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lordofdestructionm · 3 months

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Reading Mordecai Heller as a repressed gay man

The tragic attraction

This is a full post based on my response to a great analysis by @sedgewick-gayble

Let me start by saying that if you read Mordecai as being totally asexual/aromantic and any affection he has for other characters to be entirely platonic that is entirely valid and I respect that

However as this response by Tracy makes clear on the topic of fans reading Mordecai as gay there is an intentional ambiguity about it. Being 28 at the time of the main story his "lifestyle is certainly asexual" up to this point, yet "being ace and being gay are not mutually exclusive things" and people sometimes "don't know themselves or understand their own motivations all that well"

This leaves the possibility open that Mordecai is actively repressing his natural desires and feelings

Mordecai's early life didn't exactly provide much time or opportunity for "self discovery", even by the usual standards of the less than tolerant and understanding world of the early 20th century

Being born into an impoverished family and having his father die very early in his life leaving him and his Mother and two younger sisters in dire straits, Mordecai had to get to work and assume adult responsibilities pretty damn early.

As Tracy says "selling newspapers wasn't going to cut it" and so using his natural talent with numbers Mordecai starts bookkeeping for the mob. Is it any wonder someone with that background would develop such a serious and rigidly buttoned up demeanour?

Since being forced to abandon his mother and two sisters at the start of the 1920s and flee New York, being picked up by Atlas's due to his habit of collecting useful strays, Mordecai had very few people he was close to in St Louis. With his generally anti-social personality and not only lack of interest but discomfort with any sort of flirting or romantic entanglements, that would be unlikely to change

Side note: Probaby coincidence but

There are only two people who seem to make it onto that exclusive list of people that "count" for Mordecai, who he cares about and are able to bring things to the surface he would normally keep hidden

Atlas to Mordecai is not just an employer, he is the man who saved his life, the man who moulded a desperate fearful shabby young stray into the sharp professional he is today, who took him under his wing and made him his protege. Filling the empty space his father left in his life. His grief and desperate hunt for those responsible for his death are his big motivation (the strain of which is slowly tearing him apart)

That connection is undertsandable

Much more surprising on the surface is the bond with the partner Atlas teamed him up with soon after his arrival, Viktor Vasko.

The assumption at the start would have been that while their skill sets might compliment each other in the field there would have been no warmth in their dynamic.

Certainly not on Mordecai's part as Viktor appears to be a sum total of many things Mordecai hates. Viktor is unshaven, relatively casual in his attire, speaks a broken English, and hates people chattering or “noise, noise, noise” as he calls it. Clashing hard with his obsession with good grooming, high quality tailoring, correct grammar etc. Indeed Mordecai doesn't hesitate to nag/criticize Viktor for these things

Yet at the same time Mordecai has far better chemistry with Viktor than with anyone else, able to banter and bicker with him in a way you rarely if ever see with others

Its why when he gets tailored clothes for the first time Viktor is the first person he wants to show off too. Its why the one time he is intoxicated Viktor (and his large physique) are his chosen topic of converation. Its why at Christmas/Hanuhhah he gives him the gift of a tie while claiming its just because of the big guys poor fashion sense and that its "embarassing to be seen with him" (even that justification makes him sound like a nagging girlfriend)

A smaller detail is that during their iconic chess playing in the side content, set during their days staking out the remote town of Defiance, Viktor is shown very casually winning the game much to Mordecai's visible distress

This is hilarious but could also be taken as a metaphor for Viktor (possibly without even realizing it) breaking through his defensive emotional barriers

Something Mordecai doesn't know how to handle or respond to

The animated short only adds fuel to the fire

During their dispute over strategy Mordecai moves his face so close to Viktors that he almost knocks his cap off his head. His eyes at one point even dart down towards his mouth

Sharp eyed Vikdecai fans have also noted that Mordecai seems on some level to want the two of them to match

The tie being the same colour could simpy be Mordecai giving Viktor one of his own ties because its a joke gift and he just grabbed it on a whim to tease Viktor about his poor fashion choices

But think about the matching suits at the New Years party for 1926

I mean, seriously, not only is it the exact same style of suit in the same blue-grey colour distinct from everyone else, but they are standing in the perfect spots to be symmetrical to each other. Something that we all know means a lot to this compulsive man

Mordecai must have known there was going to be a big group photo ahead of time and then carefully planned this

Got matching suits made to his and Viktors measurements

Then most impressively convinced/nagged Viktor into cooperating (he may have taken off the tie and rolled up the sleeves but hey him playing along at all is quite a compromise from Viktor "I hate dressing up" Vasko)

Mordecai is intent on making Viktor retire and get out of danger, and avoid a situation where he gets sent to kill him by Marigold because he knows he could NOT do it, and his cover and investigation into Atlas's death would be over

He is horrified that Viktor is still working at Lackadaisy (though he again has to hide how much he cares) and that he has gotten not only hurt again but hurt by Mordecai again (albeit this time indirectly by stealing the guns)

Can this be read as simply platonic comradere? Absolutely

But there is something so *intense* in the fact he was willing to resort to kneecapping him. Its an extreme and desperate act that could only result from intense emotions, seemingly out of character for someone who tries very hard to appear logical and controlled.

While Vikdecai is a very fun ship when imagining them as an actual bickering married couple, I have often said that a tragic one-sided on Mordecai's part version of Vikdecai is the one that fits closest and surprisingly well into the canon.

His nagging and complaining about Viktor in that context take on a Tsundere aspect, both to protect himself from being found out and maybe even try and convince himself the uncomfortable alien feelings aren't there. He not only doesn't want others looking too hard at his feeling he doesn't want to examine them himself all that much

There is a heartbreaking but appealing angst to the idea of this extremely repressed man having such feelings for the first time in his life for his straight best friend and NOT knowing how to handle that. Having to perform the balancing act of being around him so much as his partner but being painfully aware that he can't let anyone catch on, especially not Viktor himself, as it would likely destroy his bond with the only person in town other than Atlas he is close to.

Though tragically he did that anyway later via the kneecapping, which while about trying to keep Viktor safe, he may now looking back try and tell himself its actually somehow "better" for Viktor to hate him for that

Because the big guy now wrongly thinks the feeling is mutual and that Mordecai never really cared about him, which may be better than (what Mordecai assumes would be) disgust at his partners doomed more than platonic feelings

Because he sees those feelings and his situation as a sad perfectly structured joke life has played on him

#lackadaisy #tracy j butler #lackadaisycats #mordecai heller #viktor vasko #vikdecai #repressed #gay #asexual #ace #comic #pilot #cats #gangsters #one sided love #one sided crush #one sided attraction #internalized homophobia

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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If you don't like Misha, this post might make you smirk.

I did this post yesterday and then deleted it because the OP made me feel sorry for her. Luckily for me, someone reblogged it and my momentary stupidity is now remedied. This whole scenario makes me smirk.

Yesterday's post:

Doll face found @dean-supernatural-akf ranting in the main tags, including the Jensen tag, which is why she forwarded this biased drivel to me. Thanks sweetie. I scrolled though OPs blog, trying to figure this person out, because she ships wincest and destiel, apparently. And she hates the haters. It is convenient and dismissive to label those who don’t agree with you, don’t you think? Label them rather than proving them wrong conclusively, because that would be difficult and you might lose the argument because of a lack of intelligence. So call them names and be done with it. Her rant is in italics, and my rebuttal in bold.

Rude and Missunderstood.

I CAN LIKE MISHA COLLINS AS AN HUMAN AND ACTOR WITHOUT BEING ONE OF HIS MINIONS.

Shocking right?

Here have a seat and lean back.

Very recently i got heavily missunderstood, and i’m making this post so it won’t happen again.

I asked someone if their blog is real . Because it was so full of hate against this actor named Misha Collins.

This guy right here, and I bet when you are one of the anti misha people then you even share the same look on your face right now, congrats.

Listen… I love JENSEN and i love JARED. And yes i love MISHA too.

But i don’t follow him around like a dog, i don’t kiss the ground where hes walking on.

AND i also don’t do this with J2.

Why is it that when there is an entire blog dedicated to hate for Jensen or Jared, there is no bleeding heart rant like this about that blogger? But if you write a blog about all the mean things Misha and his fans do, you are a “horrible human being” with “toxicity and hate in your heart”. No, I would prefer to call it discernment. I wont like someone just because “it SPNFamily darn it, haters don’t belong”. So if Misha gives me consistent reasons to hate him, I am still not allowed to hate him because I will be ejected from SPNFamily? What is this? A communist fanbase? Nobody is allowed to have their own opinions? Everybody must think the same way and feel the same fairytale happy feelings? Which dandelion world did you pop up from?

I fight for all of them, i fight against the hate that all of those three get and Misha gets more hate then J2 and thats a fact.

Misha gets more hate? Really? You mean like death threats? Like people tweeting him directly that they wish he was dead? That kind of hate? Please, show me where the hate is. Bring me your receipts. I want to see all the hate that Misha gets.

And it’s so fucking unfair, i have seen blogs and people that wish that he would die, a man with two children and wife.

This is so sick and it’s so not okay.

Prove it. Screenshot and show me where all these horrible people are. I will put it in a post. I always do. The death threats and death wishes for J2 have been screenshotted and are on my blog. So I have proof for my claims. Bring the proof for your claims. Its called making mature statements. Quantifying your claims. So please, set me straight. Show me all the nastiness poor Misha gets. I would like to see it.

About the Misha minions, MISHA ISNT THE ONLY ONE WITH MINIONS.

Shocking again, right ?

From under which rock did you emerge? Misha named his fans minions. Very disrespectful. No other actor has ’‘minions’’. Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t like his fans referring to themselves as Cumberb*tches. I respect him for that. Misha did the opposite. Shocking, right?

The people who only love J2 hate on Misha. And the people who love all of them hate back against the anti Misha people.

That is an incredibly simplistic way of putting it. And it gives me the impression that this rant was written by someone who is young and idealistic in their notion of how the world works. How come you don’t talk about the people who like Jensen and Misha and therefore hate Jared? You cant. You cant because that would be problematic to the narrative you are vomiting right now. Those cockles perverts are the ones that tweet him, telling him that that they cant wait for him to die. Receipts on my blog.

The way you support J2 is the same way that Misha’s people support him.

Actually no, J2 fans don’t get angry when Misha is interviewed for Elle magazine, yelling “where’s J2”. They don’t ask “Whose line is it,anyway?” why they excluded J2. They don’t threaten to burn Misha alive in his house for being anti-destiel and/or making a joke about Jensen. That happened with Jensen. I have the receipts. The same group were discussing kidnapping Jared’s kids. That group was made up of 3500 people. So many haters slipped up your radar? Well, now you know.

Minions and bitchy people are EVERYWHERE.

It is such a useless fight, don’t like someone?

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Yeah, take a page out of your own book. If you don’t like the “haters”, as you dismissively call them, then don’t put this incorrect, unsubstantiated, unquantifiable rant in the main tags. In fact, keep your uninformed opinion to yourself.

What you do when you hate someone so badly and make a whole tumblr Blog about it then you are not better as those highschool bullies.

Dealing with the entire subject of hate, in the most abstract manner, without any analysis into your darling actor’s bad behavior and without taking into account the nasty behavior of his fandom, shows that high school is all you know. Hopefully, one day you will grow up and think on broader terms.

Cyberbullying is a serious subject, and thats exactly what you do with Hate Blogs and Hate tweets and Hate comments.

Keep using the word “hate”. It will abrogate all the legitimate anger that the J2 fans have against Misha and his hellerminions. Hellers are the biggest cyberbullies in fandom. They sent hate directly to J2. Some of the things they write will shock a person who has a real disdain to hate, not a daffodil like you who thinks Misha is infallible and doesn’t deserve an anti tag. One said that she couldn’t wait for Jared to die. And she tweeted that directly to Jared, along with a praying emoji. Oh, you don’t know about that? Well, then I guess you are not an authority on who is SPNFamily and who is not, now are you?

You want to be a bully ? You love spreading hate ?

THEN JUST FUCKING BLOCK ME AND DON’T REPLY TO THIS.

Don’t reply to this? Then why put it in the main tags, as well as inappropriate tags, and still hope that nobody disagree with you. Aren’t we childish?

What happened after the post was put up:

She DM's me and says that she has since changed her mind because she did another post about the hate that J2 get, and if I could please remove my post, because she was suffering panic attacks over it. I said I would, but she is going to remove the above misleading post and provide me with proof that Misha gets death threats. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she said that she came across the death threats on two blogs, that had blocked her for some mysterious reason, which is why she couldn't screenshot the evidence. I found what those reasons were, when I went to those blogs:

@castiel-needs-2-go

@destiew-must-go

I searched through their blogs, and found nothing. No death threats. They just point out the truth about Misha. That is it. She accused them for nothing. Of course, that didn't occur to me until today, because I still felt concerned for her because the poor kid was suffering panic attacks. So I deleted the post. Today I find this message from her:

''So i asked like 10 different people Misha stans and Misha haters about those things you said he did. Nobody has ever heard of it, no one. You are telling your lies man, i aint stopping ya. But you are a horrible person if you need to attack a 19 year old on the Internet and 'Call me out' just because it gives you a kick. And just because you disagreed. My post will stay deleted because it wasnt up to Date anymore, but it wont be my last one. People like you need to be stopped, people like you are the reason why this fandom sucks so hard. Bye Bye. You are the sick one here .''

The weird thing is she attached this gif:

I don't know whether she thought it was going to hurt my feelings or something but, it actually helps to show her true identity. She is not a wincest fan. She is a Sam-hating heller in disguise. Who would have thunk it?

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j2madhatters · 6 years

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Why Padalecki marriage annoys me - non Tinhat perspective

I can safely say that never before has a marriage annoyed me as much as the Padalecki marriage. Even the Ackles’ behavior is reasonable. They don’t kiss and make out public because Jensen is not an exhibitionist sort. I have never respect PDAs. In my opinion, it is inappropriate. But remember, I am not a tinhat so you can draw your own conclusions about why the Ackles don’t “display” their love in public. There is nothing wrong with theorizing.

Genevieve, and Jared [when he is in husband mode] just irritate me. They oversell it. In the beginning, I thought she was so lucky to have a husband like him. He is so beautiful. He’s so sensitive. He earns well. He is respected in his field. Plus he cried on their wedding day. How beautiful is that? For years afterwards, he would gush over her during his panels. At first, I smirked, then I became poker faced, then I became mildly annoyed and then one day [I even remember the panel] it just got too noticeably exhibitionist. It was the last question. Timothy Omundson was called on stage, pretending to be the last question. And he comically fangirled uncontrollably before perching himself on the designated chair. His question was “who is your favourite guest star, and why is it Timothy Omundsom?’‘ It was a funny question, and Jensen went with it, saying that he was a fan of Omundson’s beard, which caused Robbie to throw a faux hissy fit because he had a beard too, darn it. But Jensen pointed out that his beard was pathetic because it was short and he couldn’t braid it. After the laugh fest, Jared gave his answer: ’'My favorite guest star is Gen, because she’s my wife and the mother of my children”.

For some reason, that is pissed me right off. It was a funny question. It didn’t warrant a serious, gushy husband reply. Some witless creature made a mistake of pointing this out, in the comment section. The entire page converged on her. Even people who had initially agreed with her, backtracked. I felt angry at this fandom's self-censoring. I realized she was over loved, not because of any personal merit, but because she married Jared. They were calling her a queen. Seriously? A queen. For what? So I went on the internet to see if I was the only weird person who couldn’t detect her monarchical merits.

That was last year-ish. How do you think I stumbled onto tinhats. I like most hats because it seems they don't conform to the politically correct norm of ’'treat the wives like gold’’. And they don’t ask tinhat questions during panels. Unlike the leeches who love destiel and Misha Collins. Jared was becoming too extra when it came to Genevieve. And I noticed he inserted an obligatory Gen mention at least once, in every single panel. Even after seven years, he was far too “in love”. And eventually, instead of being happy for their happiness, I started feel like they were rubbing their domestic bliss in everyone’s face. “look at what we’ve got, nyah nyah nyah.’' My polite and genuine [but not over the top] respect for their marriage dissipated.

You know who he reminded me off. He reminded me of Tom Cruise when he was a guest on Oprah and was over pushing the epic love he had for Katie Holmes, jumping on the couch and fist pumping the air. That incident, I found humorous and embarrassing. This was plain irritating. I noticed he’s slowed down now. The unnecessary wife mentions sometimes don’t even make an appearance, for which I am thankful. I wonder why though. Unless he is telling a story that she is a part of, like the Highway story, he doesn’t mention her anymore. My non tinhat guess is that he was aware that fans were getting pissed off, especially since, he had mentioned something about her in a panel recently [I don’t remember which one], and someone in the front row said: We know!

Another thing I don’t like about this relationship is Genevieve intruding on fan space. If people are paying bucket loads to see their favorite actor, unless they specifically ask for a guest appearance by the actor’s wife, don’t intrude. Once, Genevieve appeared on stage, during a J2 panel, to contribute something unnecessary to the story they were recounting. I think it was the highway story. Then she made sure she kissed him before leaving, while the crowd watched. Why? She added nothing fresh to the story, and couldn’t she wait to leave the stage, to kiss her husband. She isn’t paying to see her husband. The fans are. Don’t take that precious time away from them.

And I noticed, she usually sits at the side of the stage, overseeing the whole exchange. As far as I know, Danneel hasn’t done that yet. Why the need to loom over the proceedings? Does she love to hear him talk? That reminds me of the livestream they did, where he was talking and she mouthed ’'blah blah blah’' while making a mocking hand gesture, because apparently he was talking too much. So obviously Jared’s yammering doesn’t entertain her.

Then at Jib, she got to join the panel. I didn’t fault her for attending because apparently the previous year, he had gotten sick and didn’t make the con. I assumed she was there for moral support. I am a non hatter so that is my analysis. You cant of course, explain your perspective. But that doesn’t mean she needs to be on stage. For what? Its not like she did something spectacular whilst there. Rob, Rich and Jared had to take over the discussion because she was so dull. Eventually even Jensen joined in, revved the crowd up even further, and left. One of her fan girls complained that the boys ’'didn’t even let her speak”. Thank goodness they didn’t.

She is inserting herself between Jared and the fan, and now people are forced to be enthusiastic about her. Its so unfair. It almost seems like Genevieve wants shared custody of the fans. That is not how fame works. You earn it. You don’t inherit it. I started to get more and more annoyed with being forced, [by all of fandom, I thought] to go crazy over some woman, I could care less for. She wasn’t impressive as fake Ruby. And I was not the only one who thought so. Cassidy was a bland actor, in my humble opinion. Genevieve was worse.

The only reason she didn’t fade into oblivion, like all the other female actors, is because she married Jared. There was a blog called anti-Genevieve on Tumblr, that received a lawyers letter to cease and desist, because of defamation of character. Its her right to safeguard her reputation, so no problem there, especially if the blog is over malicious without proof or facts. I did visit the site. But I don’t remember seeing anything horrible other than her being called a beard. But it has been a while so maybe I just forgot.

However, there is another blog called Supernatural Snark. Almost the entire blog bashes Jared for everything that comes out of his mouth. One day, an ask about Jensen’s weird behavior at Jibcon, illicited an odd response from the blogger. The asker said that Jensen’s breakdown was Misha, Jared and the destiheller’s fault because Misha queerbaits his fans, Jared teases destiel and the fans abused Jensen on Twitter after Jaxcon. She said Jensen was trying to pacify the fans. The blogger said that it didn’t make sense for Jensen to wait six months to pacify the fans. Then she disabled the comment so the asker couldn’t respond. Of course, even I know he waited six months, because he shares no other panel with Misha. That’s when I realized that Supernatural Snark is a heller blog.

How come Genevieve doesn’t send a cease and desist lawyer’s letter to this witch. I think I know why. She only looked for anti stuff about herself on the net and that’s how she found this page. If she was looking for anti Jared blogs, she would have found Supernatural Snark. The Minute Maid commercial and her words in it were a little incentive. She said she was making so many sacrifices. Well missy, bundle up your babies and buzz off to Vancouver. You husband is not gone off to war. You are sacrificing nothing.

She doesn’t seem to care for him. She doesn’t care about his campaign. She never tags AFK for anything. She tags Random Acts, though. The thing that makes my blood boil, on a personal level, is that she claims that she also suffers from depression. As a bipolar sufferer myself, the one trend I noticed is that when people are impatient with me, and I point out that I have bipolar disorder, they quickly say that they also suffer from depression, so they don’t look bad. Since when does she have depression. Because if she did, she wouldn’t ignore her husband’s campaign that is supposed to help people like her. Is she sharing in her husband’s sympathy the same way she is sharing his fame?

She has diehard fans on Instagram. One of them is Ivana. Ivana gushily asked Genevieve to sign her name so that Ivana could have it tattooed. I was surprised. When did Gen become a rockstar? Then I realized that Ivana has her own SM page where she says she is ITK and best buds with Genevieve. So she knows that Jared abuses his wife and neglects his children. Ivana is a heller. Her best friend Lua James [@Poptivist on Twitter], led a smear campaign against J2 for the Nolacon joke. Her followers are the ones that made this problem reach MSM. And J2 had to apologize, publicly, for nothing. That is ok, because what Lua and gang were initially hoping for was for separates for the boys' panels, so that Jared wouldn’t be near Jensen. Genevieve is making herself the whip with which hellers can beat Jared.

And both Ivana and Lua cornered Danneel at one con to tell her how everyone hated her, except them. That was their snide contribution to tinhat hate. Danneel signed Poptivist’s SPN magazine, with the caption: “He is mine, bitches”… something inappropriate like that. Danneel was wrong for writing that. I noticed she fights with Jensen’s fans a lot. Ungracious. Lua is so toxic that she needs a guard at the cons, supplied by Creation to keep an eye on her. WTF!!! I always wondered why she wasn’t just excluded, but I think it’s because she is friends with a Creation staff member who also happens to be Misha’s relative. And because she is a Misha fan girl, she gets to stay.

That’s why Misha’s face appears on the main posters with J2, despite him not being a lead. Because he is related to staff. The wives have no fans, but I think Genevieve’s ego is in denial. Her intellect isn’t, which is why Jared’s appears in her vlogs. He is the deal sealer for her. One day this pompousness is going to backfire on Gen. I hope she figures that out one day.

APOLOGIES FOR ANOTHER LONG POST. I HOPE YOU DONT MIND.

Thank you for your submission, I’ve always wondered what non-hats make of the OTT parade and the wife stanning.

#submission #go-diane-winchester

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wellesleyunderground · 6 years

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Wellesley in Art: Hannah Heller ‘09, Museum Educator (@museum_matters)

Hannah Heller is an NYC based freelance museum educator, and has taught and worked on research and evaluation projects in several cultural institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Art & Art Education program at Teachers College, and holds a MA in Museum Education from Tufts University. Her research interests include developing orientations towards social justice through close looking at art; she believes art can play an active and healing role, especially when addressing difficult topics such as race and racism in a group setting. Follow her on Twitter @museum_matters! Interview by Tiffany Chan ‘15, Arts Series Editor

Q: What is your ‘origin story’? How did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in the arts? In museums and education specifically?

I actually took a course my last semester senior year at Wellesley on “art museum issues,” which really opened my eyes to the inner workings of museums, and the prospect of museum work as a viable career.

After graduating I did my first unpaid internship (out of about a thousand) abroad with an upstart website creating content on Israeli artists. While there I applied to museum studies MA programs and ultimately came back to Boston for my Museum Education MA at Tufts. It finally made sense to me why I was so drawn to the art history courses I had taken at Wellesley but for some reason didn’t excel at-- I was missing the personal connection, the humanity behind these objects, the “why” of the work. The more collections and audiences I work with the more certain I become about the power of art and my role in facilitating those experiences.

Q: What was your professional journey like? How did you get to this job?

After finishing my MA program I went to intern at Lincoln Center in NY with their guided tour program. The internship turned into a full time fellowship, which turned into a job and I ended up staying there for about three years advancing ultimately to manage their entire volunteer corps, part time staff, and summer interns. But after a couple years I realized that even though I was working super closely with our audiences in a customer service role, I was no longer doing work that felt as meaningful as anything I did as an unpaid intern working with the tour program and helping shape those prolonged, more educational experiences. I also found that I missed school a little bit, that I still had questions about the nature of my work that I wanted to research. So I quit and went back to school to get my Ed.D. in Art & Art Education at Teachers College, where I am currently finishing up my 4th year.

Being back to school affords me the opportunity to get back into freelance museum education work, and finally delve into and sharpen some of those questions I had related to practice, creating a really productive theory/practice feedback loop. I get to read all this theory, apply it to my work, see what works and what doesn’t, go back to the literature and sharpen some of those ideas, and try it all over again.

Q: What does a normal day look like for you?

Because I’m a freelance educator, and I’m also in school, every day looks like really different. But most days start with a morning school group tour at one of the museums I teach at (I teach at three), or at one of the schools that my museums partner with. Each of my museums coordinates several school partnerships, and will send educators like me out to the schools, and then invite the students to come to the museum a couple times-- I love partnerships because I get to know the kids so much better than I would on a one-off field trip. I love field trips too; depending on the museum, it’s either an hour-long gallery tour where we focus on maybe 3-4 art works and include lots of sketching and movement activities, or a tour plus art making workshop.

Then I clean up, and I might jump on the train and teach another tour/program at another museum, or go the library, do an observation for my research, or go to a coffee shop and do some curriculum writing/planning. What’s really fun about my job is at each of my three museums the exhibitions switch up every couple months, which means I’m always doing research on something new. I like to say that I know a little bit about a lot of different things. The switching up goes for the audience too; on a given day I could be in a kindergarten classroom, teach a tour to 9th graders, do some planning for a college internship program, and finish up the day doing a “VIP” tour at a corporate sponsor event.

And then I come home and shift into admin mode-- answer emails, respond to bookings, send some invoices, follow up with teachers, plan or collect materials for the next day, etc etc. I’m always carrying around a tote bag or two full of art materials.

One thing that helps clarify my job for other people is to explain that NYC is super unique in that people like me get paid (pretty well too, relatively) to do this work, whereas in a lot of other cities the work is done by unpaid volunteer docents. I can make $50-$150 an hour depending on the program (though of course I don’t work a 40-hour week at that rate!). I think that’s a gesture to the competition in this city, and the high standard for museum educational programming that that competition supports. It also means that a part time teaching gig typically requires a MA degree, 4+ years experience, etc etc, all these bonkers qualifications that can make it really hard to break into.

Q: What was your ‘eureka moment’ in wrestling with race and the art world? Or was it even a moment or rather a long process?

I point to Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson in the summer of 2014 as a turning point for me. Obviously it wasn’t the first time a Black person was extradjudicially shot by a White police officer, but it began to feel impossible for me to both witness the explosion of discourse in the media that his death spurred, the advent of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and also do nothing about it. My journey started with having conversations with friends and family about their reactions to Ferguson and subsequent shootings, which were often really uncomfortable and awkward.

It was particularly hard with my family; I notice a trend with a lot of people in my Jewish social networks, where so many Jewish Americans come from families where their grand or great grandparents came here with nothing after experiencing profound oppression in their home countries, and then were discriminated against when they got here, but then climbed the ladder, achieved the American dream, etc etc. So when you bring up discrimination against another group of people, there’s almost this knee-jerk reaction among older Jewish people I’ve spoken to be like, oh, don’t tell me about oppression, I get it. It was pretty shocking at the time, since I’d only known the privileges associated with being brought up in a close knit Jewish community, so for me it was like-- well all right, let’s take this history of oppression, and see if we can harness that experience towards alleviating current forms of oppression where we can. The more awkward it got the more it signalled to me how necessary these conversations are, particularly amongst White folks purporting to be “progressive” and liberal, but also can’t be bothered to really address these issues critically (ie in a way that would address their own privilege).

Running parallel to these personal conversations was a field-specific awakening to our own equity issues, and lots of people have done amazing work to bring attention to racist hiring and curating practices, as well as cultural barriers to success for employees of color. The big question for museums has to be: how can we hold ourselves to treating our guests equitably if we can’t even treat our own fairly? Tackling diversity and equity issues in museum work has to have a multi-pronged approach, and I’ve sussed out my own little niche in this much larger conversation by examining the various techniques museum educators use to discuss race and other equity issues using objects as the catalyst.

More recently, my research is focusing on manifestations of whiteness in gallery teaching. I think centering whiteness in a conversation about anti-racism is important so that White people can first of all name it, critique it, and figure out what it means for them first as individuals and then as part of a system-- we can think specifically about museum education in these terms-- that on one hand acts as the oppressor but which can also be used dismantle the status quo. And the only way this happens though is if we ALL (managers, educators, curators, directors, board members) make a shift from conceptualizing our various roles as supporting a "culturally sensitive," or "multicultural," or perhaps just at a base level not-racist neutral stance, to being full on, explicitly anti-racist and anti oppression.

Q: How have other people responded to your writings?

So far so good! I’ll always be nervous as a White person to discuss this work publically; am I offending anyone, have I said something problematic, etc etc. But the bottom line is POC can’t do this work alone, and they put themselves out there every day just by existing, so writing the occasional journal article or blog post seems really like the least I can do.

Q: What are the best ways that we can start productive conversations regarding race and art?

Such a great question, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but in my experience as a museum educator, there’s some really simple, go-to tools in our educator toolboxes to help navigate these conversations authentically and productively. The question is about starting, and I like to start with the art. Gather some basic observations from the group, see where they’re at and go from there. Object based learning provides a really nice context for having conversations about difficult topics without it being explicitly about the people involved in the discussion. There’s a sense of safety there, where we’re talking about the artwork, not ourselves per se. I like to choose objects based on what aspect of a counter story to the dominant narrative they can reveal. This counter story can say something about the artist, the content, the subject-- something that reveals a turn away from the dominant (while, male, straight, cis, "able" bodied) canon. A lot of educators feel like they can't talk about oppression because their institutions' collections don't explicitly treat the topic (ie are made by and picture all White men). So pick an object and ask students to create narratives to fill in the gaps. Who isn't there? Why? What if the artist was working today in your neighborhood, what might look different? What if YOU were the subject-- how would you be represented? (I obviously take certain liberties when it comes to "respecting" the "intent" of the artist which some educators or managers may take issue with. So be it).

When problematic comments based on biases and assumptions do come up, and that’s where those educator tools come in. One tool I like a lot is inspired by Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), which is a student centered methodology for looking at art. Part of the method involves asking the question, “What do you see that makes you say that?” when a student makes a comment the includes an inference. So if a student says something like, “I think that painting looks weird,” you can respond by saying okay cool, what do you see that makes you say that, putting the onus on them to back it up. That being said, while we like to say there’s no right or wrong answers in art, sometimes we do get a problematic comment and my position is I don’t want to validate those, but I do want to turn it into a learning moment. So when that does happen, I’ll say something like, “okay, you’re making an observation based on a racial stereotype xyz; what do you see that makes you say that?” More often than not the student is forced into this “aha” moment of oh, I don’t really know why I think that, maybe I need to readjust my thinking.

Another tool we have is language. It’s our primary mode of teaching, and I think museum educators need to shift from thinking of verbal discourse as non-neutral terrain; it’s either helping or it’s hindering. I’m digging into this idea more in dissertation research, but my pilot data suggests that the more explicit educators can be in our facilitation of dialogue with our language, the more productive our conversations will be. So, for example, most museum educators paraphrase each student comment (or I think they should!)-- those paraphrases are great opportunities to insert appropriate language and vocabulary. In other words, we can keep our teaching student centered, without mirroring their biases.

Q: What are several steps that we can/should take to be better allies/educators within the arts world specifically?

Something I have observed is that not only is it really tough for POC to get through the doors and actually hired in meaningful museum positions, but also the culture of privilege, exclusivity, and whiteness that pervades museums makes it really hard to sustain POC in those positions should they get there. Museums have a problem with distinguishing between performing diversity and actually achieving equity. Cultural change needs to happen on every level of management, but it begins on an individual level, and requires a transfer of power. It just does. So whenever I see a job posting I post it right away in a job forum specifically for job seekers of color. I share my salary info. I recommend POC to positions. I’m super honest with my POC colleagues about which institutions/managers I know of who are supportive and progressive, and which aren’t. I’m not in a position right now to be hiring people or shifting workplace culture on a large scale, but I’ve worked hard to identify what power I do have and try and push the needle towards equity in the ways that I can.

But to all those managers out there, whatever your field, I encourage you to rethink the qualifications you use to hire, and the culture you create in your workplaces. I’m pretty obsessed with Nonprofit AF, a blog on inclusion in the nonprofit world and can recommend the following articles on shifting those practices:

Our hiring practices are inequitable and need to change

When you don’t disclose salary range on a job posting, a unicorn loses its wings

Basing pay on salary history is a harmful, borderline-unethical practice that we need to abolish

Why we need to end the culture of “Cultural Fit”

Q: Traditionally, introductory art history classes focus on works within the Western canon and there is a specific way that instructors analyze the works and that students remember the works. Simply put, these intro classes prioritize rote memorization of a very specific way about thinking about/talking about art. What do you think that institutions can do to change or amend the way we teach introductory courses to tackle issues of race?

Representation is key. At every moment of time in every place POC were making art, being represented in art, funding art projects, etc. It is a fallacy to suggest that like, all Classical art is of White people by White people. There were tons of POC Greeks and Romans hustling and making cool shit. I follow medievalpoc on Twitter, which is an account that highlights contributions by POC during the Middle Ages in Europe, an era we traditionally think of being exclusively White… because that’s what we’ve been taught it was. Professors need to stop being lazy and seek out those opportunities to break out of the canon.

I think art history professors need to also address the circumstances contributing to lack of representation in the arts. Like, cool let’s study Jeffersonian architecture but if you’re not also talking about the Black enslaved people who built it then you’re doing it wrong.

For what it’s worth, I don’t mind the rote memorization. I sort of love knowing(ish) when a thing was made, or what museum I could find it in. In a weird way I find that information has served me pretty well. But if you’re going to make me memorize what year Stonehenge was made then you better also make me memorize the dates and provenances of those Dogon masks too.

Q: How have your teaching practices evolved as a result of grappling with this issue head-on?

I experienced a big shift in my teaching after collecting my pilot data during an interview with a POC educator and she said something I'll never forget. I was asking about her thoughts on the pedagogical role of discomfort (it was something I was big into at the time, problematizing discomfort in a field that prizes "soft" skills, emotional intelligence etc). And she was like yeah, I get it, some kids need to made to feel uncomfortable in order to shift their thinking, but for the most part (I'm paraphrasing her response here) I mostly work with POC students and to be honest I want to think about how to get them to feel comfortable in this space that traditionally doesn't feel safe or comfortable for them. How can I help make it feel like it's theirs too? She cited a Banksy quote, "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” And since then I've really shifted my teaching to thinking about well okay, I'm clearly White -- these Black or Latinx kids do not need me to tell them about racism-- they live with it. Yes, I can facilitate the conversation if it's coming up for them, but if the students want to talk about color, or shapes, or what random stories or emotions are emerging from an abstract work or whatever I'm open to that too-- basically what's going to help these kids feel some ownership here.

That all being said, if it's a bunch of White kids from the suburbs or whatever, believe me they will be made to feel at least a little uncomfortable at some point during my tour. I see my role as someone who strives towards allyship as a White person to be someone who models what it looks like for a White person to talk about their own complicity, think about systems of oppression on both individual and systemic levels, and ultimately help students take the next step to think in terms of: what can I do?

Q: What is one thing that you wish the general public knew about the art world?

So many things! If I had to pick one I think I wish more museum visitors understood that the label text on the wall offers just one story, one way to interpret the work. It’s probably an interpretation guided by lots of curatorial research, precedence, art historical facts, etc. Which is all great and important, but those interpretations don’t take into account our own stories, our memories, associations, questions, problems, wonderings, etc etc. I encourage visitors to not even read the labels at first; who cares who made it-- just walk into the room and go up to the work that draws you in the most. What’s drawing you to it? Where do your eyes want to go? What knowledges can YOU bring to help you interpret its significance for YOU? A lot of people approach art like there’s one answer, but the thing is I’ve spoken to artists and nothing excites them more than observing visitors react personally to their work and see things in it that the artist never even saw themselves. At the end of the day the best art is art that offers endless entry points, and I wish visitors felt more empowered to make meaning in a way that makes sense to them, not the way dictated by others.

#wellesley underground #wellesley in art series #wellesley in art #hannah heller #class of 2009

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isitfake · 7 years

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A list of rejections of famous authors was circulating on Tumblr awhile back and, because Is It Fake was in exams at the time, Is It Fake got really into debunking them. It has now been more than a year and Is It Fake is just gonna put it up and let this roll.

See, they’re all or almost all from Rotten Rejections, a book written with a marvelous disregard for facts, and they’ve therefore been in circulation for more than twenty-five years. Some of them are entirely true; some of them are totally fake; a lot of them appear only in Rotten Rejections but can’t otherwise be disproven. Many of the stories behind them are fantastic.

As a general note, although this was only really useful for Plath, if you enjoy this we recommend “Publication is Not Recommended: From the Knopf Archives,” which is available on Project MUSE if you’ve got access and is just… it’s wonderful. Blanche Knopf was a riot.

Okay, let’s get going!

TRUE

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.

Not only true, but actually much worse than depicted here. Internal rejection only. The editor, having been told that this is contest-winner Sylvia Plath’s book, rereads, and is marginally nicer and 500% more patronizing: "maybe now that this book is out of her system she will use her talent more effectively next time.” Accurate text available here: http://cloudyskiesandcatharsis.tumblr.com/post/57272275430/sylvia-plath-originally-submitted-her-novel-the

Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.

True! Thomas Niles to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, June 10, 1890— the brackets are wrong, because he was addressing another possible publisher, to say that he thought it would be “unwise to perpetuate” the poems, oh my STARS.

Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.

True, and directly to Hemingway himself. To F Scott Fitzgerald he managed to get up an “I am less violently opposed to Torrents of Spring than anyone else who has read it” but to Hemingway himself, nope, full no.

William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!

True. Both are true. They are so true.

The first refers to Sartoris/Flags in the Dust, and the story is really funny and sad. Faulkner sent it to Horace Liveright (his publisher) with enormous confidence: he called it the “damdest best book you’ll look at this year” and tried to ensure at this early stage that the printer not screw up his punctuation (“he’s been punctuating my stuff to death; giving me gratis quotation marks and premiums of commas I dont need.”) He also insisted that the title was perfect and that he had designed his own dust jacket which he would send by separate cover. Anyway, bye, he was going on a hunting trip, he looked forward to Liveright’s glowing acceptance!

Liveright did not exactly… do that. Besides the quote above he also noted how much he hated Mosquitoes, Faulkner’s last book, and how disappointed he was w/this one and how much he really wanted Faulkner not to submit it anywhere else, in case he got blacklisted, because the book was so, so bad.

WHOOPS

(Thanks to "Flags in the Dust and the Birth of a Poetics” by Arthur F. Kinney for those quotes.)

The second is about Sanctuary, a book Faulkner hated and described as a “cheap idea…deliberately executed to make money.” The full rejection, according to Faulkner in his introduction to the book, was “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.”

Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.

Not quite the exact quote, because “(especially fiction)” should appear after “works” and “entire” should be “whole”— but true. Harper & Brothers rejected Tales from the Folio Club in 1836 with this phrasing, the second of their three reasons for turning the stories down. The first was that a lot of them had been printed already, and the third was that the papers were too “learned and mystical,” like spooky bonbons.

http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19781c.htm

Poe responded to this by writing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which he privately referred to as a “very silly book”, and which is a classic of American literature.

MIXED TRUE/FALSE

Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.

Sort of true. This rejection is from the Atlantic on the 3rd of May, 1900, it’s about “The Law of Life”, and it was a lot nicer than this, because according to Ellery Sedgwick’s "A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857-1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide”, this was a period in which the Atlantic was being very ruthless and cynical about what would run, because depressing things didn’t sell commercially.

The full quote is, “We have heartily liked the vigor of it and the breadth of treatment with which you have written it. But the subject is forbidding—in fact seems to us depressing, and so the excellent craftsmanship of it has not changed our mind."

Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.

True, but not about Carrie. It’s from Donald A. Wollheim at Ace Books and it’s about the Richard Bachman book The Running Man, which King had written after Carrie got rejected basically everywhere in the world. “The book, unfortunately, was not fantastic,” he later commented, which might’ve been because he wrote it over a weekend in a “low rage and simmering despair.” Thanks to the Stephen King Companion for this one.

UNATTESTED (AND, ONE SUSPECTS, NOT REAL)

Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.

Unattested. ID’d as the publisher of the San Francisco Examiner or Call writing in 1889, or is it 1899? Yeah, probs not, and Is It Fake couldn’t find it.

That said, the Call fucking hated Kipling. For example, the San Francisco Call did write about Kipling in 1899; it castigated him for his poem “the White Man’s Burden,” saying, “the white man’s burden is to set and keep his own house in order. It is not required of him to upset the brown man’s house under pretesce of reform and then whip him into subjection whenever he revolts at the treatment.” (Among other sources, can be found here.)

Another review of “The Lesson” from 1901 opens "KIPLING'S latest poem, 'The Lesson,’ must be very gratifying to Mr. Alfred Austin, for, if it does not confirm Austin's right to the office of Poet Laureate, it at least shows that Kipling has no better right.”

Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

Unattested. But he was indeed rejected 27 times for his first book.

The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.

Unattested. The diary was rejected by 15 publishers before publication, but Is It Fake can’t find any of them who specifically said this. Here’s one from Knopf:

In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”

Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.

Unattested. Catch-22 (or as it was called at the time, Catch-18) was rejected over and over again, but this exact language is just vapor.

On the other hand, we have some of the language of acceptance, thanks to Vanity Fair:

“I … love this crazy book and very much want to do it,” Gottlieb said. Candida Donadio was delighted by his enthusiasm. Finally, someone got it! “I thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would fall off,” she often said to describe her happiness when negotiations went well with an editor.

And this incredible rejection from Evelyn Waugh:

Dear Miss Bourne:

Thank you for sending me Catch-22. I am sorry that the book fascinates you so much. It has many passages quite unsuitable to a lady’s reading

You are mistaken in calling it a novel. It is a collection of sketches—often repetitious—totally without structure.

Much of the dialogue is funny. You may quote me as saying: “This exposure of corruption, cowardice and incivility of American officers will outrage all friends of your country (such as myself) and greatly comfort your enemies.”

George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Unattested. It was rejected for a lot of reasons, but most of the ones I can find histories of were basically for it being anti-USSR at a time when the Russians were war allies. One publisher was basically ordered not to run it so as not to hurt the war effort, by somebody who later turned out to be a Soviet spy, like a lot of people in wartime Britain.

If you want to read T. S. Eliot rejecting Animal Farm for being too pro-Communist (not a joke) (jazz hands), you can find that here.

Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

Unattested. Could be real and internal, but it was never given to Nabokov, because Nabokov gave us a recounting of his rejections, and this wasn’t in them.

Is It Fake’s fave bit: "Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that the firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short, strong, realistic sentences. (He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy. Etc.)"

Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)

Unattested, and Is It Fake doesn’t even have anything interesting to say about it.

H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader

Unattested. It is the personal opinion of Is It Fake that they’re both false. The Time Machine was actually commissioned as a novel, so it’s hard to see why it’d receive a rejection like that, and both stories were serialized before publication, not run in book form, so the War of the Worlds one doesn’t ring true. Fun supplemental fact--War of the Worlds was immediately pirated upon release and rerun as “Fighters from Mars,” localized to New York and Boston respectively and run with a story called “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” about how Thomas Edison took over Mars and Is It Fake is not making this up.

Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…

This must be false (no one ever appears to have been under the delusion that Moby-Dick was a children’s serial, and in fact he got it printed kind of as like an art book, a 500-book edition with great critical acclaim and no sales) but since one can’t actually prove that it is, “unattested,” but Is It Fake would like to register the strongest possible objections to anyone who would bother to make up a reason for Herman Melville to be sad, dude was like high king and priest of making his own ass sad in the desert, leave him alone

If for some reason your life has been missing negative reviews of Moby-Dick you can find the full spectrum of praise to castigation here. Personal fave goes to the writer who said “There is nevertheless in it, as we have already hinted, abundant choice reading for those who can skip a page now and then, judiciously....”

PROVABLY FAKE >:(

Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.

False. Is It Fake can’t believe even people talking about Oscar Wilde are getting the Oscar Wilde effect. It’s attributed to a bunch of people, but the oldest attribution found was to John Clayton, from Albert Chevalier’s autobiography of 1895, as

“My dear sir, I have read your play. Oh! my dear sir! Yours truly, John Clayton.”

As Albert Chevalier was a comedian & music hall performer and this is part of a collection of anecdotes, one is perhaps not super convinced this was ever real, from anyone. (There’s also a fwithout the last line: “My dear sir, I have read your play. Yours, Fred Thompson.”

Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.

Possibly true, in that Is It Fake can’t find the date of publication of her first poem, but not substantively true, in that Three Lives ran when she was 35, so unless we’re counting whatever she submitted at 13, this is false. Stein was constantly and continually rejected though. Like just absolutely constantly, and crushingly too. This rejection letter is particularly amazing.

#mixed #famous authors #books #i don't know what to tag this. 'mistakes'#'lengthy mistakes'

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scifigeneration · 7 years

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Should scientists engage in activism?

by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus

Have you heard that scientists are planning a march on Washington? The move is not being billed as a protest, but rather as a “celebration of our passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community,” although it comes as a direct response to recent policy changes and statements by the Trump administration.

Not everyone thinks the nonprotest protest is a good thing. It’s “a terrible idea,” wrote Robert Young, a geologist at Western Carolina University, in The New York Times. The march, Young said, will just reinforce a belief among some conservatives that “scientists are an interest group,” and polarize the issue, making researchers’ jobs more difficult. Others find that argument less than convincing, pointing out that science and politics have always been intertwined.

As the founders of the blog Retraction Watch and the Center for Scientific Integrity, we often see researchers reluctant to push for or embrace change – whether it’s to the conventional way of dealing with misconduct in journals (which for years was basically to not do so) or addressing problems of reproducibility of their experiments. To the timorous, airing dirty laundry, and letting the public in on the reality of science, could endanger public trust – and funding.

So this isn’t the first time scientists and engineers have voiced similar concerns. Take the example of Marc Edwards and his colleagues at Virginia Tech: To many people watching the Flint water crisis, they were heroes. After being asked to visit by concerned residents, they found, and announced, that people in the beleaguered city were being exposed to excessive amounts of lead through their tap water. They also launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for water filters for city residents and created a website to push their findings about the hazards of the city’s water supply and shame governments at all levels to act.

If not for their tireless efforts, thousands of children may have been exposed to dangerous amounts of lead for far longer than they already were. Even the Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that it waited too long to sound the alarm.

Marc Edwards testifying before Congress about the situation in Flint. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

But that’s not exactly how the editor of a leading engineering journal sees things.

In October, a remarkable editorial appeared in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The essay, by University of California, Berkeley engineering professor and Water Center Director David Sedlak, ES&T’s editor-in-chief, expressed concern that some of his colleagues in the field had crossed the “imaginary line” between scientist and advocate.

“Speaking out against a corrupt or incompetent system may be the product of a culture where idealism, personal responsibility, and Hollywood’s dramatic sensibilities conspire to create a narrative about the noble individual fighting injustice,” Sedlak wrote.

By becoming “allies of a particular cause, no matter how just, we jeopardize the social contract that underpins the tradition of financial support for basic research.” In other words, don’t cross Congress – which many scientists already view as hostile to their profession – and risk retaliation in the form of budget cuts. That’s no small pie, either. Through its oversight of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy and other agencies and programs, Congress holds the strings to a research purse worth nearly US$70 billion a year.

Let’s take a moment to absorb all that. Some (unnamed but easily identified) scientists, lulled by the media, have cast themselves as superheroes in a struggle against villains born of their own conceit. Their arrogance and vanity threaten to awaken the master, who will punish us all for the sins of a few. We rarely get the opportunity to watch a chilling effect in action, but you can almost see the breath of researchers caught up in a debate over the proper role of scientists in the crisis.

It’s not just engineers who fear speaking out. “We have too often been reluctant to voice our protest, for fear of incurring the [National Institute of Mental Health’s] displeasure (and losing whatever opportunities we still have for funding),” wrote neuroscientist John Markowitz in The New York Times last fall. In a refreshing piece, Markowitz was arguing that “there’s such a thing as too much neuroscience.” As cofounders of Retraction Watch, a blog that focuses on some of science’s nasty episodes, we are occasionally admonished that pointing out cases of fraud – even when we also praise good behavior – will give anti-science forces ammunition.

In some ways, we should be glad scientists are acknowledging these concerns, instead of pretending they’re never swayed by the almighty dollar. But anyone who clings to the notion that science exists in a pure vacuum, untainted by politics, economics or social justice needs also to understand that science is a human endeavor and scientists have the same eyes and ears for injustice and outrage as the rest of us. Although the conduct of science demands honesty and rigor, nowhere is it written that researchers must remain silent when governments or other powerful players either misuse science or suppress findings in the service of harmful policies.

And before Edwards and his efforts on behalf of the Flint community, some scientists have spoken out. Clair Patterson, a physical chemist, put himself on a decades-long collision course with industry when he took on lead poisoning. John Snow earned the ire of Londoners when he removed the pump handle on a cholera-infested well, and wasn’t vindicated until after his death. It took Peter Buxtun several years to stop the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment; he eventually had to leak documents to reporter Jean Heller in 1972.

Edwards and his colleagues, we would argue, are part of a long tradition of bridging the worlds of science and policy. They have been instrumental in bringing not only attention but change to the beleaguered city of Flint. And money: Thanks in part to their pressure, the Senate in September voted overwhelmingly to approve $100 million in aid for Flint, and hundreds of millions more in loans from the Environmental Protection Agency for upgrading municipal water infrastructures and studying exposure to lead.

Tuskegee syphilis study doctor injects a subject with a placebo. Centers for Disease Control

In a stinging rebuke to Sedlak, Edwards and three coauthors – Amy Pruden, Siddhartha Roy and William Rhoads – blasted the critical editorial as a “devastating, self-indictment of cowardice and perverse incentives in modern academia.”

Indeed, scientists who accept funding with the tacit agreement that they keep their mouths shut about the government are far more threatening to an independent academy than those who speak their minds.

Since Nov. 8, it has been painfully clear that science will be playing defense for a while. The United States has never seen a regime so hostile to science and the value of the scientific method. President Donald Trump has declared climate change a “hoax” cooked up by the Chinese. He has flirted seriously with debunked anti-vaccination views and declared that polls (read, data) that are negative about his ambitions are “fake news.”

Science and politics are not always compatible. And science need not always triumph over policy: After all, research shows that steroids improve athletic performance, but we have a compelling political interest to ban them. The same can be said of eugenics. Research must always be ethical, and ethics is a conversation that includes scientists and policymakers.

Still, while the two domains are separate, the divide is, and should be, bridgeable. As Edwards and his colleagues write, “The personal and professional peril is great, the critics are numerous and vocal, but staying silent is to be complicit in perpetrating injustice. And no matter what may come of the rest of our lives or careers, we are certain of one thing: Flint was a community worth going out on a limb for, and by upholding a just cause, we enhanced the social contract between academics and the public.”

That could easily be said of the March for Science. Except now it’s not just a limb but the entire tree that’s in peril.

Ivan Oransky is a Distinguished Writer In Residence, Arthur Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Adam Marcus is an Adjunct Faculty for Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University. This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#science #activism

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prohealths · 7 years

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Should Scientists Engage In Activism?

By Ivan Oransky, New York University and Adam Marcus, Johns Hopkins University

As the founders of the blog Retraction Watch and the Center for Scientific Integrity, we often see researchers reluctant to push for or embrace change — whether it’s to the conventional way of dealing with misconduct in journals (which for years was basically to not do so) or addressing problems of reproducibility of their experiments. To the timorous, airing dirty laundry, and letting the public in on the reality of science, could endanger public trust — and funding.

Marc Edwards testifying before Congress about the situation in Flint. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

But that’s not exactly how the editor of a leading engineering journal sees things.

By becoming “allies of a particular cause, no matter how just, we jeopardize the social contract that underpins the tradition of financial support for basic research.” In other words, don’t cross Congress — which many scientists already view as hostile to their profession — and risk retaliation in the form of budget cuts. That’s no small pie, either. Through its oversight of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy and other agencies and programs, Congress holds the strings to a research purse worth nearly US$70 billion a year.

It’s not just engineers who fear speaking out. “We have too often been reluctant to voice our protest, for fear of incurring the [National Institute of Mental Health’s] displeasure (and losing whatever opportunities we still have for funding),” wrote neuroscientist John Markowitz in The New York Times last fall. In a refreshing piece, Markowitz was arguing that “there’s such a thing as too much neuroscience.” As cofounders of Retraction Watch, a blog that focuses on some of science’s nasty episodes, we are occasionally admonished that pointing out cases of fraud — even when we also praise good behavior — will give anti-science forces ammunition.

And before Edwards and his efforts on behalf of the Flint community, some scientists have spoken out. Claire Patterson, a physical chemist, put himself on a decades-long collision course with industry when he took on lead poisoning. John Snow earned the ire of Londoners when he removed the pump handle on a cholera-infested well, and wasn’t vindicated until after his death. It took Peter Buxtun several years to stop the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment; he eventually had to leak documents to reporter Jean Heller in 1972.

Tuskegee syphilis study doctor injects a subject with a placebo. Centers for Disease Control

In a stinging rebuke to Sedlak, Edwards and three coauthors — Amy Pruden, Siddhartha Roy and William Rhoads — blasted the critical editorial as a “devastating, self-indictment of cowardice and perverse incentives in modern academia.”

That could easily be said of the March for Science. Except now it’s not just a limb but the entire tree that’s in peril.

Ivan Oransky, Distinguished Writer In Residence, Arthur Carter Journalism Institute, New York University and Adam Marcus, Adjunct Faculty for Advanced Academic Programs, Johns Hopkins University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Should Scientists Engage In Activism? syndicated from http://ift.tt/2llz9hF

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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Why I detest Misha's stance as a liberal thinker

I have edited out this person's name for their own safety because they said something positive about me. And the hellers are not going to be happy about that. If Jensen can get threats from these people, then so can this individual.

I can understand you resistance. You probably spent ten years loving the man. People cant just switch that off, especially when the guy champions something that the fan might find meaningful. Women of color still remember Jensen's co-star Megalyn with fondness, as well as the eyebrow-raising sex scene between them. Jared spoke favorably about Muslims, with Jensen nodding vigorously in agreement and Muslim fans found that meaningful. When a trans fan takes pictures with a beaming Jensen or Jared, other trans fans feel happy about it. Everyone looks for something to love about an actor. Then are also actors whom we might hate because of something they did that made them fall in our eyes.

Maybe you are LGBT and Misha considers himself an LGBT champion. You feel welcomed and included in his circle in a way that you don't, with J2. I get it. Maybe you are a woman, and feel like he is a feminist champion. There are many reasons why anyone would like the guy. If you have loved him for some many years, for those very reasons, some yahoo yelling her head off on Tumblr, is not going to change your mind. I get it. So if Misha is a nice guy, how come I still don't like him? It is because I don't feel that man is genuine, that is why?

There are two kinds of problematic liberals: The posers, and the bullies. Misha is both of them. I think there are nice liberals out there. And once upon a time, liberalism was obviously a nice thing. The idea sounds nice. You want to not exclude people. You want people to love as they wish. You don't want hate governing your existence. That is how liberals thought. Now that has changed. Misha, and people like him, are liberal bullies. It seems to be the norm. Liberal bullies don't work for change. They want to enforce it aggressively. And the worst thing is, they speak for everyone else. There are LGBT fans that hate Misha and wish he would keep quiet. There are women like me who think America has too many nasty women. Why does it need more? What hypocrisy though. America needs nasty women, but��destiel shippers are perverts. So women aren't allowed to sexually express themselves without being seen as perverts and their art being reduced to porn. That is Misha being a poser. He is a champion for the LGBT but made a trans joke about Jensen's picture from his younger days. Posers are hypocrites.

Compared to him, Jensen is a proper liberal. Jensen doesn't overtalk about ''how inclusive'' he is. He doesn't brag, in other words. Jensen considers inclusiveness about including everyone. This includes the Christians. He is friends with the Ducks, but his aunt is LGBT. That is how to be a liberal. You don't exclude people and then say you are including. The first time Misha was asked about his role as an angel and about Christianity, he bashed the Bible. I am a Muslim, but I was well and truly offended on behalf of the Christians in the audience. I feel sorry for any Christian who paid to sit in that audience and get treated so horribly. What a let down that must have been. Jared did something similar once, regarding Christianity, on Twitter, but later amended his ways. You make mistakes. You learn. It is what makes you human. Misha, as far as I know, hasn't done that. But I would love to be corrected.

Jensen is a liberal where it counts. He is not an activist, 24/7. Jensen had a heart to heart with a trans fan once, and urged her to get out of the closet. She promised that she would. But if the same guy says no to destiel, he gets a death threat for being a bigot. Why is that happening? Because Misha has spent ten years, educating his younger fan base. The millennials of today were teens back then. And he has completely conditioned their thinking. They have mini-Misha tendencies and feign offense at some really silly things, because they think it will benefit him. Getting mock offended at everything that comes out of Jared's mouth is one such example. Like him, they mock a situation or go straight into campaigning and activism. His entire behavior with regards to Trump is faulty.

Trump was the reason, I actually liked Misha. Because Misha was vocally against Trump, I respected that. I cant like a man who misplaces about a 1000 children at the border. But then Misha didn't stop. His tweets seemed to be more for attention than for the greater good. That is liberal bully mode. Liberal bullies tend to mock. How is that going to help the children at the border? How is it going to stop America from economic collapse? He is not helping the situation. He is not educating anyone. There are gay men who hate the couple that sued the Christian bakery. The couple were liberal bullies. They said that they could find a liberal bakery but were ''making an example'' out of the bakery. In other words, they were destroying the livelihood of an entire family to make a point. The gay guys who were against them, were proper liberals. They recognized that what this couple was doing, was unethical. Of course, I lost respect for Misha's anti-Trump stance, when I realized he was in girl power mode and pushing for Hillary. If somebody cant see anything wrong with Hillary, then they are blind. Misha was urging people to vote for a vagina. As a woman, I say, NO. Affirmative action has no place in government...or anywhere else for that matter. Vote for character and integrity, not girl power.

I am not young. Maybe that is why my perspective of the world is different from yours. Maybe you don't see what I see. For now. But one day you will grow a little older, and might see the world with some wisdom in your eyes, and then you might realize what I am saying. Misha is a troublemaker and an influencer. It took me eight years to realize this. It might take you longer. But I hope you see the light some day. I once said I wouldn't speak about Misha's politics. But since, I realized he is a hypocrite, I have changed my stance. I am South African. There are no liberals amongst us, but American politics is in tatters because of loud mouths like Misha, and its baffling to foreigners like myself to watch. You don't even see the division.

Please excuse the typos and thanks for reading.

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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Are people not allowed to ship destiel?

Thank you for the very pertinent question. I, like most sensible slash fans, have absolutely no problem with any ship. I don't have issues with tinhatting. When it comes to shipping, I am very tolerant. As long as you don't hurt people, go ahead and have your fantasy. Destiel is not a problem. The militant shippers, or hellers, most definitely are. Some people I know, used to ship Destiel, before getting fed up and moving on. We have made a distinction between destiel shipper and destiheller before, until we were blue in the face, but we have to keep repeating this because hellers don't circulate the truth, just their headcanons. I even did posts about it, but the hellers don't want to acknowledge that. I have come across destiel shippers. They are nice people. They ship their ship and ask for nothing in return, because they acknowledge what slash fiction is and they make no demands of any kind. Hellers are a beast of a different breed, altogether. A heller is someone who wants to control fandom's thoughts. Nobody is allowed to think contrary to what a heller thinks. And if you do, then you deserve to kill yourself. I, myself, was recently told to put my head in an oven.

So what kind of person is a heller?

A heller cannot understand that subtexts is opinion-based, and that not everyone going to see what you see and interpret it the way you interpret it. For example, the Dr Sexy scene. Jensen, and most fans, interpreted the scene as Dean was fanboying over meeting his on screen idol. The hellers insist, even despite Jensen saying otherwise, that Dean was ''crushing'' on Dr Sexy. The Destiel camp is very headcanon and meta heavy. Instead of just writing stories, indulging in fanart etc, they are constantly writing headcanon and meta. Other hellers, just reading the headcanon and meta, just accept it with question. No debate is held over the analysis. Why is that? They don't question meta writers because then they will have to question their ship and they cant question their ship because they want Destiel to be canon. They can't have it any other way. If an individual uses Destiel and canon in the same conversation, immediately I can tell this is a heller. A normal shipper doesn't want to change the entire show to suit her kinks. And she recognizes that its a kink, a fetish and nothing more. Hellers don't do that. They pretend that they are crusading for LGBT representation when they ask for canon. And why do I have a problem with it? Its shouldn't be my business what hellers blindly believe or don't believe in the heller section of the fandom, should it? Unfortunately, it is. Its everyone's problem, because the hellers believe the meta writers and then they ask questions based on the meta at cons. They harass J2 over the meta. The Dr Sexy question is meta-based. So is the Cas-Collette parallel question. The Js will be put in an uncomfortable position based on how thinly veiled the question is because they will have to answer honestly. The Dr Sexy question was a thinly veiled question. They answered honestly and got bashed on Twitter for it. The parallel question flew right over Jensen's heads. Myths and archetypes are something Jared is fascinated by, so Jensen told Jared to answer the question. And Jared answered the question positively from a literary standpoint. I guarantee that if he had asked the fan to elaborate on the parallel, his answer would have been vastly different. They use that as proof that SPN is queer baiting them.

They cannot differentiate between SPN fandom and Destiel fandom. When a heller speaks about Destiel, especially when harassing SPN execs on SM, they speak for the rest of fandom. They say that ''the fans demand a spin-off'' and ''the fans deserve Destiel to be canon''. And if someone points out to them that not all the fans agree with that statement, they are called a ''fake fan''. If you don't care much for Cas, you are fake fan. If you don't like Misha, you are a fake fan. If you are not ''Destiel positive'' you are a homophobe. Hellers are notorious name callers. Their name calling reaches epic proportions when they have to deal with J2 and wincest shippers because these two ships are their primary competition. They seem to hate sastiel and mishalecki too, but no so much. They rationalize their ship shaming by saying that shipping Destiel is the moral high ground. Because ''wincest is incest'' even though many wincest fans have said they just like J2's onscreen avatars and chemistry, and that they don't condone incest. But acknowledging that is too difficult so instead of doing that, hellers go on repeat insisting that wincest fans are liars and perverts. Shipping J2 is also morally wrong because ''they are totally like brothers''. So hellers essentially want to police fandom and how it behaves and what it thinks.

The Destiel fandom, primarily, only likes Misha and Misha-related stuff. They insist that Misha is a lead, and an equal to Jensen and Jared. They attack anyone who says otherwise, including Jensen and Jared. Remember, the Nolacon joke that got blown out of proportion? The only ones who screamed about the joke on SM, where the hellers. They were taking revenge from Jensen and Jared for saying that Misha not a lead or ''lead support''. Two people approached me about Misha fans [and these may just be minions and Destiel shippers] who said that they were attacked for not liking Cas or Misha. One was attacked online. The other is a kid who is attacked by a heller at school. They can't seem to understand that you can't force someone to stan a celebrity or ship. Its a common sense thing, that has to be explained to a heller. They don't realize that people don't like to be told what to do and who to love. People like celebrities who are their ''type''. I don't like Misha. He is not my ''type'' either physically or personality wise. I never liked SPN because of him. I like SPN because of the brothers and the story. Forcing me to change my opinion is kind of drastic, don't you think? I am certain that most fans who have a blind hatred for Misha now, used to be neutral fans who didn't have a negative opinion about him previously. By forcing Misha on everyone, constantly screaming ''where's the angel?'' and insisting talk show hosts invite Misha too, since he's a ''lead'', they have irritated these fans to the point where now the fans scowl and the mere mention of Misha or Cas. The same can be said for Destiel. They pushed Destiel so much into everyone's face that fans who were amused by the whole shipping thing previously, no hate anything related to Destiel because they are sick of it. I have seen Destiel in the AKF tag. Hellers are also notorious over taggers. In fact, that is where the rift began. With the tagging.

They don't acknowledge that slash is opinion-based. Although this is an understudied area, I have a hypothesis. Shipping is based on love. If you love both the people in the pairing, you will write slash about them, because slash fiction is an expression of love, primarily. There are some kinky bits and pieces here and there, but they are a byproduct of the love that the writer may have. Some people cant slash Jared for some reason. One fan [not a shipper, this is just an example] said, her brother [or was it her cousin] looks exactly like Jared. She posted his picture, and if I hadn't read the caption, I would have thought that it was really Jared. So I can understand if she doesn't want to slash Jared with anyone. It would be weird for her because then she will have to write about him romantically. One fan said [and this was years ago] that Jensen looks identical to her uncle. She would never ship him or his character with anyone, because she would be repulsed. I feel Jensen is one of the most beautiful men on Earth. That is my opinion. My cousin watched the scene where Dean is crying over Sam's dead body. He wipes his tears and when his hands were in the frame, my cousin said ''he has ugly fingernails''. Did I get offended? No. That is her opinion. To her, his finger nails really are ugly. And yet she thinks he has a handsome face. I read a Sevin fic where the writer said, ''Jared has such hot knuckles''. She is gushing over an obscure body part, because that is probably what she likes. Hellers don't understand that. They want everyone to like the same people, for the same reasons, in the same manner. No diversion from that collective opinion is allowed. People's desires are not uniform. How they perceive beauty is also not uniform. I call Misha ugly, partly because I don't appreciate being told to put my head in an oven and partly because [in my eyes] his behavior made me become sexually put off by him. I used to slash him before. Believe me, Misha only started to look ugly to me, when I started to really not like him. For eight years he was nice looking. Now I cant stand him and he is the most hideous beast I have ever seen. That is not just my thinking. I am certain other anti-Misha fans feel the same way. They used to like him and find him attractive, until he just put them off. I am sure if Misha did a 360 and changed his ways, he might start to look nice to us once more. So technically Misha lost fans because of his own behavior.

Hellers think that J2 fans are as crazy as they are. They think bibros love J2 the same way that they love Misha. Blindly. In the years that I watched SPN, I remember falling in and out of love with both Jensen and Jared [and Sam and Dean for that matter] based on something that they had done that I had liked or didn't like. Sometimes where I was emotionally, also played a part how I felt about them, or any other human being for that matter. People's opinions over an individual will change due to various issues. Just recently Jensen said something I didn't approve of. Sometimes Jared puts his foot in his mouth. They are human so they will mess up. If they make one stupid mistake, I let it go only because messing up is not something that they consistently do, unlike Misha who doesn't acknowledge or learn from his mistakes. If they consistently do things to cause a rift in fandom, then there are other celebrities out there. I don't need them. I will move on. So I acknowledge, that just because I like someone, it doesn't mean that he is perfect and will never mess up. It also means that because I like someone, it is not necessary for other people to like him too. Even amongst bibros, we have minor disagreements J2 but we don't hate each other based of differences of opinions. We don't insist that our opinion is the right one. In the heller camp, meta writers think for everyone. They decide how people are going to perceive a scene, or a moment during a panel. In fact, the lower level hellers leaving the actual watching of the show to the meta writers. They skip episodes that don't include Cas. That is a lot of episodes they are missing, because Misha, up till this year, was only allocated a fixed number of episodes per season in his contract. The meta writers watch the episodes through their shipping goggles, looking for what they would consider subtext, and then they write essays based on the episode, and the possible subtext they have found, including flimsy things like shirt colors. The lower level hellers read it and become affronted that SPN is queer baiting them so blatantly. They do the same thing with panels. Instead of watching the generously shared panels on YouTube, for free, they follow a high level heller on social media who attends the con, and tweets something they perceive to be slashily scandalous. They especially look for something to get offended by, when Jared speaks. So the lower level hellers were not forming their own opinion but basing how they feel on someone else's opinion. They hate Jared because of reasons listed by someone else. If they were smart, they would think for themselves.

There is nothing wrong with any of the ships on SPN. Do I believe all ships are equal? Well on SPN, to a certain extent, sure. If someone doesn't like wincest, because they are victims of incest, that would make sense. Wincest fans who acknowledge the abuse are friends of mine. Those that are cruel about it, are not. Its as simple as that. I am a victim of pedophilia. So I hate weecest. I don't go near weecest fic. If weecest fans acknowledge this and leave me alone, there wont be any problems. If they try to push their kink onto me by trying to tell me how wrong my opinion is, then they will be sorry. But you cant call yourself a victim, by going where you are likely to find a trigger and them complaining that you are being triggered. Not only are you looking for trouble, but you are making abuse victims and their triggers look trivial. Because now they appear like Divas, whom everyone else has to bend over backwards to please. This allows me to segue into a similar topic. I have heard complaints from fans, looking up a general SPN fan fic, investing time to read it, only for their enthusiasm to come to a screeching halt because as the chapters progress, Dean comes out as bi and in love with Cas. Shouldn't the writer notify the reader that she or he is reading a destiel fanfic. Not only are they mistagging their Tumblr posts. They are mistagging fanfiction. Essentially they are duping people into reading their stories. What kind of indoctrination logic is this?

Hellers need to understand that Destiel is not the biggest ship on SPN. If they insist that it is, then they have to quantify that opinion with a number. They wont because the last time they did that, the number went up to 8000 and stalled. That makes them 1% of the fandom and they hate being reminded of it. They have done debunking essays with regards to the number, but then why not do the census again. Don't debunk with your words. Use actual data. Prove to ''all the haters'' that there are millions of you, voting with your remote and contributing to the ratings in the USA alone. We will never bring up the number again. Hellers need to also understand that slash is not the point of SPN. The show is not about love and kinks and soap opera nonsense. It is about the supernatural, hence the name. Insisting on making Destiel canon and destroying Jensen's reputation by calling him a bigot because he refuses to do so, is a nasty thing to do, because hellers are not the only ones watching SPN. Everyone is, and they like the show as it is. They don't want change. In fact, it will surprise you to know that wincest fans don't want wincest as a romance, to be canon. They don't demand anything accept better storylines. The only people doing the demanding are the hellers. It is time for dialogue to open between the destiel fans and the hellers, because the hellers are ruining not just the ship but the show as well.

I hope this answers the question. Thank you once again, for the ask.

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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Sam has no right to be called Jack's father apparently

It is my tagging policy never to tag anything in the anti tags, because headcanons, like the Dr Sexy one, ends up becoming a stupid con question. And when Jensen fittingly answers that destiel doesn't exist, he called a homophobic so loudly, that mass media hears the accusation. Not to mention the various threats that hellers throw at J2. Now I have no problems with headcanons, as long as you keep it in your sandbox, labelled correctly as a headcanon and don't convince other people that it is true. Look at the tagging on this monstrosity that an awesome person directed me to.

It was written by someone called @sassycaslovesdean who wrote the post ''Destiel is canon already''. And this is how she tags it. Kindly excuse my highlighting efforts. I am getting vintage. All the tags that are highlighted should not be attached to this post because they have nothing to do with this post. Even Castiel is a general tag. Destiel fans don't have a monopoly to it, in fact some Cas fans hate destiel. I am uncertain about supernatural and unhuman nature, but if I was a destiel shipper who was not looking for trouble, I would have tagged this big bucket of delusion as #destiel #headcanon. That's it. Nothing else is needed.

Of course, disgruntled people told @sassycaslovesdean about her tagging, so it isn't like she doesn't know. She knows. She just doesn't care. What a coincidence. Neither do I.

One person, and I absolutely chuckled about this, simply said:

Before proceeding to tell the OP off about her delusion. I don't blame that person at all. In fact, I am inspired to follow suit. @sassycaslovesdean, I will never tell you how to tag. I will carry on tagging the way I deem fit because clearly I am not the only one doing that. Since you put this stupid post in the public domain, I guess that is an invitation to tear it apart. Invitation accepted.

The first word Jack said was Father. And he said it to the first human he ever saw. And that was Sam. Cas died for no reason, woke up in the Empty, irritated the entity who lived there and got flung back to Earth. That entire storyline was useless and didn't add anything to the seminal storyline. It also took away from Crowley's sacrifice. Cas had no reason to die. And he had no reason to come back because there is literally nothing for him to do in the script. If you remove him, nothing will change in the script or in Jack's life. The reason Jack assumed that Castiel was his father, was because Kelly made that decision for him. She probably assumed that this tough angel wont be stupid enough to get himself killed the minute her baby is born. He didn't choose Castiel. He and Sam chose each other. Castiel was dumped on him. I guess the same way Castiel is dumped on the Winchesters and the rest of us. And Castiel is more like a babysitter. Sam leaves Jack in Cas's pointless company whenever he goes away.

Really? Is something wrong with your eyes? Because I know Sam was freaking out from the bunker all the way to hospital. Dean and the babysitter stood there while Sam fretted. Dean is more like an uncle. Uncles do cool stuff with their nephews like take them fishing and on road trips. He had never nurtured Jack. Neither has Castiel. Sam, and only Sam, has done that. Every single time Dean and Cas are in the frame, the director is not sending you secret subtexts. They are just in the same frame. That's it. There is no secret destiel subtexts coming to you through props, camera angles, and blocking. You are embarrassing yourself.

There is only one ''I love you'' in canon. The one that was excluded was Jensen's decision. He didn't want to say I love you to Castiel. Canon counts. Scripts don't. The only reason why you know about the deleted ''I love you'', is because Misha told you, even though he was instructed not to. And Jensen got abused for it on the internet. But Misha is totes a true friend, right? Profound bond is angel-speak for best friend. For someone who likes the character, you don't know much about him. He doesn't speak like normal people. Profound bond is not proof of canon destiel.

Dean and Cas are NOT raising a child together. They don't even have that much screen time together, something that Jensen confessed to enjoying. Dean only recently started to bond with the boy, whom he initially wanted to kill. I don't blame him. Jack is a spawn of satan and Dean reacted the way I expected him to. It gels with his character. Of course, hellers who had already cooked up the ''Dean and Cas are going to raise a baby together'' delusion in their goldfish brains, were very angry that Dean was not being all Papa Bear, and [wait for it] wanted him off the show. I saw the outbursts on Wayward Winchester's YouTube channel.

When Sam died, Jack yelled at Cas to bring him back. Jack didn't want to lose his father. When Luci pit father and son against each other, Jack was willing to kill himself rather than hurt his father. And he said ''I love you'' before he could kill himself. Are you blind? Did you not see that? You know how I know he said I love you. Its in the canon. That is how I know. And Luci refered to Sam as ''daddy Sammy''. Nobody contradicted him. Are you deaf? Did you not hear that?

Anytime anyone has plans for Jack, they ask for Sam's permission. Even Dean follows that unspoken rule. That is the decent thing to do. You ask for a father's permission before going anywhere near his kid. Especially a father like Sam who will kill you on the top if you go anywhere near his son without his permission. When Jack dreams, its about Sam and Dean, not about Cas. Maybe that is why he said ''You did the same thing with your father'' when referring to Dean going fishing with John. Maybe Jack wants Sam AND Dean to be his fathers. That's why he dreams about them. And NOT Cas.

Cas is excluded because Cas is not even an afterthought. He is an obligation Mommy dumped on Jack. And a very pointless one at that. And Alex sharing a resemblance with Misha is subtext? Don't be stupid. Alex looks like Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack Dawson too. Does that mean, Dawson is going to make an appearance on Supernatural covered in ice, claiming parental rights over Jack? I know that sounds stupid, but so does your meta. That was the face the poor kid was born with. Leave him alone, silly heller. Stop reminding the poor child. Because Misha does that already. Imagine telling a child ''I think your mother slept with me.'' Yes, that is so funny. That is not crossing any lines of decency at all. Alex's father must love this guy.

Thanks to all the people who inadvertently contributed to this posts by lashing out at the heller. You guys reminded me of many things.

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