Look alive, sunshine

Ed and Stede being old. No really, the fact the middle aged characters are just allowed to… be. How they’re falling in love like teenagers but the narrative makes room for their age, shows how dissonant and emotionally confusing it is to navigate such a “young” milestone when you have decades of trauma and lived experience.

Ed’s measure of being young is his hair not being grey, and he still rushes excitedly into a first kiss and doesn’t know where to put his hands, cries for hours and eats things straight from the jar because he misses someone. Just the very human experience of putting your heart on your sleeve and being rejected… but you’ve lived with decades of trauma unimaginable. So how does some “little thing” like this still hurt so bad? That little voice echoing all the way from childhood saying to act your age:

“Shouldn’t I be beyond this?”

No. No you shouldn’t.

Their years add a different context to their humanity but doesn’t remove it. They don’t have things figured out with either nuclear families or grizzled loner attitudes, and the narrative doesn’t expect that of them. In queerness, we frequently have to dismantle the entire concept of age based milestones in the first place because we historically lacked that privilege. A true first kiss could occur at 40, many only got to marry long after their skin sagged and eyes didn’t work like they used to. So much queer media now a days is so quick to forget this history, to spotlight young doe eyed gays who hold their boys’ hands in the high school hallways and slot right into the rainbow shaped hole of heteronormativity. Leaving behind the old greying queers that either endured the hell of trying to fit in a world that hates them like Stede, or raged against the whole damn system with whatever loose material and cunning at hand like Ed.

paulharries: Outtake from my shoot with @gerardway backstage in Sheffield 2007. #mychemicalromance #gerardway #musicphotography