I Was Going To Say A Few Things – Number One, Back To My Wife And Rafa. I Wanted To Just Give A Shoutout

The preliminary finale rating is 1.78, according to Spoiler TV. Even after adjustment it’ll be the lowest rated finale since s7 (second lowest overall) and no higher than the season average. 

Episode Reaction - Spn 10.23

Thank Chuck another suckass season is done with and we can hope for better things in season 11. 

After getting something off my chest, I can type this up with a calmer head. :p

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I want to believe this, and it’s the most plausible scenario. But there’s a part of me that thinks Jeremy Carver wants to destroy the brother bond for good, and will stop at nothing to achieve it.

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My son is not synthetic

In approximately 9-weeks time I’m going to become a father. This weekend will mark week 29 of the pregnancy, and due to its specifics, labor is likely to be induced around week 38. If all goes to plan, before the end of May I’m going to be solely responsible for the life of a beautiful baby boy. I’m fortunate. In spite of the absurd lies told by society about masculinity, the instinct of fatherhood It’s the culmination of over 18-months of planning, and some extreme good fortune. It is of immense importance to me, it is not an anaemic thing, it is not a subordinate or inconsequential thing. I’m fortunate because for many gay men there is no way to easily realize the desire to be a parent. Unsurprisingly, and contrary to the picture of commodification painted by Domenico Dolce, there is no easy solution for a man wanting to become a father, where the old fashioned way is not an option. There are no uterus shops, no egg banks that we can go to, and in my country it’s even illegal to pay for surrogacy. For many men, therefore, adoption is the only option, and given the complexity of the adoption system, not to mention what was until recently open hostility to gay men, and particularly single gay men, adopting (hostility that Dolce verbalises in his recent contributions), often that option is no option at all. I am fortunate because I have a very close female friend who has spared me all of that, a gay friend who loves and values me enough to want to offer me an opportunity at something I had given up on.

My son was conceived by IVF using donor eggs. For the last 28 and a bit weeks he has been gestating away in squirmy, kicky happiness, and in 9-weeks time he’s going to come into this vast, incredible, complicated world and his entire life is going to be dependent on me. Everything he’s going to need, is going to be my responsibility: feeding and cleaning, nursing when he’s sick, boundaries when he’s acting out; toys, stimulation, education; he’s going to need to be shown how he can contribute to the world, how he can enjoy it, how he can live his life in it. Above all, he’s going to need the unconditional, unswerving love of a parent. And in that, he will be absolutely no different to all of the other children that come into this world, however they are conceived.

Nothing about him, therefore, and despite Dolce’s assertions, is synthetic. He is a real person. He has intrinsic value, and he has value to me, and to his mother, and to his wider family, and to the people who come to be his friends, to the woman or man who’ll one day be his lover. None of that is synthetic. None of that is less just because he was conceived by an egg “from a catalogue” and nurtured in the uterus of a woman who has had no sexual relationship with his father. His conception was no less an act of love, simply because his parents didn’t consummate a romantic relationship. The mere fact that we went to such extremes to bring him into existence is the exemplar of an act of love. Unlike in the case of some children conceived the “traditional” way, no child born in this manner is born for any other reason than love. No child born this way is unwanted, accidental, forced. Who is Domenico Dolce or Stefano Gabbana to say that the act of love that led to my son’s conception is a poorer kind of love, is an unworthy kind of love, is a less valuable kind of love than between a straight man and a straight woman? My love for my son is as fierce as any emotion I have ever felt; it isn’t a second place love. If his mother and I don’t love each other as a straight man and a woman might, what does it matter? I dare say our relationship of mutual respect and friendship will endure longer and be more productive than many marriages, and if anyone doubts the statistical fragility of straight relationships, I invite them to take a look at the divorce statistics for North America and Western Europe, or come spend a day with me in the Family Law Courts.

Western society has come a long way in a short period of time, and being gay doesn’t have the stigma that it used to have. But that doesn’t mean that it’s “easy”. There are still places in the world where they want to murder me just for being gay, places where I’ll be imprisoned, or whipped, or stoned, or hung, or thrown off a rooftop just because of who I fall in love with. There are still places in the West where I’d be called a pervert, or told I was disgusting, or that I was going to hell because God hates gays. There are still far too many places where people would call me “fag” or “homo” to my face, without knowing the first thing about me, except my sexuality. There are places where the majority believe I should never be allowed to have a family of my own, I shouldn’t be allowed to get married, I shouldn’t be allowed to be a father. Places where people think it’s perfectly okay to deny me the most fundamental, primal desires that most (albeit not all) human beings have: to be loved, to love, to have a family, to be a parent.

None of that is okay, but you get used to it. You don’t tolerate it, but you get used to it. After all, it’s a message, in one form or another, that I’ve heard since the day I was born, and sometimes from those closest to me. And, even now, that kind of stupid, evil homophobia isn’t the only obstacle I face. Even now, today, in 21st century Britain, there are obstacles I have to negotiate simply to be a parent, to be a father. Social policies that seek to restrict parenthood to couples, which put a limit on surrogacy and babies born by IVF. Laws which completely subordinate my rights to my son to the good will of his mother: I have no power to enforce the agreement I have with my friend, I have no inherent legal right to my child, in the same way that she has. If our friendship falls apart, my only recourse is the long, prohibitively expensive march through Family Law Courts that are weighed to favor the rights of my friend (regardless of her actual genetic relationship to my son), and which will likely facilitate whatever unreasonable behavior she might possibly choose to indulge. This, the archaic sentiment of a society simultaneously indulging oblique misogyny and explicit hypocrisy. But again, while none of that is okay, it’s something I’m used to, sufficiently used to take a calculated risk, to act on the trust and affection I place in my friend. Homophobia, bizarre quirks of sexism, I can cope with. I’m used to that.

What I find hard to cope with, however, is such nakedly stupid and vicious bigotry from within the LGBT community itself. I would expect such intentionally cruel comments from the usual suspects of the fanatical (“Christian”) right; I would not expect them from two luminaries of the LGBT community. I would not expect such idiotic, consistently disproven assertions as they have expressed: “The only family is the traditional one,” says Dolce. Whose tradition? Biblical tradition? Which one? The traditions in the Gospel? The traditions in Leviticus? Exodus? In Genesis? Or do you mean white European tradition? Then what of all the non-white European traditions that don’t look like yours? What about the countless traditions of countless non-white cultures extant in the world today that look nothing like your concept of a traditional family?  ”A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother,” says Gabanna. Really? Firstly, that’s both an argument from ignorance and an argument from incredulity, and therefore a logical fallacy and therefore invalid; and secondly, your beliefs are completely irrelevant to fact. And the facts are these: No reputable sociological or psychological study conducted on children of gay couples (or gay singletons, for that matter) in the last decade, have shown any direct causation between the number or genders of parents and the wellbeing of their children. In fact, and to really put the knife in here, the children of gay parents tend to be, on average, smarter, happier and healthier than those of straight couples. So, not only is the argument invalid as a logical fallacy, it’s also simply wrong in fact. That it is an argument made by those who ought to know better makes it even worse.

And, there can be no argument that Dolce and Gabanna, of all people, should know better. I indulge a stereotype perhaps, but I struggle to believe that they are completely insulated from other gay people in light of their chosen profession; and they are also clearly smart and successful people, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that they should be quite capable of weighing the arguments on both sides, and concluding - as anyone with a brain and a moral compass has done - that the argument against gay families raising children is discredited, amoral garbage, and has no place in civilised society, much less coming out of the mouths of two gay men who should be leading the call for equality. It’s their failure of responsibility that is as unacceptable as the content of their convictions. Rather than using their influence in the public eye to advocate for - or at the very least, to support - the rights of gay families, they have instead given succour to the very homophobia that feeds the various irrational and discriminatory laws that seek to deny queer men and women the right to a family life, a right that should be inalienable for all. I don’t know what informs such convictions, whether it’s gross stupidity or a form of internalised self loathing, and I don’t much care; I do care about the words they have chosen, I care about what they have said about my son, and my family, I care about what message that sends to LGBTQ men and women, girls and boys, the world over; and I care that they have singularly failed to live up to their obligations as gay men with a public platform.

My son is not synthetic. My family is not synthetic. I am not a lesser parent because I’m not in a relationship with a woman, or because I’m - more or less - raising my child alone. How dare you, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabanna, say such offensive, hateful, deceitful, ignorant things about me and my family, and families like ours. How dare you. And how dare you seek to shield yourself from criticism by playing the martyr, by asserting freedom of speech and decrying all who call you on your foul, stupid, bizarre moral illiteracy, as fascists. There’s no fascism here, only the well earned calumny for a pair of ignorant, self loathing men, who lack the imagination or the moral courage or the intelligence to crawl out of their received archaic attitudes to family. You chose to put those words out there, and now you must suffer the consequences of them. That’s not bullying, it’s just quid pro quo.

I’m moments from being thrown out of my home (because I can’t pay the rent due to illness) and I want to wrap myself in Granada Holmes and its fandom to ease the pain. 

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Very well written. As a fellow Northern European, I recognize these sentiments all too well. We have a conservative government right now, but by US (Republican) standards they'd be regarded as moderate, even centrist. There's a part of me that wants to laugh at Trump, because he's like a cartoon villain, but the laughter gets stuck in my throat at the thought of him actually coming to power, and what it means in a wider context – if he's able to amass this support, what does that imply about USA as a nation? And what will the consequences be? Comedian David Mitchell described him well: "He’s built a campaign from gaffes alone. It’s like he’s found a way to make an incredibly strong suit of armour entirely out of chinks."

Those of us who can’t vote in the US presidential elections, but who are nevertheless indirectly but significantly affected by it, like to laugh at Trump. We like to point across the Atlantic, and shake our heads in incredulity that such an odious man, promoting such regressive, insular, arbitrary, hateful politics, could possibly be in the running. After all, there is nothing in the mainstream politics of north western Europe that is so far to the right as the current Republican Party; and if there was, we would write them off as fascists and consign them to whatever ugly, unpleasant, occasionally problematic hole they currently inhabit. We most certainly have anything like Trump. These two things - the horror show that is the GOP, and it’s caped, befanged arch villain, in what we consider a peer Enlightenment nation - inform our amusement and ridicule.

But it’s really not funny. There’s a reason why, in this part of the world, Trump’s politics would be considered the borderlands of fascism. It’s not just the breathtaking xenophobia; it’s all the rest, the savage economic politics, the poor hate, the homophobia, the weird obsession with guns and religion (which we just cannot comprehend), the warmongering, the sexism, the willingness to abandon the poor and the sick to poverty and death. And these are not simply cursory instincts, but deep, abiding, utter and as severe as it is possible to be. Trump is the figurehead of this movement, a movement that has significant numbers right across the US. This is not a tiny, unimportant fringe movement. This is a political movement that has a serious chance of winning the White House.

That’s not funny. That’s not something we should roll our eyes at. It’s terrifying, because it indicates that the problem lays not with Trump, but with some intrinsic quality of American culture. The most powerful nation in the world, the leader of the free world, a principal defender of Enlightenment values, is seriously considering handing the levers of power to a political movement that at its best an uncaring, truth hating, autocratic plutocracy and at worst a savage, illiberal theocracy.

None of us should be indifferent to that. We certainly shouldn’t be laughing.

Copedendent boys are codependent. Oh, and #seananddean, LOL

DID Y'ALL SEE THE NEW PICS? THEY ARE TOGETHER! UYFDF FFFDFF FHH Sorry for the freak out, but till now, I was holding out till confirmed. Id like to see the het stans explain this! :) J2 are their own fanfic!

Yes, EVERYONE! LET THE FREAK OUT BEGIN! I’m sure the het fans will find a way to wave this away by assuring everyone that the wives are really there and just don’t want to be seen or whatever, but that’s okay. We know what’s up. ;) –Admin N

Far be it from me to defend Creation (whose business practices I find dubious at best), and I stopped watching SPN after s11, but I had to comment on this on Twitter. The tweet doesn’t mention any fandom or any specific episode that led to the decision, yet people were jumping to conclusions like crazy. One insightful poster suggested that it might actually be about ‘Stranger Things’ (a show and fandom I know nothing about, but which apparently has an underage fandom), but it was drowned out by the loud, entitled SPN crowd.

Last night, Creation tweeted this: 

You notice what’s not on there? No mention of which fandoms, which cons, nothing. But hellers immediately lost their shit:

Big surprise, huh? Funny how they instantly knew it applied to them. Of course, the biggest fallacy in these tweets is that Jensen was fine with it, he was laughing, he loved it. That’s not how the girl who had it signed described it. She said the volunteer encouraged her to ambush him with it and when she did, he looked grumpy and uncomfortable. Maybe because she just shoved porn in his face? But no. They’re convinced that was just an act on his part, that he would have refused if he didn’t like it. Except that by the time that volunteer let him be ambushed, this option was gone. If he had refused, he’d be labelled a homophobe by them. AGAIN. 

The thing that makes me the sickest are the ones who keep saying “he looked uncomfortable but he really liked it. He wouldn’t have laughed if he didn’t like it.” Do they realize they’re using sexual predator language? “He was asking for it! Sure he looked uncomfortable but he smiled so clearly he wanted it.” Gross. 

And then (OF COURSE) we have the bunch who think none of the rules ever apply to them. They’re the ones who are going to really ruin it for everyone because they have every intention of doing it again. 

Here’s hilarious irony for you: 

Nope. Wrong. Blame the ones who decided it was a good idea to have them sign BDSM porn over their own genitals. Because I’ll tell you right now- lots of fans complain to Creation about stuff and they rarely (if ever) listen. The only people Creation actually care about is the talent. So as much as I love that these drama queens are giving us credit, it’s a lot more likely that Jensen said something after the last con. 

And hey, here’s a helpful guideline: If you have to bring a backup thing to get autographed because you think what you want signed is inappropriate? IT’S INAPPROPRIATE. Don’t bring it and put that on the actors. Have some damn sense and we wouldn’t have this problem. 

(and bonus points to the girl who feels PERSONALLY VICTIMIZED BY WINCESTERS AND NONSHIPPERS WHO DON’T LIKE HER SHIP lol)

I feel sick. If something like this happened in Norway, the public outcry would be so loud your eardrums ruptured. And people still have the nerve to say that rape culture and male privilege doesn’t exist in so-called “civilized” nations? 

This “principal” would embrace and encourage hijabs and niqabs.

What was so bad about Stephanie’s outfit that she was being punished for it? Her exposed collarbone. Her mother was called to the school but even after giving her daughter a scarf, the outfit was still deemed inappropriate.

This may have been the last straw though, as the Kentucky students’ latest effort to fight back may actually get the dress code changed.

This kinda looks familiar, I'm not sure it's recent? Could be wrong, though.

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