#yellow and blue queer coding in media

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So we have Eddie in Yellow (and brown) check

but also Eddie in Blue check (carrying a tan binder that is yellow coded)

And we also have Eddie in denim (blue) selling his Denali!!!!

So we’re getting Eddie in Bucks blue - which means we have Eddie possibly paralleling s4 Buck - who wore a lot of yellow - Eddie Yellow - and we know S4 was supposed to be the start of Buddie canon…

Plus Eddie selling the Denali (to get some fast cash!) - maybe my joke about the Denali representing being in denial wasn’t such an outlandish concept after all - Eddie selling his denial etc etc!!

Honestly Costume team I am sending you all the gift baskets for all the parallels you are giving me here with the blue and the denim, and all the check pattern theory that never fails me!!

I dreamed of this day - but never imagined I would win so big! @lover-of-mine will be dancing on the ceiling and screaming about yellow and blue colour theory forever

[lover-of-mine]

what's the chance they're doing blue and orange instead of blue and yellow for buddie?

orange is the opposite of blue in the color wheel and eddie has been in orange quite a bit recently

The blue and yellow is established as a queer thing in media in general, not just 911, recent examples include xo kitty, red white and royal blue, love simon, even random silly movies like crush (2022). Even glee has stuff like this, with klaine's proposal being blue and yellow to name one example.

In universe, both henren and tarlos have blue and yellow scenes.

Buck's bi arc is blue and yellow.

Eddie's season 5 arc is yellow coded, I wrote a post on that here.

Same with his arc this season, breakdown on 8a here.

Buddie has blue and yellow coding since Eddie's introduction.

Going back to actually being in blue and yellow in what is arguably the most important scene for their relationship, the will reveal.

They are also blue and yellow for the couch theory talk.

And the coming out scene is blue and yellow.

The orange is one of the colors of the season, along with the blue, if you pay attention it's being used a lot, it's being used to indicate major character moments. The most obvious example for me is 805, because Halloween allowed them to go pumpkin crazy, and the way that Buck and Hen have orange on and around them a lot.

Eddie was in blue and yellow for his 2 part confession in 806. And the yellow shirt is the same from the couch theory talk.

Eddie's house in Texas was blue and yellow, 812 is fully blue and yellow.

The yellow has been incredibly present with Eddie. The orange is not about this.

[basicallymikewheeler]

Byler has some of the most obvious colour coding ive seen, like ever in teenage-adult media.

and one of the scenes that feels like they are dangling them right infront of them

okay so, mike = blue and will = yellow, we all know this. and the two times they were wearing eachothers colours simultaneously, they fought.

rain scene:

and the other time being what im talking about rn, is the rinko mania fight.

as the fight begins, we can see the obvious blue and yellow lights in the background, which are also accompied by pink/purple colours (els typical colour that she is coded with)

i think this scene was a bit of mixed perspective of both will and mike, so im going to talk about it like its from both their povs

It feels like the yellow and blue lights are further down on the wall, almost like they are making their way up into both of their thoughts. But they are still worried about eleven, so her thoughts stay above

and here, we see all three colours in wills frame. like hes still worried about his sister, but also the flaming hot garbage can of a friendship both he and mike have

also to mention- contrast - as the scene progressed the blue and yellow stop fading together on their faces, they start to contrast, symbolising the clash of characters

and then we switch to mike, who is quite literally ALLL blue and yellow. after will brought up their relationship, its all hes thinking about. all hes concerned about. and he clearly doesnt like the thoughts hes having because he become quick to be defensive, “WE’RE FRIENDS…. we’re friends.”

and when will follows up with “well we used to be BEST friends,” mike suddenly retracts, realising hes overthinking it, and will is being purely platonic. realising that he had those thoughts that will was talking about a friendship. and that he shouldnt have thought like that. WHICH TO IMMDEIATLY FOLLOW THAT FUCKINNNNG CONVERSATION

AS SOON AS HE STARTS TALKING AGAIN:

A STRANGER THINGS CUSTOM SONG CALLED “IN THE CLOSET” starts playing. (a double meaning song cus el is literally in the closet as they’re arguing.)

and then mike gets defensive, taking the blame of these queer thoughts off himself.

then after his defensive outburst, he feels guilty. And his mind goes immediately back to el. “lets just find el”

and then theres this frame that i dont even have to fucking say anything cus wtf

[fgmetanoia]

💙💛 Blue and yellow: a study in media's mlm couples' color-coding 💛💙

So, since I've apparently lost all ability to write an introduction, we're gonna do without.

Let me just say, originally this was much shorter and then somehow it became a monster, I'M SORRY.

* sigh * I'm an overthinker, I can't take absolutely ANYTHING easy. Enjoy.

Quick disclaimer before starting: what follows absolutely doesn't claim to be a theory. It's more just like me trying to put some pieces together and see if something coherent comes out of it. So don't expect many deep thoughts in here, but any contribution is more than welcomed.

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Okay so, let's get started.

In the last few years, explicitly queer couples have increased in the media and I've started noticing a recurrent theme in their color-coding (I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I never saw anyone talking about it so... Sorry if I say banal stuff)

We all know about the blue and yellow deal:

Mike and Will, Simon and Wille (technically Simon is dressed in purple half of the time, but let's just ignore that for now), Nick and Charlie.

I know that these are just three cases, but I tend to notice patterns when they're there, and THREE times in THREE major queer Netflix show is enough of a pattern for me.

Plus, these are just some of the most famous ones, I'm sure there are more (feel free to add them in the tags).

Firstly, let's note how the yellow character is almost always 'the gay one' (horrible saying, sorry, but I don't know how else to put it) usually also out, or somehow the most notably queer one of the two, and somehow the most "innocent", pure of heart and/or idealistic.

While the blue one is usually bisexual and either not out yet for various reasons or in denial of their own sexuality (at least at the beginning of the story).

Jumping from one thing to another and at the cost of sounding super obvious, in color theory if you put yellow and blue together, you'll get green.

It's kind of obvious how in these shows they use green to symbolize the connection and attunement of these characters, with the most obvious one being Nick's green sweater (you know which one, I'd put a picture but tumblr has a limit), but when he and Charlie are in Paris in S2 they're also often dressed in green.

Plus, even if Simon and Wille are a little bit different (we'll see them later), they're also dressed in green to symbolize attunement and/or longing.

And don't even get me started on Mike being constantly dressed in green in S1 after Will goes missing...

So, yellow + blue = green. Green is a thing, right?

Now, I'm not an expert in any way when it comes to queer culture and historical coding, but I know that in 1800s queer men used to signal each other by wearing green flowers. Oscar Wilde himself used to do that if I'm not mistaken. It could be the origin behind this trope...?

This is stupid, I’m just babbling and it probably means nothing? Yes, absolutely, let's move on.

Let's instead indulge some more in symbolism and color psychology, because why not.

As you can see from this ugly but crystal clear infographic I found on Pinterest, yellow is usually a color associated with fun, optimism, happiness and whatnot.

On the other hand blue symbolizes trust, reliability, security, etc.

I don't know if everyone can see what I'm trying to underline, but I work in marketing and these are very common codes used by brands too.

Like, just pick the first 'yellow brand' you can think of and compare it to a blue one. It's always a matter of happy vs reliable. Here, let me visualize it for you:

Now, back to our shows, these associations are perfectly in line with our characters:

Will is described as a sensitive boy. He's gentle, artsy, warm and before the traumatic events of S1 we can presume he has an enthusiastic and happy personality. On the other hand, Mike is much more grumpy, but he's a leader, he's trustworthy and (except for when he's busy sticking his head up his ass for his own reason denying his own queerness) he's a safe person and reliable.

In the same way, Charlie is portrayed as soft, innocent, happy and bubbly but not in a exuberant or overabundant way. Nick on the other hand, is somehow the pillar of the two, in S1 he's the one that steps up to protect Charlie from Ben. He's the leader of the rugby team, and before he dumps them, of his friend group too.

Simon and Wille in my opinion are more complicated: for one thing, there is the color metaphor. As I anticipated, we don't only see them coded in yellow and blue (+ green) like the other characters. They often wear purple and orange too. But the reliable vs carefree metaphor sticks here too: Wille represents monarchy - steady, reliable, leader... Blue - while Simon is a queer artist - he's an idealist, carefree (debateble, but surely more free than Wille) and unapologetically himself -. On a side note, I find it interesting that they resolved them and closed S3 with white, as if to symbolize a clean canva, a new start. They could've more easily gone with green again, but they chose white.

Where am I going with this, you'll ask. I don't have the slightest idea, okay? At this point I'm just rambling.

But let's take some time to analyze them better.

Mike and Will

Despite the fact that Stranger Things is a horror/sci-fi TV show, Mike and Will's arc is all about coming to terms with themselves and living a life true to their nature. It's a common theme in the show, really. Nancy talks about it ("My mom was young. My dad was older, but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So they bought a nice house at the end of the cul-de-sac and started their nuclear family. [...] Screw that."), Jonathan talks about it ("Do you wanna be normal? Do you wanna be just like everyone else? Being a freak is the best. I'm a freak") and there are characters whose entire existence's point is only to show that (Eddie and Argyle just to mention two).

Out of the two, it's Will the first one who comes to terms with himself and accepts himself (at least at some level).

Mike on the contrary, stays longer in denial of his own sexuality and is not only scared of it, but a victim of heteronormativity, to the point that he attacks Will when he tries to get his attention and away from El in S3 ("It's not my fault that you don't like girls").

Hopefully, in S5 they'll get together and their arc will be completed, with Will who overcomes the shame put there by his father and Mike who get some unconditional love (finally) and learns to be his true self despite of what other people think.

Simon and Wille

Now, young royals is a different story from Stranger Things. This show is a whole campaign against monarchy and, honestly, ALL kinds of systems that (on various levels) cage people and force them to live inside the closet certain lines and behavioral rules (celebrity industry? Nope? Okay).

Simon is free, he accepts himself and his only problems, before Wille, are about his family and being marginalized in a rich-kids school because he's poor.

Wille on the contrary arrives at Hillerska without knowing a damn thing about himself. He's angry and caged by the crown's rules about clean image and whatnot, which only makes him more angry.

When he clicks with Simon he has some difficulty to accept himself at the beginning, but quickly overcomes that and the whole damn problem from that moment until the very end of the show are caused by his public image and the control the crown has over it.

The whole point of this story, in brief, is for Wille to free himself of the chains of royalty and his public image.

Nick and Charlie

Once again, Charlie is the first one to come out (and he gets bullied and marginalized because of it, like it happened to Will and possibly to Simon too?) while Nick doesn't know he is bisexual until he meets Charlie and starts liking him.

Despite the fact that queerness is at the very center of this show, though, coming to term with it is not an issue here. Nick accepts himself almost immediately and no main character is a dick about it (his father and brother are not relevant enough for the purposes of this post, because homophobia is not the enemy in Heartstopper, fear is).

The actual thing to overcome here is identity. Nick could've lived a perfect straight life, never knowing he is bisexual (unless something else happened, but that's beside the point), but would've it been a truthful life? No. He would've lived lying to himself without even knowing it.

Meeting Charlie and falling in love with him frees nick of the chains of his straight identity, allowing him to discover a whole new side of himself.

So, let's recap it quickly: yellow character is optimistic and carefree, he knows and accept himself, while blue character, the reliable leader, discovers some queerness inside of himself thanks to yellow character and proceeds to be a little bit in denial of it before overcoming it and becoming his true self, completing his arc.

At the end they both free themselves of their own chains.

All of these three stories are about getting free from chains (societal chains in ST, system chains in YR, and identity chains in HS) and live truthfully.

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So, there's that. And like, I'm not saying it's EVERYWHERE but it's definitely something.

Just to quote some other tangential (and potential?) couples that don't completely fit in the previous scheme, Steve and Eddie are yellow and blue too:

In s4 Steve has a yellow sweater and Eddie has his jeans vest (blue). A reach? Yeah probably. Especially if you consider that Steve is the grumpy one out of the two, he's the leader and the protector, while Eddie is the Jester, the funny one, happier and artsy of the two. Yes, yes, I know, they're switched. It's the reason why I didn't include them above, but still...

In The Song of Achilles there are no color mentioned that I remember, but somehow certain versions of the cover are blue and gold. Coincidence? Probably. And yet we have another mlm couple associated with yellow and blue:

And honestly, I've always headcanoned Achilles as the yellow/golden character because of his appearance and Patroclus as the blue one because of his personality.

If they'll ever make a movie/TV show adaptation I'll bet my left asscheek that they're going to be color-coded like that.

And again, in Call Me By Your Name (book) the only colors mentioned are the ones of Oliver's swimsuits (4 colors: red, yellow, green and blue, with the attention put on the red and blue ones). And YET the cover of the movie looks like this:

Let's close with a Waterparks quote, because a touch of emo is always a good idea

I'm color-coding my moods, you're yellow, I'm natural blue

Let's get together and be green like my insides

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, as you can see this is less then half-baked, and I've probably only discovered hot water [do English speakers say that? I don't know, it's an Italian way of saying that means you've pointed out something obvious] but I can see a pattern. These are all mlm couples with a repetitive scheme-color, similar narrative arcs, and all these media pieces came out in or after 2017 or so.

I have the feeling that this is something.

I'm very curious to hear other people's thoughts on this, especially if you think this is a bunch of bullshit, debunk the shit out of me, I'll appreciate it 🙏 thank you

[respectthepetty]

Have you ever saw a couple with an odd color match in a bl?

For example a pink x green. I mean these colors are a match in color theory and I would think they Make a good contrast when we talk about people (pink being more romantic and daydreaming while green may be someone more mature and down to earth) but we it's something rare to see?

@brazilian-whalien52, to answer your question before I mention a whole bunch of other stuff . . .

TLWR: I don't find any color-coded pair really odd if it's two different colors. I like the diversity of color coding and the stories the colors tell. The only thing I find odd is when colors are the same since that goes against the norm regarding romantic pairings, which isn't a bad thing.

I like that your example of an odd couple was pink x green, only because that coloring is reserved for friendships and family connections.

I would love to see a romantic pair color coded that way because I like different colors getting paired up, but secretly, I'm always rooting for the Purple Pretties x Brown Beauties since one is extravagant and the other is down-to-earth.

We've only gotten one pair with this actual color coding, and I desperately want more.

Which is why I'm thrilled I'm getting a new color coded pair in Wandee Goodday!

But the couples I find odd in regards to color coding are the couples with the same color (Tharn x Phaya are NOT the same color).

Quick color terms:

Hue - The main color

Tone - When grey is added to the main color

Shade - When black is added to the main color

Tint - When white is added to the main color

Visual media tells us those who share the same color are too similar to work out romantically.

So whenever I get a romantic couple who shares the same color, I get confused. For example, before the yellow was introduced in La Pluie, Tai was light blue and Phat was dark blue.

One was usually neutral blue (the main color), and the other was either a tint (white added to it - Tai) or a shade (black added to it - Phat).

So theirs really should have been a story about how even though they were soulmates, they wouldn't work romantically because they were too similar.

The same for Secret Crush on You's Sky and Jao.

Pink is not a separate color on the Color Wheel. Violet is, which is a third-level color mixed between red and purple, but pink is really a tint of red (red with white added to it).

So Jao and Sky were essentially the same color.

Which is different from Kiseki: Dear to Me's Eddie x Chen Yi who didn't have a specific color assigned to them, but just simply matched colors.

Honestly, I like when couples match colors, clothing, accessories, y todo. It's very Midwestern-family vacation vibes.

Like nothing says "we are a couple" more than matching colors, matching dog tags, and matching body pillows, you know?

As an aside: Color coding makes me really reflect on the story and what it is trying to say. For instance, I, a bisexual, am very against bi-colored characters because I want them to pick one color, but isn't the whole point of a bi-colored character is that they don't have to pick just one color? Same with same-color couples. I'm watching a queer love story and demanding different colors from each person, yet doesn't the same color reinforce the homo part of the story?

Things to think about.

[thepomegranatewitch]

new pride designs up! new pride designs up! happy pride all! The starmap is indeed accurate to northern latitudes in the month of June - just put the signed full moon at the horizon, and match up Polaris in the center. Which one's your favourite?

Image description. Nine slides showing variations on the same image. Background is a leafy green with pale pomegranate blossom lineart. Top left has a hazel leaf with black-bordered white serif text reading 'starmap accurate to northern latitudes in june!' Bottom right has a QR code next to artist's chop in red. Bottom line has black serif text and logos for social media with artist handle the.pomegranate.witch for instagram, tumblr, and kofi, followed by a redbubble logo and the name Sahar Bareket. Image on display is a dark blue circle with starmap of yellow stars with a rainbow of moonphases in six colours starting with a new moon in red, progressing clockwise through orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple before repeating for a total of twelve phases. Text in middle is rainbow serif bordered in white and reads happy pride, happy pride month, חודש גאווה טוב, chodesh gaavah tov, and pride. Some have a pale blue magen david behind the text. Two at the end have no text, one with the magen david. All have a faint watermark over the images.

Like this but can't buy? Even a reblog helps support a queer, disabled, mixed race artist and parent!

[kidovna]

what does the blue and yellow mean :((((

Blue and yellow have been used to colour code quite a few queer (mlm) couples in media lately. Mike and Will have been blue and yellow coded right from season one and it was even hinted at in the "the silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west" Russian code from s3 which was most likely foreshadowing the events of s4 (Vecna starting his killings when Mike leaves to visit Will (and El) in California)

Even the colours of their rooms are blue and yellow

Heartstopper leans on this very heavily with Nick and Charlie as well

Here's some blue and yellow coding of Wilhelm and Simon from Young Royals:

and the latest one of Bill and Frank from The Last Of Us

[solar-plant-princess]

Some people seem to think they aren’t canon, but I will simply state that they’re missing the point that they don’t need to explicitly say it.

“”The themes speak for themselves, and make it clear what the intent is. In this actual mini-essay I will actually talk a bit about why focusing on ships being “canon” is wasting the potential of queer representation, in particular reference to Lycoris Recoil.

Lycoris flowers represent a lot of different things, most famous is that red variants symbolize death and final goodbyes. However, of that same species are also a pink variant which symbolize love, passion, and … ahem “feminine beauty”.

There are also yellow and blue variants in other species of Lycoris plants. Yellow represents cheerfulness, courage, and cherishing what you have. While blue represents being calm and dependable, but also freedom.

It hardly gets more on the nose and it’s clear how these apply to the characters and the themes of their arcs. And how the story overall is at the intersection between love and death.

Plus there are literally multiple homages to pieces of media where the characters have been thought of as gay in the story or by audiences. In particular the scene in Stand By Me where the characters kick each other, which the animators made the deliberate choice of copying the overall mannerisms of to draw a direct parallel.

The story is about a hell of a lot more than just a romance, and that is a good thing! I don’t need every piece of representation to be about just romance. And you’d also have to be joking me if you don’t see them using the term “partner” even after retiring from being Lycorises to describe their relationship, as being tongue in cheek about how there is so much media where the characters are obviously but not explicitly queer. Throughout the show they are constantly making references to other ambiguously queer media, and using common language that is unclear about the exact nature of their relationship. Like, everyone wants their confirmed representation I get it, but could we also not call the show doing the most on the nose and tongue-in-cheek queer coding of their main characters “queer baiting”.

The creators have clearly purposefully evoked when not just directly referencing other media where the characters have been queer coded, or queer audiences have resonated with the experiences of the characters. This isn’t subtext that went nowhere, this is a deliberate choice to code the leads as queer by reclaiming things and phrases that have been used as subtext. And then, this is the important part, actually reframing the context to emphasize when they are doing it. See no further than the picture below this. “Partner” has a long and storied history of being used ambiguously, because how we use it slots between purely romantic and purely platonic, and can mean either depending on ... that’s right the context. Now let’s imagine you’re a restaurant employee, two women come in and order drinks. When one of them gets up to pick up their drinks and brags about the other woman being her “partner”, and reiterates the point. Now what sort of meaning can we imply from that context? Because if it was a straight couple, nobody would for a moment doubt that partner is in a romantic context.

Like c’mon people, they aren’t hiding it, but they don’t have to look directly into the camera saying they’re a couple for it to be obvious they aren’t “just besties”. Also I don’t even have time for going to go over how all the official art that’s come out since, and the fan art by the creators hasn’t been at all shy about showing them being more intimate than you’d expect from “just friends”.

Or that the season ended with them vacationing in Hawaii of all places. Or that the whole show had a rather open ending clearly hoping for more seasons, and this probably isn’t the end of their story together. Or that one of the original writers who was behind the entire idea for the show, and was a lead writer for the screen play has publicly stated on twitter he’d love to make them official, and told fans asking if the show would end up being a yuri show to “stay tuned for future stories“

Update: and behold, literally new art and products just got released of them literally in wedding dresses together. It’s more than obvious what exactly their intentions are with these characters. So please, please, understand that queer baiting is not just when a relationship you wanted doesn’t happen on screen. Queer people don’t only start existing once they’re in a fully intimate relationship. And queer people not ending up together at the end of what will probably be the first of multiple seasons is not the same as queer baiting. Especially not when the creators have clearly taken a lot of time and effort to consistently code them both as queer, in high effort and direct references to other media. (In a country like Japan where acceptance of queer people is certainly rising, but is also let’s be frank, far from in a good place and there are clear pressures to not show genuinely good representation for fear of upsetting a bunch of weirdos from the publisher’s perspective) (Yes I know the new Gundam show has lesbians in it, that’s also one of the biggest, most profitable, and longest enduring cross-media franchises in Japan, which is in a lot safer position to risk alienating bigots in their audience than a fully original animated show that didn’t get manga or light-novel deals until after the show was already being released and doing well. And an update since this was posted: the publishers of Gundam literally tried to retcon their queerness. This is my point, if you are expecting a country that hasn’t even legalized gay marriage yet to give you explicit queerness consistently you are barking up the wrong tree. They’ll literally try to walk it back if they think they can make more money off of retconning an explicit gay marriage out, you can’t rely on profit-driven corporations to actually care about making and keeping explicit queer relationships in their media just because it’s the right thing to do)

[epic-sorcerer]

Queer imagery in BBC Merlin

Content warning: kink/fetish, fisting in particular but I show I big image containing a long list of different kinks, homophobia, dom/sub dynamics, sex

Merlin is shown wearing a purple tunic in s4, despite the fact he is a servant and purple(especially with such saturation) was extremely expensive bc purple dye was so hard to make. Gwen also has a light purple dress(or maybe 2? It’s hard to tell). Even though it’s definitely lighter than Merlins tunic, it’s still expensive.

it was illegal for peasants to wear expensive fabrics because of the Sumptuary Law. Basically it makes sure that lower class people are not fashionable. However, BBC Merlin doesn’t seam to care about that law, considering Merlins other bright clothing so take this was a grain of salt.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s no way they could have gotten their hands on these clothes without the help of nobles. Gwen might have, because she works with clothing and could have easily mixed blue and red dye together. Merlin probably not have because he’s never shown to be particularly materialistic or interested much in fashion, despite his bright clothes. Bright Purple would have been much, much harder to get.

It makes the most sense for Merlin and possibly Gwen too to have been gifted such expensive clothing by a noble for being a good servant. I’d imagine Arthur would be the one to give Merlin the tunic and morgana the dresses.

Why does this matter? Lavender(and also purple in general) was considered a queer color starting in the 19th century. Queer men especially were said to possess a “streak of lavender” and a serge of homophobia at the time was often referred to as the “Lavender Scare.” Purple and lavender is still used now to symbolize queerness.

Since Merlin is a modern interpretation of Arthurian myths, it would be perfectly plausible that this symbol was on purpose. Merlin/Arthur and Gwen/Morgana are both extremely popular ships and they are both shown to have a very deep form of trust(Gwen/Morgana being at the beginning of the show). Arthur and Morgana gifting Merlin and Gwen purple clothing could be show them they accept their queerness and/or signaling their own queer attraction to them.

Now, this next symbolism concerns only Merlin/Arthur.

Merlin is shown to have three neckerchiefs.

Navy blue, red, and light grey. Why does this matter? Well, let’s take a look at something called the handkerchief code, also known as the hanky code or “flagging.”

This code has its origins all the way back in time during the Wild West in the USA, but got more popular during the late 20th century in USA and UK gay bars. This code was used mainly by queer men and some nonbinary people to signal to other queers what they wanted sexually. While typically worn in people’s back pockets, a handkerchief could also be worn around one’s neck to show they are a versatile and experienced.

According to this code, Merlin is into;

Red: fisting and getting fisted. This color was hard to get an exact shade from, but the second best option was dark red for double fisting which is honestly so similar I’m not sure if it really matters much.

Light grey: stone topping and getting fucked by a stone top

Navy blue: fucking and being fucked anally

For any one wanting to make their own interpretations of Merlins neckerchief colors(the lighting makes it hard to tell the exact ones) have a look at this handy chart

Not only that, but Arthur is seen wearing a favour on his left arm in s3 ep 4.

What’s a favour? It’s a fabric strip of affection commonly given by maidens to knights before a tournament as a symbol of good luck. It’s often a very important scarf, hankcerchlif , towel, really any bit of cloth that can be tied around someone’s arm. This is also a popular trope in historical media for a female love interest to give a favour to a male one to show chemistry between them.

Regardless of your stance on Merlins gender identity, you have to admit how commonly Merlin is shown to be gender nonconforming(GNC) or otherwise be associated with “womanly” qualities. Especially in a society so heteronormative, the only “pure” option for a knight receiving a romantic gesture would have it be from a woman. If the token was from a queer man, it would also out the noble and cause lots of horrific chaos and destroy both of their reputations.

Even if it was common for women to give knights favours, queer men still existed and with that came romantic gestures—this time hopefully more secret.

Even though the favour on Arthur’s arm doesn’t look exactly like Merlin’s neckerchief, Merlin was the only person to speak with him while preparing for the tournament. Also, the original theorist who I linked in my sources also pointed out that Merlins neckerchief looks lopsided. Almost like Merlin tore off a bit of it and hastily tied it back on.

Although this theory is definitely flawed, it doesn’t matter. Arthur is still wearing a red handkerchief on his left arm. But what does that tell us exactly?

Regardless of wether or not it was Merlin’s, the red is the same shade and also implies Arthur is also into fisting. What about the placement? Sicne it’s on his left, it shows that he is a top/dom, meaning that he prefers to be the one fisting. Since it is worn around his upper arm, it shows that he is simply into the fetish, compared to what other placements mean. In another source, it shows taht upper arm means switch, but because Arthur is wearing it on his left it wouldn’t really make sense for him to signal being a “top-switch” compared to being a top and having the fetish in general.

If you look closely, you can see a different colored stripe on the favour. It’s hard to tell exactly what the color is, it could be yellow, gold, orange, etc. because the color is so dubious, I’ll just leave y’all with a list of color meanings that may apply to Arthur’s favour.

YELLOW: pisser/watersports kink

YELLOW, Pale: spitter/spit kink

MUSTARD: Has 8+ inch dick

GOLD: two looking for one

ORANGE: anything anytime

Also, it’s important to bring up what many in thsi fandom refer to as the “fisting scene.” Where Arthur threatens Merlin by showing him his gloved fist and pulling a bit at the glove.

In the blooper, you can see Merlin’s actor(Colin Morgan) breaking character and giggling as Arthur shows him his fist. Many in the fandom agree that this was a clear innuendo for fisting, and it is very well possible.

Merlin is shown hitting Arthur and saying he was just doing some horse play, but still indirectly convincing Arthur that he needs to teach Merlin a lesson. This is actually a common act in BDSM sex, where the submissive person purposely angers the dominant into punishing them in a way that somehow involves sex or fetish play.

If you look closely, you can see Merlin is wearing at kinky red fisting handkerchief, showing Merlin is perfectly capable of being a submissive fistee. Also, the hanky code also includes other symbols such as latex or rubber gloves that, surprise surprise, also mean fisting. Although it’s more likely Arthur’s gloves where made of leather, it can still further be interpreted as a fisting symbol if you want. Either way, Arthur’s favour still holds water as he is undoubtedly the dom in this situation.

Also, Merlin is very impulsive and a madlad. Tell me he wouldn’t wear his secret fetish symbols infrount of stuck up, Roman Catholics who are none the wiser. He’d probably think it’s hilarious which is probably why he wears them almost everyday. Merlin loves playfully misbehaving(and is also a brat sometimes) so it makes sense for him to have some dangerous fun.

Now, you may be asking. Why does this matter? At the end of the day, it probably wasn’t intentional. Well, there is alwyas room for doupt BUT I do have some ferther proof. One of the co writers of BBC Merlin—Johnny Capps—actually won a Stone Wall Award. You know, an award named after a core part of queer culture?

The award’s website and Wikipedia page say they give the award for art that describes the LGBT experience well. While I am unsure why or what Capps made to be nominated, it still shows he is very much in touch with queer culture. Capp himself even said at an interview about Merlin, “... in the end, deep, deep down it’s about sexuality and things you just can’t tackle head-on.”

Well, what says more about sexuality than the main characters fist fucking each other? That’s a lot of sexuality. While I am unsure of Capp’s age, he does look to be about middle age and it would make sense for him to know about a code popularized in a 70s to 90s. Especially for someone who has made multiple queer oriented stories in his life time.

Sources:

Why is purple considered the color of royalty?

Sumptuary law

How lavender became a symbol of LGBTQ resistance

How Lavender Became a Symbol of LGBTQ Resistance(part 2)

flagging opinicus rampant

Handkerchief code

DO YOU KNOW THE HANKY CODE?

Picspam: The Red Favour (Proof of Arthur Wearing Merlin's Favour in 3x04)

Five medieval love tokens

The Lady's Favour

Hanky codes

Nominees for Stonewall Awards announced

Merlin series 5 spoiler-free launch report

Pls reblog I spent hours on this /np 😭👊

[tabby-shieldmaiden]

When I was younger I said that pink was my favourite colour because of convenience. I was a girl, people said that pink was a girl colour, I said it was pink because I didn’t think too hard about it plus it probably made it easier for relatives to buy me presents.

Nowadays, my preferred colour palette leans black and white + the cool colours (blue, purple, green). But I still hold some affection for pink for two reasons.

1) It’s a queer colour in my country. A big queer activism non-profit as well as big pride event in Singapore is called PinkDot, and pink is the chosen colour for this reason (taken from their official website):

Pink is the colour of our ICs. It is also the colour when you mix red and white – the colours of our national flag. Pink Dot stands for an open, inclusive society within our Red Dot, where sexual orientation represents a feature, not a barrier.

2) Traditionally, the girl heroine in a lot of media was the pink one. Likewise, the leading magical girl is often the pink one. Its changed quite a bit in recent years; it’s not uncommon for her to be blue or green or yellow or purple or so on, nowadays. But there are still a lot of girl heroines who are colour-coded pink, and anyways, I like looking back on older heroines and comparing and contrasting them with newer ones. So me liking pink is sort of like. This was my Mom’s favourite jacket when she was young. She went on many adventures in it, and now the jacket is mine. I’m adding some of my own touches to it too, because it’s mine now, and I wear it because it’s like, a legacy thing.

[pochapal]

Dude. Blaine’s “I won’t ask questions” to Yellow after we saw him pull off the glasses, fake mustache, and wig thing. Idk man maybe it’s just me but. Y’know.

As someone who has gone through trauma and knows many others who’ve also, Pokéspe’s main & recurring characters almost universally have it and it’s treated with a surprising amount of tact & genuineness for... any media really. None of the characters are treated as “insane” for it and even when they’re villains we’re encouraged to understand their motivations while still making it clear that what they did wasn’t OK. I’m p sure Pokéspe had a huge impact on how I processed trauma, for the better.

yeah!! like if anything the only "true evil" pokespe presents are the systems that drive individual people to do terrible things and in pretty much every story arc, victory is achieved not when the individuals are punished but instead when steps are made to either destroy (in the case of silph tower) or reform the systems (in the case of the elite 4) to prevent or mitigate any future harm from happening.

i'm also consistently impressed with how deeply empathetic pokespe gets when it comes to trauma and abuse despite being marketed as just a kid's shonen manga. i can't speak for the whole manga since the furthest i've ever gotten is like two volumes into the d/p arc (and that was years ago at this point), but it's really actually incredible that this story shows the same level of care for "unethical" and queer-coded forms of trauma response (ie blue and yellow) as it does for more "traditional heroic" traumas (ie red and green). idk it's just. i really like the way pokespe's message seems to be "have your trauma acknowledged while still respecting your autonomy" which is a balance i think even current kids media struggles to achieve as well as this 25 year old manga does.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 187

Film: Yes! Precure 5 The Movie: Miracle Adventure in the Mirror Kingdom! Date watched: 16 May 2020 Original release date: 10 November 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/OLloFxz (500 pics for you to enjoy!) Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

these butterflies will kick your ass

This continues our trend of absolutely excellent Precure movies, and stands strong with themes of love, compassion, and bettering yourself. It also introduces Dark Precures for the first time, who will go on to be a recurring idea for a few years. As always it has excellent animation and a moving plot to keep you invested so let’s explore and then I’ll tell you what I thought.

But first, a note!  Throughout this review, I will refer to the villain Shadow using the singular "they” pronoun because their gender is never specified in the film. They have a mostly androgynous appearance, with some traditionally masculine features but a distinctly feminine voice provided by veteran seiyuu Park Romi, and they speak using the feminine pronoun “atashi.” Perhaps the animators were designing a gender-neutral character, or perhaps I’m reading too much into it and the character was meant to be an effeminate man. There is a long and complicated history of queer-coding villains in media that I don’t want to get into, so I’m just going to stick with “they”. However, the translation I use in my screenshots opted for he/him, that is out of my control.

The Plot

Before the actual movie begins, there’s a short sketch with Coco, Nuts, and Milk explaining what Miracle Lights are and how and when to use them. (more on that here) When they explain why you shouldn’t throw them, the audience is gifted with this nightmare-inducing image of Coco being cut.

you know, for kids

After they get the do’s, don’ts, whens, and whys out of the way, the movie starts for real.

In the throne room of the Mirror Kingdom, which is an ominous land filled with reflective surfaces, a blue-haired Jojo villain named Shadow bosses around two bears named Migirin and Hidarin and has them conjure up an image of Nozomi. Shadow takes Nozomi’s image and reflects it into one of the five color-coordinated crystals that decorate the throne room. Nozomi’s image quickly turns into a full figure within the crystal, and as Shadow channels power into it, the crystal shatters and a dark version of Cure Dream is born. The camera leaves the castle and shows a desert filled with mirror slabs with sleeping anthropomorphic animals trapped inside of them.

Via a very clever set of establishing shots through a series of mirror reflections, we transition to Natts House where the five girls and Milk are hanging out. Nozomi is bored and looking for something to do, and each of her friends suggests an activity (futsal, watching TV, playing cards, or doing homework) but she rejects them all. Coco pulls out a flier for a place called Princess Land and suggests they go there. All the girls are entranced by the idea and they agree to go.

The opening theme plays over a montage of them traveling, arriving, picking dresses, leaving to change, showing off to Coco and Nuts, and then walking down a path with a huge crowd of people, including some costumed characters of bear princes. And then a mysterious gothic lolita girl appears on a nearby rooftop, looking out at everything...

The girls wander around Princess Land, acting like princesses while being silly with each other, Urara brags about a Pinky that she caught earlier, Nozomi tries to sneak up on Coco but he comments that he can tell when she’s nearby, and occasionally the mysterious girl from the roof walks by and steals glances at them. The girls enter a house of mirrors, and at one point, the mysterious lolita appears behind Nozomi’s reflection in the mirror, along with Migirin and Hidarin.

all of these are perfectly normal events

In the next room, Nozomi and Coco have a heart-to-heart, reiterating their feelings for each other and that they will find each other if they ever get separated. Afterwards, Nuts stays to talk with Coco, cautioning him about making that sort of promise since they’ll have to go back to the Palmier Kingdom soon. While they’re talking, Migirin and Hidarin sneak up from inside the mirror, take control of Coco and Nuts’s reflections, and then pull the real Coco and Nuts into the mirror world. The girls make their way to the exit, followed by Coco and Nuts. Nozomi notices Nuts is smiling, which is uncharacteristic for him.

Next, all the girls partake in a game where they run around a field as boys try to place flower crowns on their heads. Karen and Komachi are already out by the time we see them, Nozomi and Urara don’t last long, but Rin dodges and outruns all the boys, because she is too good for them. She receives a bouquet for her trouble, which she goes to offer to Nuts. However, Nozomi has noticed that Coco and Nuts aren’t acting themselves, and when Coco brushes Rin aside and asks Milk for the Dream Collet (side note: why does she have it? Nuts is its caretaker), Nozomi steps in and exposes the princes as imposters. While this is happening, the mysterious lolita watches from a distance.

The fake Coco and Nuts pull out a pair of Kowaina masks and morph into a large two-headed creature, so the girls all transform into Precure as well. The monster is very blobby and absorbs their attacks. Nozomi fires off a Dream Attack into one of the masks but when the smoke clears, the face recovers. While the girls fight, the lolita girl holds up a mirror that captures their images, and Shadow reflects Rouge, Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua into the remaining four crystals. With her work done, the lolita disappears back to the Mirror Kingdom. The Precures continue to fight, unaware of the malicious plans afoot. Aqua concludes that if they attack both masks at once, they should be able to defeat the Kowaina, so after Dream, Lemonade, and Mint gain the upper hand, Rouge and Aqua swoop in with their special attacks. As the monster disappears, what’s left are.... Migirin and Hidarin! They try to flee but Rouge captures them and takes them back to Natts House. There, the girls interrogate them about the location of the real Coco and Nuts. They’re reluctant to talk until Milk slaps the shit out of them.

They explain how Shadow took over the Mirror Kingdom, imprisoning all the residents and stealing the kingdom’s crystals, the source of its energy. Shadow then promised to return everything if Migirin and Hidarin were able to get the Dream Collet. Coco and Nuts are being held captive in the Mirror Kingdom, and there are specific conditions to get there that involve the Miracle Lights which Migirin and Hidarin have. So the girls get ready, and at 2 AM they depart. But they barely have time to take in the sight of the desolate kingdom before Shadow appears in the flesh, claiming that they can get whatever they desire with the Dream Collet! The girls transform into Precure, but Shadow smugly says the Precures won’t be fighting them, and then they teleport the red, yellow, green, and blue crystals behind themself. The mysterious lolita girl also appears behind Shadow, and Nozomi is shocked at this girl who looks so much like her. The lolita is encompassed in flame as she transforms, revealing herself as Dark Dream.

At the same time, the other four crystals burst and Dark Rouge, Dark Lemonade, Dark Mint, and Dark Aqua emerge.

Color-coded mirrors appear behind the heroine Precures as their dark counterparts quickly lunge at them and pull each of them into a mirror, where they each arrive in a new dimension. The Dark Precures speak to their originals about their twisted ideals, which all share the common theme that the Dark Cures believe friends are worthless and the clones are better because they don’t have that reliance on others. Each girl engages in battle with her doppelganger and the Dark Cures waste no time demonstrating their superiority.

Milk, Migirin, and Hidarin can do nothing but watch the mirrors. Shadow, however, isn’t interested in waiting to see the outcome of the fights, so they forcefully take the Dream Collet from Milk and teleport back to the castle. There, Coco and Nuts are shown trapped in mirrors, and Shadow taunts them before explaining that they came to the Mirror Kingdom so they could quickly collect all 55 Pinkies. They hold the Dream Collet up and the mirrors scattered around the room change to show all the Pinkies scattered around the world (very convenient that they’re all by reflective surfaces). They get sucked into the mirror, into the Mirror Kingdom, and then into the Dream Collet! Coco is sad because he’s helpless to stop this and thinks he may never see Nozomi’s smile again.

The Dark Precure fights resume, and they’re getting brutal, but the tide is starting to turn in favor of our heroines. Dark Dream says she’s an exact copy of Nozomi, but without her weaknesses. However, Nozomi turns it around and says Dark Dream is a clone of a past version of her, she continues to improve herself and she’s stronger than she was yesterday, an hour ago, a minute or even a second ago. It’s a damn good line.

The other girls also question the motivations of their counterparts and explain that having friends is what motivates them and makes them strong. We cut back to Milk and the bears. Milk wants to follow Shadow to save Coco and Nuts and recover the Dream Collet, but Migirin and Hidarin are too scared to go with her, feeling too weak and pointing out even Precure couldn’t do it. Milk scolds them for not wanting to save their own kingdom and sets off on her own. She makes it to Shadow’s castle, and Migirin and Hidarin show up after all to help her.

Nozomi and Dark Dream continue to fight, and Dark Dream’s confidence gives way to anger, confusion, and grief that she doesn’t have anyone she cares about like Nozomi does. Rin, Urara, Komachi, and Karen all manage to defeat their dark counterparts with the strength brought on by their friendship and confidence, recovering the crystals used to create them in the process. Dark Dream attacks Nozomi out of desperation but her heart isn’t in it, and Nozomi effortlessly swats the attack away. Dark Dream falls to her knees, crying about not understanding human feelings like love and friendship, and instead of fighting her, Nozomi offers her a hand and says she can learn, that Nozomi can teach her, and then invites her to return to fight Shadow with them. In the desert, all five mirrors break and the girls emerge from them. Rouge, Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua are surprised to see Dark Dream come out with Dream, and Dark Dream is clearly uncomfortable, but Nozomi says she’s a friend and that’s the end of that. The six girls run off to Shadow’s castle, and arrive just in time to save the mascots from a destructive attack by Shadow. However, Shadow boasts that it’s too late because they’ve already collected all the Pinkies, and they make their wish to become the ruler of the world. Power courses into the Dream Collet, the cures brace themselves, and then.... nothing happens. 

Lemonade remembers the Pinky that she caught earlier which is still in her Pinky Catch, so Shadow can’t have all 55 of them and therefore their wish didn’t come true. Undeterred, Shadow lashes out at the team, lunging straight at Dark Dream and brutally punching her in the stomach, but quickly separates the other girls, and paralyzes Dream. Shadow moves to destroy Dream but Dark Dream moves in front of her and takes the blow instead, cracking the jewel in her chest. Nozomi is freed from the restraint and holds her copy in her arms, begging to know why she saved her. Dark Dream responds that it’s because she likes Nozomi, and after all, she’s just a copy. Nozomi says she’s not a copy, she’s her friend, but it’s too late, and Dark Dream starts to glow and fade away, leaving behind only her crystal. Shadow remarks that Dark Dream was a traitor who had it coming, but Nozomi will not take this slander against one of her friends, and through her tears she fights Shadow, delivering a good kick to their stomach before performing Crystal Shoot, seemingly defeating the villain.

Dream turns to Migirin and Hidarin and asks them to use the Miracle Lights to free Coco and Nuts, which they do. She embraces Coco and reminds him that she said she’d find him, no matter where or how. Their reunion is short lived, though, as Shadow stands up, cursing the Precures, and transforms into their true form: giant, buffer, and now with long red hair for some reason. They attack the Precures, and then launch a huge energy ball, but Migirin and Hidarin step in to block it with the Miracle Lights, proclaiming that they’re no longer afraid of Shadow. Then they turn their miracle lights on the Precure,  wishing to grant them the strength to defeat Shadow. Migirin and HIdarin aren’t strong enough, so they ask for help. Coco, Nuts, and Milk help to! So does the audience! You! Yes you reading this right now, wave your miracle light and give the Precure power!

Well everyone’s wishes come together to grant the Precure new power, and they metamorphose into Super Precure. (I’m serious, they literally cocoon up and then emerge with new outfits and sprout butterfly wings.) Then they perform Precure Five Explosion, against Shadow’s protests of overwhelming power. They explain it isn’t just their power, but the power everyone gave them, the power of everyone’s hearts and courage becoming one! Shadow is no match for the combined strength of everybody, and disintegrates.

Afterwards, the cures use their butterfly wings to carry the five crystals back to their pedestal mounts in the throne room. The pink crystal notably has a large fracture in it, a lasting reminder of Dark Dream’s short and tragic existence. With all the crystals restored, the Kingdom of Mirrors returns to its natural beautiful state, a land of greenery and crystals poking up from the ground, and the inhabitants are freed from their prisons. Urara, Komachi, and Karen comment on how beautiful it is. Inside the throne room, Nozomi stares wistfully at the pink crystal, recalling her short-lived friendship with Dark Dream. Rin and Urara call her to go to the celebration party, and as she runs out of the room, the camera does a slow zoom in on the cracked crystal while the ending theme begins to play.

The ending itself is Ganbalance de Dance again, but the girls are in their princess gowns, while the fairies are wearing their corresponding garb, and Migirin and Hidarin make a few appearances.

The Analysis

The three movies from the “Futari wa” shows in 2005-2006 were all about the girls overcoming internal conflict to become better friends with each other, and each of them did it in a somewhat different way. You could certainly explore that dynamic with a larger team, and in fact the show did just that in episodes 23-24, but instead this movie derives its conflict from the girls’ own personalities. They’re not fighting each other, they’re fighting themselves, and recognizing their supposed weaknesses as strengths. In this way, they achieve growth. It’s a great character exploration and shows what teamwork means in a larger group setting. Additionally, the story is well-paced and flows naturally from one event to the next without ever lagging, but it also gives you some necessary breathing room in between dramatic moments. As we’ve come to expect, the animation is generally much better than the television series, and the fights look phenomenal. The aspects I find less enjoyable are mostly to do with the fairies and the merchandising, and a bit of a rushed finale.

The major themes of this movie are friendship, trust, redemption, and growth. Friendship is the most obvious one, because it’s at the core of this entire franchise. The bond that each member of the team has with the others is their greatest strength and what allows them to push past their own limits. It’s what clues Nozomi in that Coco and Nuts are missing. It’s what the Dark Precures are missing which leads to their defeat, and it’s also what allows Nozomi to befriend Dark Dream rather than defeating her. We are shown time and again that having people to support you is the most wonderful thing imaginable. Trust is perhaps both the most broad and the most limited theme in this film. It’s closely connected to friendship and you can see it overlap with that a lot. Because of their friendship, each girl trusts that the others are winning their battles against their counterparts as well. However, a small place where it heavily applies that’s easy to overlook is during Nozomi and Coco’s moment alone in the hall of mirrors. They promise they’ll always find each other no matter what they look like or where they go. True to her word, as soon as Nozomi realizes Coco has been replaced with an imposter, her only goal is finding the real deal, and Coco has unwavering trust in her to do it. It’s a powerful moment that gets lost in the commotion of the movie, but I love it.

The Dark Precures are easily the most famous aspect of this film, with good reason. The idea of an evil twin is an ancient storytelling technique, and it remains very effective, because it can simplify character design by allowing you to base your evil character on an existing protagonist while letting you deviate in small or large ways from their design as needed. It's also be a convenient way to explore and develop a character’s personality by having them face off against someone of a similar, but twisted, ideology. A case could be made that the Kiryuus in Splash Star were a form of villain counterpart Precures without being explicit copies of the heroines, but these are the first to be directly and transparently copies of the heroines, and of the three full dark teams as of this writing (Yes 5, Heartcatch, and Smile) they’re the best fleshed out. Each of them represents a quirk of their doppelganger, but turned selfish.

Dark Dream is devoid of aspirations and joy

Dark Rouge believes friends prevent you from being your true self

Dark Lemonade feels that trying to entertain others is a waste of effort.

Dark Mint believes the best defense is a good offense, and protection is a weak ability

Dark Aqua thinks that friends keep you from growing stronger

They gloat about being better because they don’t have the dependency on friends, but most of them go down precisely because the heroines feel empowered by being in a team, even when fighting alone. Each of the heroines recognizes that their strength comes from having friends to protect and fight alongside, that friends help you grow and improve yourself. The hubris of the Dark Cures is ultimately their undoing and it ties back into the film’s central themes of friendship. This is explored clearly across all five fights by careful editing, which involves giving each battle a little bit of time in focus before changing perspectives. We hear short exchanges between the original and dark cures, and sometimes conversations are continued between battles, as their debates are very similar. Ultimately, the Cures’ confidence in their friends is what allows them to succeed over their counterparts, as just having faith is enough of a motivator and a power boost to keep them going, and each fight concludes with the girls accepting and explaining how the flaw the Dark Cures see in them is actually their greatest strength. It’s beautiful. I was particularly moved by Komachi and Karen’s statements to their doppelgangers. Komachi said “I wanted to protect you, too,” as Dark Mint disappeared in her arms, which is a powerful rebuttal to an opponent who criticized her for only protecting herself, and you could feel Komachi’s regret. Meanwhile, Karen told Dark Aqua that her dark version reminded her of herself before she made friends, and therefore she wants to surpass that version of herself, which speaks to Karen’s growth both on and off the screen.

Nozomi and Dark Dream’s battle, however, is on a different level from the others. Dark Dream was actually a reflection of Nozomi herself rather than Cure Dream, she was around for longer than the others and got to see Nozomi just hanging out with her friends being happy, so she has the most fleshed out personality and perspective while the rest of the Dark Precures were created and immediately thrown into battle. Consequently, Dark Dream starts out cynical about Nozomi’s friendships, but when Nozomi begins to show how her friends help her grow and improve herself constantly, Dark Dream begins to falter. Her confidence turns to anguish as she bemoans her lack of understanding about friendship, happiness, laughter, sadness, sorrow, or any other emotions. She was created to fight and that’s all she knows how to do. But instead of destroying her, Nozomi offers to help her learn these things, and this act of kindness shakes Dark Dream to her core. Her reason to exist has been stripped away, but Nozomi has given her a chance to be more than just a clone made for destruction. More amazingly, the other Precures accept her as well. As soon as Nozomi declares her a friend, they all accept her as one of their rank and proceed to fight Shadow. For the first time in her life, she’s not just needed, she’s wanted, and this shows off the depths of Nozomi’s compassion and her power to unite people. Unfortunately, just when Dark Dream has found someplace she belongs and people who care about her, she makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Nozomi, and that breaks my heart. Her story mirrors that of Kiriya, someone else who was created for evil, but through the compassion and kindness of the heroines, tried to forge a different path, only to die before he could truly make a new life for himself. It’s the same kind of tragedy, that of unfulfilled potential, and it’s a mature plot direction for this series. It hurts but I applaud the writers for it. I also love that Nozomi doesn’t forget this at the end. Nozomi made a new friend, that friend died so she could survive, and the ending where she stares at the pink crystal with only the bottom of her face visible really gets to me. I’m not sure if it’s symbolic that she’s lost a part of herself or if it’s because eyes are major sources of expression and hiding them enforces that she’s not her usual happy self, but it’s excellent framing and it contrasts well with the happy face she puts on when Rin and Urara summon her for the party.

Additionally, this scene of Dark Dream’s desperate attack is beautiful, primarily in how the audio cuts out from the moment she throws it until it hits the ferris wheel. It’s an excellent use of silence.

Beyond having ideals that clash with those of the Precure 5, the Dark Precure also have their own spin on special attacks. The butterfly motifs are gone entirely, Dark Dream simply lobs a ball of energy around, Dark Rouge shoots fireballs and can use a phoenix attack, Dark Lemonade creates blades by kicking her feet and can decimate with her singing, Dark Mint launches orbs that can pierce barriers, and Dark Aqua uses an energy staff, and later a sword. In some respects they resemble the Cures’ attacks and in others they’re completely opposite. It’s a clever and imaginative use of each girl’s powers.

The combat sequences are some of the best I’ve seen in any movie so far, with the characters alternating between rapid-fire punching and kicking and their energy attacks. Each battle takes place in a unique environment, which lets the perspective switch rapidly between fights without confusing the audience, and the director keeps an excellent balance between them, only staying a few minutes at each before changing perspective. Dream fights in a carnival, primarily by a ferris wheel (which could be the one seen at the Princess Land), Rouge fights in space on a bunch of floating orbs, Lemonade and Mint both fight in cities surrounded by buildings and parks, and Aqua fights in a flowery meadow.

The other villain of the movie, Shadow, offers very little to discuss. They’re a power-hungry tyrant with no motivation other than to rule over everything. They’re super over-the-top in their mannerisms, very sadistic, mocking, and uncaring about anybody else. They view the Dark Precures as nothing but tools and they feel no remorse for their defeat. We know nothing about their history or what led them to become this way, and since most of the movie is them pushing other people around or letting the Dark Cures fight on their behalf, we don’t get the chance to explore their motivations deeper than the surface level. Shadow is a decent fighter, at least, when they go toe-to-toe with the Precure they demonstrate immense speed and of course their glyphs are able to both restrain opponents and teleport small objects. It’s good to have a five-on-one fight against a human-sized opponent after spending half the movie in solo fights, it shows how strong Shadow is, but ultimately of course the Precure overpower them, driven on by the death of Dark Dream. I enjoy seeing them gloat and ham it up but they’re less compelling than their predecessors Sirloin, Freezen and Frozen, and maybe even the Dark Witch. This of course is due to Shadow’s lesser screentime, since the Dark Precures are the main attraction of this film, but I still wish they’d gotten a little more time in the limelight.

The other new characters of this film are the denizens of the Mirror Kingdom, Migirin and Hidarin. They are annoying and I do not like them. I take pleasure in seeing Milk slap the shit out of them.

They are voiced by a comedy duo called “The Touch” who are real-life twins named Takuya and Kazuya. Their line delivery is very bland and, frankly, they’re boring characters. Their main gimmicks are speaking in sync or finishing each other’s sentences, and their only character trait is cowardice that they have to learn to overcome. Beyond that they’re only in the movie to have an in-universe explanation for the Miracle Lights.

Let’s address the elephant in the room here. This is the very first Precure movie to have Miracle Lights. Almost every movie after this will also include a new Miracle Light, so get used to them. I wrote a long explanation on PCD Status that you can read, but the short version is that kids in the audience receive a real Miracle Light with their ticket purchase, and at key points in the movie they’re supposed to light it up and wave it in the air, giving the Precure power in a simple form of audience participation. In this film they mask the fourth wall breaks pretty well by having Nozomi turn towards the fairies when she asks for help, even if she’s facing the camera. It’s just enough plausible deniability to not break the immersion.

The plot of the film is really good until about the last fifth, and then as I alluded to earlier it gets rushed and kind of muddy. The entire prologue and the sequence at the Princess Land is the kind of wonderful fun, comedy, and antics I’ve grown to expect from this show. It highlights all their characters wonderfully and you get some small, tender moments as well. Karen and Milk’s close friendship is on full display, Komachi pushes Nuts away from a mirror that makes the viewer look fat because she doesn’t want to see him that way, and of course there’s Nozomi and Coco’s comments about detecting and finding each other. My two personal favorite shots are the bit with Urara, Komachi, Karen, and Milk performing a hime laugh because it’s just so wonderfully absurd.

And then my other is personal bias, but during the princess crowning, Rin manages to outrun all the boys. If you’ve been in the fandom you may have heard the joke “Nobody loves Rin,” which relates to the other four girls each having an official or widely accepted shipping partner (Nozomi and Coco, Urara and Syrup, Komachi and Nuts, Karen and Kurumi). Well my rebuttal to this, based on this scene, is that Rin has no partner because there’s nobody good enough for her yet. We stan best girl!

The interrogation at Natts House is good, and of course when they arrive in the Mirror Kingdom they’re almost immediately confronted with Shadow and the Dark Cures, who I gushed about above. The part where I believe the film starts to crack just a bit and the pacing hurts is after the defeat of Dark Dream. Shadow goes down really quickly, and then once the team turns into Super Precure, they almost immediately perform Five Explosion. From the time the six girls confront Shadow in the castle to Shadow’s defeat is about 10 minutes of a 70 minute movie, and 5 minutes in the middle of that is Miracle Light shenanigans and Shadow transforming. Most of the rest of the fight is the Five Explosion stock sequence, and whereas normally the Cures would deliver some epic speech before they land the final blow, this time their righteous lecture is rather short, saying that the power is everyone’s power. It’s effective but it feels truncated.

I found the soundtrack to this movie to be.... largely uninspiring. It wasn’t bad or anything, but it just seems to be remixed or rerecorded tracks from the show’s BGM., but listening to the OST there was only one track that really hit that sweet spot in my brain. It’s “Surpassing my Past Self”, track 18, and I like how everything in it builds up. You’ve got strings for the melody backed by rhythm guitar, joined later by brass, and then the guitar starts to take a more active role in the tune as it ramps up in intensity. This is the song that plays when Nozomi is winning against Dark Dream and starting to persuade her, when she makes her epic speech about being stronger than she was before. This song sticks out to me in a way that nothing else does.

Visually the movie is gorgeous, with some occasional hiccups into TV quality, but of course the movie budget overall means they get to do more than they can with a weekly TV show. Check out the opening sequence and all the little details in it!

I especially love this bit from just before the title card where the girls’ portraits flip around to show the dark cures.

you can find a higher resolution version of this gif in the gallery

Curiously, there are still some animation shortcuts taken, like during this shot where the camera zooms in on the double doors and you can clearly see the transition between the low-detail wide shot and the high-detail close-up. I know why they did it but I wish it was smoother.

Something I find really clever is that when Shadow first creates Dark Dream in the pink crystal, the silhouette that is generated is just Nozomi in her school uniform, she doesn’t take on her new appearance until she’s fully formed.

The designs of the Dark 5 are really good and I could probably gush about them for another week, but in a nutshell they manage to effectively invert the aesthetics of the Precures, replacing cream with black, and their outfits are different from each other’s in a lot of the same ways that the main team are. Dark Dream has a two-piece outfit, Dark Lemonade’s skirt is a bit different, Dark Mint and Aqua have a band of color around their waist that the others lack, things of that nature. They’re distinct from their counterparts and from each other, which is more than can be said about their dark successors.

Dark Dream, in her civilian guise, is also an incredible design. Gothic lolita is a great look and I think it’d be cool if the franchise would utilize it a little more often.

The lace-front maroon dress with a flower petal skirt is very nice, and the black petticoat accentuates it. The headdress with roses compliments the purple bow and also reflects Nozomi’s small pigtails, and her purple lipstick and eyeshadow bring it all together. It’s almost a shame she loses the makeup when she transforms.

The Super Precure designs are nice. Not as elaborate as the Phoenix Forms from the second Max Heart film, but I appreciate the subtle redesigns.

Obviously the butterfly wings are the most prominent element, but their sleeves are longer and frillier than on their normal outfits, which means the stock sequence for Five Explosion had to be largely reanimated..... and this means the coloring error with the Lemonade Castanet is fixed!

And my last art/animation comment is to point out that there sure are a lot of stomach attacks in this film!

Some other bookkeeping: the Dark Precures are voiced by different actresses than those who play the protagonists, and this is the only time that happens, because future Dark Cures will share an actor with their counterpart. Some of them have had supporting voice parts in previous Precure seasons, and all five of them will have roles in future seasons, though again some are small parts. The most notable ones are Nishimura Chinami as Dark Dream, she would later play Aoki Reika/Cure Beauty in Smile Precure (and therefore Bad End Beauty as well); and Kugimiya Rie as Dark Lemonade, who later portrays Madoka Aguri/Cure Ace in Dokidoki Precure. The others are: Minaguchi Yuko as Dark Mint, who plays Flora in Precure 5 GoGo; Kiuchi Reiko as Dark Aqua, who previously played Kiriya in Futari wa Precure, and Nagasawa Miki as Dark Rouge, both of whom will play characters-of-the-week in Heartcatch Precure.

By the way, according to the Precure Wiki, there was a scene after the credits in the theatrical version that showed the Dark Precures being revived, however I cannot find any legitimate citation for this, and it’s also not mentioned in the Japanese wikipedia article for the film, so I’m considering that claim false unless more reliable information surfaces.

Overall this movie is excellent and once again it raises the bar for what you can achieve in a Precure movie. It features fun hijinks and high-stakes emotional drama! It tackles the doppelganger idea better than any subsequent series due to the possibilities of film and the artwork is great. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out!

Next time, in Precure Daily, we return to the main plot as Despariah appears before the girls! Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 kettei!

[lover-of-mine]

Hello and welcome to me being crazy about colors in media. Again. I feel like during season 7 there was the whole blue and yellow thing going around Buck and Eddie and I offered the theory that it could be like the blue and green thing, but for queer couples, since the show tends to use that color combo with Hen and Karen (here's that post if you want to see it), until @stagefoureddiediaz told me about a trend in media as a whole to use those two colors for queer coding, she mentioned red, white and royal blue and heartstopper as more recent examples but that this has been going on for a while. I'm gonna be honest, I don't watch a lot of movies, but the other day tiktok started to show me clips of Crush, it's a queer high school romcom, I had it on streaming, I was bored, I sat down to watch it, the movie is ridiculously blue and yellow, like, it's almost funny, I'm not gonna write a meta on that, if you get curious and watch the movie, there are blue and yellow elements to pretty much every scene, just pay attention lol. But that got stuck in my head and I was thinking about Love, Simon, and well, that movie also uses blue and yellow elements, in a more subtle manner, but it's there, rwrb also has details, like the lighting or color of ties, the same way they hide pride flags with elements of the scene. I never watched heartstopper, so I can't comment on that one.

Why am I telling you this? Well, if this is a pattern in media in general, then we have ourselves a solid theory. Crush and rwrb are more recent movies, crush is from 2022, rwrb is from 2023, but Love, Simon came out at the beginning of 2018. This makes the choice of making henren scenes blue and yellow very interesting.

You know me, I'm the blue and green person (extremely detailed meta on the blue and green), but I turned off the blue and green switch in my head and was going around wondering what counts as yellow. Because if we count warn lighting in general, the way it reflects in the background, Buck and Eddie are constantly surrounded by blue and yellow elements. There's a lot during under pressure, including the way the dialogue during the ambulance is "Practice rounds have blue caps, gold caps are live." while we have blue and yellow lights in the ambulance ceiling.

The blue and yellow elements are real, but while making my buddie in every episode series, I was watching season 3 with the blue and yellow goggles on, and I realized the lights behind Eddie during the tsunami are very much yellow, along with the blue tents and Eddie's uniform.

And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

They even have blue and yellow beers.

So the blue and yellow during season 7, has to mean something. For both of them.

And with the way that Buck, Bothered and Bewildered is a blue and yellow episode, I kinda wanna say that the blue and yellow IS about queer themes.

But the reason I'm making this post is actually more insane than just making this point again. Buck and Eddie have 2 undeniably blue and yellow scenes before season 7. Scenes where they are dressed in blue and yellow. And those are very important scenes in my humble opinion. Because the first one is the will reveal.

This scene is one of the most important buddie scenes. And that makes the colors here very interesting if we add things like the way they wanted to make Buck bi in season 4 but fox didn't let them, and this scene reads as a love confession anyway. Having Eddie in blue and Buck in yellow could very much have been the way they found to add more significance to the scene.

But there's also the way that Eddie's shirt is to yellow the same way Buck's is to blue during the presentation of the couch theory (rip you will always be famous), which is, again, a choice, we also have the notepads Eddie and Chris are playing with are yellow and the beers are also yellow, and the way Chris is a blue element.

Everything here keeps getting me more and more convinced that they will go canon while in blue and yellow, not blue and green like other couples, because green is both their breakup colors, if we count the conversation with Kim as a breakup.

And personally, I think we can, because by my own standards, their first conversation is blue and green.

So buddie going canon in a blue and yellow scene makes more sense because it would be unique to them.

This is a very long way to say, let's be on the lookout for both of them wearing blue and yellow lol.

That's all for today, if you reached this, I love you 💜

[shark-myths]

G.I.N.A.S.F.S.

this song. THIS SONG. an infinity-era song from 2007, Gay Is Not A Synonym for Shitty is a tangled-up mess of peteashleepatrick, guilt and longing and fallinginlove all worked over into knots and poetry.

in the tryst theory reckoning, i think this song is about loving patrick in a way that Isn’t Allowed, a reminiscence on when things were simple and they could just fool around in the van and never really talk about who they were or what it meant, as long as they could keep having it, and about pete’s own confused relationship to queerness (and his own sexual orientation) during this time.

so let’s dig in!

I've loved everything about you that hurts, so Let me see your moves Let me see your moves Lips pressed this close to mine True Blue

But the prince of any failing empire knows that Everybody wants, everybody wants To drive on through the night If it's a drive back home

this reads and plays like a break-up song right at the time when pete’s entering an exciting new relationship, an exciting time of his life where he’s moving out to LA, his band reaching previously unimagined heights of widespread commercial success, a million business endeavors with his name and face on them: this is the time of his life when pete wentz is finally Making Good, living up to his own potential, being a good boy and following the rules and making a serious bid at adulthood. at living happily ever after. at living at all. this is pete building a future for himself instead of looking for the nearest exit ramp for death. this is a time of new beginnings and hope and the rest of your life--so why is he writing a break-up song?

he’s writing it to himself, maybe. he’s writing it to jeanae. he’s writing it to patrick.

True Blue: not parlor trick magic. True Blue is code for Patrick. Patrick is who he wants to drive back home to. LA is not like chicago. and some princes don’t grow up to be kings.

Things aren't the same anymore Some nights, they get so bad You almost pick up the phone

(suggesting that whoever he’s singing about, he’s far away from now, and not reaching out to--even though their voice used to be a daily miracle)

Trade baby blues for wide eyed browns I sleep with your old shirts And walk through this house in your shoes You know it's strange It's a strange way of saying That I know I'm supposed to love you I'm supposed to love you

whose eyes is he singing about? the cover story--the plausible deniability--could be about swapping jeanae’s gaze for ashlee’s. but, and this won’t surprise you, i like the reading best if we’re talking about patrick. are ashlee’s eyes even blue? they’re a slate green type color--striking, sure, but they don’t scream baby blue. whereas patrick rocks these babies (below), which he described once on twitter as “blue with a little ring of yellow around the pupil so they look a little green.” are they baby blues? you decide. (maybe pete’s been singing to joe this whole time?? look at those fucking peepers!)

(aside--is pete talking about new partners with different eye colors, or imploring the listener to trade their blue eyes for his brown ones, to take his perspective and see it from his side? this song is full of clever twists)

this is one of the first times pete’s lived without patrick in years. not in the same apartment, not down the hall, not even on the same side of the continent. so he sleeps in patrick’s old shirts--there’s plenty of documentation of shirt-swapping in the early days of our boys--and walks through the house (probably in ashlee’s uggs, let’s be real, but patrick had quite the sneaker collection in 07 too, as seen on his apartment tour mtv feature) and thinks, I’m supposed to love you.

i love this line so much because it works on two amazing and painful levels. pete can be taken as saying:

I am obligated or meant to love you due to my promise / the expectations of others / the heterosexual label i tentatively offer as describing me, OR

you are the one I am fated to love. we are meant to be together like destiny

or, even more likely--he’s saying both.

I've already given up on myself twice Third time is the charm, third time is the charm Threw caution to the wind But, I've got a lousy arm

And I've traced your shadows on the wall Now I kiss them whenever I'm down Whenever I'm down Figured on not figuring myself out

WHAT ARE THE TWO TIMES PETE HAS GIVEN UP ON HIMSELF? it could be a straightforward reading--the Best Buy Incident and any other peak!depression moments. but i think pete has failed himself in subtle, important ways throughout his life. i wonder if pete is giving up on himself romantically. if he’s giving up on his ability to, as he says, figure himself out--understand his sexual orientation--ever be with patrick in the way he wants to be, because he can’t / won’t figure out how he wants to be. comp het and gendered body dysmorphia are strong in this one. the media has such a field day of making him gay, he’s tangled up in his own crossfire of hero--icon--punching bag. i imagine pete at this age like i spent the first 24 or so years of my life: repeating like a rosary, i wish i was gay, i wish i was gay, i wish i was gay. [girls] are so pretty, i like them so much. why can’t i just be gay so i can be with them?

but he’s got a lousy arm. he keeps trying to declare himself to patrick--we have albums worth of it, at this point, not to mention interviews and what happens onstage during this era--and he keeps falling short. his message gets lost, or worse, considered unworthy. ignored.

i’ve traced your shadows on the wall hearkens back to watching you two from the closet, doesn’t it? it’s all about imagining yourself with someone you can’t have and can’t even understand if you want. he spent so long obsessing over every bright line of patrick’s body, now he traces them from memory on the walls of his always-too-empty home, kisses patrick in his mind and doesn’t ask himself why, because he’s terrified of the answer. because he’s given up on the answer. because ashlee is the love of his life, he’s known it since he first met her, and he’s supposed to be with her. because he’s giving up on himself. because things aren’t the same anymore. he’s a different man in a different city living a different life.

Born under a bad sign, you saved my life That night on the roof of your hotel "Cross my heart and hope to die Splintered from the headboard in my eye" Photo-proofed kisses I remembered so well 

Pete’s a gemini, Patrick’s a taurus. either of those are bad signs, depending on who you ask. but the point of the line, i think, is the curse pete always thinks of himself / writes of himself as living under. this whole verse evokes curses and promises and love everlasting.

and: what is a photo-proofed kiss? it’s a hidden one. it’s a one they’ve made sure no one can ever see, or one that happens so VERY publicly they can deny it.

IN SUMMARY, this is a peterick af song. this is a song about pete grappling with his own relationship to the word gay and his frustrated confusion about his own sexuality. you can see his proposal to ashlee taking shape in it, clear as you can see his choking-thick unyielding love for the man he thinks he’s lost, thinks he’s never held at all. IN SUMMARY, oh god my feelings, oh god this song

[respectthepetty]

Do you have any thoughts on Jaab’s colors in Step by Step because I have seen that boy in almost every color. He’s been in red, blue, yellow, and I also recall some stripes if I’m not mistaken. I cannot figure it out so I was hoping you might have some thoughts

@iguessitsjustme, you're asking me, The Color Demon if I have thoughts about colors in a piece of queer media?

Well, you're in luck because as usual I have hundreds of thoughts about Jaab's colors in Step by Step, but I was being super duper quiet about it.

Why? Because I'm trying to make sure the colors are actually there. As much as I wish every show could be the color-coding award winning series Destiny Seeker, some shows make me work much harder to see the color-coding.

But since you were brave enough to open this flood gate, you're getting everything that has been stirring in my head the past six weeks, and I do mean EVERYTHING.

This is what I do know . . . maybe? This is important for establishing why I think the colors do exist in this show.

Pat is Blue Boy (loyal, sincere, intelligent, and passive).

All his love interests wore blue in episode six, so whose color are they trying to pick up if not Pat's?

When Pat is lost in his emotions and feeling discouraged, he wears neutrals. There are more instances, but I gotta get this moving to Jaab.

Jen is a Pink Person. This is the one I feel the strongest about.

So now that we have those theories solidified, this is where it gets wonky.

This is what I think I know . . . maybe?

If Jen is a Pink Person, most of the time when we have seen him with Jaab, Jaab is wearing black. So is Jaab a Black Brooder (mysterious, seductive, protective, and arrogant)?

He might be, but wouldn't it make sense for Jaab to wear black since he is hiding his feelings for Jen?

But what other consistent color have we seen Jaab wear around Jen? Those damn red pants!

Jaab is wearing his red pants while Jen wears his pink pants on the beach. We also saw them in the first episode when Pat wore his blue shirt. So if the Blue Boy Pat is wearing blue, and the Pink Person Jen is wearing pink, wouldn't it make sense that Jaab, who is wearing red, be a Red Rascal? If 2/3 are color-coded, why not the third?

Because when Jaab almost confessed his feelings while touching Jen's hand, Jen was wearing a pink shirt, and Jaab was wearing a red one.

And when they kissed, Jen was wearing pink pants, and Jaab was wearing red ones, which they wore earlier on the beach.

When we first met Jaab, he wore red.

And wouldn't siblings have some similarities?

Because if Blue Boy Pat is wearing RED when Jeng is wearing blue, wouldn't that be a color exchange?

And if that were the case, wouldn't that mean if Pink Person Jen is wearing RED, it'd be a color exchange with his Red Rascal Jaab?

And it's not like we haven't seen a Rose Garden before = Red Rascal + Pink Person [Secret Crush on You - Sky (Red Rascal): Passionate, Spontaneous, Energetic, and Hot-Headed & Jao (Pink Person): Compassionate, Playful, Emotional, and Loving]

Therefore, to answer your question:

I think Jaab AND Jeng are Red Rascals!

Both seem to have gone against what their father wanted and family traditions.

They live together and share similar qualities.

They both seem to be hiding their true colors.

They are piners (therefore passionate about their love).

Jaab's coworkers have mentioned his temper, and Jeng's employees have talked about his as well.

I still have six more episodes to see if my theories stick, so I'm going to crawl back into my troll hole and be quiet about this, but remember, I have plenty of thoughts about the colors .

Thanks for the ask!

[essenceofthemusical]

Coming Out - “I’m Gay“ Directed by Eugene Lee Yang

On June 15, 2019, during pride month, Eugene Lee Yang, one of the four members of the Try Guys, posted his coming out video. Eugene Lee Yang’s coming out video stands out from many other Youtuber’s coming out videos, as instead of explicitly telling the audience his sexuality, Eugene takes a performative cinematic approach to coming out on Youtube. 

In his behind the scenes video, “Why I’m Coming Out as Gay,” Eugene Lee Yang describes the reasons many LGBTQ+ individuals decide to stay in the closet, and the added pressures of coming out as a public figure, when he states, “There's a lot of really personal reasons why I haven't explicitly come out. We hold things back because we're very scared that there's going to be repercussions. I'm not even really comfortable talking about it right now. But I think I'll be able to open up more about it later. But I just know that this is the time. I think sometimes you just know.” (Yang). Here Eugene Lee Yang shares his fears on how both the audience, and people in his personal life, will react to finding out his sexuality, when he further states, “I am afraid that some people I’m very close to will disown me and not talk to me anymore because of this video. Knowing that someone might be homophobic, and a couple of people could be, and that’s hard.” (Yang). This fear of repercussions, and how other’s will react to their sexuality, is what leads many LGBTQ+ individuals to stay in the closet in the first place. 

Eugene Lee Yang wrote, directed, choreographed and starred in his own coming out video, “I’m Gay.” When describing his inspiration for the style of his coming out video, Yang states, “I have always thrived off of design, cinematography, dance, movement, and the emotional interpretation of an idea.” (Yang). Eugene Lee Yang had graduated from USC film school and directed numerous music videos and short films before he began his online career with the Try Guys. His coming out video, “I’m Gay,” perfectly embodies Yang’s distinct style of expressive cinematography. The video follows a color coded theme comprised of six distinct colors that represent stages of a queer person’s journey. 

The Red Scene (NATURE): 

The Red scene depicts Eugene in a large ornate hall, styled in an all red androgynous outfit, seated in a frozen family portrait between his sister, brother, mother, and father, who are all dressed in grey. He and his siblings begin to play and dance in unison, mimicking the tough bravado of their father, and switching to mimic the feminine and graceful movements of their mother. As his brother gravitates towards following his father, and his sister gravitates towards following her mother, Eugene moves towards mimicking his mother and applying red lipstick to himself. His mother ends up ripping the lipstick out of Eugene’s hand, while his father smears lipstick across his face. Eugene’s siblings fall back in line to following their assigned peers and gender roles, while Eugene’s father yells and pushes him to submit into his assigned gender role under him.

The red scene represents innocence, and how we our all born with innate feelings of play, curiosity, and exploration. Eugene represents an unformed nongendered child in the opening, depicted by his androgynous clothes. The red scene also focuses on gender roles, and who we feel we are suppose to be in a structure, such as in a nuclear family. The end of the red scene represents a child being told they can’t behave a certain way in society, which deviates from their preassigned gender role. 

The Orange Scene (NURTURE):

In the orange scene, Eugene is depicted in an orange outfit, lost amidst a large group of dancers all dressed in grey. The dancers move in unison, their movements representative of prominent social settings, such as school, church, and work. Eugene attempts to keep up with dancers and their controlled movements, but he finds himself increasingly bursting out of line with loud, joyous distracting movements. As the orange scene progresses, there are subtle shifts in the dancer’s wardrobe, with some of the dancer’s grey clothes changing to black, and some of the dancer’s clothes changing to white. At the end of the orange scene, half of the cast in black look at Eugene with adoration, while half of the cast in white sneer in disgust at him. 

The orange scene represents how individuality can be shamed or villainized by others, where being different equates to being bad. It also represents conformity, and how individuals who are different are pressured by society to change in order to fit in. Those who refuse to conform to society, are ultimately ostracized or treated with polarizing responses. 

The Yellow Scene (LOVE):

In the yellow scene, Eugene, now dressed in an all yellow outfit, dances formally with a girl who is dressed in black. While dancing, a boy, dressed in all yellow also, catches Eugene’s eye. The two men dance together with flirtatious and exploratory movements. Caught between two opposing forces in a three way dance with the girl and boy, Eugene eventually embraces the girl before running off with the boy. 

The yellow scene represents first loves. The girl represents the true ally of the LGBTQ+ community, someone who was right next to Eugene through his journey of self discovery and coming out. The boy represents the first romantic love and first sexual love for a queer individual, and also the realization of being attracted to someone who we are told by society that we are not supposed to be attracted to. The end of the yellow scene represents the girl, or true ally, giving her blessing to Eugene, that it is okay for him to be who he is and go run off with the boy.

The Green Scene (COMMUNITY):

In the green scene, Eugene and the boy, both styled in green, are joined by a cast of LGBTQ+ people, dressed in rainbow colors. Similar to a club setting, they all dance and laugh together in unison, moving around one another with a manner of dignity and appreciation. The group joins together, mirroring the opening family portrait shot, appearing comfortable and happy. Suddenly, a group of dancers in white approach them. Eugene’s friends scatter, some unable to escape, and instead fall on the ground as if dead or apprehended. The green scene ends with Eugene being forcefully grabbed by a slew of white hands. 

The green scene represents pride, community, and a safe place for the LGBTQ+ community. 

The Blue Scene (HATE): 

The blue scene begins with Eugene dressed in all blue, beaten ruthlessly by the horde of dancers in white. Eugene is left bruised and bleeding, with two black eyes and a bleeding lip. The dancers dash away, leaving Eugene crying and crawling across the ground. His family reappears, his mother and brother now dressed in black, and his father and sister now dressed in white. Eugene’s mother and brother try to help him up, but his father and sister push him back down again. His family dissolves into fighting one another, leaving Eugene on the ground. The blue scene ends with Eugene in his agony having a slow creeping resolution settle in his eyes, as he smears his own dark blood across his mouth, mirroring the lipstick in the opening red scene. 

The blue scene represents the hardships that come with being LGBTQ+, such as violence, hate, and polarization between loved ones and family. 

The Purple Scene (PRIDE): 

In the final scene, Eugene is showcased proud, solemn, and defiant in his most extravagant unapologetic outfit yet. His once bruised black eyes and bleeding lip is now transformed into violet eyeshadow and a dark plum lip. He stands and strides forward, as people dressed in grey, black, and white pass him. The people dressed in grey don’t pay attention to Eugene, while the ones dressed in black offer reassuring warm looks and caresses. The people in white, however, shove, scream, and hit Eugene as they pass. Eugene keeps moving forward, eyes locked directly above the camera into the distance. At the very end of his walk, he embraces in a tight desperate hug an unseen queer person in purple, as the black and white cast riot against one another around them.

The purple scene embodies how coming out is not the solution or end of a queer’s person journey to self discovery. Instead, coming out is just the tip of the iceberg, and the start of a new journey about embracing what it means to be queer. This concept is represented by the open ending of the purple scene. 

Conclusion:

Eugene Lee Yang’s coming out video, “I’m Gay,” embodies Eugene’s journey of self discovery, embracing his sexuality, coming out, and the unknown future for life after coming out publicly. “I’m Gay,” explores new paradigms of desire through its depiction of the yellow scene, which showcases the moment of realization when a queer person has their first romantic crush and sexual desires. “I’m Gay,” explores consumption practices of queer texts, and queers the audience, by showcasing the pros and cons that follow life of a queer person from infancy to adulthood. For example, we see how being queer can build a strong community, such as in the green scene, but also comes with many drawbacks as depicted in the blue scene, such as polarization and violence. “I’m Gay,” validates queer lifestyles via media portrayal by retelling the real journey and story of Eugene Lee Yang, and his experience with being part of the LGBTQ+ community. “I’m Gay,” also explores the construction of sexual identities via pop culture inclusion through its depiction of experimentation with sexuality and gender, which is prominent in the red, yellow, and green scene. The red scene showcases experimentation with gender as we see Eugene deviating from his preassigned gender role of masculinity by putting on lipstick and mimicking his mother, while his brother is mimicking his father’s actions. We also see experimentation with gender in the Eugene’s wardrobe in the red and green scene, as he wears adrogynous red clothes in the red scene, and a feminine green drag outfit in the green scene. The yellow scene depicts experimentation and exploration of sexuality, as we see Eugene transition from a solo dance with a girl, to a three way dance between the girl and boy, ultimately ending with Eugene running off with the boy, representing Eugene coming to terms with his sexuality and identity.