarnating as a random person. i think it's more interesting that way and she wouldn't want him to have to desperately seek her out while crashing out for hundreds of years. she'd want better than that for him even knowing some things are inevitable. so all the yuuko seeking type chapters we've had so far are not of great interest to me. this is actually how I came up with canary from catverse. canary is the endless numb stasis of a life devoted to hunting for yuuko and nothing else regardless of her wishes for him to live a good life.

- idk man. some clamp bullshit

- tsubasa reservoir chronicle fetch quest...2!!

...I don't know what we're gonna get. I don't know what to expect. I am excited and I am nervous and I am dreading it a little bit too. We shall see I guess but the way they left us off with Rei hiatus and the arc ended drove me insane for YEARS OF MY LIFE. so this is how I'm feeling rn. I hope watanuki is freed from his suffering. I hope doumeki, actual doumeki, gets a presence and gets to go crazy go stupid. I hope yuuko gets a presence or non presence that befits her and she's not used as a thing to wrangle around watanuki's suffering to new heights. I hope watanuki gets happiness and progress after at least a hundred years of regression and stasis. I hope they care more about character happiness and the spirit of the story and not trying to connect it to other plots in manga they may or may not prefer and holic doesn't get more weird middle child treatment. I hope we get a w for watanuki and no annoying plot twists that sacrifice character dynamics for drama. I hope doumeki gets a madoka rebellion movie and also we get a whole volume of douwata sex as compensation . I would like to see himawari again and I don't care how. I have lost hope of them doing anything with kohane given how they sidelined her already to limply not quite fulfil the authors obvious fetish. I hope we all get a W for our long wait. I hope watanuki wears more dresses and serves cunt so hard xxxholic goes VIRAL amen

[clumsypuppy]

i feel like. theres designing a character with certain themes and motifs in mind, and then theres making a gijinka for the water bottle on my nightstand

[carnivallsarchive]

.

See the thing is. I know I'm good at writing. Like I have my weak areas or things I need to improve in, but it's not a skill I otherwise spend a lot of time feeling insecure about because a) if I don't believe in my writing literally who will b) if I want to publish my writing I ought to at least feel a resting level of good about it because editors and agents likely will not be cradling my face like a prize cat and telling me how talented I am while asking for their edits c) I've always had an audience for my writing even at its worst– I started sharing my original works online when I was around 16 & that really helped sell to me the idea of 'there will always be someone out there who likes what you do' d) untalented men never think this hard about the quality of their works and they always end up published anyway and e) I don't have many other thoroughly developed skills so why not have one I feel good about. Having said this. Awkward feeling to realize you're one of the authorial weak links in your postgraduate creative writing degree's social circle

[dont-be-a-gonk]

Does anyone know if that army buddy Johnny claims to have is real or not cause whenever I look into it the tags just say his own name.

The two main consensus I've seen are that 1. Johnny genuinely thinks the tags are someone he knew due to his memory being damaged or 2. his claim is metaphorical as he views the man he was before deserting as different from who he currently is (ie. Robert's pre-war innocence died and Johnny's new more spiteful self/ persona is what remains).

[broareweabouttoviberightnow]

hello loves!!! I am facing a conundrum😔 the urge to write is IN me but I don't know WHAT!! if u folks would like to send in some prompts I would LOVE to hear from u guys!!! as a lil reminder I mostly do one shots n I don't really write for the ships (SO sorry!! tho I do make a little bit of a liar of myself bc I will do some light stevepop bc I think they're sweet) n no NSFW or creepy stuff!! other than that I'd LOVE to hear ur ideas!!! (also pls check the tags!!)

[puke-ur-gutz]

what do you do when you feel like being vulnerable with anyone in your life is an immediate turn off for them

[8-rae-rae-8]

I wasn't prepared for how wanting a hug from a friend that's thousands of miles away would feel like a stab in the chest. They don't tell you that shit hurts and you can't do anything about it

[faggling]

I love taking care of people omggg 😍😍😍

[werewulfbf]

was just wrapping some gifts and I realized that some of the coolest gifts I got are for my mother's bf and my sister's bf and I don't even LIKE THEM.....

[joshuamj]

yall im almost filled my sketchbook, and this is gonna be the first time in a literal decade that ive done that my god.

Might post some pages from it once its done.. I feel like this is the first time ive really done a sketchbook "right." Before i always felt pressured to just fill it with finished pieces, but thats;; not really what a sketchbook is for. Its for practicing! Trying out things! Etc.! So with this sketchbook i gave myself a really hard challenge: draw almost entirely in pen. I always hate drawing with pens cuz, yknow. cant erase if you make mistakes. So whenever im inking something im a nervous wreck the entire time. but now i was gonna do *everything* in pen. All my mistakes with be left there, all guiding lines and such will show. And this was very hard to do at first, but now its really natural! I actually like doing it this way now, which is kinda crazy to say. And i've filled it with a variety of things! There's me practicing things, just drawing random characters, lots of pages of me playing around with character designs, many pages of animatic plans, and some that were literally just me smearing paint on the page to test the colors or how it behaved. I even have a few sticky notes in it, and ive taped a couple of things in! A while back i was trying out acrylics for the first time, so i ripped out a few pages to experiment with trying to fill the whole page with paint and see how the paper would fare. And they look atrocious, cuz i really didn't know how those paints worked, but hey! It was me trying things out! So despite me being slightly tempted to just throw them out, i actually taped them back in. And another time I didn't have my sketchbook with me when I was hit with inspiration for a character design, so i drew it on index cards and taped em in so all my design notes would be in one place. But more than one index card didn't really fit on the page, so i had to cut the others into weird pieces so they could fit. And these sorts of pages are my favorites! Its satisfying to flip thru my sketchbook and come across very different or "out of place" pages. Im hoping to do more stuff like that with the next one!

[sillybouquetoflillies]

i keep thinking i rly didnt go thru that much growing up, but idk, everytime i tell someone abt my life, they say i did and kinda just like sit in shock abt it. am i just internet brained or smth, or am i just dramatic?? i rly dont think ive earned a lot of the symtoms of someone who was traumatized that i have. or maybe i havent been in a safe place for long enough to process things??? i dunno. maybe someday far away in the future ill figure things out