Vegas Theerapanyakul, an accidental queer icon - a surprisingly serious essay
When i was around 14/15 years old i read this book trilogy called All For The Game and quickly became obssessed with this character called Andrew Minyard. He was this very short and angry gay goalie for a team of an imaginary sport that made absolutely no fucking sense. He was severely traumatized due to several happenings in his life and also kind of a dick.
Andrew is known for being a pretty problematic character but also a huge fan favorite.
Well, one quick look at the people making him a fan favorite will tell you the answer to that right away. Like me, most of those people were traumatized queer teens who had grown up feeling like they were incurable monsters. Who went through queerphobic trauma that they could barely even name. And just like no one cared about whether Andrew was okay, beacause āwho gives a shit about how this freak feelsā, no one cared about how us little freaks felt.
I don't condone half the things Andrew does and i think he's kind of insane most of the time, but i get him.
I get why he doesn't trust anyone
I get why he's so hesitant to allow himself to be less miserable
And that's so important for a character!
It doesn't matter if he's likeable or not, it matters if i understand him.
So recently becoming obssessed with Kinnporsche i can't stop myself from seeing a bunch of traumatised queers flocking to Vegas and not think about this.
If any of you reading this have consumed both contents you're probably dying inside a little due to the comparison considering Andrew would probably love to murder Vegas very slowly as he is a victim of SA and is highly prone to homicide, and while that's true i still think the comparison in regards to the effects they seem to have in a certain group is very valid.
While many of the people i've seen obssessd with Vegas are cishets who wanna pretend he can do no wrong because of his trauma, a considerable amount are queer people who carry extensive trauma and a history as victims of abuse and who are fighting everyday to feel like they have control over who they are. Just like Vegas, who, through making himself the abuser, tries to regain the control that has been taken away from him from a very young age.
Vegas wasn't born out of nothing, he was made.
The Vegas we know in the timeline of the show is a monster created through lack of sexual agency, physical and psychological abuse, homophobic abuse (something i don't think enough people talk about) and loss. And when you stop to think about it, all those things (but the homophobia) are the same violences he extends onto others.
Obviously i'm not saying that it's okay for him to do this just because it's a product of his own trauma but it's important to understand these things about him because if we don't all we do is make him into a caricature villain (more of an antagonist than a villain but anyways) and consequently erase the very cruel reality of his existence as a character that in some ways represents so many people.
For many people (queer or not, but for the sake of this essay we're focusing on queer people) trauma doesn't make us into sad but gentle messes. No, many of us are just plain assholes because of it. Many of us are mean and toxic and that isn't a reality that can be erased just beacause it's uncomfortable to acknowledge.
Andrew being a complete dick who's snappy and too hard to handle was so real for so many people and seeing him be loved was so important. Seeing him be that traumatized and thinking ādamn i guess i'm not the only oneā was such a defining thing for many of us.
And so in the same way, Vegas constantly trying to seek the control that's been taken away from him his whole life (even if in the worst possible ways), putting on a mask in front of everyone because he knows they can't handle his true self, not having any idea how the fuck to even try to love someone because no has ever tried loving him, and getting into a relationship in a incredibly questionable way because thatās the only kind of way someone that fucked up could possibly fathom getting into a relationship, that shit's bound to hit hard for queer people.
When you stop to think about it, we have historically related to the worst kinds of people, in part because of situations like the hays code that only allowed queer rep through lenses that painted us in a negative light, but also in part beacause we have been pushed to the role of monsters outside of fiction aswell.
We are called those things so often we start sympathizing with it.
And i know for many queer people what they need is to distance themselves from that and relate to much more positive representations of queerness but to others that's never gonna be enough. For so many of us the guy making the absolute worst fucking decisions so he can feel like he owns his life is the one thatās gonna really makes us feel seen.
I love me some nice and sweet queer rep but i only truly see myself in the sad, miserable, toxic queers (read These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever yall). And that rep HAS TO EXIST regardless of whether people think it āmakes queer people look badā. Of course it makes queer people look bad, but it's not the toxic queer rep that is at fault for that, but our queerphobic social structures that make so queer people are only allowed to exist with some semblance of dignity if they pass a moral test.
Queer representation shouldnāt have to follow a certain rigid morale to be deemed acceptable.
Vegas and Andrewās existence shouldnāt tarnish queer peopleās image because weāre not some organization where one person gets to be our representative and we shouldnāt be held to this ridiculously high standard of human experience.
And, like i touched on before, if we ignore these forms of queer existence we erase a whole group of very much real people who have very much real struggles, as uncomfortable as they may be to explore.
