#it is not NECESSARILY (although sometimes/often it is) homophobic for a straight person to hc a character often seen as gay as straight

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Definitely have complicated thoughts on this one...like yes on the one hand fanfic is definitely helpful for allowing us as queer people to feel known and a part of a larger community. But, as everyone has said, fanfic is not the be-all-end-all in terms of representative literature.

My main thought, though, and this is something that I hesitate to express because I don't want to start a firestorm or get called homophobic myself, is that this is not a uniquely gay experience. The sentiments in this post are very personal and I have experienced (and still do experience) them deeply, and it is precisely because of the attitude that x character, as OP put it, "SHOULD be gay".

What I mean by this is, in fandom specifically, characters that are grouped into the "should be gay" category quickly become very exclusively only gay. Characters that are relatable to many queer people get classed (implicitly or explicitly) as off-limits to headcanon as anything else. This perpetuates the exact feeling that you're talking about, but on other queer people.

As an example, let's use Aziraphale and Crowley from the Good Omens book/TV series. They are explicitly stated to be agender, and to "not care about sex unless they make an effort". This is 100% queer representation, and Neil Gaiman (despite whatever other problematic elements he might have) did a really good job of stating that he thinks their relationship is valid to interpret in a myriad of ways. He gave really solid, and really queer, rep--but was repeatedly lambasted for "queerbaiting". He didn't queerbait, but because the characters weren't explicitly gay, the rep given there is treated as insufficient or lesser.

For an alternate perspective, consider Sherlock and John, or Spock and Jim. I, speaking as someone who does not consider them gay men, have repeatedly been met with accusations of being homophobic because I don't headcanon them a certain way. But why? I'm following the reasoning laid out above. I see them acting in ways that I relate to, and so I headcanon them as people who are like me--exactly as the people who see them as gay are doing. Why is my interpretation any less valid?

It is a different situation if the character is explicitly written to be of one orientation, and that orientation is erased by fandom. (I've witnessed that happen to the few characters out there that canonically share my orientation, so I get how infuriating it is.) But here, we're talking about characters that aren't confirmed to be anything--and in some cases, particularly in the case of Aziraphale and Crowley, are specifically intended to be a blank slate. Yet, the pushback against any alternate headcanons or interpretations, from the side of fandom that views them as gay, is as vicious at times as though these characters are canonically gay. They are not.

I'm frustrated because the attitude gay Tumblr takes towards headcanons and fandoms literally perpetuates the same mistreatment that all queer folk have been dealing with from the straights. It's "offensive" or "wrong" to insinuate that a character might have an orientation different from the main interpretation. (At the risk of making this post too lengthy, I want to add that this isn't even a strictly queer issue. This happens with interpreting characters as neurotypical vs. neurodivergent, as a POC vs. white, it can branch off into body type and religion and a multitude of other things.)

In short, my point is twofold. Firstly, headcanons are supposed to be freeing endeavors that allow people to feel represented. Putting restrictions on that freedom runs counter to everything the queer community, and other minority/disadvantaged groups, are fighting for.

And secondly, to bring it back to specifically queer issues:

Queer rep does not mean only gay rep.

Please, please understand: the queer community is more than just the L and the G. Those types of representation are important, and this is not to minimize people of those orientations--and believe me, I get the frustration of seeing characters that you relate to behave in a way that's different to how you think they would. But there are other people out there who see themselves in that character, whoever they are. Sometimes they are written vaguely to allow for others to feel included. This doesn't mean that explicit representation of one specific orientation is bad or unnecessary, but just that there are other kinds of rep out there. It isn't homophobic to not make two characters explicitly gay, or to headcanon two characters as something other than gay.

I'm just as queer as you. I have the same right to see myself in media as you do.

So please. If I say Spock is aro, or Sherlock is ace, or any of a multitude of other things--don't tell me I'm being homophobic. Don't tell me I'm wrong. The beauty of fiction, and fanfiction in particular, is that we can all be right.

I think fanfiction is one of the most potent ways of dealing with the unknowability of other people because I think we as gay people are constantly struggling with that. I think one of the only things that stops us as human beings from going crazy is being able to intuit the minds of other people and predict within reason what they’re going to do by reflecting off our experiences. Like if someone stubs their toe we can imagine how they would feel (big pain) and how they would react (big yell) because that’s what we’ve done before. And when they DO react that way it validates the fact that our experiences are things shared by other people and that our mind doesn’t exist independently among automatons. But like when you’re gay and you constantly see characters who SHOULD be gay ending up as straight it messes with that confidence you’ve built up over the years. Seeing people you can relate to not behave the way you’d expect based on your experiences…eventually reinforces the fact that there’s something flawed in YOUR conciousness. There’s a lack of control and a helplessness there that’s really terrifying in a deep way. Like there’s something (epistemologically? existentially?) terrifying about being gay in a homophobic world that goes beyond the social experience of homophobia…but fanfiction acts as a balm to that and lets you like…manifest a reality where people behave the way you would behave and just the physical reality of having a document where your intution about someone is a concrete reality is like…deeply healing imo