#attempting to beat the allegations by putting it out on record that corey is *bisexual*

[hersweetrevenge]

corey cunningham headcanons [volume two 🌈]

i want to say that i am totally normal about this man, but who would i be kidding at this point? today i bring you even more thoughts about my favourite babygirl. based partly on these two lists, here and here. more hcs can be found over in volume one, which is equally as nonsensical.

topics include: his name and how he feels about it, his gender identity and sexuality.

WARNING for mentions of child abuse, passing mentions of homophobia and transphobia. no direct mentions of smut but implications of sexual relationships are there.

[images via @/slashericons and @/shitedits]

his name, how it got picked and his thoughts

corey wallace cunningham. joan picked corey's first name from a book of baby names. no real reason other than she liked it. she'd suggested a few other to wally that he had turned down, but he doesn't have a problem with 'corey' so that's what they go with. his middle name is after his dad, and it was joan's way of trying to sweeten wally up to having a baby at all (isn't he happy he's going to have a son to carry on the family name?).

his full name was decided before he was born. joan and wally were pretty sure they were having a boy (as sure as they could have been in the mid-late 90s, when ultrasound quality wasn't as good as it is today), so they had a name ready. they did have a girl's name picked as well, just in case.

corey likes his first name well enough, there's nothing wrong with it. joan pronounces it with a pretty strong accent, which rubbed off a little on corey himself and he's never been able to shake it. he prefers the way he's heard other people say it.

he's never had a nickname. 'corey' is kind of short already. sometimes his friends say core, which he's fine with but he's not particularly attached to that. joan (perhaps surprisingly) was never big into pet names, she'll call him 'baby' or 'honey' sometimes, or 'buster' if she's scolding him (that's novel canon, don't shoot the messenger, folks).

in the run up to joan and ronald getting married, corey did wonder if they'd change their name to prevo, but it never actually gets mentioned. joan doesn't even change her surname, let alone corey's (can't have ronald thinking he's any more involved than necessary).

if corey ever got married, i think he'd be more open to changing he surname to his partners. he wants to disconnect from joan as much as possible. and even if his name is technically his dad's, he has his middle name to still keep that torch burning, so he'll happily become mr. corey [insert name here].

gender identity

corey is a man. he could never be anything else, just look at him. he has a pretty unstable sense of self though, and idolises classic american masculinity. he's vintage masc, like if james dean was built like a collegiate wrestler. he's someone who revels in gender affirming presentation and behaviour, while he's constantly emasculated at home. it's part of why he becomes so obsessed with michael - who is the pinnacle of his masculine idealisations; power, strength, control, even violence.

@slutforstabbings made this excellent post about corey's relationship to gender and his own sense of masculinity and how michael plays into that. "is it a sex thing, or a gender thing?"

i won't go too much into this next point because it just isn't within my experience or frame of reference, but i love reading about people's interpretations of corey as a transman or in some way transmasculine. in-universe, i'm not sure what the ramifications would be for that being his identity, i'm not sure if joan would be supportive or if corey would even have the means to transition in the way he wants to. but, from a literary perspective, i can absolutely see joan being pleased to have a son rather than a daughter. "difficult daughters of difficult mothers" are often portrayed as two (indignantly) similar people who resent each other, whereas "passive sons of overbearing mothers" is in a whole other ballpark; joan would be delighted to have a son she can manipulate and emasculate into being a good momma's boy.

sexuality and labels

corey is bisexual, but to be honest he doesn't really label himself at all. the need to think of a label has never really come up so he never bothered with one, he just deals (or doesn't deal) with his attraction as and when it happens.

he knows the "main", broad labels people use, it just somehow bypasses him that one might apply to him, even when he reaches the point where he fully acknowledges that he's attracted to a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons.

he experiences attraction to different genders very differently. because he hasn't put a name to what he feels yet (or ever), a lot of his early crushes (or squishes) never really registered to him. he's had crushes on men and women since he was a teenager, but it's not until he actually gets a chance to act on any of those feelings that it even occurs to him that he swings both ways.

he's a daddy issues cliché, but he does have a thing for older men. seeking all the validation and approval and attention that he never got while growing up. he feels like there's something safe about older men, even if that security is misplaced. but fear not !! he's a mommy issues cliché too !! the only way he's ever learned to love someone is obsessively. he has a tendency to put a lot of his emotional needs onto his s/o. he won't mean to, and he certainly doesn't want his girlfriend to be his mom, but joan would frequently cross emotional boundaries so he's not totally clear on which lines are for which relations.

(if roger and theresa asked him to, he'd absolutely be their third, no questions asked)

is he open about his orientation?

not really, but it's not strictly speaking a "secret" either. he hasn't told anyone, but it's also just never come up before. i don't know if he'd ever feel the need to come out.

haddonfield itself is not exactly a liberal metropolis, but it's also not a right-wing nightmare town either; most LGBT+ residents just go about their lives without much trouble, but the chances of someone on the street being homophobic/transphobic are never zero.

he does have a bit of a crisis about it at around his junior year, which is the first time he realises what he feels for his physics teacher might not be just wholesome, academic admiration. but it also makes something click in his brain and he's pretty quick to come to terms with it. also, he realises he won't actually have to deal with any of the possible implications of what he thinks is going on for one reason and one reason alone: joan.

joan pitches a fit at even the smallest inkling of a crush, even just with girls, so it's safe to say his feelings for boys is something he'll likely never bring up to her (unless the day comes where he can be out of that house and living his own life). although he knows ronald's a good guy, he'd never think to come out to him, they just aren't close enough.

corey actually never admits to any crushes, regardless of gender, not even to his friends. he's a bit "girl crazy", always has a crush but never acts on it, and you'd seriously have to waterboard that info out of him. he also falls victim to crushing on one of the only out guys in school, imagining what would happen if he ever got the guts to speak to him at one of the parties he sneaks out to. but that crush passes quickly when corey's attention drifts to a girl in his homeroom, and then to the football team's quarterback, and then to his lab partner. he has a bit more of a chance at community college, and he don't think he'd deny it, but he's so hesitant to embark on any sort of relationship that he's honestly just taking what he can get anyway.

#corey cunningham #halloween ends #everyone clap and cheer for blake right now (or else) because they have to listen to me before any of you lot have to heehee #attempting to beat the allegations by putting it out on record that corey is *bisexual*