#ok yes maybe he doesn’t want to be explicitly queer and that is completely fine but.

[youwerelikeanangel]

sometimes. i think of what louis would be like now if he would’ve been allowed to share his queerness with the world

[thatholoperson]

Ugh. I promised myself yesterday I wouldn’t get involved in that SPN discourse, but after that thousand anti-SPN post (which focused entirely on the wrong thing imo), it’s gonna bother me if I don’t.

So. Let’s do this. (You: Great, an other rant about SPN...)

First, about Dean. I mean... Yeah, I disagree with roughly 50% of what that guy does at any given moment. He has anger issues, drinking issues, his father was definitely violent, he talks before he thinks and is a wreck. He is emotionally stunted and never learned how to express his emotions in an healthy way.

But being, well, emotionally stunted myself (I can only express myself here, because i have time to think about it and you know nothing about me), I can tell you that his reaction is pretty much how I would have reacted. (You: Wow, you’re a dick)

I mean, What did you seriously expect of the guy? (You: for Dean to fall on his knees sobbing and saying he loves him back?). He doesn’t say anything because he is still processing what happened. Because that guy may never have fathom the idea of his best friend being in love with him (let’s not forget about the “emotionally stunted” part).

(You: Come on, everyone told him). You’re right, my amazing friend I made up in my mind ! Everyone does tell him “He likes you” “The one with the dirty trench coat who’s in love with you” “He was your boyfriend first”. Yes, everyone did tell him ! But first, it was about feelings, and he is not exactly emotionally intelligent. And second. The people who tell him that are either villains or antagonist characters ! He doesn’t trust anyone, how could he have trusted them?? It would have been different if Charlie or Sam would have been like “Dude, we need to talk about Castiel”. They didn’t (obviously) and Dean’s reaction is a “WTF is happening?” If they had time to talk about it and process it, it would have been different (we’ll see how Dean reacts in the next eps.)

(BTW, Death Bed confession is a dick move, Cas. And on that subject, two slightly smaller things that bothered me. I read the script of the thing (between two “Putin resigned because of Destiel” posts) and Cas doesn’t need him to say anything or something like that? Are you guys messing with me right now? No matter how much one can say that it doesn’t matter, that it’s “without hope or agenda” (also a dick move, Rick Grimes !!), there’s always gonna be a small part of that person who wants to hear it back, so f...[explicit content that i’m gonna write]... off. That maybe what stings with the whole thing “Hey, he poured his heart out to you, but don’t worry, he doesn’t need you to say anything, you’re safe and you can stay straight (You: You’re overreacting, stay on course, you assbutt). Ok, other thing, if it’s the end of Castiel, it sucks and whether or not he was right when he said that he knows he can’t have Dean, it... stings and sucks.)

Second, the message of the whole thing. And yeah, I kinda have to agree there. Killing a fan-favorite character (wait, any character), mere seconds after he expressed romantic feelings towards another man is... problematic, to say the least. Making him go to the “special hell”? Yeah, I know, the situation is a lot more nuanced than that (You: Yeah, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I miss that show!), but stripped to its bare essentials, it’s “And don’t forget, kids, express your feelings towards someone of your own gender will send you straight to hell !!”

Now I know that most people watching SPN kinda grew up with the whole thing and know they are not exactly good with representation and queer characters. I think it barely phased some of them and I hope... I hope everyone is doing okay right now.

(You: OK... Where do we go from here?) 

Well, I’m glad you asked, my petulant friend ! There is a way they can salvage this thing, but so far, I only see one way.

Dean has to save Cas from that super-duper-mega Hell. He can’t save himself or be saved by the power of the plot. Dean has to actively completely (fine, the others can help) save him. And it can’t be “You’re family, man” with a manly grabbing of the shoulder. It has to be explicitly canonically exclusively because Dean has romantic feelings for Cas. It can’t be “Oh, he doesn’t need to say it or express it”, nope, no more of that BS. It needs saying. It needs to make homophobes tremble and bow before the power of MLM love.

Gay love put Castiel in Hell, gay love better save him from it.

And if that doesn’t happen... Well, I’ll borrow my siblings’ pitchforks from their last expedition in GOT land, you’ll bring chips and we’ll have a party. (You: Yeah, that does sound like a plan!)

[backwardabyss]

i’ve been free of the sh*rlock fandom for many blissful years now and i try not to like, write things on this useless blog of mine but i’ve seen more reactionary anger to the season four finale than i was expecting so i feel compelled to Share My Thoughts regardless of whether or not anyone wants to hear them. full disclosure: i am not a fan of j*hnlock or the conspiracy movement it has inspired so you may not want to read this if you are. 

i guess the major thing for me is.........confusion. shipping holmes/watson i wholeheartedly understand, of course, there’s a long and beautiful history of doing it and i’ve always adored the ambiguous queerness of the Canon’s holmes and how that’s been adapted or not adapted in the thousands of films/tv shows/pastiches/etc that have followed it. what i dont?? fucking understand??? is the people who genuinely thought it would become canon, on bbc sh*rlock (2010) OF ALL FUCKING THINGS????

i’m pretty damn far from being a “casual” viewer of the show, it was my primary fandom for several years and i was once-upon-a-midnight-fuckin-dreary completely consumed by my love for it. so as someone for whom that is true but who, unlike most fandom people for whom it is true, has not been sucked into the J*hnlock Meta Echo Chamber, i feel pretty confident in my assertion that there has been really very little in the series itself to suggest a romantic john/sh*rlock endgame. sure, their relationship is at the center of the show and they ofc have been shown to care for each other deeply and enduringly, as holmeses and watsons always do....and, sure, there are without question lines and moments that could be read as revealing a romantic undercurrent to their devotion to each other (particularly on sh*rlock’s end, i think). but that there was a legitimate conspiracy movement convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt that they were going to explicitly get bbc’s sh*rlock and john making out onscreen...i just do not get it, and do not see it, and yes i’ve read the metas, and no they did not convince me and i’m not entirely sure how they convinced anyone but whatever, it’s fine, that’s not the point.

like, for example, i keep seeing people shocked that after the ~EXPLICIT TEXTUAL GAYNESS~ of the lying detective they couldn’t believe the final problem would follow. and i’m just like??? huh? you mean, the hug? the one that happened in the context of a) john mourning his dead wife who he clearly loved very genuinely and b) john hearing sh*rlock receive a text from irene adler and urging him, quite explicitly, to go fuck her and telling him he’d be an idiot not to?? that explicit textual gayness?? WHAT? (i know the Conspiracy People have composed all these half-assed metas about how irene isn’t Really A Character and is just a mirror for sh*rlock or a symbol of his desire to bone john or something, but, lol no offense but fuck that misogynistic bullshit that treats every woman on the show as a literal empty signifier only sitting there to reflect something about sh*rlock and/or john. it’s just not a good reading or a valid interpretation and it’s so sexist i don’t even know where to start lmao. john genuinely wants sh*rlock to find the love of A Good Woman bc he is a hetero and well, the worst, and there was nothing about that scene that felt like a lead-up to the two men in it falling in love like ohhh my god. oh my god.)

and like ok, i got off course there, but how did ANYONE expect a different outcome after this interview, in which gatiss and moffat both told you all in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that they had no romance planned and in fact seemed incredibly miffed by the refusal to be believed when they said that?? gatiss literally says that there is no conspiracy and that even tho they lie about some things in interviews they are not lying about this. and look, i don’t want to defend them, i think the writers of this show are assholes and bigoted in ways they can’t see, but how anyone could accuse them of “baiting them into thinking j*hnlock would be endgame” when they’ve been saying it won’t be the case (often in unnecessarily rude and offensive terms) for literal YEARS??? i don’t get it. I REALLY DON’T. and no, gatiss doesn’t Owe you a holmes/watson relationship just because he’s a gay man himself lmao and when he’s expressed his feelings on the matter countless, countless times. you all chose not to believe him, for whatever reason, so i mean i’m sorry if some of you are hurting but i’m also feeling very congratulationsyouplayedyourself.jpeg about the whole thing.

which brings me to my last major point really, which is: WHY WOULD YOU WANT THESE HORRIBLE PEOPLE TO BE THE ONES TO DELIVER YOU YOUR QUEER REPRESENTATION?? moffat in particular is just, UGH, i mean, for fuck’s sake, the man wrote an adaptation of a scandal in bohemia where irene identified herself as a lesbian and yet, in the very same episode, fell in love with sh*rlock to such an all-consuming degree that she Lost Her Head and made a silly mistake in their game and got humiliated in defeat. like, what kind of lesbophobic, misogynistic fucking NONSENSE that btw completely deviates from the plot of the actual story in which she beats holmes’ ass and flees away into the night, victorious and safe. that’s the writer you thought was orchestrating a queer endgame for his beloved sh*rlock holmes???? that’s the writer you wanted orchestrating a queer endgame for his beloved sh*rlock holmes?? l o l....ok. that’s not even taking into account all the nasty things he’s said in interviews, like how sh*rlock is ofc not interested in men and ofc he’s not asexual bc asexual people are BORING, sh*rlock is just a latent straight man repressing his urge to bone women!! maybe he’ll marry mrs. hudson in the end tho!! lmao. i....cannot.

and i guess i’m also irritated by this guilting wave on my dash, like i’m obligated to feel sympathy for all these shippers who get duped, or whatever. like, look, even putting my personal feelings about the j*hnlock fandom aside (YOUR SMUG ASSES MADE THE FANDOM LIVES OF ALL RAREPAIR SHIPPERS HELL FOR YEARS, YOU ASSHOLES), after going through what, say, the 100 did to lexa, i’m just.....having a hard time feeling sympathy, i am sorry. oh, your two favorite characters get to live happily together raising a baby in 221b in a scenario that leaves them ripe and open for no end of headcanon and fic that can be totally canon-compliant? boooooo frickin hoooo. HEARTBREAKING. 

i realize this probably is like, rude and condescending and invalidating or whatever and well what can i tell u, i’m a rude bitch, but i am tiiiired of reading all these posts like this is the biggest slight against the lgbtqa+ community in media history. it’s not. yeah, you should all be expecting better from your media, for sure. but you should not have been expecting better from this shitpile of a show, which has proven its disregard for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and queer ppl for seasons upon seasons now. it’s 2017, and the tv landscape still isn’t great but there are so many shows out there with actual canonical lgbtqa+ characters that you can be looking to for the representation you want, deserve, etc. 

sh*rlock isn’t the queer love story you all wanted it to be, and if i’m not empathetic abt that it’s bc i’m SO DAMN RELIEVED that’s the case, bc it and most of the people involved in its production are hmm, what’s the word.....THE. DAMN. WORST. 

[groupkiller]

Living in the moment

David Mitchell taught me about “living in the moment.”

https://youtu.be/6HTt6QJqzxk

Sometimes like during sports finals or movies you THINK you are living in a good moment, but later you have to reevaluate and realize you sat through 1,5 hour that turned out to be bad moments. People might agree that a football match was exciting while it was on, but still wont categorise the moments watching that match as very good, if their teem looses the game.

I will in no way deny that I have been intertained by Sherlock season 4.

I don’t deny that I don’t own the show. It was never my personal fanfiction (though it felt like it).

In The Final Problem I WAS at the edge of my seat, (despite inconsistanscies) I felt entertained, smiled, clapped and so on, untill the end, when I got sad.

But I think it is ok to be disapointed in movies and TV shows that don’t follow through on “their promises”. I put it in “” because at least the johnlockers felt the creators promised romance, but a lot of other people didn’t.

I think they should have put less subtext in the show, if all they wanted to do was a friendship story. They could have made it much more clear that the soft moments were just about friendship, if they wanted to.

(If they did want a romance or just wanted an open ending, so people could read into the show what they want, I think that is not as good as being clear, especially in a show where a lot of queer people have representation at stake).

They didn’t have to make John act jealous of/at Irene, didn’t have to include all the innuendo and gay jokes. They could have told a friendship story very clearly without that sub textual ambiguity.

I didn’t expect Harry to end up with Draco, or Tintin to kiss Hadock. Even though/if shippers of those couples (I don’t ship them) claim there to subtext. I think we can agree there is way less foreshadowing and build up for a Harry-Draco affair, than a john-lock kiss.

So the expectations come from the subtext.

The subtext led us to believe that we could expect romance.

I could put a million quotes here about “the things Sherlock always wanted to say but never did” and “romantic entanglement that… could complete you as a human being”. But we would be here all week then - besides you probably KNOW all the quotes.

Point is: subtext led to johnlock expectations for many people, and that makes us reevaluate the season (and for some the whole series) as “living in a bad moment” because stuff we love turns out to be queerbaiting.

I see people saying things like: “don’t expect the creators to cater to your ship.”

“Don’t hate the series just because your ship didn’t become canon.”

“It’s not queerbaiting, they ALWAYS wanted to just do a friendship story.”

“You see things that aren’t there, you just convinced yourselves that it’s there, but it never was.”

And i don’t hate the show. I hate the queerbaiting, and I honestly think it is there, because of the vast amount of subtext.

I don’t think you should ever hate on people, nomatter how disapointed you are. And sending the creators HATE is not something I condole. I think we should keep a civil tone while certainly telling them, we are disspointed. But lets’s not send any death threats ok!

I do feel intertained (mostly by season 1-3) but also by season 4. I just have to reevaluate the last 4,5 hour as living in “not as good a moment as I thought”.

In The Big Bang Theory people who wanted Sheldon to stay an unfeeling machine might be as disapointed after “the ShAmy” became canon as I feel right now.

But I think people CAN actually expect show creators to take into account what the viewers want. And I think a lot of people wanted Sheldon and Amy to have sex. A lot of people wanted Ross and Rachel to get together. A lot of shows DO listen to many of the viewers and try to make their favorite ship happen (at least if it’s straight ships).

So I don’t think johnlockers are crazy for having believed that finally the queer community would get a ship become canon on main stream tv in 2017.

That said, I know that far from EVERYONE wanted Johnlock.

These viewers might think it is great to see a fulfilled story arch where Sherlock starts out as an unfeeling machine (due to childhood trauma), but finally he became a good man, learned to have friends, learned Greg’s name, and continued helping people with cases.

But I think we WERE promised a romantic arch. Not just a “judge for yourselves, if you want johnlock to be there, just read it into the show”-ending.

Imagine what it would feel like if Rose hadn’t wanted to hold Jack’s hand in the freezing water after Titanic sunk.

I think people watching Forrest Gump would reevaluate, what they thought was living in a great moment watching a good movie, and label it a bad moment, if the movie ended with Forest visiting Jenny, and it turned out:

Forrest didn’t actually care that much about her. They were good friends, had coffee and that’s all. He then went on to sit at bus stops talking to strangers about celebrities he met, great adventures he had and offering them chocolate.

If in the end it turned out that his words: “why don’t you love me Jenny? I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is” weren’t really important to his story and character arch at all, it wasn’t always about Jenny. Forrest asking her to mary him because he’d make a good husbond… that was just a fleeting remark, not important at all. Then I think people would have felt cheated. Like they were promised a love story they didn’t get.

Ok I might be unfair because Forrest Gump had a clear romantic arch, no one would deny. But with Sherlock, many would deny johnlock. (Because of heteronormativity or whatever, To be fair I haven’t really listened to many of the arguments against johnlock ^_~ who knows, some might be legit)

“Who you are isn’t important” Well the johnlockers really thought that WAS important in adotion to all the interesting cases. Romance WAS an important part of the story, and if they didn’t want us to expect that, I think a lot of the scenes in the show are quite weird and out of place for a platonic friendship story.

In conclusion: - I do love the show, also season 4. - I was excited, but think I was promised more than I got. - I don’t like the queerbaiting. - I think people who deny the queer subtext and the promises that gives us are not nessesarily homophobes, but too grounded in heteronormativity to understand how devistating this unfulfilled romance is to johnlockers.

I am a writer, and one of the most important rules of writing is: if you promise the reader something, remember to give them what you promised or explain why they can’t have it. You should always have beta readers tell you, the promises THEay THINK you made to them. So if you made promises without being aware, you can adress them.

There might be good reasons why you wont give the reader the romance you hinted at. Maybe you as a writer only intended it to be a friendship story. But then you have to make that clear.

In short stories open endings are fine. But in novel-length-works people expect answers to the story questions they develop along the way.

And though many casual viewers think that a friendship as end goal and a more mature Sherlock might have been the clear goal of this series. There are CLEARLY a huge group, who thinks the show promised something, and didn’t deliver. And they didn’t explain why. If they did anything, they opened the ending, so you could enterpret it as you wish, but that’s not enough after 16,5 hours in my opinion.

There is also the political discussion about queer representation to take into account.

But from a pure story-telling perspective: What I thought was living in a great moment turned out to be an intertaining but unsatisfying moment in retrospect.

And I think a good show should be able to entertain in more than the moments it takes to see the show first time. It should keep on making you feel like you came full circle with the characters.

And a huge group doesn’t feel that with only this friendship. Or the open ending.

But what about the people who would have been sad and felt it would have been wrong if they kissed? Probably the big majority of viewers.

Isn’t it their show as well?

Yes it is. But i refuse to believe that in 2017 all the casuals would have recoiled and said: “where the hell did that come from,” if a tiny montage with the most obvious gay subtext had been incorporated.

It’s ok to surprise your reader/viewer, as long as you DO foreshadow.

I am uncertain about how many would have reevaluated their moments (16,5 hours) as bad moments, if johnlock had happened.

Maybe if they never rewatched the series and thus never picked up on the gay subtext in light of the ending… Again going back to the idea of a good show being able to entertain again and again with more depth every time you watch it.

If the epilouge to Harry Potter had him arriving to platform 9 ¾ with Draco, kissing him, I would have reread the books to see where I had missed the foreshadowing. (I did this emediately after book 6, because I loved Snape. And by looking for foreshadowing that could redeem him, I picked up on the Lily-thing. Told all my friend, noone believed me until book 7, but everyone then said it WAS great because of the well hidden but totally pressent foreshadowibg of Snape’s story arch) And i hope most viewers would have done the same with Sherlock, had johnlock happened explicitly - realizing how much romantic build up there was.

Then they might have reevaluated their moments as giving them a ship they didn’t ask for but at least with good story telling and build up behind it. Maybe be angry at the show’s straightbaiting/heterobaiting?

I HATED that Catnis lost her sister in the end of Hunger games, because i wanted a happy ending. But I still think the books are great because they dared show that in war there is usually no happy ending. And I think back, and realize the story of Hunger games from the start told me that all my favorites could die a meaningless dearh, that was part of the story and sort of the point.

So it’s not like I can’t enjoy good story telling even if it gives me an ending I didn’t want, AS LONG AS the book/show/movie warned me and foreshadowed events.

But in Sherlock I feel like they foreshadowed a romantic ending in EVERY episode, and didn’t deliver. I felt like they deliberately put in hints only to not follow through.

But I had hoped for johnlock, and for a lot of casual viewers to think: “oh, I should have seen that coming, but it doesn’t change that John and Sherlock are a great, and I love when they solve cases, and it doesn’t matter if they share the bedroom.”

Now casuals think things are as they have always been, and should be.

It’s still 1895, eventhough it’s actually 2017.

And Johnlockers cry because of this entertaining, but queerbaiting opotunity that was wasted.

@quietlyprim @jenna221b @loudest-subtext-in-tv

[cynthiajayusa]

Q&A: Melissa McCarthy is the Lesbian You’ve Longed For

Melissa McCarthy knows her way around a woman who doesn’t care what other people think. This is the foundation on which her bawdy and vanity-free slapstick characters are created. Anti-feminine hornball Megan in Bridesmaids dialed up dude-level crass and free-wheeling sexuality (and earned her an Oscar nomination). Officer Mullins in The Heat was a gun-toting ballbuster who shamelessly and daringly – because she’s female, and this is Hollywood – went unpolished, hair undone, mouth a free-flapping trap.

If you’ve ever gotten a lesbian read on McCarthy’s subversive heroines, you’re not misreading, exactly. They’re not explicitly lesbian. But the 48-year-old actress and bona fide action star, thanks to the Ghostbusters reboot and Spy, tells me the characteristics of being lesbian – the not caring, the disregard for convention, sensible shoes – are absolutely at play.

There’s nothing vague about Lee Israel’s sexuality in McCarthy’s latest film, the poignant Oscar-worthy dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but it’s the least interesting thing about Israel. So, even if you didn’t know her as the real-life literary scammer (and, yes, lesbian) she was, forging and selling letters by famous writers like Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker out of desperation to survive and work and care for her cat, McCarthy will make you care deeply about this woman who, in true McCarthy fashion, has few cares herself.

Recently, McCarthy phoned to talk about steeping her onscreen personas in lesbian qualities “out of admiration,” her appreciation for queer films wherein a character’s sexuality is not the whole story and why her drag alias is “Miss Y.”

What took you so long to play a lesbian character that went beyond being just suggestively lesbian?

(Laughs) It hadn’t been presented to me. I just fell in love with Lee. I was not even a quarter of the way through the script and I thought, my God, she’s so unapologetic about who she is and how her demeanor is. I tend to always fall in love with women who simply don’t care what other people think of them. Sometimes to their detriment. I don’t think it made her life easier that she was so prickly with so many people, to say the least. But I think in a world where so many people look outward to see, “How do you think I am?” as opposed to, “I know who I am, I know how I am, and I’m fine with it,” there was something in Lee’s voice that really appealed to me. I thought a little bit more of Lee in all of us would not be a bad thing.

Was there something special that stood out to you about the film’s treatment of her sexuality?

Yeah, I liked that it wasn’t treated as if her sexuality was something new – a new sweater she got, or something she was trying on. I would say 80 percent of my friends are gay and it’s not something that is an integral part of who they are – it’s not an accessory or a phase – and I thought it was just simply sunk into who she was as a woman and I related to that. That seemed real to me, and it’s about time that’s the type of character you see: where it’s part of the whole person, and it doesn’t always lead with it.

Eighty percent is very precise. Has it always been 80 percent?

(Laughs) Probably! I mean, still to this day, I don’t know why. Who knows how and why and who you pick as your friends, but it’s usually me and all my lovely, dear gay friends that I’ve had forever.

In the film, Richard E. Grant portrays Jack Hock, a charming gay boozer who becomes Lee’s drinking buddy and partner in crime. Do you have a gay friend as close to you as Lee Israel was to Jack?

I have about five of them. They were all my bridesmen. I had my sister – and then I had five bridesmen.

Did you make some new gay friends while shooting at New York City’s oldest gay bar Julius’?

I didn’t meet anyone new in there, but I found it fascinating that that’s where Lee hung out. I thought that was very telling of her not wanting to be seen, but to still be with people who wouldn’t judge her, especially in the early ’90s. But no, no new friends! Richard’s my new friend!

Richard as Jack is everyone’s new gay friend.

Isn’t he? I think it took me three seconds to literally fall in love with him. I was just like, “Oh my god, where have you been all my life?” I think how he played Jack and how bigger-than-life he was, and then how vulnerable and how he could break your heart – I just can’t imagine anyone else on the planet playing Jack. I thought Richard was perfect.

How did Lee’s friendship with Jack – two gay people living during the AIDS crisis – speak to you?

I thought what really tethered the whole story were these two characters. These people are so lonely, so isolated, desperate in different ways but similar in others. Who hasn’t had that feeling? Who hasn’t felt completely alone or undervalued? And to put that in this time period, I mean, that’s part of why I’m so fascinated. When I found out she hung out at Julius’, especially in the early ’90s, I thought she wouldn’t meet anyone there. Then I thought, “Of course!” And she knew that. So she would go to just be isolated and I thought, “Oh, Lee.” I just sometimes rooted for her. I know it’s crazy, but the scene with Dolly Wells, who plays Anna so brilliantly… and I know how this movie ends. I’ve seen it, I did it. And yet every time right before Lee makes that turn outside the restaurant, I can’t help but go, “Oh, please, let it work out.” She’s so close to having a lovely thing, and then Lee kind of could not get out of her own way.

The LGBTQ community has seemingly found lesbian subtext in some of your characters. Did you recognize the lesbian sensibility when you shot The Heat with Sandra Bullock as much as gay critics did?

It wasn’t intentionally driven by that, but it was driven by a sense of, I don’t have to be anyone else than I am. I’ve had and still have so many great lesbian friends. I remember early on just being like, “Boy, they’re just not putting on these airs and stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, and they certainly seem comfortable and at ease with it,” and there was a real weighted feeling to that. I remember being like, “Yeah, why am I in a heel? What am I doing?” Like, “This seems dumb. She’s not in one and between the two of us that’s the smarter move.” I just remember thinking someone who stops doing certain social cues that have been assigned and simply does what they want is very appealing to me. I find it very strong and respect it quite a bit.

So many of the women I play when I do play these characters – because I love them, I love them because they’re too aggressive, too whatever it is – but I love that they’re really in their shoes and some of those great women I’ve known over the years always carry into them because I think, “Don’t mess with her because she knows exactly who she is and she’s standing solid.” I love the fact that they’ve crept in. You know, it’s out of admiration.

These characters you play are a real subversion of conventional gender norms.

Yeah, that “who’s to say what” – I do love playing with that. It’s like, you don’t know anyone’s story. You can’t go off a look or a feeling; you don’t know until you know. And maybe it’ll never be any of your business.

The lesbian chemistry between Sandra Oh and Kathy Bates in your film Tammy – you called it “magical.” If you were to play another lesbian role after Lee, who would you want your love interest to be?

That’s a tough question! That’s like, “What’s your favorite album?” I don’t know! Oh, god. Glenn Close, I don’t know. There are so many women that I love, that I find magical, I couldn’t possibly answer that. It would be endless.

As a kid who grew up on a farm in Plainfield, Illinois, where I imagine there weren’t a lot of out and loud farmers…

(Laughs) Not many that I knew of!

What was your experience the first time you stepped into a gay bar, then?

I thought, “Where has this been all my life?” That’s the honest to God truth. There was a feeling of anything goes, you’re OK, no one’s gonna find you odd. What you’re wearing, who cares! What you’re doing, dancing all night! There just was a celebration innately built in. It’s like, I didn’t go there to be somber, I went because I was like, there’s such a feeling of unity and I never felt… I just… I really did, I had such a strong reaction to it. It’s like, I think, certainly, from many of my friends I was with as they came out and struggled with their families or had delightfully surprising responses from their family, to have a place to go where they were just fully accepted, a lot of joy went with that. So I kind of sat in the backdrop of that and enjoyed it.

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The feeling must’ve been so strong that “Miss Y” was born. How did you get your drag name?

(Laughs) I do kind of consider it my drag name. I was given it by a lesbian in southern Illinois. When I went to college, I went by Melissa, but up until college I had always been called “Missy.” And someone who knew me before said, “Missy,” in front of this woman and she went, “Uh! My friend ‘Missy’? Completely unacceptable! I’ll call you ‘Miss Y.’” I don’t know why she was really offended by Missy, but bizarrely it stuck and everyone called me Miss Y. When I ended up in New York, it had become somewhat of an alter ego – and in my wig and silver lamé trench coat dress, Miss Y was born.

Which drag look was physically easier to transform into: Miss Y or Divine, who you impersonated for an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot – or Sean Spicer?

Sadly, Sean Spicer was quicker. I was like, “This will take hours,” and they’re like, “Not really. It’ll take about 17 minutes,” and I was like, “Oh, come on!” I would’ve loved for them to have been like, “Oh, it’s really difficult to make her that masculine.” Instead, nope. Really easy. I had no problem doing it!

What do your daughters think of Miss Y?

(Laughs) They don’t really know her – thank God they were not at the Palladium (a NYC gay bar) in ’92 with me!

Wait, what happened at the Palladium in ’92?

Oh, so many things. So many things that I’ll never put on a recorder. Susanne Bartsch parties and debauchery; the ball pit, the slide. I could go on but I won’t. (Laughs)

You know, one day they’re gonna ask about what happened with Miss Y in ’92 at that bar.

You know, something I hope my girls feel is a freedom. I always say I find them delightfully weird, which I have always rooted for. We play a strange game that is not really meant to offend any banker, we just mean this as a generalization, which is terrible – but we play a weird game where we’re a very serious family and Ben (Falcone, Melissa’s husband) will come out and say, “Hello, children, how was education?” And they answer very properly and we can only do it for about a minute and a half. It’s really weird and then we all feel uncomfortable and a weird dance party starts. So I love that they fully embrace that they can be as strange and goofy as they want to be. I think that’s a feather in my cap, that they’re not afraid to be exactly who they are.

Do pieces of Miss Y exist in any of the characters you play?

I think there’s always a bit of her. Not surprisingly, the beginning of me being a character actress – I didn’t even do stand-up for that long. I couldn’t possibly do it as myself. It didn’t make any sense to me. But I could go on as her and tell amazing stories about myself and talk about being so young and wealthy and tall and all these things that I was not. And I could kind of channel it through someone and do that without any reservations or embarrassment. I think I’ve taken that into so many of these flawed, challenging women that I play. As long as I can channel through someone else, I feel quite a bit braver.

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/11/21/qa-melissa-mccarthy-is-the-lesbian-youve-longed-for/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2018/11/q-melissa-mccarthy-is-lesbian-youve.html

[hotspotsmagazine]

Q&A: Melissa McCarthy is the Lesbian You’ve Longed For

Melissa McCarthy knows her way around a woman who doesn’t care what other people think. This is the foundation on which her bawdy and vanity-free slapstick characters are created. Anti-feminine hornball Megan in Bridesmaids dialed up dude-level crass and free-wheeling sexuality (and earned her an Oscar nomination). Officer Mullins in The Heat was a gun-toting ballbuster who shamelessly and daringly – because she’s female, and this is Hollywood – went unpolished, hair undone, mouth a free-flapping trap.

If you’ve ever gotten a lesbian read on McCarthy’s subversive heroines, you’re not misreading, exactly. They’re not explicitly lesbian. But the 48-year-old actress and bona fide action star, thanks to the Ghostbusters reboot and Spy, tells me the characteristics of being lesbian – the not caring, the disregard for convention, sensible shoes – are absolutely at play.

There’s nothing vague about Lee Israel’s sexuality in McCarthy’s latest film, the poignant Oscar-worthy dramedy Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but it’s the least interesting thing about Israel. So, even if you didn’t know her as the real-life literary scammer (and, yes, lesbian) she was, forging and selling letters by famous writers like Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker out of desperation to survive and work and care for her cat, McCarthy will make you care deeply about this woman who, in true McCarthy fashion, has few cares herself.

Recently, McCarthy phoned to talk about steeping her onscreen personas in lesbian qualities “out of admiration,” her appreciation for queer films wherein a character’s sexuality is not the whole story and why her drag alias is “Miss Y.”

What took you so long to play a lesbian character that went beyond being just suggestively lesbian?

(Laughs) It hadn’t been presented to me. I just fell in love with Lee. I was not even a quarter of the way through the script and I thought, my God, she’s so unapologetic about who she is and how her demeanor is. I tend to always fall in love with women who simply don’t care what other people think of them. Sometimes to their detriment. I don’t think it made her life easier that she was so prickly with so many people, to say the least. But I think in a world where so many people look outward to see, “How do you think I am?” as opposed to, “I know who I am, I know how I am, and I’m fine with it,” there was something in Lee’s voice that really appealed to me. I thought a little bit more of Lee in all of us would not be a bad thing.

Was there something special that stood out to you about the film’s treatment of her sexuality?

Yeah, I liked that it wasn’t treated as if her sexuality was something new – a new sweater she got, or something she was trying on. I would say 80 percent of my friends are gay and it’s not something that is an integral part of who they are – it’s not an accessory or a phase – and I thought it was just simply sunk into who she was as a woman and I related to that. That seemed real to me, and it’s about time that’s the type of character you see: where it’s part of the whole person, and it doesn’t always lead with it.

Eighty percent is very precise. Has it always been 80 percent?

(Laughs) Probably! I mean, still to this day, I don’t know why. Who knows how and why and who you pick as your friends, but it’s usually me and all my lovely, dear gay friends that I’ve had forever.

In the film, Richard E. Grant portrays Jack Hock, a charming gay boozer who becomes Lee’s drinking buddy and partner in crime. Do you have a gay friend as close to you as Lee Israel was to Jack?

I have about five of them. They were all my bridesmen. I had my sister – and then I had five bridesmen.

Did you make some new gay friends while shooting at New York City’s oldest gay bar Julius’?

I didn’t meet anyone new in there, but I found it fascinating that that’s where Lee hung out. I thought that was very telling of her not wanting to be seen, but to still be with people who wouldn’t judge her, especially in the early ’90s. But no, no new friends! Richard’s my new friend!

Richard as Jack is everyone’s new gay friend.

Isn’t he? I think it took me three seconds to literally fall in love with him. I was just like, “Oh my god, where have you been all my life?” I think how he played Jack and how bigger-than-life he was, and then how vulnerable and how he could break your heart – I just can’t imagine anyone else on the planet playing Jack. I thought Richard was perfect.

How did Lee’s friendship with Jack – two gay people living during the AIDS crisis – speak to you?

I thought what really tethered the whole story were these two characters. These people are so lonely, so isolated, desperate in different ways but similar in others. Who hasn’t had that feeling? Who hasn’t felt completely alone or undervalued? And to put that in this time period, I mean, that’s part of why I’m so fascinated. When I found out she hung out at Julius’, especially in the early ’90s, I thought she wouldn’t meet anyone there. Then I thought, “Of course!” And she knew that. So she would go to just be isolated and I thought, “Oh, Lee.” I just sometimes rooted for her. I know it’s crazy, but the scene with Dolly Wells, who plays Anna so brilliantly… and I know how this movie ends. I’ve seen it, I did it. And yet every time right before Lee makes that turn outside the restaurant, I can’t help but go, “Oh, please, let it work out.” She’s so close to having a lovely thing, and then Lee kind of could not get out of her own way.

The LGBTQ community has seemingly found lesbian subtext in some of your characters. Did you recognize the lesbian sensibility when you shot The Heat with Sandra Bullock as much as gay critics did?

It wasn’t intentionally driven by that, but it was driven by a sense of, I don’t have to be anyone else than I am. I’ve had and still have so many great lesbian friends. I remember early on just being like, “Boy, they’re just not putting on these airs and stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, and they certainly seem comfortable and at ease with it,” and there was a real weighted feeling to that. I remember being like, “Yeah, why am I in a heel? What am I doing?” Like, “This seems dumb. She’s not in one and between the two of us that’s the smarter move.” I just remember thinking someone who stops doing certain social cues that have been assigned and simply does what they want is very appealing to me. I find it very strong and respect it quite a bit.

So many of the women I play when I do play these characters – because I love them, I love them because they’re too aggressive, too whatever it is – but I love that they’re really in their shoes and some of those great women I’ve known over the years always carry into them because I think, “Don’t mess with her because she knows exactly who she is and she’s standing solid.” I love the fact that they’ve crept in. You know, it’s out of admiration.

These characters you play are a real subversion of conventional gender norms.

Yeah, that “who’s to say what” – I do love playing with that. It’s like, you don’t know anyone’s story. You can’t go off a look or a feeling; you don’t know until you know. And maybe it’ll never be any of your business.

The lesbian chemistry between Sandra Oh and Kathy Bates in your film Tammy – you called it “magical.” If you were to play another lesbian role after Lee, who would you want your love interest to be?

That’s a tough question! That’s like, “What’s your favorite album?” I don’t know! Oh, god. Glenn Close, I don’t know. There are so many women that I love, that I find magical, I couldn’t possibly answer that. It would be endless.

As a kid who grew up on a farm in Plainfield, Illinois, where I imagine there weren’t a lot of out and loud farmers…

(Laughs) Not many that I knew of!

What was your experience the first time you stepped into a gay bar, then?

I thought, “Where has this been all my life?” That’s the honest to God truth. There was a feeling of anything goes, you’re OK, no one’s gonna find you odd. What you’re wearing, who cares! What you’re doing, dancing all night! There just was a celebration innately built in. It’s like, I didn’t go there to be somber, I went because I was like, there’s such a feeling of unity and I never felt… I just… I really did, I had such a strong reaction to it. It’s like, I think, certainly, from many of my friends I was with as they came out and struggled with their families or had delightfully surprising responses from their family, to have a place to go where they were just fully accepted, a lot of joy went with that. So I kind of sat in the backdrop of that and enjoyed it.

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The feeling must’ve been so strong that “Miss Y” was born. How did you get your drag name?

(Laughs) I do kind of consider it my drag name. I was given it by a lesbian in southern Illinois. When I went to college, I went by Melissa, but up until college I had always been called “Missy.” And someone who knew me before said, “Missy,” in front of this woman and she went, “Uh! My friend ‘Missy’? Completely unacceptable! I’ll call you ‘Miss Y.’” I don’t know why she was really offended by Missy, but bizarrely it stuck and everyone called me Miss Y. When I ended up in New York, it had become somewhat of an alter ego – and in my wig and silver lamé trench coat dress, Miss Y was born.

Which drag look was physically easier to transform into: Miss Y or Divine, who you impersonated for an Entertainment Weekly cover shoot – or Sean Spicer?

Sadly, Sean Spicer was quicker. I was like, “This will take hours,” and they’re like, “Not really. It’ll take about 17 minutes,” and I was like, “Oh, come on!” I would’ve loved for them to have been like, “Oh, it’s really difficult to make her that masculine.” Instead, nope. Really easy. I had no problem doing it!

What do your daughters think of Miss Y?

(Laughs) They don’t really know her – thank God they were not at the Palladium (a NYC gay bar) in ’92 with me!

Wait, what happened at the Palladium in ’92?

Oh, so many things. So many things that I’ll never put on a recorder. Susanne Bartsch parties and debauchery; the ball pit, the slide. I could go on but I won’t. (Laughs)

You know, one day they’re gonna ask about what happened with Miss Y in ’92 at that bar.

You know, something I hope my girls feel is a freedom. I always say I find them delightfully weird, which I have always rooted for. We play a strange game that is not really meant to offend any banker, we just mean this as a generalization, which is terrible – but we play a weird game where we’re a very serious family and Ben (Falcone, Melissa’s husband) will come out and say, “Hello, children, how was education?” And they answer very properly and we can only do it for about a minute and a half. It’s really weird and then we all feel uncomfortable and a weird dance party starts. So I love that they fully embrace that they can be as strange and goofy as they want to be. I think that’s a feather in my cap, that they’re not afraid to be exactly who they are.

Do pieces of Miss Y exist in any of the characters you play?

I think there’s always a bit of her. Not surprisingly, the beginning of me being a character actress – I didn’t even do stand-up for that long. I couldn’t possibly do it as myself. It didn’t make any sense to me. But I could go on as her and tell amazing stories about myself and talk about being so young and wealthy and tall and all these things that I was not. And I could kind of channel it through someone and do that without any reservations or embarrassment. I think I’ve taken that into so many of these flawed, challenging women that I play. As long as I can channel through someone else, I feel quite a bit braver.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/11/21/qa-melissa-mccarthy-is-the-lesbian-youve-longed-for/