#queer joy movies

[radiosandsilences]

I am begging everyone to go watch fanfik on netflix. it’s this polish movie with an mlm romance and a trans man main character and honestly the whole thing was just queer joy

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Y'know, there's this gripe I've had for years that really frustrates me, and it has to do with Love, Simon and people joking about it and calling it too-pg and designed-for-straight-people and all the like. (A similar thing has happened to Heartstopper, but that's another conversation.)

I saw Love, Simon in theaters when it came out my senior year in high school. I saw it three times, once with my friends/parents on opening night, once with my brother over spring break, and once with my grandparents.

On opening night, the air in the room was electric. It was palpable. Half the heads in there were dyed various colors. Queer kids were holding hands. We were all crying and laughing and cheering as a group. My friends grabbed my hands at the part where Simon was outed and didn't let go until his parents were saying that they accepted him. My friend came out to me as non-binary. Another person in our group admitted that she had feelings for girls. It was incredible. I left shaking. This was the first mainstream queer romance movie that had ever been produced by one of the main five studios, and I know that sounds like another "first queer character from Disney" bit but you have to understand that even in 2018 this was groundbreaking. Getting to have a sweet queer rom-com where the main character was told that he got "to breathe now" after coming out meant so much to me and my friends.

But also, from a designed-for-straight-people POV (which, to be frank, it was written by a bisexual author and directed by a gay man, this was not designed for straight audiences), why is it a bad thing that it appealed to the widest possible audience? That it could make my parents and grandparents see things in a new light? My stepdad wasn't at all interested in rom-coms but he saw it with me because it was something I cared about and he hugged me when we came out of the theater. My very Catholic grandparents watched it with me and though my grandpa said he still didn't quite understand the whole 'gay thing,' all he wanted was for me to be happy and to have a happy ending like Simon did. My Nana actually cried when Simon came out and squeeze my hand when his mother told him he could breathe.

And when Martin blackmailed Simon, my mom, badass ally that she is, literally hissed "Dropkick him. Dropkick him in the balls" leading to multiple queer kids in the audience to laugh or smile. Having my parents there- the only parents, by the way, out of my group of queer and questioning friends- made multiple people realize that supportive adults were out there. That parents like those in Love, Simon do exist in real life.

When people complain about Heartstopper not being realistic or Love, Simon being too cutesy, I remember seeing Love, Simon on opening night. I remember my friend coming out and my stepdad hugging me and my mom defending us through this character. I remember the cheers that went through the audience when Bram and Simon kissed and the chatter in the foyer after the movie was over and the way that this movie made me understand that happy endings do exist.

Queer kids need happy endings. Straight people need entry points to becoming allies. Both of these things can come together in beautiful ways. They can find out about more queer culture later, but for now, let them have this. Let them all have a glimpse at a better, happier world. Let them have queer joy.

[what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew]

Watching two asian gay guys take down the model minority myth and a transphobic society with their small genderfluid child wasn't on my bingo but damn I'm glad that it exists

[thundergrace]

I guess this isn't surprising....

And I guess neither is this...

[who-knows73]

Ok I just watched Nimona (which is really good by the way) and I don't really have any major critiques or anything but I do want to praise the movie for being so openly queer. Its not just a throwaway line or a quick less then ten second scene of queerness. I don't want to really spoil anything so I'll keep it vague but the fact that one of the characters is gay and him and his partner kiss and say I love you multiple times on screen, in the forefront of the shot is so important to me. Them being in love actually adds to the plot and gives it more depth than just playing them off as friends ever could have.

Also Nimona in my eyes is an allegory for being trans and I will die on that hill, when you watch the movie through a queer lens its literally so queer. Plus at the end of the movie in the credits there's a shot where she spits rainbow fire and it turns into a heart shaped tunnel kinda thing out of the progress flag colours.

There's also this in the credits which if you look at all the crossed out words, the one right on top of the word 'lot' at the bottom is boy which also leads me to believe that Nimona is kinda intended to be interpreted as a trans character but maybe I'm reading into things.

Bonus: This is the very last line of the movie and I just think it's really funny that they end it with a cut off curse word.

Double bonus: Throughout the movie, there are multiple of these anarchy symbols inside hearts instead of circles and at the end of the credits right before the Netflix logo pops up she draws one. So to conclude things, not only is Nimona a metalhead but she's also an anarchist and I love her for that.

[dimichuu]

I want to see a movie in an old folks home that takes place years in the future.

A short film maybe, mainly focused on one scene. A room full of people with piercings and tattoos that have long since wrinkled. The gathering of people is for an event akin to a gsa.

The first thing you hear is laughter as these people are telling funny stories about their experience with queerness. One of them says something like, “God I must’ve changed my pronouns a hundred times till I figured it out.” Another person lightheartedly jokes back that, “At least you knew something was up. I didn’t find out I was a lesbian until I was married with four kids.”

And the mood changes and maybe it gets more somber. Things like, “It took my parents fifty years to accept me. They found out I had a kid of my own and wanted to be there for him.” And there is a scene where they stop and think about all who they have lost through the journey.

And they talk about how so often there was a pressure to be pretty. That a gay guy became so wrapped up in beauty standards and how for the longest time he tried to hide his aging. Or that a trans woman didn’t think that she could transition until she was thin enough. And then they all take a look at each others bodies, weathered by age and they laugh at how ridiculous worrying about that seemed in hindsight.

Then they show their scars and they laugh some more as they recount how happy they are that they unlike some of their friends were able to have lived this long.

-

Queer people don’t exactly have elders. We have some but there are so few that it can be hard to imagine growing old. There is so much stress with being queer and I think people just need a reminder that it all will pass with time. You will not die when you’re thirty. You have your whole life ahead of you but you just need to see it.

I don’t know. Maybe something like this would help people see this. I think it would help me.

[burning-ink1]

There‘s something so beautiful about growing up queer in the closet, with such a lack of media representation and people actually consuming queer media, and then being a young adult and seeing people of all sexualities and genders love shows and movies such as Heartstopper, Killing Eve, Red White Royal Blue, etc.

Like, we still have a long way to go, but no matter how many homophobic laws get passed all around the world, we are here and we are queer, and I love it.🫂

[sunshinelore]

Nicholas Galitzine has a sadness in his eyes that you only see in Eastern European gay porn

[thedreadpiratebonnet]

I love the joy around sex in RWRB though

Like the smiles in their first hookup, and when they fall to the bed before they ~make love, and the giggling and giddiness in the hotel room—it’s really lovely to see

[greenerteacups]

You like downtown abbey! I almost did not watch this show because frankly a bunch of rich people from early 1900s England did not interest much but the writing is so good and the characters so intereting that I was rooting for them by episode 2. Anyway. What prompted me to write this ask is: do you have any recs for shows/movie/book with great characters? The specifc genre doesn't matter much. I'm curious to know what media have your favorite characters (besides HP of course)

I do like the Edwardian rich people show! The bastards got me again. It's such an interesting period — I think that the early seasons are the best because you can see the writers are still trying to *say something* about Edwardian Britain, especially the decline of the class system in England during and after World War I. The whole war plotline is really great, some of the show's best writing, and it hits series heights when it's doing the initial aftermath stuff (also not coincidentally the season where they develop Thomas's character beyond 'evil gay footman.')

My favorite characters are scattered all over the place — off the top of my head, Wuthering Heights, Sense & Sensibility, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Brideshead Revisited, anything by P.G. Wodehouse; more recently, White Teeth, The Goldfinch, Atonement (book and movie), My Brilliant Friend, and Wolf Hall (books first, but also the TV show). In terms of straight movies, Chimaera was the most recent one that moved me deeply; also When Harry Met Sally, the Before trilogy, The Social Network, Inception, the Daniel Craig bond saga but ONLY Casino Royale and Skyfall and the 35 minutes of Quantum of Solace I actually like; The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and basically anything Wes Anderson before he got too in his own head about shit; Downton Abbey for fun, The Sopranos for different fun, Mad Men for the most fun of all, and Better Call Saul but only in small doses, because otherwise I'll get brain worms and start crawling on the ceiling about stuff. So, uh. That's a start.

[notabeanie]

You know. There are a lot of things you could say about the original scott pilgrim comics, and I find myself profoundly uninterested in saying most of those things. But there is one thing I will say and that is that for all the whatever you wanna say about it I still find the way Brian Lee O'Malley writes women pretty compelling and I think it genuinely changed my life for the better.

Like ok this doesn't mean that much in 2023 because the world is different now. But like imagine it's 2008 and you're 15 years old and you still think you're a girl because you won't figure out that you can be trans for like another decade and a half and up to this point your entire context for gender roles has been the cast of fucking Friends, and someone has given these comics to your brother who is Not A Reader in a desperate bid to get him to Read Something and he remains Not A Reader but you are a voracious little bottomless pit for words and for neat pictures and so you're like ok maybe this mine now.

And you open it up and here are all these girls that are WEIRD. Girls with spiky hair and punky boots. Girls who wear tracksuits almost exclusively. Girls who are surly and don't care if you like them. Girls who have ex girlfriends. Girls who disconsent to sex. This seems normal now, but in 2008??? This was RADICAL.

And not only are there all these weird girls, but the weird girls are DESIRABLE. They're the dream girl. They're the competing love interests. They have exes who are billionaires and movie stars. The main character is melting into a puddle of pathetic goo left and right for all these women who are so decidedly not traditionally feminine. Like these are not Zooey Deschanel "look I have big eyes and brown hair haha aren't I quirky" women these are "we defy the bounds of traditional womanhood and we don't care what you think about it but we will still kick your ass" women.

And like do you know what that can do to to the psyche of a 15 year old whose main gender role model up to this point had been the Totally fucking Spies?? Huge. Enormous. The blasted landscape of gender is unrecognizable as any semblance of what it once was.

Not to mention that thanks to BLOM's art style, people of all genders are drawn basically androgynous and squarish. Sure there's a little tiddy but nobody is stick thin or hourglass curvy or with huge breasts busting out of blouses. It's not exactly body diversity sure, but these are normal ass looking women with completely rectangular legs and they still get to be sexy and wear leather and lingerie and fishnet stockings and be rockstars and dream girls and that was really fucking cool, to me, in 2008.

When I was a senior in high school I got a pair of big fuckin boots and some tights. In first year university I cut my hair like Ramona Flowers' with safety scissors in my dorm room in Toronto. I clomped down Bloor Street past the old Honest Eds and all these hyper local references directly from the books (it was Canadian! Nothing was ever Canadian!) and it felt like I could do this. This was a kind of girl I could be. Scott Pilgrim had opened up whole new vistas for gender expression that I had not previously even known were possible.

Like maybe there was a little roughness around the edges. But there was goodness there. It did good. It helped. It changed me. For a new generation who are looking at those books and can't imagine why they meant so much to someone I just wanted to explain.

[runarelle]

Lately been feeling the weight of amatonormativity.

[birches-and-hawks]

i love how movies are going away from

'here, learn about the sufferings of this underrepresented group in media'

to

'here, learn about the joys of this underrepresented group in media'

[awestruck-atrophy]

there’s so much queer joy in the end of red white and royal blue. not even just the end, but the whole thing. this was incredible. i want to kiss this movie and tuck it into bed and AUGH mindset and life changing fr

[rewritingcanon]

andromeda tonks and ted tonks and nymphadora tonks and druella black are the only ones who can even come close to an eeato au with evelyn and waymond and joy and gong gong

[starredforlife]

NOBODY ELSE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO BE GAY IF I CANT ALSO BE GAY AT THE SAME TIME