#could you imagine if Wizards of the Coast had the audacity to sue for royalties for their games AND THEN straight-washed the PCs?

[enby-denby]

I know this a personal anecdote, and I should probably make my own post, but I want to share this story to show that censorship of queer themes and characters starts as soon as writers and artists start putting forward their work in any media space.

So I was in a high school creative writing class in 2010, emphasis on the specific year and subject. We were given a singular prompt: the first page of a first-person mystery/noir narrative, where we were expressly told by our teacher Miss Patty Sloan (I don't care about censoring her name, if she's still alive she deserves to be shamed for this) that we could write our main character to be any gender, race, or personality type. Again, for emphasis, we were expressly told to get creative with the narrator's character as part of the creative exercize.

So I, being a baby gay in the school's GSA, wanted to make him a typical gritty noir protagonist... except he's gay. What a cool concept, right? A dame walks into his office and he has no reaction-- not a stoic exterior while his internal monologue is gushing over her fence Fatale beauty or whatever, genuine disinterest. He follows a lead into a non-gay bar and is genuinely worried he will be hit on by women and have to out himself to get any useful answers. But the biggest reason why I wanted it: the villain was also going to be gay, but instead of making out about it the protagonist would talk him through his internalized homophobia that he was unhealthy dealing with by experimenting on unwilling male subjects.

So we had a few in-class check ins before it was due, and I proudly described my concept alongside my classmates. But rather than praise me for my creative subversion of noir tropes, Miss Sloan pursed her lips with what I now recognize as disgust.

"I don't feel comfortable reading about queer characters written from a straight person's perspective."

This criticism led me to out myself to the entire class, to prove that as a lesbian (and now a nonbinary pansexual) that I had the "right" to write to write about queer characters. Then her excuse changed to it being "not appropriate to talk about sex and sexuality" in a school assignment. So a man kissing another man is too vulgar, but another man surgically implanting flowers and loose organs in other people's bodies is just fine? Years later, I would sympathize a lot witha certain quote from George RR Martin.

I even told her I had no intention to show either man in sexually suggestive situations: no kissing, no longing looks, nothing. Being gay was just a fact, a fact that would inform both characters and their actions. A necessary plot point. Non-negotiable.

And indeed, it was not: she gave me the ultimatum that if I made any of my characters gay, she would fail me for "not following instructions."

So I had to rewrite the entire story... and in malicious compliant fashion, I did. I gave the villain character a pet dog, a morality pet that was only put in to replace the heartfelt discussion on identity and the nature of love that was the crux of the original story. And how does the main character interact with this animal, while trapped in the villains lair and with nothing binding him to the villain but the physical binds he just escaped?

He holds the dog at gun-point, threatening to blow its brains out if the villain doesn't let him go and turn himself in.

So sure, the characters aren't gay anymore, bit I can still link them in some way: they are both sociopathic monsters now, the kind of villains old boomers like Patty Sloan seem to think all gay people inherently are. In this way, the Hayes Code coding came back with brutal avengence.

She graded this version of my narrative fairly, but my classmates feedback reflected their discomfort at my "survivalist ending". I wonder, if their discomfort would be more or less than if I had put forward the work I had wanted to... considering how many of my classmates have since come out as LGBT, I imagine they would have been thrilled with my original concept, had it been allowed to manifest organically.

There is one other epilogue to this story: I am still very queer, and still doing a lot of writing. Not for publishing, not yet, but I have an oc that I used in a traveller campaign. He is a greaser, he is very bisexuality, is very open with his preferences.... and he rides a Sloanobike Model XK-7000 hiver bike. If I ever publish the adventures of Zen and his friends, I might have to change the name of the bike for defamation reasons... but I will fight tooth and nail for him to continue to be bi, along with his girlfriend, his gender queer alien copilot, and his very trans-coded robro.

But maybe I'll get lucky, and the powers that be won't fight with me on any of these factors. Maybe they won't find this post, and accept the catchphrase justification for the name ("Is it slow? No! It's a Sloanobike!"). Or maybe they won't care at all, writers have gotten away with even pettier digs in their writing.

But yeah, tl;dr: even the baby gays are getting their works censored by gate-keeping, and the solution appears to be make all media so unhinged that they no longer have the capacity to care about the LGBT characters swept up in the madness.

Something I don’t think enough people recognize when it comes to making shows more diverse, there is so much going on behind the scene that you literally can’t “just add them.” 

Alex Hirsch had to wait until the end of Gravity Falls to show that Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland were in love so that way the show didn’t get prematurely cancelled. And even still, that was censored in other countries. 

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The Owl House has a bisexual afro Latina protagonist that falls in love with a white lesbian. They kiss several times on screen and say “my awesome girlfriend.” It also has Disney’s first nonbinary character (Raine Whispers), their bisexual love interest (Eda Clawthorne), and an aro/ace woman (Lilith Clawthorne). However, because like five people said that TOH wasn’t the “Disney brand” the show is prematurely cancelled. So even with everything that TOH did, it only won battle but lost the war. 

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The art crew for Encanto had to fight to make Luisa buff. And when they were finally able to make her buff, Disney didn’t make as much Luisa merchandise because they thought little girls would want Mirabel or Isabela’s since they’re more “feminine.” (I think the same thing happened with Namaari when RATLD came out but I’m not sure. So don’t quote me on that.)

*Also, Luisa out preformed. So that’s a win. 

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Bubblegum and Marceline couldn’t kiss until the series finale of Adventure Time because it would’ve been cancelled. So throughout the entire series, the crew always just had to imply undertones about their past. Since HBO produced Obsidian, they were able to kiss on screen.

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Korra and Asami’s relationship had to tempt down so that way Nick could continue airing the show and they weren’t allowed to kiss until the comics. 

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Turning Red got so much unwarranted criticism because not only did Mei’s mom say “pads” but she showed them on screen. (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if that made you uncomfortable, that’s a sign that we need to do this more and not less.)

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Some countries marked She Ra as 18+ because Catra and Adora kissed on screen. (Once again, I’m not sure if this completely true but Nate Stevenson had to fight to actually show them kissing on screen instead of a fade to white.)

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Steven Universe is the gayest show I’ve ever seen in my life which was both good and bad. It was good for obvious reasons. Example being that it was the first show that introduced to me nonbinary people in a way that wasn’t “haha, look, she uses they/them pronouns. She’s so funny and quirky.” 

And it’s bad because it put a target on it’s back. SU has been censored so much that it’s honestly a miracle that we got an ending. And in most of the countries that censored SU, they usually portray Ruby as a man. So I can’t imagine how bad the censors were when the wedding happened and Ruby wore a dress and Sapphire wore a suit. 

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Also, you have to remember the outdated idea that gay/trans topics are “too mature” for kids to handle (there’s an episode of Adam Ruins Everything that talks about this). So it’s easier for shows with an older audience (like Arcane) to have queer/trans rep.

Not to mention, if you ever go on Insider’s website to look at the queer/trans characters in cartoons [here], most of the characters are revealed to be queer only online and not in the actual show.

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All of this BS because God forbid that kids find out that other people exist. 

Representation is important but please, just be aware of the actually struggles that go on that you don’t see and be thankful that this is where we are now because even though it might seem like it at times remember that this is actual progress. We need to keep pushing studios to do more. I’m sure that there’s millions of untold stories that would be made if not for this prejudice.