#write an essay on queercoding and get back to me

[goldieclaws]

Got back into replaying Skyward Sword and suddenly remembered how Japanese Ghirahim explicitly says 'red string of fate' when you get to the Fire Sanctuary cutscene, like how English Ghirahim says 'thread of fate'

And I can't stop thinking about this for multiple reasons bc like, if you are a JPN to ENG translator, you would need to understand idioms used by characters so you know how to make it make sense to other cultures.

(JPN Ghirahim references the 'one thousand years to prepare' trope, ENG Ghirahim says 'I'll beat you within an inch of your life'. There's also the Naraku line before his final fight that was adapted out to 'Endless Plunge' so kinda cringe by comparison ENG Ghirahim sorry)

And it makes me really want to know if they either didn't care to understand what JPN Ghirahim meant/what he was referring to (especially since Ghirahim is saying this to a minor, for god's sake) or they just used it as an excuse to further their villainous queercoding of him (especially with changing his text to be more flamboyant and how he refers to Link and again, he is saying that to a teen).

Now, you could say if they scrubbed the line or changed it drastically, it could be classified as censorship (in the sense of trying to hide Japan's homophobia and America being the Cool Dudes who wouldn't dare reference such an awful topic) but it really isn't that hard to just have Ghirahim say they're bound by fate and not the myth of a thread that is well known to tie destined lovers together (even having ENG Ghirahim say he's going to dye it red with Link's blood like...... Nintendo of Japan and America. You are as bad as each other.)

[onbearfeet]

Queerwolf By Night: Queercoding, Media Literacy, and Werewolf By Night (part 2)

Welcome back to Media Studies And Writing Hacks With Kat! Part 1 is here if you missed it. We discussed queercoding: what it is, how it works, why it exists, and how it plays into the 1930s and 40s horror movies Werewolf By Night likes to reference.

Once again, the thesis I'm arguing here is that there is queercoding in WBN, and that it should be part of the discussion of the special (which I'm calling a movie or film because I think "special presentation" is dumb and this is my essay.) I am NOT arguing that WBN is explicitly queer, or that inferring heterosexuality where queercoding exists is morally wrong or even textually inaccurate.

TL;DR: you can totally still ship Jack and Elsa, I just wanna point at some metaphorical rainbows and say, "Look! Rainbows! Aren't they neat?" I personally think the queercoding adds a layer of richness to the story. I hope you get something out of it, too.

And now, allow me to introduce our starting point, the wolfman of the hour, everyone's beloved blorbo and queercoded icon: Jack Russell.

Look at this adorable protagonist, this absolute chewtoy of a human being.

He's queercoded as fuck. Not as much as Ted, but we will GET to Ted.

Let's begin with Jack's introduction, where he is literally revealed as the narrator speaks the phrase "the monster who finds himself among them". We join Jack as he enters an unknowingly hostile space, a building full of people who would literally mount his head on the wall if they knew who and what he really was. Jack's introduction to this world is a series of Bayeux-style tapestries showing, among other things, the gory slaughter of his kind. We see him react with a mixture of shock, queasiness, and tamped-down anxiety, which marks him as an outsider. It seems unlikely that the other hunters would be grossed out by the sight of a depiction of their literal jobs.

Now, outsider status alone isn't necessarily queercoding, but it often is, especially in monster movies. Jack's reaction is not dissimilar to that of a closeted person entering a homophobic church for some kind of socially expected ritual--and, indeed, Jack has come for a funeral.

Look at that nervous glance as he walks into the room. He's not comfortable here. He knows he doesn't fit in.

This is a good time to mention Jack's outfit and the way it intersects with what we see of hunter culture. From the leather to the weapons to the heads on the wall, the aesthetic of hunter culture in WBN is hypermasculine, almost to the point of parody. The obsession with imagery of violence and death (the paintings on the walls, the corpse animatronic, the skull bowl) and the hostility to anything perceived as feminine is marked.

Wait. Hostility to anything feminine? Yes, I said that.

There are three characters who are played by female actors: Elsa, Verussa, and ... look, the hunters HAVE names, but I'm just gonna call them Scottish Guy, Asian Guy, Black Guy, and David Bowie. So David Bowie is an adrogynous character played by a female actor who acts as our third not-exactly-a-male character, and it's interesting to me that they're taken more seriously by the other hunters than Elsa is. Elsa, by contrast, is treated with contempt by the other hunters--and the contempt is very specifically gendered. Scottish Guy calls her "lassie" when he threatens her, and Asian Guy says, "Where's the lovely lady's medallion?" with a noticeable leer. They don't take her seriously, not even after Verussa announces she's welcome to participate--and they only brighten up when Verussa reminds them that they're allowed to kill Elsa if they can. That's the response to the only unambiguously female hunter.

Now, you may point out that Verussa doesn't get nearly as much shit from the hunters, but Verussa is explicitly presenting herself as the servant (and sexual partner) of a man. She's also not competing with them for the Bloodstone, nor trying to inherit, even though presumably she has at least as good a claim as Elsa does. She's not trying to enter the hypermasculine realm of hunting, but Elsa is in it, and so Elsa is despised and Verussa is tolerated.

And then there's Jack.

Okay, time for Baby's First Queercoding Element: gender nonconformity. In general, feminine male characters and masculine female characters (something explicitly forbidden by the Hays Code, by the way) are coded as queer. A lot of gay male stereotypes are men doing "womanly" things, like cooking and wearing dresses and having sex with men. The same goes for lesbian stereotypes like short haircuts, manual labor, and having sex with women. Now, obviously ACTUAL queer expression is infinitely more complex, but stereotypes don't do infinite complexity.

So. Is Jack feminine?

Well, he's wearing a gentleman's suit, but by the standards of hunter hypermasculinity, yeah, he's pretty girly. For one thing, he's wearing that suit in a room full of people in combat gear. For another, the suit itself is full of fussy details that mark him as a man who cares a great deal about his appearance, another stereotypically feminine trait. The suit is green, a barely acceptable color in menswear, and it has glittery details like the trim on his lapels. The spinal-column tie is metal as fuck, but it's also a silk tie. He's doing the death-and-gore theme, but making it high fashion. He's even wearing makeup. Granted, it's Día de los Muertos makeup, but it's still pigment on his face for aesthetic purposes. He's also the only hunter who acknowledges, in dialogue, that he has non-white, non-USAmerican heritage--"It's to honor my ancestors." He marks himself (literally) as visibly foreign, even though denigrating foreign masculinity is a big part of American hypermasculinity. He also tries to smile at and befriend every hunter who glares at him--another stereotypically feminine trait that leads to his conversation with Scottish Guy.

Speaking of, that conversation is gay as hell. It's practically flirting, especially the part where Scottish Guy compliments Jack's makeup and then tearfully admits that hunting and living all by himself "gets lonely". And Jack makes this amazing face:

Now, this is me inferring again, but I read this face as a combination of "Aww, that's sweet of you" and "Loneliness caused by hypermasculine self-isolation? I literally have no idea what that's like, but it sounds bad, bro." Perhaps with a soupçon of "Get me out of this conversation aaaaaaa."

So the scene rolls on, and Jack continues to be Bad At Toxic Hypermasculinity. When his top kill count is mentioned, he shrugs it off rather than taking a little bow like the others do. He actually chuckles at Ulysses' joke. He seems mildly interested in Elsa rather than hostile, and amused by her snark rather than threatened by it. He shows fear and worry when he learns Ted is in peril and in pain. The guy really wears his heart on his impeccably tailored sleeve. Notably, none of these traits are bad, per se--they're just more likely to be assigned to feminine characters, and they're given to Jack.

It's important to note the impact of perspective here. Jack is our POV character. If there were to be a hunters' version of this story, Jack would be a sneaky, cowardly, vaguely effeminate villain and Elsa a traitor (or possibly a dimwitted victim seduced by Jack's charms). All of Jack's queercoding would make him a GREAT queercoded villain; it's just that here, he's the protagonist, and a deeply sympathetic one at that, so we miss some of his "unmanly" traits.

All right, let's fast-forward to the maze. We see Jack being clueless and awkward about the drawing of lots, we see some sneaking around, and then we see his first hostile encounter with Elsa, and we get this great exchange:

Jack: I suggest we just pass each other by.

Elsa: ... What?!

Jack, visibly pained by the awkwardness: I suggest we just ... pass each other by.

Jack is uncomfortable with violence. He actively avoids it, talking his way out of trouble when he can and running when he can't. Even Elsa points out how strange he is compared to other hunters, specifically because he avoids violence. He doesn't kill or even hurt anyone in his human form. He doesn't even know how his explosive works--to the point where he asks a woman if SHE knows how to work it.

I'm not saying violence is an inherently masculine trait, but the association of masculinity with a capacity for (and comfort with) violence runs deep in Western culture in general and American culture in particular. It's a huge thing in Mexican culture as well, and yet Jack is actively choosing not to participate in it. He's denying a core part of what would otherwise be his traditional gender role. He later tells Elsa that any "hunting" he does is done by "a part of me that is not me"--a part of himself that he doesn't see as himself. In his eyes, violence is not merely scary or distasteful; it's not part of him at all.

(Compare this to all the ass-kicking Elsa does.)

And then we get to Ted. Buckle up, guys.

Technically, our first introduction to Ted is a distant roar and some screaming, but the moment where we meet him is this:

A jumpscare, followed by a cuddle.

Once again, Jack wears his heart on his sleeve, but more importantly, let me draw your attention to the juxtaposition of Ted's scary grab and Jack's excited snuggling. This relationship is introduced as something scary before being revealed as something sweet--and "scary" is a good description of the portrayal of queercoded couples (who are, remember, usually villains) in classic cinema. All the cinematic language around Ted right up until the grab is telling us to be afraid of him--and then our cinnamon roll of a protagonist starts petting him and greeting him and asking if he's okay. Ted is monstrous and inhuman ... right up until we see him receive affection from another man.

We don't get clear details of Jack's relationship with Ted, but we know that it's a big deal to them--after all, Jack is risking his own life to save the big guy. Jack also describes Ted as "family" and, with a fond eyeroll, a "pain in the ass". Jack implies that he no longer has contact with his family of origin, a common experience for many queer people who are shunned for leaving the closet, but Ted slots neatly into the category of found family. Ted is also, notably, the only close relationship Jack is seen to have, just as Jack is the only close connection Ted is seen to have. The two are physically affectionate (again, cuddling) and emotionally vulnerable in their conversations.

And Elsa, the outsider to their relationship, finds the whole thing bizarre, right down to Ted's name.

Speaking of Elsa, let's talk about Jack's behavior in the crypt and the cage.

In the crypt, Jack displays compassion for someone who has largely been hostile to him (he REALLY wants to fix Elsa's leg), absolute delight when he receives the tiniest signal that she might be sympathetic to him ("It's not in your DNA, then?") and remarkable emotional intelligence (see his speech about families). He also, notably, doesn't hit on Elsa or indicate any sexual interest in her.

He also makes this terrific face when he's handed a skull:

Oh, yeah, that's a big, scary hunter there.

Now, the cage. Jack's response to being put in the cage (and stripped of his jacket, interestingly--little bit of dehumanization there, perhaps) is recognition, followed by attempts at reassuring Elsa, followed by panic. He's arguably more upset than Elsa is, and Elsa thinks she's about to be torn to shreds.

At two points in this story, Jack Russell finds himself trapped in a small space with a beautiful woman and more or less immediately freaks out. It's not the most heterosexual pattern. In fact, it's got strong thematic overtones of queer men being forced into straight relationships by their families, their work, or their society. In a culture that entwines sex and violence, the fact that he's delighted to be grabbed by a male swamp monster but begs for death rather than symbolically do a sex with a woman is noteworthy.

"Symbolically do a sex"? Yeah, the only times the film frames Elsa as anything like a sexual object are the transformation sequence, which is a visual callback to classic sexualized scream queens of yore with her literally in Jack's shadow, and the face-touching scene, where Jack straddles her, their faces almost touch, and then he flees and she sits up with her hair mussed in a dreamy, almost post-orgasmic way.

Michael Giacchino doesn't eroticize violence MUCH, but he's fairly classy about it when he does.

"But wait!" I hear you saying. "What about the sniffing scene? Isn't that eroticized? And it's between Jack and Elsa! Checkmate, liberals!"

First of all, how dare you call me a liberal when my preferred political descriptor is "chaotic good". And second of all ... well, you're HALF right. It IS eroticized...but not because of anything Laura Donnelly or Gael Garcia Bernal is directly doing.

Go watch Elsa's body language during the scene. It's awkward as fuck. She's curled in a ball, knees and elbows out, letting Jack pull on her arm and sniff her hair but not really participating. There's no indication that she wants to be doing this, or even knows what "this" is.

Gael is making a little more of an erotic show about it; in fact, the intensity of his sniffing would probably be an indicator of sexual desire--if he weren't CRYING WHILE HE DOES IT. That's why his voice breaks on "Once."

These are both excellent actors, making very intentional choices with their voices and bodies. They're playing the scene as something that COULD be sexy IF THEY WEREN'T BEING FORCED TO DO IT.

Seriously. There's enough fanfic now that we've all read Jack giving Elsa a leisurely, consensual sniff. You can't tell me Gael and Laura couldn't have made that happen. This is not sexy sniffing. This is angst sniffing. It's just angst sniffing between two beautiful, sympathetic characters who genuinely don't want to hurt each other. It could have been acted and shot in a much sexier way, but it wasn't.

It's also worth noting one last category of queercoding that WBN plays with a lot: dehumanization. A lot of those classic movies played their queercoded characters as specifically less than human, visually aligning them with disliked animals like rats or wolves and often making them literally less human as the story progressed. Even after the Hays Code, monstrous and inhuman queers became a staple of horror movies, especially in the 1980s and 90s as the AIDS crisis convinced a lot of conservative America that LGBTQ people were literal plague rats. There were proposals to tattoo HIV-positive people to identify them, to round them up into camps, to shut HIV-positive kids out of schools because those kids were implicitly queer and therefore not deserving of human rights like an education.

WBN, with its werewolf POV, pushes back on this trope in some specific ways. Jack's line about being "still a human" is an obvious one, as well as his explanation of "systems" to keep other people safe. (It was common during the AIDS crisis for queer people to be fired from their jobs if they were outed because they were considered an AIDS risk to their coworkers--even if they were, say, an office worker who didn't have any contact with other people's bodily fluids. There were conspiracy theories about AIDS spreading through shared soda cans. Those paper seat protectors in public bathrooms came about because of fears that AIDS could spread via toilet seats. So imagine a gay man trying to explain that he's not a threat to his officemates, and you'll see the parallels to Jack trying to reassure Elsa.)

Most notable, however, is how Elsa survives the wolf. She's safe because she maintains eye contact (implicitly acknowledging her and Jack's shared humanity--she literally refuses to stop seeing him) and because he remembers her scent (she becomes a part of his world as he becomes part of hers). Elsa is rewarded, both with her life and with her inheritance, for treating Jack and Ted like human beings when the world around her regards them as abominations.

Elsa is an ally. She's ally-coded. She can also be read as a love interest for Jack, but she consistently acts in support of his relationship with Ted as well.

In Part 3, we're going to talk about the crowning moment of queercoding in WBN. That's right--it's time to learn about coffee in the woods, the gay jukebox, and the Friends of Dorothy.

[handsmotif]

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors. 

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out. 

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis. 

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

[todayisafridaynight]

It would have been super cool to have a character come back who had changed for the better. Especially since Baba is such a femmecoded and queercoded individual, I'm glad he wasn't a part of Yakuza's initial kick of killing off villains right after they were having a change of heart, but it's like he might as well be dead. Him being in the original Ishin was a huge surprise, still seeming to carry on the same themes. His mainline game self, though... It would have been interesting to see where his bond with Saejima could have gone. Saejima was so stuck on helping, announcing he'd wait for him to be ready to be sworn bros, and I would have loved to see a queer character confess to the person they're attracted to. I doubt they would do that, but how many more gay men can keep telling Kiryu they're in love with another man. He's not immortal ya know. Guess Ichiban has to carry that torch too.

Despite both characters being the "I don't think I deserve better, and I could never forgive myself. I would rather die" type, they both just make me sad as well. Mine actually goes through with it with no one physically stopping him, and that's seriously the last time Daigo sees that man. That way. What a terrible lasting impression. Saejima doesn't see Baba the rest of the game- or ever again- but he sends others to aid him after seeing him try to take his own life. Which is great and all but l o r d. There's so much potential with both of them. It's so wildly unfair how their stories ended. I'm rambling a lot. They both just give me so many wordy thoughts.

it'll never cease angering me how much the yakuza series preaches about starting over and turning a new leaf but never actually allowing characters to do that- like the most we got was hamazaki but even he kicked the bucket. it's upsetting we didn't get to see more of that, i genuinely really like hamazaki's turnaround, even if i had an inkling he was going to die anyways.

back on topic though, it is unfortunate baba and saejima didn't get to meet up at least one more time. sure, baba isn't dead in-universe, but as you said he might as well be and that sucks MAJOR balls.

i could probably write an essay on the ending of Y3 cause there's just so much to talk about, especially with the prologue the RGGO story gives us. but for now i'll just say rgg do better with your cast please and thank you

[polystyrenequeen]

Alright, I am curious. Why is Jonny Cade queercoded and what queer subtext was there in their relationship with Ponyboys? 👀

TW: mentions of abuse, violence, death, murder

also spoilers for the outsiders!! (i mean it is a 60 year old book, but still)

-------

OOH OKAY OKAY

(In all honesty, I could probably do a whole essay on this, but I'll keep it brief-ish.)

Bit of background on The Outsiders: It's a book written in the early 60s that focuses on the class divide between the rich Socs (Socials) and the working-class greasers (like, "hoods", criminals), or rather the people within each of those groups who don't feel like they fit into the binary.

Ponyboy is the protagonist of the novel. He and Johnny are both greasers and part of a gang with a few others, including Ponyboy's two older brothers and three other boys.

Let's start with Johnny. Johnny is extremely queer-coded in his own right. He's described early on as timid, shy, weak and maybe a little feminine. He's seen as the gang's "pet" and the youngest, despite being sixteen to Ponyboy's fourteen. His friends are very fond and protective of him. A lot of this behaviour comes from his trauma, being abused by his parents as well as beaten nearly to death by a Soc named Bob. However, it also falls into an archetype of stereotypical queer characters. Writing male characters in this way is a way of subtly telling an audience that they are queer. This probably wasn't done intentionally, but should be kept in mind.

Johnny's character development involves him becoming more masculine, almost. The final important act he does in the book is save children from a burning building. Ponyboy comments on the fact that he seemed braver, louder etc in that moment, all traits associated with masculinity, which is 1) a strange reaction to the situation, especially for Johnny, and 2) exactly the kind of narrative standpoint one would take to show that femininity (or queerness) is bad.

Now for Ponyboy - his queer-coding is more subtle at times, and a little different. He isn't timid or shy or scared or feminine like Johnny. (However, he does once say that he "didn't care too much for girls yet", but that his brother said he would grow out of it. This is particularly strange, considering he is fourteen already.) Early on, it's established that he feels like an outsider within his own group. He doesn't really feel like a greaser, or act like one. He likes things that greasers don't like. He watches movies, he reads, he likes to see the sunset. He considers himself different, or "other", and he feels as if he can't talk about it. His friends just wouldn't get it.

A large part of the book, in my opinion, is Ponyboy finding other "outsiders", like Cherry and Johnny. (Cherry being a Soc while Johnny is another greaser.) All three of them talked once, while at a drive-in, Ponyboy finding a particular connection with Cherry despite her not being the only girl there. They all have the same sense of feeling “other”, and not being able to talk about it for fear of being judged.

Now for Johnny and Ponyboy’s relationship, which...oh boy. Some of it is just scenes like this, which feel very queer, outright:

“‘Guess I look okay now, huh, Johnny?’

He was studying me. ‘You know, you look an awful lot like Sodapop, the way you’ve got your hair and everything. I mean, except your eyes are green.’

‘They ain’t green, they’re gray,’ I said, reddening. ‘And I look about as much like Soda as you do.’ I got to my feet. ‘He’s good-looking.’

‘Shoot,’ Johnny said with a grin, ‘you are, too.’”

Not to mention the whole chapter they spend literally just acting like a domestic gay couple while they’re on the run, just the two of them, from the police. There’s also this conversation they have while watching the sunrise in this chapter (which I’ll talk more about later once I get to the symbolism), in which they talk about being outsiders. Here are a few quotes from that:

“‘You know,’ Johnny said slowly, ‘I never noticed colors and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It seems like they were never there before.’”

“‘Well, Soda kinda looks like your mother did, but he acts just exactly like your father. And Darry is the spittin' image of your father, but he ain't wild and laughing all the time like he was. He acts like your mother. And you [Ponyboy] don't act like either one.’”

“‘You [Johnny] ain't like any of the gang. I mean, I couldn't tell Two-Bit or Steve or even Darry about the sunrise and clouds and stuff. I couldn't even remember that poem around them. I mean, they just don't dig. Just you and Sodapop. And maybe Cherry Valance.’

Johnny shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I guess we're different.’

‘Shoot,’ I said, blowing a perfect smoke ring, ‘maybe they are.’”

(Honestly, can my whole argument just be that one quote? “I guess we’re different.” // “Shoot. Maybe they are.” Queer stuff, huh?)

Later in the book, when Johnny is in the hospital, Ponyboy stresses again and again that he can’t think about him dying, that he can’t fathom a life without him. Everyone in the group is fond of Johnny, but Ponyboy acts like Johnny’s death would destroy him.

When Johnny is dying, he asks to see Ponyboy. His last words are to Ponyboy, despite Dally also being in the room. One of the other last things he does is write a letter to Ponyboy.

Johnny is also the first person Ponyboy runs to when his older brother hits him early in the book.

When Johnny dies, Ponyboy falls into denial, pretending and convincing himself that Johnny isn’t dead, because he couldn’t handle the grief. He says the reason that he doesn’t go insane with it, like Dally does, is because Johnny isn’t the only thing he loves.

This isn’t nearly all of it, but this post is already long as fuck, and I want to talk about some of the metaphors and symbols too.

Symbol #1: The hair

The is a more obvious one, as the author clearly intended it to be a metaphor, although probably not for something queer. When Johnny and Ponyboy go on the run after Johnny killed a Soc in self-defence, the two of them have to cut off their hair. This is obviously a big deal to them, especially Ponyboy, because they’re proud of their hair - it’s a symbol of the greasers, of rebellion, and it’s one of the last things they have that tie them with their gang back in the city. However, having Johnny and Ponyboy specifically cut off their hair feels like more of a symbol of them severing their ties to the greasers. They feel like outsiders within their own group already, and this is a way of showing that they’re leaving it behind, or starting to. (Shedding symbols of comphet, you know.)

Symbol #2: Sunrises and sunsets

Johnny, Cherry and Ponyboy, three characters who are outsiders within their own community, all spend time watching sunrises or sunsets. It’s one of the things that Ponyboy and Cherry bond over and talk about. Johnny and Ponyboy also watch a sunrise while they’re on the run. It’s a small thing that unites the three of them and becomes almost a symbol of their “otherness”, and thus, queercoding enters the chat. Also, the sunrise that Ponyboy and Johnny watch can symbolise the “beginning” of their relationship, as they start to see each other in a different light. 

Symbol #3: Gone with the Wind

When Johnny and Ponyboy are on the run, Ponyboy buys the book Gone with the Wind from a corner store. They read it together. The book is an idealised story of the southern, free, country life. Johnny makes comments about how the men in the book are charming and gallant and he admires them. The book symbolises both what Ponyboy and Johnny wish they could be, like happy and free and rich (and straight and masculine), and what they are, or what they’re starting to find with each other while in the countryside. When Johnny is in the hospital, he asks for a copy of the book to read. It’s one of his last requests. In my opinion, he asked for it both to remember Ponyboy and to escape to a reality where he wasn’t young and dying, to one where he was still with Ponyboy on the run, or one like in the book where none of this happened at all. The book is integral to their relationship.

Symbol #4: The poem

When Ponyboy and Johnny are watching the sunrise in the church, Ponyboy recites a poem by Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold,

Her early leaf’s a flower,

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

And Eden sank to grief.

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

At the time, the two of them both say that they don’t understand the poem. When Johnny dies later in the book, his last words to Ponyboy are to “stay gold”. In the letter he wrote for Ponyboy, which Ponyboy reads later, he says that he now understands the poem.

“I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid, everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.”

Oh boy, there’s a lot to say about this poem.

First of all, the poem symbolises what Ponyboy gave Johnny - a new outlook on life. A lens with which to see more beautiful things. Johnny said that he hadn’t really appreciated sunsets or clouds before Ponyboy pointed them out to him.

Secondly, the meaning of the poem. When you consider Johnny’s interpretation, also taking into account what sunsets and sunrises etc. mean in this book, it’s possible that the “gold” phase is Ponyboy’s acceptance of himself. Ponyboy loves Johnny. He knows he’s different, and while he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, he’s happy with it in his own way. He finds other people like him, queer, like Cherry and Johnny.

However, the poem’s whole meaning is that nothing gold can stay. That’s the message we’re left with, even with Johnny’s insistence of “staying gold”. It could honestly be referring to an array of things - perhaps Johnny himself, or life in general (given the amount of death in this book), or youth. Obviously, this whole post is about the queer undertones in the outsiders, so one could argue that it’s about a queer youth experience, especially in the past - finding someone like you, someone you love, but it not lasting forever, and it being especially difficult to find again, given the circumstances.

In the end, Johnny dies, but he leaves Ponyboy with all the things that remind him of him - sunsets, sunrises, Gone with the Wind, stargazing. And ultimately, I think that’s the “gold” that the book is referring to.

[wearenotasfarwest]

hey Katie! hope this isn’t too much of a bother but if you feel like answering - how did the LA Tigers characterizations most differ from the off-broadway portrayals? I know pretty much nothing about the earlier productions and wondered how certain facets of the characters changed/evolved (and I hope you’re doing well!!)

Hi, nonny! Sorry for the late response, I really wanted time to sit with the question until I felt confident that I was answering it in the most honest way I could. So let’s jump into it!

1. RIley

Callandra Olivia seemed more aware of everything than Lauren Zakrin. Like when Annleigh says “He came to propose!”, she still had the “Congratulations!”, and she started it almost as enthusiastically as Lauren, but midway through trailed off when she remembered Clark’s dead. It also felt a lot less pre-meditated. I continue to hold that she came up with the idea during Before the Breakdown to kill them, because you could just see it in her eyes. Also, Callandra was lovely and kind and passionate and... never got all of the words right. For example, in Wallflower one night she said “The type of high school girl who is rarely seen at parties with her pants off”. Also, she didn’t have a knife in the breakdown. 

2. Cairo

Wonu is wonderful, but Jade really seemed like she just... cared more? Which is interesting, because the script had more Cairo quips, but she just seemed to care more about the other girls. What comes to mind is the “God, I have done nothing with my life!” “You won a lot of dressage medals!” “I did!”. The way that line was delivered was very comforting. In my memory, Cairo even has an arm around Annleigh as she delivers it, and it wasn’t snarky at all. Cairo didn’t become the captain in LA, but it would have made so much sense with her characterization if she had. In LA, Annleigh also brought her the phone and she made the call to the police herself, which I really liked because it showed her stepping up and actively playing a part in getting things right.

3. Kate

Kate was not queercoded in LA. She wasn’t explicitly straight, but the idea that was in love with Chess didn’t even cross my mind until I saw Jenny in the role. I don’t have any specific examples of this, it just seemed less like she didn’t want Chess to leave because she was in love with her and more that she didn’t want her to leave because she had spent so long as her best friend that she didn’t know how to be herself without her.

4. Annleigh

Rachel King took things much more seriously than Kaitlyn Frank. The gesture of good will never killed anyone line was added into the workshop, so after LA but before Off-Broadway, which Rachel swooped in to save the day in, and where Kaitlyn is just so bright and sunny and whatnot, that is not the case with Rachel. Rachel said it with a completely straight face, and slowly nodded while she said ‘Jesus’, like she just really seemed to take her beliefs a lot more seriously than Kaitlyn.

5. Reese

The word that comes to mind for Gabi’s Reese is exhausted. Like, in Worst Team Ever, when Cairo stops her from entering, the line “I’m part of the team” wasn’t said with her head held high and drawing on some source of inner strength, or at least pretending to, it was more of a “We’re still going over this?”, like she actually said “C’mon, I’m part of the team.” Like she still desperately wanted to belong and fit in, but she had long since given up hope that she ever would. But also her Captain of the Team was just 10/10 god tier.

6. Eva

Eva did not make an appearance in act one of LA, which gave her a lot more distance from the events. She wasn’t a suspect, more just a bystander, which made her just 100% done with all of this nonsense. There were two lines that I felt describe this best that were cut- after Riley said “Do you really think I couldn’t replace you all with another ‘diversity scholarship’ in two seconds?” she interrupted to be like “I’m maaaaaybe a quarter Puerto Rican?” and after she plays back the confession, she was asked how long she was recording and she said “This whole time. Y’all are crazy.”

7. Chess

I actually was lucky enough to see two Chesses, Cait Fairbanks and swing Katie DeShan, and they had very different takes. Cait’s was closer to Celeste, but Katie. Oh, Katie. I could write an essay on Katie’s Chess. In all the different productions and casts I’ve seen, Katie isn’t just my favorite Chess, she’s my favorite performer from the show. She played Chess as very playful, and she smiled a lot... until Before the Breakdown, which was made so, so much sadder by the way her facade broke apart and you saw how truly deeply miserable she was and how she felt like there was nothing she could control. I had already seen the show twice by the time I saw her, and she just broken my heart so, so much even though you’d think I would be worn out because it was the third time I was seeing it in as many days,

8. Farrah

I was also lucky enough to see a second Farrah, but her characterization didn’t differ much so we don’t need to focus in one that. But up above, where I said Cairo was a lot more empathetic? Farrah was way less. I think the biggest thing for her was that the failed stunt didn’t exist, so there was no explanation for why she felt like the team wasn’t supporting her or that she would always be linked to what she already was and would never be anything better. Also, Cairo’s line Off-Broadway of “Is [Farrah] raiding Riley’s parents’ liquor cabinet again?” would actually have been based in truth if the line was there in LA because that was exactly what she was doing, she had found the alcohol in the house and was sitting on the kitchen floor, drinking it straight from the bottle.

9 & 10. Clark and Mattie

Did technically exist and that’s about all I can tell you about them because there wasn’t anything they did that stood out enough to stay with me still.

[asherisimmortal-archive]

tfatws weekly ask 5

this episode has no plot. tfatws's pacing is garbage but im here for plotless fluff and ship-building (both literal and figurative 👀)

theyre in love your honor

blood on the shield! blood on the shield! kinda wish they did more with that symbol (sam wipes it off with his hand, and in the next scene the shield is totally clean, if you're gonna be unsubtle, then start there...)

i know sam giving joaquin the falcon suit is setup for joaquin becoming the falcon in sam's place, but in context, joaquin must have been like "well great, thanks for handing me this pile of garbage sam". c'mon sam, if you're gonna give the wings to joaquin at least do it when 1) you're sure you want to give up the mantle (at this point he doesn't yet know if he wants to be captain america) and 2) the wings aren't broken so you don't seem like you're handing him a bunch of trash he has to salvage

i'm glad the writers & sam are treating isaiah with respect...to some extent. sam disagrees with him, but concedes that if he went through what isaiah went through he'd think the same thing. there's so many black characters who essentially boil down to "i'm Strong and have Morals and i'm an idealist" because if they weren't idealists they'd be too anti-establishment. the fact that sam wilson and monica rambeau are basically the same character isn't a coincidence. marvel can't center a piece of media around, for instance, an isaiah bradley, because his disillusionment is at odds with 1) the way the narrative has to go to maintain that MCU mass appeal, and 2) the nature of Marvel/Disney as a corporation itself.

i choose to believe either malcolm spellman or kari skogland moonlights as a sambucky ao3 writer

you might have noticed that sam and bucky's homoerotic tension definitely manifests differently than steve and bucky's. here's my hypothesis: steve and bucky's appearances together were inspired by war movies (ca:tfa), which shows homoerotic tension in one way, then the russos took over his franchise and made it really heterosexual, somehow steering clear of any moments that might possibly be perceived as gay (like, steve and bucky's hug in infinity war? the russos said that was because they had already seen each other beforehand. we don't get any emotional reunion because 2 men displaying emotional intimacy is gay.) with the russos, it was one of those situations where the writing heavily broadcasted that they're soulmates but the direction was to steer away from any moments that were remotely intimate. but tfatws explicitly draws on buddy cop movies, which were often intentionally queer-coded (i've watched like 2 video essays about queercoding i know what i'm talking about /s). that's how we get sam and bucky having a lot more time together in this series, getting close, and rolling around in a field like the gay idiots they are. basically, they're all gay, but at least tfatws is based in a genre that leans into the gay a bit more

i saw a post about the yellow filter in isaiah's neighborhood in ep2. i also noticed the filter this ep, but it was kinda justified this time since it was nighttime and incandescent house lightbulbs and street lamps tend to be orange

friendly reminder i love when the show is unsubtle thematically but the dialogue tends to feel less like people talking and more like getting hit in the face with a sledgehammer

one time when the lack of subtlety totally works is the racism stuff. because racism is such an uncomfortable topic for (white) families to actually talk about, it makes sense to broadcast that theme super loudly so that white families are forced to have those discussions. anthony mackie said as much about the show; we need shows that spread discussion to those that don't want to have it. the fact that we have isaiah bradley and sam wilson very explicitly talk about what it means to be Black in America is super unsubtle and that's important. isaiah's whole storyline is ripped right out of tuskegee

sarah wilson's situation is really sad. i'm pretty sure it was one of those situations where the actress said "let's make this character actually interesting" and the writers were like "great! let's ignore that". in an interview with adepero oduye (you can see here), she says the following: “Before [Malcolm Spellman and Kari Skogland] could really share much with me, I wanted to make sure that Sarah was not just there to pat a man on the back or to stroke an ego,” Oduye explained. “So I’m thankful for the space that was created. It allowed us to dive into [the Wilson family], ask questions, think about things and change things, if needed, within the dialogue to make it very clear, specific, and grounded."

sarah telling sam and bucky they were no longer needed on the ship was code for "ok boys go on your date now"

shameless extremely cheesy rocky training sequence featuring anthony mackie's extremely toned arms was almost perfect except not enough of mackie's famous thighs

so did sharon call batroc? if she did, does that mean she's working with the flag-smashers? if not, is he a double agent? for who?

i choose to believe j*hn w*lker's reunion with lemar's family is caricatured/ironic. he goes back there, straightup lies to lemar's parents about having killed his killer, and then the parents cry some and talk about how honored lemar was to be captain america's "partner". i'm not sure what exactly this is saying about the "black best friend" trope but there's no way this is happening unironically

Okay so I spent at least twenty minutes writing a response to this but I accidently deleted it and I’m too sad about it to rewrite it so I’m just going to say that I agree with everything you said 

[jcmorrigan]

In Defense of Archibald Snatcher

Oh, wow, we’re coming up on almost the sixth anniversary of The Boxtrolls, my favorite film of all time, and though the fandom for it seems to be either dead or in hibernation, I still have the torch lit.

I actually have been of the mindset of the opinion/s I’m about to present here for all those six years, but never really thought it prudent to lay them out until I recently had a friend I was recommending the film to who I warned about some of the elements considered “problematic” and I offhandedly mentioned that I could do a whole essay about why they don’t bother me and said friend replied with a desire to want to hear it because we share infodump for infodump, so here we go, I’m poking the hornet’s nest surrounding a controversial film with a dead fandom.

But if you were on Tumblr back in the heyday, you might’ve seen the reaction to this film when it first debuted. Specifically, what a lot of people honed in on wa that the villain, Archibald Snatcher, employed a dragsona to be able to push his agenda and implement his evil scheme. There was outrage. There were accusations. There was lambasting. And above it all, one question hovers: was this transphobic?

I want to start, before we get into the weeds, by saying that if you are anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and you were offended by this film or this character, your experiences are completely valid. I’m about to present the counterargument in language that assumes my take is fact for the purpose of not having to write fifty thousand clunky disclaimers, but analytical as this may be, it IS an opinion, and if you don’t think it’s right, then hey, that’s super valid, and I’m not gonna try and change your mind, because if you’re hurt, then you’re hurt! You just may want to nope out of this post right now because I’m about to lay out my observations and thoughts to the contrary of the accusations of this being homo/transphobic.

First of all, the obvious facet that comes to mind is how strange it is that we only ever saw the word “transphobia” put on this phenomenon rather than “homophobia” when using a female alter ego as a disguise or a performance art is not the same as being a woman assigned male at birth. One only needs to take a look over at RuPaul’s Drag Race to see examples of this culture. Lots of gay men wearing dresses. No women perceived male.

All the same, I will say that on the surface, adding any kind of queercoding to the story’s villain, who the audience is supposed to boo and hiss at, looks really, really bad on paper. However you interpret it, Snatcher is definitely queercoded. He openly flirts with the man he’s trying to trick as a means of getting what he wants, he displays sincere enjoyment of wearing the dress, and he runs the gamut of flamboyant hand gestures. But if you dig a little further, there’s even more to the story: his tale is one of a man who desires to pass as one of the elite class in his society, but is held back by something he can’t change about himself no matter how he denies it.

Let’s look at the rest of his story. Snatcher is in pursuit of the White Hat: the ultimate status symbol. To that end, he’s decided to otherize the Boxtroll population of the town and play upon the culture shock in Cheesebridge to convince the humans of the “upper world” that the Boxtrolls are predatory monsters who must be killed. This sounds like a pretty black-and-white good-and-evil scenario, right? You’ve got your population of innocent sweethearts being attacked and your genocidal racist orchestrating their destruction. But there’s a third layer still: Lord Portley-Rind, the chief White Hat himself. Lord PR is actually the worst of the lot. It’s because he doesn’t accept Snatcher that Snatcher feels he has to resort to this tactic. He demonstrates open hatred of the Boxtrolls and of Snatcher (”I’m not sure who should be more worried: the Boxtrolls or us!”). There are implications in how he treats his daughter that he’s a textbook sexist who believes there are men’s roles and women’s roles in society and nary the twain shall cross. And he’s the rich guy controlling the entire city and letting children’s hospitals and crumbling bridges go to waste by spending the budget on frivolous cheese. In short, Lord PR is basically the ur-example of a nightmarish fictional Republican (and oh, how I WISH he hadn’t been so prophetic).

I’m not saying Snatcher was justified or good. No. He’s in no way redeemable. But over the course of his interactions with Lord PR, you can see just how much society’s elites treat him as inhuman or like a dirty buffoon. He’s looked down upon, he’s insulted even when he’s doing the “service” Lord PR desires, he’s rejected until he’s gone above and beyond his contract and I think it’s even a little bit implied that Lord PR would’ve reneged on the whole deal if the mob hadn’t cheered for Snatcher in the end. So what you have is a prim and proper billionaire who subscribes to gender roles telling a man of the lower class, obviously economically downtrodden, that he doesn’t deserve what Lord PR has.

The idea of meritocracy is woven throughout the film. Listening to the speech in the background of Snatcher’s anaphylactic attack, while the visuals are focused on Eggs rescuing Fish, you can hear Snatcher rambling about how his father told him that if you work hard, you will receive a White Hat, but he worked hard all his life and got nothing. One of the White Hats literally says he got his through being rich. It’s not hard to infer that Snatcher has figured out how broken the system is and realized the only way to win the game is to cheat.

But there’s still one more thing holding him back from his victory, something that actually trips him up when he achieves what he wanted. Cheese is presented as another status symbol: the rich eat it and are connoisseurs of its flavor. Snatcher is deathly allergic to it. The goal he’s chasing, he can’t even have without threat to his own life. His reaction is to pretend he isn’t allergic and to expose himself to having allergic reactions on the regular to show how much he’s ready to become part of the elites. I’ll reiterate: Archibald Snatcher wants to join the elites, but is held back because of something about himself he cannot change that only matters because the upper crust said it should.

Okay. So we’ve established the man is gay, or somewhere on the queer spectrum. How is this not really, really horrible?

Because the narrative invites you to feel some sympathy for him. No, not for his actions or any secret soft side or tragic backstory (that’s a job for the fans), but because he is chasing a dream he cannot attain. Perhaps the film’s biggest shortcoming is how little consequence comes to Lord PR in the end, because Lord PR, for all intents and purposes, is the worse villain on the board. Snatcher’s ploy is to take the class below the one he inhabits and paint its members as the bad guys: a nuisance that must be exterminated for the betterment of society. And we’ve seen this. We’ve seen plenty of real-life examples of have-nots turning on have-lessers because the haves benefit from oppressed groups infighting and being distracted from who holds the money and the power. A lot of times, you see that while intersectionality is definitely something we need to pay attention to, racism, sexism, and homophobia are not concepts that are all explicitly linked. If you experience one, that doesn’t mean you don’t project one or two of the others on other people - particularly if you’re trying to make yourself feel better about the discrimination you face.

When you look at the hierarchy, Snatcher is, I reiterate, a very bad person. But he’s also a victim. Not as much of a victim as the poor Boxtrolls, who get the malice trickling down from both the Red Hats and the White Hats, but he is a victim. We see him mocked, laughed at, turned away. And though he’s not redeemable, there are aspects in which he is sympathetic.

But what about Frou Frou? What about that particular disguise?

Well, for one, it’s used to make yet another allegorical statement. Snatcher is able to get attention paid to him if he weaponizes female sexuality - though it is a very shallow attention that largely results in the straight men of the town swallowing his propaganda while also objectifying him. Most of the comments made on Frou Frou are slimy, smarmy “compliments” on her body from the White Hats. Lord PR’s wife harbors a distinct distaste for Frou Frou because her husband most certainly prefers ogling Frou Frou to actually paying attention to their marriage. Frou Frou is a propaganda vehicle to make it look like more than one person is on the same page as Snatcher; Snatcher himself drives the action of his scheme and gets the dirty work done.

It’s also worth noting that if you take away the implications, villains using alter egos to trick their nemeses is a tale as old as time, from sea witch Ursula making herself more supermodel-esque in order to marry the prince to mythological Loki actually crossdressing much in the same vein in order to fool the Frost Giants. There’s a reason disguise masters and shapeshifters are intriguing villain archetypes: because we’re always a little bit afraid that someone isn’t who they say they are, and because - yeah, I’m about to go here - I think we all wish we could shift shape ourselves to take on new forms that suit the goals we’re trying to accomplish, even if that means “fooling” others. So it’s reasonable to think Laika wasn’t aware that there was any queercoding to even be had here - but I do think the crew was aware, and not in a malicious way.

However, watching Snatcher’s scenes as Frou Frou, there’s something that comes across in his character that you don’t see so often when he’s presenting male: he’s legitimately having fun. He dances, he flirts with the crowd, he adds more flourishes to his speech, he gets sassy. Frou Frou is a means for him to express himself, to allow himself to be feminine when he has built his philosophy on needing to do “what a man does” (he repeats this at least twice) in order to achieve greatness. He can be a little more himself when he’s Frou Frou, even though Frou Frou isn’t him. Taking a new identity that’s allowed the other half of the gender roles allowed in Cheesebridge (which runs on a binary because it’s run by the White Hats) lets him act a little less like what he needs to be to be taken seriously and a little more like he has freedom.

Put this back in context of the greater narrative: given all the parallels we’ve seen, it’s safe to assume that Cheesebridge, as a whole, is not accepting of deviations from gender roles, whether it’s being open and proud of your LGBTQ+ identity or simply wearing the clothes that don’t belong to your gender. Snatcher is taking an enormous gamble here by using Frou Frou at all. On one hand, it’s a calculated risk; he knows if he can appeal to Lord PR’s unchecked sexist libido, he can secure another avenue to being heard. On the other, however, it’s not really much of a leap to say this is something he wants to do, someone he wants to be more like, and isn’t allowed to, and since he’s cheating at the game anyway, he might as well go all the way and do what he wants with his life.

I’ve seen a lot of people take issue with the scene where he reveals himself to Lord PR and comparing it to some actual homophobic/transphobic media. And again, if that still stands to you as your primary analysis and emotional reaction, then feel free to turn away, reject my analysis, and know your thoughts and feelings are completely valid. But I think this scene differs from your usual “person with male parts tricked you into thinking they were a woman” scene in a couple ways.

For one, Snatcher decides to out himself on his own. To Lord PR, it’s when he’s got nothing left to lose. Again, when he realizes the game is broken and the odds are against him, he takes control and decides to be himself a little more. Now everyone knows he likes to act a dragsona because he wanted them to. But also, earlier on, when he revealed himself to Eggs, it was again on purpose. Eggs didn’t figure him out. Snatcher needed Eggs to know the level of the threat he was dealing with: that he was the person Eggs has been running from since the start and is no less dangerous in a dress. It’s always been of his own volition. There’s no “I thought you knew” or disrobing to see a body that doesn’t match expectations - Eggs ripping Snatcher’s wig off is maybe a little iffier, but again, in context, that’s him trying to show Snatcher’s identity, not as a man but as Archibald Snatcher, to expose the corruption, and Snatcher actually plays it completely off because he’s that good of an actor.

Which brings me to my second point. There’s only one person who reacts in an “Oh, gross!” manner to this revelation, and it’s Lord Portley-Rind. The one we’ve established is sexist, homophobic, and your textbook Rich White Straight Cis Man. The one at the top of the food chain. The one who’s been objectifying Snatcher and acting like a slobbering pervert about Frou Frou from the beginning. The homophobe realizes he has been a little gay. The sexist realizes his objectifying a particular person he perceived female has consequences. And this is why to me, that scene is actually hilarious. Because I don’t feel like I’m laughing at Snatcher’s expense. I’m laughing because Lord PR just got called OUT, and this is exactly the kind of discomfort that is karmic given how he’s treated his daughter, his wife, and everyone in his city who’s needed him.

Cycling back to when Snatcher outs himself at the ball, Eggs doesn’t really seem to care that there’s a gender-role-play involved here. His concern is not that this is actually a man; his concern is that it’s specifically the person who he knows is trying to ruin everything. Same with Winnie when Eggs passes it on. Eggs trying to reveal Snatcher to the crowd doesn’t even begin with “Frou Frou is fake,” but a line I will never forget: “Archibald Snatcher has lied to you all.” Not even drawing attention yet to the fact that he’s in the room. Starting out by having everyone remember that guy they are all sure ISN’T there and pointing out he’s bad news.

To look at Lord Portley-Rind’s “Oh my God! I regret so much!” as a dig at Snatcher is to say that Lord Portley-Rind is the lens through which we should be viewing this story, which it most certainly isn’t. The lens is Eggs and Winnie. Adjacent lenses are Fish, Shoe, and Jelly. Lord Portley-Rind is an antagonist to every single character in this film save the other White Hats.

Which is why if this film falls flat anywhere, it’s in letting Lord Portley-Rind get away without consequence. I think I can take a guess as to why this primarily happened: it needed to wrap up in a little under two hours, and dismantling systematic oppression and abuse of socioeconomic power can’t be done in a two-hour escapade. I still wish he were at least villainized a little more, as that’s where the narrative was leading up to that point. One of his earliest scenes with Winnie foreshadows that he will have to choose between her and the hat, and it takes him two tries to make the right choice. This story, until the very last act, has not supported him being a character to like or sympathize with, even in such subtle ways as Trout and Pickles stealing his hat and running around with it to taunt Snatcher - showing that a symbol is really only a symbol, and doesn’t indicate your worth. Anyone can put on a hat. Lord PR has just been brought onto an equal footing with them, if only for a moment.

Okay, so why have this whole three-layer narrative anyway? Couldn’t we have made this story more clear-cut between the Boxtrolls and White Hats, with no queercoded villain to get in between?

Yes...but I’m not sure that would have been best for the viewing audience. And there’s plenty of precedent as to why Laika thought it was a move for the better.

Queercoded villains are in every aspect of our fictional and fandom lives. Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: all your favorite Disney villains are queercoded. All of them. “But Frollo’s arc is about - “ Being a man in a religious system afraid of being tainted as sinful for being attracted to the wrong person. “Gaston, though, is - “ Very chummy with LeFou, and I’m talking the animated versions. They’re all colorful, flamboyant, foppish for the men and full of socially-unacceptable strength for the women. These were the cornerstones of our childhood nostalgia and characters we still feel culturally attached to.

It’s not just in Disney. Are you a fan of musical theater? Well, then your favorite villain probably got a big song and dance in which they wore some glitter. Classic lit? Google the name of your favorite literary canon villain and “queer theory” and see what happens.

I don’t think we can really say this is good or bad. On one hand, it’s not great that a marginalized group can only see themselves in the character we’re supposed to hate. On the other, though, we don’t always hate that character. Villains hold a unique place in our culture. They do bad things, horrible things, but the story can’t take place without a conflict, and we like when that conflict has a name and a cool design such as a tall, imposing sorcerer/witch in flowing robes - or perhaps a tall, graceful man in a long red coat and a towering crooked top hat.

I’ve had lots of friends and trusted Internet reviewers talking about how queercoding in villains can actually be really empowering. If you’re a fan of the villain, you get to see a power fantasy in which someone who has something very big in common with you gets to enact karma on others for wronging them! You get to wear the cool robes, sing the fun song, do things that are not really legal or acceptable! I think a great analogy is if you check out the book “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” by Sady Doyle. It’s primarily about sexism rather than queer issues (though it does touch upon them!), but examines how women throughout pop culture and storytelling history have always been the witch, the monster, the demon, and how that sucks, but it also means that women have a great pile of fictional power fantasies to pick from to indulge in. It’s the same principle. I myself may not be same-gender-attracted, but I am asexual, and still waiting on my glamorous villain who uproots society as revenge for being forced to do something analogous to having a sexual relationship...*taps wristwatch*

Meanwhile, queercoding is not as prevalent in heroes. And I think that’s where everything’s tripping on its own feet. Because a gay villain among a bunch of straight heroes does look pretty bad. Are some of the heroes queercoded as well, though? Well, that’s just realistic diversity. People are gay, and there happen to be some good ones and some evil ones here. I don’t think Snatcher’s dragsona is entirely unproblematic, but I do think it could have been mitigated a lot with more implications that Eggs and Winnie might be queer in some way (and believe me, I choose to interpret them that way, because the more the merrier).

The thing is that in pop culture as of late, there seems to be a trend to scrub away all villainous queercoding because it’s seen as a black-and-white issue. To go back to the Disney villains, do you feel like the live-action recreations of Jafar, Scar, and Gaston are missing a certain je ne sais quoi? Well, think about it through this lens and it might be that you savez quoi after all. They’ve all been made incredibly straight as of late, with off-the-record actor confirmations about having obsessive crushes on the film heroines. I can’t speak to why this has happened; there’s a lot of history behind any given social movement, and I haven’t managed to really unpack this one. “Blame Tumblr” is too easy; I would want to know who were the loudest voices, why they said what they said, and what was the intended accomplishment, not to mention if this had built on other social-media or real-life platforms over the years and was influenced by any outside source by news or marketing. I can’t say why queercoded villains are being burned; I can only say it’s happening. And it was happening big-time in 2014, when The Boxtrolls was released.

I also feel like I would be remiss to mention that The Boxtrolls is based on “Here Be Monsters,” which I believe to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read, bar none. That version of the story has...pretty much everything that’s perceived to be in the film version’s text as problematic. Frou Frou is presented as something to laugh at Snatcher about throughout, largely because everything about Snatcher is presented to make him seem gross or like a buffoon. There’s a whole scene of the hero rifling through his desk to find soiled underwear. Not to mention that the original purpose of Frou Frou in the text was to manipulate the town’s women by dictating the fashion trends they should follow and the beliefs they should hold in order to fit in. This is something that does need commentary on it, but in that text in particular, it seems like the women are silly and easily swayed, and that they’re the town’s weak link because they’re slaves to fashion. The Boxtrolls completely flips this around so that the town’s weak link re: Frou Frou is the rich MEN who objectify women, particularly the men that happen to be in charge of the whole town, and looking at that divide alone tells me how much care was put into this adaptation at every level.

So why’d I do this, besides having a friend who wanted to read it? Because Archibald Snatcher is legitimately one of my favorite fictional characters. Yeah, I know, he’s a horrible person and terribly racist, and no, I don’t think his demonizing an entire people is anything to be emulated. But on one hand, there are places where I not only empathize but identify with him, particularly where it comes to living out the majority of one’s life trying to live up to a meritocracy - I did everything right, so why am I not on top? He’s also just fun and satisfying to me. He’s the exact brand of evil I eat up. He’s quippy, flamboyant, sadistic to a point, and altogether enjoying his job way too much. Even though he isn’t in power all that long, he is a power fantasy for me, too - wishing I had his talent to talk my way into others’ hearts by saying the right thing, and maybe cultivating a little bit of that I didn’t realize I had (but not to use for evil purposes). I loved him from the moment he turned up because of his sheer dynamic presence - his drawn-out vowels, his sinister smile, his silver-tongued manipulations - and to this day I find him an inspiring character when it comes to writing fiction, both in the realms of fanfiction and original villain creation. You could say he’s a comfort character to me. And maybe this has been the delusional rambling of a woman trying to protect a character she likes for surface reasons by spelling out what look like analytical points of discussion.

But I don’t think Laika was trying to be mean-spirited or homo/transphobic in their character creation. I think they were trying to make an engaging villain who had some layers you could pick at to see more about the narrative as a whole and the message of societal corruption and how the way to overcome it is to be true to yourself rather than defined by your status: a lesson Snatcher fails at the finish line when Eggs gives him one last chance to “make you.” And ultimately, if you really and truly did like Archibald Snatcher, you’re not wrong or invalid in the least.

[samclownchester]

Supernatural Rewatch 01x10

Asylum 

(Next Episode | Masterlist | Previous Episode)

(Not spoiler free, I’ve watched up to 15x13)

More John and Chuck Parallels, I guess I am going to have to write this essay after all

SAM: You know, he could be dead for all we know.

DEAN: Don't say that! He's not dead! He's – he's...

SAM: He's what? He's hiding? He's busy?

I’m not going to get too deep into it here. I’ll just file away some of what happened in this episode and bring it up later, but this does remind me a lot of conversations they have about God before they know he’s Chuck. Once again, with the role reversal, Dean assuming the worst, that God has abandoned them, and Sam stubbornly arguing that God must be watching, must be involved (still bitter that the faith Sam had for so many nears turned out to be for naught but anyway ... that’s for episode 12)

Alright, so the main conflict in this episode is the tension that has started building between the brothers, they’ve been having arguments about their dad through almost all the episodes, but this one really brings out the frustration Sam is feeling with Dean. Dean, as an older brother (and as a type 8) is used to being in charge. Sam normally goes along with this, but in this episode he’s tired of always doing what Dean wants. Now, obviously this is part of a very long arc in their relationship, and I’m not even going to scratch the surface right now, but it will be interesting to track how this progresses throughout the series, because at some point Sam stops pushing back against Dean so much, as I have mentioned in my previous rewatch summaries. (I’m still curious to figure out exactly when he started feeling like following was easier than leading)

But, focusing less on the 15 seasons show and more on what’s specifically happening in this episode:

Firstly, we see that Dean and Sam are still uncomfortable with Sam’s visions. Dean teases him about it, but the teasing seems to really bother Sam.  Dean kinda seems like he’s acting like his typical big brother self, teasing Sam, but when Sam tries to seriously explain what his “powers” are like, Dean brushes it off saying “Whatever, don’t ask don’t tell.” (Reference to Homosexuality; when I say that Sam’s powers are an analogy for being queer … ), Dean acts like he doesn’t want to hear about them being talked about seriously, and then couple of lines later teases Sam with another “psychic” joke. This doesn’t come up when Sam lets out his anger later in the episode, but this has to be wearing on him, that Dean is poking fun at something that is really serious to him, but won’t have a real conversation about it.

DEAN: Let me know if you see any dead people, Haley Joel.

SAM: Dude, enough.

DEAN: I'm serious. You gotta be careful, all right? Ghosts are attracted to that whole ESP thing you got going on.

SAM: I told you, it's not ESP! I just have strange vibes sometimes. Weird dreams.

DEAN: Yeah, whatever. Don't ask, don't tell. (File under queercoded Sam Winchester – we’ll get back to that later)

…

DEAN: Hey Sam, who do you think is the hotter psychic: Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt, or you?

 Now, the early seasons of Supernatural often used this idea of possession/supernatural influence forcing the brothers to reveal their issues to each other. We saw a little of Dean’s inner thoughts in “Skin” and in this episode we see Sam, who’s rage has been accentuated by the spirit they are fighting, attacking Dean for the blind trust he puts in John.

DEAN: Sam, put the gun down.

SAM: Is that an order?

DEAN: Nah, it's more of a friendly request.

SAM: ’Cause I'm getting pretty tired of taking your orders.

DEAN: I knew it. Ellicott did something to you.

SAM: For once in your life, just shut your mouth.

DEAN: What are you gonna do, Sam? Gun's filled with rock salt. It's not gonna kill me.

SAM: No. But it will hurt like hell.

DEAN: We gotta burn Ellicott's bones and all this will be over, and you'll be back to normal.

SAM: I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? ’Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?

DEAN: This isn't you talking, Sam.

SAM: That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I'm not pathetic, like you.

Earlier in the episode Sam made a comment about following “Dad’s orders” but now that he’s had his inhibitions stripped, we can see how much animosity he’s been hiding. Sam will normally choose to be passive, to let people like Dean and John take the lead. Like Dean said in 1x02, Sam is normally not the belligerent one, but we are being introduced to him when he’s been pushed really far emotionally. He is done taking orders from a dad who never understood him, and he’s done with Dean’s blind faith that he doesn’t understand.

So, nothing really revelatory character-wise but definitely an interesting episode

[arofili]

Just curious what your point is then, (in that post about Good Omens rep) that you think the person who replied was missing? Because my own "no, not like that!" about the supposed lgbtq rep in Good Omens is precisely what I think they were getting at too: none of it is truly explicit, and i see no proof of intent in crafting it from Gaiman or anyone else officially creating for the show, and Gaiman himself sees it as just one way to interpret the text.

hey! thanks for being polite :) i may not have been as clear as i thought i was, lol.

from what i’ve seen there’s been no shying away from the “homoerotic” (for lack of a better term) tension between C&A, not from the actors or from neilman? i have seen gifs of tennant and sheen talking about C&A as a couple (i may be misremembering! but that was the impression i got) and neilman’s affirmation of queer interpretations since before the tv show was in the making is proof of intent to me, at least.

(side note: whatever sheen and tennant were acting, i don’t think that in and of itself is makes the rep canon...it’s about as canon as the hobbit fandom seems to think bagginshield is, lmao, which is to say “better than nothing but still not much”)

i’m not super plugged in to twitter, but neilman’s acceptance of everyone’s interpretations to me says: “yes, i am fully aware this reads as very queer; we may not have intended that when writing the book but we knew about it coming into the show and deliberately included it; however it would be inappropriate to claim that we planned this when writing the book and want to remain faithful to that aspect.”

Basically, he is doing the inverse of a JKR: not claiming retconned representation but actively encouraging queer interpretations. that doesn’t mean he’s going to dunk on people who see them as straight (though interpreting them as straight is...Beyond Me) because he’s not, idk, an Asshole,

i think neilman patting himself on the back in his responses to thanks from queer viewers is...egregious, tbh. but the backlash i’m seeing, claiming C&A as queerbaiting and neilman as homophobic, is fucking Always in response to him endorsing an a-spectrum reading of C&A’s relationship. some folks just Dont Want Aces And Aros To Have Nice Things!

looking at their relationship, i cannot say it is anything other than queer. the specifics of that queerness are left up to interpretation, but it is so fucking queer. and yes! explicit queer rep is good and important! but queer vagueness can be good representation too. that’s what i think this is, queer vagueness, not queerbaiting.

i find comfort in vague queerness, and queercoding too to some extent. as an aromantic asexual nonbinary person, the odds of me getting something to represent me in all those areas is Extremely Unlikely, so instead i cling to “vague” representation and implications.

it’s rare that i see queer vagueness done intentionally like it is in Good Omens; usually i end up projecting onto characters like Legolas or Luke Skywalker &etc that are also easily interpreted as gay but not written that way on purpose. (which is another tangential subject i have a Lot of opinions on, but let’s stay in our lane why don’t we)

i think we’ve focused so much on explicit queer rep (which again! is a good thing!) that we ignored characters and relationships that fall into gray spaces that are still very much nonnormative. those are good too, those are wide-reaching and provide ground for transformative works, those are also wonderful places for questioning people to experiment.

representation shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. we should have lots of options. i see now, after writing this mini essay, that i jumped into that post with the idea that it was obvious that there’s more to representation than labels, but it isn’t obvious, and i hope my explanation makes sense.

also: there is ample canon evidence (within the book) for queerness on the part of C&A. aziraphale intentionally presents in a way that aligns himself with the gay community; angels and demons don’t have sex or gender unless they are really trying; the lack of sexual feelings is apparent and imo if you’re going to interpret their relationship as romantic (which is cool, even if it’s not my personal headcanon) you have to acknowledge that this is the only time either of them have had this experience (making them arospec)

ignoring all those things and getting mad about them not kissing is reductive of the queer experience. not every kind of queer is gay. nonbinary, ace, and arospec representation is queer representation. and there is more to any queer identity than just kissing; queer is identity and rebellion and community and self-expression and refusing to fit into the norm, all things that both crowley and aziraphale represent and embody. that in itself is (vague) queer representation, outside of their relationship.

i’ve written too many words and need to focus on the actual essay i have to turn in for class tomorrow, but i hope this makes sense!

[book-obsessedtomboy]

I’m like, thinking about things tonight, idk. I’m tired and I spent too long typing this up and it probably isn’t coherent but it’s not like I’m trying to publish an academic essay on this shit right this second so, whatever.

Thinking about my draw to villains that have redemption arcs (kinda)

The most straightforward, of course, is Ken Ichi/jouji. He’s literally The Worst TM and then he realizes the truth of it all and everything comes crashing down around him and he’s wracked with guilt and doesn’t even want to be redeemed because he feels he doesn’t deserve it, and he manages to fight for good until the end. There was also a bunch of stuff that is emphatically not actually his fault which he still feels immense guilt for, and combined with the parental pressure and expectations of being a brilliant child it’s all a little too #relatable for me. 

There’s then the seeming reverse--Sayaka Miki. A crusader for justice who takes it a little too far, goes through a shitton that makes her doubt everything she believed in, ends up falling into despair and wrecking so much in the process. But in Rebellion, she’s back, and considering her as she is there...as Madoka’s fronting warrior, she’s basically an Archangel Michael equivalent. A fallen angel becomes the right hand of God, is how I’ve put it in the past. But also, that whole falling into despair thing, super #relatable. I watched the series in full around the time of my first full-blown depressive episode and man did I identify with her.  

MCU’s Loki has been stanned to hell and back, but like, trickster archetypes are my jam, he is emotionally damaged but it’s not an excuse for how half the time he’s a flaming asshole, but ultimately, even if it takes a lot of shoving, he does what’s right. He’s that grumpy former enemy who becomes a reluctant part of the team and all. Not quite as #relatable, but that sweet, sweet queercoding sure is a draw. 

There’s one other particular character I’m thinking of but then you’d all know one of my guilty pleasure animes. Mainly unsavory due to elements of the fandom, which is why I don’t actively participate in it here or anything. One of my friends in real life reacted with derision when he caught sight of it in my history, however, so I’m keeping hush about it. Maybe someday...

I’ve been sticking to anime/mainstream movies because those are more widespread than particular books I’ve read over the years and all. But like, I recently reread for the first time this novel I initially read in middle school or something? Anyways it’s cute for me, because it’s this ‘evil’ dragon child, and a girl who’s a liar and a thief, and they have to team up to save the dragon’s mom and like it’s wholesome okay, it’s two people who are absolutely not heroes being not quite heroic and I’d rec it as a lighthearted fantasy read if I didn’t know it was very hard to find copies of nowadays. 

I SWEAR I HAD A POINT IN THIS. 

I guess...I’ve been told over the years, by various people in various ways, mostly indirect but still harmful, that I’m bad. I’m a shitty human. Whether it’s because I’m lazy, or mentally ill, or queer, or whatever else. And whether or not it’s actually true, it feels like it is. I’m a rotten person in need of redemption but I’m not worthy of it anyways, so why do I try? 

These sorts of ‘villains,’ I think, give me hope. We are all a mix of traits, and while some of those are good or bad, most are neutral and circumstantial, and...and even the worst of us can end up doing good. It’s not an excuse for people who are willfully evil or anything, I’m not saying that. I don’t condone villainous actions. I just...think that lots of us feel like we’re the bad guys, for whatever reason, whatever we’ve been told, and it isn’t true. And even if we’ve done bad, the average person isn’t like downright evil, we are capable of bringing light to this world instead of darkness, doing help instead of harm. 

I don’t know. I’ve noticed, in my own writing, that most of my characters are not traditionally heroic in any fashion. Some are angry, some are bitter, some are on the wrong side of conflicts or doing bad things on purpose, for their survival or even for profit. The character I’ve had the longest and loved the most over many many years, she pushes her newfound best friend off a cliff, for fuck’s sake. It isn’t done out of malicious intent--it’s to get the friend’s wings working, but like, damn, that is not an appropriate way to go about it. If I start talking more about that character I’ll never stop, though, so...

TL;DR: HI VILLAINS REDEEMING THEMSELVES IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME BECAUSE IT REMINDS ME THAT EVEN THOUGH I, TOO, MAY SUCK, I CAN DO GOOD IN THIS WORLD, AND EVERYONE IS A MIX OF ALL SORTS OF STUFF, AND DAMMIT, WE CAN CHANGE AND WE CAN IMPROVE BEYOND OUR WILDEST IMAGININGS. 

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk. 

[jcmorrigan]

D, L, N

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t (again: be nice)

The one that comes to mind, I don’t really wish I had instead of my OTP, but...sometimes I feel like the fact that I’m not into PSIC means there’s something wrong with me. Because I’m always about “SHIP TOGETHER THE TWO BEST ROGUES IN THE GALLERY EVEN IF THEY’VE NEVER MET!” Roman and Neo *are* my two favorite rogues in the gallery, and yet...when other people decided it should happen, I wasn’t down. I was doing gay crossover things. It made me wonder, actually, if some of my ship taste is legitimate, or if I can only like “hipster” ships or mlm villain ships (which I have enough evidence to the contrary of, but still, things get to me). Also, PSIC is the entirety of the Roman Torchwick tag right now. And sometimes I think it’d just be easier if I shipped that, because I’d fit in, I’d have a constant stream of nice content, and I would be secure in my brand. But...that would mean no more RedHatBlackHat, and that thought alone makes me so very sad. I can accept that both are valid, and if you’re my ONE friend who OT3′s them occasionally (you know who you are) then I eat that shit up when you write it, and I really don’t fault anyone for liking PSIC, but...it’s just not for me, and that makes me worry about my taste and why I’m *not* into it. But...I think I actually figured this answer out, a while back? Hopefully. It’s that...much as I love the fantasy of partners in crime, given the long and tragic history these two particular criminals have together, what I love MORE is the idea of a guy-girl friendship that stuck together without a romantic or sexual incentive. They were pals whose platonic love got them through the tough times. It’s that old cliché about women feeling like every guy’s about to get them, but sometimes I do feel like cishet men are Not To Be Trusted because of how they’ve been socialized, so for me, Roman and Neo represent “If I were in Neo’s shoes, he’d treat me like a brother would his sister with no lewd comments, no come-ons, no pressure to turn the relationship into anything - just friendship and breaking the law.” So I think that explains it. Still, I’d...love to be able to find a steady stream of Roman content again, and it’s all PSIC now. So sometimes I am tempted to wonder what it would be like if I could just...ship it instead.

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves (chars you’re neutral on are fair game, as are chars you dislike)

Master Eraqus has a really neat design, and there’s an alternate universe in which I simp. That hair, y’all. Mark did a bang-up job delivering his lines, and his boss battle gives him some really neat powers that worldbuild on the idea of what a true Keyblade Master should be able to do perhaps better than any other mention of the topic in the series.

Now don’t ever make me do that again

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Gen/non-ship art or headcanons of Roman Torchwick. Content of Archibald Snatcher that isn’t ship-related OR about how people were offended by him (and if you were, that’s fine, but can the people who liked him please stand up? I have an essay about why I don’t even think his queercoding was that bad in the first place and yeah). CROSSOVER SHIPPING EVERYWHERE, MORE DIVERSELY, EVEN IN FANDOMS WHERE I DON’T GO.