Restorative or Transformative?: Homoerotic Subtext, The Closet, and Ciphers in Pop Culture. The nature of commercial art is that it’s sometimes bad and inconsistent. Notably it’s also misogynistic. One way in which audiences try to reconcile massive plot holes or gaps in character motivation is by reading secrets or hidden information into a plot.
Commonly, male characters are interpreted as closeted gay or bisexual to reconcile the absence of women from commercial narratives with the generally stunted and poorly-written male characters that form the focus on said texts. This reading has become especially common among a non-heterosexual milieu. Rather than transforming the original text into some radically different new form, this closeted interpretation seeks to make the original text stand on its own as a story rather than a Swiss cheese of dumb writing decisions.
This interpretation only works for a specific type of pop, usually genre fiction. Any story in which tortured male leads eschew women in favour of male-male bonds (because female characters are constantly killed off, written sparsely, or written out, because the production team keeps casting their male buddies, because actors demand to keep having scenes with their bros, whatever) can become a sounder structure if you put one of them in a closet.
The gay interpretation is the natural consequence of shoddy misogynistic writing from ventures like Supernatural, Naruto, all the biggest hits. It’s also the natural consequence of more benignly misogynistic writing like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Lord of the Rings, where women aren’t necessarily rejected but are simply absent from the worlds of the protagonists. When the emotional crux of the story falls on male-male interactions, this reads as romantic because society at large priorities (definitively heterosexual) romance as the pinnacle of human connection. Two forces are in conflict, the primacy of heterosexuality (read as: romance) and the primacy of men.
Anyway. All that is to say that the typical gay or bisexual reading of male characters in pop fiction comes from a very real place. But, in some places, that’s the default interpretation. Angst, insecurity, secrets, double lives, fatigue, disappointment, restrained passion, stunted personal growth, anyone living in the closet can tell you that it impacts and defines your whole life to know that you live in a way fundamentally incompatible with The Proper Way that life is structured around down to tax law and superstore prices (which assume a heterosexual nuclear family unit). Characters in fiction also tend to have personal problems because that makes them interesting and tasty.
If you’ve grown up on stories with the specific type of misogyny that can be papered over with a closeted interpretation of the male leads, carrying this interpretation over to any male character will make sense more often than not. Even a bit of angst or insecurity? Well of course that makes sense if a character is closeted.
Except that’s hurt a normal part of fiction, and sometimes the closeted interpretation takes away from the point of a character. If a male character is on another axis of marginalization, the closeted interpretation imposed by the slash reading community downplays or trivializes the effects of that marginalization in the plot by overwriting it with another type of marginalization. Alternately, sometimes a character’s heterosexuality is a part of the story. There are some sorts of critiques or investigations of misogyny or masculinity that don’t work if the character has an ‘opt out’ of the cisheteropatriarchal perspective. Not that gay/bisexual men aren’t except from misogyny, but misogyny masculinity and heterosexuality are so tightly linked that it sort of defeats the point if you interpret that character outside of heterosexuality.
All that is to say—the closet interpretation is a quick and easy spice to apply to the weaker parts of action-adventure genre fiction to make it taste better. It draws from a large enough sample of art that it’s pretty widely applicable. Because of that, it’s part of some people’s [my] default interpretation package just because the semi-dull macho show at least gets less dull if you imagine there’s a reason for there to be no girls besides simple hatred. That then forms its own problem where the interpretation that works with your average genre work gets then blanket-applied to all genre works and obscures the places where the closet interpretation doesn’t fix the work, and actually makes it less interesting.
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horny reader sending toji soapy titties pics when he's out so he gets home and makes her cum by just playing with her nipples and talking her through it :3
۫ ⭒ toji talking you through an órgasm after you tease him with pics while he’s at work
warnings. fem! reader, dirty talk, nipple play, fingering, praise / mdni.
you always loathed whenever toji had work, meaning he’d be gone for so many hours.
boredom always overtook you.
you’d be laid on the bed, specifically his side of the bed while having a staring contest with the ceiling. nevertheless, you get an idea so you decide to take a nice relaxing bubble bath. with a good thirty minutes of straight silence—you reach for your phone, snapping a good two pictures of tits. the pretty bubbles of soap that ran down, you bring a hand up to give your nipple a soft squeeze as the camera flashed before sending it to toji.
giggling, you watch as the message immediately goes straight to read, meaning toji opened your picture immediately.
of course, it took toji about thirty seconds to actually reply — all he replies with is with a subtle, “That’s cute. I’ll be home in a few.”
deeply in thought, you pondered what that was about, you just couldn’t wait for toji to finally be home. you clearly missed him and even changed into something pretty for him.
nothing too risqué….
just one of his oversized shirts, you knew he loved whenever you walked around with nothing but one of his clothings. after drying yourself off and moisturizing with candied smelling lotion. you crawled back into the bed and as if right on cue, toji came through the door.
“toji!” you’d beam, stretching your arms out and about to hug him.
“nah baby, don’t touch me.” he grumbles in a gruff voice—you took in his scent, a strong rousing cologne scent that left you craving for more. he got into the bed and you gasp once he lifts up your ; his shirt. “you know you’re in trouble right?”
you grow quiet as he snuggles up against you, sliding off his shoes before bringing your straight into his arms. “what for?”
“girl,” he utters in a rasp, you let off a soft moan once toji drags you towards his lap—you’re facing the opposite way of him, and a rough hand of his grabs onto your right tit. “you’ve got some nerve, princess. not only were you touching yourself while i wasn’t here, but you also sent pictures of yourself to me while i was at work,” and you start to softly pant, feeling him swipe a thumb against your perky nipple. “what if i was around people huh? and they saw my cute baby all exposed ‘n provocative?”
“i’m…s-sorry, you huffed out a frustrated breath. his touch was so warm. you started to feel yourself getting heated, in that kind of way. the way that makes you drenched between your thighs. “you were gone all day ‘n i thought i’d show you myse—”
“i understand princess but you shouldn’t be touching yourself in the first place,” and for a moment his voice grew smooth and tender—you slump your head back against his chest before he moved his free hand towards between your legs. “what’d i tell you about touching yourself, girl? besides, ya can’t even do it properly.”
you heard the low snicker follow shortly afterwards, and he was so smug and condescending.
“ya can’t even touch yourself right, what makes you think you can make yourself cum?” he murmurs against your neck before playfully licking a stripe against your tender skin.
you start to whimper, feeling him squeeze against your left breast, another rubbing against your panties.
“i-i can.” you pout, intaking a sharp breath from the sheer warmth to of his touch.
“baby, y’er fingers are fuckin’ useless,” he chuckles. you frown from his teasing before you let off a soft moan once you feel toji’s thick fingers graze and brush against the middle part of your panties. “gotta do everything for you,” he sighs, planting a kiss against your collarbone. he felt you breathing back against him. you gnaw on your lip as toji’s still playing with your breasts. “did you touch down here?”
your breathing continued to pick up, and you squeeze your eyes shut for a brief second. “um, no.”
“um, yeah,” he hisses. toji’s jaw tightens and you let off a needy mewl once he runs a thumb down your slit before feeling it slowly sink in—you’re so wet it happens so easily, and your heads just lazily laid back against his chest. “if you didn’t touch yourself, how come you’re all drenched?”
“i was—”
“dumb soaked liars shouldn’t speak,” he cuts you off, and you moan once he presses a little pressure against your hardened nipple, feeling a bit a few droplets of water trickle down. “i don’t hold grudges though, especially not with you, baby,” and his words were tame and smooth right against your ear. “but i feel kinda bad. least i can do is give you an orgasm huh? ya want that, princess?”
you sniffle, giving his wrist a firm tug. “yesyes, please. touch me more.”
“shouldn’t do shit after that little slutty stunt you pulled,” he growls, and you moan once he starts to maneuver small circles against your cunt—two fingers now softly making its way inside. toji’s got your panties shoved to the side and your bottom lip quavers. “but…i don’t wanna make my baby more needy than she has to be.”
“toji,” you’d sulk, and the warmth of his breath forevermore continued to blow against your ear whenever he laughed. “make me cum, p-please.”
he was so smooth with his fingers, adding just enough pressure to where you’re feeling yourself grow hot and bothered each second.
“no one should see these girls but me,” he snickers, giving your nipple a soft squeeze. you were so sensitive, especially there—yet he knew that. “her too.” toji coyly grins, the top of his fingers prod against clit as he feels you bare around his digits. “can’t leave ya by yourself can i? i can just imagine how many others times you were here waiting, playing with yourself, hmpf.”
“it— it was just this one time.” you moaned, immense tension building up. a sudden breeze of from the cool air danced against your skin. toji smiles, knowing each exact angle to hit you with his fingers.
you remain sojourned against his chest, and toji brings his chin towards your right shoulder—you conceal an incoming moan once he’s just lightly ramming his fingers in and out of you. it’s sloppy, the plethora rings of squelches sang in harmony and you weren’t sure how much longer you could last. “and it’ll be the last right, baby?”
“yes. promise, toji please.” you’d hiccup, and as he still has one of your breasts in the inner depths of his hand, your legs trembled in longing desire.
“okay,” he purrs, nipping a kiss towards your neck. you pierce your nails into his arm before after a few long tension building moments. you cum, and you cum hard. you eye sight hazy, swallowing thickly you panted heavily. “good girl, good messy girl. relax.”
you huffed and puffed quietly, legs stuttering and shaking with such pleasure that you’re at an almost lost for words. so embarrassing you could barely pronounciate his name. your words broke and broke. “t-to-joiiii.”
“poor baby,” he whispers, fingers still shoved into your pussy. it stays there for the time being before you feel him curl his index finger just a few inches upward towards your sweet nub and you choke out a cry. “ooh. that’s a good little girl,” and his praises went straight to your heart. toji’s hand caressingly trailed down your chest towards your tummy before clearing his throat. “this won’t happen again, will it?”
“m-maybe.” you slur, and you’re taken aback once he turns you over to give you a chaste kiss.
toji stares at you before groaning. “thought you’d say that. what a fuckin’ shame,” and you gasp out a noise once toji makes you land on your chest before giving your ass a playful spank. “i’ve been too nice, princess. now i gotta really show you what your pictures did to me. so arch for me.”
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