I've wanted to write something proper about the emotions I've gone through with this case, I guess it is the same with all the historic cases like Rolf Harris but obviously because Watkins was my generation this is the one that hits home for me.
Ignore everything I've said before because I've been talking in anger, in mortification and in heartbreak.
I doubt there will be a time to really talk about it because it'll never be something that we "should" talk about without talking about the facts and reminding the world he is guilty. In his own words. He pleaded his guilt. He might have done it for very strange reasons but he still did it and after viewing the necessary evidence the judge handed a very stern sentence to him.
So what do I want to talk about?
I haven't searched him name in a long time because I've been conflicted, I still have LostProphets songs on my phone but I don't know why I have a blank moment when they come on and hurriedly skip over it. It sounds stupid but it is just a natural gut reaction.
I don't think the band or their memory is ruined for me, but right now its like a raw wound that every time their music starts up someone is poking.
The thing is everything you just said is totally right! His sentence is so high because of the danger he represents. The women will come out and if they have kids again will either have them taken away or will have social services so far up their asses they won't be able to breath without getting in trouble. The women have no influence on anyone else.
When I was a kid, like most teenagers, I wished for the day that someone like Ian Watkins would pronounce their undying love for me and run away with me. You don't think about the consequences, the rules, the fact he's an adult or anything like that. As a teenager I was drawn to music because I was a outcast, not every kid who loves music is the same but his music talked to me because I had very little in the way of friends and no life whatsoever. I was a kid that loved all the music on Kerrang, Scuzz and P-Rock. Ian Watkins was my second favourite front man (Rivers Cuomo being my first) in my third to fourth favourite band (Weezer and Rammstein are always joint top but I've always loved bands like Bowling For Soup and Reel Big Fish more then LostProphets too!) His music meant a lot to me, I look back at the late 90s early 00s as one of the greatest times ever, not only with music from these bands and the best music from Korn, Slipknot, Foo Fighters, System of a Down, Disturbed, Linkin' Park, Offspring and so on. It was also the Jackass years. Oh how I loved them and Ian Watkins was one of the poster boys of that era.
It isn't like that now, now I have a lot more in my life then I did back then and music and bands changed. I can say that LostProphets music always stayed the same to my ear even if their image changed. I'd only ever really listen to new songs when I got bored and googled them. I had heard that he was changing, his attitude was a bit wonky and the drugs were getting him a reputation but I didn't care, why would I? I was no longer a fan of bands or listening to music or reading about them. I'd have been more upset if it was a former driver or something. By this time F1 and anime and the rest of my interests were able to blossom for one reason or the other.
When I first heard the news my stomach turned. I had posters on my wall of him not that long ago and I just sat there totally disgusted but at the same time kind of hoping there was a mistake. The longer we had no news, the longer he stayed in jail without bail the longer I believed what I was being told. I wanted it to go to trial because I wanted to know what it was they had, what it was they knew and then he took that away from people like me.
I felt the whole time like a part of my most vulnerable years were being ripped out of me.
It is emotive speech, yes, but what the **** are you meant to feel? This crime is one of the worst I could imagine, it is the thing I hate the most, it is the thing that I can never forgive and it was done by someone who meant the world to me once in my lifetime. You put your heroes on a pedestal for a reason and he was up there, yeah in the years leading up to it he had fallen a little but his impact on my life was very real just like the impact Jonathan Davies had or Fred Durst or even Johnny Knoxville, Giancarlo Fisichella, Francesco Totti, Fernando Alonso, Rivers Cuomo (especially Cuomo) and the impact people like Felicia Day and my absolute hero Sir Terry Pratchett still have on my life. You look up to people for many reasons and NO ONE can tell you its wrong. Even if its just the local milkman who was kind to you when you had a rough day, you can put them as a person on a pedestal because its YOUR LIFE! YOUR PEDESTAL TO ******* PUT PEOPLE ON!
Where is this going? I don't know...
I guess what I'm trying to say is now that its all settled and so on I understand deeply how these people feel. If this kind of thing came out about, I don't know.... Colin Baker or Fernando Alonso I wouldn't be able to believe it. If they had come out about Ian Watkins 10 years ago I wouldn't be able to believe it! It is only because I walked away from following them years ago that I feel a little detached from it all.
The thing is there are a lot of conspiracies out there about what could have happened etc, and there are a lot of people who no matter what will support someone who has changed their lives no matter what and I don't think there is any problem with that at all. I think we really need to remember that this is a man who is a idol to many people who are still only just growing up. I might be 25 but it was only 10-15 years ago for me! This isn't like Harris who was a idol to people maybe a good 20+ years ago, I mean my mum remembers him from when she was a kid a good 30 years ago! He hasn't been relevant for a long time and his biggest fans aren't going to be as effected by it as someone who only 10 years ago might have stopped themselves from losing all faith because of the lyrics of a LostProphets song.
I wanted to write something on the blog about it but its one of those subjects I find really hard not to get emotive about and I'm not sure when the best time to say anything would ever be, but if there is a group like that on Tumblr I'm starting to feel like a generic "heroes on pedestals" blog is in the making.
Sorry none of that made any sense
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he's still got the child pornography charges to face.
