#if i do pursue that idea it will most likely wind up not a webseries

[vatp-extra]

Some conceptual Seeker backstory art nobody asked for

[bellabooks]

How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Heteronormativity and Love the Screen

I grew up on movies. More specifically, I grew up on old movies. I was raised on Rosalind Russell, Doris Day, Jimmy Stewart, and plenty of others touting transatlantic accents and the ability to deliver a monologue faster than the speed of light. My younger years were full of strong women, both on and off screen. Mame Dennis, of my favorite movie Auntie Mame, taught me the value of big, eccentric hearts. Kim Novak’s witchy character in Bell, Book, and Candle fostered my love for lore and the occult. The Bad Seed taught me not to murder someone with a tap shoe over a penmanship medal. via blogs.indiewire.com For as long as I’ve loved movies, I’ve been fascinated by the filmmaking process. I was the kid that, when DVDs became a thing, went straight to the special features for behind-the-scenes footage and candid interviews. I wanted to know how films were made, and if there was space for me in the world of filmmaking. I never really felt there was though, and so I interacted with movies from the academic side. My love for Doris Day’s The Glass Bottom Boat and Cold War era propaganda led to my undergraduate thesis. From that came my Master’s thesis on science fiction films of the 1950s. It was full of Jesus and Communism and aliens (oh my!), but watching movies counted as research so I couldn’t complain. Throughout my many years of school, I ignored any desire to pursue filmmaking. I assumed that I didn’t have any stories worth telling, or the means to tell them. For as much as I had learned from movies, I still felt my life deviated from the stories I’d seen on screen. When people ask about my “coming out story” or if I always knew I was queer, I now talk about what I like to call Some Kind of Wonderful Syndrome. In Some Kind of Wonderful, Mary Stuart Masterson (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame) plays Watts, a high school girl strongly coded as queer who is in secret-love with her best guy friend. Watts epitomizes the kind of female characters I was always drawn to, but her stereotypical story arc is precisely why I pushed my own queerness down until my late teens. It’s a classic story of a tomboy, hopelessly in love with a male friend, who struggles with singledom until said male friend wakes up one day to realize the girl he wants has been in front of him this whole time. Given that I was once a tomboy with many male friends, that’s how I thought my life would go. I figured I’d eventually have my ugly-duckling-to-beautiful-swan moment, get the guy, and be done with the whole ordeal. That is not how my life turned out; I eventually caught wind of The L Word through the budding-queer grapevine and it was all downhill from there. What movies like Some Kind of Wonderful inadvertently taught me, though, was that women, even the seemingly-queer ones, needed a very specific form of validation. Looking back on the movies I love, I now realize that many of my favorite on-screen women were motivated by their desire to get the guy. via contac.tumblr.com I was always a big fan of shows like Charmed that featured kickass, complex women. I think it’s safe to say that Piper Halliwell was one of my first loves; to see a woman portrayed as strong and vulnerable, anxious and practical, prone to cynicism but still a bit of a romantic, was delightful. The demons and witchcraft were also a plus. What would pull me out of shows like that was the inevitable inclusion of a love interest (usually male) that drove my beloved female characters away from their core stories. It wasn’t that these relationships were always haphazardly thrown in, or that I couldn’t identify with them on some level; they just felt like unwelcome reminders of all the ways I differed from the characters I looked up to. Like most LGBTQ folk my age, I survived on subtext and The L Word. We’re often told that characters and stories on screen are supposed to be universal, but to deprive people of nuanced experiences on screen is to render entire groups invisible. I have no doubt that I would have been able to sort out my identity sooner had I seen more queer characters in movies and on TV. via rebloggy.com The way that Alex Danvers’ coming out was portrayed on Supergirl, for example, really hit home for me. She is but one part of the upsurge in queer and trans representation, which has rightfully spawned conversations on how these characters are treated. It is difficult to believe you exist when you don’t see yourself on screen. And if, when you do see yourself, you are entrenched in tragedy or killed, the implication is that to exist is to suffer. The increased number of LGBTQ characters on screen is an undeniable positive, but I think what many of us sense is lacking is an increased presence behind the scenes, in the writers’ room, on set. What has changed the game, in my mind, is the advent of the webseries. via www.fanforum.com It is unsurprising that, in an industry like film and television, we have to create and fund our own stories if we want to see them. This method of producing content for LGBTQ audiences has seen success in shows like Carmilla, Her Story, and Couple-ish. What makes these shows so engaging is not only the direct involvement of queer and trans creators, but also the accessibility and transparency of both the shows themselves and the people behind them. Whether it was my own ignorance or a consequence of growing up in southern California, I always felt that, to work in film and television, you had to go from zero to Hollywood overnight. I started questioning this notion when I came across the Carmilla series while in graduate school. I binged the first half of season 1 (all the episodes available to me) late one night instead of prepping for a thesis presentation. I had never really seen a webseries, let alone a successful, low-budget, freely-accessible, referential one featuring queer and non-binary people. What drew me in was not only the story and wit, but also the simple pleasure of seeing queer people my age creating a wonderful thing together. Her Story and Couple-ish gave me similar warm and fuzzy feelings, and the idea that I could help create things instead of dedicating my time to writing about others’ creations. These shows, among a few others, gave me the representation I had been looking for and tipped the scales in favor of going to film school. Now I’m at the starting line of what could very well be a career I never bothered to dream of. Regardless of whether or not I wind up working in the industry (please hire me), I now know I have stories worth telling, and I’m excited to see how those of others manifest themselves, on screen or otherwise. It’s encouraging to see so many young queer and trans folk creating things in spite of adversity. Our stories are topical, and to know that there are communities in the world trying to elevate them makes me hopeful that the next generation of queer kids will feel a little less lost. Keep making your art.   Feature image via haroldlloyds.tumblr.com   http://dlvr.it/NcYRSN