#an exploring rich’s internalized homophobia mood

[insertsickusername13]

Rich x Michael is one of my least favorite ships in the fandom, but by god they are the perfect chance for a character study. Post-fire Rich finding his own new ways to demonstrate his sexuality—at first overcompensating. Making himself appear more feminine even when it makes him uncomfortable, showcasing his relationship with Michael almost violently to others (maybe some of the popular kids have something to do with it. Jake’s confusion and disbelief—a result of genuine shock or fear of his own suppressed feelings?—Chloe’s ‘gay best friend!!’ stereotype (as long as she supports him, he’ll play the part). Jenna spreading rumors?) and eventually learning what he actually likes and what he actually doesn’t, and he doesn’t actually like Michael, he just liked the fact he had proof. I am gay, they all know I’m gay, and they can’t doubt that because I’m kissing him and I fucking like it. And eventually he finds his balance, he finds himself, and that person isn’t with Michael. That person loves his friends and treats outsiders with kindness and skateboards and joins robotics club and has a bi pin on his backpack and yeah, he does like to appear a little more feminine at times but not because it proves he’s gay, just because he likes it.

Meanwhile Michael gets his in to the popular crowd. He doesn’t care. He really doesn’t care. But after Jeremy apologizes and the anger wears off, Michael can’t help but question what parts of this were his fault. Jeremy flinches every time he goddamn slouches, this wasn’t just messed up for Michael. Jeremy was ruined. So this is him trying. He’ll give some. He’ll display his interests with pride all the while pretending to be into some of the normal stuff. And Rich is his way to get everyone to notice him. He slinks into the group, Rich on his arm as a sort of fake ID, and finds his place in this new friend group. Except weirdly enough, all of these people are trying to become more like him? You mean more like the boy Jeremy abandoned? The boy who was quite literally invisible? Is it because of Rich? Is it because Rich admires him? Is that why Jake seems to pay him so much attention, or why Brooke is so willing to hangout with him? And now he’s learning a new lesson—not how to give in because you’re insecure, but how to give in a little because it makes the people around you happy. Pretending to like theater because Jeremy and Christine glow the second they’re on stage. Pretending to like painting his nails because he’s the only one who will let Brooke experiment with new colors and designs on him. And learning that this giving in doesn’t apply to boyfriends. He can’t pretend to like Rich because it makes Rich happy (does it?)

[mamabear-elinor]

THE FORGING OF BITTER BONDS

VI. The Heart Wants May 12, 1994

[tw -- homophobia/internalized homophobia, cw for mentions of sex]

Sorcha knew it had been a risk falling in love with Elinor, but when you grew up in a place where you were different from everyone else, you learned that everything you did was a risk. You might as well enjoy it. 

And Sorcha enjoyed the months that she got with Elinor. She thought maybe they could be something. Even if she didn’t hear anything from her after that first kiss. The summer had dragged on, Sorcha having left school without realizing she didn’t have Elinor’s number. Nothing but her email address. And the emails she sent remained unread. 

Sorcha could rationalize this: Elinor was rich. She was probably busy, in the south of France or somewhere else fancy, with no cell reception. That was all it was.

It was easy to accept Elinor back when they saw each other for the first time after summer break. After all, what was she supposed to do when Elinor ran right into her arms and told her she missed her? 

They moved slowly. Elinor was as shy as the sun on a cloudy day, but she was beautiful. Graceful. She reminded Sorcha of gazelle or the way river water flowed. They laughed together, explored together. Elinor forced Sorcha to sit in her seat at the library and actually do her assignments. Sorcha convinced Elinor to have fun. She made her smile. Each one was like winning a prize, for smiles from Elinor DunBroch were hard won. Her favourite was making her come undone, cheeks flushed, that perfectly combed hair wild, that prim, proper exterior undone like the zippers of her skirts, strewn across Sorcha’s floor. Sorcha drank her in. Held her hand on dark nights back to the dorm, kissed her in the shadows and in the snow. 

But, as the snow melted, she grew restless. She didn’t want to hide. Sorcha had never hidden anything in her entire life.

“What about Marigold?” 

“No!” Elinor barked, her voice climbing even higher than it had already been.

“She’s your best friend. I don’t think she’ll care. And if she does, she isn’t your best friend.” 

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is,” Sorcha pressed, feeling her hands curling into fists. To her: it was. How could it not be? She knew that Elinor loved her. Sorcha loved Elinor. They could be together. “Times are changing. We can be together. We can go to England. Hell, what about Oranges are not the Only Fruit? The Stonewall Youth Project? Bloody Edwin Morgan is gay, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know what any of that means,” Elinor replied in that way of hers, as if she had suddenly suited up for battle. Her voice was detached. Her shoulders back. She was sitting in her chair bolt upright, as if someone had shoved a piece of metal between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t looking at Sorcha. Instead, her gaze was focused out the window, on the sunny day outside.

It was a good thing, too, because she would see the flash of rage and hurt that struck across Sorcha’s face.

“What do you mean you don’t know what that means?”

“I don’t know what it means,” Elinor repeated. Her voice was stiff, but firm. Her hands are folded in her lap, one in front of the other, palms up. As if she was holding something precious there. As if she was about to take a sacrament. She was beautiful.

Sorcha could feel her heart breaking but she swallowed it down and tried it again, softer. She put her hands in Elinor’s, holding them tightly. “I’ll teach you.”

“About what, oranges?” Elinor turned and looked at her, gaze sharp.

“No—about the community. Our community.” She adjusted her grip on Elinor’s hands, but that was a mistake as she pulled them away and held them to her chest.

“What are you talking about? I’m not—I’m not gay.”

“Sunshine, that’s not what it sounded like with my head beneath your skirt,” Sorcha smirked, trying to lighten the mood.

“That was a mistake,” Elinor said at once.

Sorcha’s brow crumpled and her lip trembled. Her whole life she had been raised to be tough. To not let the things others say hurt her. Her skin was beautiful and Black and tough. It had to be. That hurt, though. It wounded her deep and she couldn’t help the way she scoffed, almost spitting in Elinor’s face as she pulled her own head back and her hands curl into fists at her sides.

The rage that was burning in her was not just for herself, but Elinor too.

“You’re pathetic,” she snarled at Elinor and wished that she was the kind of person who could be satisfied when she saw her flinch.

Elinor stood, her hand grazing the chair as she did so. “I should go.”

“Yeah, you should.” That was the last thing Sorcha says to Elinor. The next time they cross paths, they pretend as if they do not even know each other. 

[softfists]

I listened to Warm Strangers and Waking Hour yesterday while writing, and they were SO GOOD. Is there anything I should know about Vienna Teng's discography before I dive deeper? Any gems I should make sure to check out? Or anything else you want to share about her? I'm so glad to have found this.

YOU GENUINELY HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY THIS ASK MAKES ME!!! :D I love Vienna so much -- I genuinely think she’s a genius and she’s such an underrated and unknown gem that whenever other people love her, I get so excited. I’ve been intending to write a VT music primer for literal years now but have never gotten around to it, so I...may have gone a little overboard here. /o\

In general things to know about Viennna: in a sentence, I’d say her songwriting is best described as musically and lyrically complex explorations of diverse themes written with the eye of an academic and the heart of a poet.

They’re great no matter how you listen to them, but closer listening tends to reveal more and more layers, so I highly recommend that. She’s a mega-nerd, in a way I think a lot of singer-songwriters usually aren’t, and that’s 100% reflected in her writing, especially the further into her discography you go. Her lyrics have always been thoughtful, but they also become more interesting, diverse, and political through successive albums. One of her great talents is telling political stories that still feel very personal, intimate, and immediate.

The other thing I really love about her and that I’d look out for is what I think of as “form-function” songwriting. In many of her songs, the lyrical themes are echoed in the music.

Anyway! After WH and WS, she has three more albums: Dreaming Through The Noise, Inland Territory, and Aims. I’ve listed some of my favorites on each, but tbh, they’re all such strong albums that I don’t think there’s a bad track on any of them.

The rest under the cut because it got too long /o\ I JUST LOVE HER A LOT OKAY.

Dreaming Through The Noise is very much a mood album, with lots of piano and strings. It’s quieter and more subdued, very polished. Favorites:

Whatever You Want - a falsely cheery passive-aggressive song about a shitty corporate boss who gets turned in by one of his workers and then divorced by his wife (she goes on curating your domestic museum / she disappears in her loyalty / she is a dress wearing a face in the doorway) .

Love Turns 40 - has AMAZING strings. Title is exactly what the song is about.

City Hall - a queer couple from out of state driving to California (I assume it’s California) to get married. Makes me teary eyed every time.

Nothing Without You - about loneliness and how it strikes in unexpected ways and places. Less musically interesting IMO but has some really lovely turns of phrase (it's the quiet night that breaks me / like a dozen paper cuts that only I can trace / all my books are lying useless now / all my maps will only show me how to lose my way)

Pontchartrain - the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Haunting music and lyrics (darling / lake Pontchartrain is haunted / bones without names / photographs framed in reeds). She plays all white keys in one hand and all black keys in the other, which produces the eerie, dissonant sound, and is a nod to the theme of the line between living and dead.

Recessional - my favorite from the album. A love story in reverse, inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also, I have no idea if this was an intended meaning, but I’ve always read it as being about a queer woman who’s in love with her friend and is struggling with internalized homophobia.

Inland Territory is her “mixtape album”. It’s tied with Aims for my favorite and has a lot of great musical and lyrical variety. Marks a turning point for her writing more political music that’s framed by specific personal narratives.

Antebellum - a love song about a deteriorating relationship. Beautifully intricate (almost classical sounding) piano and rich strings.

Grandmother Song - a fun, raucous romp of a lecture from her grandmother about her choice to pursue music (Vienna, who’s a second gen immigrant, has a CS degree from Stanford and worked as a programmer before leaving to do music). It’s a surprisingly nuanced portrait of what it means to be an immigrant, knowing you are so much more fortunate than your parents/grandparents etc. -- even though it starts out sounding like your conservative grandmother’s outdated views on marriage and careers.

Stray Italian Greyhound - my favorite from the album, possibly my favorite VT song. A political song disguised as a love song: Vienna wrote it after being almost unwillingly inspired by Obama in 2008, about how scary it is to believe in something and want to make it happen, rather than being comfortably cynical. And then she realized that feeling was similar to the uncertainty of knowing whether a crush is reciprocated, and decided to frame it in those terms. I love the tentative staccato piano and hopeful strings on this SO MUCH.

Also this is totally James’ feelings about Thomas in a modern AU (or canon, though the tone is almost too happy for canon, even in the London-era).

No Gringo - a theoretical shoe-on-the-other-foot future where white Americans cross the border to Mexico after the US descends into chaos [looks directly into camera]. Basically an attempt to make white people more empathetic to undocumented folks.

Radio - about domestic terrorism and the tendency to tune out terrible things. It’s not explicit, but I also read it as a critique of American apathy towards the victims of American terrorism abroad (many years ago I think I read somewhere that the numbers she whispers in the bridge are victim counts from drone strikes since 9/11). Musically experimental and bold. Transition from verses to chorus sound like a radio being changed.

St. Stephen’s Cross - a fictional account of the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sounds like it could be part of a short story. Lovely, sparse lyrics and a beautiful, soaring, hopeful piano chorus. Evokes the feeling of people spilling into the streets.

Aims is the album she wrote while in grad school for environmental science/sustainable enterprise. It’s more electronic and pop-y, and it’s her most political one -- she talks about capitalism, climate change, mass surveillance/data mining, and resource exhaustion. Fair warning though, if you’re the kind of person who is very politically radical, I can see why you might find her political critiques don’t go far enough. She’s very much of the belief that you need systemic change (vs. individual choice) to make a difference, but her political orientation is reformist and not revolutionary. Personally, I love the album and find the critiques she offers in her songs thoughtful, but none of them are LET’S BRING DOWN THE SYSTEM-types.

Favorites:

Level Up - an ode to secular humanism/call to action/inspiring music that is genuinely inspiring and not cheesy. About how when the world is disheartening, the best solution is to keep opening yourself up, caring, doing, creating, and asking people for help.

In the 99 - Occupy Wall Street, or Wall Street Sucks: the song. I mean:

Also contains the line “I haven’t come to say I’m sorry / but I swear I’m on your side” which, to me, captures how fucking infuriating the privileged are.

Landsailor - my favorite from Aims. She describes it as her “sustainability song”. A love song/duet between capitalism and humanity, not in the “I love capitalism” sense, but in the “It’s amazing we have all these modern comforts but the infrastructure needed to sustain the way we live comes with a price and we have to confront the inherent tension in that”. Which sounds like a recipe for a horrible dry, preachy song, but it totally works. She writes about everyday things as if they’re mystical: “cloudraker” for the internet (literally, The Cloud), “lightbringer�� for artificial lighting, heating, and cooling, “deepwinter strawberry / endless summer, ever spring” about food shipping.

Close To Home - about Body Integrity Disorder, but more broadly, mental illness. That was the intended meaning, but it also reads very easily as being about (non-white) immigrants’ sense of identity in a place that will forever consider us alien. Musically just...very well-done. Has an AMAZING soundscape.

The Hymn Of Acxiom - Acxiom is a marketing company that steals your data to sell you stuff. This is a creepy techno hymn with a robot chorus, written from the perspective of the computers. Uses religious language/motifs to creepy effect.

Copenhagen (Let Me Go) - climate change generally, the failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, specifically. Has a three-voice overlapping bit at the end.

Flyweight Love - a love song about a long distance relationship. Really, really lovely: took a flight far across the globe / found a calling sweet as a lover / through the wilderness you find in me / you are in love with all the world. Also a modern James/Thomas song (and if you OT3 them with anyone, there’s also the line: you should never have belonged to me / or should I say, not to me alone).

Goodnight New York - about New York, and leaving it. I love this for its sense of place and lived-in, homey feel: goodnight, you canyons of steel and light / twist and turn where your alleyways hide / swaying trains, sheltering dreams, and little white lies