(original post)
Those John and Paul moments ... (Ready, Steady, Go rehearsals, 1963, full video here)
we're in such a strange era where men will just casually wax poetic for several paragraphs in mainstream media outlets about how john and paul were in love with each other but no one dares to explore the real questions (were they having gay sex? when were they having gay sex? what kind of gay sex were they having?) mate you're a journalist, do your job
yknow your fantastic post about closeted paul and how he's (probably) come to accept his queerness/bisexuality, but simply keeps it private for multiple reasons? what would you say was john's case?
(i personally believe he was a closeted gay man but idk how to Phrase Things. Sigh.)
oh i 10000000% believe john was a gay man with a lot of Problems. like. i know, i know, in later life he talked about liking men & women & we have that hysterical "john lennon's bisexual guide to gardening" quote but likeeeeeeeeee.... idk. here's my Speculations under the cut
several things, to me. yes, he fucked a lot of women (a lot). but of the 4 of them, during the beatles years he really didn't.... have any steady girlfriends. it's not like he was the only married one and it's not like he had any hangups about cheating, so it's really not that. the ONLY rumor there is was one that he "dated" an older woman (blanking on her name rn) and even thennnn those rumors were, afaik, just based on the fact that he was kind of sad when she died & that he viewed her as a mother figure. which is... i mean that's not convincing like at all to me.
the Three Biggest Relationships in his life w women were cynthia, yoko, and may pang. the rest were women he fucked around with as one night stands. again, as far as i'm aware. and cynthia..... well it's not really hard to see that he very much (unfortunately) did not give that much of a fuck about her. it's the most classic case of comphet i've ever seen. he dated her bc he was supposed to & then he married her bc she got pregnant and he was supposed to.
and yoko....... lord. i won't deny that he loved her. but it was, from literally everything we've seen, a very obsessive love that had less to do w their personal chemistry and more to do with Circumstances. and even with her, there's sooo many quotes of him talking about how he liked her bc she looked like a man, or looked like him in drag, or acted like a bloke/best mate. that's. not to doubt him but that's just not something someone into women says lmfao.
and that's not to mention the whole debacle w probable conversion therapy. and like. this is no hate to yoko & again i believe she was a flawed individual just like any of them were & we have truly got to embrace her morally gray status just like any man bc we can't demonize OR idealize women when women are Literally Just People. but from some of her quotes & outside sources she was very uncomfortable w the idea of his queerness. and hell, there's the "you think of rock hudson when we do it" line, which is both honestly pretty fucking homophobic but also very indicative of where john was, sexuality wise
and as for may, that whole situation was honestly so fucked up and tragic for Both of them that getting into it would take a novel but like. that wasn't exactly his first choice in partner
and in his quotes about Being Into Men, what he says is basically that with women he is fine fucking without an emotional connection but w men he needs that emotional connection & he hasn't found that with a man. which i think is him bullshitting, btw, but the core of it there that he can't fuck a man without emotions is... well that's really telling. it seems like sex with women to him is just sex, whereas sex with men to him is a deep, emotional thing. and that's, again, just not really something someone into women would be saying with their chest
i'm pretty sure he Also has a quote about never having found a woman attractive which is just telling all on its own
and as for Being Into Men...... well he talked about it himself. but also, there's at LEAST stuart, paul, and brian that would go right at the top of the list for me of men he had an incredibly close & intimate relationship with, one-sided or not. i don't think it's incidental that he referred to paul constantly as his other partner in life, his other marriage, etc while like. literally barely ever mentioning cynthia. like it's super telling, the johnandpaul of it aside, that he talks more about his Boy Best Friend when talking about past marriages than his literal wife lmfao
i think he had a LOT of internalized homophobia & anger with himself over it ("scared of his inner fag" as he said). bc of that, i don't think he let himself get as close to the men he was probably in love with as he wanted to be, or even let himself acknowledge just how emotionally attached he was to them. by the end of his life, i think he WAS coming to terms with liking men, at least. was he coming to terms with Not liking women? i don't know. probably not, although i know his and yoko's marriage was in a rough place by the end of his life so who knows really.
i would hope that if he'd lived that by now he would've found peace w his sexuality, bi or gay, but that's not the world we got unfortunately
Ok this is what I think the biopics will be like for each Beatle:
John will be so troubled but in a really charming way and Julian will be mentioned but briefly and they’ll make it seem like John was just too busy to be a present father (Paul will make up for it in a vomit inducingly cheesy way). His eating disorder, heroin addiction and other internal struggles (self-esteem, sexuality, maybe even gender,…) will go unmentioned or brushed over jokingly like haha he tossed Brian off, don’t we all at that age. He’ll be the cool and funny older brother & later genius who just couldn’t be confined within a band. They won’t have the guts to call his bullshit and therefore will automatically brush over his kinder and vulnerable sides. He’ll be reduced to a knock off version of the tortured artist blueprint. They’ll never pick up on his pathetic wet dog vibe
Paul will be the charming good guy who’s all in with the band. No mention of how he fucked over Jane and every other girl until Linda; he’ll be a musical genius, too, but in a prince of the people sort of way. They’ll loooove that he stopped eating meat, woke king!!!! Linda will be brushed over by making her into his soulmate wifey who finally helps the charming playboy with a heart of gold settle down. His depression and alcohol problem won’t be mentioned/reduced to feeling a little sad. He’ll be a little bossy sometimes but they won’t ever get it right how fucking annoying he could be. Straighter than a ruler. John’s brother, almost biologically. No homo. They’ll find a way to make the twink who fucked the entire population and had an ego bigger than Neptune into a straight feminist
George will be the indie underground smart Beatle and people on tik tok will start posting thirst traps of the actor with the caption “they don’t make em like this anymore” and then complain about real-George’s teeth. He’ll be so spiritual and smart and he won’t have an affair with his best friend’s wife at all and if he does it’ll be because of some spiritual insight, not because that man couldn’t keep it in his pants for 5 seconds. I’m deadly afraid of the colourful drug scenes where he’ll hallucinate god. He’ll be the perfect boyfriend and Pattie will be played by Sidney sweeney or something. They won’t take a side with the whole George Or Paul debate during the breakup, but George will be too focused on other things to want to stay in the Beatles. They won’t mention the three billion songs John&Paul deemed unworthy. They’ll never do the grudges my man held justice. No one could
Ringo will be the funny guy who luckily survived his childhood and found his passion through a kind nurse giving him his drumsticks. He’ll play an incredible drum solo at 8 years old on his hospital bed frame the first time he ever holds those sticks. He won’t be in gangs, he won’t beat his wife half to death, he won’t have drugs and alcohol problems. He’ll be peace and love from age 0. He’ll be slightly stupid and he’ll mention octopuses too much. They’ll never get it right how he was truly the eldest and how much his vote and opinion actually counted within the band and how much the boys wanted him in the band and admired him. He won’t be a sort of glue to the band. He won’t marry a teenager he met when she was 16 and he 22. He’ll be a weird version of Ken from the Barbie movie, his job will be Drum. They’ll flatten a severely nuanced and layered man to a sheet of paper with the word ‘beat’ on it
I am too afraid to even think about what they will do to Eppy
Oh and each and every one of them will have way too pretty teeth and I am already furious. I want them to have British men in the 1960s teeth. Give me British teeth and jerking off together
ao3 down…. what i’m i supposed to do….
did anyone else notice that the closer yellow gets to discovering lesley, the more the clump starts to become more independent?? like, the whole theme of dhmis is like ‘it’s a kid’s show but with gore and it’s disturbing’ and so they all follow these norms. but, even before smart yellow shows up and starts questioning everything, we see some freedom in the characters.
in ep4 red outright states that the clump lives in a nightmare and he says that he hates the house in ep5, when he tries to leave. in ep6 they seem a little conforming, but both duck and red guy swear (breaking disturbing kid’s show rules) and, of course, the “i like looking at you scene”. (i think the romance in this show is another example of independence and breaking free of their norms so them glancing at each other in the transport episode during the song 100% counts)
thank you for coming to my tedtalk
1977: Paul sings a wistful tune. (Note: A fragment; this is either all there is of the song or all that has been publicly released.)
PAUL: I can’t write another song / As long as you keep leaving / Day by day my nights are long / But I keep on believing / Some men fight for lovers’ rights / Some men fight for freedom…
YES!!! and then he sees why joyce likes him so much and trusts him around will and maybe mike will finally get a proper father figure in his life
i love the ‘hopper is okay with will being gay and dating a guy but hates that it’s mike’ trope but the better trope is ‘hopper is okay with will being gay and dating a guy but hates that it’s mike until he sees this total change in mike’. unlike how mike was with el, mike and will are not constantly making out and sneaking off to suck face somewhere. instead, they talk, draw together, actually DO things together instead of just kissing which was what hopper solely saw el and mike doing. he notes that mike seems happier and more like himself and that he makes will happy and he treats him with respect and love. then he starts to like mike a little bit.
all in all, i think that hopper’s problem with mike is that he knew that milkdud was super toxic and he blamed it on mike.
mike wheeler is not cisgender. mike wheeler definitely would use she/her pronouns (probably in addition to he/him)
i can not explain why and i will not. it is simply a fact.