#queer subtext still has a very important place in media

[vegasvictor]

queer subtext is where it's at forever and you'll never take that away from me

[brucestalia]

Hi! I hope you don’t mind me asking, but you're one of the only blogs I know that both likes Selina and doesn't ship batcat, so I was wondering if you had any comics/other media recommendations for her character that either doesn't have batcat (or at least doesn't focus on it)?

Thanks! ❤️

no worries at all! thank you for the ask <3

selina was one of the first dc characters i was introduced to! i was really young at the time and immediately felt a connection to her—to me, she was everything a girl could ever hope to be 😭 it was incredibly empowering, in a sense. she was confident, independent, and had this effortless charm that made her stand out from everyone else. i think that really stuck with me.

i was never an avid batcat shipper, but i never hated the ship either—i guess i just couldn’t get into it 💀 like, i���m not opposed to batcat content, but i’d rather see something else, something that really interests me. i feel like that’s just how everyone is with ships, right? 😭 sometimes, you just want to see a different dynamic, even if you appreciate the original.

then dc bombshells came along in 2015. it had such a great setting and featured so many of my favourite female characters. growing up as an only child in a religious household, i had a very sheltered upbringing and little to no understanding of queerness or same-sex relationships. mari and shiera really changed that for me. i started to understand that what kate kane (& numerous other characters, of course - especially the amazons) shared with renee and maggie was also love. it wasn’t just subtext or a side story—it was real, and it mattered.

and that’s when i started seeing kate and selina in a different light.

katelina became my first fanon/semi-canon ship! maybe it was just because i wanted a fresh pairing, or maybe there’s a deeper reason i still don’t fully understand. but something about them just clicked for me. the idea of these two powerful, confident women—both so different yet strangely complementary—felt like it had so much potential.

ultimately, i’m much more involved in brutalia/talia, but selina/katelina will always be something close to my heart. it’s one of those ships that just stuck with me, even if my main focus has shifted.

selina is one of bruce’s most constant love interests, and nothing will change that. it’s the direction dc has taken for decades. everyone is free to like what they like. if my take on batcat sounds a bit biased, it’s because i have a personal reason for it 😭 i’m not here to argue about what’s “right” or “canon”—it’s just my perspective.

bruce wayne ship wars are pointless. he’s a dynamic character. writers change, things change. what doesn’t change is that all of his partners occupy an important place in his life.

selina is important to him, whether they are together or not, as a friend and an ally. talia is important to him in the same ways, and she will always be the mother of his son. that’s something that deserves respect, no matter how people feel about the ship.

anyways, i’ll get to the point. i’m fairly new to being active in fandom spaces on the internet, so i just wanted to make sure nothing gets lost in translation 😭

catwoman 2002-2008 (ed brubaker)

Brubaker was offered to write Catwoman by editor Matt Idelson after Idelson asked him for his opinion on the series at the time, which Brubaker thought was "kind of insulting to women readers" after having read advance copies of the comic which featured Catwoman in "naked shower fights", mentioning that he preferred Catwoman in the 1960s and 1970s comics as well as in Batman: Year One, and suggested to Idelson to take the character back to her "East End roots" while incorporating the "classiness of the high-society thief".

In writing Catwoman, Brubaker considered the character's background and motivations of having been an orphaned child "raised in the system in the worst conditions" and "ended up on the streets", and thought of her compassion for "other people like her", "people who the system doesn't care about, the cops don't care about and who, really, Batman doesn't care about", establishing it as the foundation for the character's stories. In the book's first issue, Catwoman, having seen the police's disregard for the series of murders of prostitutes, declares, "I will speak for them. Because no one else will."

catwoman 2011-2016 (new 52) (judd winnick) - especially issues #35-46. the earlier issues do contain batcat, but it shifts focus to exploring selina as a leader and strategist.

catwoman: when in rome (2004-2005) (jeph loeb) - a noir-inspired story set in italy, following selina as she investigates her origins and connections to the falcone family. batman is absent, except in her thoughts/dreams.

selina's big score (2002) (darwyn cooke) - this is the prequel to cooke and brubaker’s catwoman relaunch. it takes place before catwoman vol 3 #1, after selina getting declared dead in the end of catwoman vol 2 #94. it is entirely about selina, catwoman scarcely shows up, only for a few panels, and in the form of a flashback.

That said the story itself if about Selina getting back on her feet and finding the funds to restart her life.

Cooke creates a vivid enough underground world to see where Selina learned her skills and has friends. That said the book is very classic noir with as many of the recycled clichés that comes with it. The thief brought back in, the person with an inside hook up, the friendly and tired fence just looking out for old friends, the suave hired gun, mob money, and of course the PI just looking to save the girl. The story focuses on building a team for the heist and then its execution. It is just a marvelous tale about the criminals that the DC superheroes seem to miss as they are out saving the planet and people trying to do what ever they can for a better life.

catwoman: lonely city (2021-2022) (cliff chiang) - a miniseries set in the future where an older selina returns to gotham after years in prison. batman is dead, and the story focuses entirely on selina’s journey.

Ten years ago, the massacre known as Fools’ Night claimed the lives of Batman, The Joker, Nightwing, and Commissioner Gordon…and sent Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, to prison. A decade later, Gotham has grown up—it’s put away costumed heroism and villainy as childish things. The new Gotham is cleaner, safer…and a lot less free, under the watchful eye of Mayor Harvey Dent and his Batcops. It’s into this new city that Selina Kyle returns, a changed woman…with her mind on that one last big score: the secrets hidden inside the Batcave! She doesn’t need the money—she just needs to know…who is “Orpheus?”

catwoman: guardian of gotham (1999) (doug moenech) - an elseworlds story where selina is gotham’s main vigilante, and protects the city from the psychotic batman.

batman/catwoman special (2022) (tom king) - while this is tied to king's batcat run, reading it is entirely avoidable. it shows readers the romance between bruce and selina as it changed over the years, offering a glance into her earliest days, to her entry into the criminal underworld.

catwoman (1989) (mindy newell) - this four-issue miniseries marks catwoman's first solo title, delving into her origin story and establishing her as a standalone character.

Catwoman Vol 1 is a four-issue mini-series published in 1989, written by Mindy Newell and illustrated by Joe Brozowski. It established a new origin for Catwoman, based upon the earlier work by Frank Miller in Batman: Year One. As such, it is a departure from the classic Catwoman and introduces a new version of the character for the Post-Crisis continuity. The series has been collected under the title Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper.

Elements from this series have been referenced in other runs, such as the introduction of Selina Kyle's sister in Joëlle Jones's Catwoman run.

catwoman: election night (2017) (meredith finch) - a one-shot issue where selina kyle becomes involved in the political scene of gotham city

It's mayoral election time in Gotham City, and while the city is up in arms, Catwoman couldn't care less! But when the candidates get personal, the Feline Fatale decides to get involved-much to the detriment of...well, everyone!

catwoman: soulstealer (2018) (sarah j maas) - a young adult graphic novel that reimagines selina kyle's story. it is the third novel in the dc icons series. the dc icons novels retell the stories of renowned dc heroes in their adolescence before they become a superhero.

catwoman (2018–present) (joëlle jones and others) - an ongoing series starring catwoman. it began in 2018, following the canceled wedding of catwoman and batman in batman vol 3 #50.

catwoman 80th anniversary 100-page super spectacular (2020) - an anthology celebrating catwoman's legacy. a must-read for fans of the character.

this is all i can think of off the top of my head! if i’ve missed something, or if you need anything else—recommendations, sources, whatever—just let me know! :)

[funnylovepuppis]

I should probably shut up about it because there is so many other people talking about it. But I can't stay silent about it. I can't stress enough how upset and uncomfortable I am with being here in buddie fandom right now.

As a bisexual myself, I agree with the importance of its representation in mainstream media. Especially when it comes to male characters, who are really low in static speaking. We can all agree on this, and hopefully, we can all see it. I'm really thrilled about Bi Buck's journey and about finding his happiness. He's not fixed, he just found out about his other sides he never knew they were existed before. As @m3r1m4r5u333 said in their post, bisexuality is not a personality, just a small piece in whatever color that is a part of many more pieces of soul. Buck, like many real-life people, is trying to figure out himself. I honestly don't think that self-journey will ever stop, not just on sexuality but on many other things. That's how living is, right? So yes, it's very exciting and kind of carefree for him, and I'm truly happy. He deserves it big time after all that he has been through. And I really think that Tommy is genuinely the right person for him at the moment.

But aside from me being bi, I'm also demisexual. Honestly it's more than that for me, because besides the need for emotional connection before sexual intimacy, I need some degrees of emotional connection before even getting into dating. So as you can see, I'm very much attached to Buck and Eddie relationship. I'm mostly finding myself a lot in Eddie's character. I do feel a lot of pressure on starting to date someone nowadays. And I'd probably be single for a long time because that's kinda how how people go to date. You meet someone you like and interested to explore the romantic dynamic and that someone is a completely stranger to you so it's kind of scary and stressful.. I'd rather be someone's friend and then lover..

Yes, best friends have a different kind of love than just two friends. That doesn't necessarily mean that it must have a romance subtext or under the surface, especially when it comes to two people of the same gender. And sure, all the things related to buddie are open to interpretations and any ways that people who see it differently are pretty legit.

We can argue about why things are the way they are. I can acknowledge that Eddie is not in the same emotional place as Buck, and it can be taking a long process for him, if at all, to realize his own feelings about himself and Buck. But at the same time, I can say that although it seems like Buck and Eddie communicate in a very healthy way, there's a sense of underground miscommunication that leaves both of them scared to make a move or talk about their deep feelings and observations on their own relationship. Because what they have is great, so why ruin it for a good change, right? And there is lots of evidence that saying buddie are partially soulmates. Having back from each other. Their reactions are when the other one is in a dangerous situation, such as the firetruck, the wall, the shooting, and the lighting strike. The will. The family moments of Buckley-Diaz. Going to each other's home as a safe place. The teasing from surrounding people about them. The jealousy. Their parallels to other couples on the show/

I guess I'm trying to say to the people who are feeling like some people are not very happy about Bucktommy because they are not appreciative of the new queer couple or the very fact that it's B-Buck canon. I understand the need for bi-representations and am happy to see that. It seems very worth the long wait for this. And yet, I want to say, give buddie stans time, including me. Because our feelings are legitimate and matter, too. It may come as rude or not excited about Bucktommy, but I think this is coming from being afraid and uncomfortable with how quickly many people from the fandom are shifting from Buddie to Bucktommy, even if they still believe in Buddie Endgame. Give us time to fall in love with this couple and connect with them. Give us time to warm up for them. Give us time because we have been attached to Buddie for 5 long years. We have been memorizing all of the episodes, plots, and quotes. Writing for 5 years, Buddie fics. Making beautiful gifsets and fan art.

Thank you for reading this if you have reached this far. 🩷

[bookshelfdreams]

Im sorry about this i need to rant. I thought things were getting better but Izzy stan Twitter is at it again with their whining, truth bending and self-victimising.

'Do you like OMFD but wish the queer disabled hero didnt die?' IZZY IS NOT THE HERO OF THIS SHOW!!!!! He is at best a reformed antagonist. What an insult to the other disabled characters, and what about the actual heroes of the show??

'We've been betrayed by straight man writing queer stories'. First of all, way to dismiss the other writers. Also, its not his fault you project your personal traumas and mental health on a fictional character on a show with death in the title.

'GB's ending is comphet (?????) because 'we only need eachother' and theyre breaking away from their queer community' ED HAS BEEN WANTING TO LEAVE PIRACY SINCE LAST SEASON!!! also, its progress that Stede was able to resist basic flattery. And David made it clear that they still have work to do. This one truly broke my brain.

Im just sick of all this. Izzy stans have been coddled for the past week, being told its ok to grieve, but theyve crossed multiple lines. I do wish some things had been more explicit in this finale, only because David overestimated the maturity and media literacy of some people.

Sorry for this but i needed to talk to people here. Its beyond annoyance at this point. Im angry and sick of petty crybabies actively working to poison what we've built.

Don't apologize, feel free to rant at me any time!

"The Blackbonnet ending is comphet" surely is A Take, let me add that to the It's Only Queer If It's Subtext Collection, also featuring such gems as

The Lupete marriage proposal/wedding was basically straight

Canon queer ships are boring and unimportant

Izzy has the only queer arc

Izzy is the only "convincingly" queer character

It's super interesting to see this develop. The massive victim/persecution complex of a certain subset of Izzy fans. The vitriol leveled against all other fans, and the show itself, because clearly, these people never liked ofmd in the first place. Never liked what it actually had to say and instead, invented subtext that was never there to look into instead. It's like watching the birth of a conspiracy theory under controlled conditions in a petry dish. You will see these people say with their whole chest the most unhinged bullshit imaginable and receive praise for it, but when you keep in mind that for months, they have discussed the show Izzy in their insular little echo chambers, most of their takes become a lot more understandable. There's robust internal logic, even though, due to the flawed premise, none of it makes any sense.

But it becomes understandable when we loop back around to the point that a lot of these people don't engage with the show on its own merit. They really treat it as if it were just another queerbaity (maybe not even that) mid-2010s thing, too afraid to do something different.

ofmd is not that! But when all you have is a hammer. And when you're surrounded by people who keep insisting that yes, obviously that problem is a nail. That one too. Nails are all that exist. yk.

But. And please know that I am holding your hands and speak as gently as I can when I say this.

But please don't get angry about this? If this whole drama genuinely upsets you, you might need to take a step back and remind yourself that it's just fandom. It's just some idiots somewhere enjoying the pirate show wrong. It's not that important. There's plenty of things that are worth your anger in the world right now. Everything is fucked. But this isn't one of them.

Like, for me, this is fun. I am a petty bitch, I love to gawk at bad takes, I love conspiracy theories, reading things like this tickles my brain in the best possible way. It's like reading through the Psiram wiki (which is also something I do for fun. Yes, I am aware there's something wrong with me). It's even better, because it's inconsequential. It doesn't have very real human misery attached to it.

Like, obviously i think it's fine to be opinionated about dumb bullshit on the internet, and while picking fights with people who don't agree with me isn't something I enjoy personally, some people do and there's nothing wrong with that either. As long as everyone involved is having fun.

But. You gotta keep your distance, you know? Don't get personally mad at people with bad opinions. Having wrong opinions about the pirate show isn't actually harmful. Fandom isn't activism.

[unholytrinityrpt]

I didn’t know where else to vent because I’ve been feeling incredibly isolated in my feelings about the RPC. What I’ve noticed is how there is an influx of creators fetishizing MLM to a degree that goes beyond the importance of representation. I don’t think it would be such a glaring issue if the RPC treated all queer people and relationships the same because the same energy is not paid to WLW or nonbinary relationships.

There is irrefutable evidence, regardless of how much people will post about respecting female muses and will still continue to leave women of colour and trans women out of the conversations. We do absolutely need more queer representation. We need more trans muses, non binary muses, bisexual, pansexual, homosexual, lesbian and aroace muses. However, the RPC in certain fandoms ( marvel, DC or those many ABC dramas for instance ) still prioritize and centre MLM ships that have no canonical text or subtext and I’m not actually sure people understand what healthy dynamics between men look like.

Which further perpetuates the societal divide and toxicity of the kind of masculinity that is dangerous. Men in fandoms can’t hug without it being gay, men can’t support one another or express their emotions and appreciate without it being some buried longing. This is the cycle of violence in the real world within the patriarchy and there are real consequences in the real world. Reasons why violence towards the LGBTQ+ continues.

I think at its base level, there are a lot of female aligning muns ( and this is not subject to just those who identify because as a trans man, I had to do so much work ) who have not done the internal work to review their own biases and internalized misogyny and are placing white cis men on a pedestal and erasing everyone else. I say this as a trans person of colour, that it’s disheartening to see this constant motion and dismissal towards anyone who voices their opinion or upset. I am by no means suggesting that people don’t ship what they want because that would be counter productive. But what’s happening is pure fetish without insight or understanding towards the real life struggles of gay men and other LGBTQ+ people in the world.

People are hiding behind the shield of wokeness while actively writing with zionist face claims, fetishizing MLM and putting mediocre cis white men above everyone and everything else. It’s very exhausting, it feels like I couldn’t possibly say anything else towards this without being called homophobic as a queer trans person myself. I think too much has been placed on smaller issues that we’ve forgotten how much queer stories and the stories or people of colour deserve a spot in the RPC that is safe and for the right reasons. Not to be fetishized, not to be a scapegoat for people’s internalized misogyny or complacency to the patriarchy. I’m very sorry for broaching this subject and taking up your time but I appreciate the space.

hi! just wanted to gently chime in. i think you bring up some really important points — especially about how often woc, trans women, and broader queer identities are excluded from conversations and representation. that gap is real, and it's disheartening when people say they care about diversity but don’t reflect it in their character choices or plots.

that said, i also think it’s worth recognizing that people often gravitate toward mlm ships (even the non-canon ones) because they’re reading queerness into media that doesn’t give us a lot to work with in the first place. sometimes it’s the only way folks feel seen — and while that doesn’t mean we should ignore imbalance, it helps to frame it as a broader fandom trend rather than blaming individuals. it’s not always that people don’t understand healthy male dynamics; sometimes it’s that they’re exploring something they didn’t get to see growing up.

i really do agree with the heart of your message though: we absolutely need more nuanced, intentional representation. not just queer-coded men, but also trans muses, nb muses, women of color, and queer women of all kinds. it’s possible to critique the trends and recognize where people are coming from. both things can be true. sending love — bubbles

[vanquishedvaliant]

If the gayness can be denied it can just as easily be called queerbaiting. Text (and subtext) is less impactful and meaningful than action, even in the right direction. I think if gay people say it's not good enough isn't that an indication that it isn't good enough or enough for them to feel represented?

No.

There’s been a concept in social media activism that the primary perceived value of queer content in media is how loudly it demonstrates inclusion of a particular identity, and a lot of popular media gets judged solely on this aspect, like it’s checking off a tickbox for binary approval. 

A kiss has been chosen by many of these circles to be the most concrete binary proof you can have for a character’s queer sexuality, but putting aside the fact that many identities don’t benefit from that at all; (theoretically a bi person would have to kiss 2 different genders to ‘prove’ themselves this way, why would a trans person kissing anyone prove anything, asexual or aromantic obviously inapplicable, etc) w 

It’s simply incorrect that text is less impactful than “action”, given that media is Text. The Text is what comprises its “action” and what it’s statement of intent is. A kiss is not action, a kiss is Text. A gay character that does kiss or meets whatever satisfaction the audience deems for “representation” is still a creation of Text as much as a gay character that never kisses anyone. There’s no separation there. This wholesale disregard of theme and meaning of text and subtext in fiction and instead only approving media-friendly headline screenshots is one of the greatest tragedies of modern popular culture.

Treating the ‘undeniable’ existence of a queer character as “action” and “representation’ and not examining the actual context of their inclusion and what the story says about their identity, their lives, and their experiences is how you get Disney’s First Gay Character popping up in the news twice a year- it’s become more important for the headlines to State that you have one than for them to actually be important or meaningfully written, or for the story to have anything to say about the character or their lives. At this point of popular social media understanding, Queerbaiting simply does not mean what people have begun to use it to describe. Queerbaiting was intended to refers to deliberate marketing attempts to accrue viewership by over-promising the presence or importance of queer content to Bait in queer viewers hoping to be included. The key part of Queerbaiting is the intentional misdirection here, and because of that there is a very important distinction between queer subtext that is created to build intentional undertones and that which is included specifically to tease and entice viewers with the promise of more.

Many anime shows that people accuse of queerbaiting are doing exactly the opposite; in the case of Flip Flappers the overwhelming Text of the story is largely and centrally focused on the burgeoning sexuality of a young girl as she grows up and realizes that what her heart desires may conflict with expectations set by herself, her family, and society at large. That remains true through to the end of the story where she makes a breakthrough in her understanding of herself and her place in life and her sexuality is a major part of that.

A kiss is not at all required for this, but because there isn’t one people somehow become convinced that the story is “baiting” them desptie the actual meat of the story itself being fundamentally about being queer. Now, there’s definitely room for subjective differences in appreciation here, especially taking more Yuri works as a whole (particular Slice of Life), in which many of them do place their queer undertones as a less central tenet that aren’t deeply explored. I’m not saying that you as an individual can’t feel that you’re not satisfied without a more substantial story; but it doesn’t mean these stories have Failed in their role of Representation; they still have value and purpose whether they meet that shallow criteria or not. And it doesn’t mean that they aren’t Real and these characters aren’t quite obviously gay to anyone paying even the slightest attention.

What I’m actually hearing most of the time is that people consider the capital r Representation buzzword to tick off a box of “HAS LESBIAN” to be more important to them than actually reading a Story about gay people that has something meaningful to say; Add further to this deeper disqualifying factors restricting death, tragedy, “unhealthy” relationships, etc. And you quickly begin to cut down the number of stories you accept to only those which portray a superficial, consumer-friendly veneer of queerness.

This is in itself a sanitization of Queer identity that doesn’t celebrate or represent anyone; it’s selling an idea of Queerness that is clean, palatable, easily accessed.

That’s simply not enough to satisfy me, and it shouldn’t be for you either. 

[freakadr0id]

OFMD and My Experience With Queerbait and Fandoms

I don’t think I can emphasize just how cathartic Our Flag Means Death is for me and my relationship with queer media and fandom space in general. It has made me grow optimistic for the state of queer television, and reminded me why fandom spaces are so important for the queer community online.

BTW this is a VERY long (seriously it’s too fucking long), kind of trauma dumpy post. If that’s not your jam, just skip over this. I don’t often do this sort of word vomity personal post, but OFMD has been stuck in my brain for a solid week and I have a lot of feelings when it comes to this show. There will be TL;DR at the end, but if you end up reading it, I have a feeling quite a few people will relate to my experience. I’ve bolded the elements that I think are most important in this mess of a thought dump.

Just like so many queer people, I have been burned again and again by shows, books and movies who have hinted at the promise of representation yet continuously end up disappointed. The presence of fanfiction and fandoms were a solace for me for many years, as I explored the subtext and queer themes that many shows have to offer, even if the representation wasn’t really there. However, one show ruined all this for me, and I began to resent most television shows and their fandoms, excluding animation (I’ll get to that in a bit).

Let me take you back in time to late 2018. I’ve just discovered this show called The Magicians (you might have heard about it) and I have fallen hard into the fandom. More so than I’ve ever done before. Not only am I consuming all I can surrounding the show and the books, but it’s also the most active I’ve ever been in a fandom (it was the first fandom Discord I ever joined). I talked to people in the fandom, felt like I was truly a part of the community, and even started setting up a rewatch of the show when it went on hiatus between seasons 4 and 5.

Then The Magicians season 4 came out, and it all came crashing down. They had killed their bisexual main character in the worst way possible, and every bit of queer rep the show had built up was all but destroyed. So many people struggled after that finale, heartbroken and upset at how they handled Quentin’s death. My mental health was in a terrible state at the time, so seeing Quentin, a character I so strongly related to, die the way he did was devastating to me. The fandom was shattered, and this little community I deeply loved became a source of pain to me. I never saw season 5 (I only read synopses) or watched the show ever again. Not even fanfiction could help me through this and I left the fandom entirely. I abandoned the rewatch project I helped set up, and I stopped talking to the people I met through it. Although I think it was best for my mental health at the time, this is something I still regret.

The Magicians was the final straw when it came to queerbait. It left more than a bad taste in my mouth - I lost interest in live action shows almost entirely, since most of my experience with queerbait came from that medium. There have only been two live action shows I’ve really watched since The Magicians: Hannibal and Good Omens, two shows that I knew going in were accepted by the queer community for their representation. The rest have been animated shows, which have been pushing the boundaries of queer rep in television over the last decade.

Fandoms were still a place I dreaded, since so many of them are full of antis, ship discourse, and bad takes (the animation community has some fucking AWFUL takes on shows and the industry). There were a few I continued to follow, but they were for things that have long since ended. Ongoing fandoms are strictly off limits.

I’ve learned an important lesson from The Magicians: most queer ships are never going to happen. I see so many fandoms hype up certain ships, swearing it’s going to be endgame (TJLC style, although not quite to that degree), yet I know most of them will end up only upset and disappointed. Why bother with an ongoing fandom, if I knew that any potential ship in the show wasn’t going to happen.

When I saw OFMD trending on Tumblr two weeks ago and I saw all the excitement surrounding it, I decided to give it a chance, and I loved it. To be fair, the first three episodes were rough for me (I get secondhand embarrassment really easily), but by episode eight, I saw what this show was doing. This was the show I had been waiting for – that we all were waiting for. I still had my doubts when it came to Stede/Ed, even with everything David and the cast were saying, but I finally had hope.

A kiss between Ed and Stede was something I simultaneously knew would happen, but never thought would exist. When we got the kiss in episode 9, I was overwhelmed with excitement, surprise, and most importantly, relief. For once we weren’t being lied to and the subtext became text. This isn’t some final episode conclusion that ensures straight people and homophobes continue watching the show throughout, but a first season promise that more is to come. The feelings we had upon seeing the kiss is something we should have been experiencing this whole time. It has been a long-fought battle to get to this point, and hoo boy does it feel good.

You would think that the excellent queer rep that this show provides would make me more resentful of the shows that failed in doing so, but I’m not. If anything, I’m more at peace with how those shows made me feel. For a long time, I hated what those shows did, since those shows were our chance to see finally ourselves on mainstream tv (let’s face it, Hannibal is a niche show). Time and time again we were denied that chance. Now, we have this show. We finally have a queer show that appeals to a wide range of people, straights included. I can accept my disappointment in shows like The Magicians now that there is better queer content to enjoy. It is just another broken steppingstone on the path it has taken to get here.

I’ve never been in a fandom this early on, and it has been a joy to see it grow. People are celebrating the show and the community surrounding it has been incredibly supportive of each other. I joined a OFMD Discord, the first one since The Magicians, and the people I have talked to on there have been absolutely wonderful. Of course, there has been a bit of discourse in the fandom (I think the kiss was excellent and the awkwardness of it was entirely in line with Ed and Stede’s character arc), but overall, I have seen nothing but amazing, talented people sharing their love for this show in their art and writing. I have people I can enjoy the show with, even if I don’t irl, and I am reminded why I enjoyed fandom spaces to begin with.

Has my faith in television and fandoms been totally restored? No, and it likely never will. We will get queerbaited by other shows in the future, and fandoms will always be a somewhat problematic culture. However, I believe that this show will set an example for queer media, setting a standard for what it can look like in the future and how creator honesty and fan expectations can improve in fandom spaces.

TL;DR: The Magicians ruined everything I loved about live action television and fandoms as a whole. I hated the constant queerbait and toxic fan culture that surrounded many of these shows and removed myself from them as a result. OFMD and its excellent queer rep (and lack of queerbait) has improved my outlook on live action television and fandom cultures, and helped me accept the pain I felt from past shows that failed in executing, or straight up lied about their queer rep.

[dgcatanisiri]

So... something kinda hit me abruptly and pushed me to feeling about ready to snap, so... Have a word vomit. Kinda feels like a greatest hits compilation of  my “another angry queer rant” tag, but I need to get it out, so...

I know I’ve been over plenty about how I don’t feel represented even when I have something with gay representation. How I’d give dozens of Dorians and Iron Bulls to get even one run of Inquisition that properly has my male Inquisitor romance Cullen. How when I look at Mass Effect - this franchise that I love - I can only see how much it hates me for being a gay man who dares to seek content for me. How godawful it is that Gil’s story, a story that is explicitly a story centered on a gay man and the difficulties he faces BECAUSE of being gay, was written by a straight person who ABSOLUTELY does not GET. IT. And how fandom as an entity sucks, because so often it feels like the attitude of the people in it comes across as telling me that my desire to be represented in my media somehow comes in second to celebrating the advances solely for women, that my needs as a queer MAN (the emphasis usually theirs) are less important, because I can still see myself AS A MAN in other characters throughout media.

But... That doesn’t change the fact that this is a very real, very tangible THING for me to grapple with. And sometimes it feels like no one ever, EVER talks about this.

I mean, my go-to example is that after Inquisition dropped, you could not say A WORD in criticism of Dorian without people jumping down your throat, chomping at the bit to call you a homophobe for it. No matter what reason - but ESPECIALLY if you thought he was “too stereotypical” - you got hit with that label. Even if you were gay yourself, it was just your “internalized homophobia” that made you dislike him, or even being biased against the people who genuinely do lean in to the stereotypes, don’t they deserve representation too?!

Well, yeah. It’s not like I was saying they don’t. But that it’s a stereotype means it’s often still in media, still often THERE. It’s not always good representation, but it’s something. Meanwhile for those of us who AREN’T? It just meant further exclusion from the narratives. A continuation of our invisibility.

And sure, one queer character cannot represent every queer person, one individual who embodies one letter of the alphabet soup cannot be everything to everyone under that individual label. But, again, it still means that I don’t get to see myself.

If media representation is a life preserver, then I’m getting pulled out to sea while the lifeguards are busy with people who are closer to them than I am. Which, you can call it triage, cast the widest net to hope to get the most people, but when you’re one of those who are not even able to grab on to the net and use it to pull yourself closer, it’s not helping. And, because they’re focused on those who have grabbed on to the net, your struggle continues to be ignored.

Worse, sometimes they aren’t factoring you in the net they’re throwing (yes, I’m aware my metaphor is getting increasingly strained, just work with me here) because they think you’re not in the trouble they think others are - if you can “pass” as cishet, if you can exist without actively fearing for your safety, if you are the kind of person who can walk down the street and not expect to be harassed because you “present” gay, then you’re not as in need as those people who can’t, who are going to be threatened for existing while visibly queer.

But the truth is that you’re still suffering. I’m not gonna get in to the whole oppression Olympics nature of it all, but there is an element that those of us who “pass” as being “straight-acting” (and, for the record, I think these terms are bogus and bullshit, but I’m using them for the sake of simplicity in getting my message across, because I’m stream of consciousnessing this post instead of going to bed so you’re getting babble and word vomit so that this isn’t playing on a loop as I try and sleep) suffer that... I’m not going to say that it makes it worse, but it does have this level of SOMETHING that is a unique pain that you aren’t going to find from the people who are visibly and noticeably queer at a glance - it’s not just isolation, because this is something that you end up not talking about because no one around you realizes that you are queer, but also this voice in the back of your mind that starts questioning “are you REALLY queer? Are you queer ENOUGH?”

And that’s why it hurts that little bit more, is that much more a twist of the knife, when I see these people who push the “joke” of like “why did they even HAVE male Shepard?” or “the only way to play is as Kassandra.” Because it does reinforce this idea - that there is this attitude of this thing, this character that I was seeing as representation doesn’t matter. So that I take strength in that character, well, that’s just me latching on to REPRESENTATION AS A MAN, and we’re not here to protect your fragile masculine ego.

When all I’m looking for is a queer man like I am.

And sometimes, I don’t even feel like the other queer men I can look to get it. Like, there was that time about a year ago that I looked up issues of queer men in video games, and the three videos I found all got an “...and NOPE!” reaction from me - the first argued in math about how “queer people are a small portion of the population, we can’t realistically expect to be represented equally,” even though we’re talking about FICTION, which is, by definition, NOT reality, the second was clearly a cishet who compared not being represented as a queer person to not being represented as a Swedish person, and then a third who first had a thumbnail on a video of “good and bad representation” and Kaidan was the example of bad (so a negative mark against this video to begin with, but I was desperate), only to lead with Dorian as a good example, which... *vague motion above and at the “dorian critical” tag* I staunchly disagree with this stance.

Like... I have to struggle to think of who my role models in being a queer man are. It’s not just who fits my story, but who do I look up to, who inspires me. And, admittedly, the luster for any personal hero seems to inevitable wear off at this point, I’m in my early thirties, and most of the media I consume will have characters who are my age or younger PERIOD, so my queer heroes would have to be people I’d consider either peers or even someone who I am older than...

But then, that’s kinda the thing about being queer period - we lost a generation to AIDS, and for those who followed that generation, we’ve had to live in this world where our heroes don’t exist like us, while trying to pave the way for those who come after us, and who can’t conceive of what it is like to age - as in “go from adulthood to middle age to elder,” not just the matter of growing up from childhood to adulthood - and so even as they’re the one who we want to give all of this to... It still means we suffer because no one is there to offer US that hand.

And yet, try to explain this to media creators, and you get ignored or even shut down. Like, I about a year ago, I directly replied to tweet from Patrick Weekes, explaining how Inquisition failed me, how all bi LIs actually HELP me feel more represented as a queer person than the mix of sexualities that BioWare on the whole has said that they intend to do (re: the difference of LIs in DA2 and Dragon Age Inquisition). It got no response, not even a like to indicate that it’d been read by them. I could form in my head the response I’d have inevitably gotten from David Gaider when he still had an active Tumblr of what would amount to, nicest, “we cannot please everyone, enough people were moved by Dorian’s story to make it worthwhile, sorry.” Given some of my cynicism, I can’t help but believe that it would also have come with a “sorry you feel that way.” Particularly considering some of the comments he’s made about Cullen and Kaidan as LIs, both of whom being characters I connect to more than others in their respective games...

And like... Gaider is a gay man. Weekes is nonbinary. But they are from that generation who view being able to exist openly as queer as a revolutionary statement, which... It’s a statement I want to make, sure, but it’s not a revolutionary one to me - “existence” is the bare minimum. To me, focusing on existence as a queer person is to say that the queer character must justify existing as queer in order to be a part of the narrative. But what is revolutionary to me is to give the queer person a story in the narrative that has NOTHING to do with their queerness.

Like... Fantasy world here, Inquisition drops with Cullen and Cassandra as same-sex exclusive LIs, while every other aspect of their stories are the same. Women can’t romance Cullen, Men can’t romance Cassandra. Other than that, we have Cullen with his addiction/redemption arc and Cassandra not just struggling with her faith but even getting the chance to be Divine. Yes, fandom would FLIP. THE FUCK. OUT. But here’s what it says - the things that these characters go through in the course of the game are not defined by their sexuality. Hell, with these characters specifically, you get characters with MASSIVE relevance to queer stories that AREN’T exclusive to being queer - addiction is a real issue in queer communities, given how many of our safe spaces are bars or clubs, places where alcohol (and thus alcohol abuse) is easily obtained, and, by extension, drugs as well. Meanwhile, there are SCORES of queer people who struggle with the question of faith in the wake of their queerness manifesting.

THAT is revolutionary. To take these stories that straight people get all the time, that certainly have meaning as queer stories for the queer audience... And yet, when they go to these (hypothetically) queer characters, it has that subtext without making the story ABOUT their queerness, while still making it clear that, in this version of things, they are queer - players couldn’t pretend that it’s only in some parallel universe that they are queer, they would only be attracted to the same sex PC. THAT is revolutionary.

Or, y’know, take it back beyond BioWare for a little bit here - all the characters I feel the most connection to emotionally in TV shows are straight. All these men who are my role models only ever get shown being involved with women. At most, they’ll get queerbaited as MAYBE being queer, if you just keep watching! Inevitably, of course, they are not queer by the end of the show - the closest to date is the debacle that is Supernatural.

Yeah, there’s representation for ya.

And then there are those who end up looking at what I see as thoroughly inadequate and... They’re happy. They praise it. They look at this thing that hurts me, that excludes me, that can, when I’m in the bad headspaces, even make me question myself... And they have found something they like with it.

Which, for the record, good for them, genuinely and sincerely, I really am glad that someone is getting something out of this, but... Well, see above: life preserver, isolation, “sorry you feel that way.” Everyone else is getting what they needed, but what about me? When does my representation get to appear? Why am I always being left, scrounging for the scraps of the scraps? Why does other peoples’ representation always seem to get shoved to the front of the line, leaving me languishing in the back.

That’s the real thing about all of those lines of “if you don’t like it, go make your own!” At this point, even if I did manage to get something in my to-write folder cleaned up and ready to go, in reality... How am I supposed to feel like anyone other than me WOULD proceed to read it? That the audience would exist? Because... no one seems to care about this audience. Hell, how would I get anyone to publish it if it is only going to appeal to me?

I feel on the margins of the margins, where no one really cares. Hell, even here in my own blog, I feel afraid of backlash - I’ve had the assholes show up in response to like little brief comments that are off-the-cuff rambles, not worded in a way that makes them a full, detailed accounting, and either take them as evidence that I, personally, represent all that is wrong with fandom at large, or that I am a target for their trolling. Because saying that “I find the jokes about male Shepard not mattering to be diminishing of me as a queer person, can we please stop this?” is somehow not just lesbophobic, but VIOLENTLY lesbophobic. Or that saying that I don’t care that bad things happen to a fictional species is somehow advocating for violence against actual women. Or even explicitly calling out BioWare for lovingly lingering the camera on Miranda’s ass is slutshaming her. And of course, there are the assholes who responded to me saying on the BioWare Twitter announcement post for the Legendary Edition that, if it didn’t have a full trilogy male Shepard/Kaidan romance, I wasn’t buying it, and proceeded to a) call me entitled for it (like, read a dictionary, the very fact that I have to call for this content that doesn’t exist in the game proper is the OPPOSITE of entitlement...), b) tell me that I “shouldn’t deny [myself] a great story just because it doesn’t have gay people in it” and c) just generally be homophobic. Even in rolling with it on the basis of “the trolls are gonna show up period if you make it clear that you care about something, especially if you are trying to get representation for some group that is in the minority... It gets exhausting. It can be harmful. It makes it clear that you’re not welcome, even when you’re supposedly united by the fact that you and these people supposedly love the same piece of media.

I mean, among those examples, I’ve given the statements that inspired those responses no tags other than my own organizational tags, but SOMEHOW they find me anyway, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I got accused of like being another White Gay™ with this post, that I simply want to center the conversation wholly on myself at the expense of all other intersections of queerness and other identities or something for saying all of this, even though this is, and it says so from the start, a vent post, which, by definition, is centered on myself because it’s about me and my experiences and emotions. *sigh*

Anyway...

And, y’know, when BioWare actively refuses to even ACKNOWLEDGE that the absence of a full trilogy M/M romance option is a bad thing, it just ends up saying that the trolls are actually the audience they’re willing to court. That Supernatural ending with a brothers only focus that doesn’t even allow Cas to be mentioned other than offhandedly while suppressing ANY kind of emotional fallout to his admission of love says that they don’t care about the queer people who at the very least the actor was trying to be respectful and representative of. That every piece of media that says that to have a queer person in it, their presence must be explained and justified is saying that there needs to be a REASON for queerness, a reason that is not “because people are queer, and queer people come in as many stripes as cishet people, and so media should reflect that spectrum just as much.”

Even when the numbers of queer characters in media goes up, it doesn’t really move the needle. And that’s not even getting to the difficulties when you are any mix-and-match combo under the queer umbrella, or any other identity that intersects to marginalize someone in our society. It just...

Y’know, it doesn’t feel like “it gets better.” Rather it just feels like being stuck in position, just with a changing backdrop. Sure, things look different by the end of the day, but that doesn’t change that you’re not getting anywhere.

[isaacthedruid]

Steven Universe’s Representation and Music: an informal essay

As the first animated Cartoon Network show created entirely by a woman, Steven Universe’s run lasted for five seasons, a movie and a sequel-epilogue series. The show was far from perfect and its fandom wasn’t the best either but there is something so special about a show that followed lesbian space rocks and a young boy saving the world.

More specifically Steven Universe is about a young boy named Steven, who is half-Gem, half-human who protects the town of Beach City from evil. Gems are a kind of alien who take on the form of pastel-coloured women, to better assimilate with the rest of the world.

Rebecca Sugar, the creator, explains her colourful characters in a behind-the-scenes promo:

“I always dreamed of making a show that would have this mix of fantasy and reality. So, I wanted to make these fantasy characters that enjoy being with Steven as much, if not more than they enjoy being fantasy characters. The characters aren’t perfect and that’s what makes them so great.”

Steven’s family are known as the Crystal Gems, a group of rebels who fought against their government thousands of years ago and now live on earth. Steven’s mom, Rose Quartz was at the forefront of the fight, she did extremely terrible things and when she gave up her gem—-so Steven could be born—-she was left unable to form a body ever again. Steven, with only his dad and three alien women, must attempt to fix her messes and deal with the repercussions of his mother’s actions.

One of the main mechanics within the series is known as fusion, in which two or more Gems become a single being who is stronger and more powerful. The fused form takes on the physical, mental and emotional aspects of those who are part of the bond. As mentioned and discussed many times within this blog, fusions are a physical embodiment of different kinds of relationships. And for a show starring a primarily female cast, they do not shy away from using this mechanic to tell queer stories.

So explicitly that in 2018, the show had the first-ever lesbian wedding in a cartoon. Of course, representation wasn’t always as accepted in Steven Universe. Just two years before the big wedding, higher-ups at Cartoon Network told Rebecca Sugar, they not happy with the multiple queer relationships, so much so that they were ready to threaten cancellation.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she expressed:

“If this is going to cost me my show that’s fine because this is a huge injustice and I need to be able to represent myself and my team through this show and anything less would be unfair to my audience.”

Being LGBT herself, identifying as bisexual and non-binary, representation is important to her. For many queer people, especially grown-ups, they hope to see themselves represented in kids’ media today as they never had growing up. They want nothing more for children’s shows to say that being “different” or not fitting in with our heteronormative society is actually normal.

Within Steven Universe, you can find woman-loving-woman relationships, non-binary and intersex characters, woman-loving-non-binary relationships, asexual coded characters and basically every other letter in the acronym.

Rebecca Sugar even acted as the exciting force for LGBT inclusion within Adventure Time, originally working as a writer and storyboard artist before leaving to create her own show. She pushed for making the ex-romantic queer couple to be canonically part of the story and for it to not just coded into the dialogue.

A few years later, she returned to the show, multiple times, to compose over 20 songs that would air over the series 10-year-long run such as, “I’m Just Your Problem” which had lesbian subtext that would be confirmed later.

Some other iconic songs including “Fry Song“, “Remember You“, “Good Little Girl“, “Everything Stays” and even the finale song, “Time Adventure“.

Much like the show as a whole, there is something so special about the music she writes. In total, there were over 160 songs written for the franchise, some being short little tunes, no longer than a minute while others were full-blown musical numbers. No matter, all of them have their place within the show. Often when the character can’t express lines through speech, music is utilized to provide a more raw and poignant portrayal of their emotions.

Why Steven Universe is so widely loved is due to the music, as the overall story is not even close to perfect. Yet, everyone can agree on one thing, the music is unbelievably good. What is interesting is the different styles of melodies and backtracking used in the various songs, even more impressive is that every character has their own instrumental motif.

Steven’s motif is the ukelele as he is often seen playing the instrument himself, performing short little melodies and even writing the in-show version of the theme song. Additionally, Steven’s music uses a large amount of Chiptune synth, electronic music which is created using a programmable sound generator. Both instruments have a very childlike feeling to them, Chiptune especially as it is normally used in video game music like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the main musical inspirations for the show. As Steven is the lead, most of the music has Chiptune somewhere in the score and fun fact, the first song in the show, sung by Steven, “Cookie Cat” was actually written on an old Gameboy.

Amethyst is very loud and fun, her motif is electric drums which is extremely reflective of her character. As she can be angry from convincing herself that she is not good enough to happy and giggling from pranking Steven, her instrument can be used in so many ways as she is not a simple character. No matter what, for the few songs Amethyst has on her own (or in the score), her drums provide such an interesting emotional response to the situation.

Garnet is a fusion, so her motif is actually the combination of two instruments. Ruby is a drumbeat as she is a fiery and loud character, she is chaotic while Sapphire is her opposite. Sapphire is calm and collected, she has ice-related powers and is represented by Synth music. The characters together have a perfect unity, expressed by Garnet’s synth bass sounds, she is the equilibrium of two very contrasting characters. The music associated with Garnet, uses primarily the synth bass but Ruby and Sapphire’s individual instruments can be heard throughout her music. All three instruments are also heavily representative as Garnet’s main dancing style is Hip Hop which clashing with others’ softer dancing styles.

Despite, not being alive during the show, Rose Quartz still has her own musical motif as she plays a large part in Steven’s growth throughout the series. As well as being in many flashbacks, she is represented with strings, more specifically, the violin. Rose’s story is rather sad which quite is visible within her associated music, yet, she was also an extremely powerful character as she led the fight against the Homeworld government. Her strength can be heard with strong uplifts and swells in the music. She is never seen playing an instrument unlike the rest of the main characters but one person who plays hers is Pearl, a character Rose was possibly in love with.

For the complex and beautiful character, Pearl, her motif is classical and swing piano. She is visually represented as a ballerina for a large majority of the series, dressed in a leotard, a small skirt and ballet shoes. Apart from Garnet, she is one of the calmest characters in the show. She is a perfectionist and is knowledgeable on many topics. She has a dark past and her fair share of trauma, all of this is wrapped up in her music. From her traumatic past with Rose Quartz, the violin had been heard throughout her music, yet, when she finally dealt with everything, the violin was lost. Swapped out for a new instrument, a bass guitar which she learned how to play at the end of the series. Pearl is a character who has been through a lot and her music reflects it. As she grew, her music changed with her, becoming her own instead of something built off of Rose’s.

My personal favourite song is “It’s Over Isn’t It?” which is this heartwrenching and emotionally painful ballad sung by a broken woman. Pearl was in love with Steven’s mom. Yet, the feelings were not mutual or at least ended being reciprocated as Rose left her for Greg, Steven’s dad. It hurts because Rose didn’t just leave her, Rose Quartz also passed away. As the song goes:

That they didn’t really matter until you I was fine when you came And we fought like it was all some silly game Over her, who she’d choose After all those years, I never thought I’d lose … You won and she chose you and she loved you and she’s gone It’s over, isn’t it? Why can’t I move on? … Who am I now in this world without her? Petty and dull with the nerve to doubt her What does it matter? It’s already done Now I’ve got to be there for her son

Without Rose, Pearl has lost her place in the world as all she ever knew was her. Yet, now she is left to help raise a half-human baby and go on with her life. It makes it more difficult as this baby is the product of Rose and the man that she left Pearl for.

Pearl doesn’t want to hate Greg, she is angry at him but she doesn’t have hatred towards him. They may not be the best of pals at the start of the series but in the song called “Both of You“ has Steven, finally, begging for Greg and Pearl to just talk to each other.

Why don’t you talk to each other? Why don’t you talk to each other? Just give it a try Why don’t you talk about what happened? … You might not believe it but you got a lot in common, you really do You both love me and I love both of you … I know you both need it Someone who knows what you’re going through

An interesting thing about this song is that Steven is this to them, the person with Rose’s gem is singing to the two people who fought over Rose. It makes me wonder if this could be Rose speaking through Steven to her two loved ones. Whether it is or not, doesn’t really matter to the overall story but it is a fun idea to look at.

Overall, these songs are a literal representation of dealing with ones’ emotions in a healthy way, something that Steven Universe actively tries to teach their younger viewers about.

To say Steven Universe is a good show only for its music would be a false statement, it’s one of the strongest aspects but without the story or the characters, the music would fall flat and not have any of its passion.

[yikes-strikes-again]

my thoughts on “Ho Yay“

i want to talk about something that’s been bothering me about TvTropes. i love this site; it is an incredibly expansive resource for understanding common tropes in western media and developing a framework for critical analysis. what i’m going to explain requires some background if you’re not already familiar with TvTropes. to try and be brief, there are two main types of pages on the site (three if you count indexes, but they aren’t relevant right now):

trope pages. these are pages that explain a common literary device or concept and then provide examples of its use in media. basically the backbone of the site.

media pages. these pages introduce the reader to a piece of media and list various tropes that it uses along with explanations of their appearances. media pages also contain links to YMMV sub-pages at the top of the page (important): these pages are extensions of a work’s YMMV (”Your Mileage May Vary”) sub-page, which every work has as a place for subjective interpretations written by tropers, site users with the ability to edit and add to pages. when a trope on the YMMV page of a work has too many examples, it often becomes its own YMMV sub-page. the specific sub-pages a work has depend on its popularity as well as its content.

i wanted to talk about a particular kind of YMMV trope that commonly appears as its own sub-page on media pages: Ho Yay. Ho Yay is a category that refers to aspects of a work that fans interpret as gay subtext. it’s generally agreed upon that for something to qualify as Ho Yay, the relationship can’t be canonically romantic. in many cases, the gay subtext was not intended by the creators.

it’s not hard to understand why this trope exists. when positive queer representation was so taboo as to be unheard of, the only gay subtext was fan-interpreted subtext. people only had the same-gender platonic relationships they found in television and books to see themselves in. and that’s what Ho Yay was: queer interpretations of the same-gender friendships in media that gave them a new, personal significance.

on TvTropes, Ho Yay appears as a YMMV page on, basically, any media page of a popular work that features close same-gender friendships. which is... a lot of them, to say the least. there’s got to be, collectively, hundreds of thousands of words solely about gay subtext on this site. and that’s a really good thing, I think, especially for old works with decades of gay fan interpretations, like Star Trek. for many people, it’s a very important aspect of their enjoyment of the work, and it deserves documentation.

however, after years of lurking on TvTropes, and reading Ho Yay pages in particular, something began to irk at me. something I’d seen glimpses of in the wording of certain entries. and, slowly, it began to bother me more and more, until i finally decided it was worth addressing.

you see, there’s something about the concept of having an entire page dedicated to speculation on potential gay subtext in a work, to the exclusion of all other relationship subtext. understand that Ho Yay pages are not places to discuss headcanons regarding a character’s gender or sexuality, or the nature of any relationships they might have with other characters, regardless of gender. it exists to point out romantic subtext only, and i mean only, if it’s gay.

this... bothers me somewhat.

i’d be sooooo much more comfortable if there was also a type of YMMV page that existed for people to talk about all non-canon romantic subtext, or just romantic subtext in general, without characters’ genders being a factor. because, honestly, it feels incredibly othering to have a page dedicated to fan speculation on the potential gayness of something at the exclusion of all other types of relationships. as if being gay is exotic and inherently worthy of note. that’s such an icky sentiment to me, and i can’t ever shake it when i read Ho Yay pages now. and i’m not even getting into all the examples of Ho Yay that are about real people, that’s disgusting for an entirely different set of reasons

i want to emphasize that i don’t want to get rid of Ho Yay; as stated above, i think it’s incredibly important to document the literal decades of fan speculation on the queerness of canonically straight characters. but to have gay subtext be the only kind treated with this amount of attention seriously rubs me the wrong way. if our goal is the equal treatment of all types of relationships, then it should start with us not granting this exceptional quality to gayness and just make a page for all relationship subtext!

you know, maybe what Ho Yay has become is just a symptom of a much larger problem: fandom treating gay relationships as inherently different and special. if that’s the case, i’d like everyone reading to take a moment to examine their biases.

my point to all of this is that, unlike in Ho Yay’s heyday, it’s rare, but not unheard of to see canon queer relationships of all kinds. even though there’s still a long way to go in that department, i think it's time to let go of the need to use a YMMV trope whose historical necessity has been, in many places, rendered obsolete.* the needs of fandom are changing. we don’t just want representation, we want our existence to be treated as mundane, and that means unexceptional. 

Society Marches On.

~~~

*in some places, homophobia is much more pervasive and queer representation is even farther than where it should be than in my country. I’m from the U.S., so if my sweeping statements don’t apply to your culture, please feel free to disregard them.

[aroaessidhe]

Hello fellow book fanartists! I had some thoughts the other day, along the lines of: 

I wish there was more fanart for xyz diverse/queer books!

There must be more artists that consistently do fanart for books that don’t have much/any fanart, but I can only think of a handful….

I should organise a zine specifically for fanart of diverse books that don’t have any fanart!

I have never even been in a zine, let alone organised one…..maybe not….

Anyway, I don’t think a zine is the way to start but…..something? a hashtag? a monthly challenge thing? A twitter/tumblr account to reblog stuff?  Even just finding more fanartists I don’t know about would be cool tbh! (this applies more to twitter/instagram, rather than tumblr where it’s somewhat easier to check tags)  If designers, people who make edits, bloggers, fic writers, wanted to get in on this somehow i’d be into that too!!

Whatever it is, I’d want it to focus on books where the main character/s are canonically queer, trans, poc, not just major side characters or subtext. Also books by ownvoices/marginalised authors - I do notice that the most popular m/m books that have a lot of fanart are ones written by white women, rather than ownvoices m/m books (especially those by poc), for example . (I’m not hating on people who do fanart for those books either - just pointing it out!)

Actually, I drafted this post ages ago and have just been too busy to do anything with it, but I decided to make a twitter (currently @diversebookart) for retweeting art on there - so that exists, at the very least! Keen for other things to happen if other people are keen to, though! (and if you post your book fanart on twitter please @ it to me so I can rt it!)

I’ve also definitely noticed in the last couple years that tumblr isn’t the best place for book fanart unless it’s got a pretty big fandom - which is generally not the books I’m talking about here. And on twitter and stuff, it’s rarely tagged and gets lost after a few days. I definitely understand having more motivation to do art of more popular things, especially for those of us who are freelancing (and getting more attention on social media can be really important for), but maybe a hashtag could help that stuff not get like, seen by the author + a handful of people and then nothing after a week. idk. Basically I want to do something that a) creates more fanart for books that don’t have it and b) boosts artists work when we make it! No like, obligation to do certain art of certain things

I’m posting this here because I don’t have any other blog for this sort of thing, but I’ll definitely talk about it on twitter (@layahimalaya and @aroaessidhe are my art and fandom accounts, but also @diversebookart since I’ve made that now) 

Anyway!!! This is just some thoughts, but if anyone else has some thoughts, let me know???? I could make a group chat on twitter, or maybe a discord server, if people are into that. I tagged a bunch of people off the top of my head (& also looking through art i’ve rebblogged) who either have done book fanart of some books with barely any fanart, or some people who do fanart of more popular but still diverse books. Some people who only do like 5% book fanart, too. Feel free to ignore this if you want and also tell me if I missed anyone obvious!!!

EDIT: I also made a discord, which is here, and a tumblr: @diversebookfanart

@nellasbookplanet @ace-artemis-fanartist @may12324 @yabookportraits @lesyablackbird @phantomrin @ghostbeeish @caitabellart @monolime@vinnie-cha @linovadraws @gibbarts @aymmidumps @emieclat @vulpyx @tonftyhw @itsiparwing @benevolenterrancy @rowatree @taratjah @oblivionsdream  @moonlit-sketches  @alexisc-art @hyperhs @drisrt @whitefire17draws

[norahastuff]

At this point , I am really scared , I need some reassurance that Destiel will happen , so many posts saying that it is unlikely , please help!! :(

Ok first of all, I get it. These days I’m relatively chill about most aspects of the show, just taking things as they come and trying to enjoy the story they’re telling - it’s still a pretty good one - but I have those moments too. For example my knee jerk reaction to the “Cas has failed his brothers” tweet  (which again means nothing - people that run the CW social media accounts know next to nothing about what’s going on in the show) was genuinely “I can’t believe Dean made Cas a mixtape of the music his parents fell in love over, in a scene that was shot so romantically, and people are still out here calling them brothers.”

And honestly that’s still where I’m stuck with all of this. I haven’t been in fandom long. I never even really knew what shipping was until last year. I was watching, enjoying and analysing the show (albeit in my own head), long before I found tumblr, and had thought it was blindingly obvious that there were romantic elements to Dean and Cas’ relationship. I think that’s something a lot of us forget when we’re talking about “Canon Destiel” and what will happen etc. We discount everything that has already happened between them in favour of some proof down the road. Which I get, trust me, but I really don’t think we should forget everything that led us to see Dean and Cas this way to begin with.

Ok so what helps me mostly be chill about all this?

1) The wealth of canon material that already exists between them (mixtapes, grief arcs, human weakness, colette parallels, sweeping reunions set to rousing musical cues, Amara supposedly having control over Dean but when in a room with her and Cas all Dean can do is call out Cas’ name over and over again in a broken voice - I honestly could go on all day.)

2) I don’t believe any of this was being done in bad faith.

I’m going to focus on 3 of the current writers, 2 of whom are openly queer and one of whom is the showrunner:

Berens

His first episode 9x06 was the one where Misha was instructed to play Cas as a “jilted lover” by Carver, the showrunner, and that episode was just romantic af. There’s so much staring through wistfully at each other it’s ridiculous. If you watch Berens episodes, it’s pretty clear that he considers Dean and Cas’ relationship vital, he often makes a point to place them in the same tier of importance as Sam and Dean’s relationship, and on top of that it seems to me he’s always just contextualised their relationship as having romantic elements. Whether it’s Colette parallels or mixtapes, Bobo’s always presented them a certain way.

Yockey

If you even glance at Yockey’s resume you’ll be able to see he’s a genius playwright whose work tends to focus on gay relationship dramas. Of course that in no way means that any relationship between two men that he writes has to be romantic, but what it does mean is that he understands when it is. It does mean that when he writes an episode like 12x10 (an ep about angels falling in love with humans), where Dean and Cas are bickering like a married couple and Ishim dubs the woman he was in love with his human weakness, whilst in the same breath calling Dean Cas’ human weakness, he’s doing it intentionally. That episode was a lot of things, well written, smart, beautifully crafted - but one thing it was not was subtle. Claiming Yockey didn’t mean it that way seems pretty absurd to me, and honestly, trying to claim Yockey - a gay man who writes nuanced LGBT+ stories - meant it as bait or whatever, is even worse. I mean that episode even had an exploration of how angels do not have genders like humans do by showing Cas in a female vessel and having him reiterate that angels are their own thing, regardless of whether they are in a male or female vessel at any given time.

That’s not even mentioning 13x05 and how ridiculously romantic that ep was. I mean I can’t - that final scene was ridiculous.

Andrew Dabb

And then we come to the showrunner himself. Dabb joined the show the same season that Cas did. He’s always placed a great deal of importance on Dean and Cas’ relationship, and always made sure to differentiate it from Sam and Cas. Even as early as 5x16, he made sure to emphasise how it was Dean who felt for Cas when he lost his faith in God (note: I don’t think there was any romantic intent there at the time but he was showing the depth and importance of their bond even back then.) 8x08 with the “talk to me” and the heart breaking conversation that followed that was cut short when Sam walked in. Dabb cares.

Dabb has also clearly been intrigued with the potentially romantic aspects of their relationship. I don’t know what his intentions have ever been with it, but at the very least, he has often seemed like he wanted to explore it. In 9x22 where Metatron delivers the “he’s in love with..,humanity” line, Dabb reportedly wrote that Metatron created Cas’ heaven as having tons of photos of naked Dean (which allegedly was axed by a higher up). His era led to Cas being given a vital, central role in the show and story like he’d never had before and also the escalation of the Dean/Cas romantic story like never before. In Dabb’s eps all of heaven and hell assume they’re banging with a demon even saying it to Cas’ face. Not to mention 12x23. Just all of it. Seriously.

I have no idea what TPTB intentions are, or ever have been, with Destiel as an eventual textual development, and yes I definitely believe that the right thing to do is for them to address it in some way. But I will say it bothers me a little when people throw it into the same category as a couple of other shows that shall not be named for the very important reason that the show has never invalidated any of the romantic elements of this relationship they’ve crafted between Dean and Cas, at least not post s8 and certainly not since Dabb took over around mid s11.

Kripke and Gamble definitely had a different approach that was pretty much just homoerotic subtext with the occasional (extremely on the nose) gay joke thrown in, but that’s not something Carver and Dabb did. However explicit they did/will get with it, every development between Dean and Cas has been anchored by serious emotional importance and nothing about their bond has ever been dismissed or downplayed as unimportant.

If there’s one thing I’m reasonably confident about is that that isn’t going to change. They’re not going to invalidate or “no homo” any of this by throwing Dean or Cas a last minute love interest. There’s a lot simmering under the surface between Dean and Cas right now, has been for a while now, and it’s definitely something they’re going to address if they’re going to give any kind of sensical end to their story.

Regardless of how explicit it winds up being - and again I want to reiterate, I do understand people’s pain and frustration if it winds up not being especially overt - this is a story that the people who created it cared about. The writers have treated in seriously and none of them ever mocked or dismissed any of the fans and are not evil villains cackling over a cauldron because they’ve tricked so many people with this story. Also, because I’ve been seeing some baffling commentary about intent - some from former Destiel shippers even - even if there isn’t a clear cut romantic endgame that makes it obvious to 100% of the GA, none of that invalidates all the romantic storytelling that has been, and continues to be, a part of the narrative for a long time now. It exists. To quote Misha “you are not crazy.” And don’t let anyone make you believe that you are.

TLDR: I have no idea what’s coming next and I’m sorry but I can’t give you any assurance that things are going to be wrapped up the way you or I would want them to be, but I can give you my long rambling thoughts about why I feel the way I do. Why it can still bug me that we can watch a story that if it was between a man and a woman would be blindingly clear to everyone but if it’s m/m (or even w/w) has constant denials levelled against it, but how at the same time I’m not constantly filled with rage or sadness about why it has played out the way it has.

So yeah, that’s how I’m going into the final season. There’s a lot more I wanted to say but looking at this wall of text I’m realising I’ve already gone on for far too long so I’ll stop now.

[sol1056]

Can you explain why LGBT representation is so important and why Voltron's negative portrayal of LGBT characters/rep should be scorned as harshly as it has been? I'm trying to prove a point to a friend and they don't get why representation has to be as important as we're making it.

Oh, this is a huge topic, and one I’m not sure I could do justice to, all by myself. Given that, this time I’ll let people speak for themselves. Anyone else reading (and I know a whole lot of you are out there) who’ve valued representation – regardless as to whether you relate to the character as a lived experience – feel free to add your thoughts, or links to any other articles, podcasts, or videos you’re recommend.

Fabricio Leal Cogo, Why Queer Representation Matters

I remember growing up here in Brazil and not seeing anyone like me portrayed on TV—or at least, not anyone with a similarly complex inner life. The few times I saw gays on TV, they were always a punchline in a comedy—a source of laughter. Many people, I’m sure, are probably thinking: It’s just a joke, right?

But representation matters.

It’s impossible to overstate the power of being able to identify with a public figure, particularly when that figure is actually seen in the fullest sense. As Michael Morgan, a former professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a researcher on media effects, told the Huffington Post earlier this year, “When you don’t see people like yourself, the message is: You’re invisible. The message is: You don’t count. And the message is: ‘There’s something wrong with me.’” He continued: “Over and over and over, week after week, month after month, year after year, it sends a very clear message, not only to members of those groups, but to members of other groups, as well.”

Uma Dodd, Queerbaiting And The Issue Of LGBT Representation In The Media:

Of the 125 movies released by major US studios in 2016, the media monitoring organisation GLAAD found that only 23 (18.4%) contained characters who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer – an increase of less than 1% from the previous year. … It’s insulting, and often quite disheartening, to be told that you’re only worth the three lines of dialogue and five minutes of screen time that the one LGBT character in a film might have, just because of your sexuality or gender.

Queerbaiting relies solely on subtext and the subsequent interpretation of it by fans, and as a result, creates the perfect paradox: writers are able to attract an LGBT audience with vague promises of representation, implied by the text and often encouraged by the writer, but will then never actually confirm or explicitly show said representation, reducing the amount of effort that has to be put in on their part.

You may say that I’m blowing this issue out of proportion, but that too, is a part of the problem. Because queerbaiting is based on purely subtextual hints, any evidence of it, no matter how blatant it might seem to the viewer/reader, is often insubstantial and difficult to quantify. This allows writers and cast members to dismiss the anger of LGBT fans as simple overreaction and, as a result, makes any legitimate pleas for better representation easier to ignore.

Another by-product that has resulted out of increasing calls for better LGBT representation is implied representation. This is where writers will claim that a character is LGBT but never explicitly show this within the TV show, film, or novel.  This is a method which has been employed by many creators of famous franchises, and it allows them to insert that token bit of representation which makes them look good, without ever actually providing said representation explicitly … Not only does this result in LGBT characters, once again, being shoved into the background – and often killed off for shock value – it raises the question: is this kind of representation good enough?

…Whilst any representation of non-heteronormative characters is a good start, this way of representing us can’t be allowed to become the norm – we deserve to be explicitly shown in the media as much as anyone else does. We need better representation and we need to be shown that not all LGBT characters have to remain in the closet, because what kind of a message is that sending to those young people out there who are currently questioning their sexuality?

B. Whiteside, 6 Reasons It’s Important to Have LGBT Characters on Children’s TV Shows:

A recent study by the Williams Institute at UCLA revealed that nearly 6 million adults and children have an LGBT parent. There are more than 125,000 same-sex couple households with nearly 220,000 children under the age 18. These children go to school and are active members of their communities. Their identities and home life deserve to be portrayed and represented just as much as anyone else’s.

Being a child can be tough, especially when one can’t identify with anyone around them. There are children and young adults alike who identify as LGBT or have parents who do so. Having content that mirrors their lives can, in fact, save their own. It isn’t always easy for children to articulate what’s wrong or what they need. So it can be a tremendous help to see their favorite character in their same predicament live out their life and truth.

Aristeaus Sizer, We Need To Talk About LGBT Representation, Apparently:

…since Cinderella, there have been 11 Disney princesses. All of which have been heterosexual, and the majority of them married by the end of their film. There is no shortage of straight princesses in this world, so why would it be such a crime for one of them to be LGBTQ? If anyone is forcing any agenda down anybody’s throats, Mary, it is you and your heteronormative agenda.

As a heterosexual, and I don’t mean to patronise here it’s simply the truth, you cannot understand in full capacity how important representation is. Seeing yourself on screen in a genuine, non-caricature form is hugely validating. When I was a kid I thought being gay was like doing drugs, it was a fun choice you made when you wanted to spice things up, and that all came from the films I had seen and how sordid LGBTQ people were portrayed as being. Then, later on into my teenage years, I thought I’d never be able to show public displays of affection without violent repercussion. Again, this was because of the media I had consumed telling me this. Films and media may not dictate our personalities, but they tell us how much of it we should hide, and the implicit message when you have an entire franchise of heterosexuals is that anything other should be kept underground, out of sight.

…we’ve been everywhere for so long you’ve just never noticed. Primarily because every movie and every advert and every t.v show and every animated cartoon is packed to the brim with straight people. LGBTQ people deserve representation because there’s far more of us than you think. … To you, it’s just a gay Disney princess where there could have been another straight one, but to someone that princess is the validation they needed that they aren’t some abomination or sinful mistake. They’re valid, they’re wonderful, and they have every right to love and be loved.

Danielle Cox, The Importance of LGBT Representation in Media:

[In 2016, GLAAD’s annual] shows the highest percentage of LGBT characters on our televisions … [but] when more than twenty-five of those characters are killed off in the same year, we know there is still a lot of work to be done. In fact, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis released a statement saying, “When the most repeated ending for a queer woman is violent death, producers must do better to question the reason for a character’s demise and what they are really communicating to the audience.” When this ending is repeated in show after show and character after character, we can’t help but think the message they are sending is about the worth of our LGBT characters or rather lack thereof. 

James Dawson, The importance of LGBT visibility in children’s books:

I was unaware gay people even existed and, when puberty hit, found myself more than a little lost. I so dearly wish there had been just one book with a character who was a bit like me – just a normal teenage guy who happened to be gay. I would have especially loved one whose sexuality did not define him.

I just know that had there been a diverse range of people like me in books when I was growing up, I wouldn’t have felt abnormal for all those years, which I see now, overwhelmingly, I am not. In 2014, it’s my hope that all young LGBT people can see themselves in fiction and recognise there is a place for them in the world.

Palmer Haasch, “Yuri!!! On Ice” and the importance of positive LGBTQ representation:

Despite my resigned certainty that I was about to be drawn in by the potential of a queer relationship only to be disappointed for the umpteenth time, Yuri!!! On Ice managed to exceed all of my expectations. In the end, the show delivered a thoughtful portrayal of two men developing a deep and trusting romantic relationship that provides LGBTQ viewers with representation of queer individuals being happy together above all else, which is something that we desperately need.

For me, it was the first piece of entertainment media I had seen that didn’t present queer individuals as “other,” but allowed them to simply freely love and exist. While watching, I didn’t have to worry about whether Yuuri or Victor would be outed in an unsafe environment or if Yuuri was going to be unfairly judged on the ice because of his sexuality like so many real life figure skaters have feared in the past. Rather, I fretted over when they were finally going to kiss (because really, it was a long time coming) and if I was ever going to get to see the wedding that was hinted at by their matching gold rings.

Although it is true that the discrimination-free world of Yuri!!! On Ice isn’t realistic (yet), it can help reassure queer individuals like me that they can experience love in the same way as anyone else. At the same time, it provides a glimpse of a future where being queer doesn’t mean being “other”. And that notion is something that I will always work towards and protect.

Additional reading:

Why Visibility Matters

Make Them Gay: Why Queer Representation Matters

Why LGBT Representation Is Important In Media

We Need More Than Visibility

Why It’s Important To Make More Diverse LGBT Films

Queer Representation in the Media

Why Television Needs More LGBT Characters

Importance of LGBT Representation

[elizabethrobertajones]

(part 1) this is random but something im curious about is do you think the next few years will see a radical shift in more lead lgbt couples in shows? i feel like when supernatural started it was all about subtext/queerbating between characters we would never see canon (maybe), the last few years have seen an update in more side lgbt characters/couples and while not a lot, more main lgbt characters then we had before. I don't know if tumblr/twitter fandom translates to general audience...

Yeah, I mean, the only way is up. I feel lucky that I managed to encounter a fair amount of queer content in my formative years, whether targeted programming on TV, or taking the route of not really differentiating the perceived cultural value of independent media like webcomics and webnovels etc from the mass media as I was young enough to naturally grow up on the internet as the internet itself was growing up and web 2.0 was pretty much taking off alongside my use of the internet. And that I had liberal parents who didn’t regulate our internet, and lived in a community where culturally I didn’t really fear being discovered casually accessing all this like in particularly this terrifying seeming evangelical christian community in America.

Which really makes me feel like A: everyone should feel that comfortable in themselves via the media as I did as a mass accessible thing or B: that the world at large should be soaked in as much representation and more that I encountered as a curious teen because at the very least it did me no harm and at best helped handhold me through an awful lot. 

And then brings us to the problem that the world isn’t actually like that and for a lot of people their media is restricted one way or another, from everything such as the era of social media weirdly making us much LESS broadly travelled on the internet as I was back in the day (SO many bookmarks - I had like 100 that I would check either daily or on their weekly update schedule, with enough habit that I had pretty much memorised it all without using an RSS feed or just following everyone’s twitter and waiting for update announcements, never mind the vast pit of things which I occasionally checked to see if their sporadic but very worth it updates had occurred somewhere in the last month/year) to the vastly overwhelming amount of media accessible to us. It seems almost to flood the market and creates this panic about watching the worthiest shows and campaigning for them and raising awareness and the FOMO and how things slip by and zomg you have to watch this that and the other, when even just making this list on Netflix now contains more hours of TV than a human lifetime and also one liable to disappear from the service at some point or another without warning. 

And then on top of that you have the absolute cultural monoliths that if you’re not going to have a cohesive culture - which now includes the entire population of the world because of our connectivity on the internet and mass-joining of services - based around smaller shows and stuff, then at the very least everyone is going to watch anything under the main Disney umbrella, other superhero flicks, animated things, and all the really big studio franchises and remakes, as well as a few TV monoliths which manage to get enough people talking to make it seem like “everyone” (again - these days it seems like that’s presumed to be the entire western world plus everywhere else these things air) are watching, like Game of Thrones or whatever… THESE properties are the inescapable ones and on that basis they’re the things we have to lean on the most for representation and then again barely get any, when it comes to gender and sexuality, due to them shooting for such worldwide markets that they can’t imply gay people exist to censors in places such as China. And it exposes the cultural awfulness inherent just in getting a white female character in the lead role of some things, or the absolute garbage fire lurking underneath that if you dare have a black stormtrooper or make one of your female ghostbusters black when you’re already ruining the childhoods of so many how dare… 

In those respects, having side characters who aren’t even major well-known superheroes or jedis or ghostbusters or whatever also be gay (because even well-known lesbian Kate McKinnon didn’t manage to get her ghostbuster to be canonically gay even if we All Knew) would be absolutely groundbreaking, even if it was, like, a role that could be snipped out for the Chinese market or something. And that’s probably exactly what would happen, and cue ensuing riot from whichever fandom, along with everyone rightly pointing out that even for us who got to watch it it was still a tiny side character… I mean Disney is still at the stage of what they did with Beauty and the Beast’s ~canonical gay character~ 

So yeah… that’s thrown back to TV and smaller movies to lead the way and because the generations showing most likely the real global percentages but actually just the young western world stats on queerness in any form (like… 25% instead of 1% or whatever and that’s STILL probably too low) are still teens to young adults. The previous gayest generation above them are still just arriving in power and settling in, and the excellent changes we already have from the generation before that is what we are seeing now... But given THEIR cultural context, even their best can still seem to younger eyes, moderate and not generally placing queer characters in lead roles except in niche or indie or otherwise “acceptable” places to take those risks. I think change is always coming and culturally each generation being more open and accepting that the last is really making changes and so on, hopefully things WILL change rapidly and what was the common state of affairs in the sort of indie media I consumed as a teen will be the mainstream soon because a lot of those creators 10 years later are kicking off… 

All that said, TV in the mainstream is still controlled by Mark Pedowitz types exercising their power over the Bobos who have their Wayward Sisters pitches with the clearly labelled main character for the main teen demographic being queer. The culture is very much that we’re now pretty open and can happily have queer characters, but the main characters are still largely held separate. A good example is Riverdale, which is on the CW, a newer show with writers such as Britta Lundin, who is young, queer, and wrote a novel blatantly based on being a Destiel shipper and fan interacting with the cast and crew in fandom spaces, and whose first solo episode of Riverdale featured a looooot of the gay stuff (yay). 

But while she’s a story editor and writer for the show and can use it as a platform for writing stories for its audience using a whole range of canonically queer characters, the show still keeps all 4 of its mains at a strict remove from this. Cheryl can come out as a lesbian in the second season after a lil ho yay in the first but no clearly marked storyline about her identity, but even though Betty and Veronica kissed in the first episode it was blatant fan service (for Cheryl in-story, lol) and mostly just set the tone that they are the sort of seemingly straight girls kissing for attention while having strong romantic or physical attraction to guys. In the second season the kiss comes up again in joking that Jughead and Archie are the only ones of the main 4 who haven’t kissed, Archie gets one planted on him by a dude as a “judas kiss” moment of betrayal in season 3 and he and Jug are teased that they were expected to get together because they were close but in the same sort of homophobic undercurrent tones as early Destiel snarking from side characters, seemingly less about their relationship and more to unsettle them with implications… I mean it was a complicated moment but in the long run it didn’t seem entirely pleasant to me, especially given the overall emotional state they were in and later plot etc etc. (My mum is 1000% invested in Riverdale now as a former Archie Comics reader as a kid so this is now my life too as I was in the room when my brother callously exposed her to it, hi :P) 

Anyway that’s just one case study but aside from SPN it’s probably the most mainstream teen demographic thing I watch… Other examples would be things like B99 which had Rosa come out as bi and that’s awesome, and made us all cry a lot, but Jake, the clear main character even in a very strong and well-treated ensemble, has a great deal of bi subtext, there’s no way given Andy Samberg’s apparent habit of ad-libbing MORE progressive jokes that he’d ever be intentionally harming people if that’s how his brain works (you know, like other people quick-fire offensive stuff from their mouth working faster than brain sense of humour :P). But at the same time for all Jake’s quipping about crushes and such and the fact the show clearly knows how to be sensitive to bisexuality with Stephanie Beatriz being a strong advocate, just because Jake’s the main character and adorably married to Amy. In NO WAY can that be threatened because they’re SO GOOD, so there’s STILL uncertainty that this will pay off in the same special episode “I love my wife but I am bi” kinda way that seems obvious that could just be said. We all carry on without it affecting anything because obviously Jake’s found his soulmate so we don’t mess with that but they should know it’s important to clarify it… Even with B99′s track record, I’m nervous solely because Jake’s the main character and main characters tend not to get self-exploratory arcs about latent queerness and ESPECIALLY not if they’re happily married. If ANY show was going to do it right and trailblaze in this exact era it would be them, but… gyah :P 

Anyway I guess the conclusion right now is that the more mainstream you are the more uncertain it feels, but we are right at that cliff edge, especially with shows putting in SOME of the work. If B99 doesn’t get us there (or the Good Place where they’ll happily confirm Eleanor is bi in interviews but I believe she hasn’t said it outright on the show despite clearly showing attraction to female characters, again, the denials we know so well in SPN fandom reflect a wider audience view of dismissing this stuff as jokes and not reflective of character feeling and identification without a Special Episode dedicated to confirming it >.>) then we’re very clearly on the cusp of SOME mainstream or massively well-known show doing it at least once in a meaningful way that has an Ellen-style cultural impact on TV writing. 

Let’s make it a goal for 2019 or 2020, and hope that a NEW show with a canonically queer main from the start is pitched and becomes a mainstream hit in the next 5… Still got a ways to go before Disney level mainstream but again there IS work going pushing the envelope, especially if we get a movie of a franchise such as idk Further Legends of Korra, or Steven Universe or something else that’s massively pushed the envelope with sexuality or gender for their main character on the small screen in the experimental petri dish they’ve had there for children’s TV. Something that would force Disney to blink about a lesbian princess or Star Wars to let Finn and Poe kiss or Marvel to let Steve and Bucky hold hands or something in order to remain relevant.

Once the Big Cultural Monoliths get in on it, I expect culture as a whole to first of all react quickly on the small screen, but honestly I’ve been waiting for them to snap pretty much my whole life since adolescence and they’re taking such wee tiny baby steps, and some factors are enormous geopolitical awfulness, that the story as a whole is unpredictable and we can only really hope that things don’t slow down. 

(Where this affects SPN is just impossible to say right now, given its almost unique position in this mess due to longevity vs fandom vs almost entirely new generation of writers’ room) 

[that-curly-haired-lesbian]

The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo + Taylor Swift: a master post - Part 2/6

Hi guys, welcome to part 2 of my masterpost regarding parallels between Taylor Swift and Evelyn Hugo, the fictional actress from the book The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by author Taylor Jenkins Reid!

Before proceeding please be aware that there will be 

**MAJOR SPOILERS**

for the book ahead and please also read my disclaimer!

It’s very important that you read these in order so if you haven’t yet go ahead and check out the previous part right here, thank you and enjoy!

Monique goes home for the weekend consumed by the question “who the hell was Evelyn Hugo in love with?” This goes to the point that she finds herself no longer dwelling on her own relationship problems, but instead focuses on Evelyn’s love life for the whole weekend. (pg. 37)

This of course is similar to how Taylor’s fans and media instead of relating songs to their own love lives and experiences or writing about the quality of the music are obsessed with finding out who in her life she wrote the songs about. (x)

Essentially Taylor’s stories substitute or overpower fans’ own love lives and her love life overshadows whatever could be written about her in a professional sense…Apparently??

Similarly instead of wanting to ask Evelyn something regarding her remarkable career (or her childhood, or what have you) Monique finds herself immediately drawn to (both as a journalist and a consumer, she’s sure to point out, just like how both the fans and the media are drawn to this aspect of Taylor’s public persona) asking about the men in Evelyn’s life, which is frankly, a very sexist angle to take.

When it comes to Taylor fans and media seem especially interested in (or unable to let go of) Taylor’s “relationship” with Harry Styles and likewise Monique’s best guess for who the love of Evelyn’s life could be is the appropriately named Hollywood producer Harry Cameron aka beard/husband #5. A man who we later find out (pg. 72-73) is not only very flamboyantly gay, but also Evelyn’s best friend and closest confidant, the friend who she trusts to tell everything without fearing it might get out.

At her second wedding Evelyn and Harry have an interesting conversation, Evelyn asks Harry why he’s never tried to flirt with her (like most men she encounters in the industry has after all.) He asks Evelyn if she ever wanted anything to happen between them (since she’s the one asking him about this) she says no, but Harry catches onto the fact that Evelyn wanted him to want something to happen and she offers:

  “’And what if I did? Is that so wrong? I’m an actress, Harry. Don’t you forget   that.’   Harry laughed, ’you have actress written all over your face. I remember it     every single day.’ ” (pg. 72)

In response to why nothing has ever happened between the two Harry vaguely implies that he’s gay and Evelyn immediately gets it, but says nothing about it until years later when Harry is the first person she comes out to after realizing her own queerness. After which the two agree to always tell each other everything.

Harry’s vague coming out at the wedding is however not what interests me about that scene, instead it is the use of the word “actress” of course in Evelyn’s case this is literal, she is in fact an actress, but it’s Harry’s response that causes me to reach…

On the surface his comment seems to be him admitting that despite his preference for men he can see that Evelyn is an attractive woman (like actresses generally are), but if we are to put this in a different light let’s consider that Taylor often either uses the word “actress” in her songs:

   She's not a saint and she's not what you think She's an actress

                                                   //

                I’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams

or implies that she’s playing a role a few examples being All of Blank Space, and I Did Something Bad and parts of Don’t Blame Me.

I’ve gone on record in my analysis of the song Better Than Revenge as saying that the acting theme may be a reference to bearding and if we are also to look at the fact that Harry comes out to Evelyn in this scene it reads to me as if the underlying subtext is someone who beards (like Taylor) asking a gay male friend why they have never bearded together despite this friend’s knowledge that this Someone (Taylor) beards a lot (or is an “actress”) the friend agrees that he knows she is indeed a prolific bearder and that anyone with eyes can see she’s gay (the fact that she is gay and beards, or “is an actress” if you will, is “written on her face”.)

This might seem like an extreme reach even for this context, but given the fact that Evelyn and Harry actually end up bearding together later in the book and Evelyn does mention shortly before this conversation with Harry takes place that she sometimes feels like her public persona is someone she’s pretending to be (aka a role she’s playing, just like Taylor implies she feels about her public persona in the songs mentioned above.)  I just found the conversation and Taylor’s bearding-connection to the word “actress” interesting in this context…

--

On Monday Evelyn tells Monique:

   “People have so closely followed the most intricate details of the fake story of    my life. But it’s not…I don’t…I want them to know the real story. The real     me.’” (pg. 38)

Similar to how Taylor told us:

“We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us.” 

“When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory” (x)

Monique responds:

  “’Alright, show me the real you then and I’ll make sure the world understands.’”

Like I said before people like Evelyn and Taylor are famous enough that this flies, they call the shots. Just like we are agreeing that Taylor is coming out in her own time, Monique agrees to listen to whatever Evelyn has decided she has to say. Meanwhile we’ll keep speculating and so does Monique.

At one point she even questions if Evelyn is capable of telling the truth after all those years of hiding it? (pg. 38)

I’ve personally had more than one anon questioning why Taylor keeps “lying” about her personal life and whether she’ll be able to ever stop and just come out? (For my thoughts on all that, please read this.)

--

As Monique agrees to Evelyn’s terms she’s put in a bit of a bind, given that Evelyn contacted her through Vivant when the story was truly never intended for the magazine but for Monique this basically means that one of their writers is about to steal a story from one of the most famous magazines in the world and she could of course be fired for this. With a sinking stomach Monique realizes that the only plan she has is to lie to her boss about how the story is going and act as if she’s still doing the original piece for Vivant in order to save her own career. (pg. 32)

She even points out later that being fired from Vivant for stealing a story would be disastrous for her reputation in the industry.  (142)

I imagine that Monique’s confusion about what to do with Vivant mirrors a young Taylor’s initial unwillingness to “lie” to us (the public and the fans) regarding her sexuality at risk of losing her contract with a label.

Being let go from a contract and a label for making her sexuality publicly known would’ve been disastrous for her reputation in the industry and probably harm her chances at ever being mainstream famous/get on the radio. Had she gone against the advice she was getting at the time and made her sexuality public knowledge/decided to sing about girls or whatever she could’ve lost her career, her job.

In Monique’s case she would literally be fired form a job, in Taylor’s case it’d be more in the sense of falling from grace in the court of public opinion, or being left out of the community in Nashville. Something that country singer Chely Wright has mentioned was a legitimate fear for her upon coming out. (x)

 When Frankie does find out what’s going on this is what happens:

  “’She used us to get to us?’ Frankie says as if it’s the most insulting thing she     can think of. But the thing is she used me to get to Evelyn, so…” (pg. 142)

This scene is yet another reminder that it’s all power play, a game and lowkey blackmail in the entertainment industry and that everybody does it, even the media.

…Baby let the games begin

--

 And so Evelyn’s story starts once and for all. She tells us how she wanted to run away from her abusive father after her mother died and how she at fourteen romanticized Hollywood and believed her life would get better if she could only get there:

  “It would take me years to figure out that life doesn’t get easier simply because   it gets more glamorous. But you couldn’t have told me that when I was   fourteen.”

New to town with a made up name in the angel's city,

Chasing fortune and fame.

And the camera flashes, make it look like a dream

You had it figured out since you were in school.

Everybody loves pretty, everybody loves cool

                                     //

  Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now                               I didn't know who I was supposed to be at fifteen

14* but close enough, right? What I’m saying is, major Lucky One/Fifteen mashup vibes…

--

Evelyn does eventually get to Hollywood, by seducing a dude named Ernie who is a light technician on movie sets, she doesn’t love him and she lies about her age (she says she’s 16 when she truly is 14) but she gets a ride to Hollywood as she puts it, out of their marriage (pg. 44)

Having arrived in The City of Angels Evelyn does what she has to in order to launch her career and that included doing something rather bold for such a young, inexperienced actress:

“I did something not many other actresses at my level would have had the guts to do, I knocked at Harry Cameron’s door.” (Pg. 47)

This of course reminded me of:

   “Hi, I'm Taylor. I'm 11; I want a record deal. Call me.” (x)

At this point in the book Evelyn is 16 or 17 and not yet explicitly queer, so that isn’t what Harry (here representing the movie/music industry) points out they have to “get rid of” when it comes to Evelyn’s image if she wants to make it. Instead, when Evelyn does get her audience with Harry Cameron she’s immediately told she has to get a more American-sounding name (her maiden name was Herrera, and now being married to Ernie her name is Diaz which in the industry’s eyes isn’t much better) and dye her hair blonde.

Instead of her queerness it’s her Hispanic heritage that has to go, in Taylor’s case however, it was of course the queerness, even in the early days. Moving to Nashville at 14 (just like Evelyn and Hollywood) Taylor signed with Big Machine Records at 16 and after seemingly previously being out she was back in the closet by the time her first album was being recorded.

--

To begin with Ernie is supportive of Evelyn’s attempts to make it in acting, but eventually he gets resentful when she doesn’t wanna be a house wife or give him children. This understandably frustrates Evelyn:

  “I’d told him I was someone else. And then I started getting angry that he     couldn’t see who I really was.” (pg. 47)

Of course I wouldn’t truly know, but I don’t think Taylor has ever used someone as a beard/for PR without their consent the way that Evelyn does to Ernie here, but if it is to be claimed that Taylor Swift did what she had to get her career off the ground then the obvious example of this would be her closeting, she told us she was someone else (with the aggressive heterosexuality of The Old Taylor™) she thought the closeting was a price worth paying for the professional success, at first…and then it started to frustrate her that she couldn’t be open to us about who she really is.

Just like Taylor though, Evelyn is all too happy to agree to the studio’s bigoted terms if it means she’ll get to be an actress, so she agrees:

  “And in so doing I set the star machine in motion.” (Pg. 50)

Hmm, interesting choice of words, Evelyn…

As Evelyn’s image is starting to take shape Harry introduces her to the concept of bearding or in this case, since she hasn’t realized she’s queer yet, “dating” for publicity:

  “The studio thinks it would be a good idea if you were seen around town with     some guys…*proceeds to list various fictional male celebrities*” (Pg. 52)

So Evelyn Swiftly (pun intended) divorces Ernie and starts being seen around town with fellas of New Hollywood™

Here she shares her thoughts on those early days of bearding:

  “I was OK with it for it for two reasons. One I had no choice but to be all right     with it because I didn’t hold the cards. And two, my star was rising. Fast.” (Pg. 60) (x) (x)

  “Don and I had been seen around town, our photos taken at every hot spot in     Hollywood. … And we knew what we were doing, parading around in public. I     needed Don’s name mentioned in the same sentence as mine, and Don   needed us to look like he was part of the New Hollywood. Photos of the two of     us went a long way toward solidifying his image as a man-about-town.” (Pg. 68)

Bearding 101…

It’s not just bright sides to the bearding and PR though, on page 56 Monique calls Evelyn “calculating” that word (or a less kind option, “manipulative”) is often thrown around by both media and antis when describing Taylor both in her professional life and in her love life…. (x) (x) (x)

There are also dark sides to not just the bearding but to fame and Hollywood itself as we’ll soon find out.

At this point in Evelyn’s story she has genuinely fallen in love with one of her PR boyfriends (she’s bi and don’t you forget that) and so they decide to get married and at first Evelyn’s second marriage is going swimmingly (again, pun):

  “We had pool parties nearly every weekend, drinking champagne and     cocktails all afternoon and into the night.” (Pg. 74)

*TIWWCHNT plays loudly in background*

However sadly Evelyn is about to learn just why they can’t have nice things, it turns out her new husband Don is both physically and emotionally abusive and it doesn’t take long for him to start regularly hitting her and this ruins the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.

  “I’d made my way three thousand miles from where I was born, I had found a     way to be in the right place at the right time. I had changed my name. changed    my hair. Changed my teeth and my body. I’d learned how to act. I’d made the     right friends. I’d married into a famous family. Most of America knew my name.   and yet…And yet.” (Pg. 78)

  And they tell you that you’re lucky.

But you’re so confused,

'Cause you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used.

   “I got up off the floor and wiped my eyes. I gathered myself. I sat down at the   vanity, three mirrors in front of me lined with lightbulbs. How silly is it that I   thought that if I ever found myself in a movie star’s dressing room that meant   I’d have no troubles?” (Pg. 78)

The same sadly seems to go for a singer’s dressing room I’m afraid…

--

Just like in Taylor’s case it’s not just Evelyn’s personal life that gets affected by various PR strategies though, her career does too. Ever since Evelyn heard that the studio was planning to adapt Little Women she’s been pushing to get cast as Jo and Harry is saying she will get that role, if she agrees to doing a few more run of the mill movies alongside her famous boyfriend. Evelyn all but rolls her eyes and asks Harry if he’s saying she should be predictable in her career choices, Harry denies this:

  “I’m saying you should be predictable and then do something unpredictable,   and they’ll love you forever” (Pg. 67)

This strikes me as very similar to what Taylor did in her transition from country to pop, she put out three full-on country album and then came RED and Taylor famously said that album isn’t “sonically cohesive” why? Well, it straddles the line between the two genres, but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable, it’s still country, she’s still being “predictable” and THEN she dropped 1989 her first 100% pop album and just as Ha-I mean Big Machine probably predicted, we loved her forever!

Evelyn agrees to not doing Little Women right away and admits she didn’t have much choice in the matter:

  “My contract with Sunset was for another three years if I caused too much     trouble, they had the option to drop me at any time.” (Pg. 67)

While I fully believe that Taylor is in charge of her PR these days we cannot forget that she was a minor when all this started and back then I think she let “the adults” handle her PR, she would do whatever they thought was best as long as it’d get her on the radio long-term, including staying closeted. However, now that the contract with her old label is up  and the Rep tour has basically been one giant glass closeting event we’ll see what’s to come in terms of bold PR moves.

--

When she finally gets to do pop Little Women Taylor Swift Evelyn Hugo meets Karlie Kloss Celia St. James. Celia is an actress too and they become fast friends complete with Celia calling Evelyn out on her bullshit over milkshakes:

  “So many women around here are full of crap in everything they say and do. I     like that you’re full of crap only when it gets you something.” (Pg. 97)

Just like Taylor Evelyn is genuine…for the most part and Karlie and Celia know this.

      Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me

      Flashback to my mistakes

     My rebounds, my earthquakes

    Even in my worst lies, you saw the truth in me

                           //

           You must like me for me

--

Both Evelyn and Celia realize that Celia is a better actress than Evelyn while Evelyn is better at playing the PR game than Celia, so the two agree as their friendship blossoms to teach each other what the other knows better.

Evelyn says about Celia:

  “She did teach me to find moments of emotional truth in false     circumstances.”  (Pg. 101)

This is of course in regards to acting, but it made me think of what Taylor’s early girlfriends and her exposure to PR games and bearding must have taught her, to find moments of emotional truth in false circumstances. That’s how she can write and sing songs with the wrong (male) pronoun and make it seem so genuine, she projects the feelings she has for the women she dates onto these wrong pronoun, it’s like I pointed out before, to some degree Taylor has always told the truth about her own emotions, even when she’s hid them behind male pronoun and false heterosexuality the emotion has been real all along. Moments of truth in false circumstances.

--

Even genuine friendship can be played up for PR in the world of celebrity and when Evelyn has to deal with some bad publicity Harry suggests using a shopping spree with Celia to get Evelyn back in the tabloids’ good graces.

It has been speculated over the years among Kaylors and non-Kaylors alike that parts of Kaylor’s 2014 glass closeting could have been played up to “get Karlie’s name out there.” Even genuine friends (or girl pals) call the paps from time to time, but in this case Harry’s suggestion that they could “call Photoplay and let them know Evelyn and Celia will be on Robertson” is shot down by a scheming Evelyn with a better idea, she is going to fake a miscarriage to get some sympathy and make the press eat their words about her “not giving Don a baby.” (Pg. 102-104)  

  “’How did you learn all the underhanded, sneaky stuff you know?’ Celia asked.   ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said coyly.   ‘You’re smarter than you let on to just about anybody.’ ‘Me?’ I said.” (Pg. 109)

We play dumb but we know exactly what we're doing

Taylor is smart, she knows just how to play the game. See: Blank Space.

Similarity Evelyn has learnt the industry by now, she manufactures her own scandals, playing with her own narrative for professional benefit.(x)

--

One night when Don is away somewhere (probably in the club doing I don’t know what) Celia comes over to Evelyn’s and they drink some wine…As you can probably tell it’s about to be gay up in here! Celia calls Evelyn the most gorgeous woman to have ever been created and Evelyn immediately counters, saying Celia is a KNOCKOUT with her BIG BLUE EYES

(Karlie’s eyes do look blue in some lights…See: “Oh damn, never seen that color blue”)

The night continues and as it gets chilly the girls decide to make a fire…Yes, seriously:     “I asked her if she knew how to make a fire.    ‘I’ve seen people do it,’ she said, shrugging.    ‘Me too, I’ve seen Don do it. But I’ve never done it.’    ‘We can do it,’ she said. ‘We can do anything.’”  (Pg. 109)

 (s)he built a fire just to keep me warm

--

What follows is all from page 111-112:

As the night progresses Celia spills some wine on herself and has to borrow a clean shirt from Evelyn, they go into the bedroom and Celia decides that now is the right time to get personal. She asks Evelyn if she loves Don, Evelyn is caught off guard and finds herself answering that she used to love him but doesn’t think she does anymore. Celia asks if it’s all for publicity and when Evelyn denies this Celia asks if she’s sexually attracted to Don (and by extension, men in general) Evelyn says yes, Celia is jealous and uncomfortable and she seems to feel she’s said or asked too much. The scene that plays out embodies:

  Is it cool that I said all that?

  Is it chill that you're in my head?

  'Cause I know that it's delicate (delicate)

  Is it cool that I said all that

  Is it too soon to do this yet?

Just like these lines from Taylor’s song could (in my opinion at least) represent sneakily trying to find out if your new crush is gay too and worrying that the questions will make them uncomfortable as the subject is delicate. Celia’s awkward question seem to really be her trying to ask Evelyn if it’s cool that she thinks of her in a gay way and that she talks about that fact?

The word delicate even shows up in the scene when Evelyn describes Celia as being more delicate than her when trying to find a clean shirt that might fit.

--

Finally she does find a shirt and hands it over to Celia who comments on how gorgeous it is, Evelyn agrees and confesses she stole it from the set of one of her movies and asks Celia not to tell anyone. As she takes off the soiled shirt Celia says:

  “I hope you know by now that all your secrets are safe with me?”

Evelyn comments on how she’s sure that line was something Celia said casually, but that it meant a lot to her nonetheless. Because as Celia said it Evelyn realized she believed her and she’d never had that with anyone.

  “People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When     you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to   them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘You’re safe   with me’ — that’s intimacy.” 

Secrets and truth (and intimacy) are, of course a huge theme on Reputation:

1.    “No one has to know” (…Ready For It?)

2.    You've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks, so here's the truth from my red lips (End Game)

3.    But when you get me alone, it's so simple/ But when I get you alone, it's so simple (So It Goes…)

4.    “Your love is a secret I’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep” (King of My Heart)

5.    “I loved you in secret” (Dancing With Our Hands Tied

6.    “Our secret moments in a crowded room” (Dress)

7.    “Even in my worst lie you saw the truth in me” (Dress)

 “I wondered if this was what it felt like to love someone?  […] To throw your lot in with theirs and think, ‘whatever happens, it’s you and me’”

  Don't read the last page   But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared   And you're turning away   I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong   Or we're making mistakes”

--

Celia goes to put on the shirt and says that she’s not sure it will fit her, Evelyn says that if it does fit Celia can have it.

Other people we know share/wear a lot of similar clothes too.

--

Just as Celia gets her own shirt off and Evelyn starts checking her out (spoiler alert: it’s really gay) Don enters the room and teasingly asks just “what is going on in here?” Just like that the spell is broken and Evelyn hurriedly assures her husband that “Absolutely nothing” is going on in that bedroom.

Here Don represents the shippers and the media alike starting to question the nature of Kaylor’s relationship during the height of their glass closeting forcing Taylor to assure “Don” aka us that “absolutely nothing” is going on between her and Karlie, but I’m getting ahead of myself, more on #Kissgate later…

Anygayyyy, let’s just say that those two pages are, as they say A LOT™ for my Kaylor feels!!

--

Thanks for reading, please read part 3!

[gaylor-songs-unleashed-blog]

Just South of Knowing Why

This is a queer interpretation of Taylor’s early song Just South of Knowing Why (Drive All Night). I believe that this song is written about Taylor just beginning to question if she is gay; either written when/just before she started questioning, or shortly after (within a year or two) coming to terms with being gay as a reflection of her experience. Just South of Knowing Why is one of Taylor’s older unreleased songs. We know that Taylor started writing when she was 11, and this song sounds like it was written before the Self-Titled album (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). So it was likely written sometime between the ages of 11 and 15.

[Verse 1]

She didn't have a reason to go, oh no

She didn't have a reason to stay

Either way she didn't tell anyone about her first ray of sun 

(alt: by the first ray of sun?)

She looked at her keys and found a reason to run

So to start off, we have female pronouns. There are a couple of different ways to interpret this - (1) Taylor is talking about a friend/girlfriend, (2) Taylor is talking about herself, (3) Taylor is talking about no one in particular or she invented a character to fill this role, and (4) Taylor is referencing a fictional character. Based on the rest of the song, and the use of “I” later in the song, I’m inclined to think that it is some combination of 2 and 3 - she doesn’t necessarily have a specific person in mind, but rather, she is writing about an imaginary girl who is in a similar situation to herself. 

Now onto the lyrics! The first two lines, I believe, are talking about the girl being in a relationship with a boy. A lot of young queer girls will try to like boys, and in my experience, many young queer girls find themselves in relationships with a boy at some point. The girl in the song, who maybe hasn’t realized she’s gay, finds herself in a hetero relationship to keep fitting in with her peers. And while there’s nothing really wrong with the boy she’s dating (no reason to go), she doesn’t really like him (no reason to stay).

The next line has two different reported lyrics - some sites say “about her”, while others say “by the” - personally, when I listen to the song, I have always heard “by the”, but “about her” has some really interesting connotations as well, so I will discuss both. If the lyrics is “about her” the line is almost certainly referring to the first time the girl fell in love/had her first crush, but she didn’t tell anyone. Why? Because her crush was another girl. The line could basically be rewritten to say “she didn’t tell anyone about her first taste of love”. This leads to the next line - now she has a reason to get out of the relationship discussed in the first two lines, and the reason is she’s starting to realize she’s gay. 

If the lyric is “by the”, I interpret the verse differently. In this version, it sounds more like the girl has not had her first girl crush yet - she doesn’t necessarily have any real inkling she’s gay, she just knows she’s different and maybe she’s realizing she doesn’t like boys. She doesn’t mention this to anyone, but in the morning light, she realizes she’s unhappy and leaves the relationship. The reason she gives to her friends and family may be flimsy - like anything that could get her out of the relationship would be good enough.  

[Pre-Chorus]

And time stands still when you're nowhere bound

But I understand it somehow

The first line here - time stands still when you’re nowhere bound - is repeated several times in the song, and it is a really eloquent way to talk about the feeling just before you realize you’re gay.  Being gay helps give you a community, an identity, a reason for feeling different. For me, before realizing I was gay, I knew I didn’t want a traditional m/f relationship and found romantic relationships were dreary and uninspired. During this period - realizing you’re different, but not yet having the full picture, really does feel like you’re “nowhere bound” - knowing your relationship is going nowhere, not knowing where you’ll end up and how you’ll be happy. 

The next line is Taylor admitting that she relates to this feeling, but not being quite sure how or why. 

[Chorus]

If I could drive all night would I find my peace of mind?

Would it be a million miles of cold white lies

And unfamiliar exit signs?

I just drive on by, just south of knowing why

The chorus talks about driving - which I believe is a metaphor for the road of questioning and coming out. To clarify, I use the term Coming Out to symbolize the entire coming out journey - coming out to yourself, accepting yourself, and coming out to other people around you. 

The first line wonders if having all night to think about something would give her some peace of mind. When I started questioning, I spent months thinking about it - it was constantly in the back of my mind. I had a lot of stuff to work through before I was in a place where I was comfortable enough to settle on labels, and start to find my place in the community - all night was never enough time to find my peace of mind about it - but it would have been a good start. 

The next line is clearly about the impact of being in the closet - a million miles of cold white lies  - to clarify, being closeted is not lying - but not correcting people when they ask about your boyfriend or joke about your future husband , or in other cases, faking a boyfriend, can sometimes feel like lying. 

But if the road you’re on is made of cold white lies, how do you exit? The truth. The exit signs (ways out of the closet) would be unfamiliar to many people who are starting to question their identity - they may not know the different aspects of the community, the language we use to talk about ourselves, or the kaleidoscope of identities there are to chose from. 

The next line says that Taylor drives by these exits - she’s not ready to come out yet; or, doesn’t realize she’s also part of the community - she’s just south of knowing why she feels different. 

[Verse 2]

I didn't really know her that well

But I could tell that her smile was only something to hide behind

She felt so out of touch, because she just felt too much

If you don't know what you want nothing's ever enough

Onto the second verse! And we’re back to the female pronouns! At this point, it seems like Taylor is on the road to questioning/coming out, and in this verse she is talking directly to herself - that is, her “straight” self. Taylor doesn’t know her “straight self” very well because her straight self was never really real. And this is confirmed in the second line - her smile was something to hide behind; in other words, there’s more happening behind a smile than other people would know - “straight” Taylor isn’t very happy, because she doesn’t fit in with her peers - and maybe she doesn’t fit in because she feels to strongly about other girls. The last line is interesting with its use of “you”. It sound like Taylor is giving “straight Taylor” (or maybe just younger Taylor?) advice that she has already learned - if you don’t know what you want from your relationship, no boy is ever going to be enough. 

[Pre-Chorus]

And time stands still when you're nowhere bound

That's where I'm headed right now

last time we heard this line, Taylor talked about how she understood being nowhere bound - now, she’s taken a step forward and she’s saying that she’s also headed “nowhere”. 

[Chorus]

If I could drive all night would I find my peace of mind?

Would it be a million miles of cold white lies

And unfamiliar exit signs?

I just drive on by, just south of knowing why

[Verse 3]

I don't have a plan, I don't have a map

I don't even know if I'm ever going back

I don't have a when and I don't have a where

I don't even know if I'll know when I'm there 

Verse 3 follows the chorus, and it sounds like Taylor is still driving - but she doesn’t know where she’s going. There is no road map for coming out, and everyone takes a different road to get there. Taylor says she doesn’t know if she’s going back - going back to what? Straight Taylor. Once you start questioning, it’s hard to go back, and that self-knowledge doesn’t disappear easily. The third line refers to the where/when of coming out - how is it going to play out? How will people react? What do you do if it doesn’t go well? These are questions that Taylor needs to answer for herself - but she’s not there yet and that’s okay. 

The last line is incredibly important - so many queer woman constantly question and second guess their identity - I myself went though 3-4 labels before I found one that I’ve settled on, and I still wonder if its the “right one”. In terms of coming out - how do you know when you’re ready to come out? How does anyone? These are incredibly difficult questions that just about everyone in the queer community grapples with at one time or another and Taylor discusses them in such a beautifully metaphorical way. 

Taylor is known for her beautiful use of metaphor in songwriting, and for many, many years, queer culture was subtext and metaphors - and this song exemplifies queer traditions and Taylors songwriting in a way that few other (more recent) songs have. This song is also about a period of time that current queer media does not discuss very deeply - the first hesitant steps of questioning and slowly beginning your journey coming out; a factor that makes this song particularly unique and special. 

[Chorus]

But If I could drive all night would I find my peace of mind?

Would it be a million miles of cold white lies

And unfamiliar exit signs?

I just drive on by

[Verse 4]

I just drive on by, drive on, drive on

Drive all night

If I drive on, drive on, drive on

Drive all night, just south of knowing why

The rest of the song is just repetition of the chorus, but it’s interesting to note that the song ends with Taylor repeating that she’s driving on - which symbolizes that she is still on her road to coming out.