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doctorloup · 9 months

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ACTUALLY FUCK IT, I WILL ELABORATE, STRAP IN, BITCHES

Let me first make the following statements - 1) I come not to bin Caesar but to praise him. WOE.BEGONE is beautiful chaos, an erratic smorgasbord of musical talent, and complex characterisation. I respect this craft, I see how much work has gone into it and I am deeply impressed. Multiple ten-minute plus long fucking musical numbers, season finales with three whole songs in them. The memetic virus that is Old Brush Valley. Wild. 2) However, apart from respecting the music, I massively bounced off this podcast the first time I tried to listen to it, because I found the protagonist such an awful damp weasel of a man. I do not like the wet cat men so beloved of tumblr. I find them deeply annoying. No shade on you all but your kink is not my kink etc. I bounced off it so hard that I actually confused it with Ostium which I listened to around at the same time, and I would describe as fun and poignant, but really rather heterosexual. Woe.Begone is not remotely heterosexual. It is gayer than Quentin Crisp in a little Sailor Suit, gayer than the letter Bram Stoker sent to Walt Whitman saying "I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked". Gay as Elton John in a feather boa riding up Brokeback Mountain on a bear while sniffing poppers and quoting Oscar Wilde. I should have known. I should have guessed from the fans being absolutely feral nightmare gnomes. They reminded me of the Stellar Firma fans. That shrieking bucket of wild kobolds snorting ketamine and downing tide pods vibe. That should have been a warning. But they asked nicely and they politely invited me into the discord server and like a fool I humoured them. I gritted my teeth at the horribly flawed characters and I stuck with it….

Spoilers follow.

::deep breath::

MIKE WALTERS? Stupid idiot motherfucking Mike Walters goddamn fool multiple murderous alternately callous and arrogant shithead or wet as depressed otter’s pocket sociopathic-ARG-playing biggest varmint in the west cowboy motherfucking MIKE WALTERS WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK DID I JUST LISTEN TO? WHAT IS THIS CASUALLY/DELIBERATELY VIOLENT SLAPSTICK TIME TRAVEL FUCKING COSPLAY MURDER FEST? COWBOYIFICATION? Okay I understand this is a clever way for the VA to distinguish between characters played by the same guy, weird fetish aye but I’ve seen worse BUT WHY THE FUCK DOES NEARLY EVERY OTHER CHARACTER DO IT TOO JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ON A BISCUIT IN GRAVY I ALMOST STARTED DOING IT MYSELF MULTIPLE TIMES I HAD TO DRINK TEA AND THINK OF ENGLAND TO STOP MYSELF SAYING GET ALONG LITTLE DAWGIE shit here we go again help RULE BRITANNIA WHAT WHAT YOU WON'T GET ME YA BASTARDS

AND ANOTHER THING: IN THE HISTORY OF NARRATIVE NO PROBLEM HAS IN ANY WAY EVER BEEN SOLVED BY RAISING THE DEAD jesus doesn’t count anyway that was consensual NON-CONSENSUALLY RAISING THE DEAD AND THE FACT THIS ENTIRE CLUSTERFUCK STARTED WITH THAT SHOULD BE EXTREMELY TELLING HOLY FUCK every time I hear him talk I just want to shriek OH MY GOD WHY CAN’T YOU GET THERAPY WHY DO YOU KEEP REPEATEDLY RETRAUMATISING EVERY VERSION OF YOURSELF I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND EXPLAIN TO ME WHY ANYTHING YOU EVER DID FROM EPISODE 1 ONWARDS WAS EVER A GOOD IDEA AND YET I COULDN’T STOP LISTENING, SOMETIMES OUT OF SPITE, SOMETIMES OUT OF A HORRIFIED DESIRE TO SEE WHAT HE FUCKS UP NEXT it was like listening to a car crash in slow motion sweartaefuck.

HOW CAN SO MUCH ABJECT HYPOCRISY, USELESSNESS AND NAKED SELF-INTEREST BE CRAMMED INTO THE BODY OF ONE, AND I USE THIS WORD LOOSELY, MAN?? NOT TO MENTION THE FRANKLY HETEROSEXUAL LEVELS OF TOXIC MASCULINITY FUCKSAKE AND WHILE I’M HERE HEY LETS TALK ABOUT THE OTHER CHARACTERS. Edgar “Inexplicably Evil Gluten-free Postman”, Anne “I support my transfemme sisters but fuck this may be too far”, Marisa “Where in the holy fuck do you keep getting that tank?!” Ng, Matt “I thought you were too sensible to get involved in this nonsense but boy was I wrong”, Ty “No amount of apparently learning to respect boundaries will make up for this level of affably psychotic ‘For Science and the Greater Good’ leering viciousness” Betteridge, Я осуждаю тебя за то, что ты оставил свою собаку с Майками Борисом, Felix “Criminal Offence Against Oreos”, Hunter “Somehow worse than the protagonist, apparently that’s possible” Hartley, Sylvester August “Actually this character isn’t absolutely terrible, which is weird for a Harlan character, I’m usually immediately sus of anyone he plays carry on sir“ Baxter. HAVE I JUST GONE TO THE very helpful thank you WIKI SO I CAN ENSURE I HAVE VENTED ABOUT EVERYONE I WANT TO in this fucking TRAUMA POLYCULE YES I HAVE

(Hey one second voice actors I hope you know I adore you even those of you who are CLEARLY COMPLICIT in this unstable lunacy anyway it was cool waiting to see which of you would voice the FUCKING MONSTER PEOPLE) 14/10 absolute fucking masterpiece, I look forward to the next episode so I can SCREAM LIKE A BANSHEE AND CALL DOWN THE WRATH OF EVERY HARPY IN EXISTENCE TO WREAK SHREDDING VIOLENCE ON MIKE. FUCKING. WALTERS.

#NO TAGS NO MASTERS except this one NAE QUIN NAE KING WE WILLNAE BE FOOLT AGIN

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avauntus · 3 years

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Supernatural - a retrospective

This is super self-indulgent, and I have so much else I’ve promised-- I owe a long-fic rec post, and ao3 comments, wip work, and that’s just my fandom stuff I’m behind on. *sigh*

But it’s late on a Saturday and now I’ve finished Supernatural, I want to share what I think are my top few eps, and a few other comments. I promise some of this will be different from the “greatest hits” you probably usually see, and I’ll try to make it worth your time. *wry smile*

Look, we have to have categories like: “Most Likely to Live in My Head Rent-Free for the Rest of my Life” and “Most Likely to Inspire Unnecessary Fanfiction” that are different from “Favorites,” because that’s just the cursed energy this show has. ;-)

My top five

#5 - 13.01 - “Lost and Found”

Written by: Andrew Dabb | Directed by: Phil Sgriccia

In fandom, this is most often referred to as the start of the “Grieving Widower” arc, tongue-in-cheek. Also has Alexander Calvert (Jack) walking around completely in the nude for the first third of the ep. (Neither of these are why this is in my top 5, but he has a good story about wardrobe for his ‘first day.’)

I didn’t expect much out of this episode the first time I watched it, but I’ve gone over this ‘section’ of the show maybe 3-4 times in my Netflix catch-up, and I watch this one in full every time. From Jack being...not at all what anyone expected and an unsteady vindication, to the stunning cinematography (there’s a post that compares shots to Brokeback Mountain, but I think the shots here might be better), to the sheriff who takes the time to remind her deputy that “...there’s no such thing as ‘weird.’ Everyone’s normal in their own way,” to the slow reveal of exactly how hard the events of the previous night (12x23 - All Along the Watchtower) are hitting Dean and Sam and in different ways...(how long the episode takes to reveal to you how Dean fucked up his hand, and what he was saying when he did. Augh!) The Winchesters are trying to rally, but they have been taking hits for a long time, and the cracks are showing.

#4 - 15.06 - “Golden Time”

Written by: Meredith Glynn | Directed by: John F. Showalter

Supernatural has a terrible track record with representation in all stripes. It is infamously consistent in killing off anyone minority, female, or non-White. One of the interesting things about the chaotic meta-narrative of season 15 is you can see the lack of fucks some of the writer’s room had to give about not even being subtle about tearing down that type of ‘White-male-hero-journey” now that they were in a literal “what will they do, fire me?” situation.

I’m a Cas fan, and this episode, which gives him an actual, ‘case-of-the-week’ hunter’s narrative where he gets to save the day on his own, successfully, was wonderful. I love that for him! But more than that, for me, this episode is emotional to me for other reasons-- the way Dean and Cas circle around each other on their angry phone call (with the body language! They are broadcasting so LOUD and neither can see because they’re on the phone!), Sam’s story here, where he’s inheriting things from Rowena that allow him in turn to save Eileen, to Cas’ speech and quick anger at the lake when you reflect on his entire journey of self-realization from a soldier of blind faith to an agent of free will... “You selfish little men in your positions of authority...” I just... *clears throat, grabs tissue*

#3 - 6.20 - “The Man Who Would Be King”

Written & Directed by: Ben Edlund

Speaking of Cas’ journey... I know some folks don’t like the angst and drama of the ‘Heaven and Hell’ plots of Supernatural, but I am here for it. Oh, did we need another reason to include this episode? This has some of the most metal quotes I have heard from any TV show. Ever.

I mean, look at this:

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have said: Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.”

“Explaining freedom to angels is a bit like explaining poetry to fish.”

The delivery of: “It's not too late. Damn it, Cas! We can fix this!” “Dean, it’s not broken!” is one of those Supernatural bits that will live in my head until the end of time. All of Edlund’s episodes are among my favorites, but this (along with “5.04 - The End”) was on another level.

#2 - 5.16 - “Dark Side of the Moon”

Written by: Andrew Dabb & Daniel Loflin | Directed by: Jeff Wollnough

I think of this episode every time I hear Bob Dylan sing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” This is kinda a giant montage episode, but the connecting concepts are so...satisfying.

“Heaven is your favorite memories.” “ It’s called the axis mundi. It’s a path that runs through heaven. Different people see it as different things. For you, it’s two-lane asphalt.” “This is your idea of heaven? Wow, this was one of the worst nights of my life.” “I don’t think I realized how long you’ve been cleaning up Dad’s messes.” “It’s awesome to finally have an application—a practical application—for string theory.” “Everyone leaves you, Dean. You noticed?” “Why is God talking to me? Gardner-to-gardener, and between us, I think he gets lonely.” “You son of a bitch, I believed in... ” Whoosh.

#1 - 4.01 - “Lazarus Rising”

Written by: Eric Kripke | Directed by: Kim Manners

So...this is the episode where Castiel, angel of thee Lord, shows up. And that’s primarily why it earns the no. 1 spot, because 80% of my enjoyment of Supernatural from this point on was Cas-adjacent. Plus this entire episode just hits. ALL OF IT. Dean’s homecoming. Ruby, my darling. Bobby’s entire vibe. Pamela Barnes, easily one of the most interesting women Supernatural ever introduced. Cas being so hot to say “Hi” to Dean he forgets he wounds people.

But beyond that-- the way the show writes their ‘oh, by the way, angels’ narrative! If you haven’t seen this episode, would you believe me if I told you that THIS EPISODE, the episode where Supernatural said “canonically, Judeo-Christian Heaven is real, btw” involves no churches but does involve a séance, a soulmark handprint brand, and a himbo angel that “gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition”...but they were all “no homo, guys” for years?

Truly no one was out here doing it like Supernatural even back in 2008.

Others--

15.18 - “Despair”

“Most Likely to Live Rent-Free in My Head for the Rest of my Life”

Written by: Robert Berens | Directed by: Richard Speight, Jr.

You know why this episode is here. It broke reality. I could be wrong-- but I’d put good money on this episode being the subject of academic theses in the future. That doesn’t automatically make for interesting story, but...

Has there ever been a case, in a mainstream US TV show where a major lead character (Cas) came out as queer so late in the game in a narratively-important way? I’m not aware of it, but I might just be behind on my television.

This episode has great writing, and (blessedly) amazing direction and blocking anyway. Check out the above gif - that is some next level foreshadowing going on in the cinematography, and this isn’t even the most remarked upon shot in this episode. (Seriously, I had to search for 40 minutes for this gif, please respect my game, lol.) Everyone who was involved in 15x18 is giddy talking about their investment, from the costume designer to the actors to the director to the writer...

...And then a bunch of them steadfastly have avoided posting much Supernatural-related since. So that’s...loud. There is a bunch of subtext in this episode that is screamingly loud; there is a bunch of text in this episode that makes several things clear fandom has been chattering over for years and years. The meta-commentary around this episode continues, months later. There are over 700 fics on AO3 with this episode tag.

I have more to say about the themes of ‘free will’ and ‘love’ and ‘identity’ tied to this episode, but seriously-- you’ve probably read 17 versions of it on Tumblr already, so.

This is the last time we see Cas, and the last time Supernatural can claim anything close to narrative consistency. For that alone, it’d earn free head-space.

Runners-up: “4.20 - The Rapture”; “5.04 - The End”; “7.21 - Reading is Fundamental”; “8.21 - The Great Escapist”; “9.06 - Heaven Can’t Wait”; “12.19 - The Future”; “14.08 - Byzantium”

6.17 - “My Heart Will Go On”/8.07 - “A Little Slice of Kevin”

“Most Likely to Inspire Unnecessary Fanfiction”

Written by: Eric Charmelo & Nicole Snyder (6.17); Brad Buckner & Eugenie Ross-Leming | Directed by: Phil Sgriccia (6.17); Charlie Carner (8.07)

Usually the show kills off it’s “one-episode” female characters, but do you know one time it didn’t? When the Moirai (the Fates - specifically Atropos, the shearer of the Threads of Fate) showed up in canon in 6.17. She was posited to have “two older sisters that were bigger than her- in every sense of the word,” ...and Castiel had to back down when she challenged him to a cosmic game of chicken over the Winchester’s lives.

Then they never returned to that idea again.

“A Little Slice of Kevin” is on here for the opposite reason -- an amazing idea that was really underwritten in the episode it showed up in. Dean Winchester has been dragging himself across the fabric of universes; the literal Word of God is in play in a warehouse in Middle America; Cas is back from Purgatory, but what does that mean, micro and macro? As a person on the street, what would it mean, or feel like, to learn you were a Prophet of the Lord, uncalled? That what you are, everything you are, is a cosmic contingency?

Maybe Fate has an opinion on all these shenanigans?

Perhaps all that doesn’t make sense, but it certainly made an impression on ~2012 me. To this day, it remains the WIP I can open up and fool myself with the ‘twist.’ I wish I remembered where I was going with it so I could finish it.

Runners Up: “2.20 - What Is and What Should Never Be”; “5.04 - The End”; “6.15 - The French Mistake”; 12.12 - “Stuck in the Middle (with you)”; “13.05 - Advanced Thanatology” “14.03 - The Scar”; “14.10 - Nihilism”; “15.15 - Gimme Shelter” ... and “15.20 - Carry On” (obviously)

Fifteen seasons. There were plenty of other episodes I loved that didn’t make these limited lists. But overall -- thank you, Supernatural, for the run. Even if I’m upset at the ending, I can appreciate the game. If you watch the show, what were your favorite episodes?

#spn #supernatural #meta #review

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ambthecreative · 3 years

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DESTIEL RANT! Unpopular Opinion Time - The Scene was NOT Homophobic

Wow. It’s BEEN YEARS! And yet here I am again! I have returned to my Tumblr roots, rambling about Supernatural again! I have come full circle! Summoned by three words spoken by the Angel of the Lord we all knew and loved. But lets get down to business. Everyone’s going crazy. They either loved it, hated it, loved/hated it, hated/loved it, etc. Even people who never watched an episode felt the need to add their two cents without any context or with extreme bias. So here’s the observations from a former Supernatural Fan and intense DESTIEL SHIPPER, but also one who has stopped watching it cause omfg it sucks so bad now. My bias comes from both angles and thus neutralizes each other out xD Obviously, spoilers for Episode 18 of Season 15 of Supernatural lay ahead. ~~~

(TL;DR: The scene wasn’t bad because it was forced or homophobic. It was neither. The scene was bad because of long term poor plotting, repetitive character arcs and horrendous timing and execution. That said, my shipping heart is just happy that it happened at all. <3 ) ONWARDS! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lets just get to the point. At first glance, that scene looks extremely homophobic and when it was first described to me (I haven’t watched the show since Season 9), it appears that is indeed the case. And you can make a STRONG case for it to, if you watched that scene and knew of all the fucking queer bait we had to live through before getting here. But I watched the entire episode. And I think this is key. Cause while it’s easy to say its all homophobic, that’s not actually what was happening. The truth is, the episode is a set up for the ending. Sure it seems to be framed that Castiel is sent to the Empty for being gay, but that’s the bias talking. Contextually, Castiel is sent to the Empty for being Truly Happy. Also EVERYONE dies. Funny how no one is up in arms that Charlie’s GF got poofed at the very start of the episode. Not gay enough for it to count? Like she literally made her girlfriend breakfast and they were flirting, and boom she was gone FOREVER, not sent to a place where people have come back from before, but with NO EVIDENCE of them being alive at all. Dead. Gone. But no one says a damn thing. And then EVERYONE died. THEN Cas died. And yet everyone got like temporary amnesia and its like, “CASTIEL WAS KILLED FOR BEING GAY!!!” That’s...not what happened tho. What’s really sad is the moment with Castiel was actually a GREAT plot point/twist, if only they had done it better. NO ONE would be saying SHIT if Castiel had been a woman. NO ONE. Or at least, they would mostly see it as tragic than anything else. But because Castiel is making a homosexual love confession, it must BE because he’s GAY! It’s really ironic. Judging that scene as homophobic is ACTUALLY homophobic* (not really, but i can’t think of a better word). Or at least you’re judging the scene by their sexuality and not by what is actually going on. Now I remembered something after thinking about this scene for a while. THIS PLOT POINT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE IN ANOTHER EVEN MORE ICONIC SHOW!!! Now bear with me cause I never watched the whole thing, only the bits and pieces my roommate shared with me. But the whole “I am cursed to suffer a terrible fate if I ever experience true happiness” has been done before. And where was that?

Spoilers for Buffy by the way. SO! To all those who are still trying to spin this as platonic, you need to watch more shitty afterschool 90s supernatural TV shows. In season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Buffy’s good vampire boyfriend, wakes up evil because he had a moment of true happiness. And this dooms the couple. NOW. Do you call this...heterophobia???? Oh I hear you! “But Angel didn’t die and he and Buffy got to be romantic and actually have sex before that shit went down! Not the same thing!” TRUE. I didn’t really bring this up to make an argument that the scene/show isn’t homophobic (or at least they are very uncomfortable with it), but rather I wanted to make a point that the PLOT POINT is not at all homophobic and is actually really awesome. The issue with the scene is the execution. That moment between Cas and Dean should have happened SEASONS ago or at the VERY LEAST earlier in this FINAL season, and not right at the very end. The other reason why it worked so well with Buffy is that they had plenty of episodes afterwards to go into it, have Buffy react to it, and deal with it and such. Meanwhile SPN, still BLATANTLY uncomfortable with handling this sort of thing, decided to put Castiel away in a dark closet and then put forth an end the world plotline by killing EVERYONE so Dean is too busy to actually think and talk about it for any real length of time XD. I wouldn’t use the word homophobic for it, because it wasn’t used as a joke, it wasn’t used to demean gay people, it wasn’t meant to say “if you are homosexual, you go to hell.”

That’s not it at all. The only reason people think that is because they’ve been hurt in the past so many times, by religion and government and truly homophobic media, and this scene triggers that hurt. HOWEVER, if you look at that scene without that lens, it’s more cowardly and insecure, than homophobic. Cause at the end of the day, that’s the whole problem with Supernatural. They never commit. Their writing is lazy and weak because they don’t have the writing chops to actually GO FOR IT.

They are constantly at war with the writing, the ratings/money, and the general public views. They constantly add poc and homosexual characters, but are too afraid to actually do anything with them in fear of doing it poorly and upsetting people (and honestly, it’s a valid fear XD). I stopped watching Supernatural cause the writing is HORRIBLE. It has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with the fact its all over the place, there’s no stakes, the power escalation is shot to hell, they keep saying SIKE when they do kill people, no changes last forever, and it should have ended SEASONS ago. Its BAD. But in regards to homosexuality, the fact that they used a plot point that the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer used but used it on two characters of the same sex is actually AMAZING. YES it was CRINGY. The handprint was cringy! They were trying WAY too hard to make it different than the other 1000000 times Castiel died for Dean. But it was their poor plotting, their overuse of killing and bringing back people, the fact Dean and Cas never actually even toyed with the idea of romance openly in the entire show, that caused this scene to not shine as brightly as it could have.

THAT SAID.

HOLY SHIT CASTIEL LOVES DEAN! THATS AMAZING!!!! Ahem. Another reason why people get this scene so wrong is because they think writers are actual Gods. We are not. They are flawed and they are many and this show had WAY too many showrunners. AND IT SHOWS. But you know whos constant? The actors. Dean has never really changed. Jensen played him exactly as he’s always played him. ALWAYS. Any person who got mad that Dean didn’t sob or kiss Castiel needs to take off their gay fucking glasses and respect the fact that THAT ISN’T DEAN. HE’S NEVER BEEN THAT WAY. EVEN IF CASTIEL WAS A WOMAN HE WOULDNT HAVE ACTED THAT WAY.

Also Dean has been so BLATANTLY straight this WHOLE time. Now I’m not saying that the romantic feelings were not reciprocal. I’m saying we don’t fucking know XD Hell DEAN might not know, and honestly that would be the most realistic and best way to handle that. Do you know how FUCKED UP it would have been if Dean broke character and suddenly came out as Gay and totally fine with that and just acted like he’s been gay this WHOLE time even when it’s so obvious that he was not?!! Its like - Respect Homosexuality, but Disrespect all other sexualities. You can’t just force Dean to be Gay and Comfortable With That Fact (tm).

You can’t. And to expect and force Jensen Ackles to play his character, that he’s played for years that way, to tell him to fuck off how he’s BEEN playing him cause it’s not good enough anymore even though everyone ATE IT UP before Castiel came on screen, is an INSULT to him. I do think he can realize it. I think he can lean into it. I really do think it’s possible to do it in a way that’s realistic and still in character with how Jensen has played him all these years. But now, you’re all fucking entitled little nutcases if you think that Dean should bend to your fanfic fantasy as being head over heels in love with a man without any issue at all when there’s absolutely nothing in his backstory, childhood, or ANYTHING that would explain why he would be that way. I’m old as fuck, but you know how Dean SHOULD play it? Like Heath Ledger’s character in Brokeback Mountain. He didn’t exactly showed his emotions regarding the love of his fucking life immediately, now did he? BUT THAT SAID THIS ISNT BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN YOU HORNY FUCKS XDD Ahem. That’s also a reminder for myself XD ANYWAYS!!!

TL;DR: The scene wasn’t bad because it was forced or homophobic.

It was neither.

The scene was bad because of long term poor plotting, repetitive character arcs and horrendous timing and execution.

That said, my shipping heart is just happy that it happened at all. <3 The End. That is all

#supernatural #destiel #castiel #dean winchester #season 15 episode 18 #s15e18 #despair #spn #spoilers

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lordendsavior · 5 years

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In the latest episode of HBO’s new NSFW teen drama Euphoria, there was sex scene between Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson. Well, kinda. One of the characters in the show, Kat (played by Barbie Ferreira), is famous online for writing One Direction fan fiction, specifically about Larry Stylinson, the name given to the theory that Styles and Tomlinson were, in fact, lovers. The sex scene in the episode actually comprised of versions of the two former boyband members in an animated scene lifted from one of this character’s stories. It’s unfortunate that the animation left Styles looking a little like Lord Voldemort and Tomlinson like a sweaty teenage boy.

But while that aspect of the show might not have been real, the conspiracy of Larry Stylinson very much is. Since One Direction were launched off the back of The X Factor in 2010, Tomlinson and Styles have been dogged by rumours that they are embroiled in a love affair. On Tumblr – a breeding ground for fan theories, fan art, fan videos and fan fiction – fans would collect GIFs, images and videos of the pair that “proved” that they were in a relationship. A lingering glance was decoded as a lustful stare, the brush of knees during an interview a sign of a secret intimacy. These in turn would mutate into smutty fan fiction about the pair, where these unspoken sexual wants could play out in full explicit glory.

In the tradition of Bennifer and Brangelina, their names, like their desires, were brought together for the portmaneu Larry Stylinson. Shipping them – the act of wanting two people to be together romantically – became a way of life for some fans. To this day, these fans, known as Larries, are unwavering in their belief, love and support of Larry Stylinson.

The same cannot be said for Louis Tomlinson. For nearly nine years, he has been dogged by rumours and speculation about his relationship with Styles. This latest outing of Larry in Euphoria is just another example of the theory’s pervasiveness. After the scene aired, some fans on Twitter messaged Tomlinson to see if he had been consulted about the scene. His reply was telling. “I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it,” he wrote.

For years, Tomlinson has categorically denied that Larry is real. In 2012 he responded to a fan stating that “Larry is the biggest load of b——- I’ve ever heard”, and in a 2017 interview with The Sun, the Doncaster-born singer said that he found the rumours disrespectful of his relationships with women and shared how it had also affected his friendship with Styles. “It took away the vibe you get off anyone. It made everything, I think on both fences, a little bit more unapproachable,” he revealed. “I think it shows that it was never anything real, if I can use that word.”

The decision to include the animated Larry sex scene in Euphoria has provied divisive. On Twitter, One Direction fans have dubbed it “disrespectful”, “vile” and an “embarrassment”. Even self-professed Larries called out the scene and some fans went so far as to start a Change.org petition to have the scene removed from the episode. (At the time of writing it has over nearly 17,000 signatures.)

The fandom’s rejection of Larry, at first, seems hypocritical. How can the very people who have spent years perpetuating the narrative that Tomlinson and Styles are romantically linked show annoyance when that same narrative gets utilised in wider media? However, fandom, specifically fan fiction, is a contradictory and confusing beast. The thing is, Larry Stylinson is bigger than the two boyband members at its core. Their supposed romantic relationship really has nothing to do with them at all.

To give a brief history of fan fiction, the medium, while it always existed in some form, came to prominence in the 1970s in fanzines for the TV show Star Trek. Then known as slash fiction (the slash refers to the forward slash that divide the two characters, for example “Kirk/Spock”), these early writings reexamined scenes within Star Trek episodes where it appeared that there was coded queer behaviour, language or sexual tension. A chance meeting on the bridge of the USS Enterprise could result in steamy sex behind a computer console. A violent clash with a Klingon that left either Spock/Kirk injured, may end with a restorative tryst in a hospital wing.

As fan communities evolved from zines to online forums, so fan fiction became more widely accessible. Forums gave birth to sites like fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, where every intellectual property from Harry Potter to Bob the Builder was free game. And not every story written was sexual, either. Many fan fictions, while romantic in nature, kept their plots suitable for all ages. They also mainly took fictional characters and queered formerly heteronormative (or platonic) senarios.

Incorporating of real people – celebrities, public figures, popstars, actors, artists – into these stories propagated during this online boom of fan fanction. Portals like nifty.org had dedicated sections for celebrity fan fiction, while sites like Wattpad, a sort of social media site for writers to share their work, filled with stories about famous people. During One Direction’s imperial phase, Wattpad especially became a hive of 1D fan fiction.

And not all of it was slash fiction, either. Anna Todd’s popular YA novel After, which became a movie this year, had its beginnings as One Direction fan fiction on Wattpad. That story featured a heterosexual relationship. Her literary success follows in the footsteps of EL James, whose Twilight fan fiction was repackaged as 50 Shades of Grey.

Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that much fan fiction, smutty or not, specifically draws on queer narratives. The reasons for this are multi-faceted. Demographically, fan fiction is predominantly written by women. In the case of Spock and Kirk, it has been argued by academics that in queering their relationship, women were able to carve out safe sexual spaces in the world of fiction away from the dominant glare of patriarchal sexuality.

According to fandom academic Camille Bacon-Smith, the fact that the gender of the characters was the same allowed women to reconstruct men without the toxicity of masculinity. The American writer Joanna Russ added to this, suggesting that in this safe space, women were able to explore their fantasies outside the confines of heteropatriarchal normalcy.

In fact, Constance Penley, a professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote in her book Nasa/Trek Popular Science and Sex in America that the gender of the characters was irrelevant. The act of having characters acknowledge their homosexual desires, she argued, was a metaphorical one, grounded in a desire to change “oppressive sexual roles”.

Still, exploring sexual desire with fictional characters doesn’t feel like an ethical problem. Neither, really, do private fantasies about real people. But fan fiction takes those private fantasies and makes them public. If authors like JK Rowling and Annie Proulx (Brokeback Mountain) take umbrage with fans writing their own stories using their made up characters, how do real people feel about having their lives dissected and fictionalised for entertainment?

The problem is the blurred line between celebrity and the human being. As celebrity’s lives playout on websites, television and physical media, their real life stories – often fabricated for headlines or sales – become a sport. There’s a twisted sense of ownership over these people. The public, as a throbbing and beating entity, made them famous. Their payment is their lives. The boundaries begin to disappear, and these human beings become characters in a soap opera. The internet, which its unending ocean of content, only helps to conjure more moments that fans can decode or adapt for their fics.

The implications of this are different for everyone. Stars like Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott, who played Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty respectively in the BBC’s cult favourite Sherlock, take the fictionalised versions of their lives in their stride. In an interview with MTV, Cumberbatch, while acknowledging that he found some of the racier stories weird, called it “flattering”. Daniel Radcliff and James McAvoy also seemed to be able to find the humour in it (although, again, acknowledging that they find it “really weird"). There’s also those who just outright ignore that this phenomenon exists.

Harry Styles, despite being one half of Larry Stylinson, has only ever alluded to it once. After the release of his debut solo album, fans speculated that the track Sweet Creature was about Tomlinson. In an interview with a radio station, Styles said: “I think people are always gonna speculate what songs are about, and I don’t think I’d ever want to tell anyone that they’re wrong for feeling what they feel about a song. Even when they’re not necessarily right. But I think if you really listen to the lyrics, I think you can work out if it’s really about that or not, and I would lean towards no.”

However, this level of ambivalence isn’t always easy. In a recent interview with British GQ, Taron Egerton expressed his discomfort with people writing fan fiction about him. “I don’t know why people think I’d want to see that,” he said. “I don’t love it at all.”

It seems that Louis Tomlinson exists firmly in this camp. And unlike these other celebrities, the ship he was involved in evolved into a full blown conspiracy theory. Fans accused management of keeping his and Styles’s relationship a secret. Paparazzi pictures, performances, interviews, press cuttings, tweets and Instagram posts were dissected for clues that the pair were linked. Tomlinson and Styles were bombarded on Twitter by fans, the first comment under every post on social media almost always being “Larry is real”. That level of scrutiny would have been difficult for anyone, but for a teenager progressing into young adulthood it was unbearable.

What’s debatable is whether any of these fans and their libraries of “proof” and “receipts” actually believe that Larry Stylinson is real or whether shipping them is just an extension of their fan fiction fantasies. For the millions of One Direction fans, the members of the group, while clearly real people, were also mythic, so far removed from their realities that they were almost imaginary.

Anyone who has ever truly obsessed over a band or musician can understand that this distance between true human interaction incubates a need to develop an alternative form of intimacy, be it through listening religiously to their music, attending concerts or cooking up fantasies.

And because of the inequalities in knowledge between celebrities and non-celebrities, where we know everything about them and they know nothing about us, these fantasies, and in turn our perceptions of them, become skewered. This mutation is the perfect breeding ground for fan fiction and conspiracy theories as we attempt to fill in the blanks in our intimate knowledge of celebrity lives.

In the case of One Direction, whose fans were mainly young girls and gay boys, this fantasy became a way to explore their own sexual wants and desires. It’s what the showrunner of Euphoria, Sam Levinson, told The Los Angeles Times he was trying to convey by having the character of Kat write 1D fan fiction.

The fact that the members of that boyband were in a similar age bracket only intensified things. Intimacy and a coarse understanding of celebrity saw the lines between fantasy and reality blur, accelerated and magnified by social media. In a way, it stopped being about Styles or Tomlinson and became about the fans, the community they’d found, a safe space to explore their desires in which those desires were often mirrored and supported by others in their community.

Does all that make real person fan fiction okay? Speaking to i-D, sex psychologist Jess O’Reilly, put it like this: “How might is make someone feel? How would their parents, partner(s), kids or friends feel about reading it? How would they feel if their friends and family read your work? How would you feel if someone published a similar story about you, your child, your partner, your best friend, your sibling or someone else you love?”

For Tomlinson, who has repeatedly shared the impact the sexual speculation had on his relationship with Styles, maybe a line has been crossed. His discomfort with the theories and fan fiction, along with countless other public figures who take issue with it, should be respected.

And, really, in the pantheon of fandoms, Larry Stylinson was its own perfect storm of burgeoning internet cultures, the proliferation of social media and cute boys singing pop bangers. The need to share sexual desires in fan fiction and, by extension, romantic celebrity conspiracy theories, feels more complicated than mere right or wrong, but rather an expanse of grey, ethical ambiguity.

It also feels too late for it to stop, too. Perhaps, as the role and makeup of what constitutes celebrity evolves, accepting fan fiction in its myriad of forms, like with gossip and rumours, is par for the course. Clearly, it’s up to the individual to figure out if they’re okay with that.

#this is a very decent take on RPF

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