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wasp-coffee · 3 hours ago

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I like the paddy/eoin content a lot BUT Paddy Mayne was a real person who was fucking women irl, and the show has been intentionally playing with queerness for the story line (which is problematic in many many ways). You can't be mad at people for writing what is canonically correct (with real life as the original source material). The middle ground is him being considered bisexual and then everyone can write the fics they want to write about a dead man

hoo boy.

i really should ignore this but hey ho what the fuck. Let's dive in.

so i AM going to ignore your mind boggling assertion that paddy 'was fucking women irl' because what. lol. and focus instead on 'the show has been intentionally playing with his queerness as a story line' and 'the middle ground is him being considered bisexual' because again, lol, but at least with this we are getting close to the actual issues here.

firstly, what the real paddy did or didn't do is irrelevant because nobody, and i mean nobody in any way involved in this conversation is writing RPF about a dude dead these 70 years. Do not come in here pretending that the paddy x f!reader or fem!oc is actually about the real paddy mayne. That is a straw man argument and i personally will laugh you out of the room if you (general 'you', not just anon) keep putting it forward. It's ridiculous, fucking stop.

what we can talk about is how his sexuality is portrayed on the show. In order to do that we all need to put our media literacy hats on, but i know some of you don't have those so in that case just try to pay attention.

we have to start by talking about what the show is, primarily that it is ahistorical. It says so right on the tin and of course no one is expected to believe that the real SAS went around blasting Highway to Hell for extremely obvious reasons. The show also as we know has taken some liberties with the characterisations of the real people involved. This again is irrelevant because we are not writing RPF. Discussions about how real people can/are/should be interpreted in television and films are interesting and valid but they don't belong here. We're looking *only* at the show characters and how they are portrayed and what we as viewers are intended to understand from that.

now despite my having just said that the show is deliberately ahistorical it is still firmly set in the past and certain expectations arise from that. We expect the characters to dress in period fashion, we expect them to drive period accurate vehicles and shoot period accurate weapons. We expect them to talk about killing Germans and Italians which they clearly would not do today. We also expect them to display period accurate attitudes to certain social issues, namely in this case homosexuality or queerness in general.

we expect this because while we are able to suspend disbelief about the soundtrack or the choice to cast a 5'7" actor to play someone who was 6'4" irl, suspension of disbelief refers to the reader/audience's willing choice to accept the artistic premise of what they are reading/watching for the sake of the story being told. Suspension of disbelief refers to accepting improbable coincidences that move the plot along or not thinking too hard about the timeline, as in the case of SAS:RH. It does NOT mean shrugging away anachronisms built into the story itself.

think of it as the walrus/fairy question that was all over tumblr last year. We are unfazed by the appearance of the fairy at our door because that only requires us to accept the existence of something we thought wasn't real. We are fazed by the walrus because how the fuck does a walrus--something we already know is real and therefore has to follow the rules of this reality--get to our door? How does it ring the bell? We accept a soundtrack of AC/DC and Judas Priest because it sets the tone of the show and is a clear artistic choice. If paddy were to appear in onscreen wearing an AC/DC t-shirt we would immediately react negatively and be taken out of the scene because even though the show is ahistorical he simply wouldn't do that. He couldn't do that. It's impossible within the premise of the show that we have already accepted.

so when you, anon, and others like you, claim that show!paddy's queerness is something the show 'intentionally plays with as a story line' what you mean is that he's not portrayed as a modern queer character would be. He doesn't kiss eoin, only ever calls him a friend, doesn't apply modern terminology to himself or speak openly about any of this. Because of course he fucking doesn't. That would be wearing an AC/DC shirt whilst sulking like achilles in his tent. It would be out of place in a way that goes against the established premise of the show. It is not reasonable to expect that from this show or this character.

as for it being fundamental to the story, well, yeah. That's storytelling. Eoin's death and paddy's reaction to it drives paddy's arc in a way that we the viewers are clearly intended to understand. That's not 'playing' with his queerness, it's drawing a very clear and logical line from 'the man he loves but can't express that love to dies tragically' to 'he isn't able to talk about his grief because that would mean articulating things he can't even acknowledge to himself' to 'the internalised grief, anger, and homophobia drives him to behave in ways that would have him locked up in another context but in the SAS has him wreathed in medals'. His queerness and our the viewers' understanding of it is essential to the show but it is not the point of the show. If you want an exploration of what it meant to be queer in the british army in wwii then that is a fanfic you should write but again, you shouldn't expect it of this show. SAS:RH is about beautiful men blowing shit up. It's not a treatise on historical queerness. Manage your expectations.

let's move on then to the laughable notion that bisexuality is in some way a 'middle ground' between straight and gay, some sort of compromise that we the audience can strike amongst ourselves so that everyone can be happy. And on this point let me just say again, hoo boy.

i've been accused of bisexual erasure in the notes of my original post which is very funny to me considering i've written bill stirling as bi in two longish fics now, in a very pointed way that involves a self-realisation arc for him. i am also old enough to have lived through the days when homosexuality was becoming more widely accepted but people on both sides of the issue were united in their refusal to admit bisexuals were real. A gay friend of mine, fresh out of the closet in 1998, told me flat out that people claiming to be bi were just 'too afraid to come out for real' so you know. I've been in the trenches.

however, none of this is relevant to the show, which very deliberately and pretty fucking obviously gives us canon gay paddy but makes an equally deliberate point of him not being into women. How do we know he isn't? Consider the loving way the camera lingers on every single touch shared between him and eoin, the softness in how they look at and speak to each other, the fucking rowboat scene, hold all of that in your mind and then compare it to how he's shown with the two women he interacts with on screen.

in the very first episode we see him in the club when eve approaches him, visibly unnerved by her and wanting to make it very clear that he's not after what he thinks she's offering. He throws the flower over the balcony in a clear statement against any potential misunderstanding. He's absolutely desperate to avoid any situation wherein he might be hit on by a woman and have to extract himself without arousing her suspicions as to why. Eve of course clocks him instantly, as we have seen her do before and more explicitly with dudley clarke. Her gaydar is spot-on and she is able to smooth his ruffled feathers at least enough to get a bit of conversation out of him before he runs away. Her approach to him is so dramatically different to the approach she takes with david in the very next scene that it's impossible not to notice. A bisexual paddy, particularly one who has a sexual history with women, would not be so afraid of being hit on by one.

which brings us to alessia, with whom he has basically no direct interaction. We do however see him being scornfully dismissive of riley's attachment to her. He doesn't really seem to understand it and views it mainly as an obstacle, which is why he makes a point of separating them in s2e5. None of this is indicative of someone who has a romantic or sexual interest in women. None.

so, to recap: show!paddy is very clearly portrayed as in love with eoin, conflicted about it, conflicted about himself and his own identity, uninterested in women and unnerved by the possibility that they may have a sexual or romantic interest in him. This is not a bisexual man and saying so is not erasure of bisexuality, it's simple media literacy and not attempting to force a non-textual interpretation to justify the kind of fic you want to write. now let me be very clear on this. Of course you can write whatever fic you like. i am not the fic police or the SAS:RH police or any kind of cop (ACAB now and always). My point is not that you aren't allowed to write paddy with women, but that if you do you are making a very particular sort of decision, which is to deny and dismiss a fundamental aspect of his character and characterisation in order to justify your choice to write self-insert fantasies wherein your fic avatar is fucking not any version of paddy mayne either real or fictional but more your fantasy version of jack o'connell in a british army uniform with an irish accent. Which you know, whatever, you do you. Just do it with the full acknowledgement and recognition of what you are doing and what that says about you, as well as accepting that the ability to do something does not imply any freedom from criticism for choosing to do it. If you write paddy fucking women the cops won't break down your door but myself and the other viewers/writers/readers who are interested in the actual character from the show as he is actually portrayed are absolutely going to judge you for doing that.

basically, have the courage of your own fucking convictions. You think it's okay to ignore the sexuality of this character and by extension all the points made by the media he's in about what that sexuality means for him and his arc within the story. You want, essentially, to make him into a different character in order that you can fantasise about fucking him. Go right fucking ahead, no one is going to stop you. But don't pretend that this action isn't tone deaf, ignorant, and fucking homophobic. Don't pretend that it's something that shouldn't make other people mad, because hey ho we can all just headcanon him as bi.

nope. lol. not happening.

#everyone here has put it far better than i could have #but personally i think its just weird as fuck to write gay characters in m/f ships #is it because its taboo?#do straight people really need even more things catered towards them?#its not like everyone else on the show isn't straight #is it to get a win over gay fans?#these people are proof that media literacy is a dying art #paddy mayne #sas rogue heroes #eoin mcgonigal #paddy x eoin

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