#anyway... creates Queer Character out of non-normative narrative functions is the tl;dr

[variousqueerthings]

today will ramble about why I hc Sidney Freedman as queer (leaning on gay and aro) (as of a third of the way through s6)

1. first of all there was this fic (sidenote: I do not know if all these mentions of Leavensworth are actually spoilers or not, but I am become 99% sure that Hawkeye will actually lose it at some point and briefly get hospitalised, don’t tell me though), which I read about 4ish seasons into the show and made me go... “huh, yeah, I could buy that” and has since continued to marinate in my brain, both because Hawkeye and Sid have a very particular relationship that Hawkeye doesn’t have with anyone else (which comes from Sid’s professional and narrative role), and because Sid has... a vibe

2. so then I thought about Sid’s role in the Narrative (covered here), and how that makes him an inherent outsider. He comes in to this established Place and disrupts the status quo. The interesting thing is of course that “disrupting the status quo as queercoding” is usually framed as villainous, whereas he does so for the betterment of his peers, whom he respects a great deal

3. and of course the status quo is already not particularly Straight by virtue of other characters and the general non-normative construction of gendered roles in these sorts of environments (in real life, as well as narratively) -- not just Klinger and Margaret, although they’re the two most obvious ones, but voiced generally through the idea of what women’s roles are in the home/the workforce + nurses speaking openly about sex in what feels like deliberate reversals of how the men talk about sex, Radar’s and Potter’s working relationship, and of course Hawkeye with everyone, but especially with BJ (and Charles may be new to me, but I hazard there’s a lot there too, not least the foppishness...) -- so the question is how does he disrupt the space?

4. Sid is most of an enigma of a person (and not in the caricatured way that Flagg Who Represents The Military In All Its Ridiculousness is), who comes in and allows all these characters’ vulnerabilities to come to the front, without having to share his own (because he’s a psychiatrist, that’s his Narrative Role as well as his military role) -- we don’t know much about him (yet, this may change), which means there’s a lot of easy projecting that can be done, but he is someone one can feel for. And what we do know is that there is... something... about the 4077 that draws him back. For whatever reason, what he needs is to be around a bunch of misfits like these on occasion, for his own health... misfits whom we’ve already covered exist in an incredibly non-normative set of relationship structures + of course the anti-military and anti-conformist sentiment (sidenote: something that Margaret’s tension centers around -- we did just have the episode with the dog....)

5. which, speaking of -- some characters beyond Hawkeye with whom I really like his interactions: Klinger and Margaret. Their frustrations and vulnerabilities in various ways center on being misfits amongst misfits in interesting gendered ways, and he talks with them about it better than anyone else, although Margaret is slowly opening up to others (especially Hawkeye, but it was always Sid who understood her first). He seems to feel deep compassion for people who live as contradictions, and he allows those contradictions to shine, if just for a moment

6. simply put: he queers the space around him, simply by letting them be even more them. The other characters’ feel no inhibitions or shame around him. His status as an outsider, his demeanour around them (sincerity, soft-spokeness, interest, lack of judgement) brings out whatever element of Them that they usually try to tamper down on. That’s, again, because it’s his Role, but it means his Character contains something hard to pin down (and that hard-to-pin-downness I choose to read as queer too)

7. he’s also got some interesting Gender -- his role is to listen, and especially to bring those ugly, terrified, “unmanly” emotions to the forefront and to work through them -- again without any shame attached to those emotions... unfortunately that’s still kind of a wild place for a guy to inhabit in a story (never mind in real life...) He exists to listen, to have compassion, to let others be vulnerable, and he’s very very good at it

8. also, purely technical and less “feelings” analysis, because of how he’s used in the story, his interactions have a habit of feeling very chemistry-laden, especially the ones he has with Hawkeye (whom I will not go into “why is queercoded” because there’s about a million gifsets and analyses on him and one little text-post could never do all that justice -- but also just “Hawk’s Nightmare”) + he hasn’t had a straight love story written for him. Apart from his desire to be present at the 4077 and to help others, he’s not really someone who’s written with wants so traditionally (it may or may not happen, shows like these tend to give everyone at least one romance arc, but so far he hasn’t, so he’s also got that distinction amongst the rest of the cast)

9. (the TL;DR of the first bit of that last point is that his interactions with Hawkeye are kinda sexy by the way, in case that wasn’t clear)

10. I could read him as ace, but I do take a lot from how he is around Hawkeye, not in a necessarily sexual way (lest you be fooled by point the ninth), but as an unspoken kinship that floats in the air between them. Their ease around each other is very particular in comparison to how they are around everyone else -- the aromanticism read comes from his desire to be at the 4077th, simply because it makes him feel better. An untraditional preference when searching for companionship/rest/support/family, even in narratives ostensibly about found families. To project, it’s not so far off from how I engage with my own particular aroness. I like to enter in and out of others’ lives, not disparate from them, so much as checking in on my families and spending quality time with them in R&R -- his place in the story feels familiar to me

11. what can I say, me and everyone in the story every time Sid’s around: 😍