#tm meta

season 4 :: questers + catharsis

I love how this season we’ve had a theme of characters having to take a moment alone to confront difficult things about themselves in order to access something they need to move forward in the story.

All these characters have had to be honest about something that has been sitting on their chest for some time that makes them angry, scared, disappointed in themselves. All had to find some way to, at least, start reconciling that. All grew because of it in the direction of further happiness.

Eliot’s “Becoming Me has been my greatest life project” hit HARD. I have always felt like guilty? for the fact that I’m not the person I used to be and I’m not the person my family wants me to be. Instead, I have become the person I WANT to be, not what’s expected of me and his whole character makes me feel secure in that. Made me feel secure in me.

Eliot Waugh gave me permission to not hold back. In personality and embracing who I am but also, I’ve always been nervous about being affectionate with other people, and he showed me that (as long as I have their consent) There’s really nothing weird about casual touches or being open about my love for people. I should be more open with my love.

Margo gave me permission to put some feral in my life. For too long, I’ve been quiet and apologetic and hiding my anger under a guide of politeness and Margo Hanson gave me permission to be angry. To not hide that anger, to not hide my emotions to make someone else comfortable. She gave me permission to be strong and independent and confident in a way that I didn’t know I had in me.

Quentin gave me permission to not be ashamed about being nerdy or awkward or knowing lots of things and wanting to share my info. That’s like a small thing, but it powers me a lot. 

I don’t even know that I can fully describe everything that 3x05 gave me. 

The gay fantasia of running away with your love to live out the rest of your days in the middle of the fucking woods. There’s a whole queer history behind it, it’s my number one escapist fantasy, and seeing it played out on screen was very fucking emotional.

The idea of queer parenthood. It was something I had rejected for so long and now im weirdly open to the idea of having kids with a partner? This is a big fucking deal to me, as someone who has always rejected the idea of parenthood. Like, a big BIG deal to me. Like kind of an earth shattering type big deal to me. 

Growing old/living your life with your same sex partner. I genuinely cannot name another piece of media that portrays this seriously. I’ve never seen it in a fantasy/drama/serious show. I’ve never seen it! I’ve never seen a queer couple grow old together. Not even in real life! I’m literally tearing up just thinking about it. For a community that is so often killed while we’re young for existing as ourselves, to see two men grow old (like OLD) side by side, struck me like nothing else. THAT is my biggest take away from that episode. That I have the RIGHT to grow old with the love of my life. And it is a real option I have. That it can be done.

The key from 3x05 will always be a symbol of all of that for me and I want to get it tattooed one day. Even after that fucking finale.

Also peaches have always been gay culture but now even more

Quentin facing his Depression Monster is another thing that hit HARD. His whole little speech about how “I’ve come up against you before, asshole, and I won” or something like that was suUuper inspiring and exactly what I needed to hear in my life when I watched that episode and I think about it every time i deal with my depression.

Also honestly season three was just great storytelling and I loved all of it.

Goddess!Julia is a woman reclaiming her life 

High. King. Margo. 

Escape from the Happy Place. sigh.

An in depth analysis of a queer person’s mind, trauma, and past. That episode wasn’t just eliot centric, it felt like it was giving an acknowledgment to queer people in general. (i wish it had been)

I like can’t even formulate properly what the throne room/park scene did for me. “Proof of Concept” and “Peaches and Plums” was a life changing thing to watch, not just cause like “yay my ship!” If you’re LGBTQ, you know what I’m sayin. The validation. The hope. The promise. The narrative weight. the truth. The look in Eliot’s eyes. Sometimes i feel like my whole life was waiting for that moment, as dumb as that sounds.

I can’t fully speak about the queliot in season four and how it affected me to think I was getting queer narrative weight and to get to see one man fight like hell to get another man back to him in this context of “The writers can’t take it from me!” because they kind of did but I’m working on reclaiming that. I just need more time.

4x10. All that hard, glossy, armor, babey.

Margo’s tent speech changed my life. Full stop. I am a different person after that episode, in a good way. (not in like the finale way) I literally wrote part of that speech on my bathroom mirror so i could look at it every morning. That speech ignited something in me.

“I’m a king. Not a goddamned princess. A king.”

Women being allowed to show rage on screen affects me deeply.

“They do whatever it takes to help women.”

The entirety of “Storm Coming” affected me almost as deeply as the tent speech did. There are no words to describe what it did for me! I literally wrote “I’m the storm coming!” on a post it note and stuck it to my front door so it’s the last thing I see before I leave in the morning. It’s my hype up song and I still listen to it when I need a confidence boost or to get hyped up. 4x10 is like, in the top three of their best episodes.

Wow so weird that the season ended after 4x10

So, this was a comment I received in response to this post of mine and I had a lot of words to say about it.

Hi, my name is Key and I have a theatre background with an emphasis in costuming. So I have a lot to say about Eliot Waugh on any given day in general, seriously, I think about Eliot and the way he dresses a lot. But presently the subject is his look at the end of 4 x 13.

Eliot puts a lot of himself into how he dresses. Anything that Eliot is wearing is carefully chosen. Picked out first in style, dandy, or Fillorian, and then in colour.

Magali said so herself that Eliot's outfits becoming darker over the course of season 1 was on purpose. It was a reflection of his mental state getting darker. I don't think that care has left Magali's thought process with Eliot at all. If anything, she is the only one I would trust in the crew of the show. She hand made lots of Eliot's Fillorian wear, one was just "based on a painting." [One of his chiffon based outfits I'm not positive which one, Hale brought it up in an interview.]

Now I will say that the comparison between him in 4×13 and the images of him from 3×05 are very, very different and there are several reasons behind that and I kind of went over some of them in my one post about his outfit in 3×05 here.

Basically Eliot's outfit in 3×05 is a very specific look that is different than anything Eliot wore up until then. The closest comparison being what he wears in 3×13/4×05/(4×09?). Because he lives in those outfits. He wears those two outfits far longer than anything else he wears and therefore those costumes become important. Therefore comparing the outfits from my post are a little bit unfair.

However, let's get into it.

Eliot has always looked tired. His makeup always has his eyes like purple all around them. Like nearly bruised with how exhausted this man is. Because Eliot is exhausted. I highly doubt he sleeps more than 5 hours a night. It nearly looks like he is wearing eyeshadow-- he's not. The only time Eliot does wear eyeshadow is Lizard!Eliot. Every other time, it's just this sleep deprivation manifesting around his eyes.

This look is no different. He is exhausted, you can just see it around him like an aura. The love of his life just died. I'm not about to beat around the bush here he probably hasn't even been getting that generous 5 hours I mentioned earlier.

Plus, he nearly died himself. His stomach was ripped open. He had to go through surgery nearly hysteric on the pain. This man has been through a lot leading into this scene.

Also, note: he has not been aged. The rest of his makeup is just basic. Foundation, maybe brows, if I squint hard enough there might be mascara. But he has not been aged. This is just what Hale/Eliot looks like at 31/28. That's just this man's face.

As for the hair I just disagree with the commenter. His hair isn't bad, but it's not meant to look good either. But I will be comparing it to 3×05 for this. Eliot up until season 3 has been a mostly closed off character. He doesn't talk to very many people besides Margo and Quentin. And he almost exclusively does not open up.

From what I have seen his hair sort of reflects that. In all of season 1 his hair is always in that style where they have pulled all of his hair to the top and back of his head. In season 2 he is almost always wearing his crown so his hair has to be out of his face. And then in season 3 he is still wearing the crown at the start of the season but whenever he's not wearing his crown his hair is still pulled back out of his face.

His hair in 4×13 is no different. It is very reminiscent of his hair in season 1 actually. There is a lot of styling at the top but the rest is pulled to the back of his head. His hair is longer now however so we get the little curls at the base of his neck that poke out. This is the hairstyle that Eliot is comfortable wearing.

Now, in 3×05, Eliot's hair is different. He's disheveled, he's raw, he's unkempt. And his hair reflects that. His hair is falling into his face, he's not pushing it away and out of his face. He is being vulnerable with Quentin, and he's not not caring about how he looks, but he is allowing it to be looser.

Eliot is like the opposite of Quentin. Quentin hides behind his hair. His hair is like an anxiety shield for him. Eliot does the opposite. He pulls his hair out of his face and keeps himself mostly clean-shaven to protect himself. Eliot, to me, seems to feel like if looks well kept, than he is. No matter how untrue it may be. If he looks good, than everything will be alright. If others think that he is okay, no one will ask questions.

Because we jest that Quentin is a high strung super nerd. So is Eliot.

Eliot probably spends an hour or more getting ready every morning. Picking out his clothing, by style, by colour, by feeling. Styling his hair. Choosing his cologne. He does it to meticulous detail. He always has we just don't see it. We see him after that, pretending that it required no effort, that he woke up like that.

His outfit we can't fully see because of his coat but he is wearing mostly black, his shoes, his pants, his coat, his cane, his shirt and tie are a dark purple: the shirt has a pattern that reveals filigree amidst the darkness. His vest is hard to see but it's dark whatever colour it may be grey/purple/black.

Anyway Eliot is going through a lot. Mostly mourning, and he is dressed accordingly.

To start with, I’m not a philosopher and I’m not a sociologist. I’m just a linguist who likes to talk about stories and use jargon-y words. I’ve been in fandom (in some form or another) since the late 90s, and I’m a bisexual/queer ciswoman married to a man. I say all of this so you understand where I’m coming from (my positionality, if you’re nasty).

I’m writing this piece because I see a lot of people in fandom spaces using terms like “queer”, “cishet”, “queerbaiting”, and others. I find use of these terms to generally be vague, misleading, or just downright wrong. There seems to be consensus in fandom that these are Important Things to talk about, but there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on what they mean. So, as a queer woman who has engaged in fandom for 20 years, I want to talk about the idea of queerness and what it means to be queer.  

So, in this essay, I’m going to address three major questions:

What does it mean for an individual to be queer?

What does it mean for a relationship to be queer?

What does it mean for a piece of media to be queer?

I’m going to argue that for an individual to be queer is an ontological and epistemological issue, for a relationship to be queer is just epistemology, and for a piece of media to be queer is an epistemology plus diegesis. I’ll explain what these words mean (and how I’m going to use them), and I’ll have some sources sprinkled throughout. It’s generally Bad Academic Practice to source Wikipedia, but for the sake of accessibility and ease of explanation, Wikipedia is a good source for this essay.

Ok, so let’s define some terms. I’m going to start with the most obvious, but also perhaps the hardest to pin down: queer.

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community. (x)

So there are a few major takeaways for the word queer. The first one is that queer is inclusive--it’s an umbrella term. The second one is that it describes people who are not heterosexual and/or cisgender. A definition by saying “we are not x” is actually not a great definition, so we’ll come back to this point later. The third one is that queer is political, and it always has been; crucially, queer does not equal LGBT.

Now on to the jargon: ontology and epistemology both come from the field of philosophy, and diegesis has its origins in Greek theater, but I hear it mostly used now to talk about film.

Ontology is the study of being. Ontology asks questions like what is a thing? what exists? What categories of things are there? So, for my purposes, when I talk about ontology, I’m talking about categorization and identity. What are the labels we give ourselves? What categories do we sort ourselves into? How do we identify ourselves?

Epistemology is the related study of knowing. Epistemology asks questions like how do we know something is true? how do we define truth? how do we make justifications? For my purposes, epistemology has a lot to do with how we define social truths and norms. What is true about human gender/sexuality/etc.? How does queerness affect one’s beliefs? I use worldview as a kind of short hand for epistemology in this essay, though epistemology is really only one part of a person’s worldview. But, for my purposes, worldview works just fine.

Diegesis refers to anything within a narrative text--characters, plot, setting, etc. are all diegetic (or intradiegetic). Things outside the text, like the score of a movie or the UI of a videogame, are extradiegetic.

Ok now that we have all the jargon down, let’s tackle the first question: What does it mean for an individual to be queer?

As I previewed above, I define queerness for an individual to be a matter of both ontology and epistemology. I want to come back to the definition of queer here, specifically the part that defines queerness as “not cisgender and heterosexual”. This is a bad category ontologically speaking, because the definition doesn’t point to all the things that make up this category, but rather the things that don’t. Queerness, in this definition, is a catch-all; I’m not sure that’s really an accurate way to think of queerness. At least in linguistics, the catch-all category is for the default, unmarked cases, and queerness is not that at all.

So I’m going to switch things up a little and change this part of the definition. Instead of defining queer by what it’s not, I’m going to define queer epistemologically. Queerness is not just not being heterosexual/cisgender, but a rejection of the heteronormativity (“the belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation”). This rejection may derive from social ostracization and condemnation from same-gender attraction/behavior and/or gender non-conforming, but ultimately is not quite the same thing as LGBT.

A week ago, I was reminded of the dark places my own brain has taken me. A week ago, I was told that there is no escaping it. That the only way my story ends is the thing I’ve been desperately trying to avoid. A week ago, I was reminded of every suicidal queer friend I have, and I have quite a lot. A week ago, I was reminded of every suicidal queer person that I don’t know, and there’s quite a lot. A week ago, I was reminded of a year ago, when my friend committed suicide. And it broke me.

A week ago, I seemed to develop a permanent hole in my chest and a difficulty breathing whenever I thought about broken mirrors and burned peaches. A week ago, I couldn’t speak my thoughts aloud without dissolving into tears. A week ago, a rage rage rage within my chest was ignited. Rage against the writers. Rage against the media which refuses to show queer people as alive and happy. Rage against a society that doesn’t let queer people or people with mental illnesses live or be happy. And it broke me.

A week ago, a week ago, a week ago, a week ago, a week ago, a week ago, a week ago, I found out that I was not alone. I found out that others were also hurt, that I was not imagining my pain. I found a group of individuals who validated me and lifted me up. Who lifted each other up. Who stood on top of their tables and beat their chests and said “NO. This is NOT how our story goes.” People spoke at length about their own traumas and their own brokenness and how they had survived. And it healed me. 

I think I will feel broken for a little while. The death of a loved one tends to do that, and despite the fictionality of Quentin Coldwater’s existence, he was real. And I loved him like he was myself. Because he was me. And this is going to take time to heal from. But I will give it that time. And I will put myself back together. The death of Quentin Coldwater broke me, but his speciality was minor mendings, and he knew what it was like to face his monster and say “Come at me, asshole.” This is the Quentin I chose to remember. The Quentin who saved his own life time and time again, and so saved mine. 

So I will face my monsters, and I will win.