#Bram Greenfeld

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Y'know, there's this gripe I've had for years that really frustrates me, and it has to do with Love, Simon and people joking about it and calling it too-pg and designed-for-straight-people and all the like. (A similar thing has happened to Heartstopper, but that's another conversation.)

I saw Love, Simon in theaters when it came out my senior year in high school. I saw it three times, once with my friends/parents on opening night, once with my brother over spring break, and once with my grandparents.

On opening night, the air in the room was electric. It was palpable. Half the heads in there were dyed various colors. Queer kids were holding hands. We were all crying and laughing and cheering as a group. My friends grabbed my hands at the part where Simon was outed and didn't let go until his parents were saying that they accepted him. My friend came out to me as non-binary. Another person in our group admitted that she had feelings for girls. It was incredible. I left shaking. This was the first mainstream queer romance movie that had ever been produced by one of the main five studios, and I know that sounds like another "first queer character from Disney" bit but you have to understand that even in 2018 this was groundbreaking. Getting to have a sweet queer rom-com where the main character was told that he got "to breathe now" after coming out meant so much to me and my friends.

But also, from a designed-for-straight-people POV (which, to be frank, it was written by a bisexual author and directed by a gay man, this was not designed for straight audiences), why is it a bad thing that it appealed to the widest possible audience? That it could make my parents and grandparents see things in a new light? My stepdad wasn't at all interested in rom-coms but he saw it with me because it was something I cared about and he hugged me when we came out of the theater. My very Catholic grandparents watched it with me and though my grandpa said he still didn't quite understand the whole 'gay thing,' all he wanted was for me to be happy and to have a happy ending like Simon did. My Nana actually cried when Simon came out and squeeze my hand when his mother told him he could breathe.

And when Martin blackmailed Simon, my mom, badass ally that she is, literally hissed "Dropkick him. Dropkick him in the balls" leading to multiple queer kids in the audience to laugh or smile. Having my parents there- the only parents, by the way, out of my group of queer and questioning friends- made multiple people realize that supportive adults were out there. That parents like those in Love, Simon do exist in real life.

When people complain about Heartstopper not being realistic or Love, Simon being too cutesy, I remember seeing Love, Simon on opening night. I remember my friend coming out and my stepdad hugging me and my mom defending us through this character. I remember the cheers that went through the audience when Bram and Simon kissed and the chatter in the foyer after the movie was over and the way that this movie made me understand that happy endings do exist.

Queer kids need happy endings. Straight people need entry points to becoming allies. Both of these things can come together in beautiful ways. They can find out about more queer culture later, but for now, let them have this. Let them all have a glimpse at a better, happier world. Let them have queer joy.

[shujubeelamoglia]

Keiynan Lonsdale

[sgsketchbook]

cause back then we were caught in a love song (so loud, oh yeah!)

[royalenbydisaster666]

Book boys I’d sell my little brother for:

No one, as much as we fight, i love him

•Maxon Schreave

•Percy Jackson

•Leo Valdez

•King Grey of Emberfall

•Ravi Singh

•Prince Henry

•Adam Carlsen

•Cardan Greenbriar

•Seth Gray

•Jesper Fahey

•Wylan van Eck

•Baz Grimm-Pitch

•Bram Greenfield

•Julian Diaz

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Kelly Bennett- Green Creek Series by TJ Klune

Bram Greenfeld- Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertelli

Nancy Whitman- Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire

Penn de Foucart- One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny

[allwehearisradiosilence]

Why can I find no good Bram/Simon fics on ao3 guys please. Please there were the OG tumblr gays we gotta be good at this.

[bluetrainer]

Pride Month Art Challenge Day #8: Bram and Simon from Love Simon

Yes I’m exposing myself as a fan of this movie. Look in my defense I did read the book first and got enjoyment from both. Though I definitely am thinking about re-reading the book to see how it holds up in 2024. Also did anyone have this starting an extended universe on their bingo cards?

[justalexx-things]

Happy pride month to my favorite gays 🏳️‍🌈

[cutepilleddd]

SIMON AND BRAM!! I liked their casting for the movie but this is how I envisioned them ^_^

[whydontyourealize-viennawaits4u]

Am I the only one who remembers this book? Like fuck this is an actual masterpiece. This was my heartstopper.

[shujubeelamoglia]

Keiynan Lonsdale

[sgsketchbook]

drawing art for my silly little favorite book. i know it’s been years but these guys changed my life!! love ‘em forever

[heyitsbramgreenfeld]

So, I rewatched Love, Simon after not seeing it for a while last night. And I have some thoughts. They changed a ton of stuff from the book, which, okay, some changes are fine. You can’t fit hundreds of pages into 2 hours. But a lot of the stuff they changed didn’t make much sense, and didn’t impact the running time. Here are just a few:

1. Blue’s personality. In Simon vs., Blue is shy, and takes a while to open up. He’s quiet and nervous, and isn’t super outgoing. But in the movie, Blue is super popular, super outgoing, and not nervous at all. There’s nothing wrong with this at all, but I did miss the quiet, nerdy Bram that we were blessed with in the books. Although movie Bram was cool, and absolutely slayed with his halloween costume.

2. Martin’s Tumblr post. In the book, Martin did have screenshots of Simon’s emails, just like in the movie. However, he didn’t post them. He just posted the blurb that was like “Simon’s gay, contact him for gay sex” or whatever. He made a slight mention of Blue (he said something about blue balls), but he didn’t post the screenshots, so no one found out about Blue. And Blue didn’t even find out who Simon was until a while later, because he didn’t look at the Tumblr. But in the movie, Martin posted the screenshots, which made everyone aware of Blue. This led to Blue deleting his email. In the book, Blue didn’t, but they just sort of stopped emailing for a while.

3. Simon and Blue’s meet up. In the movie, like I mentioned, Blue deleted his email. So to reach him, Simon made a public Tumblr post, asking Blue to meet him in a public place. Honestly, I hated that. Simon put Blue in a position where, in order to talk to Simon, he had to out himself. I mean, Simon didn’t have much of a choice in reaching out to him publicly, but he didn’t have to ask Blue to meet him in a place where everyone would watch them. In the book, Simon emails Blue privately, and they meet and figure things out on their own.

4. Simon’s friends reactions. Simon’s friends, in the book, are super supportive of Simon. Abby does find out about Simon trying to set Martin and her up, but she’s much more forgiving. She takes a couple days to process, but ultimately decides Simon was in a tough spot and he didn’t really have a choice. In the movie, his friends give him no chance to explain, never try to understand him, and ditch him even after he got outed.

5. Simon guessing who Blue is. In the movie, Simon guesses it’s Bram, then Lyle, then Cal. In the book, for the entire time, Simon thinks it’s Cal. He makes mentions of Bram, so we know who he is, and we know Simon thinks he’s cute, but he doesn’t guess it’s him. I kind of loved this, because Simon is canonically very clueless, and the love of his life was right in front of him. I didn’t love how, in the movie, Bram was caught making out with a girl. It just doesn’t seem like him.

6. Judaism. Bram and Nick are canonically Jewish, and it’s mentioned a lot. It’s not exactly problematic that they didn’t talk about it in the movie (except for the one mention that Blue spends Hanukkah with his dad), because that may take too much time, but I love how Simon becomes sort of interested in Judaism because of Blue. Idk, maybe it’s just because I’m Jewish and crave Jewish characters, but I really missed that aspect.

7. Leah’s crush. All throughout Simon vs, we think Leah likes Nick. It’s never resolved, but she definitely doesn’t like Simon. As we find out in the sequel, Leah on the Offbeat, Leah actually likes Abby, and she doesn’t know what to do with those feelings, so she’s sort of surly towards Abby through the whole book. In Love, Simon, we find out she actually loves Simon, and she and Abby are besties with no drama.

8. Leah and her situation. So, I know that Leah on the Offbeat was written while Love, Simon was being filmed, so they couldn’t really have a super accurate Leah in the movie, but in the book, she’s seen to be a bit moody sometimes, and in the movie, she’s very calm. It’s not too much of a difference, though. The bigger difference is Leah’s financial status. In Leah on the Offbeat, it’s made known that she has a single mom and lives in a smallish house, and feels off with everyone because she’s not as rich as most people in Shady Creek. In the movie, it’s shown that she has a giant house right next to Simon and Nick, who we know have rich parents. Again, I know that this was only mentioned in Leah on the Offbeat, and so they couldn’t have really done that, but I would’ve loved to see the characters not living in almost-mansions (seriously. the house that was used to film simon’s house recently sold for over 2 million dollars).

9. Privilege. Yes, in the book, Simon is still privileged. But he acknowledges it. He knows. I feel like in the movie, Simon has a sort of “I’m not privileged because I’m gay, and anyone who acts more gay than me (like Ethan) is asking for whatever harassment happens to them”. I just didn’t love that non-self-awareness.

Comment if I missed anything!

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Bram Greenfeld- Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertelli

Percy Newton- The Montague Siblings by Mackenzi Lee

[blackcharactertournament]

Submitted explanations

Bram Greenfeld

rom com jock KING

Zélie Adebola

She's the heroine in a book full of interesting and well fleshed black characters.

[lgbtqjockshowdown]

LGBTQ Jock Showdown Round 2