Maybe straight folk can’t see queer coded characters as queer and get mad when one of their favs gets called gay or w/e because they think queer people are lame or uncool and they think all the cool & badass stuff about their fav is hetero shit, so they can’t see that all the “evidence” of the character being straight is actually the literal queer coding itself, but they’re like missing the crucial info that queer folk are Very Cool
straight person: “no, that guy? no! that can’t- but he’s like, you know, he’s so bada-”
me: “-badass? were you gonna say badass? is that why that character can’t be something other than hetero? you think the supposedly-but-never-canonically-confirmed-straight white cis dude is badass BECAUSE he’s straight white cis dude and if he wasn’t those things he’d somehow not be badass? or you think he’s badass because he’s doing things that you think are cool and you only think straight white cis dudes can be cool? like be honest, when is the last time you met a COOL straight white cis dude IRL? let’s not even talk about other fictional supposedly-but-never-canonically-confirmed-straight white cis dudes because I bet there’s scholarly essays about how they’re gay af, too. you cannot win. queer folk are on average more badass than straight folk, and that’s just real, and I’m sorry for the lies you’ve been fed.”
I had a bunch more to say about the queer coding in the spn endverse episode, but I think this imaginary conversation kinda covers it...
Like, in my experience, the cool boots-wearing badass that’s maybe a little weird but doesn’t care what you think and they can sew and knows first aid and has a bunch of other skills that would be useful in an apocalypse and might even have an apocalypse plan, THEY’RE BI. I can think of multiple people I know right now that are like this, and they’re all queer (and artisits, I work in theatre, lotta queer theatre folk that would really be set for apocalypse living, Idk why this is a thing). And this kind of badass queer person is as common in real life as the media would have you believe the sassy gay guy is. Like yeah, many bi folk are endverse!Dean level badass and many gay folk are endverse!Cas level cool, but only folks within the LGBTQ+ seem to know this because they’re got a bunch of queer friends and know it for fact and straight people are only going off what they see on TV and their one gay friend. Which is why I just will not argue with a straight person about queer coding. It’s a practice that was started to purposefully go over their heads, and even though it’s less necessary now, it still happens and it still goes right over their heads, and yet many of them will still try to put their extremely limited experience and knowledge of queer folk up against an entire queer subsection of a fandom that is saying a character is gay or bi or whatever and it’s just laughable that they think they have any ground to stand on.
