Alright… Let’s get into the REAL reason why this matters.
Long story short, well-meaning liberals (*cough* tumblr *cough*) are falling for manipulation by straight-up nazis, and this info really needs to be shared.
In case anyone here is out of the loop, James Gunn was fired by Disney from directing GotG3, or any further films for the company, because of some repulsive and creepy jokes he made on twitter a long time ago. This has sparked some passionate reactions– from agreement that he should be fired, to a quickly growing petition to rehire him. The latter is mainly supported by those who saw his apology as genuine, (he apologized for this YEARS ago,) and see his hatred of his younger self as a reassuring sign that he’s changed.
But this is so much bigger than one man and his career. Let’s be real, Gunn will recover. This isn’t about him at all.
HOW this stuff got brought up, and WHO got him fired in the first place, is what really matters right now.
Yeah…. you’re probably aware of exactly where this is going, now.
Yes, the crack-down on Gunn was started by a bunch of bad faith conspiracy theorists who are ~*~ strangely ~*~ obsessed with pedophilia. And yes, the reality is that Disney is capitulating to a fucking Pizzagate conspirator over shit they already knew blown up into “pedophiles run Hollywood” nonsense. This is validating far-right conspiracy theorists who know they can take down anyone who dare criticize Trump.
The Gunn case sets a dangerous, terrible precedent, and Disney needs to walk it back.
Seeing their success at what should be a non-starter, there are already far-right ops in place to take down other “Hollywood pedophiles” like Patton Oswalt and Michael Ian Black and others who use their platform to criticize Supreme Leader.
This is why the push to rehire Gunn is bigger than Gunn himself – he’ll be fine. His career will recover regardless of who directs GotG v. 3. But Nazis are confident that they are in control of hollywood now, and this isn’t something we should just roll our eyes at and ignore.
To be clear about Disney’s intentions, they likely wanted to cut it off before the story started getting picked up by major outlets. They’d be hit with the narratives that there’s a double standard based on politics. (Gunn can get away with it, but Roseanne can’t.) Which, yes, is unfair, since Roseanne also got a second chance, and she didn’t change. Gunn used his to change, and he hasn’t reverted back to his older self. Meanwhile Roseanne tweeted racist things just this very year.
But hey, has Disney ever been fair?
(Also– They’re the same people who still hire Johnny Depp.)
This whole game is that the Left has a sense of moral accountability, the Right doesn’t, and the Right has learned to weaponize the Left against itself. Gleefully.
So please, listen to others who can put this stuff into words so much better than I can:
“Even if you think Gunn’s old deleted tweets were gross, and I do, this entire thing was built on a lie.
It was dug up, repackaged and purposefully lied about by someone with a hostile agenda to accomplish exactly what it accomplished.
And the worst part is as long as people keep falling for this. Every time MSNBC fires a reporter because of Weird Mike and then rehires him after discovering they got had. Everytime ArenaNet gives into a mob and fires a woman for a tweet, it’s a signal to escalate.
Gunn’s firing is pouring blood in the water and telling the sharks that it’s open season on everyone they want to target.
To them this has nothing to do with any kind of moral outrage or genuine concern. It’s all bad faith gaming of systems to destroy ideological opponents.
And part of that is weaponizing a liberal desire to expel abusers.
It’s pointless to point out that Weird Mike constantly brags about raping women and says the most vile, edgelord shit on a daily basis, because their is no moral equivalence. They will never hold themselves to the standards they know liberals will hold themselves to.
These are the people who campaigned for and supported Roy Moore, an actual pedophile, and engaged in bad faith tactics like making fake robocalls to frame Washington Post, or Project Veritas pretending to have info on Moore and totally failing to entrap reporters.
Actual morality and truth are entirely inconsequential to these people and they will destroy as many people as possible to make sure the white supremacist con man in the White House is never challenged.”
–Ashley Lynch
There’s further views linked here. Please take the time to listen to these people, and try to understand why they’re taking this particular stance. (Lindsay Ellis’ twitter right now is especially informative.)
tony stark singing disney songs to his kids and changing the words to be about technology. morgan spends at least the first few years of her life thinking that the lion king features the award winning song “the circle of spare parts”. peter absolutely encourages this and gets friday to make a recording of tony singing it to morgan so that he can learn all the changed lyrics. tony has no idea his kid just straight up doesn’t know the original song exists, but pepper does and she thinks it’s both adorable and hilarious. eventually it’s rhodey who breaks the illusion. he watches the lion king with morgan when he’s babysitting and is very confused when she tells him “it was a good idea to change the words to fit with the lions but i like daddy’s version better”. rhodey explains that the song was written for the movie and morgan, age 6, says very solemnly and precociously, “i guess ‘a whole new world’ isn’t about clean energy either”. she goes on to learn all the official lyrics but she still likes her dad’s versions better
nobody likes the “bad boys” who insult and degrade their partners while wearing pastel polos with popped collars, people like REAL bad boys who wear leather jackets and take a lot of care in how they shape their pompadour and carry around stiletto switchblades and care about their communities and ride a motorcycle and rebel against the government and says stuff like “NOBODY insults my gal” and gets in fistfights with dudes who catcall their girlfriends. THOSE bad boys are the guys everyone wants.
I asked my boyfriend in Canada once, how he deals with polar bears because I was curious about what to do and he was like, just be calm, let them know you’re there, and give them space and they’ll usually just go away.
specifically for witchsona commissions, i’ll ask you several questions, such as
what’s your personality type? what’s your most outward personality trait?
what’s your favorite thing to wear, both for comfort and when you’re being a little fancy? do you have a favorite item of clothing?
favorite season of the year? favorite element? any plants you particularly like?
do you have any animals of your own or that you particularly like/identify with?
what color schemes (not necessarily favorite colors) do you most feel drawn to?
and if there’re any real religious/spiritual elements you’d like referenced, i can do that, too! a friend of mine who commissioned one was raised under south carolinian native american traditions, tarot readings, etc–and you can see some calls to that in her piece. in the one that i did for myself:
i thought of all of the fantasy elements i liked, and i was having trouble coming up with things, so i asked twitter what colors/elements/seasons people who perceive me from the outside associate me with. i got earthy and fire elements, so i combined them, making it a little more individualistic, which is what i’ll try to find with someone who’s looking to have one of these done. i also like loose clothing and empire/high-waisted fashion, big hoods, things like that!
so after combining everything, i work out several poses, OK it with the client, and continue on from there! so far i’ve had nearly full creative direction with them, and it’s really nice. they’re super fun to do.
