#or how many of them were at the very least queercoded

[sukiluvvs]

thanks for the tag!!

azula (atla) - what can I say, she was a victim of abuse that is often overlooked bc of her response to it. she just wants her father's love even tho it'll never come :(

himiko toga (mha) - another traumatized kid turned villain who deserved so much better :(

daki (kny) - you may be noticing a theme here. traumatized kids turned villains who deserved better :(

tohru oikawa (haikyuu!!) - he's just a brat and I love him for it

dazai osamu (bsd) - he's a dork and I love him for it

victor nikiforov (yoi) - he's a dork. he's also a middle-aged queer man so there's that

haruhi fujioka (ohshc) - genderqueer-coded kid!! :)

komi (komi can't communicate) - she's so relatable to me

reki (sk8 the infinity) - literally everything @fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma said

korra (lok) - she's hot. like rly hot. she's also canon sapphic and dating asami

tagging @princessmikaa @ozais-lobotomist @bleekay @chitsangenthusiast @zukkababey @zukkas @just-a-dinomask @formvienthusiast @dickpuncher420 @spkyart

10 characters | 10 fandoms | 10 tags

This is cool, thanks for the tag @transuncletaylor! I think I just talk about my faves right? I know I’m forgetting some but here goes

Sokka (ATLA) : he’s so funny and interesting and his character is So Deep actually! I love a guy with Secret Issues. Must be relatable I guess.

Mako (LOK) : You’re going to start seeing I have a type. Hot, bad boy vibes, seems reckless but has a huge sense of justice actually. Also I LOVE a mysterious and tragic backstory.

Jim Kirk (Star Trek) : I mean the exact same reasons as above pretty much.

Jack Kelly (Newsies) : same hehe. I just love these guys of questionable sexuality who are like a leader of a found family and would do ANYTHING to protect them.

Marius Pontmercy (Les Miserables) : he’s annoying af and doesn’t get the point of anything going on around him but he knows exactly what he stands for. So relatable. His hyperfixation with Napoleon for entirely stupid reasons? Iconic. What a king. Living through a tragedy too? I’m attracted to that angst like flies on shit.

Tommy Shelby (Peaky Blinders) : He’s just badass. The best antihero. He says fuck capitalism and then falls victim to it lol. Also he is a GENIUS and loves to fuck people up to protect his family. Also his trauma is delicious to me ofc.

Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher) : Mysterious hero with pain and a family. So yeah.

Roronoa Zoro (One Piece) : I mean pretty much the same as the majority of this list. Tough guy who would die for his captain omfg

Han Solo (Star Wars) : the og baddie, need I say more

Anya Forger (Spy x Family) : listen it creeps ME out too that a little girl is on the list of me, a grown ass man, but she’s SO funny and her cuteness reminds me of like every student I ever had, I can’t help it

ok idk if y’all figured out but I just tag people by typing letters and clicking the first people who show up lol. Anyway if I dont tag you and you wanna do this, go for it. If I tag you and you don’t want to do this, fine.

@ultfreakme @ozais-lobotomist @firenaition @fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma @jovialcloudqueenisnotonfire @kiki-strike @lizardlicks @localgaysian @zukkacore @narrativelysignificantturtleduck

[syndromestatic]

Something I’ve been thinking about… because of recent moominous events & also the classes I’m taking:

Queer artistry is so so special. & when a queer artist creates something, it resonates with other queer people. The art becomes inherently queer. I think it could probably be debated if all art made by a queer person is, necessarily, queer- separation of art and artist and all that- but at least I think that’s the case.

The question is: does this remain the case after the artist is gone and their art is altered? You probably see where I’m going with this. We think of these characters as inherently queer because of their long and storied history, but at the same time, we know that Moominvalley has changed these characters, too. I’m not going to definitively state that they’re made… not queer, because I don’t believe that to be fully true, but if fundamental aspects of their character and how we perceive it can be changed, can their queerness be so as well? And if the queerness is not erased, then what is it? tamped down? undermined? mishandled?

& Maybe this is the point where you go “okay static it’s not that deep” but I really do think it is! Moominvalley 2019 mishandles a lot of things, i daresay even skirts around the queerness of itself without fully leaving it out. Here is my main case: If they were going to be more explicit with Moomin and Snufkin’s queercoding, that very much should have been followed through with. & let’s speak on how much Moominvalley played around with and constantly changed the nature of Snorkmaiden and Moomin’s romantic relationship with little to no actual explanation or context? Guys I don’t know. It’s odd, it’s weird, and it certainly doesn’t sit right with me.

To me, Season 3 left off in a place where Snufkin and Moomin’s relationship was at it’s tipping point between romantic and platonic- the season literally ends with them arm and arm- And that’s why season 4 falls flat in the demonstration of their relationship. I never expected season 4 to deliver on that front in the first place- by season 2 I felt that the Moomin/Snufkin moments were heavy handed and a bit too forced to be completely natural, and I knew it wasn’t about to become explicitly canon in the first place because Moomin and Snufkin never have been- but to me it’s about follow through and writing, and the fact they were dropping such obnoxious hints only for that tension to be dropped last season feels like both a cop-out, and perhaps even intentional.

The contemporary Moomin boom occurred in 2019, in the wake of the series. Shippers went wild. absolutely nuts. If Moomin has no fans, the world is dead, but this definitely contributed to a spike in viewership. and listen. Season 1 had its flaws but if every season onwards was of the same quality, and each season included the snufmin subtext only as much as season 1, I would not be upset right now. I do, in fact, believe, that the queer fanbase of this show was teased and strung along with the Moomin/Snufkin relationship. And I think the way it was handled in season 4 was due to the fact that they wouldn’t need that part of the show to, excuse my terminology, bait viewers along because it was the last season. Obviously this is all speculation, but I really don’t think it’s all that unlikely. And I’m not even saying that it’s strictly the writers’ fault, but I think there was someone in power who let the queer shit- the shit was was just obvious enough to give young queer viewers fuel- pass by for as long as it was useful, but by no means could the show surpass a certain limit.

Ahem anyways I love Moomins and I dislike Moominvalley 2019… for many reasons but also for this… sorry for incoherencies, typos, the like.

[wheelercurse]

byler + subtext

(a rant by me)

I do think byler is still subtext, at least the part of Mike being queer too. But this story started with subtext, even with Will. So I want to share with you my personal experience of watching the show and coming to the conclusion that byler will be endgame.

note: subtext doesn't mean it's not intentional, it's written like that for a reason. I know it's hard to convince others because many people would like to have it spelt out. And of course, their bias will affect them. They wouldn't want to think the ship they like isn't ending up together.

When I finished watching S1, I was sure Will was gay. There were two biggest hints: the homophobic bullies, and his conversation with Jonathan.

You don't present a kid as different, and even his father was homophobic toward him for nothing. But Jonathan telling Will that "he shouldn't like things only because he's supposed it." was the confirmation. That was a queercoded conversation, yes, they were talking about baseball, but there was an underlying meaning to it, the subtext.

I know some part of the general audience considered that Will could be gay for these hints, but it wasn't confirmed.

In s2 he has another queercoded conversation with Jonathan, about how it's okay to be different. Again the conversation wasn't about Will's sexuality, it was about him feeling alienated and outcasted, especially because people called him zombie boy.

But the last scene was the one that reaffirmed that he was gay. The one when he danced with the girl and he looked so uncomfortable. To me, it was obvious he wasn't interested in girls like that. This was more about another rule show, don't tell.

In the original script, the scene was written a bit differently. Will wasn't interested in the girl because he was looking at Mike. That would have confirmed that he waa gay, but also that he liked Mike. And to be honest, I didn't consider that he liked Mike, but some Mike's actions made me think that he liked Will. But still, I thought it wasn't possible because the main couple was "mil*ven" It was another case of two besties having more chemistry than the straight couple.

Then it's season 3, where literally the rain fight confirmed that he was, in fact, gay, homosexual, gay. But now I also highly suspected that he liked Mike too.

The rain fight is my favorite byler scene (my mutuals know this). The reason, it's the perfect example of queer subtext. This season, his queercoded conversation wasn't with Jonathan, but with Mike. At first, I interpreted the line "it's not my fault you don't like girls" in a literal way. I thought that Mike knew that Will was gay, but the creators and actors were still denying that he was. It was still just subtext.

My friends (like some GA) insisted to me that Will wasn't gay and liked Mike, it was only that he didn't want to grow up. And they were half right because, of course, they were arguing about that. The line in context was about Mike complaining that Will wasn't interested in girls, and he just wanted to keep playing d&d (even though it had homophobic undertones).

So, yes, on the surface it was only about growing up, but what was written between the lines? Their inner conflicts about their sexualities and feelings for each other. But, tbh I still thought Mike wasn't gay. Even though, mlven annoyed me this season, and their last kiss felt forced and awkward. I truly believed it was bad acting and bad direction, but I changed my mind in season 4.

David Harbour spoiled in an interview that Will was very interested with someone else (Mike). So I thought maybe he would have a crush on him, and then get over it, but oh boy, he was deeply in love. And not only that, he was suffering for his unrequited love. And every milevn scene was about how much pain it caused to Will. Why would be the reason if he doesn't get what he wants in the end?

BUT, I don't think how they wrote Will's arc this season, it's the only reason why Mike has to be queer. Also, how they wrote Mike and his relationships with both Will and El. Especially because their main conflict was that he couldn't say I love you. The same conflict, that another Wheeler sibling had with her partner.

Anyway at the end of the season, he gave his monologue to El, and for like two days I thought it was truly over, until I realized that the truth about the painting had to come out and that would change everything.

I watched the show again in retrospect. And I noticed Mike's queercoding through the seasons.

His conversation with Karen in s1, is very similar to the one Will had with Jonathan. So, it was intentional that he treated Will differently in s2, and the gay vibes I felt were there. And in s3, the rain fight, he thought growing up meant having girlfriends, yeah, that's so heteronormative. I know what you're dealing with, Mike. And of course, the awkward kiss was intentional, the boy kissed her with wide eyes open perfectly framed next to a closet. That's subtext.

When I read some leaks, I still doubt. Especially, the ones which claim that mlevn is still together, because, to me, it doesn't make any sense for the way it was written. But, maybe they're wrong, or they're going to break up later in the season.

And I also doubt because they haven't leaked anything about byler being romantic. BUT, I remember they leaked that Jamie was playing Vecna and 001, but nothing about Will being in love with Mike, so it's okay. This is their top secret.

This was a rant, not an analysis of the queer subtext in the show, if you want, I could write it one of these days.

Thanks for reading.

[incorrectsibunaquotes]

i’m taking a class on horror films through a queer lens and today we covered a theory called ‘infiltration anxiety’ and how secret societies are often stand-ins for queer people because “how are you supposed to tell who’s part of this hidden ���other’ group when they look and act like everyone else?”

i think unsurprisingly this infiltration anxiety (and subsequent potential for queer reading) can be applied to s1 and s3 of hoa respectively— more so than s2 for obvious reasons.

in many horror films throughout history, the secret society preys on impressionable youths, whether to influence or harm them. this impact is most obvious in three student characters in hoa s1: joy, patricia, and jerome. oftentimes in horror films, these societies (often queer coded) target teens who are either loners or have missing parental figures. all of them are students at a boarding school so no parents, and while joy’s dad is present, he’s still a central point in the society.

and, as we know, secret societies are often queer coded. who are our main players in the s1 secret society/society adjacent group? victor, rufus, and mr. sweet. now, idk about y’all, but… do i have to say it? 💅🏻 okay, in case it’s not clear, these three characters in particular are queercoded in some way, shape, or form. at the very least they’re all bi. and they all prey on teenagers in some way, shape, or form— whether through gaslighting, grooming, or, more often than not in the case of the hoa adults, both. joy and patricia were essentially groomed and gaslit by the society and rufus respectively, and jerome was definitely exploited, which is a lot of what anti-gay propaganda claimed was happening to children because of the existence of secret society type groups in the mid-20th century.

(i want to be clear that especially in the horror genre, a lot of queer coding is inherently homophobic to get around the production code that was put in place to combat “perversion and depravity” in film, so while equating homosexuality with predatory behavior is obviously not good, it’s still filed under a “queer reading”)

now, in s3, it’s a more traditional sense of infiltration anxiety. this is applicable to a horror films like invasion of the body snatchers or in lots of vampire movies. there’s also the inclusion of a curing trope, but i’ll get back to that.

in s3b, the sinners (the name alone gives me enough fuel for a traditional horror queer theory reading, but i digress) operate as a sort of secret society in and of itself. my professor literally used the words “they walk among us” in reference to the pervasive fear in the 50s and 60s in america about both communists and queer people. and i don’t have to talk about how queercoded robert frobisher-smythe is, do i? i mean…

anyway, if we’re looking at this all as a metaphor, we once again get that homophobic read on infiltration anxiety. here’s a queercoded man/monster preying on children and recruiting them to also be queercoded monsters preying on children. it’s an old and potentially problematic trope if we look at it through horror film queer theory.

now, let’s look specifically at the dynamic between sibuna at this point, because they best represent the “discovery plot” often used in horror films that feature infiltration anxiety:

straight couple who discover a thing: obviously it’s the whole club who discovers that frobisher is on the hunt, but two of them are paired off so they count.

they are aware the thing is there and dangerous and they’re trying to convince other people of that: more specifically applicable to kt trying to convince sibuna that she’s been set up by patricia.

the couple (or group) is not believed until it’s too late: fabian learns the truth and immediately gets picked off

the female character in the couple is in danger from the thing (may also succumb to the threat): patricia (or arguably kt but in a different context)

the hero discovers the thing’s achilles heel and exploits the weakness to destroy the monster: eddie & co vs team evil smack down

If we look at this through a queer lens, particularly point four stands out, especially in the context of s3b and sinner!patricia’s behavior with kt and eddie separately. the female protagonist is in danger/harmed by the thing and has succumbed to its influence, thus infiltrating the good group. her behavior with kt is physical and obsessive, and as i’ve pointed out before… can be read homoerotically. on the flip side, her behavior with eddie is a pageantry of straightness— she is acting as the “perfect straight girl” should with her boyfriend, only to further her evil agenda.

the curing trope was often used in queercoded horror films to overcome the evil, aka curing the monster of its queerness. that might be a religious curing or it may be a straight curing, like in the nightmare on elm street sequel where freddy is defeated bc the girlfriend of the queercoded boy he possessed kisses him and he melts back into her boyfriend. ring any bells for s3?

once the evil (queerness) has been eradicated, everything returns to normal (heteronormativity)

both these s1/s3 instances of horror tropes are very interesting… and potentially products of a problematic production code chic

[c0rpseductor]

also like its kind of funny bc in terms of video game franchises dragon age actually DOES do fairly (?) well when it comes to representation of lgbt characters. at least by sheer volume. and a lot of games whose writing i prefer fall extremely flat in comparison. so it probably seems silly that im so much more ready to tear da apart

like in ffxiv, emet-selch isn't actually gay despite how many posts i make about his loving joan crawford and dolly parton. he's heavily queercoded (ESPECIALLY in the localization) in order to remind you he's the bad guy. like, it's cheap; the best xiv can do in terms of lgbt rep among its cast is Heavily Imply a relationship between ryne and gaia, and i don't deny that it's really great that they did that, but it's also like...not much. and i think it does suffer from this pitfall of like, "we intentionally chose pretty teenage girls in a very chaste relationship to Imply Homosexuality About, because male homosexuality is gross." like i'm not saying Less Lesbian Rep Is Good or something or that it's a contest or some shit like that, i just think it's clear in this case they made this choice bc the devs have kind of evinced a bit of disgust toward gay men. most of the time (not all the time!) when male homosexuality or homoerotic imagery with men is brought up in the game i think it's sort of as a gross-out joke. also, as sort of an aside, transmisogyny is like. A Gag That Happens Way Too Much. However i think xiv is a much better-written game/series as a whole and i will be sucking it off until the end of time.

dragon age is like, nominally a lot less homophobic and transphobic, but i feel a lot more critical of and less generous toward its representation of lgbt characters because this is also a Big Selling Point for them. bioware i think has sort of built this image as like a really character-driven sensitive liberal crunchy kind of studio (i just really wanted to say crunchy lol) and seem to kind of pride themselves on having this really deep tactful groundbreaking lgbt rep. so if it falls short of those standards i'm going to be mad at being ripped off, naturally, and at bioware for patting their own asses for doing ultimately very little.

ffxiv did not at any point try to sell me Gay Rep. ffxiv did not say "hey, we're square enix and we're a really cool progressive company, we're going to make an mmo for the gays!" square enix looked me in the eyes and said "we have an mmo. our character creator has catgirls, and almost every single outfit in the base game is unconscionably hideous," and i said "HOLY SHIT CATGIRLS!!!" and have been playing it for nearly a decade now. i've never felt cheated out of sensitivity square promised me. i kind of know the score with them, as a company they can be pretty regressive and that often reflects in how they handle real-world issues in their games.

to use a food metaphor here, if i'm told i'm going to be given the most enormous delicious tasty stake ever and then it's like...good enough but ultimately very average, i'm going to feel a little cheated and probably be meaner about that steak than i would if i were simply told "i made steak. have some." i might even appreciate a kind of middling or even Not That Good steak without complaint if i'm not hyped up for no fucking reason first. this is kind of my feelings.

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte! I have a question. How do you differentiate between a closeted queer person doing PR and a straight person doing PR? If I was to use Harry as an example. I think he is closeted and gay but my opinion is mostly based off consistency and patterns since X Factor and 1D rather than him acting flamboyant. We saw him openly talk about his attraction to men before 1DHQ worked with the media to give him a womanizer image. We saw the womanizer image unfold. We see his pr relationships being set up and we can roughly predict what will happen, when it will end, what it is in connection to etc. If I was a new fan I don't think I'd be so sure. Him wearing female clothes and displaying some feminine traits can be put down to him being comfortable in his sexuality as a straight man and wanting to experiment with fashion. Straight men can dress and act flamboyant. Straight celebrities have pr relationships, they push their heterosexuality to sell projects, they might engage in fake relationships because they want to maintain a private life etc. So I'm wondering how would you personally differentiate? I see so many pr relationships happening and I jump to thinking that the celebrities are closeted and have to remind myself that not every person is queer lmao and some real relationships are also used for pr. All I can think is to go by how they act around both sexes. We see that Harry has chemistry with men but lacks it with women. We see that he gravitates towards men and that he's more comfortable around them. That he often looks uncomfortable and awkward around women when he is performing heterosexuality. If it's female friends it's different. It might be harder to tell with HW actors because obviously they play pretend for a living so they can probably perform heterosexuality in public more convincingly. But then I think about J*ke Gyllenh**l and he's a great versatile actor but I've never seen him publicly perform heterosexuality in a convincing way lmao, nothing will convince me that he's straight.

Hi, anon!

This is such a great question! I guess if you were to observe Harry now, without context, without knowing his fandom, what Harry's said and done in the past, or the rumours about him being gay and with Louis, you'd have a hard time differentiating between performative heterosexuality for promo only and performative heterosexuality for promo and closeting purposes.

I agree you'd have little to go on but observing his chemistry with men vs women (but that would be hard to do if he was bi/pan), but also queercoding and of course stereotypes and gaydar. Yes, straight men can dress and act feminine and flamboyant, but it's also very much used as an outlet and queercoding for closeted men. You say that you need to remind yourself that not every person is queer. You are right, but in the business were talking about here there is a much higher rate of queers than in the rest of society. There are more queer celebrities than we know of. They're also more likely to have reasons to hide it than in the rest of society in order to further their career (in the modern western world at least). So if you pick up verbal and non verbal clues, mannerisms and put it together with rejection of traditional gender roles and his occupation and the knowledge of closeting in the industry one should be able to figure it out (at least suspect) without knowing anything else about him.

[formerheroeswhoquittoolate]

Break down you Gerry Dugan hate for me please (if you’d be so kind)

that's so fair of you actually. and I want to start off by saying: I don't think he's actually a bad writer. his hawkeye vs deadpool is one of my favorite limited series ever, sam alexander nova (which he wrote a decent chunk of) is one of my favorite characters, and aside from my grievances about the stepford girls, I absolutely loved his cable run from a few years back. he can and does write well!

when you give him things he knows how to write.

and the problem with that is marvel... kind of hasn't been doing that. his marauders was good, except for kate pryde's sudden, random bi arc that started and basically ended with her kissing a female tattoo artist. and his x-men was fine until it turned out he had to write a female character with mental illness and another female character with an extremely complicated and trauma-ridden relationship with her own autonomy (and a ton of queercoding). not to mention the reduction of a fairly functional polyam relationship to just scott and jean. and he definitely doesn't seem prepared to be handling so much of the fall of x -- he's never been responsible for an event to this degree before, it's really just been tie-ins before this.

you'll notice that two of the series I mentioned in the beginning (nova and cable) are very similar -- teenage guy Figuring Out What The Hell Is Going On with the unfortunate shadow of an older version who does the same thing and a lot of space shenanigans. and the third involves deadpool, and duggan has been a deadpool writer for at least as long as I've been reading comics, probably longer. these are things that gerry duggan can definitely do! he is good at them! they are enjoyable and make me feel things!

but I don't think he was prepared to branch out from that when marvel dropped krakoa in his lap and said "figure out how to kill this." I definitely don't think he was prepared for writing multiple characters who were Weird Kinds Of Queer, or who had mental health issues that went beyond your standard heroic ptsd and angst, or who would have to have some pretty complex feelings about the questionable homeland they're defending. writing a lot of comics at once is really difficult, too. and so I think he fell short, and he fell short hard, and his writing suffered for it.

what could have been a story (or even a side arc) about laura and her previous history with self-harm instead became a remix of the tried-and-true Logan's Memory Sucks storyline. and then what could have been a story about the dynamic between laura and talon and which one was real instead became a heterosexual romance with laura completely jettisoned from the x-men. what could have been a very relevant and pressing schism within the team after lorna puppeted laura while laura was unconscious was instead played off as a joke. what could have been an emotionally fraught and complex arc about scott and alex reconciling was instead a five minute conversation with the endgoal of a fight instead of a conclusion, and then alex was completely jettisoned from the x-men. what could have been an interesting, complicated, and nuanced conversation about the idea of exterminating all the brood that paralleled the broader conversation humans were having about mutants instead became scott summers advocating for genocide. and that's just within his x-men (largely because that is the series I'm most familiar with and the characters I'm most familiar with outside the context of the series) and pulled out of my ass at eight in the morning. I have so many thoughts on the way he's been handling his portion of the fall of x.

it's not so much that I hate gerry duggan as it is that I hate what he's doing. he's been put in a situation where he has too much to write and so he's resorting to the easy stuff, even if it means he has to resort to tropes and oversimplifications and sentences like "I didn't go to the gala because I have depresssion." and it fucking sucks! because I love a lot of the characters he's writing and I think he could do so much better under different circumstances. maybe just with less to write so he can give the characters the time and attention they deserve, maybe with series that are more suited to the things he's good at. I don't know. but what's happening right now is not working and I don't like it.

[copperbadge]

pagemelt on tiktok did a 2-part video on Stealing Harry! how does it feel knowing how deeply important that fic is to so many people?

As many of you know I am a Fandom Old, and never has there been a moment where I felt older than when I was trying to get onto TikTok to see these videos. Oh man I am so old. But what lovely and thoughtful tiktoks those were! Just truly delightful and a lot to consider.

For those of you who are curious and/or very new to tiktok as I am, here are the videos:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRMAErfP/

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRMAt3df/

Hopefully those will load in browser, but I can't make promises. Anyway, I had many thoughts but I'm not really a video guy, so I wrote this here and I'm going to drop a link to Pagemelt and hopefully she will see it!

I have a lot of feelings, most of the time, surrounding Stealing Harry; as odd as it is to say it really was a defining moment in my life, though I didn't see that for many years.

In terms of being influential or meaningful to others, of course I'm extremely proud and touched, and so glad I could offer such positivity. Writers do their craft for a lot of reasons, but I've always wanted to write in order to interact with others -- to touch people or teach people or offer them my opinion, although this wasn't as consciously vocalized when I was younger. To have written something with the impact of Stealing Harry, especially at the age of 24, was a real accomplishment for me, but the kind that is mainly seen looking back -- it's the kind of feeling that comes of years of compilation, for lack of a better word, of conversations with others about the work. At the time it was very popular and that felt extremely good, of course, but I didn't understand why.

In some ways I still don't -- I also have a lot of bafflement when it comes to the story, because why THAT story, at THAT moment, and still today? I've had guesses before -- people love a kidfic, and there's plenty of romance and sex, and much of the fic is a sort of emotional hurt/comfort -- but I do feel as though Pagemelt put her finger on something in that regard which I hadn't fully considered.

Her take on Stealing Harry is extremely cogent and thoughtful, particularly since she's looking back at the fic as a reader and really thinking about the experience. Like, bisexual representation that wasn't stigmatized was really important for her, and I think perhaps both Remus being secure in his love as a gay man and Sirius being truly uncertain about his sexuality as someone who has had romantic/sexual relationships with women and strong feelings for men really spoke to people. Struggling with identity or with knowing your identity but feeling attacked for it, and also wanting that security in identity, I can see how the adult relationships in Stealing Harry could speak to people. I'm so very glad they have.

I also think she were spot-on about her discussion of some of the flaws in the story. It WAS written fifteen years ago and the environment in fandom was different. Certainly I love to write a strong redemption arc, so I would have added more nuance to Snape's had I had the reading of Half Blood Prince beforehand, but I think I still would have written it. That said, she's not wrong that there was a strong shift in fandom attitudes towards Snape based on HBP, though it took a few years after the end of the series, at least in my experience, for that to arrive.

I hadn't really thought about the name issues, with Tonks; she was definitely read as queercoded even at the time she first appeared in canon, but specifically trans-coded readings for Tonks weren't as visible and trans headcanons for characters in general, while I'm sure they existed, weren't vocalized as much, for perhaps self-evident reasons given how much transness was respected (or rather, not respected) in fandom at the time. People not always respecting Tonks' name in Stealing Harry does land differently today. It's something I, to my dismay, wouldn't have consciously thought of if I were writing the story today, the idea that respecting Tonks' chosen name was an important gesture to trans readers, so I appreciate having that pointed out.

Though, I am a little proud that, subconsciously, I did sort that out as a current writer -- I don't know if Pagemelt knows that I'm rewriting the story into an original fiction, but in the original-fiction version Tonks is very much gender-questioning and their name and how the adults can help them through it is a whole entire subplot -- Remus finds out about the shift in names, asks Andromeda about it, draws his own conclusions, and then speaks to a canonically trans character about who should (or if they should) offer to be a sympathetic older queer presence in their life.

So overall, I'm feeling quite proud both of myself and Pagemelt, delighted that Stealing Harry continues to be considered a classic text, and not unsatisfied that people are looking at it critically. As you all know from my original work I don't enjoy being told my works' flaws but I do like knowing them so that I can continue to learn and grow as a writer, and Pagemelt said some things that I think will stick with me as I continue. Plus it has made me want to get back into work on the Ozyverse, the adaptation of Stealing Harry, so once I'm no longer traveling with a bluetooth keyboard and an ancient tablet as my primary mode of communication I will get on that....

[demadogs]

Hi!

So you answered an ask a little while ago where you said that you don’t think s1 has any Byler content/doesn’t really hint to it, but that it may contain hints that Mike is gay.

Given the fact that in Will’s original character description it said he struggles with his sexuality, and that in the actual show numerous characters make references to it (“Lonnie used to call him a f*g” “Will’s in fairy land all happy and gay”) does that change anything for you?

Like if s1 definitely hints to Will being gay and possibly hints to Mike being gay as well, would that imply that the intention from the start was to make them a couple and that there is Byler evidence in s1? Or would that be more of a coincidence/otherwise unintentional?

Thanks! Love your blog/theories, I was just curious about this certain topic :) <3

i do think the duffers intended byler from the start!! i guess i didnt make that clear but i totally do and i only mentioned mike in that other ask bc i thought will was more obvious but yeah wills been hinted at being gay since the very first episode. i just think in comparison to seasons 2 and 3 i dont see why deep diving into s1 all that much for byler content is necessary when we have sooo much for the other seasons.

in s1 before they realize the actual situation, mike is mourning his best friend. some people take the scene of him looking at his drawings and try to make it gay but like hes an 11 year old kid who thinks his best friend just died. i think hes responding the way anyone would?? and theyre showing his response instead of lucas or dustin just cuz he has a bigger role that season. i dont like when people are like “look hes stroking his hands over wills drawings!! he loves him!!” like bro he thinks he just DIED like?? thats grieving not pining.

i dont think the duffers put anything that could hint at byler in the first season bc they didnt know how huge this would be. also they had to have his storyline with el being a love interest so if they made other feelings for someone else obvious it would just be confusing. but when they became the biggest netflix show of all time just after one season they were like “ok we’ll be renewed every time we can start foreshadowing this relationship thats at least two seasons away from actually happening”.

some things tho that i can see peoples point on for mike potentially being gay is the fact that el is mistaken for a boy so many times and when mike pushes troy after he said homophobic stuff about will. also there are some things that could hint at mike just feeling like he SHOULD like el cuz shes a girl and he genuinely does care about her but not romantically. like when lucas said something like “youre just happy a girls not grossed out by you”. he didnt mention his feelings at all just him liking the idea of being with a girl. not that i think lucas knew anything about it, i just think it was interesting writing. but will telling mike he rolled a 7?? and will hugging him in the hospital after he nearly died in an evil alternate dimension???? thats not queercoding that what any best friend would do.

[handsmotif]

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors. 

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out. 

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis. 

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

On why “not like other girls” isn’t a useful criticism anymore (and maybe never was)

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the way people have been talking about femininity in feminist spaces for the past few years really fails gender nonconforming queer and neurodivergent girls.

In particular, I’ve noticed and seen others talk about the tendency to push the ideas that women never enforce gender norms on other women, never punish other women for not conforming to gender norms, and that female bullies essentially don’t exist because girls would never do that to each other. I’ve also noticed how the “face” of internalized misogyny has become the blatantly queercoded, neurodivergent-coded girl who’s Not Like Other Girls. That’s not an accident.

There are feminist circles made up mostly of women who have never had a problem with being accepted by other women, and their ideas about how girls and women treat each other are very influential. The things is that they don’t realize that how other women treat them and how other girls treated them growing up isn’t universal. They’re unaware that they aren’t accepted just because they’re women but because they’re able to check off a number of conditions that signal to other women that they “belong.” One of the more important conditions is being able to do femininity the right way. They’re unaware that there’s a huge difference between women who can do femininity the right way and choose to subvert it for feminist reasons versus women who can’t do it the right way at all, and that difference has a huge impact on how other women treat you. A lot of these women are probably well intentioned, but that doesn’t make it okay that their viewpoints, which erase women who are marginalized in ways they aren’t, have become so mainstream.

This, of course, has a disparate impact on gender nonconforming queer women, who can’t do femininity right because it leads to things like dysphoria and depression, and autistic women, who often can’t do femininity right because of sensory issues with makeup/tight clothing/certain fabrics, because they’re unable to understand the social rules that govern things like fashion trends or matching clothes, or because their special interests aren’t seen by their peers as acceptable things for girls to be interested in.

The problem arises because women in the first group, the influential feminist circles, seem to have decided that the idea of female bullies is a patriarchal trope pushed by men (girls wouldn’t do that to each other) and that only men enforce gender norms on women (girls are so much more accepting of other girls uwu). Gender nonconforming queer and autistic women, who grew up as gender nonconforming girls, know that this idea is frankly bullshit because they were bullied and ostracized by other girls for not being able to do femininity right or enough, but when we try to talk about this, we’re shouted down by the first group of women as just having internalized misogyny. The entire time I was in middle and high school, I only remember having my appearance insulted by a boy once. It was almost exclusively something other girls did. And yet we’re told that our own lived experiences can’t possibly have happened because “bullying is a boy thing, girls are all friends.” You would think that this conversation would at least be happening in queer circles but even there, gnc queer women are the only ones talking about it, while everyone else is all, “It’s so great how lesbians never enforce gender norms against each other. Anyway, here’s my fanart of a canonically butch character wearing a dress.”

So here’s where the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls comes in. The stereotypical girl who’s Not Like Other Girls is blatantly queercoded and blatantly neurodivergent coded, and that’s not an accident. It’s because those are the girls who are disproportionately likely to be rejected by other girls because of their inability to do femininity right, and that’s something that the women who love to talk about the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls have subconsciously picked up on.

Now, I’m not going to try to claim that no one who thinks they’re not like other girls has a sense of superiority about it, but overwhelmingly, the girls who think that aren’t thinking “I’m not like those dumb sluts.” They’re thinking “why am I not like the other girls.” For me (an autistic lesbian), my Not Like Other Girls phase was never about thinking I was better than everyone else. It was an attempt to explain to myself why I was being picked on and excluded by other girls, even the ones who were my friends. I knew I was different from other girls because I was told that by other girls. And the idea that girls who hang out mostly with boys are doing it because they hate other girls is largely false. Lots of teenage gnc queer and autistic girls hang out mostly with boys because they find that there are fewer unspoken social rules between boys, boys are less judgmental about their appearance than other girls, girls their age are starting to develop interests they find alienating, and/or because they’ve just given up on trying to befriend girls after years of rejection. It’s not internalized misogyny, it’s a trauma response.

All this vilification of the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls really accomplishes is making gender nonconforming girls and women into the main perpetrators of internalized misogyny and gender conforming girls into the main victims. It should give us pause that our idea of a stereotypical victim of internalized misogyny is a thin, blond, pretty queen bee-type and our stereotypical perpetrator is a queercoded, neurodivergent-coded girl with no friends, because it’s a blatant example of homophobia and ableism in mainstream feminism. It’s because the women with the loudest voices want to feel like they’re always the victims and never to blame. It should concern us how many posts are dedicated to condemning girls who think they aren’t like other girls when I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a single post condemning girls who bully other girls for not conforming to femininity. That’s an incontrovertible example of internalized misogyny that’s honestly a much more widespread problem, and everyone either wants to pretend it isn’t happening or has decided they’re okay with.

Gender nonconforming queer and autistic women grow up being ostracized for their gender nonconformity and no one can even make a post telling them its okay to be the way they are without having to add about a dozen disclaimers to avoid hurting the feelings of gender conforming women and still having 20 people in the replies reminding them that “some girls like to wear makeup :)” Meanwhile people will make 380 posts about how feminine girls should be celebrated without a single thought to how that contributes to the alienation and exclusion gnc queer and autistic girls are experiencing. Not everyone needs to learn to love pink or whatever. It’s so okay for gnc women to have deep negative feelings towards femininity as a concept when it was the reason for their abuse at the hands of other girls. That’s not internalized misogyny. 

Anyway, I remember around the turn of the decade when the idea of the girl who was Not Like Other Girls really took off and I remember being able to picture exactly who it was about, but looking back, I can’t for the life of me remember whether that person was someone who actually existed irl, or whether it was the result of a popular media trope that everyone just assumed was also a problem irl, or whether it’s always just been the most acceptable women with the loudest voices blaming gender nonconforming queer and autistic women for something we weren’t doing.

mod k

tl;dr - Blaming girls who Aren’t Like Other Girls for internalized misogyny is victim-blaming bullshit. Girls thinking they aren’t like other girls is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

[nadiasna7]

My opinion on st4 that no one asked for

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Okay, first off, I think that steddie isn't queerbaiting. With the way Joseph improvised some scenes and well, just acted in general, it's safe to assume it's just the chemistry between him and Joe. (Which is 100% valid and enough to ship these charactes). Tbh, I didn't think they'd be canon, didn't want them to be. I only wanted for Eddie to stay alive, everything else I would've done myself.

However, I do think that Eddie is a queercoded character, but I assume it was by accident. They wanted to have a freak, but they crossed some invisible line, and ended up with a character who's so weird (affectionate) and unapologetically himself that he became queer.

Although we need to talk about the way the two canon queers were handled. I mean, Robin has Steve, at least, he's a great wingman. It still sucked to get so hyped up about Vickie and then have only a few minutes of her on screen (not to mention that they used her to make Robin even more miserable). Maybe they'll get together in s5, but like... It still sucked. Will, on the other hand... They did him dirty, Him and Mike who's supposed to be his best friend??? But he lost all the emotional intelligence he had previously. I couldn't care less that it's the 80s, omg, queer people existed, and stranger things tells a very nostalgic and idealized story anyway.

Ronance, though... I think some of it was very intentional. The camera angles and whatnot. But they never thought it would be this big of a phenomenon (we're just hungry queers).

Btw, I definitely think we were queerbaited by social media managers. Like, the show itself didn't do much. BUT SMM?? GOSH. I hate it when they use us like that.

It's even more obvious that queers are just doomed to suffer when we look at how the show treats its straight couples. We're CONSTANTLY reminded of some romantic interests, even Argyle gets one, like... There're SO MANY straight couples... They even have time to play will they won't they with Steve and Nancy, which I thought was pointless and embarassing. They could've used that time to explore something else, there's still a lot to explore, believe me. So we can have a lot of straight romance going on but we can't get even a second of queers being happy and in love. Ok, nice.

[itsrainingfeathers]

So......I watched s2 of Netflix Witcher. It wasn't great, but not absolutely horrible either. No clue what the writers were high on, but I want a hit of that stuff. Incredible bullshit, this season.

Here's some things I liked about it:

- How they adapted the plot of A Grain of Truth with Ciri thrown in the mix, and how she and Geralt just walked away from Nivellen in the end. A very powerful scene.

- Vereena!! She is one of my favorite characters in the books even tho she doesn't do that much, so it was really nice to see her in the series, too. I liked the few extra moments they gave her, and the chittering sounds, and all the non-human things. (Though her watching Ciri in the bath was a bit creepy-crawly, even if it was likely purely out of curiosity)

- I hate book!Yennefer so much and didn't like her in s1 either, but now she wasn't completely horrible??? unbelievable

- her interactions with Jaskier and Cahir were the best

- Francesca Findabair/Enid an Gleanna is in the books considered the most beautiful woman in the world, and she's absolutely gorgeous in the show, too

- Burn Butcher Burn slaps so hard (and Whoreson Prison Blues, too)

- Jaskier's mouse friends!!

- "The Aard incident" yes please tell me more about small witcherling Geralt's shenanigans

- "Ciri, this is my...dear friend." "Dear friend?" PLEASE (Yennefer's 'dear friend'-letter in Blood of the Elves is the funniest thing)

- ah yes, Yennefer's stuffed unicorn that broke under mysterious circumstances (she and Geralt banged on it in Sword of Destiny or Blood of the Elves)

- Nenneke my beloved (though she couldn't do magic in the books)

- I'm glad they included some smaller side characters (like Jarre, Rience's homies, Codringher & Fenn and the cat)

- Very much queercoded Jaskier (talking about the "artist"-scene here)

- and he has a hat now!! And a very nice coat

- Buffskier enjoyers were clearly onto something. How are you feeling?

- Yennefer's outfits were gorgeous

- Coën's eyes looked really cool (the potions affecting only one of them)

- the Temple of Melitele looked exactly like I imagined it in the books! And it had that cozy welcoming warm atmosphere

- Tissaia de Vries in what I think were night clothes? Anyway she looked lovely

- Bard in Kaer Morhen!! (if only Eskel were there...)

- Those shots of Yennefer with the sword on her throat were gorgeous

- and there were some decent interactions between her and Geralt?? I deeply dislike the relationship bc at least in the books Yen is abusive towards him (and, as we all saw, it's not great in the show either), but the scenes at the temple were even enjoyable.

- the "basilisks" were a bit too velociraptor-indoraptor-like, but their design was still great!!

- Dijkstra and dear Phil!

- I'm glad they brought Dara back

And here's some things I didn't like:

- Eskel. They really massacred my boy in every possible way.

- Ciri. What have they done to her. She had some scenes I liked (like her talk with Jarre), but it was mostly bad (for example, when she and Yennefer portalled to the farm from the temple). Like I've said before, a bland ass sack of flour.

- Book Cahir is so much better too. Really hoping they'll steer him more into that direction in s3. (And Eamon Farren looks a lot like this Finnish singer-actor-sex offender Roope Salminen so it's a bit difficult to take the character seriously. Not his fault ofc, this is just a me problem)

- Why were there so many witchers? Were all of them from Wolf School? Way too many witchers. Way. Too. Many. At least they died.

- The previous one had (except for Coën ofc) there but I removed it bc they made him into a Wolf Witcher. He is a fucking Griffin. Not. A. Wolf.

- Could've used any of those unnamed guys and dudes for the Groot storyline instead of darling Eskel

- watching the scenes with Triss at Kaer Morhen and imagining what it could've been like with good, gentle and kind Eskel there...I need to reread Blood of the Elves or something.

- "yeah Ciri Kaer Morhen is very secret place" and moments later Creepskel has brought some friends for a party

- Geralt's ridiculous fucking tiddy armor. (Though I think he made it himself? Ngl kinda iconic. And it looked good from certain angles, but mostly just...no)

- s1 main theme (Geralt of Rivia) was so thoroughly badass. Awe-inspiring. Magnificent. S2 main theme? I can't even remember the melody.

- Them using African violets for Feainnewedds shouldn't maybe bother me this much, but it does.

- How on Earth did Ciri manage to surprise and kill not one, but two Witchers in their sleep??? People who have enhanced senses and likely don't sleep too deeply due to nightmares, paranoia and such????? What

- and how come those basilisks beat the shit out of and killed a group of Witchers, but Geralt manages to kill the biggest, baddest one without too much of a trouble?? And without potions????? Make it make sense

- Geralt in full-on parent mode is the best Geralt, but am I the only one that found the relationship between him and Ciri a bit...empty? Lacking something?? I don't know how else to say it, it just felt weird (not creepy, that's not what i mean) like that

- That Baba Yaga motherfucker. What.

- The entire season seemed to lack depth in some way.

- The plot had some good things in it (like Jaskier and Yennefer's interactions, Temple of Melitele until Rience arrived, Dijkstra and dear Phil, Roach number 387's very emotional death), but other than that, it just felt off and I really didn't like it. I wasn't that interested in it and mostly watched it to pass time, out of curiosity, for the bard, and to know what the fandom was talking about.

So, as one Joey Batey once said:

Seriously, if you can stand occasional monologues and being introduced to so many new characters at once (especially in the short stories), they're so much better. Though I do think I would've liked the show much more had I not read the books (not all of them yet tho, still got 3 more to go). Oh well.

Even though I didn't like this season that much, I'm sort of excited to see what happens in s3?? Yennefer teaching Ciri magic, Jaskier's spy stuff, possibly the Scoia'tael, Cahir and Fringilla's fate...let's see how badly they fuck up those, shall we!

[steveyockey]

Non spn anon: thank you for answering my confusing question, sorry it was confusing 😅 I must say I’m so intrigued by all the Dean gender discussion posts I’ve seen so when I learned there was a satin underwear moment I was like ?!?!?!!!!! On SPN of all shows? Just so much to unpack here. Anyway thank you again 🙏🏻

okay like I know you didn’t actually ask a question but this ask has been driving me crazy because “on SPN of all shows” non spn anon you wouldn’t know this because you, of course, do not watch spn, but this sort of slippage occurs all the time with dean! as was written in the gospel of dean by tumblr user marcusantonius, the slippage occurs so many fucking times (he likes to wear nightgowns! he knows purgatory is name of a gay club in miami! he’s made everyone he lives with watch lost boys over thirty times! he recites rent lyrics! soft spot for dirty dancing [“swayze always gets a pass”]! loves doctor sexy aka the in universe equivalent of greys! weird kinky sex references about zorro masks and whips!) and with such an earnestness that it actually actively reconstitutes dean against the superordinate classification of Absolute Heterosexual Male the narrative leans on as his assumed identity! 

the thing about a lot of meta on gay/bi readings of dean is that. well. da miller has a piece called “anal rope” where he uses this understanding of coding as a difference between connotation and denotation, basically things that have the potential for a certain reading vs the literal text,

 “connotation... excites the desire for proof, a desire that, so long as it develops within the connotative register, tends to draft every signifier into what nonetheless remains a hopeless task — hence the desire assumes another, complementary form in the dream (impossible to realize, but impossible not to entertain) that connotation would quit its dusky existence for fluorescent literality, would become denotation.”

it’s the same problem sedgwick refers to as “We Know What That Means” in epistemology of the closet, 

“to have succeeded... in cracking the centuries-old code by which the-articulated-denial-of-articulability always had the possibility of meaning two things, of meaning either (heterosexual) ‘nothing’ or ‘homosexual meaning,’ would also always have been to assume one's place in a discourse in which there was a homosexual meaning, in which all homosexual meaning meant a single thing.”

and I have to say anon that back in fandom circa 2014 the panties thing drove me CRAZY because I felt like it was everywhere all the time in every post about bi dean or gay dean or queerbait or queercoding or endverse spiral but NO ONE would ever explain it! “We KNOW What That Means”!! it filtered out into every single fucking fic where dean discovers his sexuality, I swear to god I read so many stories where he had this big sexual identity crisis during which part of the realization would be the panties, just the panties, the fact that he liked them an illumination in and of itself. exactly as you articulated it, a “satin underwear moment.” most interestingly (to me, at least), the idea of the panties makes an appearance in twist and shout but in REVERSE with cas being the one wearing the panties (almost as though through some sort of metacognition the writers understood they were making a work so profoundly out of step with the actual characters the meaning of the panties no longer aligned with the dean they had written - but what about the panties had aligned with dean in the first place!?). 

what DO the panties mean! they could mean a lot of things! sexual domination symbolic castration transgenderism kink fantasy shakespearean crossdressing something something gender roles battering rams to masculinity redefinitions of masculinity transgression of masculinity permeability of the borders of masculinity — nothing about the panties is inherently anything, it’s just about what you as the reader understand their meaning to be, the connotation YOU confer onto the text on the basis that rhonda hurley made dean try on her panties and he “kind of liked it,” and, somehow, and perhaps this is the key, this knowledge is what will convince a future self of dean winchester that his present self is the same self. and of course on the one hand it’s obvious that the assumed private nature of this knowledge, that dean would not have told this story to anyone else and thus only dean and rhonda can confirm its veracity, is the motivator for dean’s admission, but where’s the fun in that! and besides, that does nothing to explain how it come so easily, and so comfortably, which is how a lot of dean’s sexuality is supposed to come to him and part of the project he is cultivating as the Absolute Heterosexual Male! he’s a womanizer he’s a ladies man, again, to quote the gospel, “lovable fucker, always fuckable,” and something about the panties does fit into that, into what has been denoted about dean and sex and how he desires, but! it’s been denoted so thoroughly to collapse the image onto itself, so insistently proffered over and over again that it begs a question of itself and of the very comfortability that dean purports to have in his sexuality and the manner in which he wants you to think he wants the girl in the zorro mask to slap him. so the panties, which could be a reassurance of this comfort in this firm Heterosexual-Though-Non-Normative-Sexually Identity, instead become an object that connotes, along with every other little tic, every slippage, every glance, a hidden truth, a discomfort, a necessity to insist that there is not a secret buried beneath the open-bookedness of his sex life. it isn’t even actually about the connotation striving to become denotation, but rather that the denotation itself lacks stability and so connotation becomes identity as the performance of this heterosexual self tips into parody. masculinity. what a beast.

[deanwasalwaysbi]

Thinking About How This Wasn't Actually a Denial

But was it self preservation?

The year was 2013 and rather than a denial, Jensen said "Don't ruin it for everybody now."

What was the fan 'ruining' for everybody? The Con? or something else? So if I was a tinhatter - and sometimes I am - I might think about other tv shows from the past that were covertly queer and how they handled the question, were TV shows 'out'?

Mainstream shows like Bewitched, you know, shows that are so clearly straight, you can tell because... well. ... they never technically used the word 'gay'. ... witches honor

SPN Film Studies is Back in Session! Join Under the Cut for more on supernatural & the story about how Bewitched! came out of the Broom Closet

Bewitched aired from 1964-72, it's so old the first season was in B&W. The show starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, the strange housewife with a stranger secret. Her husband, Darrin, unwittingly married into the whole witchy family, from the now drag icon Agnes Moorehead's Endora with her open marriage, to the unmarried and batty Aunt Clara (Marion Lorne who played the mother in Hitchcock's heavily gay coded 'Strangers on a Train'), to the extremely coded Uncle Arthur (gay actor Paul Lynde). (We can't know for sure, but it seems at least 4 members of the cast were gay themselves.) The core premise of the show involves Samantha balancing who she really is with repressing that self for the safety and comfort of her family.

Samantha and her husband keep her [ahem] 'queer' nature a secret which gets harder on Samantha when she has to tell her daughter to live the same way, “I know what fun it is to be a part of the magical life ... to have so much at your fingertips. But we’re living in a world that’s just not ready for people like us, and I’m afraid they may never be. So you’re going to have to learn when you can use your witchcraft and when you can’t.”

There are plenty of generic 60s wacky hijinks but there are also whole episodes metaphorically about repression being harmful, episodes where characters asked if another was a 'thespian', episodes where Darrin was queercoded while under a spell, episodes about representation & bad stereotyping in media, and even two episodes where witches discussed whether it was time for witches to come out to the mortals, (whether mortals could accept that they were just nice normal people trying to live their lives like everybody else - or not - and would just freak out and kill them again).

When it came time to recast Dick York's Darrin with a new 2nd lead, Elizabeth and her husband, William Asher, knowingly cast the gay Dick Sergeant. (Although he wasn't out publicly at the time.) Then, when Sergeant came out in '91, Montgomery supported him and the two served together as the grand marshals of the Hollywood pride parade.

Dick Sargent expressed in the 90s what he would want in a Bewitched reunion episode: for Darrin to meet another like couple, a witch and a mortal who are married, and another, and another, and end up forming a whole community and support group, finding out that it was never so uncommon after all, that it was actually "about 10% of the population." The two would march in the first mortals and witches pride parade, saying they should have come out years ago.

In '94, Montgomery had this to say about the queer themes of the show, “Don't think that didn't enter our minds at the time. We talked about it on the set, that this was about people not being allowed to be what they really are. If you think about it, Bewitched is about repression in general and all the frustration and trouble it can cause. It was a neat message to get across to people at that time in a subtle way.” (x)

Interviewer: Are you concerned that your involvement in the gay-pride parade will lead people to believe you're a lesbian?

"[Laughing] I'm really not worried about that. There are bigger things to worry about. Like the presidential election and finding a cure for AIDS. I did the parade in support of Dick. I mean, in the end, didn't we all?" (x) (Montgomery was also one of the first celebrity allies to fight for LGBTQ rights and support HIV/AIDS-related fundraisers.)

So did they talk about it at the time? No. You can bet they didn't speak about it publicly. What would have happened if a fan, publicly, had asked Elizabeth, William, or Dick about the show's queer allegory content? This was a time when being gay was a literal felony. They would have had to have lied or risked losing the show, their careers, and possibly subjecting themselves to violence.

Now. back to Jensen and the Schrodinger's long con:

This was in 2013 - The same year that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a federal ban on gay marriage. You certainly couldn't call homosexuality illegal in the US at that time. It's the same year that Dabb and Sgriccia spoke about the Aaron moment on the DVD and whether there's 'this potential for love in all places' for Dean. Of course Jensen said this about the very same scene: "But it was - you know - it was comedy. It was a comedic moment in the show and fortunately Dean gets a lot of the comedic moments in the show and it was just, you know, Ben was poking fun at the fact that - you know, how can we make this very kind of manly, heterosexual guy uncomfortable - uh -you know, or  or have him back on his heels and throw him off his game a little bit.”

I'm reminded of 2012 when Ben Edlund stepped in about a Destiel question at comic con, pretending it was some freaky thing that fans had made up even though he'd already written and directed TMWWBK, which had already aired.

Jensen: “What’s Destiel?” Ben Edlund: That’s some weird shit. Jensen: Is this something that you created, Ben? Ben: You don’t want any part of that.

Or the next year for season 9 when Jensen said “I think the whole Cas and Dean thing has gotten out of hand”  “I don’t think there’s anything secret to their relationship even though a lot of people wish there was” EVEN THOUGH- that season we got the nightstands acknowledgement and Misha (or both of them?) was told to “play him like a jilted lover”

Or Jensen's knowing bromance smile in 2015

I think recent events (cough spn gate) have made clear that the network and many viewers were still uncomfortable with CAS being gay in 2020, deleting even familial mentions of Cas from the finale episodes once he was revealed to be not only gay but also in love with Dean. (x) (x) (x) Can you imagine then what Warner Brothers would have said to an acknowledge bisexual Dean Winchester in 2013? Granted, there was no Trump election, but legitimate, could that have been the end of the show? Or the Russian and Conservative US viewership? Is it possible that Jensen would have feared so?

Is it possible that Jensen had a more personal reason for a knee jerk defensive response?

So was Jensen covering in 2013? Well. This happened 5 years later in 2018:

That hostile "? No." came even though Misha confirmed that he and Jensen had discussed Destiel by that point. Granted, discussing Destiel as a concept and accepting Dean being inherently bisexual are two very different things - Cas is GN after all - still, less than encouraging.

I may never get over the jumps back and forth that Jensen did. At this point I think there's no denying that a lot of SPN's queer content was on purpose, even as writers and actors were telling fans and network execs otherwise. Yet when each person involved was brought in? that question haunts me at night. I have gone off before about the timeline in my pursuit of whether Jensen was Ben Hur'd (x) and, if so, for how long. I'm sure many in this fandom have so much to add.

In the meantime we'll just have to cherish this moment from 2019:

Interviewer: 'So, tell us just a little bit about what you’re most excited to tackle with your character this final season.’ Jensen: “Cas. Just like a full football form tackle.”

Bewitched references in SPN:

2.05 - Dean: Well, it looks like he can't work his mojo just by twitching his nose, he's gotta use verbal commands.

2.20 - Dean says Barbara Eden was hotter than Elizabeth Montgomery - sigh - Dean.

7.05 - Dean thinks a husband has no idea his wife is a witch, and refers to him as Darrin. Dean also indicates he likes the first Darrin better. - (I guess I can't make a comment about how much TV Dean watched as a kid if I get all of his references and also haven't saved the world.)

14.03 - Jules refers to the witch as 'Brunhilde' - this is a minor character in bewitched but more so from mythology and likely referred to the cartoon witch from WB cartoons - the stereotypical witch that faced bugs bunny with the green skin and straw hair.

let me know if you have any to add. Stay Witchy ✌

[sleepingcrisis]

Sk8 The Infinity: Thoughts

I- like many- have finished Sk8 and have a lot of thoughts about the show. I was going to make this three parts but opted for just one. This is split into three sections though: 

Adam’s “Redemption”

Character Relationships

Overall thoughts

Adam’s “Redemption”: 

Okay let’s not get it twisted, Adam wasn’t really redeemed. At least I don’t think he was. When I initially pictured a redemption I pictured an ending where he got along with Cherry and Joe and the three were skating together again or something. That would be super badass for a shot- but it wouldn’t work and would have ruined any tension between the three in my opinion. So in the eyes of our main six Adam isn’t redeemed which is nice. If anyone wants to argue that he is then… sure? You can do that- I don’t really care though because it is quite clear that he isn’t redeemed in their eyes. 

This doesn’t mean I like what they did with Adam’s character though. First of all, he was never going to jail. They set that up to build suspense but it was never really going anywhere which I hated. Despite him not getting redeemed in the eyes of our main six, he still didn’t face any consequences for what he did. I understand that him going to jail would not have been him facing consequences for his actions at S, because they weren’t related, but he got off. In the eyes of the viewer him going to jail would have been consequences for everything he did at S even if that wasn’t why he would have been goin to jail it still was supposed to serve as consequences. Instead he faces no consequences for what he did. He was never going to jail either which is what really pissed me off. The writers of the show made it so that the threat of him going to jail was sorta a red herring. It was something that was under developed and that a lot of viewers really cared about, but if you went to the bathroom during the episode you might not have even known about this subplot at all. The least the show could have done was make this a genuine threat and not something that was just used to build suspense- and it wasn’t even done well. 

I get not wanting to send Adam to jail though, I really do. He is a central character who a lot of people really like (even I really like Adam as a villain- I think he makes a really effective villain and his character is explored decently well). Perhaps sending him to jail would have been an ending to his character that was too clear cut. The ending they did decide felt too good for him though. In my opinion he hadn’t earned it. While I’m not entirely sure if I wanted him to go to jail, I think that he should have faced more consequences for how he behaved. Again I think if anything the end of the show paved the way for him to have a larger character arc.

Character relationships: 

Oh what probably everyone is here for: the topic of queerbaiting. 

If you are reading this in hopes that I support the idea that this show was queerbaiting then you won’t find that here. I don’t think the show was queerbaiting in the slightest. I think that it is incredibly obvious that Cherry, Langa, Adam, and Tadashi are all queercoded as gay characters. Every other character is up for interpretation, yes Reki and Joe are included even if I personally headcanon them both as bi. 

The show presents some beautiful friendships and handles them in a way that I love. Reki’s breakdown and self doubt feels realistic and how he and Langa reconnect was handled well and I think the pacing was good too. Langa and Reki contrast one another really well and obviously the same applies to Joe and Cherry. I have said it before but a spin off show with Joe and Cherry as central characters would be *chef’s kiss*. 

Had these two pairings been explicitly flirting with one another then yeah we would have been queerbaited. Does that mean you can’t interpret romantic undertones from all of this? No it doesn’t mean that at all, I interpret both relationships as romantic- but they also make really well written friendships. 

Where the show falls flat on its face and where I do take issue with the queercoding is the ending. By the end of the show I think it is quite obvious that Tadashi/Adam is canon. Their relationship isn’t normal by any means but they are in a relationship. Do I think it is a healthy relationship? No. Like k*nks aside- Adam treated Tadashi like shit through the bulk of this show. Adam is the most heavily queercoded character in the show so it rubs me the wrong way that this relationship is the one they make the most explicit. It rubs me the wrong way that Cherry and Langa’s sexualities are made more clear after having interactions with Adam. It presents the narrative that gay people turn other people gay and by having Adam be a flamboyant gay character it pairs gay with the idea of being evil and promotes sterotypes. Someone made a really good video covering this and I can’t find it- If I do I will repost this with a link- or if someone else wants to comment it then I’ll repost and add it into post. Flashbacks aside I wish we had gotten some scenes where it was a little more obvious that Adam cared about Tadashi. Don’t get me wrong- I know he does- but Adam acted like an asshole towards tadashi for the majority of the show and then pulled the “all is forgiven” between the two right at the end. Healthy relationships aren’t needed in a show and I don’t think these two need to have one, but having it be the only/most explicit relationship in the show is upsetting. I would have loved to see a healthy queer relationship be made canon. 

Not having these other relationships be made canon is fine. I understand wanting representation, but it is just eh- 

I get both sides of this- the side that desperately want’s queer rep that they are willing to settle and thirst over the crumbs they get and then demand an explicit relationship when we aren’t handed one. I also understand the argument of the cultural differences and how I can only ever look at this through a western lense. Japan has a vastly different culture and their media reflects that even if obviously they do try and appeal to a wider audience. I am very conflicted on this and am totally fine with matchablossom and renga not being made canon even if I do understand the appeal. Again what rubs me the wrong way is the relationship they do decide to make pretty much explicit. Anyone who wants to argue me that Tadashi/Adam is a healthy queer rep can- but from what we have seen… it really isn’t.

Overall Thoughts:

I love sk8 the infinity and I hope they get another season. The difficulty it must be to tell a full story with fleshed out characters in around four hours of run time is something I can’t imagine. Every single character feels fairly well done and they are all loveable in their own way. I understand the appeal people have towards any character. In fact there isn’t a single character that I actively hate. At the end of the day Sk8 The Infinity is meant to be a light hearted anime about having fun skateboarding. The animation is amazing, the music is wonderful- in fact I don’t think it could have been better- the characters that fill this world are all incredibly lovable, the show is so much fun to watch. The creators did that, they gave us a beautiful and fun show. Ending the show with Adam going to jail would have pulled away from what the show was trying to accomplish. The show was trying to have fun and I sincerely hope they get a second season so we can see every single one of these loveable characters again. I hope I got my thoughts across in this show but I am definitely willing to clarify if anything is confusing.