welcometoqueer

[welcometoqueer]

[welcometoqueer]

purpose of this poll: basically im wondering if my gran having a pistol was a typical american experience

#I’ve literally shot guns before #when i was a young boy #my father took me to the shooting range in order to spend time with me #usually after dinner and sometimes a movie #got my first gun safety talk at 3 years old cause we had quite a few around the house #and im american #yes my father is conservative why do you ask #my folks were at least extremely responsible and safe gun owners and raised me to be conscientious

[welcometoqueer]

Just a reminder of how hard it's been to get to where we are today wrt queerness on tv:

2000, Dawson's Creek: Berlanti says “I had to threaten to quit, basically because they wouldn’t let us have the characters kiss,”. WB also asked them to film it from across the street.

2001, Buffy The Vampire Slayer: co-ep David Greenwalt, once recalled that he received a phone call from an anonymous WB exec asking "Is [Joss] really going to do this gay thing?". They were asked to cut Willow and Tara's kiss, and Whedon 'declared he would walk away from the show' if they didn't get their kiss.

2005, The OC: network affiliates said they were getting complaints about the bi Marissa storyline, and they went to the network saying, ‘If this doesn’t go away, we’re not going to air your show anymore.’. “I’ll never forget when we were forced to cut their first kiss way back before it aired. [...] I’m like, ‘What are we doing? Why are they doing that? They just made us cut this thing down to like a tiny little smooch,’” Schwartz recalled.

2000-2007, Gilmore Girls: Sherman-Palladino: "The networks were very different in how permissive they would allow you to be. So, Sookie was originally supposed to be gay, but that was a non-starter at that time."

2007-2012, Gossip Girl: “There was not a lot of representation the first time around on the show.” Safran said [...], adding: “I was the only gay writer I think the entire time I was there.” / ''Sure, Eric Van Der Woodsen came out in the 1st season -- he also triumphantly outed his boyfriend, which tells you a lot about where we were in 2007''.

2010, 90210: Q: 90210 doesn’t shy away from allowing its straight characters to express their sexuality. Will the show be as frank in its depiction of Teddy’s romantic relationships? Sinclair [EP]: I hope so.

27 LGBTQ+ characters were killed off in 2016 across various networks and shows.

Carter Covington (Faking It, 2014-2016) said in 2016: “Networks are terrified. They’re completely scared right now. They will look for any reason not to do something. …I would hate for us to lose opportunities because of fear.”

Javier Grillo-Marxuach [...] explained [he] doesn’t own the properties for which he is telling stories. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he said. “I will not stand up in front of the world and promise to do this and then somehow become the scapegoat on something that is not my property.”

Extra not-related-but-kinda-related fact: 1999 - Felicity's Haircut: network executives suggested it could have been series star Keri Russell's drastic haircut that did the real ratings damage. According to entertainment president Susanne Daniels, [...] she provoked a reaction so "overwhelmingly negative" that audiences stopped tuning in. Rather than chiding viewers for their superficiality, Daniels promised Russell would regrow her mane. "Nobody is cutting her hair again on our network," she said.

Sometime around 2021-22, the 9-1-1 team starts seriously working up to expand their roster of queer characters (including two black women, a black man, and a white guy) by exploring Buck's bisexuality... but Fox hits the brakes and ends up cancelling the show. Fortunately ABC (owned by the same production company) picked it up and that storyline got the go ahead.

Now, The CW. Know Riverdale? that show where every plot point or detail that crosses your dash makes it seem even more bonkers, and whose fans are quick to tell you that actually it's even weirder? romantic entanglements included?

So there's a recurring gay character, and then the main cast (which includes Cheryl, who is a lesbian). Who kisses who? Cheryl and Topaz? YES. Cheryl and Veronica? YES. Cheryl and Betty? YES. Betty and Veronica? YES. Archie and Betty? YES. Archie and Veronica? YES. Jughead and Betty? YES. Jughead and Veronica? YES.

Archie and Jughead? NO.

...🤔

My main points:

Queer storylines are still not easily greenlit, especially for pre-existing characters (don't take risks. don't fix it if it ain't broken). It's getting easier, but it's still not easy.

White, male, and straight is still seen as the default and as neutral by the networks, and let's admit it, by a portion of the audience. So while they might be willing to include some diversity in their shows, I think these characters are still seen as 'other', and there's a strong reluctance to taking one of those 'neutral characters everyone can identify with' and... 'officially/openly queering them', so to speak.

And what about Supernatural? The show that Pedowitz was happy brought on some very wanted male viewers, and which they used to usher in new shows:

“It has been the lead-in or lead-out to almost the entire schedule,” Pedowitz said. “It’s made successes out of shows that might not have [otherwise] been sampled, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that Supernatural brought in an audience that demographically was 50-50, male to female.[...]"

The show that got this network note in season 1 (2005):

For the episode "Route 666" though, "… The note I got from the network was 'The girl can't be on top.'"

More not-fully-related-but-relevant tidbits, this time from Nancy Drew:

"[straight pairing were] never endgame in the very early days. It was never even a thing. It’s that beautiful thing that comes out of creating a show and getting to 62 chapters of a story and all of a sudden it kind of takes you somewhere."

[Actress from Nancy Drew] told Us that she “made it [her] mission” to make sure there were “little moments” between the two characters that fans could latch onto. “[Even] in subtle ways that weren’t necessarily scripted — just in case they decided to go that direction [so] that it would feel supported,”

Okay, now think back to the stuff Edlund has been saying. Misha has been saying. Jensen, even, has been saying.

[welcometoqueer]

“girls support girls” no. girls protect girls. I could hate a girl to death and I still wouldn’t take my eyes off her drink at a party, I could hate her like she was the devil but still I wouldn’t make her go back to a man that was beating her.

[welcometoqueer]

in general I think this website has a serious problem about wanting to feel smugly superior about Literally Everything without spending even five seconds thinking about it first

[welcometoqueer]

adults are always talking about how “kids will do anything to get out of school” and okay, first of all that’s not true, but I think we really need to ask why that idea holds so much sway.

children’s brains are hard-wired to take in new information and acquire new skills. consider, for a moment, just how thoroughly our society had to fuck up the concept of education for it to be a normal thing to assume kids are universally desperate to avoid learning.

[welcometoqueer]

anyway all that to say that if you’re a dropout if you have shit grades if you go to an alt school and are looked down on for it if you’re in your 5th or 6th or whatever year of high school if you’re still getting your GED if you’re taking night classes if you missed out on “universal” high school experiences if you were abused by your peers (because make no mistake, that’s what bullying is) if you were expelled if you were truant every single year if you were homeschooled and got sick of the jokes if you never attended a full week if the whole world treats you like the scum of the earth all because of your high school experience or lackthereof you’re not alone. there’s so many of us that have been beaten down and broken by the school systems we’re subject to and the hostility they breed and the abusive environments they foster. some day we won’t have to be treated like objects of pity or contempt to be swept aside but until then we have each other

[welcometoqueer]

when is comes to asexuality and aromanticism you have to be okay with contradiction. one ace person will say asexuality is about not experiencing attraction, another will say it’s about not caring to act on attraction, another will say it’s not experiencing arousal. one aromantic will consider themself queer, one won’t. two people with seemingly identical experiences will use two different labels. aro people will be in romantic relationships, ace people will have sex. you get it.

[welcometoqueer]

#undescribed

[welcometoqueer]

someone asks dean if he'll fuck his clone and he's like hahaha of course I'm so hot and it's not gay if it's my clone and then you put his clone in front of him and he shoots it.

[welcometoqueer]

it’s like every month there’s some shit from the us that’s like “congressman for iowa john hamburger has introduced the Put Everyone Into A Meat Grinder bill (s.911) & it’s about to get passed to the senate everyone call your reps now!!!” & it’s something that affects the entire world

[welcometoqueer]

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

[welcometoqueer]

some of the brightest minds of our generation post on tumblr during work hours

[welcometoqueer]

“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“ (via gothhabiba)

Yes.

[welcometoqueer]

the thing about time loop jokes is, sure, they may be repetitive, but they never get old

[welcometoqueer]

#monster factory #the mcelroys #source: monster factory #source: griffin mcelroy #griffin mcelroy #justin mcelroy #mcelroy #mcelroys #mbmbam #the final pam

[welcometoqueer]

Hannah Montana is fucked up because its entire POINT as a show is that children should be protected from fame and exploitation, but it stars a REAL little girl that's being exploited. Nearly every episode carries the looming threat of Miley being outed as Hannah and losing her peaceful teenage life to the ravages of fame. Her father in the show (played by her own father in real life) wisely protected her from the trauma of fame by making her wear a disguise and live a rather quiet, interview-free life. Meanwhile the REAL Billy Ray Cyrus sold his daughter to Disney Channel when she was 11 and forced her to read dialogue about how terrible it would be to face the public eye. Like... Jesus, dude. The fictional Robby Ray is 10x the father, and it's not even close. (It's also IMMENSELY funny that her dad doesn't use his real name in the show, while she does. Almost like he wanted a bit of a disconnect between his identity and his character. Something Miley didn't get.)