- ̗̀🍄sunshine queer🍄 ̖́-

The TikTok Team is back again with a Tag Wrangler Hear Me Out Cake.

Eira lounging

Page 22

hmmmmmm i am once again unhappy with these pages story-wise, but i need to stop myself from being a perfectionist. this is my fun comic i made for fun to have fun. we move on

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close ups (+ cut content) \/

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes of amatonormative culture, we aren't doing anything. Adults are supposed to do things. That's how you become a member of society.

This movie got made because Robin Williams said yes to it (and it's important that Gene Hackman did as well). Williams in the 90s was a mega-star of a type that's not present in the current media environment (maybe Tom Cruise, but I personally think that's echo from his salad days). Even his flops made money on the back end in the video rental market, which also doesn't exist anymore (streaming is different). Hackman was on the other side of his A-list career but still Hollywood nobility if not full royalty.

Playing gay was considered career suicide in the 90s. There had been a number of actors who put lie to that belief stretching back decades, but this was Williams and Hackman (yes, being on screen next to a gay character was enough to get you blacklisted) saying "screw that" and doing it anyway.

Being gay and out was career suicide in the 90s.

Nathan Lane had a really nice gig going for himself. The Lion King put him into the Disney rep company with people like Williams, Bette Midler, and Whoopie Goldberg (check their IMBD list from the 90s--they were making bank at Disney).

Lane didn't come out until several years later (nice summary: https://deadline.com/2024/06/nathan-lane-robin-williams-advice-coming-out-birdcage-1235975010/).

I don't want to imply that this was a Sorkinized moment where everything changed because of one thing, but this was a very important movie that caused real movement in the needle on queer acceptance.

Actually, trivia that gives a sense of just what a big deal Robin Williams was. During pre-production of Aladdin, he was offered a role by a small indie animation studio in Australia, for the character of Batty in Fern Gully. He not only took the role, but at a price that was dramatically below what his work usually cost, because they were an indie studio that was basically making this movie pro bono for the cause of environmental conservation.

Disney told him he wasn't allowed to take the job. That they wanted all their actors to devote their full attention to the Disney movie they were making, and he was not allowed to be doing any other project that overlapped with Aladdin, and if he didn't drop the Fern Gully role they'd find someone else to play their genie, and implied that they would no longer be approaching him for any other roles in the future. Keep in mind that as someone else said above, Disney was even then the biggest studio there was, and getting on their short list could make or break anyone's career.

Robin Williams told Disney that if he had to choose, they could find someone else and he was doing the altruistic environmentalism movie. He didn't need them. Now or ever.

Disney backpedaled and capitulated, and he did both films.

Alexa play Who Is She? by I Monster

this crossover is insane and i love it sm, i needed to add my own two bits into the sandbox, so here, eldritch AU be upon ye