#all queer people are relegated to the side on this show remember?

[triviareads]

the give people what they want (peneloise end game, we really dont need philip too)

lol as if this show would be progressive enough to actually go ahead with a main queer love story.

[cloud-somersault]

Your fic "The constellations within us" was so perfect, and exactly what I wanted and needed for since I joined the fandom. I wish I had eloquent words but english is not my native language, and I'm struggling with the translator now, but this fic is probably one of the most high quality ones I’ve ever read so i've finally worked up the energy to leave a solid comment.

I love your prose, the descriptions and internal monologues are so immersive and emotional that I need to reread over and over again. The worldbuilding scratches my brain real nice, all contribute to make a really cohesive image that canon still doesn't quite achieve in my opinion. And you did a good job capturing the mood and humor of the show with every little detail but at the same time you’ve added a whole new dimension to the plot and characters. Keep cooking, I beg you but also have mercy on me. I imagine you saying something like: I am going to create an situation that is so emotionally fucked up before writing any chapter.

I really love the way shadowpeach interact in this story. From trying to kill each other to sharing the food. It's kinda crazy that people genuinely thought shadowpeach was a one sided crush until s4.

To be honest, I'm not a fan how the fandom treats shadowpeach but you have successfully kept the characterization of mystical monkeys to perfection while setting up a realistic shadowpeach plotline. I read this quote in another fic but it applies very well to them: "They really embody the pain/comfort thing, except that comfort is understanding and trust."

Sun Wukong is canonically a latent danger that not even the most powerful entities in celestial realm or underworld could subdue him, but he has no self preservation skills whatsoever. He's a bleeding heart. He's the one who sacrifices everything possible to protect the few he loves because, god, he has lost so much. The immortality he achieved with peaches, wine, pills, among many other things, may have made him indestructible on the outside, but inside they made him emotionally vulnerable, lonely and afraid of attachment. This monkey can fit so much trauma and he's holding a lot close to his chest even from the audience. The fandom villainizes him unfairly, but sometimes they also put him on some kind of pedestal, which is also incorrect.

The same happens with Macaque. He's the walking mystery who may or may not realize how much of a prickly capricious hypocrite he is in some things. For example, he feels an apparent resentment at being relegated to being a mere shadow of someone much brighter, but at the same time he seems unwilling to step out of that role. In s1 and s3, he clings so much to the past that he pushes Wukong, the only constant of him in a modern world after his resurrection, to be the version he remembered. Where Wukong advanced, Macaque retreated.

Nonetheless, the motives behind every action of his are more nuanced than him just being evil. He did once he was free from LBD's control was immediately start helping everyone even until s4, as if it were a tacit way of apologizing because he was just trapped under incredibly shitty circumstances, let's remember the part where LBD said she'd kill him if he didn't do what she wanted. Although I don't think he didn’t have fun knocking everyone around a bit (to his ex-husband especially).

It's little funny because I consider that before the perigranation trip, Wukong is a self-proclaimed hero with destructive or villainous tendencies (depending on which side you look at, celestial Realm definitely sees it that way still) while in the current timeline, Macaque is a self-proclaimed villain with heroic tendencies.

I wont keep rambling, but thank you again for pouring your time and talent into this beautifully painful read. I can't wait to chew on the next chapter like a hungry dog ​​with a good steak and also I'll be keeping an eye out for your future works, in case you continue writing about queer monkeys with emotional constipation, but if not, it's such a treat to read what you've already gifted us. Have a good week! and sorry for any translation errors again.

AAAAAH i'm sorry i've taken so long to respond to this. this ask is SO SWEET and i loved just rereading it over and over to suck all the serotonin out of it. Filled me with gleee!!

Thank you so much for taking the time to translate and write out this message! There weren't any errors, it's okay! I'm so glad you liked my story sm and read it and ENJOYED IT YAAAAAY!!!

honestly, I only cackle evilly before posting chapters sometimes. Only sometimes, when I remember. I usually cackle while writing, but then, by the time I've posted it, I've read it so much, it doesn't have that emotional impact on me anymore LOL

I think that's a great way to sum up shadowpeach! It's about understanding and trust. No matter what, that trust has to be rebuilt, and that process is so painful and hard and time-consuming that...it takes such a great amount of effort on both their parts. It's the choice to persevere in spite of that amount of hardship that makes them beautiful, even if what they create together isn't inherently beautiful. What's beautiful is that, in spite of tragedy, these two monkeys want to be together in whatever way they can.

I think with any fandom, people are going to misinterpret characters. I've kind of gotten used to it, but there's definitely a lot of missed nuance and character depth that the fandom chooses to not see or doesn't except. Maybe they like to keep it surface level, but i think critically thinking about the plot and characters is where you can find depth or make depth of your own that's not present in the show.

Wukong is either a trickster villain or a precious soul who has done no wrong and needs to be protected. Macaque is usually a mustache-twirling villain or a sweet, bashful monkey who was just pretending all that time! and has never done anything bad.

A lot of the fandom sees things in a clear black and white way, which is dangerous for several reasons, but it means that their interpretations lack that depth or understanding that people crave. Because no one is black and white. The world doesn't work that way, so it's kind of worrying that they think that's...normal. It's not normal. I see it as a lack of life experience and maturity, but I also don't know these people. Maybe they like their fictional worlds to be black and white, I dunno.

Aaaanyway, you're not the first person to speak about this topic with shadowpeach and how, through constellations, they found some understanding or were pleased with how shadowpeach interacted. and to that I say, thanks! I just like some realism and three dimensional...ness to my characters, please and thanks. Don't even get me started on MK.

But wow! Yes! I'm so honored you'll keep reading whatever I write next. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing, and I'm just smashing my dolls together, but I'm happy to have you here in Constellations AU land! Welcome! Enjoy your stay 💕

[heretherebedork]

I can't speak with any particular knowledge about the Korean industry, but just from observations, queer characters and storylines in more mainstream productions (big budget, actually on tv, etc.) seem to still be in their infancy. If there are queer side characters there's typically homophobia, forced outing, unaccepting families, etc. and while it's sometimes shown as a bad thing that that happens, they still rarely get a satisfying story to counteract it. While there are I think some characters who have ended up in relationships, I can't name any that got even a kiss, it's all very restrained. I'm not totally sure if you can compare their industry to the US, but if you do I think we're a ways away from a studio making a high budget full-length gay drama. The next step is probably more gay side couples that aren't just full of shame and angst, with increased physical intimacy. I think it's possible these smaller studios that are producing BLs may get some more funding and be able to produce more stuff at least on Semantic Error's level, but I think it's going to take more until there are bigger, mainstream shows that aren't relegated to online streaming only and short runtimes. Remember also that this is an industry where 20 years after its first major celebrity came out as gay, no other major celebrity has (officially) come out, just smaller artists to my knowledge. Maybe Korea needs another celebrity coming out paired with a mainstream show about gay people like how the US had Ellen and Will & Grace in the 90s to advance things, lol.

Thank you for your comments! As I've said, I don't know a lot about these things and I'm very happy to learn!

But also, yes. I again turn to culture as a huge issue here and one I've learned mostly that I don't know enough about to judge anything. It's actually been a real experience to realize how little I know about a lot of cultures and how much I'm learning through these dramas but also like... how much I am not learning through dramas just like what you wouldn't learn about America through TV.

So, yeah. There's a lot to go and a long way and it's really only been a few years of even getting anything mainstream and that doesn't mean anything big is coming soon.

I'm just happy Strongberry is making Choco Milk Shake because it's another movie length production and that's fantastic from them!

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

lately i feel taehyung is a straight man and his vibez is much more masculinity i mean not to mention taehyung straightly said to jimin he like him most and no offense for me it's just assurance about something etc and i don't feel like in romantic way but much more because he is best friend for life. i mean before you can assume he is kind of gay but lately i feel like he's more focus on masculine way and much more straight man.

Admin 1: Let’s do a little exercise which I think will help us answer this question, as well as showcase why reading it annoyed me so much, especially as queer person myself. Okay, here are nine different men, all of them athletes (why did I pick them? Because idols are basically just as athletic as them and chances of you knowing all nine are low), and now please try to guess which of them (if any) are gay/queer:

…

Do you have your guesses?

…

Okay, as example, if you guessed only the one first row second from the left then, well, you are partially correct. That man is Johnny Weir, former American figure skater, who is, in fact, gay, yes. But you are wrong in saying that out of all the men in those pictures he’s the only one who is queer. Because all of them are. You can read more about them here if you’re interested.

What does this tell us? Easy. The manner in which someone presents themselves (or the vibe, whatever that’s even supposed to mean, that they give off/give you), traditionally masculine, feminine, more androgynous, or anywhere else on the spectrum, has no correlation whatsoever with their sexuality. A gay man can dress in a way that is traditionally seen as more feminine and that’s fine. He can dress and look more typically masculine, and that is fine as well. He can dress and look however he likes and that doesn’t make him any less or more gay, or any less or more valid.

The main thing I would like for you to take away from this answer is this: please do not buy into stereotypical, basically fetishizing, portrayals and assumptions of what constitutes a “gay man” visually and behavior wise. There is no checklist full of boxes a queer man, or any queer person for that matter, needs to fulfil in order to be queer and valid in their queerness. There is no unified look a gay man has to showcase in order to be gay. It’s the 21st century, the year 2021, can we leave finally lay these things to rest?

As for Tae, if you want to know my thoughts about BTS and the LGBT community, I have an entire post about it which you can read here if that’s something that interests you. If we look at how Tae currently looks like, which you’ve defined as more “masculine” (and therefore straight), I will agree that he has gained muscles, if that is what you think is a necessary checkbox for masculinity, but really, all that really tells us is that Tae is healthy, that he looks great, handsome as ever, and that he is an idol of whom it is expected and required to be in a good physical shape, especially with comeback being quite literally just three days away which means a lot of performances, dancing, and hard Bangtan choreographies.

Your taste in fashion and how you feel most comfortable with your body looking like has no direct correlation with your sexuality, and neither does it with Tae’s.

Lastly, how is Tae saying he likes Jimin most on national TV somehow proof of him being straight? What else was he supposed to say? What would he have to say for you to not question his bond with Jimin? Is there a possibility we’re wrong and they’re just platonic, of course, but at the same time, looking at how Jimin said that Tae is a honest person, how Tae basically wears his heart on his sleeve, and how he’s written a song all about falling in love with his best friend, whom we know is Jimin, and we know Tae writes songs based on his own feelings and experiences, I do have a hard time believing that we are wrong. But, of course, we won’t know for sure until Tae or Jimin, or both, tell us themselves.

You are free to believe whatever you like but at least don’t project gender and LGBT stereotypes (most of which have been created and are perpetuated by straight people) onto Tae, and the other members for that matter. Or any queer person really.

Admin 2: I admit that after what I’ve recently observed on various sns platforms, no question will surprise me anymore. In fact, I'm sure I know where this question came from.

The most annoying thing is that despite so many "steps and demonstrations" on BTS' part, there is still an army trying to put people into individual boxes and number those boxes and give them names.

Do any of us have our sexualities written out on our foreheads? Can you see if we are sexually interested in women, men, or anyone else? And how can you know that?

I think a lot of people know Adam Rippon, for example, who is a former American figure skater and Olympic team bronze medalist. Yes, Adam is gay and has a very handsome partner, fiancé actually, who looks like a young god. He's fit, look at his photos on Instagram, Jussi goes to the gym, runs and is even in the process of builds a house himself, like a "real man", a "typical" man ... but he's gay!

If you look at this example, you can clearly see that there are no stereotypes that would indisputably define the appearance of an LGBTQ+ person! Indeed, in the last century, attempts have been made to give "gay" people the weird appearance of only ever being feminized man who are always sassy and the side kick in movies/shows, the stereotypical "gay best friend". It the past century it was designed as such to portray queer people, and especially gay men, in undesirable ways, as jokes and as something "bad", but I thought we grew out of it a long time ago as modern and tolerant people.

Kim Taehyung has to practice and exercise as a member of BTS. That’s a fact. To meet the requirements of their choreographies, whether you like it or not, you must be in an Olympic physical form. Not just him, the entire team must basically be at a near peak physical condition and health. Tae has to exercise, he has to take care of himself, and he has to look great. I have to admit, I've noticed that "gay" men pay more attention to their looks than a normal, unshaven straight guy! (I'm basing this on a joke Adam Rippon once made where he apologized to his followers for looking like an "unshaved straight guy" after he'd just woken up)

What do I mean by that? I want to express the fact that the way you look and take care of your appearance and physical condition are not an indicator of sexuality!

As for the "I like you the most" statement, I'll admit that I've observed many people in many ways trying to use this statement to twist it into whatever those people wanted it to be, instead of taking it for what it actually was, especially since it appears to be something like a thorn in the sides of those who ship other ML pairings.

I'll be rather blunt here now, instead of beating around the bush.

I think this whole question is another attempt at ripping down the Vmin sails and belittling their bond and its possible implications once again.

If we remember how the scene played out, remember Jimin's reactions, his nervousness, how flustered he was, said that things are getting dangerous, and the fact that Taehyung's letter was only for Jimin's eyes. Is that really how "bros" behave? Just a couples of besties?

I doubt that normal best buddies on national TV would feel the need to write mystery letters just for a friend's eyes and tell each other that they like him the most? I'll say more, "boyfriends" don't force their lover to admit that he is copying him in his dance style, only friends do.

It is strange that this "copy" situation was "perceived" as highly romantic, and yet Taehyung's words to Jimin were relegated to "best friends only, nothing else".

However, it doesn't change the fact that Taehyung said what he said, he wrote 95z is love and Jimin confessed that he would love to spend his life with his lovely Taehyungie. Do "only best friends" (best friends that are straight) behave like this?

[cupsofteandcoffeespoons]

What is your ranking of the original New Directions members (including Sam & Blaine, doesn’t have to include Matt since I know he’s difficult to rank lol)? :)

ooh this is so fun! here we go:

1. quinn: no surprise to anyone who knows me. i adore her and all her squandered potential - by far my favorite character to watch on screen and to read/write fanfiction for. not a perfect person - or even a nice one a lot of the time - but somehow still incredibly compelling. 

2. mercedes: a true queen. worked hard, stood up for herself and her friends, brushed off the haters and went on to become a fierce celebrity in her own right. we love to see it. also, her cover of ain’t no way? my favorite song from all of glee.

3. kurt: literally the coolest person on the show, and one of my all-time favorites.  he was so brave and fearlessly himself, even in the face of incredible pushback, and i really admire him for that. he’s as ambitious and determined as rachel, but doesn’t step on other people (or send them to crackhouses) to succeed. at the end of the day, he achieves his goals on his own merit and hard work, which was a refreshing foil to rachel’s storyline.

4. blaine: he’s such a complex character, with such an undeveloped backstory, which is why he appeals to me so much (same reason i like quinn, now that i think about it). he isn’t perfect, and there were certainly moments that i actively disliked him, but i found him to be really interesting, and his relationship with kurt was incredibly sweet most of the time.

5. tina: love her! fantastic sense of style throughout the seasons, and really grows into her own skin similar to people like blaine and puck. there’s definite character development there, and i love the narrative of her going from someone who let rachel steal her west side story solo in the front 9 to fighting for a place in the spotlight in seasons 3-6. 

6. rachel: love fanon rachel, but canon rachel is someone i can only handle in small doses. she’s got a wonderful voice, and her ambition is admirable. she also won my heart in a lot of scenes opposite quinn, where she shows a remarkable capacity for forgiveness and compassion. i think she’s a good person, but not a very nice person, and she’s a bit much for me.

7. mike: mostly sweet but not a really strong presence in my mind. i don’t remember him doing anything that made me upset, but he didn’t have enough of a personality - or enough screen time - for me to develop an attachment to him, so he’s smack dab in the middle.

8. santana: (ooh i can feel the hate coming already). look, at the end of the day, santana just didn’t do it for me. towards the end of season 3 and through the end of season 4 i actually found myself warming to her, but her decision to leave new york to go to an island with brittany (who is literally my least favorite og glee clubber) pissed me off, and she never really recovered from that decision. also, a lot of her “funny” comments weren’t funny to me at all, just mean. she crossed the line a few too many times for me to every like her.

9. sam: love his voice! also found him to be a pretty solid character in seasons 2 and 3, if a little boring. then season 4 hit, and he was relegated to being not funny and kind of dumb too. disappointing end to a character that had a promising start.

10. artie: meh. great voice, mediocre personality. said some really shitty things - mostly about and to women, but also the scene with ryder from lights out (y’all know the one) comes to mind.

11. puck: hate season 1 puck, tolerate the rest. he’ll never be my favorite, or even a character i particularly like, but he had decent character development and personal growth, especially given the show’s general manner of ruining everyone’s character development on a regular basis.

12. finn: started an asshole, ended an asshole. had sweet moments occasionally - especially opposite quinn, rachel, and as a teacher in season 4 - but completely destroyed any trace of fondness by using homophobic and ableist slurs, making the glee club perform gangnam style at sectionals (seriously, what even was that), and generally being both dumb and prejudiced. no disrespect to cory though - he seemed like a wonderful person and actor, and my disdain for finn is strictly based on his writing and characterization.

13. brittany: i didn’t find her funny at all, especially in the later seasons - she was just mean and irritating. also, as a bisexual woman who looked to glee for queer representation when i was coming to terms with my sexuality, brittany failed to deliver for me in any meaningful way - probably because she never actually used the work “bisexual” to describe herself, and her promiscuity - while not a problem in and of itself in my book - fed into a lot of shitty stereotypes about bisexual people. not a fan.

[jennaschererwrites]

Inside the Groundbreaking Queer Reboot of ‘She-Ra’ | Rolling Stone

We’re all shaped by the myths we grow up with, whether it’s the stories we learn from holy books or Saturday morning cartoons. Kids who see themselves as the hero learn to center themselves in their own life stories. Kids who see their experiences relegated to the sidelines, or not represented at all, come away with a very different lesson — one that can take years to unlearn.

Which is exactly what makes a show like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power so vital. Since its premiere in 2018, Noelle Stevenson’s reboot of the cult Eighties cartoon has joined a revolution in the world of children’s animation, combining classic genre storytelling with diverse representation and a progressive worldview (see also: Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra, Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe). In its fifth and final season, which dropped on Netflix last month, She-Ra rounded out its 52-episode run by centering a queer romance — specifically, between its hero, Adora, and her best frenemy Catra — and positing that such a love can, quite literally, save the world.

“I knew from the start that it wasn’t going to be easy,” says Stevenson, speaking via phone from Los Angeles. “Because this is She-Ra. To have the culmination of her arc be this lesbian love plot is a big deal! And I understood that. But I also felt that it was really important.”

The original She-Ra: Princess of Power was a 1985 Filmation spin-off of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which itself was based on a line of Mattel action figures. Set on the planet of Etheria, She-Ra follows a band of magical princesses in their rebellion against the Evil Horde, a totalitarian sci-fi regime bent on global domination. Adora is an ex-Horde soldier who joins the rebellion after she gains the ability to transform into She-Ra, a superpowered Chosen One with glowing blue eyes, a mystical sword, and a very cool outfit.

In 2015, when Stevenson, then 23, found out that DreamWorks Animation was looking for someone to pitch a new take on She-Ra, she jumped at the chance. She was already an Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and writer who had made a name for herself with works like her web comic-turned-graphic novel Nimona and the Boom! Studios series Lumberjanes.

“The world [of She-Ra] is so incredibly vibrant, and has so many powerful female characters. It’s this world that has all my interests rolled into one: It’s got the flying ponies and superpowers and all of these things that, immediately, I was like, ‘I want to do this. I want to be the one to do this,’” she says.

While Stevenson’s reimagination of the world of Etheria pays tribute to its predecessor, it includes some key differences. The reboot transforms the musclebound, scantily-clad grownups of the original series into awkward teens in much more practical (but still very sparkly) clothing. In addition to embracing a diversity of races, genders, and body types, the She-Ra reboot fleshes out the characters and their backstories, giving them fully-fledged arcs and complicating the good/evil binary of the original. The princesses of the rebellion aren’t simply heroic, and the soldiers of the Horde aren’t simply villains; everyone’s just a human being (or scorpion person or alien clone or flying horse, as the case may be) trying to make their way in a world that doesn’t offer easy solutions. It’s also, incidentally, really funny.

For Stevenson, it was crucial that the characters felt three-dimensional, and that it was their choices that guided the direction of the storytelling. “The characters all began with a deep personal flaw, and the process of making the show was kind of giving them the room to process those flaws. But we wanted it to feel organic. We wanted the characters to feel like real people that we knew,” she explains.

From the start, She-Ra’s most compelling tension was always between Adora (Aimee Carrero) and Catra (AJ Michalka), Adora’s childhood best friend who becomes her bitterest rival after Adora leaves the Horde to join the rebellion. In the show’s first four seasons, the two continually fight and reconcile and break apart again, their obsession with each other marking them as something more than frenemies.

“It’s a dynamic that I find really interesting: the attraction and the tension between the villain and the hero, especially when they know each other better than anyone. They love each other, but there’s something between them that cannot be overcome,” Stevenson says.

Stevenson always knew that she wanted the relationship between Catra and Adora to be a romantic one; but she had to walk a fine line, because she didn’t know if the studio would give her the go-ahead to put an explicitly lesbian love story front and center. At first, as in Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar’s radically progressive series that aired its final episodes earlier this year, she steeped the world of the She-Ra reboot in queerness. The show features multiple side characters in same-sex relationships, characters who flout traditional gender roles, and even a nonbinary character (Double Trouble, voiced by transgender writer and activist Jacob Tobia).

Still, Stevenson, herself a gay woman, wanted young viewers to be able to see a queer relationship that wasn’t just incidental, but central to the plot of the entire series. “I’ve loved these stories my entire life, you know? I was a huge Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fan as a kid. But there weren’t a lot of characters that I felt personally represented by,” she says. “We love what makes these stories classic, but we’ve seen them all culminate in the same kind of romance so many times: The hero gets the girl, he gets the kiss, and then he saves the world. And it’s not just [swapping] the man and the woman for two women. You have to actually approach it from a standpoint of: How do you make these stories, at their roots, queer?

“So that’s what I was trying to do — for little queer kids to see that this is normal, that these are stories that can happen and that exist, and that can center them and make them feel seen and understood.”

Whether or not Adora and Catra’s romance would become canonical was in the hands of the studio, and it was a risk Stevenson couldn’t be sure it would be willing to take. So the show played a long game — hinting at a romantic dynamic between the two without making it explicit, for fear of disappointing fans in the end if they weren’t able to deliver. Fortunately, a groundswell of viewer support for a potential relationship between the characters — a phenomenon known in the fan community as “shipping” — allowed Stevenson to make a case to the studio for supporting the story she wanted to tell with She-Ra.

“Just as I had hoped, people started picking up on this tension and getting really passionate about it,” she says. “It was immediately one of the strongest fandom ships right out of the gate. And that was when I finally showed my hand and was like, ‘Look. We’ve got a bunch of people who, just off Season One, are really, really excited about the gay representation in this show. I have been planning for this. And here’s how it needs to end, and not just because I want a moment that everyone’s gonna talk about. It’s the logical conclusion of both their character arcs. They need each other.’”

Finally, after years of hedging their bets, Stevenson and her collaborators got the go-ahead from DreamWorks. “I really wanted it to be so central to the plot that if at any point they were like, ‘Oh, we changed our minds, we want to take it out again,’ they wouldn’t be able to, because it would be so baked in,” she explains. “The temperature is not always right, and depending on what’s happening in the world, not everyone wants to be the studio that sticks their neck out and makes a statement like this. You will get a flat ‘no’ sometimes. But if you bide your time, or you come at it from another angle, that can change. You just have to keep pushing.”

Feedback for the conclusion of She-Ra has been overwhelmingly positive both from critics and fans. Viewer support has been pouring out in the form of social media posts, YouTube reaction videos, and fan art and fan fiction. Stevenson, who first made a name for herself online with Lord of the Rings and Avengers fan art, has been blown away by the support from She-Ra lovers. “That’s how you know that you’re successful at what you set out to do — if people are getting inspired by the stories that you’re telling. I think that that’s the beauty of fan work, is that it’s an evolution of the genre. We take that inspiration and create something new all the time.”

Unfettered by restrictions, the final season of She-Ra is a tightly plotted, character-driven masterwork, featuring a slow-burn redemption arc, a harrowing villain, and a timely message about the power of love and unity against the forces of repression and tyranny. It’s a show about becoming kinder and more open in the face of unrelenting darkness, about banding together to prepare for the worst, but always hoping for the best in spite of overwhelming odds.

Stevenson says that she and her team began work on She-Ra in the aftermath of the 2016 election. “The veil was ripped off, and we had to reckon with a world that we hadn’t expected. And that theme of relying on each other and being stronger together became so much more relevant,” she recalls. “I remember writing one script after a particularly bad news day where it just felt like nothing was ever going to be OK again. It’s an episode where Adora realizes that there are supposed to be stars in the sky, and there aren’t any more stars. And as Aimee [Carrero] was recording the lines, she was crying, and we were crying, because we were all experiencing this together — the idea that things were changing in maybe irreparable ways.”

The refrain of She-Ra’s catchy-as-hell power-pop theme song is “We must be strong, and we must be brave.” According to Stevenson, that’s easier said than done; but the whole point of the series is that you have to try anyway. It’s a message that rings especially true at this moment in our world when it seems like everything is spinning out of control, and it’s all too easy to feel helpless.

“It always comes back to this — when you realize that there’s a great evil or a great darkness that won’t just go away from one fight,” Stevenson says. “It boils up, and it can be pushed back down, but it’s something that we’ll probably have to be fighting for the rest of our lives. That’s really hard to do, and it makes you really tired sometimes, and it can be really scary. But when you are surrounded by the people that you love, and when you have that love for the people around you, then that strength is possible.”

[sol1056]

To be honest I don't know how to ask this but, since VLD turned out so bad do you think fans should stop making fan works of the show to prevent encouraging others to watch it, because it's bad message? I know its a kids show and fanart/fanfics are just for fun but, in a way is it kinda wrong? Doesn't fan works equal support for the show including all its bad messages. Sorry for the dumb question.

Not a dumb question, ‘cause I get where you’re coming from. But this is also exactly when fanworks are most necessary. Fandom will never be a monolith, but remember: it’s transformative. And there is no better recipient of fandom’s grace than a story with so much potential, that failed so many. 

Soon VLD will fade from the headlines. New fans won’t discover it through DW’s marketing. They’ll learn through word-of-mouth, and fanworks will be their primary introduction. We already have that happening, as @mylanitaly​ made clear, and you can see the same in comments on AO3 and tumblr when people ask: “so, this VLD, should I watch it?” 

This is where the transformation begins. 

In the first wave, canon will get broken into pieces, usually along pairing lines (because it’s the easiest to separate out). Frex, a Lance/Allura writer might ignore S5-S6 as too love-triangle-ey, while a Lotor-centric story might say bluntly in the notes, “canon-divergent after S5.”

In the second wave, canon is relegated to a distant second-tier. You’ll know we’re at that point when new fans are actually steered away from watching the show, and towards certain stories that are loosely considered the ‘best’ intros. Expect each pairing-centric or character-centric fandom subset to compile their own list of must-read authors or stories.

[somewhere in here the straight, white, abled, and usually teenaged-male part of fandom will launch a volley of complaints about fangirls (since ‘girl’ is the worst insult in their minds) being so entitled about relationships and character development and other girly things. They’ll cluster in the internet’s alleys, muttering darkly about fujoshi or SJWs rewriting canon. Ignore them. They’re almost universally idiots, and out-numbered by the legions of girls — and boys and everyone else — posting on AO3, anyway.]

But that’s just how canon falls. The other half is how fandom rises.

Somewhere, right now, someone is devising an ingenious re-interpretation of some detail of canon. It’ll catch the fandom’s imagination, and the best become a fandom convention, a kind of loose agreement among fans clustering around a particular character, pairing, or theme: how the lion/paladin bonds work, what certain villains are known for, what Shiro’s arm can or can’t do, etc. (As the fandom matures, there’ll also be cross-pollination from multishippers pulling characterizations or conventions from one subset into another.)  

As those convention virii spread through fandom networks, they’ll neutralize the source. All those negative messages? In bits and pieces, fandom’s going to find a way to resolve them. Never all in one story, but picking and choosing from among each, and gradually the worst excesses of canon will be overwritten.

Alright, let’s imagine the newbie fan coming into VLD, say, a year from now. The chances are fairly high their introduction will come through a friend; art on the dash, a link to a fic, something. 

If they watch canon, if they’re on any of the axis where the show fails — non-white, Asian, female, disabled, queer, autistic, or neuroatypical — it’s going to hurt. If they relate to any character who gets shuffled to the background or flattened into a series of jokes, it’s going to hurt. Don’t be surprised if the majority of recs say, “skip canon, they did X but the rest of us ignore that, go read this fic instead.” 

If you binge the series for 12 hours each day, it’ll take you 2.4 days to finish. If you binge the top 50 most-kudos’d stories for a pairing, genre, or rating, you’re probably looking at… on average, approximately 250 hours. Read for 12 hours a day, and you’ll finally come up for air in three weeks — and you’d still have another 50,657 stories you can read.

Now, which do you think is going to leave the biggest impression? 

A cartoon on Netflix written by nine white guys who didn’t know or care about disabled or neuroatypical or queer or female or non-white fans — or a fandom with 15,000+ voices who are all saying in some fashion that there’s a home for you, here? Where you can see yourself in the story? A chance to see a happy ending for the character you loved? A moment where your favorites get their overdue moment of crowning awesome? 

Which do you think will matter the most, in the end: the story that shoved you to the side, or the fandom that lets you claim the center? 

[elizabethrobertajones]

you ever think about how they hired twins to play the triplets that dean and crowley have sex with. I feel like that right there is proof that they're not queerbaiting, because no one could possibly be baited by that because 99 percent of everyone didn't even notice it. They just put it in there cause dean's bi and they write him as bi.

It’s funny, for whatever reason I was thinking last night about how my own personal definition of the way the show may or may not queerbait has changed over the seasons, and it’s not just to do with personal growth but the way the show is written and the way they are handling things. 

My impression of how it all felt in the start of season 10 was utter disbelief that they were so on the nose about Dean and Crowley, and I know not everyone wants to/does think that they hooked up, but there’s some stuff the show pushed there that in some ways it would have no other excuse to do and I went cold on Drowley several times after feeling like the handling was sweeping it under the rug, writing it off as villainous queerness or other ways to distance Dean from it like suggesting he wasn’t in control or roofied by being a demon, that thankfully at least was not how Crowley died on the show, with 12x15 giving us the last example of how that dynamic had matured, and it WAS matured, and at least in terms of respecting that Dean n Crowley had once eloped, was about as good as it could get. And I think owning that the dynamic wasn’t a sense of that time being abusive was important given how much Dean and Crowley interacted and behaved towards each other AFTER, as well as exactly how we were supposed to read whether Dean should feel violated or smug or nostalgic about it all (and he did flash between them depending on the season or episode in the time after). But at the start of season 10 this whole journey was really only just beginning. 

Obviously people had written about the queercoding and Crowley’s seduction before then, but in very careful metaphorical terms, and as much as it was suggestive in season 9, the fact is that without season 10 it could easily remain a metaphorical ~seduction to evil~ where this was written in terms of romantic seduction - except for where it was fatherly or brotherly - but 10x01 smashed that and made it really really clear that you could read that Dean and Crowley had been hooking up, even independent of the twins/triplets subtext. Specifically when Crowley is annoyed Dean and Ann-Marie hooked up in his bed, and Ann-Marie tells him and Dean to get a room, and he’s like, we had one. Of course you can pretend that not everything Crowley says is innuendo (and room = specifically the bed), but that exchange had a lot of jealousy and a lot about his and Dean’s *personal* relationship, as much as the other stuff was about the more wild stuff they shared with others while howling at the moon. Which was part of the longer term emotional game Crowley was playing about their business relationship and Dean being his scary consort and them sort of going exclusive >.> 

And in that context, Crowley mentions they’d done some memorable stuff to triplets together, and on rewatching you catch they’re hanging out with twins in the bar before that, but the wider context was this absolute explosion of queer subtext and borderline text and a dynamic that needed concentrated work to not come to the conclusion they’d been fucking all summer, with and without buddies of whatever gender with them. Focusing on the male twins in the background as a hint that Dean had had sex with men is ignoring where Crowley directly implies they’d been hooking up and now he wanted to go exclusive with Dean as the hugest neon sign that, yes, Dean has been having sex with at least one man, regardless of the gender of the triplets. Like, I know people were like hurr blurr the triplets could have been women, #no homo, sometimes men sleep with triplets together like bros. Which traps us into hyperfocusing on what the triplets were and using them as the definitive proof, when in fact the reason triplets were being banged in the first place was because Dean and Crowley were banging all the time everywhere up and down seedy bars in America, and Dean didn’t want the good times to end, while Crowley wanted the d all for himself now pls. 

And considering that’s the thing under the paper thin surface that you can remotely pretend that Dean only slept with women and he and Crowley were just hanging out the entire time, regardless of no matter how much more subtext the show piled on later, less close to the surface but with more confidence that everyone knew Dean had banged Crowley and the only way any of this worked any more was that that had happened, even just when we only had 10x01 to work with, the whole Dean n Crowley thing was so enormous that you can’t just speculate on what the twins were to approach to what degree was this queerbaiting or not. The twins are a detail that you can pick up on and speculate on if you look deeper, as they know we sometimes do. I’m not saying they’re NOT an aspect of this, but they’re a relatively buried easter egg of subtext compared to, say, Crowley sobbing over his flickr albums in the next episode :P

To what degree Drowley was queerbaiting is the real question, and since Crowley is now consigned to the show’s history books, we have the full story in a way. In the context of what we have now, I don’t think overall, all comments included, the show ever pretended, even when distancing Dean from it, even when painting it as abusive or Dean having diminished responsibility, that Dean and Crowley did *not* bang. I think there are multiple comments which as long as you are permissive that Dean would have could have probably did, that in seasons 11 and 12 pretty clearly indicate a memory of having slept together one point or another, especially 11x23 and 12x15 with overt references to sexual things from Crowley to Dean, or 11x07 and the implication that over a year later Dean still has Crowley’s answerphone messages from howling at the moon, and knows and remembers details of his personal life fondly. (I don’t think that’s the only time Bobo wrote them like that but that’s the one that springs to mind :P)

Buuut they never showed them on screen in such a way that could be seen from the moon as them together, like actually showing them IN a sexual relationship while Dean was a demon, or having Dean confirm Crowley’s innuendo with more than the usual reactions where he gets plausible deniability to any gay stuff going on. And SOME of that I think MAY be to do with the problems with the villainous queerness slant, and the way it was at times framed as abusive/Dean lacking control. Because they would not commit to exploring the aftermath of that relationship SERIOUSLY, i.e. making it clear they had slept together when Dean was a demon, and him on-screen dealing with how that made him feel and how he felt about Crowley, and even, god forbid, his own sexuality, the best they could do to resolve it was to establish eventually a sort of civil exes dynamic, both aware of their history, but not harping on it, even if Crowley remained somewhat to entirely besotted by Dean for the rest of his time on the show. The lack of handling it seriously means it stays as a somewhat jokey subtext later on, and they can play it off as no harm no foul by the end of season 11 and through season 12. 

I think in that vein it also eventually contributed to Crowley being sidelined and eventual downfall, because he was trapped in the subtext of being Dean’s ex and all the enormous complications that made between them and for his personal life, again without being able to explore it or leave a lasting, openly discussed impact on him. He no longer directly antagonised them, but he couldn’t cross any lines which made him human or part of the team for more than passing moments because the longer he was around Dean the more awkward it got and the more it would beg them to explore what, exactly, were Dean and Crowley now, and the obvious issues that would have/could have arisen if we discussed this like adults and we were allowed to just textually state in a frank and open way that Dean had been seduced by Crowley that one time. 

And I think in terms of where that puts us, it means that Drowley was very much a stifled relationship, officially over and no chance of getting it back, which in some ways is as large as or larger then Destiel in the weight it puts on the show when it comes to answering queerbaiting charges, because it could never be addressed openly while Crowley was alive, still ISN’T acknowledged, and Dean is as closeted as he was before, despite in his actual living human memory, knowing what it’s like to bang Crowley on the side for 3 months of his life with no direct personal growth (that is: now banging Cas, happily, or even banging other random guys, no angst, just for fun hook ups, equivalent to the textual times he picks up women) to show for this wild college experimentation metaphor phase of his life. 

At this point you really can only change the final judgement on it by making Dean canonically bi and then giving him the character growth, acknowledging the role Crowley had played in it, and allowing him to live what had just been subtext as a textual part of his character. In all other respects, I think the fact that Dean subtextually has hooked up with Crowley, and presumably other men probably other than the male implied triplets we saw on screen as well, but it’s relegated to this one particular part of his story and locked up in the subtext box, is going to look absolutely like one of the show’s worst sins of queerbaiting if we get to the end and that box is never opened again. And not to say it all looks rosy while we wait until the hypothetical what if of textualising Dean’s bisexuality and trying to live a positive life of hoping that will happen. As it stands, the handling in the text is depressing, and speaks of how far the show will currently allow any queer relationship for Dean to go. Meaning a worst case scenario is that his borderline subtextual marriage to Cas may never move beyond a similar point if this remains the high water mark of the show’s willingness to show Dean in a genuine, sexual relationship with a man. And that’s something you have to at least think about, in terms of how it looks now, and how it might look one day, no matter how positive you are about the endgame of the show, when it comes to being realistic about the show’s queerbaiting, or at least perceived queerbaiting if you don’t believe they are. That’s what other people are seeing, both with Drowley and Destiel. 

I mean, that deleted scene in 10x14 says it best: Cas and Crowley trapped together, frustrated and living in angry despair in their competition over Dean, where he is busy not picking either of them, while they vie for his attention and consider each other his boyfriend in all but name, and yet he will not commit to either of them in the way they desire. And this is the same frustrated wall that Cas is still stuck bouncing up against, even when his romantic rival is *utterly* vanquished and removed from the narrative, and hadn’t even really been competing for Dean for like 2 seasons before that.

[notanicequeen-blog]

An Explanation, and Romantic Frustration

Hi there, assorted people. I'm Elsa, and I am not an ice queen. And today, I'm going to talk about something that is probably more common in television than in text-based mediums, though I imagine it exists in basically every sort of medium. It's a pet peeve of mine, and as we're all aware, this is my blog, so I can write about whatever I damn well please.

So, what is it?

Queer baiting.

'But what is queer baiting?' you might ask.

You've most likely seen or heard or read something where there are two characters that are the same gender, and they're close. Like, really close. There are long, soulful stares, lingering touches, rather suspicious overprotectiveness, a certain preoccupation with each other… If they were different genders, if would just be assumed that at some point, they would screw each other's brains out, but in their native medium, they are rather explicitly best friends. Within the fandom, they are probably a very popular pairing, or even the most popular pairing.

Other characters probably make jokes about how they need to get a room or how they act like an old married couple, but despite that, you get the distinct impression that they will never actually be together in a romantic sense. In fact, the entire point of the jokes seems to be for the not-couple in question to scoff at the idea.

This is queer baiting. If you watched the BBC Sherlock series or anything beyond season four of Supernatural, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

(TL;DR: queer baiting is the writing equivalent of playing gay chicken and then shouting, "NO HOMO!" at the top of your lungs and pounding your chest.)

Is it problematic? Yes. How come? Let's get into that.

Queer baiting implies that homosexual relationships are dirty and need to be hidden, like filthy kinks or fetishes that must be kept away from the civilized world; they can only be whipped out in private or when they can be easily explained away. Because god forbid two men love each other without a woman being thrown at one of them whenever the bromance gets a bit too close to losing the B (unless you go the Supernatural route and just kill one of them every few episodes). God forbid two women be together if a man can't climb into bed with one of them whenever someone in the audience starts to side eye the relationship.

In slightly less scathing terms: homosexual relationships are already frowned upon in real life, and queer baiting encourages that attitude.

On top of that, it shows that the writers are cowards. They're willing to exploit the idea of a same sex relationship if they think it will attract a larger audience--to dangle it around like a carrot on a stick--but when it comes to committing to writing an actual same sex relationship, an endless line of love interests that are probably made of balsa wood and wood shavings are paraded through. Despite the fact that it's the characterization that the writers wrote themselves, they are too cowardly to just follow through and let a relationship happen.

(Let the record show that I am just using 'writers' as a stand-in term. I am aware that sometimes it's the producers or the network or whoever else forbidding it.)

Now, I know this kind of makes it sound like I expect all close platonic relationships to turn romantic. I promise, that isn't the case. If they were just going to stay as platonic soul mates or whatever you want to call it and they just told anyone making a big deal about it to piss off, I would be cool with that. I am bothered, specifically, by the idea of them being in a relationship being treated as something sinful or forbidden or as a joke.

Not all is lost, though. It's important to remember shortcomings, but it's just as important to still remember the successes.

When it comes to cartoons, the writers of Adventure Time consider Princess Bubblegum and Marceline to be a couple, and at the end of The Legend of Korra, the writers implied as heavily as they could get away with that Korra and Asami were a couple by the end. In both cases, though, the networks forbid them from just stating that outright.

(This is one of the few ways that Korra getting dicked around by the network actually helped, as the last season was relegated to online streaming, which undergoes less rigorous censoring.)

The Dragon Age and Mass Effect series of video games both have bisexual and homosexual romance options, though in the case of Mass Effect, the homosexual options for male characters were rather… uncreative. (Humans. The options were all humans, in a series where all the fans want to screw aliens and/or robots.) The Fable series of games has always let the player marry whoever they please, regardless of the player character's gender. In the Sims games, characters are all bisexual by default, save for an incident where homosexual relationships were removed on Nintendo consoles. As a personal recommendation, Gone Home involves walking the main character through a string of clues and journal entries to put together her younger sister's coming-out story.

Queer As Folk and Dante's Cove are both shows that reveled in their gayness in their times, and both were rather ahead of the curve for it (admittedly, I can't really speak for the quality of Dante's Cove). The Originals, Smash, Shameless, Spartacus, and a host of other shows all have openly bisexual or homosexual characters and relationships.

The Kids Are All Right, Saving Face, Shelter, and Pit Stop are all films about, or at least dealing heavily with people in homosexual relationships. And with sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., shows and movies like this can be found pretty easily. (The Babadook will be your guide.)

The Heralds of Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey have several homosexual couples that show up, and The Last Herald-Mage trilogy (one of the foundational trilogies of the series, as it explains several key aspects of lore) follows Vanyel, a gay man. (As a caveat, the final book in the trilogy involves a fade-to-black style gang rape that seems to exist largely just to put Vanyel through more shit, and I found it to be in rather poor taste.) Homosexual relationships are becoming more and more accepted in YA literature, as you'll see in Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, Keeping You A Secret by Julie Anne Peters, Adaptation by Malinda Lo, and Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, and a host of others.

The most recent run of Transformers comics has finally begun to include gay relationships. Questionable Content is a webcomic that has been around since basically the dawn of time and includes gay and bisexual characters, and even includes a bisexual woman who is actually involved with another woman, rather than her bisexuality just being a detail tacked onto her backstory. Tripping Over You is a quaint little webcomic detailing the attraction and building relationship between two boys through high school and out into the real world during college.

Queer baiting is problematic and it's still running far more rampant than I would like it to be (if you hadn't guessed, I would like for it to not exist), but the LGBTQ community is not invisible in fiction, and it's getting more visible by the day. I don't know about you, but I'll take my victories where I can find them for now, and I'll be happy in the knowledge that not every writer is too chicken shit to follow through on the relationships they started.

[unendingkissnyc]

My experience one year ago was similar to many of the speakers at Huizenga Park on Sunday, June 11 who recalled that fateful day. Waking up to many of my friends in Orlando checking in as “safe” on Facebook was a heart wrenching thing to live through. Gradually, more and more information broke through about Pulse, a gay nightclub in the area. My heart sank knowing that I had queer friends in the area and I held my breath waiting for them to respond with a “safe” check-in. The idea of “safe” in these spaces I hold onto dearly for a sense of community was attacked that day.

(Source: Jon Daniel on Facebook)

In a recent report by Newsweek, a study has shown that saying “it gets better” to queer youth without giving them any guidance to make it better, actually has less beneficial, if not harmful effect. To what extent the world has gotten better since the horrific attack at Pulse Nightclub is, I cannot attest to.

https://flic.kr/p/Vx4t3n

The Equality Rally for Pride and Unity began with a light association of people that gradually gathered into hundreds in this park in Downtown Ft. Lauderdale. A mostly unassuming stage with an American flag center-stage flanked by rainbow bars in an open air bandshell served as the hub to which vendors, 97.3 FM, and the ACLU alongside other human rights organizations made their claim. One speaker lamented that even though the organizers had reached out to the local Black Lives Matter chapter, they could not send a representative to appear.

https://flic.kr/p/VJwsfz

Amongst the bevy of rainbow flags and material were representatives from important local organizations like SunServe and Stonewall Museum strewn across the lawn. Yet, with the presence of FLPD, corporate sponsorship, and a few leftover Uterus hats in the crowd, it would be apparent what kind of event this was. Serving as the emcee for the speakers was Ft. Lauderdale District 2 Commissioner Dean  J. Trantalis who would command the stage with the poise and casual ease of a politician well aware of his audience being key campaign demographics.

https://flic.kr/p/Vx3KV2

While performances were a bit on the softer side with a former The Voice contestant flail through a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”, a track that has become a snake losing its venom in recent years as an obvious choice for the pageantry and overbearing corporate presence of modern Gay Pride rallies. As well as, The South Florida Gay Men’s Chorus’ immense harmonies and talents being relegated to performing the anthem to a nation that once refused to acknowledge the personhood of queer people.

https://flic.kr/p/VtQMZW

A Performer at The Equality Rally

https://flic.kr/p/Vx3AwH

The South Florida Gay Men’s Chorus

Moments such as Latinos Salud bringing friends and family of the victims of Pulse to the stage, in white shirts holding up images of their lost loved ones evoked a visceral reaction. These 49 people were dehumanized in life in a senseless massacre, and in their passing and seeing their faces along with their names confronts the audience with the reality of the situation. The shooter targeted the club on Latin Night. 94% of the victims were Latinx. Latino Salud drove home the importance of intersectionality within their community and the necessity of empowerment.

https://flic.kr/p/VtPjtq

https://flic.kr/p/Uv1Ex4

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In a scene that could not have even been written on the best episode of Veep or House of Cards, disgraced former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz showed her face to a crowd of LGBT people on the main stage and told them how we need to unite. Wasserman-Schultz’ tenure as DNC chair came to a halt when it was revealed that she had actively undermined the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders revealed through WikiLeaks and she resigned. She drove this sense of “unity” that was reiterated well along the campaign trail as voters were now forced to decide between two harsh realities for president- A Republican, and Donald T*ump.

https://flic.kr/p/Vx3nT6

  Following her, a representative for a homeless advocacy group “Food Not Bombs” took the stage. Announced simply as Elijah (they/them) by Commissioner Trantalis, they walked on adorned with face glitter, a black tank top, and a truly sickening rose petal skirt. If you hadn’t known any better you’d swear they were at Coachella. Elijah’s speech was slow burning and as they had revealed to me, they were apprehensive at first to speak. The quiver in their voice and the occasional cracks in their presence through giggling showed not a lack of preparedness but instead a resilience to make a statement in a place where it may not entirely be convenient. Their speech explicitly called out the City of Ft. Lauderdale’s “Homeless Hate” laws as well as, anti-LGBT violence that Elijah had witnessed firsthand at the hands of the FLPD. The fact is a 40% of homeless youth in shelters nationwide identify as LGBT, many shunned from homes that could not accept them for living their true, authentic lives. From the crowd, Trantalis could be seen nervously pacing back and forth, having to prepare for a potential PR nightmare on his hands and ready a speech. As the “Wrap It Up” music attempted to usher Elijah off the stage and audience members yelling “this is a UNITY rally!” I knew that was the radical statement I had been waiting for.

https://flic.kr/p/Vx1Jh6

https://flic.kr/p/VJurLc

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So can I say that it truly “gets better”? I don’t know. But I do know that empty sentiments like encouraging people to register to vote only go so far. Change cannot come from within a system that is already corrupted. Only one year removed from the Pulse Massacre, the rise of white nationalists has gripped sections of LGBT people into supporting a movement that throws the originators of the gay rights movement under the bus.  Weak liberalism and corporate democracy has lead to one of the most openly racist, sexist, anti-Gay presidents in decades holding political office (and yes I am counting Ronald Regan). In nations like Chechnya, ethnic cleansing and less explicit forms of queer oppression are taking place and all deemed perfectly legal.

https://flic.kr/p/V9imvJ

The movement “Gender Is Over! (If You Want It)” has always been the ideological group I align myself with in queer politics. Their bold typography stated in black and white clothing makes the imperative that the ideas and roles of gender have become outdated and change must come from within a community as well as, individuals. I wore the same mesh “Gender Is Over!” tank top that day the same reason I wore it one year ago on the day of the massacre. Toxic masculinity and queer bashing go hand in hand. The only way violence against LGBT people and the recognition of personhood can ever come to be, is destroying old patriarchal views of society, sexuality, and especially gender. I remember being angry that day. I remember my heart in the pit of my stomach. I remember finally being ready to no longer feel the need to hide anymore. Maybe this is what it means to “get better.”

https://flic.kr/p/Uv2i1K

The ethos of gay pride is built on queer liberation, not pinkwashing or rainbow capitalism. I could care less for the “All Lives Matter” sentimentality in Trantalis’ speech, or pride flags made by Abercrombie and Fitch, queer resistance is existence. Corporations heralded by CEOs who fund Super-PACs for anti-LGBT legislators (i.e Coachella founder , Urban Outfitters) will willingly throw queer people under the bus until they no longer become a viable demographic to shell out $300 rainbow colored jeans to. The Stonewall Riots, were started (unlike how a certain filmmaker would like to acknowledge) by Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman and other queer, mostly POC retaliating against police to send a message to the world, and that message will not be bought or sold by any corporation or CEO. Queer liberation is not a party everyone will feel invited to, but if you want it, it will be a battle well fought.

View All Photos Here

Portraits of Pulse: 1 Year Later (Photo Essay and Op-Ed) My experience one year ago was similar to many of the speakers at Huizenga Park on Sunday, June 11 who recalled that fateful day.

[mosaicabstract]

Queer Baiting vs. Queer Coding: A Discourse on Yuri on Ice and other media

Sup kiddos. Listen. The Yuri on Ice finale came out two weeks and some change ago, and ever since, I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about how the show didn’t end with a kiss or a wedding or a solid, physical confirmation that Yuuri and Viktor are, indeed, your friendly neighborhood gays. Others are saying that because of this, the show intentionally queer baited its viewers, and that Viktuuri is not, in fact, canon because of it. 

Well I’m going to spend the next however long, as someone who has a bachelor's degree in film and has written lengthy essays about this very topic in the past, explaining why that’s a big pile of poo!! 

(Disclaimer: I apologize if anyone is offended by the word ‘queer’. I’m using is solely because it is the word used in both of the terms I will be discussing). 

Okay, so first, I need you to understand the historical and cultural context of what we call “queer coding”. Queer coding, in film theory, is the implicit and subtle coding of characters to be LGBTQA+ without every explicitly saying it or showing it on screen/in literature/etc. I like to think about coding as kind of an inside joke: if you’re ‘in the know’, you get it. If you’re not, it goes right over your head. For decades, queer coding was the only way that anyone non-straight or non-cis could have any sort of representation in media. Old Hollywood is riddled with some of the best, most subversive queer coding. One of my absolute favorite examples is an Alfred Hitchcock film called Rope. Rope is a thriller about two young, handsome men living in a penthouse apartment together in New York who decide to commit a murder for the fun of it, throw the corpse in a giant chest, and then serve the dead guy’s family and friends a dinner party on top of the chest. It’s morbid and dark, but what intrigues me the most about it is that the two men are, if you’re looking for it, clearly homosexual. It’s never stated. It’s never shown. But they simply are, and if you look closely, you can tell they are through various character traits and wink wink nudge nudge lines in the script. This was much later confirmed by the man who wrote Rope, Arthur Laurents, who was himself gay, and was in a romantic relationship with one of the lead actors, Farley Granger (John Dall, the other lead, was also gay) (x). This was an utter act of subversion. It was a rebellious act, as were all queer codings back then, to have representation in media. (Side note: When I took a class on Hitchcock I read a book by an author I can’t quite remember, and he had an anecdote in his book about being a teenager and going to see Rope in theaters, and coming out in tears and so happy because it was the first time he’d ever realized people like him even existed. Queer coding is HUGELY important in the history of queer media and queer representation.)

Coding still happens today, as well. Just because gay marriage is legal in the US doesn’t mean the fight is anywhere near over (but it’s not like that’s some huge secret). Out and Proud queer media is often a rather niche platform. Film and television are starting to be better about having queer representation, but often it’s either fetishized, pushed to the background, or made into tragedy. Rare and far between are there just like, your average happy-go-lucky shows or films that capture a non-het romance in a normal light. It almost always, still, ends in tragedy. “Bury your gays” is a phrase for a reason, folks. Also in more conservative cultures (such as Japan, where gay marriage hasn’t been universally legalized, and discrimination against LGBTQA+ people is still technically legal (x)), queer coding is a valuable tool for telling queer stories and finding representation. 

Now, we’re going to talk about queer baiting, which is also a thing that happens, but is not the same as queer coding. The difference may be subtle to some people, but it’s there, and it’s all about intent of content and treatment of LGBTQA+ viewers and fans. Where queer coding is done for the benefit of queer viewers, queer baiting is done at the expense of queer viewers. Let’s face it, with fandom culture and non-straight or non-cis people desperately seeking representation and validation from popular media, having a queer relationship/character is a cash cow for a show or film. However, either due to networks or investors or homophobia of certain actors/crew members etc, certain media might find it difficult to just have characters like this. Some certain shows (I’ve especially found this is a trend in television shows... you know the ones) have decided to exploit that interest in the possibility of a homosexual relationship between two (usually male) characters, and they lead their audiences on and make them believe that it’s a thing, only to bring back in ye olde mighty fist of ‘no homo’ heteronormativity and crush everyone’s hopes and dreams, time and time again. (I would argue, at this point, Supernatural makes 99% of its revenue from queer baiting...)

So! Let’s discuss now why YOI isn’t queer baiting, but is, in fact, queer coding (aka why dem bitches be gay af):

I mentioned earlier that Japan is a more conservative place when it comes to homosexuality. It isn’t illegal to be homosexual there, like it is in some places, but there are no laws that protect homosexual people from discrimination, they can’t marry, they can’t be recognized as married (in most places), they can’t adopt, etc. Often, homosexuality portrayed in Japanese media is extremely fetishized and stereotyped. This isn’t all-inclusive. There are some really, really positive strides being made toward queer representation in Japanese media. And honestly, YOI is one of them. And for the record, no, reading the wiki on LGBT rights in Japan doesn’t make me an expert on what it’s like to be gay or trans in Japan. All I have are online testimonies and actual laws, so feel free to comment on that if you know more than I do (which isn’t hard at all). 

Back to YOI. It wasn’t easy to get this thing made. They had to fight to get aired in the first place, only to get relegated to being aired in the middle of the night. I’m not sure if anyone expected them to become the international hit that they did, with millions of watchers all over the world. But, already hanging on by a thread to get aired in the first place, they had to walk a delicate line between getting the green light and bringing you the gay love story of your dreams. 

Because that’s what YOI is. It’s a gay love story. The skating is a platform that they use through which to tell the gay love story,  but at the very core of the show, YOI is about two people who fall in love. 

But Rachel, you say, there’s no confirmation! Nothing from the show to validate their love to the audience! How are we supposed to think it isn’t queerbaiting?!? 

Because it is validated, children. It’s consummated, if you will. Here’s why: 

YOI relies heavily on established genre conventions of romance. Pining, lust, blushing, hugging, etc etc etc. There isn’t a single moment in the show that tells you that it’s just bros being bros, y’know? There’s never that Supernatural No Homo Moment™. But there’s also never a moment where their love is, in the traditional sense, explicitly shown. Why? Because their love is explicitly laid out and shown to you through the grand euphemism of figure skating. 

Think of figure skating as the invisible thread that ties it all (and them) together. They meet because of figure skating. Viktor becomes Yuuri’s coach. Viktor uses figure skating to get Yuuri to love himself and regain his confidence in himself. Viktor puts his own figure skating career on hold for Yuuri. At almost every single performance, Viktor and Yuri have a Moment together, because the ice is the purest form of their love. It’s where Yuuri expresses his love to Viktor. (I mean, for f*ck’s sake, Yuuri’s theme of the season is ‘love on ice’. I even read a meta somewhere that says in Japanese the title can be translated to ‘love on ice’ as well.) It’s love. Their love. On Ice. That’s it. That’s the show. 

Yuuri’s experience skating reflects his experience being in love with Viktor. It starts out shy, embarrassed, self-conscious, and a little inexperienced. But it grows and grows as the season goes on, to show Yuuri taking more risks and gaining confidence. He gets into skating because of Viktor, and Viktor goes back to skating because of him. Their love is directly correlated to skating. 

If you think of their skating as an explicit euphemism for their love story, then the rings? A real engagement. 

(C’MON PEOPLE. Romantic setting. Soft mood lighting. Sliding gold rings onto each others’ fingers. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT)

The pair skate at the end? Their marriage. 

(y’all... full offense but like... matching suits? in front of a ton of people? THE LYRICS OF ‘STAY CLOSE TO ME’ BECOMING A DUET? THEY’RE MARRIED OK gif credit: x)

The kiss? Well...

(CONGRATS IT’S A FUCKING KISS, JUST BECAUSE WE DON’T SEE LIP TO LIP CONTACT, DO YOU HONESTLY THINK IT’S ANYTHING ELSE??? gif credit: x)

Once you stop thinking of things literally and wondering why you didn’t get a steamy make-out scene post GPF final, you will honestly be free. Because for all intents and purposes, that pair skate was either a marriage or a sex scene, depending on how you’d like to interpret it. Point is: it shows them consummating their love. Are you following? If their skating represents their love and finally they’re both skating together... Harold, are you listening? Harold... HAROLD.

Another show I love to compare this to is Hannibal. And I know a lot of people have various issues with Hannibal and the moral implications of it and I’m right there with you bud but if you take a step back and look at it as a heavily queer coded piece of media, a very distinct comparison can be made to the end of Hannibal and the end of Yuri on Ice (I know... I know... but STAY WITH ME HERE OK??). Hannibal was made by Bryan Fuller, an out gay man, and although it’s total possible for gay people to write straight characters (obviously!!!!!!!!!!!! kill that gross stereotype!!!!!!!!!!) it makes the queer coding a little more... apparent. (Warning: Spoilers and also... mentions of gore and violence ahoy)

What skating is to Viktor and Yuuri’s love is what murder is to Hannibal and Will’s love (as fucked up as that is). And how do they end the show? With Will and Hannibal (in the most homoerotic way possible) murdering a dude together, viscerally, and then holding each other, covered in blood. Do you see what I’m saying? IT WAS A SEX SCENE. IT WAS A MARRIAGE. JUST BECAUSE THERE WASN’T THRUSTING OR MAKING OUT DOESN’T MEAN IT WASN’T THERE. It’s what’s beautiful about queer coding. We all watch it and go “Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” whereas all the homophobes watch it and it goes right over their stupid heads and into the void. But yeah, like how the pair skate was Yuuri and Viktor consummating their love, Will and Hannibal fuckin destroying a dude together and then falling off a cliff was them consummating their love. 

In conclusion? YOI didn’t queer bait you. The contrary. It gave you a beautiful gay relationship with a happy ending and a promise for more. Let me reiterate that: it gave you a beautiful, 100% canon gay relationship with a happy ending and a promise for more. You just have to squint a little. Read between the lines. Take your Straight Goggles™ that traditional media have glued to your lil noggin right off and realize that you’re not imagining it and they’re not doing it to fool you. They want you to see it. They want you to know that Viktor and Yuuri are in love. They just have to do it in a way where they can maybe get green lit for another season because the world is still a shit place and homophobes still exist, kapish? 

Look. This isn’t some theory. I’m not saying this like I think it might be the case. No. I know this. I would bet my entire life on it. Trust me. I will not lead you astray. Viktor and Yuuri are in love. You know this. I know this. Kubo knows this. 

(gif credit x)

[dreamsamongmortals]

“Hatari!” An example of queer coding in film history

As I watched for the first time in years the movie “Hatari!” a new perspective came to mind, and I discovered a secret my subconscious had been telling me about since childhood. “Hatari!” is a simple, charming kind of romantic comedy-adventure, about a group of hunters in Africa that catch animals and sell them to Zoos all over Europe. The movie is quite forgotten nowadays since it has no big thrills, action scenes, dramatic love story or gross out humor. It is only remembered as one of the decent John Wayne movies. But it turns out, it is also an example of queer coding done right and for the right reasons and contains a beautiful powerful gay “bromance” story.

 So, let’s do this.

I know what a lot of you may be thinking. Queerbaiting is never right! But queer coding and queer baiting are not the same. It is only recently that the LGBT community has gained its rights, and even now the representation in media is usually not very good or inexistent, just as with the majority of minorities. But during the 40, 50 and 60 eras things were much worse. Since the beginning of Hollywood, films had to be approved by the censors before they could appear on screen. No extreme violence, no sexual relations, no communist propaganda and definitely no queer content was allowed. However, things got worse when in 1946 the Hollywood Blacklist started. It was then when screenplayers, actors, and directors started to be imprisoned for their beliefs. And until 1960, when Trumbo was actually recognized and accepted back in Hollywood the Blacklist stayed. But even afterward, the witchhunts and censorships continued. Therefore, those who wanted to tell different stories, present outside characters or represent themselves had to use coding and subtext to do so. And thus, queer coding became a loudly spoken secret, just as subtextual communist ideas or sexual tension and innuendos disguised as the fight of the sexes. And “Hatari!” a movie by the great Howard Hawks and released in 1962, made a great and positive use of this, which is why I wanted to use this movie as an example.

The film tells the story of the chief of the hunters, played by John Wayne, who falls in love with a photographer that works for a zoo from Switzerland. At first, it seems he can’t stand her, and he assumes she is going to be trouble. But as their relationship blooms and they even adopt three motherless elephants, it turns out they are quite a good match for each other. Of course, it is not this two characters that interested me in my new viewing of the movie. Although when I  watched it for the first time with my father, who loves it, I thought they were the most relevant characters of the story, two other characters caught even then my attention. And it’s about their relationship I want to talk here.

The movie begins with one of the hunters getting hit by a rhinoceros. Immediately, they all rush to hospital, but by the time they arrive, “The Indian” has already lost a lot of blood. It is then when a new character appears. A French guy named Charles Maurey that has heard they’ll be needing a new worker. Of course, Kurt Muller, a German car racer that is part of the hunter’s team, jumps immediately with anger. His friend is “not yet dead”, and so he hits the French guy. However, as it turns out  “The Indian” has a pretty rare blood type, and the only person that can transfuse him is the French man. But Charles does not care about the job anymore, he just wants Kurt to ask him for help. Thus their love story begins. Even if very few people will recognize this couple as more than friends, the coding is there.

Charles, who soon will be called “Chips” by his new colleagues, and Kurt are the only male characters in the entire movie that are somewhat sexualized. The female love interests appear almost always fully and usually quite modestly clothed ( the only exception being the time Dallas is “attacked” by a leopard while showering). In fact, you could say, especially if you look at other movies the actresses partook in, that they were unsexualized in this one. In contrast, “Chips” always shows off his muscles under are a tight blue shirt and a pair of “Rebel-without-a-Cause-Glasses”; and Kurt wears the shortest pants with pride, while he unbuttons his collar, and makes the same use of his glasses. 

The second time they meet, some days have passed since “The Indian” got send to the hospital, and John Wayne receives a call, telling him that “Chips” abandoned the place after asking for money. Kurt assumes that he has gotten the money for himself and is not going to appear again. But soon after, the French comes by, a rifle that he bought back with the money he asked for in his hands, and ready to apply for the job. After they try him out and realize he’s a good shot, Kurt seems to be quite happy to accept him and even gives him his weapon. “Chips” punches him in the face and asks him afterward: “Do you still want me?”

It was at this point that I first noticed the queer coding. Who would ask if someone still wanted him when he was applying for a job? Funny enough, it was obvious that the reason they did not like each other at the beginning was mare Pride from “Chip’s” side and Prejudice from Kurt’s part. But after this, they become close friends. They drive together in the same car, they wear the same glasses, are always close to each other, “Chips” even safes Kurt’s life at one point… And yes, they also fight for the same girl. You may wonder how that’s possible if they are both gay. However, it was rather usual for queer coded movies to put a female love interest in between “gay acted” characters, in order for the film to pass the censorship. It is obvious if you see the movie that neither of the two men is really interested in the girl they are chasing. They pass more screen time looking at each other than at her, and when it turns out that she is in love with the comedic character, they accept it easily and Kurt invites “Chips” for a drink. 

What is great about this movie is that you can easily see when the screen players or director thought, they were being too obvious, as immediately after a very close scene between them comes another one with a female counterpart, or were one is relegated to the background, looking at the other from time to time with apparent longing. They get hurt together, they heal their wounds together, literary in fact, and they are always driving together. By the end of the movie, they both have planned to go to Paris together and stay there until the next hunting season. They apparently both know a girl there. “It’s a good excuse for another fight,wright” says Kurt and then asks John Wayne what his love interest is going to do, therefore comparing “Chips” with the girl Wayne loves.

It is precisely this ending that makes me love the movie more. And for that to be understood we have to see how the queer coding at the time went. When we think about hidden queer characters in classics, usually there are some movies that pop up repeatedly: “Strangers on a train” by Alfred Hitchcock, “Spartacus” by Stanley Kubrick, “Some like it hot” by Billy Wilder… Each of this three examples shows a different kind of typical queer coded character:

 “Strangers on a train” was not the only time Hitchcock queer coded main characters. He did the same with the movie “Rope” and the similarities between the men are quite obvious. As much as I love Hitchcock both for his films and his willingness to break molds and fight for acceptance, I have to agree with those that criticize him for making his villains gay. Even in “Strangers on a train”, where the hero is also queer coded, he ends up with a female lover instead of with his villainous gay counterpart. In that sense, “Spartacus”, the movie that helped break the Black List and is all about freedom of expression and the right to be oneself, has a similar problem. Tony Curtis plays a young, attractive and somewhat feminine slave that falls in love for Spartacus, who rescues and takes care of him. But as the story is a tragedy and a reflection of the times Trumbo lived in as he wrote it, everybody dies. Only Spartacus’ female lover survives and runs away with her baby. 

And then we have the hilarious “Some like It hot”, that is way more explicit and actually has a happy ending for the two queer coded characters. The only slight problem is that these characters are supposed to be a joke. Their sexuality is supposed to be part of the joke. By stating this, I’m not trying to devaluate these movies. They are some of the best films ever made, touching on impossible themes at the time with impeccable taste and great direction. But they also show the stereotype that would follow gay characters in movies up until now. 

There have only been three queer characters in Hollywood for decades: The comic relief, the villain, or the hero with a tragic ending. Nothing more nothing less. And this is the brilliance of “Hatari!” in my opinion. Kurt and “Chips” are anything but gay stereotypes. They don’t have a tragic ending, they are not villains, and they are not there to be a comic relief. In fact, “Pockets” the character that so easily could have been queer coded, is the one that ends up with the girl.

This is the reason I wanted to write this essay. This two minor, overlooked characters of a movie that nobody bothers to remember could easily be the best gay couple that was written during the censorship era. And they end up happy, and they have never been outed before. So this is me pulling them out of the closet.

 I hope you like it.

 But even if you don’t believe the couple is gay, you can still enjoy the movie, as my family does, because of its light harded humour, great score from Henri Manccini, great screenplay by some of the best Hollywood writers at the time, and beautiful elephants in the room ;)

[theconservativebrief]

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for July 8 through 14 is “Love Is the Message,” the sixth episode of the first season of FX’s Pose.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a show structured like Pose, FX’s ’80s-set exploration of drag ball culture and LGBT lives in AIDS-era New York, much less one structured like Pose that is as good as this one. With every week, it opens a new door to a new corner of its world, then thoroughly explores that corner, before moving on to something else the next week. Its episodes are adding up to something, but they’re also slices of life, quick glimpses of character, of emotion, of story.

This is welcome in a world where it often seems as though every TV show should come with its own dedicated Wiki, which viewers can furrow their brows over as they watch. “Now who was that? And how do they relate to that other character? And what secrets are they keeping?”

That’s not the case with Pose. I was tempted to call Pose simple, but that gives the wrong impression. What it is is clean, and elegant. The storytelling is always clear, and you always know where every character stands with every other one, despite the show’s rapidly expanding ensemble.

All of this is on display in abundance in “Love Is the Message,” the show’s first truly great episode, the first episode of American television ever directed by a trans woman of color (Janet Mock), and one of the best episodes its producer and co-writer, the mega-mogul Ryan Murphy, has ever been involved with.

Angel has a sad moment. FX

As I wrote in my initial review of Pose, the series is an elaborate stew of nods and references to other pop culture that deals with this era, some of it stemming directly from that era and some of it other works made in the intervening decades.

There’s nothing wrong with this. All TV shows are built atop their influences, and usually consciously so. (TV’s production schedule is so fast that it’s often hard to disguise just where the lifts are coming from.) But it’s also meant that the show has had to figure out how it wants to approach the AIDS crisis in its storytelling. Given its setting and characters, AIDS isn’t something Pose can ignore. But it also seems aware at all times that when it talks about AIDS, it’s competing not just with other TV shows but also with titanic works of American pop culture.

“Love Is the Message” isn’t the show’s first stab at telling a story about AIDS — indeed, the show’s fourth episode, “The Fever,” might have been even more interested in the effects of HIV. But it’s the first real look at what it would mean not just to live with the virus but to live in a time when so many of your friends were dying, and when even people whose lives ostensibly had nothing to do with the LGBT community might have found themselves marked by its passage.

It focuses on the character of Pray Tell, a drag ball emcee played by the great stage actor Billy Porter, who has been very good on the show to this point, but mostly in the role of introducing what has become the show’s most recognizable bit of dialogue, every time he purrs, “The category is…” before introducing a new drag show. But “Love Is the Message” traces Pray Tell’s journey through the last few weeks of his lover’s life, as he watches his boyfriend wane and finally die. And then Pray Tell himself, who is HIV positive, has to consider what he will do to ensure some sort of legacy once he finally passes on.

What “Love Is the Message” made me feel, acutely, was how much those who lived through the AIDS crisis almost seemed to believe it was coming to wipe a whole community off the map. Pray Tell wonders if anyone will remember those who are LGBT if the disease kills all of them, before bitterly concluding that, no, the rest of the world will simply move on and relegate them to a footnote in history. AIDS was ignored for so long, the show argues, because the disease was convenient to mainstream society, killing only those who were kept far away from the center of stories like this one.

But there were two big reasons that changed. The first was art, the vibrancy of queer culture reaching up into the mainstream and shaking it just enough to make those who lived in heterosexual, cisgender complacency realize that those who were not like them were living full, human lives, too, and those lives were being cut tragically short. As this episode ends, Pray Tell seems intent on developing some sort of testament, a message to the future that he and others like him existed. It’s not hard to wonder if Pose itself is that testament.

But the second big reason is right there in the episode’s title. Love is understandable and undeniable. It’s impossible to really get to know two men who are in love and deny what that love is, just as it’s impossible to mistake the look of sadness mixed with longing on the face of trans sex worker Angel (Indya Moore) when she sees her cis guy lover, Stan (Evan Peters), again for the first time in months. (He, similarly, looks overcome.) Love and art transcend the walls that would otherwise divide these characters. And that might as well function as a mission statement for Pose itself.

Stan and Patty work out their differences. (Or don’t, as it were.) FX

It’s perhaps easy to look at Pose and write mostly about its flashiest sequences and moments — those drag balls, or Stan’s work for Donald Trump (who is never seen, like he’s Vera on Cheers or something), or the show’s many layers of performance. They are the most obvious qualities to take home about the series.

But poke underneath those qualities, and you’ll find a show that is intent on underlining the basic humanity of all of these characters, no matter who they are and no matter what they do. In “Love Is the Message,” Mock underlines this by giving almost every member of the cast a moment when they’re framed, dead-center, in a close-up, so that we realize Pray Tell’s story of love taken away from him is also Stan’s story of same and vice versa.

This makes the show feel like, of all things, Mad Men, which also took a wide view of its characters and their lives, even if it was solidly fixated on points-of-view that were well within the mainstream of American pop culture of the time. Mad Men was happy to realize when its characters fucked up, but it always empathized with their fuck-ups, with the idea that they might find their way to some better self if enough time passed. Don Draper might have cultivated the image of a perfect man, but he was empty and broken inside. Mad Men relished that contradiction.

The same is broadly true of Pose, but it reverses the equation almost exactly. Here, the lead characters are those whose society has dubbed them undesirable, who have a plague threatening to wipe them out. And at all turns, the series underlines the ways that they have constructed their own families that are, perhaps, more wholesome than the families that kicked them out in the first place. It is an argument for the primacy of the found family in America that makes its case not by banging a drum, but by simply depicting a bunch of people who have nowhere else to go and find somewhere to go in each other.

Indeed, the one reason Stan is such a prominent character on the show is because he’s a seemingly typical go-go ’80s executive who finds himself flummoxed when his connection to Angel reveals itself to be tender, genuine, and loving. The show never mistakes Stan for a romantic hero — he’s cheating on his wife, after all — but it does depict the ways in which opening a door to acceptance within yourself can cause you to lose your footing in ways that might terrify but also, eventually, reveal their wonders.

“Mother’s Day,” the episode immediately preceding “Love Is the Message,” explores this directly, via stories of the various characters’ relationships with their biological parents and how those relationships are complicated by their very beings. Pose more broadly is a show about how its characters survived being cast out to the fringes of society by those who were supposed to love and care for them and by fiction that refused to depict them as they were and by a plague that seemed hellbent on killing them, only to emerge, stronger than ever, on the other side of that banishment. In an uncertain world, it’s a much-needed balm.

Pose airs Sundays at 10 pm Eastern on FX.

Original Source -> FX’s Pose offers a soulful look at the AIDS crisis — and its best episode yet

via The Conservative Brief