#and in fact was headcanoning chase as bi literally from the word go

[grifalinas]

Between Weller’s ex-wife and the apparent set up for some Chase/Yas action it’s clear that RT are probably not planning to give me any mlm any time soon in gen:LOCK either and it’s like. It’s not like I’m holding it against them but like. Damn. They coulda. 

They coulda.

[the-bee-graveyard]

Ok I actually need to rant about this.

What's so insidious about erasing Robin's lesbianism is that lesbians are always constantly told either directly or through subtext that we are wrong and broken for not liking men and essentially for having a sexuality that completely excludes men. It's less about liking women (because people never really take that seriously anyways which yes is another type of oppression) and more about not being attracted to, loving or dating men.

We are made to feel like freaks from childhood along with aroace women and nonbinary people who are often read as women for not liking boys or having crushes on them. That fucks you long before you get a crush on a girl (or young enbies read by society as female you get the idea).

Society teaches you that you are broken without a boyfriend or a husband and yes this affects all women (and those read by society as such) but it screws with the heads of those of us who don't and never will want that even more. It literally breeds comphet. Comphet comes from our society focusing so much on the importance of men and male validation that some lesbians and aroace women and nonbinary people will literally start chasing male validation and putting ourselves in situations we don't really want to be in to get men to like us when we don't even really care!!! We just think we care!!

It's so fucked up and bisexual women and bisexuals in general will never understand how painfully triggering it is for us when they ship Robin with a man when she was confirmed to be a lesbian because they've never gone through what we've gone through. Not to mention the fact that she never even shows romantic or sexual interest in men on screen! All of her interactions with Steve are platonic and STILL beautiful btw!

People are using straight amatonormative googles when looking at them I'm order to ship them. And it makes me so mad not just because if what I mentioned but also because as an aro spec person as well it annoys me to see people immediately take a friendship and turn it into something romantic like they always do because they don't value platonic love as something as powerful as romantic love.

Now I'm not the kind of person who usually believes in "the word of god" or word of the author and I really wish they had stated it explicitly on screen but, the canon backs the confirmation like I mentioned earlier, and it just feels particularly insidious that people's first instinct will always be to dismiss someone's lesbianism and to to ship a women with a man no matter what.

Like lesbophobia is everywhere and no one cares and I'm just so tired.

I was actually going to make a post about this so thank you for making it for me.

My big problem with people being like “I headcanon Robin is bi” is she’s literally the only character in stranger things that’s sexuality is confirmed. People don’t actually give a fuck about bisexual representation, they just want their heterosexual ships.

It’s deeply annoying and slightly for me personally because I’m also an aspec arospec lesbian who was constantly picked apart and made fun of as a person for not having crushes on my male friends, and like you mentioned, this happens to almost every aspec and/or lesbian.

Everything in society is so sexualized and so revolved around being in a relationship with a man. Even gay men don’t face the kind of backlash lesbians do because it’s still two men. I’m just so tired.

Long story short Robin’s a lesbian erasing that is lesbophobic whether you’re aware of it or not please check yourself before you dismiss an aspect of a person’s identity.

[writershapeholeonthedoor]

Phoebe Buffay x Joey Tribbiani headcanons

-Phoebe and Joey had this really open relationship in the beginning. It wasn't a relationship per se. They would have sex and have dates on random days, but they would see other people more often than not;

-That's just how they were, it worked for them and it was good. Joey could be free to 'date' other women and yet feel attached to Phoebe. And Phoebe would enjoy spending time with Joey, one of the only people in the world who took her seriously, and yet get the chance to adventure herself with other people;

-So, in my headcanons, Joey is bi and Phoebe is pan. They just love to love people in general;

-Throughout the years there are periods of times where they wouldn't hook up for months or suddenly get really close to actually date;

-While on their dates, they would call each other Regina Phalange and Ken Adams, and always come up with crazy background stories to mess up with the waiters;

-They also always assumed their friends knew about this and that's why they never told anyone;

-Joey not only takes her seriously, but he also adores the way Phoebe views life. It's light and free, and her entire energy makes him truly happy;

-Phoebe, on the other hand, values how much Joey chases his dreams and don't allow other people to push him down, not to mention that she founds fascinating how big and united his family is;

-Phoebe didn't want to live with Joey when her apartment burned because she thought it could make things a bit confusing for them and the space they put between each other was a good thing;

-And it worked for quite some time, over 10 years, before they both looked back and went "hey, I guess we're, like, together, huh?";

-And, just like that, they were all in. Literally. After they realize that yes, that's real love, they move in together in less than a month;

-Joey had been living with Monica, Chandler and the twins and one day during dinner he just said he was moving out and his friends were SHOCKED;

-And he's so confused because "I'm going to live with Phoebe, why is that so weird?" and Mondler has no clue why he would do this until he has to come out and say it with every word;

-Monica immediately calls Rachel to yell at her about it, but Rachel isn't that surprised about it. She lived with Joey for a while and Phoebe did stop by a lot more than she had to, but of course she screamed with Monica over the phone as well because DAMN, PHOEBE AND JOEY, PHOEBE AND JOEY!;

-They get married that same year, not wanting to wait any longer, but it went so completely unplanned that a wedding in Vegas would have made more sense;

-They just got married one day, just like that;

-They very often fall asleep watching TV, with Phoebe lying with her head on Joey’s large, strong chest;

-For Phoebe, Joey tried to go vegetarian for a while, but she didn’t judge him when he gave up on that;

-Whenever they go to the cafe alone, when the other ones are busy, they do impersonations of their friends to make the other laugh;

-To Joey, Phoebe has the most amazing laugh – loud, free and from inside;

-To Phoebe, Joey has the best smile – large, easy and honest;

-Fun fact, none of them can cook. Joey can pull out some tricks and do some crazy things in the kitchen that sometimes turns out eatable, but the only thing Phoebe can make is pancakes. But that’s not a problem, because Monica always saves them some leftovers. Joey does like the pancakes, though;

-When Joey showed his first grey hair, Phoebe made fun of him for it. It was innocent enough that he didn’t care and he let her name every new grey or white hair that appeared on his head from that day on (Rita and Edith were his favorite ones);

-At some point, trying to get some money, Phoebe decided to go back to her taxi driver days. Joey put a baseball bat in the trunk for her and would check in every hour or so, just to be sure;

-When Joey finally won an award for his job, he not only thanked Phoebe on the stage but also let her carry the thing around like it was hers for days after that;

-I'm not sure they would have kids. I believe they wouldn't plan it, it wouldn't be a goal or something like that, but they would both be thrilled if it ended up happening;

-They adopted the craziest animals throughout the years. Ducks and chickens were always a presence in their home, but all sorts of birds who felt from their nests, stray dogs, old cats, rat babies, baby pigs, and even a foal were part of the family at some point;

-And Phoebe spent the last of their days trying to teach Joey how to speak French. 

 For the person who asked me (@foreverpheebs), I’m so so sorry it took me so long to get this! Hope you enjoy it!

[drsilverfish]

Old Timey SPN - A Fresh (Queer) Look at 4x06 Yellow Fever

Dean in Yellow Fever (comedic terror overlays heart-stopping anxiety).

Whilst we’re on S14 mid-season hiatus, I wanted to write this meta, because sometimes, when writing or reading about the queer subtext in 2018/19 SPN it’s perhaps too easy to forget why queer subtext came into being in the first place, not just as codes in literature, film and television, but as codes in the everyday lives of LGBTQ people. Such codes were (and still are in many places) built around being able to safely signal to, and identify, one another, without being outed more generally, therefore being at risk of often life-threatening violence, backlash, repression etc. 

The world Sam and Dean grew up in, on the road in dive motels and truck-stops, working cases in the “boondocks”, on the fringes of a seriously macho hunter culture, with an ex-marine and Vietnam Vet for a father? A father who sometimes drank too much, and who (in subtext) was, most likely, sometimes physically violent towards his eldest son? A world where Dean got him and Sam fed by stealing food when their Dad forgot to leave them enough? A world where, when they were a bit older, they got by on hustling pool and credit card fraud and (Jensen’s headcanon, but also see below) Dean probably turned tricks on occasion too? That was not a world where you could be “out” safely, by any stretch of the imagination. Of course that doesn’t mean it was a world where sex between men didn’t exist. But it was far, far more likely to be a world populated by MSM (men who have sex with men, but who do not identify as gay or bisexual) than by anyone sporting an “out” LGBTQ identity of any kind. 

It’s not until ten years later, in 2016, in 11x19 The Chitters, that we meet any clearly identified LGBTQ male hunters, and when we do (Jesse and Cesar) we learn that Jesse’s childhood, in small-town Colorado, was full of fear and the need (which his older brother warned him about) to stay in the closet for his own safety.

SPN really hints at all that, early on, in the scene from 1x08 Bugs when Dean comes out of a pool hall with a wad of cash in his hand, and Sam ribs him about hustling pool and Dean says it’s “fun and easy” and there’s a “Billiards” sign flashing behind him which is partially broken, so instead it reads “Billiar” (Bi-liar = bisexual liar) hinting (in subtext) that maybe, what Dean was hustling wasn’t just pool, but dudes:

Original gif-set here: http://canonspngifs.tumblr.com/post/182845022861 

So, content warning for this piece of meta - under the cut I discuss “queer-bashing” and link to an upsetting (but important) real-world piece of reporting in Vanity Fair from the 1990s on a series of brutal homophobic and often ultimately murderous incidents in Texas, as an example of the kind of climate Dean and Sam would have been aware of, growing up.

If you’re feeling OK to follow this thread through, the first thing you should do, is read this earlier, great piece of collaborative meta on Yellow Fever and its Dean/ Ash subtext by @f-ckyeahfutbol and @sandraugiga  and @aslightsgoflashing (the last blog now deleted):

https://f-ckyeahfutbol.tumblr.com/post/147912926731/aslightsgoflashing-f-ckyeahfutbol 

I want to write something adjacent to that meta, by talking about how both Dean’s heightened anxiety (brought on, ostensibly, by the “ghost sickness” in the episode) and the form of violence meted out to Luther/ the ghost in Yellow Fever, can be read as, subtextually, signalling towards Dean’s “gay panic” and (the extremely understandable cause of said panic) - homophobic violence. 

More under the cut...

Firstly, let’s understand something of the history of violence towards gay/ bisexual men, particularly in the small town and rural United States where SPN is set. SPN began screening in 2005. Just a decade earlier, Vanity Fair ran this important piece of investigative journalism on a series of deadly and violent “queer-bashing” incidents in Texas carried out mostly by teenage boys, who felt supported by their churches and communities in carrying out these attacks (many of them resulting in murder):

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1995/02/texas-murder-199502 

Sam and Dean are aware, in the SPN story-world, of this kind of community-supported homophobic violence. Remember the out gay teacher who was murdered by a homophobic preacher’s wife controlling a Reaper in 1x12 Faith? Meta on that here: 

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/115161057824/bisexual-in-the-subtext-since-s1 

The SPN story-world also established, early on (see below 2x11 Playthings) that Dean is anxious about being perceived as queer, in a way that Sam is not: 

SAM: “They probably think you’re over-compensating”

DEAN: .................................

Original gif here: http://nimbus2ooo.tumblr.com/post/5585782984 

Dean has been queer-coded as bisexual since S1, and, as this Dean/ Ash meta master-post makes clear, specifically, in the early seasons, in relation to Jo Harvelle and Ash, whom he meets at the same time:

https://sandraugiga.tumblr.com/post/124850209617/a-detailed-look-into-dean-and-ash-masterpost 

Ash, of course, dies in 2x21 All Hell Breaks Loose, which is why the Yellow Fever @f-ckyeahfutbol  and @sandraugiga meta linked to, above the cut, discusses mourning and the Dean/Ash subtext as one of the threads running through the episode. As “ghost-sickness” in some Native American cultures, is a form of mourning, that reading is definitely relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_sickness . 

Bearing that in mind, I’m going to leave Dean/ Ash to one side, and talk specifically about reading the “ghost-sickness” in Yellow Fever as closted “gay panic”.

The episode opens with Dean, terrified, running down a dark street at night. 

On one level, we later understand, his terror is all about what he experienced in Hell and his fear of returning there. He is being chased by a little dog, which, it is eventually revealed, he is hallucinating is a Hell-hound.  

However, on another level, we can also read this as Dean being chased by his “Gay Thoughts TM”. The little dog is wearing a pink bow. Pink is often used in symbolic visual TV/ cinema code for “gay” a) because it is understood as a “feminine” colour (and there is that old stereotypical association of gayness with femininity) and b) because the colour was reclaimed and used with pride by the LGBT community itself, particularly in the 1970s and ‘80s, from the pink triangle that homosexuals were forced to wear as an identifying mark in the Nazi concentration camps. 

After this opener (also strongly played for comedic effect, so the queer reading is definitely in the closet) we flash to 43 hours earlier, and the first vic, Frank O’Brien, on the autopsy table. Posing as FBI agents, the Winchesters show up to investigate. They have taken the aliases Joe Perry and Steve Tyler (from Aerosmith). Tyler has been quite open about having had sex with men as well as women. 

Dean notices (and we should note it’s Dean, not Sam) that there is a mark on Frank’s ring finger where a wedding ring should be, but it’s missing. Then the coroner hands Dean Frank’s heart. 

A dude with a wedding ring missing and then his heart is passed to Dean? That looks like symbolism for queer-on-the-side infidelity to me.

We learn all the other vics were also men, and they all died of heart failure (aka, in subtext, we are talking about queer closeted men). 

We also learn that Frank’s wife Jessie committed suicide many years ago, and that Frank was a bully in school, but he “got better” after his wife died. Both of these factoids can be read as subtextual signals pointing towards Frank’s queerness (possibly his self-loathing turned outwards and his unhappiness in his marriage). 

Then we meet the germaphobe (a mirror for Dean) Sheriff in town.  The Sheriff is really cut up about Frank’s death, and seems to be hiding something.

SHERIFF BRITTON: "Me and Frank, we were friends. Hell, we were Game-cocks.” 

(Dean snickers) 

SHERIFF BRITTON: “That's our softball team's name. They're majestic animals.”

In other words, Dean heard the word “Game-cocks” and his mind immediately went to “fuck buddies,” which says a lot about Dean, but also Dean’s gaydar may have been on-point. 

Were the Sheriff and Frank, in fact, (closeted) lovers? 

Textually, we find out the Sheriff knew Frank had murdered someone, and covered for him. Subtextually....?

The Sheriff, we realise later, like Dean, has also been “infected” and is beginning to suffer from the ghost sickness. This “infection” as a metaphor for queerness might seem as if it is alluding to HIV/AIDS, but, if we read the queer subtext of the ghost sickness in Yellow Fever as about closeted “gay panic” in the kind of environment where it’s not safe to be out, then this isn’t a “gay/ bi men are infectious” homophobic metaphor, it’s more about closeted men’s fear, in a homophobic environment, that they are somehow “infected” by queerness and will not be able to keep it secret. 

And how are the men who have died, “infected”? It seems to be (metaphorically) “through the heart”, as Dean was shown literally holding Frank’s heart, and the Sheriff was suffering from grief-of-the-heart at Frank’s death.  

As soon as Dean is drunk, and therefore disinhibited, the element he is is repressing emerges, and Dean flirts with the Sheriff’s cute young assistant. And let’s side-eye the Dean-mirror Sheriff’s choice of deputy eye-candy here. The deputy is framed by a painting of stallions in the Sheriff’s office. Stallions, like game-cocks, being a symbol of hyper-masculine virility - the Sheriff’s choices being both a cover for, and a coded signal of, homoeroticism.  

 And here’s that much giffed flirting scene:

(Couldn’t find the gif credit for this one)

At Frank’s neighbour’s house, Dean (not Sam) gets crawled over by a huge yellow-white python (read - penis metaphor) and Dean (infected by the ghost-sickness, aka “gay panic”) freaks out. As frequently throughout the episode, this subtextual meaning is covered by comedic effect. 

(Couldn’t find the gif credit for this one either - sorry - older gifs tend to appear on platforms like “giphy” that strips out the OP)

Finally, the boys find out that a dude named Luther is the ghostly source of the “ghost-sickness”. Luther, who had learning disabilities, was murdered by Frank, who ostensibly (and wrongly) believed Luther murdered Frank’s wife, Jessie (who had been kind to Luther, and who, Luther’s brother tells the Winchesters, he had a “crush” on).

Is that the actual story, however? That’s the heterosexual, surface-available textual story. 

But subtextually? The Winchesters find Frank’s wedding ring in the lumber yard which the ghost of Luther is haunting. What if that disused “lumber yard” was a known cruising ground, and Frank had had sex with men there (symbolised by the loss of his wedding ring) perhaps with Luther himself, or with the Sheriff (and Luther witnessed it) then he felt guilty about it (maybe because Jessie found out about his habit of having closeted sex with men on the side and that contributed to her suicide)? And so, Frank went after Luther.

Why this subtextual reading? 

Let’s look at the way Frank killed Luther. He wrapped a chain around his neck and “road-hauled” him to death behind his truck.

Have you heard of a “fag-drag”? Unfortunately, I don’t mean drag performance, but the “queer-bashing” version. You may have heard of a “fag-drag” used in this sense because of this Southpark clip (typically faux-ironic in tone) in which Mr. Garrison yells, “Come on everybody, let’s get us some queers, and some trucks, and have us a good old fashioned fag drag.” Mr. Garrison was depicted as a closted gay man who hid his homosexuality by making homophobic statements in the first three seasons of Southpark (he eventually came out as trans).

Or, you may have heard of the “fag-drag” (a particular form of homophobic violence) thanks to Brokeback Mountain. It was such a (murderous) “queer bashing” that young Ennis was forced to witness (the aftermath of) by his father -  in which an old gay rancher had been roped to the back of a truck and dragged, “...until his dick came off,” and he died.  

Sorry for the graphic imagery - none of this is OK and I am using “fag-drag” in quote marks throughout, because it’s obviously a violently homophobic term in and of itself. 

So, in subtext, we can read Luther as having been “fag-dragged” to death by a, self-hating, closeted Frank. 

As Dean gets pulled further and further into the hallucinations that accompany the ghost sickness, Sam calls Bobby for help. 

Bobby realises that the ghost responsible for the “ghost-sickness” is a Buruburu, a ghost born of a person’s fear after dying in a terrifying way. Bobby tells Sam a salt-and-burn won’t work - they have to scare the ghost to death. I mean, logically, that makes no sense, right? A ghost born of terror would surely feed on terror?

But, subtextually, it does make sense, because Sam and Bobby love Dean dearly, but they both, at this stage in the SPN narrative, do not fully understand just how much Dean’s surface macho bravado is a performance, covering much that he hides from them (including his queerness).  

So, although they both express distress about it, Bobby and Sam recreate Luther’s original death (in subtext, his homophobic “fag drag”) by wrapping an iron chain round ghost-Luther’s neck and hauling him over the ground, attached to Baby.

Shots of ghost-Luther’s death - Sam calls it a “truck haul” (in subtext, a ”fag-drag”):

are intercut with shots of Dean, in the motel room hallucinating the creepy little girl version of Lilith. He asks her, “Why me? Why’d I get infected?” She tells him, “Silly goose, you know why - listen to your heart.” In subtext - that’s Dean’s queer heart (and see my meta linked above on Dean’s queer heart in 1x12 Faith). 

As Luther’s ghost gets “fag-dragged” by Dean’s soul (Baby) Dean’s heart starts to give out (again, the shots of the two events are intercut). In our queer subtext reading, we can understand this as a metaphor for the trauma Dean’s own closeted self (his “gay panic”) is inflicting on his queer heart: 

Once Luther’s ghost has been destroyed, the ghost sickness leaves Dean.

Or (metaphorically speaking) does it?

The final scene between Dean, Sam and Bobby is really heartbreaking, in a subtextual sense. Because Bobby and Sam tease Dean about how anxious he was under the spell of the ghost sickness, and he pushes back, full once again of his performance bravado:

BOBBY: “You sure, Dean? 'Cause this line of work can get awful scary.”

DEAN: “I'm fine. You want to go hunting? I'll hunt. I'll kill anything.”

BOBBY: “Awwww, he's adorable. I got to get out of here. You boys drive safe.”

So, yes, the more textual layers of the narrative tell us that Dean got infected by the ghost sickness not because, as Sam says in the episode, Dean is a “dick” but because Dean’s terror of being dragged back to Hell (and to the things we eventually find out he did there) made him susceptible to fear-infection. 

The more textual layers tell us, that the things Dean keeps from Sam in their talk at the hood of the Impala at the end of the episode, are his hallucinations of Hell-hounds, of Lilith, and of Sam himself with yellow eyes.

But in the queer subtext (should we choose to adopt this reading)? 

Dean’s “gay panic”, Dean’s fear of homophobic, or homophobic but homo-erotically charged, violence (like that which was visited on Luther by Frank) was what attracted the ghost-sickness to him (and not to Sam) just as it was attracted to the town’s other (closeted) men, like the Sheriff, who, guiltily (and in fear) nevertheless cruised for sex in the abandoned lumber yard, or took part in nights away with their fellow “Game-cocks”. 

And so, in this subtextual reading, one of the things Dean is choosing to hide from Sam, is his queerness.

This particular reading of Yellow Fever makes additional sense once we get to 4x16 On the Head of a Pin and discover that Dean’s time in Hell included a, hideous and twisted, but nevertheless homoerotic, charge between himself and his torturer and “mentor” in Hell, the demon Alastair. That’s an additional trauma, an additional psychic wound, for Dean’s queer heart to bear.

Finally, we should also note, that an element that significantly supports this queer reading is the fact that Yellow Fever is set in the fictional town of Rock Ridge, Colorado. That is also the setting for the spoof Western Blazing Saddles  (1974). That movie contains the famous “French mistake” sequence (which later gave Edlund the title and concept for 6x15 The French Mistake).

This sequence is where the movie finally breaks the fourth wall (revealing itself to be artifice) and the Western set of Blazing Saddles breaks through into a cabaret chorus show, where an all male troupe are performing a top and tails number called “The French Mistake” (an allusion to men having sex with men). They are called “faggots” and “sissy marys” by the cowboys, but they also “queer” themselves by using feminine pronouns; “Come on girls!” The cowboys and the chorus dancers get involved in a free-for-all punch-up, but we also see some of them making friends with one another, emerging from the melee with their arms around each other. 

This is, of course, a meta-commentary on the queer subtext of the Western genre (and the closeted queerness of classic Hollywood itself). So, it’s a pretty interesting setting to have chosen for Yellow Fever (as it points, by allusion, to the queer subtext of Supernatural i.e. it’s a big sign, for those chosing to follow the trail, that looking out for queer subtext in Yellow Fever might bear narrative fruit). Here is the “French Mistake” clip from Blazing Saddles:

The book Intersecting Film, Music and Queerness by Jack Curtis Dubowsky (Palgrave, 2016) contains a chapter specifically devoted to reading the queerness in Blazing Saddles.

My own reading of Yellow Fever has been brought to you by me, courtesy of Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin, who wrote the episode, inspired by some of the questions left hanging in @f-ckyeahfutbol. and @sandraugiga ‘s meta on the episode.

As ever, here is my usual disclaimer -  Dean’s bisexuality and his attraction to men continue to be told in the SPN subtext (14 years and counting now). My queer readings of Supernatural do not “promise” that this element of the narrative will emerge into undeniable main-text for the general audience.

However, subtext IS a part of narrative.