#i should probably just learn how to make my own jerky or buy a smoker to smoke my own fish but. uuuuuuuuggghghghghghhh

[cappurrccino]

i need a hundred bajillion dollars and an infinite supply of dried/cured/smoked snacking meats

[incarnateirony]

Representation, Authorial Diversity, and more.

“I’ll take some beef jerky and a pack of menthols.”

Been a while since most of you thought about that line, hasn’t it? And for some of you it somehow sends some primitive lizard brain gaydar into overdrive and you can’t really pinpoint why, can you? It makes no sense, that line alone, and how it stands -- but between all of the talk of both Bobo Berens and LGBT media history, including The Celluloid Closet/Vito Russo or the Vito Russo Test, this moment actually puts a pin in a shift within our show, its handling of content formerly completely overlooked by creatives, and the importance of diversifying our writing crews that we all press for.

It was the moment our show leaned, and frankly-- should have been the moment the straights panicked. In fact, some of them did, just before it aired, and then everyone has played at oblivious since.

Before seasons air, we get news on new authors being added to teams, or other workers. Pre-S9 was no different, with fandom finding a tweet from Bobo Berens, our first open-closet LGBT author. I mean, Out And Proud. A true king.

The association if this is the mention of the Bechdel Test, a step aside of Vito Russo.

Now let us begin.

Well first of all I’m just gonna let everyone get a giggle at how Bobo handled the straight male knee coil:

But anyway the response to his initial tweet was a merry go round of concern trolling in the area of “OH DEAR I FEEL SO SORRY FOR YOU PLEASE ALLOW US THE NORMAL ASSBAGS OF THE FANDOM TO TELL YOU AN AUTHOR HOW STRAIGHT THE CHARACTERS ON THE SHOW YOU’RE WRITING FOR ARE” and I dunno, it’s comedy.

Whether or not Bobo was addressing SPN as a new project in particular -- and it, from a dark age of SPN I’ve covered the upheaval during -- this is important. Really, really important.

Let’s say that timeline does overlap Bobo’s, and he did implicitly believe it; he might have had to write them as Straight Guys; but his own deep-seated place in the LGBT community developed resonant text, he made change. Change enough that when his first script was put into motion, the showrunner took one look at it and, for the first time in recorded history, we had note of some sort of intent --

Misha went on to say “so that’s what we played there.”

Regardless of anyone’s misunderstanding about how the fandom riled themselves up prematurely and shot themselves in the foot by lighting a CW exec on fire in the middle of network level board/CEO rotation commotion, or whether or not it’s visible enough for anyone--

this, this moment, this content, created by this LGBT individual led to this first known forward motion of intentful creative subtext. People can hilariously try to argue semantics about it that summarily boil down to “I mean it could be metaphorical jilted lovers it could be this it could be jilted lover bros, it’s just a turn of phrase!” in a loop as they’ve done with this data for six years until it dies every time, but this was it. This was the moment.

There is a nuance in this sort of writing -- how easy would it be for Dean to come up and say, “I’ll take some beef jerky.” Dean’s the meat man, Dean loves meat! We’ve seen it in other, new, straight authors the first time they try to tick off the Dean checklist, but like many lessons, that extra line leading into that smile holds volumes of LGBT history unspoken.

I think several of us Old Gays(TM) have banged on about the necessity of reading the Celluloid Closet, because for as much as people think they’re chasing queer subtext around here, it’s like they have completely missed that there actually is like, a printed, accepted code of conduct on this shit, basically. That’s not exactly what it was released for, but if you’re LGBT and engaged in lit and over 40 like you’ve read and understand and know this.

I’m not going to sit here and over-needle that line; most of you felt it the second your eyes drifted over it; but the sum of it is -- why that, what charming secret comes with that smile, a dean we’ve never seen smoke either, how is this part of how Dean throws himself back before his ex buddy leaves more unseen, *why* is that the hook? These are ironically things that no lit crit study *beyond* excessive citation of Celluloid Closet will really capture. This is a form of queer coding -- not the villainous disaster type that queer coding actually *is*, but the subversive form as it’s begun to be casually addressed in the population with positive, resonant content by authors choked out by IP holders while trying to service an audience. Or sometimes, even starting to accidentally.

So you know, you can unironically double down on the simplicity of Dean implicitly probably being a smoker (a possible read of subtext!), and I think this is kinda where the bizarre split happened tbh, because dude bros double down subconsciously into each reading of this kind of coding-- Dean just smokes, or this or that, though it grows thinner by year. Not about why that line is tossed, and how, and does just set off some sort of TV pheremone we all swamp like a bee hive. None of these moments truly mean anything independently. But it is the perspective and voice the text begins to take. The difference between that and “Hey pal [chews on jerky before buying] marlboros and got any pie?” in one moment that knocked everybody around on their ass in the fray of it. And then it all just went gayer from there, as if framed by one sharp moment that set the rest of the tone.

Hopefully you’ve all read my giant post about the history of this all to remember what I mean by accidentally, but even Bobo posted on it before,

That’s all an aside to the general point but worth placing into the edge of the conversation here.

The simple fact is, an activist gay man joined the show, and possibly with ‘keep it straight’ notes wrote some stuff so resonant, due to his point of view in life and the world, that even the showrunner decided to further guide it in that direction. It blossomed a direction.

The direction was small and slow and meek at first, (well, in final product -- don’t get me started at how S10 looks if all the cut scenes were included) with subtext running as dull echoes in Colette (oh look he wrote that too), and maybe more obvious with classic heart songs -- but even this was more structured than “Misha inherited abandoned storyline they scrubbed the romance out of as best they could”, or “Sera Gamble is a dumbass” that just happened to feature great chemistry and some resonant elements, like Bobo mentioned, we all connected with. But to actually constructively choose to incorporate these, no matter how quietly, was... *new.*

And some called it queerbait and I’ve already given history lessons from other angles on why no, but also now why here, definitely, no.

By season 12 we gained Yockey, another LGBT man, another activist in his own way like Bobo, but his less in writing political stuff and more in writing LGBT specialist plays. And everybody loved him, and saw it, and Yockey gets a boat load of praise -- deserves a lot of it -- but sometiems I feel like Bobo gets trampled over without recognition of how he shifted the playing field, the calculated effort he started putting into mastering those accidental resonances into something new, and ultimately to guiding the new author crew, Yockey included, or Jeremy on this newest episode who thanked him.

The same man that picked up Wayward and connected Dreamhunter... back to his own work and moments. The insanity of yelling “HOW DARE YOU LESSEN DREAMHUNTER BY COMPARING IT TO DESTIEL!” when, dead ass, you’re looking at this author who has carefully incorporated work and, with an already resonant story, made another relationship familiar to us by making it similar. Because that’s how writing stories works! But either way, Bobo has been in here doggedly growing the breadth of the legitimacy of queer narrative in supernatural -- to the point that it HAS narrowly, quietly breached into text even if not “loud” or “visible” enough for some people -- and the point where the subtext is so wall to wall and flooding every piece of cinematography in shooting and not just set or lights but complete mise en scene -- a point where everybody OUTSIDE of fandom is just addressing this shit as what it clearly is --

...That’s something that came with bringing the scope of an LGBT male author into the show. Whether you like the volume he’s been allowed to take his work to or not is your own thing, but before yelling queerbait at any creatives, perhaps it’s time to play “sit down children, and learn to appreciate the activists who came before you and how they’re fighting for you right now”. You wanna yell at something, get organized, pelt the CW in a non-aggressive, non-light-on-fire way, do activism like the books Emily put together that are resultingly still on the current showrunner’s desk now 6 years later, but most of all, don’t take a shit all over content you would otherwise enjoy, at the expense of a man in the demographic you’re trying to represent, who has battled, LITERALLY, for both the women and the gays in this show. Wayward was his baby. This slow swing in S9 that turned into a loud din in S12? 

It wasn’t magic. It was a gay author. A gay author that has now climbed to be an Exec alongside dabb and the others and SURPRISE now suddenly everything’s so gay the whole goddamn world is seeing it. Literally SEEING IT, not just guys looking at each other with stories, but intentful, meritful choice in extremely bold cinematography choices that don’t require chasing a post-it on the wall, but instead are shot with care and devotion. Be that 12.19 Mixtape (OH DAT HIS) or 13.5′s Never Too Late (OH DAT YOCKEY. check what antis said to Dabb in his mentions after, even they saw it). Be that 14.18′s het drama PR promo (OH OOP DAT WAS HIS), be that 15.1-3′s entire tension and the openly addressed and so-called by media sources break up (OH DAT HIS), be that 15.7′s low key textuality (to which the new author thanked the elder for guidance, huh), or 8′s heavily shot domestic separation moment loudly filmed in the choicefully hollowed out and dimmed kitchen bereft of family -- this change? This had a moment. And you can find it.

I’ll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols.

So this has been eating at me ever since this whole topic came into play. 

Anyway full circle them trying to ride Bobo to Keep It Straight probably wasn’t their smartest idea ever. We gays are contrarian by nature so tell me to do it again, motherfucker. And now here we are in Destiel Divorce Season 15 as heavily managed by Bobo.

Everyone got so fuckin dramatic when Yockey said he was leaving like, tolling the burial bells of Destiel and-- like??? hello? BOBO? JUST? GOT? PROMOTED? Like Yockey didn’t make that entire platform all by himself, and hell, he didn’t leave without laying out unironic empty space of it. Yo guys, Berens done been here a WHILE to the point he’s now *callbacking his own season 9-10 material wtih him and dabb*. Like. Lmao. Guys. Guys listen. Listen. Think.

Whatever your weird goalpost is I’m not promising anybody’s anything is about to get hit. Whatever clown nose expectations you all have enjoy those and honk those loud and proud but remember most of those are yours. But respect the fact that Berens has essentially cornerstoned an entire queer canon within Supernatural discussion, of which others are included in as they joined.

And yes, queer canon. Not the way fandom throws it around for weird kissing spots, but articles of discussion of queer narratives, of which we can literally draw a wealth of episodes from LGBT authors or their understudies and literally point and go “all of that right there, officer.” Whether it’s visible or textual or undodgeable or marketed enough or glittery enough or whatever for everyone’s very unstable definition of “canon” -- Berens has literally cornerstoned an entire architecture of queer canon within this legacy show.