#queer analysis

It is obvous that Megamind as a movie has alot to say about gender. Like ALOT to say about gender. Being a superhero like metro man is directly shown as a representation of succeeding at masculinity. Megamind is representing being ostracized for alot of reasons but a big one is the way he doesn't fit into tradtional masculinity. It's also clear that masculinity isn't something that is natrual him. We also can read his fake relationship with roxan in a gendered way where he is trying to fill this roll of a man only to later be told she isnt into that.

"The bad guy doesn't get the girl" is a repeated line. He thinks society litterly incapable of haveing a romantic relationship with a women becuase of his statis as "bad guy" something he actually like is part of his very being. This is litterly a character who wants a romantic relationship with women but thinks that his presentation isn't something a women would be into. I don't think I need to spell out how this could be read as metiphoreical for a lesbain with out community.

Roxan is also lesbain coded in this way. She constantly has people trying to earn her intrest with performances of masculinity when she isn't into that.

Also how Megamind first trys to stop Titan by pretending agin to litterly be the hight of masculinity but ends up needing to lean into his feminine presentation in order to beat Titan.

No matter how you read it Megamind is queer becuase of he is a clasic haze code era queer coded villain. For thoughs who dont know the haze code among outher things made it so you litterly couldn't depeict queer people on tv unless they where bad guys. Even after they ended the tropes created in this time where still used as short hand to indicate that a character is queer and where for along time the only way queer characters could be seen at all. This film in showing thoughs same traits used as short hand for both villains and queerness and telling the audience these things are not only exceptable but good actually is a show of queer exceptance.

So first of i don't know what consertives think looks like fun about little house on the prairie life. The main family is constantly struggling financially. They are the ones doing manual labor for work of corse haveing the farm. The people with money are the ones who own the genreal store ie the ones who don't do manual labor. The doctor is regularly paided in chickens and food because people there are so poor they can't afford to pay them. Like while frolicking in fields is fun but the constant financial stress is like not idk.

Show don't tell.

If you ever been in writing or critique circles, online or not, you are probably familiar with this term.

It's both a critique and a tip that people give writer that basically means that we should see certain character's characteristics in action and not just getting told about it through dialogue.

For example, if a show you watch keeps having its characters tell you that the MC (main character) is good at making pizza, but we never see said character make pizza, it'd be hard for us to believe said fact.

Show don't tell also has some backlash, mostly with how difficult it so apply it to your own story projects (especially those done in prose) if you are not too familiar with its complexities.

And there is a specific critique that I personally have of show don't tell that I don't think other people have talked about.

Does it promote bigotry? Let me explain.

Dead End paranormal park, also known as Deadendia, is a Netflix animated series adapting the first two Deadendia graphic novels that was cancelled after two seasons, and on a big cliffhanger at that.

One of the most well known aspects of this show was the fact that the male lead Barney is a gay trans man who is also Jewish.

The scene in which he comes out to Norma as trans has gotten a lot of praise for being the first instance that many people saw the word “trans” being used out loud in animation.

And as much as I love that, it does point out an issue this and other queer media have when it comes to how they handle labels.

The discussion about labels is usually centered around the fact that people are complex and we shouldn’t use labels to define an entire person’s identity” which is something I agree with.

When it comes to media however it gets more muddy.

To put it in simple terms, where members of the queer community accepted the complexities of labels, media isn’t as far ahead as for example queer labels are treated as taboo (name one time the word ace was mentioned in an animated show outside of bojack horseman) and as we time and time again, media does have the power to impact our every day lives.

An infamous example of that case was the movie "Birth of a nation" that many people criticized for making the KKK reappear in American society.

What does show don't tell have to do with anything like this? Especially for Dead End?

Meet Norma.

Norma is the female lead in this series. She is also south Asian, bisexual and autistic.

All of these traits are shown in the series in different ways. Norma’s ethnicity is very clear, the second half of the series has her go through an arc where she comes out as bi, and there was an entire episode dedicated to her troubles as an autistic person.

Only the word “autism” itself was never mentioned in the show.

Granted some of may not take an issue with this, most likely because if you watched the show you’d clearly see how the show didn’t even try to hide Norma’s autism. But I personally find it that it makes the issue worse.

To illustrate why, name me one show that has a queer brown ND girl as it’s female lead that uses the word “autism” in text. It’s hard to think of one right?

Even though the show did an incredible job showing us Norma's autistic traits over and over again. The fact the word autism was never mentioned itself makes me feel as if the creators still wanted to make the rep "safe" for big companies and audiences.

Not only that, this show is targeted towards a younger demographic, one which may not be even aware that autism is a thing. I didn’t know it was a thing until high school and there could be worse cases about that as well. Not only do I find the absence of the word ‘autistic” very frustrating as an ND woman myself, there is a high chance of it negatively impacting nd youth too.

“Isn’t this a blog about queer characters? What does autism have to do with that?”

For one, this show didn’t shy away from using queer labels in text

As I mentioned earlier, one of the show’s most well known moments was Barney saying “I’m trans, Norma.” and when Norma comes out as Bi to Logs (Barney's love interest) she gets so giddy that she keeps saying the word “bi” over and over again.

The word autism doesn’t get the same treatment whatsoever.

“Well, maybe the creators didn’t think of her autism as that important?”

The creator of the show is both an autistic trans man who use the word autism openly in the original deadendia comics.

Which make this whole case even more confusing. I used to believe they wanted to use the word in the third season that never came out, but the fact that it HAD been used in the comics makes that idea hard to swallow.

The point of this essay wasn’t to cancel the creator or deadendia itself, or to assume that the creator had bad intentions for not using the word autism in the script.

The point is to show the problem of how we handle labels.

Labels are important. They are a language by queer people for queer people to express themselves with words they connect to. The words themselves even saving people’s lives. And many are reclaimed from bigoted people as a way for us to stand up for ourselves

The amount of times I've seen people use the term gay to express themselves proudly in front of bigots, how lesbians keep defending the word "lesbian" with it's history of mistreatment. The various umbrella terms that help aspec and trans people use to better express themselves.

And yet these words don’t have a ton of respect. Case in point, we coined them as “labels”

Bi and trans, both words that help a large community express themselves, has been mistreated by bigots and their own queer peers, is also apparently just a label

Asexual and Aromantic, two terms that help people finally understand themselves to their core, is also a label, even if representation for aspec folk is still lacking to this day.

Autism, a word many people prefer to use to describe themselves over Asperger's (which has roots in Nazi history) seems to be just a label too. Autism in fact could be considered to be treated far worse than queer terms because of the fact that it's a medical term for a condition that can't be "healed," unlike queer labels that are more fluid in nature.

And media, whether it was created by queer or allocishet folks, refuses to use these “labels.”

Maybe it’s because those imply something ugly, strange or just don’t grab a mass audience. Or maybe they didn’t want to break the “show vs tell” rule. Maybe to some it is more important to follow loose storytelling rules to get a better audience reaction, than to showcase our true experiences that may give us ugly looks.

Who knows? I never worked for a big corporation.

TLDR: Deadendia not using the word autism, most likely because of the "show vs tell" rule, shows a bigger issue of how we treat labels used to describe various queer and disabled minorities, and how it can imply many negative things about the people who use these labels

Sophie and Howl have great chemistry, but it comes off as entirely platonic and I'm like 3/4 of the way through the book by now and there's been no inkling of attraction between them. And Sophie is too young (or old, I guess) for Howl, and that scene from chapter one where he hits on her in the street is supposed to be creepy, right? Right??

And also Howl is written like a closeted gay man. He's literally described as flamboyant several times, and he's either very very metrosexual or a fantastic twink. And far more than that, he's attracted to women, totally super duper in love with them, until they come onto him and then he's like "Actually no I'm not into this don't ever talk to me again" like Howl this is a safe space is there something you need to tell us about?

I've been thinking for a while about how people discussing queer media have a common frustration. For a lot of media that me and many people I know like (Wicked, Nana, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Ace Attorney, etc.) have characters and plot points that, if those characters were in a hetero-presenting relationship, it wouldn't even really be a question over whether the characters were in love or not because the implications are so strong, and it could just be used when analyzing the piece. I'm going to talk about why this test is necessary from here, but if you just want to get to the test itself, just scroll down to the ***TEST EXPLINATION*** mark.

In academic and analysis of works of art, there is a degree to which, when things are so heavily implied that if you take that interpretation out of the story the story ceases to make as much sense or have as great of an emotional impact, you treat that inference as text so that you can continue to analyze the story. For example, if two characters are shown with matching wedding rings, live together, sleep in the same bed, and share a last name, you assume they are married. It's not that people who have the same name and wear matching wedding rings don't exist, but the majority do so it is fine to assume this.

This is used all the time, to great effect in both academic analysis and those shared on this website. But I've seen for a while people not extend this branch for story tellers to queer people and queer relationships, which vastly hurts the logic of the text, the characters' arcs, and appreciation for the story as a whole.

I will admit, this is an older phenomenon. Now, people are more kind with their readings of queer characters and acknowledging when a piece of media is, in technical terms, gay as fuck. But in a lot of analysis still, people are afraid to mention the queerness inherit to a work that would make their analysis better because of fears that someone in the replies or comments will go "WeLl ThAt'S nOt ThE tExT!1! ThAt's JuSt YoUr OpInIoN! YoU cAn'T aNaLyZe ThAT!" When analyzing that piece of the text would increase the analysis, make more sense or all of the above.

I think the best examples of this I've seen recently are of Madoka Magica and Nana, both of which I've recently gotten into recently that really made me think about this. Starting with Nana, I got into the show via youtube videos like the incredible 'The Queerness of Nana Kokamatsu' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyMMdgKpUkw) and 'The Queerness of Nana Osaki' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ_hVxije-k) by Little Miss Crabby, which are both amazing and you should definitely watch, and posts on Tumblr and Tiktok, which either have disclaimers ahead of them about how you're allowed to have you're own opinion just to quell the reaction Little Miss Crabby expected on her videos or either call Nana 'queerbaiting' or in some other way saying it was 'subtext' or 'not canon'. When I actually read Nana, I found that it is almost impossible to talk about Nana without talking the queerness of both Nana Kokamatsu and Nana Osaki. It's mentioned several times in the manga, Hatchi (Nana Kokamatsu) literally says how Nana (Osaki) would be her ideal boyfriend, Hatchi literally has a sex fantasy about Nana in Volume 4 and then chastises herself for it, the Nanas' friends are both very weirded out by their inability to say they are queer and comment about that on multiple separate occasions, etc. I feel like @sfaghetti said it best when they said "to be honest it amazes me how many people think that nanahachi isn't canon or that it's queerbait or that Ai Yazawa didn't realize she was making them gay. like right before Nana she wrote a manga with a bi character and a trans one who ALSO appear in the Nana extras. and also if they were a man and a woman people wouldn't see these scenes and assume they're meant to be taken in a platonic way. they'll explicitly say they're in love with each other and for some reason the fandom will insist it's entirely platonic, or go 'I wish they were gay!' as if they already aren't" (https://www.tumblr.com/sfaghetti/735159827955875840/to-be-honest-it-amazes-me-how-many-people-think)

This is true to a lesser extent with the Madoka Magica fandom when it comes to analysis. While a lot more people are willing to admit this story is Gay As Hell™, there's still a lot of ideas that because Gen Urubuchi described Madoka or Homura's relationship as being romantic rather than sexual (https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Nitro%2B_Q%26A_Panels_at_Animagic_2013), he is saying Madoka and Homura aren't gay and thus not in love with each other which is not what he said and earlier in 2011 said "For me, perhaps there is part in my thought that said whatever relationship that could exist between male and female it should also exist between couples of same sex. Inside me, I could not imagine a model in which there is something that absolutely could only exist between male and female. Notwithstanding the extra element of [PtV] sex, I do not believe male-female relationship is such a special thing among all the different inter-human relationships." This, to me, comes across as very acephobic, implying that the only way that two girls can have a romance is if they are sexually attracted to each other, which, as a lesbian on the ace spectrum, is incredibly insulting to me. Homura and Madoka being canonically asexual is incredible representation as queerness and asexuality doesn't really tend to get included together as people believe it's just another way to say that something's not queer, they're just "pure friends with a relationship greater than love", because many see queerness as something that pollutes a person. But through Madoka Magica, I can say for certain that was not the cast or crew's intention. Madoka and Homura aren't ace and therefore "purer" than everyone, they're gay and also ace. They pretty much say as much in multiple sources (the Madoka Magica wiki has SO many sources on this if you want to see for yourself at https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Community:Yuri_undertones#Homura_and_Madoka). Also, as Katy from @silvermoon424 said in her tags "I'm normally all for platonic interpretations as an aroace person myself, but Homura's character simply does not work if she's not in love with Madoka." (https://silvermoon424.tumblr.com/post/780670134878650368/not-to-downplay-homura-and-madokas-relationship), which I absolutly agree with because the conceit of Madoka is that Homura would go back in time over and over and over again to save Homura at any cost, which is something you don't do for someone who doesn't mean a TON to you. Little Miss Crabby explained this frustration yet again in her video 'The Queerness of Homura Akemi' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLob9DKitOI) because Homura and Madoka use almost every romantic trope in the book and still get treated like they're a 'non-canon, queerbaity' relationship which, as someone who has watched and analyzed this show multiple times, they are not!

Overall, I feel like the analysis community has a problem with talking about queerness in media that is 'shown not told' and how queerness is often measured by how many characters explicitly say they're queer, not how many queer stories are actually told. I feel like this especially hurts young queer people already scared about being 'queer enough' and limits the discussions about queer media and stops our analysis of it.

*********** TEST EXPLINATION *********************

So to resolve these issues, I've devised a test much like the Bechdal, Mako Mori, or Vito Russo tests, but this time covering whether or not people can be sure their queer ship has enough legs to stand on when analyzing a piece of fiction. To be clear, this doesn't mean that ships that fail this test cannot be discussed or analyzed, but it does mean that those ships are genuinely up for interpretation and cannot be considered 'fact' in fan discourse and discussion. You can also not like a ship or wish it wasn't in the work or just personally not like to interpret it that way if it passes the test. All art is subjective and sometimes you just want to be a little delulu and ignore canon, and that's great! My point with this test is not to harass people with it or make them think their individual opinions are wrong because they're not. But just like people shouldn't be harassed because they don't like a ship, people shouldn't be harassed, told their very logical interpretation of a work doesn't make sense, and pushed out of further media analysis because they do. Respect is a two way street. And thus, with that disclaimer, I now present you with

The Akemi test:

Something passes the Akemi test if all of the following are in a ship

The two characters have several emotionally charged scenes together that use generally agreed upon romantic tropes (I.E. staring into each other’s eyes for prolonged periods, a decent amount of physical affection, challenging their perspective, etc.) with romantic tension connecting such scenes together to create a picture typical of romantic subplots in other explicitly romantic media.

These scenes and/or the romantic tension of these scenes are not played for laughs in the work itself

It would be assumed the characters involved were going to have a romantic subplot/it would be assumed the characters were in love with each other if either of them were of the opposite gender (I.E. if you would suddenly believe the characters would get together/were in love if one of them were suddenly of the opposite gender, it checks this box).

Queer themes - a character's queerness (often not canonical) is reflected somehow through the themes and interactions tied to the character in the piece of media they belong to. Think Merlin in Merlin (a character with something innate about himself that is hated in the society that he resides in). In this, queer themes are (often unintentionally) invoked, though actual queer identities are never assigned, but these narratives often give queer audience members the most to grab on to, because they relate to and can analyze the wider queer meanings in the narrative, even in the absence of canonical queer identity.

Queer identity - in my opinion, queer identity without wider queer themes is why a lot of modern queer characters feel quite empty, especially in comparison to their queer coded predecessors (think those memes that are like Queerbait media: There is no me without you, just as there is no darkness without light. Queer media: Uhhhh... I like girls. Romantically). Often queer audiences might relate to the identity of a character, but the experience and narrative of the character feels entirely disconnected from their lived experiences, because they are literally a queer character but they are not thematically a queer character. THIS IS NOT ME SAYING THAT THIS IS ALWAYS A BAD THING. I think this type of narrative is crucial for the normalization of queer identities to wider audiences, HOWEVER it will never be able to satisfy actual queer audiences, as they are still not being fully represented.

Both - I have seen an active trend towards this becoming more common, which makes me happy :). The best example of this I can think of is still Stede from Our Flag Means Death (a canonically queer character existing in a story thematically about being an outsider from society, either from being queer or from being a pirate, but often both) or really any of the queer characters in Our Flag (bonus shoutout to Jim). This results in stories that both have literal representation in the labels and relationships AND the thematic queer coding that makes queer audience members actually feel seen, as well as to have something to analyze.