Neil Gaiman's Favorite Trope

Old collage for Måneskin bc im perpetually in love

Crystal being too young to know how a VHS works and Edwin too old is my favorite underrated joke of the whole show

people who don’t wear glasses will never understand the absolute humiliation of dropping your glasses under your bed or in a dark area and feeling around on all fours muttering “my glasses…. where are my glasses” like fucking Velma Dinkley and thinking to yourself BOY WOULD THIS BE A LOT EASIER IF I COUKD FUCKING SEE

"I'm a top" "I'm a bottom" okay??? I am an arms dealer???? fitting you with weapons in the form of words?????

Dracula poster, but it's actually Nandor because he's quoting Dracula far too many times in this last season 👀

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Paul's grief over time: A Compilation

“During the session [in 1981] Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. He said, ‘I’ve just realized that John is gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he is not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just hit him. ‘Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just realized." (Eric Stewart)

“It’s still weird even to say, ‘before he died’. I still can’t come to terms with that. I still don’t believe it. It’s like, you know, those dreams you have, where he’s alive; then you wake up and… 'Oh’.” (Paul, 1986)

"Occasionally, it wells up. Y'know, and I'm at home on the weekend suddenly and I start thinking about him or talking to the kids about him and I can't handle it." (Paul, 1987)

"Is there a record you like to put on just to hear John’s voice?" I ask Paul the next day. Paul looks startled. He fumbles. “Oh, uh. There’s so much of it. I hear it on the car radio when I’m driving.” No, that’s not what I mean", I persist. "Isn’t there a time when you just wish you could talk to John, when you’d like to hear his voice again?" For some reason, he instead responds to the original question.“Oh sure,” he says and looks a little taken aback. ‘Beautiful Boy". (1990)

"Also not obvious is that McCartney [for the Liverpool Oratorio] has penned a gorgeous black-spiritual-like piece for mezzo-soprano that intones the last words spoken to John Lennon as he lay dying of gunshot wounds in the back of a New York police car -- "Do you know who you are?" McCartney gets a bit choked up at one point when he reveals, "Not a day goes by when I don't think of John.” (1991)

"Delicious boy, delicious broth of a boy. He was a lovely guy, you know. And it gets sadder and sadder to be saying “was”. Nearer to when he died I couldn’t believe I was saying “was”, but now I do believe I’m saying “was”. I’ve resisted it. I’ve tried to pretend he didn’t get killed." (Paul, 1995)

"Paul talked about John a a lot, but the strange thing was that it was in the present tense, “John says this" or "John thinks that. Very weird." (Peter Cox, 2006)

“John Lennon was shot dead in 1980. That totally knocked dad for six. I haven’t really spoken to him a lot about it because it is such a touchy subject." (James McCartney, 2013)

"It's very difficult for me and I, occasionally, will have thoughts and sort of say: "I don't know why I don't just break down crying every day? […] You know, I don't know how I would have dealt with it because I don't think I've dealt with it very well. In a way… I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist would sort of find out that I'm slightly in denial, because it's too much." (Paul, 2020)

"Like any bereavement, the only way out is to remember how good it was with John. Because I can't get over the senseless act. I can't think about it. I'm sure it's some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it." (Paul, 2020)

"When I talked to Paul about John and when he missed John most, he couldn't answer me for a long time and his eyes teared up. And I asked him where he thinks about John and when John comes into his mind and he just … he lost it, he completely lost it." (Bob Spitz, 2021)

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The following two are from the gossip website Datalounge, so they may or may not be true. Still interesting though:

"The one time I was ever actually in a room with Paul, zillion people between me and him (and no way I'm gonna bother him, all of us who travel in celeb circles have people we're fans of and all of us inexplicably try to hide it to seem "cooler"), he started talking loudly about himself and John, and how hard it was not to have him there. I remember him saying something along the lines of not a day passing that John's not still in it with him, but it's not like he can pick up a phone and say, "Hey, just needed to hear your voice today," and even when he got craggy responses, he still missed them. He misses it all, and it's bothering to him that he misses him more as time goes on -- it doesn't heal, he just learns new ways to bandage the wound."

“Since everyone is anonymous here, I guess I can give a bit of info I got from a female friend of mine who at one time worked as one of Paul’s assistants. [...] She does not know for certain if John and Paul were involved but she suspects it since to this day whenever John’s name is brought up he acts in her words ‘like a widow’ and he also addresses John in present tense. He would say things like, ‘John thinks that the music should be like this,’ and during his bitter divorce from Heather he was saying, ‘John says that this is getting nasty.’ Kind of creepy." (this one actually seems very intriguing because it sounds very similar to what Peter Cox said, about Paul often talking about John in the present tense, saying "John says.." or "John thinks...")

jonathan harker on may 12th: i witnessed with abject terror as the count descended the sheer stone wall of the castle face first as a lizard would. the unmitigated horror of the spectacle haunts my waking hours like an inescapable nightmare. this man or this thing shall surely be my undoing.

jonathan harker on may 15th: saw the old bastard do the crawling trick again and honestly fuck him it's not even that impressive i don't even care anymore i hope he falls.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 2.08: And That's The End of It. There's Nothing Else IWTVTwT Version.

Kinda feel like there's some untapped meme/reaction image potential from old horror movie trailers...

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.