Out in Storybrooke: Who should have a Queery Tale romance?

[Crystal Princess]

The point I want to make about “seeing the same thing” is that we live in a society where we are cultured to see straight relationships and gender normative behaviour first and foremost. We don’t get a lot of exposure to same sex relationships in the media and what we do tends to be relegated to shows that are particularly known for it and have a “Queer” vibe to them (Orphan Black, Orange is the New Black, Glee, etc.). We’re seeing better now but unfortunately lesbian relationships especially have not quite broken into the “Fairytale romance” thing and often happen in complicated or shady circumstances(again, Orphan Black and OitNB being great examples of this).

It’s not just straight people that miss it – though they’re more likely to not having personally experienced it – I didn’t even pick up on Sleeping Warrior at first, because again I was so used to the idea of the show being so heteronormative and that any queer pairing would as has been said, end up having a “Song and a dance” made about it(though personally being into musicals I like a song and a dance being made out of everything, so not sure I would have said it that way!). We’re not used to the idea that there can be queer subtext between characters and are much quicker to dismiss it than we would for traditional pairings, because it takes a lot more “activation energy” for that chemistry to happen in our minds.

Which is in a sense homophobic, but people don’t want to admit it because they take it as a personal insult. And it’s always a problem when people make other people’s oppression about them. It’s not a personal insult – it’s just pointing out how negative or dismissive attitudes towards homosexuality have been imprinted on our culture. After all if they weren’t there, we’d already have queer characters on the show and a gay disney princess. We don’t. And it’s not so simple as blaming a few soccer moms or religious fundamentalists for this – it’s a sociological trend and thus can be found in everyone to a degree.

So please don’t take it personally if I point out that people aren’t likely to pick up on a queer romance or pairing like Galinda/Elphie – we are all brought up in a society that instils certain values in us and teaches us to recognise certain things in certain ways. Unfortunately people like me have been completely excluded from that and goodness knows how many decades or centuries it will take to truly turn that around and imprint the idea of homosexuality and especially bisexuality(some of the anti-Swan Queen arguments seem to be based in bi erasure) into our culture.

As a queer woman I want a happy ending. I’ve had a difficult time lately, I had a brief relationship with another girl I loved very much, she was my Galinda(and still calls me her Elphie), but things got difficult. Long distance relationships are hard. When you’re lonely, the first instinct of a geek is to dump your head into fiction. I watched/rewatched a bunch of Disney movies when I was sick/depressed a while back, and ended up feeling worse in some ways as a result. I take offense to people who tell me(and this has even come from other Swanqueen shippers, generally the more sheltered middle class types) that headcanons are enough for now, give it time etc. and I Don’t accept that. As a queer transwoman I’m used to fighting for my identity, it’s not been an option to me not to and I know if people keep pushing we can see more acceptance and representation. It’s very deeply morally wrong that in 2014 especially we still have queer people excluded from fairytale romance almost entirely, even though queer narratives often make such wonderful fairytales.

p.s. they kiss at the end of For Good in the Finnish production. Just saying.

[Gaultheria]

Regarding Archie Hopper, RumplesGirl wrote:

He’s not token in that way, but he would be token. He would the be closeted, sweet, guy who everyone turns to but just “never knew about.” I think when OUAT does bring this up in show it should be something bold and not something everyone would suspect. Like, I want Hercules to be gay and dating his trainer Phil (who is not half goat…) because it’s a deviation from the stereotypical depictions.

Yeah. The show itself has this ongoing theme about how there’s a lot more to any particular character’s story than what people think they already know, and going against stereotype would fit with that theme.

Gaultheria's fanvids: http://youtube.com/sagethrasher

[PanTheMan]

I orginally thought Pinocchio might be their gay character, but then they put him in bed with a woman in Selfless, Brave, and True. It would’ve made sense. Lying to himself about who he is, and then his nose grows. He was a biker and a bear (as in a hairy gay man). And, he had no romantic interest in Emma. He seemed content to let Baelfire and Emma be meant for each other.

I had kinda assumed the writers wanted to go that direction and the actor didn’t, which was why they made him a kid again.

 

@RG

Hercules would be a fantastic gay character, especially considering his Greek/Roman origins.

[Myril]

I’m very much with you in this, Crystal Princess. And think we both know there are fan fictions and even queer fairy tale books, but that is not the point, they are treated as niche, and what we aim for is being in the mainstream, to be as visible as heterosexuality is, to be able to watch the daily TV mainstream program and find representations of us in it, not as specials but as being included. Amazingly especially fantasy and science fiction fail in this, should thing with so much freedom of imagination they would do better.

Stories are open for interpretation, some more, some less, and we all read stories our very own, indiviual way, through the lens and filters our own views, individual experiences, biography are setting. Part of it and more are societal images, images none of us is free of, creating a bias going beyond our individual interpretations. Frequently we are not much aware of biases coming from those societal images and how they affect us. If it comes to relationships, romance and love we have a dominant societal image: an adult woman and an adult man, mostly from the same ethnic group and around the same age, in a relationship that is marked as different from mere friendship by sexual desire and activity. Everybody can try it, ask yourself, what pictures first come to mind, when you think of romance. I am a bisexual woman and still can’t help it, but have a man and woman pretty much every time as first picture on my mind.

It goes as well the other way around, and that is the main issue here. When we see two women, about same age, sitting close, one leaning against the other on a park bench, it is less likely that we will think of them as lovers as if it were a man and a woman about same age sitting on a bench. Unless we explicitly are told differently, when a male co-worker tells, he was out last night with a friend on a romantic dinner, we will assume the friend is a woman. When a female character has been so far shown to have romantic relationships with men we mostly assume, she is straight and never will have any romantic relationship with women.

True, kisses can be non-sexual, not just historically and in other cultures but think in every culture, even U.S. American cultures (and the plural is intentionally, think there is not one big national culture but many sometimes just slightly different ones on U.S. American soil). The Christian kiss of peace when meeting is still practiced by some. Not to mention if going beyong kissing the lips. But as well kisses of sexual affection are not limited to lips 😉 Not even in visual media it is always explicit, but in books without more description and a more vague context it can be indeed read different ways, which should be not mistaken as subtext, it can be very well open text staying simply vague, as in the case of The Wicked Years (subtext means there is a maintext delivering a certain, often even clear, meaning, while there can be read a second and different meaning in it, a subtext). So some read Elphaba kissing Glinda as prove of a romance and sexual attraction, others just a close friendship. And many don’t even get the idea, it could be a romance, because it’s not explicitly said and they are women. If one of them were a man, most likely a lot more people would read romance, even if everything else was written the same way – and that is the bias created by societal images preferring hetereosexual pairings, something I think we should strive to overcome in society as much as individually.

Based on that biased most people assume without questioning it, that if a woman has been shown on a show in just one relationship so far, or a few, and it was with men, that she never could have had in theory any realitionship with women or ever will have, in other words, she will be called straight, and all ideas of her being with women will be dismissed as not possible. Guess what, there are women who had most of their lives only relationships with men and then there is that one woman they fall in love with, they might never again, no one can tell, but there is this one woman at this moment. Others know early on that they are attracted to more than one gender. Just because a person was so far always with one or the other gender doesn’t make sure to me they never will be able to fall in love with another, unless they claim for themselves that they are just one or the other or something else, I respect how people identify themselves. That a woman has been and maybe is at the moment in love with men says not much about her future, it creates at best a possibility that the next person she’s going to fall in love with might again be a man, but it doesn’t disprove, that it couldn’t be as well a woman.

The problem is not so much, that people read stories differently, but that they ignore possibilities because of societal dominant images and think that is the normal reading of the story.

The common approach is: a character is heterosexual unless shown otherwise. It’s an eye opener when you approach stories and characters with the different assumption, that everyone is at least bisexual unless said by the character otherwise. Try it!

And as well we should be cautious about assuming gender (although I ignored it here in this discussion). But seeing how OUaT struggles to even bring in something different from hetero-normal relationships that is something even less to expect to ever be shown on this show.

I don’t mind an evil character to be bisexual or gay/lesbian, if them being that is not the main root of their evilness. Given the dark past of LGBTQI representation in media and how little representation still is there, making LGBTQI characters the evil, the antagonist means moving on thin ice, possible but writers should know what they’re doing. It’s not about adding eventually fuel to the fire of homophobia, because it doesn’t matter, homophobes twist whatever you offer to have prove for their views, and it’s neither about creating positive images, whatever that should be. To change heteronormativity it doesn’t matter much either, make it more likely that a character could go in a different direction is the point, more visibility. LGBTQI are rather people like heteros are, with good sides and manners and bad sides and manners, we’re not any better nor any worse, we make mistakes and do things right, we can be heroes and evil and cowards as everybody else, and I want to see all that. Just one thing: Because if we get stories we mostly get the ones ending with drama and tragedy so far, love not fulfilled, it would be nice to get some happy ending for a change.

I see not many parallels to The Wicked Years, not even nods here and there, but correct me if there had been, so I highly doubt that the affections Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda have in the books and the musical are any inspiration for OUaT. Besides being green see not much that Elphaba and Zelena share. Nevertheless, the idea of Zelena and Glinda having been close to each other in a more romantic sense is interesting, but I can only picture it before Zelena discovered who she was, because think since she did, and then visited EF and was refused by Rumple, she wasn’t anymore open for love.

Glinda told the Charmings, that she and Zelena were friends, and unless told otherwise the option is there, that they had a strong affection for each other, or even maybe just one of them for the other, that there could have been a romance in the making, which maybe never came to be though.

PanTheMan wrote:

Hercules would be a fantastic gay character, especially considering his Greek/Roman origins.

Why would Hercules being of Greek/Roman origins make it any more notable to be a gay character? The ancient Greek and Roman cultures had different views on sexuality than we have in our contemporary Western cultures, which doesn’t mean they were all open to being gay or lesbian as we understand it today, alright, and I know some have the view, that Greek and Roman mythology have a number of gay relationships, including Hercules with younger men, but so what? It would be nice if it would be more noticed that in Greek mythology Hercules was not just a womanizer but also had relationships with young men which could be read as gay, but that is about it, not the origin in Greek/Roman mythology but that there are already possible stories could be interesting to work with.

¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯

[RumplesGirl]

Why would Hercules being of Greek/Roman origins make it any more notable to be a gay character? The ancient Greek and Roman cultures had different views on sexuality than we have in our contemporary Western cultures, which doesn’t mean they were all open to being gay or lesbian as we understand it today, alright, and I know some have the view, that Greek and Roman mythology have a number of gay relationships, including Hercules with younger men, but so what? It would be nice if it would be more noticed that in Greek mythology Hercules was not just a womanizer but also had relationships with young men which could be read as gay, but that is about it, not the origin in Greek/Roman mythology but that there are already possible stories could be interesting to work with.

To be fair to Pan, he was picking up something I said. What I was getting at was the idea of breaking with some of the stereotypes of either the flamboyant homosexual or the closeted homosexual that you find on TV, by making someone who is viewed as –for wont of a better term–“a manly man” and someone all the ladies flock to. I think Hercules is an interesting choice for gay character on ONCE instead of, say, Archie, because Archie is who you would expect.

And you’re right; it’s not as if the Greek and Romans were totally open to same-sex relationships and had no qualms. It was more a power relationship of an older man and a younger boy (see Pederasty ) So we can’t think of them as a free love type of civilization. But I think Pan was getting at the historical reality, that it’s a good way to move away from what people think Hercules is like (a la, the Disney version) and show how some types of relationships happened in Greece.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Crystal Princess]

That’s a great post, Myril, thanks for explaining much of what I was trying to say from a different perspective, it makes it harder to isolate someone as being contrarian when someone can back up what i’m saying with their own twist on it.

I have a friend who’s discovering her bisexual identity in her mid 20s actually right at the moment, so it rings especially true to me.

I don't cause commotions, I am one.

[TheWatcher]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Interesting perspectives all around. I think we should have a thread specifically for this (unless this thread has moved on completely from Glinda/Zelena rlationship to just dicussing the possibility of ANY same sex relationship in the show. Either way is fine, lets just keep discussing it :D)

Anyway, something that I was thinking about earlier when reading this thread was about something Crystal Princess said, about how same sex relationships aren’t really representated in fairytales and how Disney has yet to have a gay princess. I was just thinking that A&E may run into some backlash if they introduce a character who in the Disney films (lets say Hercules for example) has a OTP match and then give them a same sex pairing in OUAT. Wouldn’t fans get upset about that? I mean, even if u took Atiel and put her Hook people would have thrown hissy fits because she wasn’t with who she is with in the Disney film. What I mean to say is, if OUAT chooses to introduce a same sex couple, do u guys think they would do it with a character who has an established relationship through Disney canon (Tiana, Anna, Ariel) or with characters who had no romantic parnter (Elsa, Merida, Drizella perhaps?) and do you think fans would accept that? Food for thought. I could accept Elsa or Merida in whatever kind of relationship but for me OTPs are off limits. Tiana has to be with Naveen, Ariel had to be with Eric.

"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGIC

[Crystal Princess]

I’m not sure how I feel about that. In the official Disney canon I’d hate to break them up but Rumple isn’t exactly the beast for example. And Cinderella had… complications.

We do also have to accept though that if we’re going to keep using the same archetypes again and again and changing nothing we’re leaving no room for diversity. It’s been a problem with comics for yonks – new characters don’t tend to to well and haven’t since the 80s, in fact most have been around since the 60s.

I don't cause commotions, I am one.

[RumplesGirl]

I have really enjoyed reading this thread. Interesting perspectives all around. I think we should have a thread specifically for this (unless this thread has moved on completely from Glinda/Zelena rlationship to just dicussing the possibility of ANY same sex relationship in the show. Either way is fine, lets just keep discussing it 😀

It can stay here if Crystal doesn’t mind. Our conversation often go off on tangents

What I mean to say is, if OUAT chooses to introduce a same sex couple, do u guys think they would do it with a character who has an established relationship through Disney canon (Tiana, Anna, Ariel) or with characters who had no romantic parnter (Elsa, Merida, Drizella perhaps?) and do you think fans would accept that? Food for thought. I could accept Elsa or Merida in whatever kind of relationship but for me OTPs are off limits. Tiana has to be with Naveen, Ariel had to be with Eric.

I think it wold be BOLD and the right sort of BOLD to creak up a Disney canon couple and make one of them gay. That was one of the things I liked most about ONCE–they could do anything with these characters. They don’t ahve to stick to Disney, as much as I love Disney

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Crystal Princess]

I think people forget that OUAT can and already has gotten away with a lot more than the average Disney movie. It’s just the right distance from Disney so it doesn’t show up at the parks or whatever but there is still an official variation of a Disney character that is queer for us to cling to. There wasn’t really much of an outcry with Mulan, maybe they were testing the waters.

I don't cause commotions, I am one.

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