#king of empyre describes teddy as a good-good nice goodest boy and like! wow! that's it! thats all there really is to his character!

[delusionland]

Billy and teddy kaplan-altman are the gay answer to the comic book code that devastated the golden age of comic books.  teddy and to a lesser extent Billy represent a moment in time, a feeling, a history that is beyond their minimal appearances in the last 15 years. And its not just about being gay---its about what it means to be GAY and completely, and totally unproblematically, unthreateningly good in the most common sense "aha!" Moment in comics. 

This is the middle ground between absolutely no censorship in comics at all, and our straight Christian propaganda fanon-canon blue boy scout superman aimed at little boys. Of course two of the most extensively powerful people in the marvel universe are two dumbass gay boys who REFUSED to say goddamn and say gosh-darned who are just? Really nice and in love after everything they've been through? 

Sometimes you don't want to read about superman beating up racists bc that shit can be scary and traumatizing. Sometimes you just want the most normal boy next door toothless fan raised couple to have matching sauron rings and get married twice and have mental issues and daddy/mommy issues that can be picked up and put down as easily as flying thru the air with ur boyfriend when u have superstrength and can shape-shift and fly and also u are king of space.

There is room for that story. There is room to breathe and to laugh, to talk about the deeper moments, the interdependence, the ways u are unhealthy and scared and lonely… and there is also room for mcu quips about a "twunk with great arms."

Its hard to trust stories, even after you've read every page. Its impossible to trust characters---theyre just fiction and prone to editorial whims. Its impossible to trust writers---they won't let you read their mind, and are also often forced into editorial corners.

But there is room for good. For boys who trust too much. Who are kind, excessively, needlessly so.

Superheroes and unfortunately our modern understanding them wouldn’t exist without the comic code foundation of characters striving so hard to be perfect---and continuing to try again, every time they got knocked down by serious threats after the code was knocked down.

There is no such thing as perfect, and I don’t want to censor myself or my own lgbtness or mental illness, which is not as SIMPLE, or easy to manage. But if I cannot be satisfied with the good within myself, I can be satisfied with the good in comic books that profess to be nothing more than themselves, that provide decent character arcs--and make me hope for more for myself one day.

#ooc: hc #king of empyre describes teddy as a good-good nice goodest boy and like! wow! that's it! thats all there really is to his character! #besides this sense of unreality that he is dealing with everything while trying to be as nice and kind as possible when everything is weird #but he deals with everything so well and so healthily its honestly so nuts #one of the few superheroes to go to therapy even if the therapist did turn out to be a monster #he's just. welladjusted. shy. nice. polite dreamy boy. maybe a little out of it at times. maybe tries way too hard #but he's just NICE. he was just raised right by a woman who loved pink lemonade! #he KNOWS he's living the dream! he knows his boyfriend is wonderful and his powers are wonderful and his destiny is insane... #he's so NORMAL but i guess there are normal people in this world. ive never met them. but teddy kaplan is a nice nice round spongebob boy