#hellfire as an allegory for queerness

[aemiron-main]

“eddie’s pocket hanky/bandana is queercoding about hanky code” “NO!! eddie’s pocket hanky was something use to tell people that you’re a metallica fan and is based on james hetfield’s pocket bandana”

it’s both. the answer is both. it’s specifically meant to be both on purpose and it’s done in a way where its both rather than just one (ie choosing a hanky pocket side and colour that aligns both w some of the hanky code stuff AND with james hetfield’s pocket bandana) because of eddie’s secondhand queercoding and how eddie’s queercoding is always tied to things that have double meaning/isn’t direct (unlike much of the queercoding around mike and will) because the queercoding itself is literally being filtered through another layer (the other layer w the hanky being the james hetfield hanky reasoning) bc the queercoding is less about eddie himself being queer and more a.) the way that hellfire operates as an allegory for queerness rather than being a direct ‘gay club/gsa’ just like how eddie has that extra layer when it comes to his queercoding, just like the hellfire does and b.) it’s more about mike’s gay crush on eddie than eddie himself actually being queer. 

[lexcellence]

When I heard Gerry Duggan get asked on Cerebro, white boy to white boy, about the unfortunate optics of announcing and then immediately murdering the least white team of X-Men in years, I knew we'd be in for some shit. Man, did he deliver - after some evasive waffling about how ORCHIS is meant to be fascist, and how the story's point is to put the collective back of mutantkind even more against the wall than it was any of the last six times something like this has happened.

And, honestly? That's fair! This year's Hellfire Gala is ultimately the first part of a larger story, and history shows it's not going to last forever — hell, does anyone remember what the status quo was immediately before HoXPoX? At least this time most of the characters have implicitly just been sucked into Mother Righteous's magical Poké Ball, rather than outright killed; if anything, that's an improvement. I was fully content to just think "hey, not for me," and get back to ignoring everything beyond Immortal and Sabertooth, secure in the knowledge that certain topics are bound to be handled poorly when almost everyone in the room is white, when Duggan said three words that stopped me in my tracks:

"Keep the faith."

See, that struck me, because for a lot of us, this entire era of comics has been about nothing but faith. I've been reading X-Men, and engaging with fans since I was eight, and I've never seen the kind of collective buy-in from other marginalized readers that I have with Krakoa. X-Twitter (or, I suppose, X-X) has been Blacker, queerer, more disabled, less homogeneous than the fandom has ever been, all of us buying in to the implicit promise that this time things would be different. Sure, the line was headed by a presumably straight white guy, but there were other voices in the room for a change, and it really felt like they were going to be listened to. We thought we'd moved past clunky metaphor, past queerbaitimg and awkward racial gaffes. Storm and Kwannon were getting to do stuff, Arakko was full of amazing characters of color, Cyclops and Wolverine were probably fucking, we were hooked, and we turned out.

It's hard to overemphasize just how wild this was to see in real time. X-Men has always been allegory, sure, but it's traditionally allegory by and for the majority. For years, the readers who might really feel that resonance, those of us who have been hated and feared for the unforgivable crime of being who we are, we were afterthoughts, tolerated at best. We got scraps, "representation" from creators who seemed to be offended by the implication that we would ever want something other than being fetishized tokens. We were, as Hickman so succinctly put it, told that we were less when we knew we were more. And then, out of nowhere, Krakoa made us inescapable.

The two biggest X-Men podcasts, X-Plain the X-Men and Cerebro, are hosted by queer people. X of Words has been rocking the Black, queer experience like no one's business, Mutant Watch has been a joy to listen to and to be on. Not just podcasts, either, in everything from criticism to fanart to cosplay, voices have been elevated that were previously silent. I mean, hell, I've gotten paid to talk about comics, that shit never would have happened four years ago.

All of that was based on faith.

Faith that we were being celebrated, for once, instead of just used. Faith that for whatever growing pains there might be, things were going to be better.

And let's not fuck around here, there were growing pains. In the first year alone we dealt with everything from blatant whitewashing, to queerbaiting — any Sunspot fan can go into detail there, assuming you can get one of us to stop crying for long enough. While that was going on, we watched Bryan Edward Hill (the only non-white writer in that initial wave) put out a book that was, let's face it, at worst aggressively mid, only to be excoriated by certain portions of the fandom, and dropped by the office, while significantly worse books managed to hold fast — er, hold on. Not to say that Fallen Angels was without sin, mind you, the book was packed with enough orientalism to make Chris Claremont blush. But, at the same time, Wolverine's first year ended with him doing what he does best: trying so hard to be Japanese that I had to check to make sure he wasn't Marvel's editor in chief.

Through all of that, we kept the faith.

Things didn't really get much better, of course. Arakko was a fascinating concept, and felt like it damn near doubled Marvel's characters of color. And yeah, the ending of X-Factor was one of the most poorly handled racist messes I've seen this side of… well, any given day on Twitter. Sure, the whitewashing has never stopped, to the point where everything from X-Corp to this week's Hellfire Gala has had to be hastily edited between previews and release. Maybe we keep dealing with stuff like butchered AAVE, even more queerbaiting, Kate Pryde's funeral, the genocide of almost all of those Arraki characters, and whatever the hell was going on with Lost in Way of X. Maybe there's a very real argument to be made that there's something insidious about three straight years of voting to determine if characters like Monet (who, by the by, has been retooled from "basically Superman" to "Black woman with anger powers") deserve the honor of being written by a white man who's stayed writing with his foot in his mouth. I mean, hey! All my white friends in the scene say he's nice, just like Williams, or Howard, or any number of other crusty crackers who are still proud of tripping over the bar Claremont left on the floor in the 80's!

And dammit, we kept the faith!

Even before the issue dropped, the Fall of X has had a lot of us wary. After all, all of the promotion leading up to it has been white guys saying the minority allegory has had it too good for too long, which, whatever, press copy. We all know they've gotta sell books — they, in this case, being the almost exclusively white, almost exclusively male creative teams attached to all of the books in the line. Sure, as Duggan said, the 616 has a fascism problem, but it’s hard not to see this as a deliberate step back from the almost double digit number of non-white creators these past few years — almost as if Marvel has realized they can make space for a fourth ongoing by their favorite white boy if they just throw out a Voices special every couple of months as a containment zone for the darkies. And, hey, considering how good ol’ C.B. got his foot in the door, I can’t even fake surprise. At this point, it’s a minor miracle any time a person of color is tapped for anything that’s expected to last beyond one issue.

In this issue, as a reward for keeping the faith, we got to see something astounding, something that'd bring a tear to the eye of even the most cynical reader — a team that was only half white. My god. And sure, their brutal murder in favor of a team with Kate "Hard-Arrr" Pryde and the Kingpin(????) was only a pit-stop between the resurrection of the suddenly ashy Ms. Marvel and Lourdes Chantel being killed off for the sake of a white woman's angst yet afuckinggain, but ain't that the dream that Malcolm Ten or whoever died for?

The Krakoan era, ultimately, has been the same as every other. Empty promises by white men who show us time and again that there was never any point in expecting anything better. Any meaning we've found, everything of worth, has been what we've made for ourselves.

We've spent years keeping the faith, Gerry, while you and yours have continued to let us down. What the hell do we have to show for it?

[vidavalor]

I'm obsessed with your Crepes post and Ineffable Husbands Speak but I'm stuck on when Azi says "angel, demon, possibly explode." Wouldn't that say they hadn't tried it? I feel like there's a lot happening with the language in this scene and I'm not seeing it. Could you write about that? I will bring you fucking boxes of caramels if you can make that scene make sense haha.

Hi there! I can try. :) Thanks for reading the post & for the ask. I made chocolate chip cookies today so please help yourself.

You know how we've been chatting here about how Crowley & Aziraphale use words like "wily", "thwart" and "smitten" that have multiple, sometimes contradictory, meanings? A violent or religious one but also a romantic or sexual one? "Explode" is another one of those words and it changes the meaning of the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene quite a bit from what it might seem to be at first.

One of the definitions of "explode" is to disprove ideas that were previously thought to be true or potentially true. To "explode a theory" is to uncover new information that allows you to render a theory untrue.

"Explode" is also an example of using destructive language as sexual metaphor, which they do pretty frequently, and we'll get into when I finish the meta one of you requested that I write on the "seeds of destruction" scene in S1.

I'll get into it in more detail in the future but, imo, the Discorporated!Aziraphale scene is actually suggesting that Crowley and Aziraphale once thought they might harm one another if they were to have any sex that brought them into too much direct contact with each other's, uh, holy water and hellfire, but that they eventually exploded that theory and have been, uh, exploding each other more expansively for some time as a result.

Queer history allegory incoming:

Steve walks merrily down the street/with the brim pulled way down low/ain't no sound but the sound of his feet/machine gun's ready to go/are you ready?/hey/are you ready for this?/are you hangin' on the edge of your seat?/out of the doorway/the bullets rip/repeat it to the sound of the beat...

[hedgehog-cynder]

i would kill for a hellfire shirt and these people are complaining smh

"i cant wear my hellfire shirt anymore bc yall are so cringe 🙄" ok but i can. give it to me

[gaywatch]

Have you seen/heard “Lilith” the collab OST between Halsey and Suga that they made for the game “Diablo” ?? 👀

Someone on twitter said “something about two queers serving religious destruction and hellfire allegory on pride month” and attached a clip from the music video and I couldn’t agree more honestly 😭

I had NO IDEA about this hsajkldfjskflkjfl

I was not expecting a total overhaul of the production like that????? I loved it so much that was some dark synth perfection

And Suga came in SO smooth? Was not expecting him to come in with vocals and then bam, but then his rap flowed right in????? What the FUCK, I love this even more than his Interlude (and his Interlude has always been top notch)

Happy demonic pride to US, holy SHIT

[pinkeoni]

Do you have a time-line in mind for how Will possibly becoming a scapegoat or blamed for all things would go? From someone recognizing him to how it could snow ball into something simular with Hellfire? I imagine with 3/4 of the OG party already toeing that line and Ed*ie "missing" some towns people are going to turn their ire towards the remaining members. Will could possibly be pinned with guilt by association too. What are your thoughts?

Oooohh okay I’m glad you asked.

I think initially it would start small. Maybe during the timeskip there would be rumors about Will being into something nefarious, not too different from the usual he would have to endure.

But post-timeskip as the action ramps up, especially as it relates to Will’s connection to Henry, what starts as gossip begins to look like it may have a lot more truth to it. The town suspects that Satanists are involved, and this kid surrounded by strangeness seems to have a connection to what people think is the devil?? I can imagine some supernatural strangeness happening to make people think this— maybe Will begins to hallucinate Henry or begins to hear his voice and people take notice of his strange behavior.

When there’s a Will power reveal this is when things REALLY start to get bad because it shifts from gossip to genuine speculation to outright witch hunting, and Will could likely have the entire town actually out to get him.

Lately I’ve been making a few posts regarding the AIDS allegory in the show, and this would definitely tie into that. Will is, quite literally, seen as the predatory gay man who is spreading disease and causing death. Now, this actually goes hand in hand with the canonization of Byler. Imagine Mike and Will becoming romantically involved, perhaps around midseason, and how this would create even more of a conflict for them getting together than there already is. After the mutual feelings are revealed and the confession is had, the conflict then just becomes how society is going to see them together, which is now just dramatized to the nth degree.

Imagine Will telling Mike that they shouldn't be together because everyone will think that Mike is in on it with him. Mike has been relatively proactive about hiding his queerness, but it's actively falling apart. Meanwhile, Will's queerness has always been perceived by others. I could imagine Will saying something along the lines of, "If they see us together, they will think that you are in on it with me. If they see us together they will kill you." And he's talking about his involvement with the Upside Down, but it serves as a double meaning for their queerness. Will is basically telling Mike, maybe not in these exact words, to continue to hide his queerness and let Will take the fall for both of them.

Of course, it all works out happily in the end. Will won't be the one to destroy the world, he is going to save it. Town perspective will likely shift, although I don't know if they will overwhelmingly love Will so much as just feel a little embarrassed that they placed all the blame onto him. I also don't think that Will saving the day would mean that the town changes it's tune about gay people either 😂 however I do think that both Will and Mike learn by the end that they deserve to live a happy long life together, so they get together even if they can't have the most public relationship. Cue Byler leaving Hawkins together in the epilogue.

[castlebyersafterdark]

hi, what percentage of S5 do you think will be dedicated to byler and unveiling the twist that is byler? I feel like so many people on here are expecting Heartstopper but make it 80s, when that’s never been how the show has handled any of its ships. even during the most overtly romantic season (S3), the larger Plot always took precedence. I do think the Duffers have been saving this for the end for a reason and they have to show us some intimacy beyond just a chaste kiss. But like… Stranger Things is a supernatural show playing to a wide audience. It’s not gonna be a byler fanfic

Very good points, which is definitely a healthy thing to keep in mind when hyper fixating on any one portion of a piece of media. Your expectations may not = reality.

I think something to keep in mind is that the Byler story isn't just the romance/shipping aspect. It's entwined into entire plot. So while, yes it isn't a quaint little teen romance show like Heartstopper, the arc for Mike and the arc for Will, even in regards to their relationship and sexualities, is purposeful to everything else.

Will's story will combine his coming of age and dealing with his sexuality, ties to the supernatural, maybe some internalized isolation from his struggle, leaving him vulnerable to vecna, etc etc. Mike as a fight between authenticity and conformity, confronting his own sexuality struggles with the allegory of being a target of the town for associated with Hellfire, simultaneously being the allusion that he'd also be a target for who he really is. Will is zombie boy, he's maybe got powers, he's the town pariah, all these awful things seem to revolve around the boy who came back from the dead - he's different, he's the town queer, he's a huge target - all of it. It's all entwined.

So, I don't think it's gonna be blatant, constant long form conversations and self reflection and relationship drama between Mike and Will. I think in dealing with the bigger plot pieces, everything will align in different ways through the same plot points. Multipurpose story-telling.

This is why I like spending so much time in certain focused parts of the fandom. It's filling the gaps and giving extra that we'd never get in the source material. Which is why it's so fun to play, because we're creating transformative works and doing what interests us with the story presented. I don't neeeeed to see everything cookie cutter and not be what the show is to be happy. The show is what it is and I think it'll do a good job, but we can't expect it to be as hyper focused as our biased spaces.

[morose-magnetrix]

Excalibur #26 by Tini Howard (writer), Marcus To (artist), and Erick Arciniega (colorist)

Emma Frost: “Betsy, stop this. We need your assistance here, in the real world.”

Betsy: “Don’t. [...] Don’t reduce this to that. As if it’s some fantasy.” 

Tini Howard and Marcus To’s run on Excalibur comes to its conclusion in its 26th issue. This series has definitely had its ups and downs, but in the post X of Swords era it’s really come into its own. Knights of X has been confirmed to be the continuation of Tini’s run, which definitely explains why this very much feels like the season one finale of a show that’s finally found its footing, promising more to come. 

Things I loved about this issue:

1. It’s so queer! We’re blessed with a Rictor/Shatterstar kiss and moment. We also finally get on panel confirmation of the Betsy/Rachel romance that has been brewing in small hints throughout the run, beginning with Betsy giving Rachel Amazing Baby and continuing with their dance at the Hellfire Gala, as Rachel gives Betsy a kiss on the cheek and talks about how Betsy isn’t just needed, she’s wanted. I know that it isn’t a full blown on the mouth kiss, but I get the sense Howard and To gave us as much as they were allowed to, so I still adored it. 

2. Saturnyne’s schemes are revealed. One theme that I have adored in this series is how women deal with misogyny - Roma was trapped under her father’s thumb, Saturnyne is constantly belittled as just a witch, Betsy is discriminated against for being a female Captain Britain. It was really satisfying to see that Saturnyne had worked with Roma to overthrow Merlyn - that Roma was a part of those schemes. It really felt in line with the huge amount of agency that’s been giving to these female characters who are constantly doubted or overlooked by the men around them. 

3. Maggie having the emotional intelligence of a child was really sweet - she was scared for her mom! It’s really easy with hyper intelligent children to make them robotic, but I loved that she was allowed to still be a kid AND a genius. 

4. The idea that Arthur is a composite of all the legends and stories about him is fascinating. It reminds me a lot as to what happens to those who die in Otherworld and are then resurrected - how they become a mixture of all their selves, scrambled up. It explains a lot about Arthur’s paranoid psychology and the idea that a lot of it is him creating a self fulfilling prophecy about Mordred was interesting. I think it similarly explains Merlyn’s instabilities and Roma’s stability - there are countless of legends about Merlyn, whereas unless I’m mistaken Roma is a unique character to the Marvel Universe. 

5. The entire discussion of Otherworld as just some fantasy, that it’s a way for Betsy to escape reality - I think that really speaks to a lot of her character beats. When Betsy was in Kwannon’s body, she went ALL IN on the ninja stuff. Now that she’s Captain Britain, she’s gone all in on the medieval fantasy stuff. I think she has this tendency to just adopt whatever her current role is and make it her identity - she obsesses over things and loses herself in them. Obviously Otherworld is important to deal with, it’s not like she’s lost in a video game, it really is real, but I think it was a great character beat. 

6. She’s fighting for a world that hates and fears her. A common critique of the Krakoan era is that the mutants aren’t doing the hated and feared thing anymore - and I think Otherworld is the natural answer to that. Otherworld is where we get stories about how people are scared of the witchbreed, even as Excalibur does all they can to protect them. I also think Otherworld allows for stories that examines an aspect that isn’t possible with Krakoa - what happens when a minority group creates a nation state and seizes land that was previously inhabited. Krakoa has annexed Avalon (and now lost it), which allows for a lot of unique story telling perspectives, especially with the Israel allegory of Krakoa. 

7. Gambit fretting over his cats after the lighthouse is destroyed. I love him as a cat dad. 

8. Saturnyne continuing to thirst for Brian Braddock. 

9. The title change to Knights of X is explained, as Britain is taking the name ‘Excalibur’ back. 

Things I’d love to see expanded on:

1. I wish we had gotten more time of Saturnyne and Betsy in the Lesbian Sea of Secrets. Maybe we’ll get some fun flashbacks to that one day. 

2. Where’s Mordred? I’d love to see him show up. He’s been such a huge part of the plot with Arthur but has yet to make an appearance. 

3. I actually low key would love to see Saturnyne kicking it on Krakoa now? I feel like her and Selene could get together and throw an AMAZING theme party. Maybe slutty tarot? Anyone? Just me?

Verdict: Eight out of ten knights

[aemiron-main]

EXACTLY!!!!! YES OMG!!! All of this!!

El’s perspective on the bullying is SO different. The dismissal confused me too a first, but like you said, El’s perspective of the bullying is so different than the audience’s perspective and Mike’s perspective. She didn’t see Mike get pushed in s1. She daw him push Troy, but didn’t see how he was previously pushed. El saw how the bullies verbally pushed mike towards the cliff, but didn’t see all of the other incident that pushed him towards making that choice to step off. El doesn’t know Ted or Karen very well at ALL, so she hasn’t heard their comments towards Mike or seen mike’s experiences with them. Her frame of reference for family is Brenner, and then Hopper, and now the Byers, all of which are different from eachother, but also all VERY different from the wheelers.

AND YES!! El doesn’t see Mike dwelling on the bullies. She also doesn’t know about Mike being gay + how that ties into the fact that he IS different, in a way that he CANT change. El doesn’t see mike’s struggle, so she assumes it doesn’t exist. El‘s character fascinates me in that regard esp in terms of gay mike, because her experiences/worldview is “narrow” in the sense that she’s been raised in a lab for the majority of her life. At the same time though, ironically and wonderfully, it’s that exact “narrowness” that’s going to make her more open-minded and accepting of mike and his sexuality in the end, because while she’s unaware of dynamics like the wheeler family + the way they’ve hurt mike, she’s also ‘unaware’ of homophobia in the sense that she hasn’t been raised around it, she sort of knows it exists, she hears troy’s comments in s1, but even then, Troy talks about “fairyland” and “fairies” in that scene, he doesn’t say the word “queer” like he does in the other bullying scene, so El may not have filled realized the connotations of the fairy stuff at the time. So, El being “unaware” of homophobia means that she’s going to be more accepting of mike, but also means that she’s struggling to see HIS struggle, can’t see his internalized homophobia or shame or the external homophobia that he’s beginning to face via the hellfire club as an allegory for queerness.

AGAIN EXACTLY YES!!! HUGE AGREE!! Mike is literally invisible in his struggle, like that’s what frustrates me when people say that he’s not struggling because he’s not doing the same thing/acting the same way as xyz character: that’s exactly WHY we know he’s struggling, because his struggle is different than Will’s for example, but gets ignored because it doesn’t fit the ways in which people judge him based on themselves or others.

After reading some of @aemiron-main 's post I realized that El can't see how Mike is struggling because it's so different from how she's struggling.

Like during their argument her dismissal of the bullying confused me to no end bc she did prevent him from dying by using her powers to catch him. I was wondering if she'd forgotten or something. Then I realized that El's perspective of the bullying is so different than ours.

She's not there for the bullying in high-school, she's seen Mike push down his bullies, and while she witnessed the cliff incident she has no way of knowing the depths of Mike's emotions/trauma in that scene. Even the audience doesn't know.

El also doesn't get the chance to see him dwell on the bullying like she does. Anyway Mike is internalizing things in a way that is making his experiences invisible to others because the judge him based on themselves or others.

[aemiron-main]

good lord i need to do a writeup on eddie’s queercoding and how it ties to mike’s crush on eddie and how the best way that i can describe a lot of it is ‘secondhand’ queercoding where it’s not directly but rather through another layer + how the reason for that is because it’s not necessarily about eddie being queer but a.) about mike’s queer crush on eddie and b.) hellfire as an allegory for queerness  theres more to this but rn i am staring Directly at the choice of a dio patch for eddie’s jacket despite the fact that we don’t ever get a dio song associated with him or even a dio tape in his collection of tapes and how imo it’s ‘secondhand’ queercoding because ronnie james dio was also the lead singer of the band ‘rainbow,’ but they used dio instead of rainbow because there’s meant to be an extra layer to it bc they’re not trying to directly show eddie as queer but rather the fact that a.) mike has a queer crush on him and b.) hellfire acts as an allegory for queerness, there’s that hellfire allegory layer to how they address queerness rather than saying the words ‘aids epidemic,’ jason calls dnd an ‘epidemic’ and how just like there’s that hellfire allegory layer to the theme of queerness in st, there’s an extra layer of eddie’s costuming that makes it not directly queercoded but rather second-hand queercoded like how the allegory is like ‘secondhand’ queer imagery. i hope this makes sense but god i need to do a full writeup. 

[aemiron-main]

Gay Mike Wheeler Posts

The OG ‘if Will Is Gay Men Who Die By Hate Crimes, Mike Is Gay Men Who Die By Suicide’ And Hypervisible Vs Invisible Gay Men And Ted Wheeler’s Ignorance Post (x)

If Mike Ever Actually Loved El/Even Just Had A Crush On Her, Why Didn’t He Use The Moment He Actually Fell In Love With Her As Part Of His Monologue Instead Of Claiming It Was Love At First Sight? (x)

The Rainbow Lens Flare On Top Of Mike In The Shed (x)

Mike Thinks Will Had A Crush On Angela (x)

Mike’s Figuring Out What Romantic Love Actually Is/Feels Like (x)

Mike’s Sweetie Pie and Phoebe Cates Expression (x)

Mike Calling El Pretty Isn’t Meant To Be Romantic (x)

The 60 Minutes Namedrog And Its AIDs Themed Episode (x)

El Kisses Mike The Same Way The Fleshflayer Flays People (x)

We’ve Seen This Setup With Will Behind Mike And El Before (x)

Initial Post About Mike’s Crush on Eddie (x)

Watch Where You’re Going, Frogface (x)

Flying Around In Fairyland With All The Other Fairies: Mike And The Fairy Wings (x)

Why Am I So Confident About Gay Mike? Do I Think I Can See The Future? (x)

Women and Bullshit Media Propaganda (x)

Heteronormativity and Troy Pushing Mike (x)

If Mike Was Ever Attracted To El Then What Was The Point Of The Mileven Familial Parallels/References From The Start? (x)

Mike, The Rainbow Jazzercise Sign and George Michael (x)

Mike’s Playlist and Frankie Goes To Hollywood (x)

Mike’s Playlist and Level 42 (x)

Mike’s Playlist, Limahl, and Neverending Story (x)

Mike’s Playlist, Michael, and Franz Ferdinand (x)

Another Gay Vs Bi Mike Ask (x)

More Gay Mike Ranting (x)

Mike, The Sauna, and the Lingerie Store Scene (x)

Initial Post About The Hellfire Club As An Allegory For Queerness (x)

There Is No Actual Mike Will El Love Triangle (x)

Another Rant About Elmike and Gay Mike (x)

Max’s Rainbow Sleeves And Byler (x)

Gay Mike And The Coca Cola Kid (x)

How Gay Can We Write This Guy While Still Having People Think He’s Straight? (x)

Mike’s Expression Towards Dart vs Towards Phoebe Cates (x)

Mike and The Rainbow On The Muppets Movie Poster (x)

Mike Isnt Just Rebounding Into A New Relationship (x)

Mike’s Reaction To “Youve Made It Super Clear” vs to “You Dont Love Me Anymore?” (x)

I Loved You, I Loved All Of You (x)

A Rant About “Will You Be Like My Brother?” (x)

Reblog Regarding Mike’s Lack Of Attraction To Girls (x)

Quit Viewing Mike And His Sexuality Through A Will Lens: They Arent The Same Person (x)

Yet Another Gay Mike and Elmike Rant: Gay Mike Is Actually The Best/Most Amicable Ending For Mileven (x)

We’ve Been Seeing Gay Mike This Whole Time and It Doesnt Need Any Extra Long Winded Explanation (x)

[aemiron-main]

watch where you’re going, frogface

“watch where you’re going, frogface”

“he was probably killed by some other queer”

I just think it’s interesting that in a scene about homophobic bullying, not only is Mike the one physically targeted the most & has insults about will directed at him, but he’s also the only party member there who gets called an insulting name that starts with “f,” (dustin and lucas’ nicknames are ’toothless,’ and ‘midnight’).

But what about Will? What was his insulting nickname?

We know ‘zombie boy’ wouldn’t have started until s2/after will got back from the ud. so what were they calling will before that? I think they were either a.) outright calling him a fag or b.) calling him a freak c.) calling him a fairy or d.) all of the above. 

Mike and Will likely being the only two in the party whose’ insulting names started with ‘f’. fairy/freak/outright using ‘fag’ for will, and ‘frogface’ for Mike. because they’re the two gay members. because as absurd as it sounds, relative to what the other nicknames are ‘frogface’ isn’t that far off from ‘faggot’. like cmon. “freak” is often used as a stand-in for fag, especially with the hellfire stuff & hellfire acting as an allegory for queerness, and so for there to already be a precedent of other words starting with ‘F,’ (freak) being used as a standing for ‘fag,’ I don’t think it’s farfetched for ‘frogface,’ to operate in a similar way and to be a subtle nod to Mike’s gayness.

[aemiron-main-backup]

I’m gonna talk abt this at length in my analysis but the hellfire club is Such an allegory for queerness. like in addition for all of the other mountains of evidence, does the ga think that they writers chose a word starting with ‘F’ (freak), and set it up as an offensive term that gets ‘reclaimed’/used as a self-descriptor by some but that we still see other people seem to be hurt by just for fun? do they think they just did that randomly bc they were in a silly goofy mood?? like does it not ring any bells for any other F word that applies to queerness and is a parallel to freak in the context of the hellfire club metaphor?? no bells at all?? cmon GA

I’m gonna talk abt this at length in my analysis but the hellfire club is Such an allegory for queerness. like in addition for all of the other mountains of evidence, does the ga think that they writers chose a word starting with ‘F’ (freak), and set it up as an offensive term that gets ‘reclaimed’/used as a self-descriptor by some but that we still see other people seem to be hurt by just for fun? do they think they just did that randomly bc they were in a silly goofy mood?? like does it not ring any bells for any other F word that applies to queerness and is a parallel to freak in the context of the hellfire club metaphor?? no bells at all?? cmon GA

[aemiron-main]

good LORD the hellfire club vs satanic panic could not possibly be more of an allegory for queerness and the aids epidemic vs homophobia/panic about the aids crisis:

in s4 ep2, Jason literally says “it’s like an epidemic” when talking about dnd + the satanic panic and how it’s spreading across America.

yknow. like the aids epidemic.

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i am not a ted wheeler defender tm but i am going to defend him from the blatant mischaracterization of him as some rampantly abusive dude who would beat his son for being gay ted is not the world’s #1 dad don’t get me wrong he has caused some Issues for Mike but as a character he represents IGNORANCE not active hatred. this is not me saying that ted is good. this is me saying that i see people hate him for the wrong reasons that don’t even align w his character or themes. like ted is a living version of the bystander effect. he’s the epitome of “being neutral means siding with the oppressor”. he is not lonnie byers 2.0. 

this is might be a controversial take but considering what i’ve already talked about with how we see ted’s attitude towards the media coverage of the hellfire club change at the end of s4 and how he’s been questioning the news and government more and more throughout the seaasons, I don’t think that Ted would outright reject Mike if he found out Mike was gay. Especially by the time season 5 comes around. Right now? I think he’d still have a very ‘ignoring it” and still not sure about it and still vaguely homophobic attitude that would result in Mike feeling dismissed and ignored. But I don’t think he’d completely align with all of the homophobic rhetoric going around at the time. In previous seasons? Sure, although again he wouldn’t be like actively violent, just more of a dick about it. But in season 4, we start to see him question that homophobic reagan rhetoric. 

like he’s not a hellfire club enthusiast!! but he IS realizing that a lot of the news coverage of it is bullshit. and considering how the hellfire club and the satanic panic are 100000% an allegory for queerness and the aids crisis...

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they literally could not be more obvious with the “hellfire is an allegory for queerness, the satanic panic is an allegory for the panic about the aids crisis” stuff in st. they did a great job of it but Jason literally calls dnd “an epidemic.” idk how people claim that it’s not there when it Very Clearly Is