The limits of subtext

I've been trying to broaden my movie-viewing experiences recently, but I'm still not averse to a good old-fashioned blockbuster. That's what I figured I was getting when I bought a ticket to The Magnificent Seven last week, and for the most part, my expectations were met: yes, the script was a Frankenstein's monster of multiple rewrites, yes the explosions were many and joyful, yes Chris Pratt was doing his standard Chris Pratt schtick ("hi, I'm Chris Pratt, and I'll be your off-brand Han Solo for the evening.") But amidst all the standard cliches, something caught my eye and held my attention even after the credits had rolled: was the film implying a romantic relationship between Goodnight (Ethan Hawke) and Billy (Lee Byung-hun?) According to at least one person on Twitter who worked on the film, that's exactly what the implication was- and it was toned down significantly from the first draft of the script:

Now, rewrites are standard practice for any creative product- it's a chance to smooth out bugs, plug in plotholes, and deepen the characters and themes. But in this case, I'm at a bit of a loss as to what was gained in translation. The final draft of  the script- the one that ended up in the movie- has Goodnight explaining their relationship by saying "I keep him employed, he keeps me on the level," and later insisting, "where I go, Billy goes." A relatively small difference- but vastly significant in what it implies. "Comfort" is something provided by a loved one; "on the level" is a business term. The rest of their relationship- what caught my attention when I watched the film- takes place in quiet moments in the background, little glimpses of what might be happening when the camera cuts away. Easy to notice, if you're looking for it; easy to miss if you aren't.

Ethan Hawke and Lee Byung-hun in The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven is far from the only film to employ this sort of peri-textual approach when it comes to queer relationships. Last year's Mad Max:Fury Road featured a cast of five "wives" fleeing their warlord "husband," and many viewers noticed that two of the wives- played by Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton- were awfully cuddly with each other, even for sister-wives. I'm willing to give Mad Max slightly more leeway in this regard, because the movie relied heavily on visual storytelling over dialogue- literally showing rather than telling. But at the same time, a male and female character (played by Riley Keough and Nicholas Hoult) were permitted to carry out an explicitly romantic relationship; no one watching the film would come away denying that the two were attracted to each other. So why the discrepancy?

Left to right: Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, and Zoe Kravitz in
Mad Max.

The short version seems to be "because studio interference." The looming spectre of "the studio" is far from unknown to filmmakers wishing to include LGBT characters; studio heads fearing reduced ticket sales have dictated the erasure of LGBT people since Hollywood began. The 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet (a must-watch for anyone interested in the history of queerness in cinema) details the timeline of gay, bisexual, and transgender characters on the big screen: first there were the coded "sissies," then the restrictive violence of the Hayes Code (which forbade "any inference of sex perversion" and warned against "sympathy for criminals") the punishing Puritanism of films like Cruising, and finally the softened, palatable gayness of films like Philadelphia and Fried Green Tomatoes: the gayness is there (explicitly named in Philadelphia, hinted at in Fried Green Tomatoes) but affection between the couples is kept to a clinical minimum, so as to avoid discomfiting homophobic audience members. Antonio Banderas and Tom Hanks- for all that they play a committed couple in Philadelphia- never kiss onscreen. Mary Stuart Masterton and Mary-Louise Parker, despite playing characters who were explicitly identified as lesbians in the source material, are relegated to "friends" in Fried Green Tomatoes. The movies I just mentioned were released in 1993 and 1991 respectively, but it seems we've made very little progress in the ensuing twenty-five years.

This squeamishness even affects the marketing of explicitly gay cinema: this year's Moonlight, a gay coming-of-age story about a young black man, shows no same-sex kisses in the trailer. Similarily, last year's Carol was promoted with trailers so devoid of romance that audiences could be forgiven for not realizing what the movie was about until an hour into their screening.

Still, at least Moonlight and Carol allowed their gay characters to exist: "mainstream" blockbusters (i.e. films that are not explicitly about the gay experience) still seem to balk at the possibility. Another release from this year, Ghostbusters, featured Kate McKinnon (who is gay herself) as Holtzmann, a character many audience members interpreted as a lesbian. When asked, director Paul Feig replied with a nod, clarifying “when you’re dealing with the studios ...” Likewise, the relationship between Sulu and his husband in Star Trek Beyond was limited to a friendly pat on the back, and the gay couple in Independence Day: Resurgence only got to hold hands. (Although given that Roland Emmerich also managed to make a bizarrely heterosexual movie about Stonewall, perhaps that last example shouldn't surprise anyone.)

Perhaps it would be easy to shrug all this off: after all, we've come a long way from the arid landscape of the 1930s, right? At least gay movies are getting made, and movies outside the "gay cinema" ghetto are at least hinting that their characters might not be entirely heterosexual. But the trouble with this is that gay characters are being left to languish in movies that only the dedicated film fanatic will seek out. (For example, when Carol was released, I had to drive to a theatre an hour away to see it; it wasn't playing any closer.) And in the meantime, heterosexual viewers are offered a comfortable way out: if they don't want to see these characters as gay, they don't have to. If they want to avoid the implication that one can be a gay sharpshooter, or a gay post-apocalyptic action hero, or a gay Ghostbuster- that gayness does not limit someone to endless navel-gazing about their identity, that a gay person can engage in all sorts of adventures before returning home to their partner at the end of the day- they are entirely free to do so. I'm not content with that. I don't like trickle-down representation. Gay people deserve to be in mainstream releases just as much as they deserve to be in artsy independent films, and as long as that doesn't happen, it's just another roadblock on the path to actual equality.

I wanna be a starship ranger

The future is now, so I don't see how the time isn't right for me . . .

Being a woman who likes genre fiction is one of the most exhausting experiences on earth.

At the moment, I'd say there are two broad categories of genre fiction: the "gritty" stuff, like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, and the more "fluffy" ones like the Marvel movies. I've said before that I don't have a whole lot of time for gritty shows; the main reason is that I find surrounding myself with that kind of negativity tiring, but there's another aspect. The thing is, "gritty" seems to translate- in the minds of showrunners, anyway- into "bad shit happens to women." The bad shit isn't

Pictured: what women can expect from "gritty" drama.

always limited to the female characters, obviously, but there's a specific dimension to the way women are hurt in these shows. It's always to do with their bodies. They're groped, raped, tortured, suffer miscarriages, die in childbirth- it always seems to be some variation of either a woman being made vulnerable by her body or a woman being betrayed by her body. The female vessel is treated as an essentially weak, fragile, corrupt piece of meat in a way that mens' bodies just aren't. Men get hurt; men die; but men die heroically in battle, men take a bullet for their friends, men make heroic last stands. Maybe a single tear runs down their face while they do it. Often their death concludes with a brief glimpse of them in the afterlife, being greeted by the women whose bodies paved their way to heroism.

In some ways, this hurts men as much as it does women; it perpetuates a myth of male superheroism
that leaves no room for men to be weak or emotional or hurt. But the visceral disdain for the bodies of women- that cuts deep. And it cuts into male and female viewers alike. We all learn, hearing these stories, that this is what women should expect: from men, from other women, from themselves. Is it any wonder, then, that violence against women is endemic? We've created an endless cycle of regurtiating misogyny into our pop culture and then playing out the scenarios we see onscreen. And with "gritty" stories becoming increasingly popular, I only see this trend on the rise.

So what about the other side of the coin?

Remember girls, this is what you're good for.

In a way, gritty and fluffy genre shows create a one-two punch of female disempowerment. Gritty shows tell women that their bodies are weak and disposable. In a lot of respect, fluffy shows do that as well: how many superhero movies has the girlfriend/mother character died in? There's a whole trope named after it. And it's not just death; it's disrespect. This past summer, Guardians of the Galaxy opened with Peter Quill's mother on her deathbed, and shows the sole woman on the team being called a "green whore" as a joke. In The Avengers, the sole female superhero is taunted by the villain, who calls her a "mewling quim" (an antiquated slang term for "vagina;" in modern parlance, a "whiny cunt.") Buffy the Vampire Slayer, often held up as a paragon of feminist TV, had its heroine inadverdantly turn her boyfriend into a monster by having sex with him. But I think the trends of fluffy TV, when it comes to women, are deeper and more insiduous than just hurting them physically. That's an aspect, yes. But what these shows really say- beyond "you're gonna get hurt-" is "you can't be a hero."

I don't think I've posted about BBC's The Musketeers here before, but I was absolutely crazy about the first season. It wasn't perfect when it came to women (oh look, more dead girlfriends and attempted rapes) but the most prominent female character, Constance, got to her her own miniature hero's journey. She wanted to learn how to fight, and she did. At one point, she and one of the men find themselves backed into a corner by a bad guy. Constance grabs a sword. "Have you got this?" her companion asks her. She bares her teeth. "Absolutely." And then she kicks the bad guy's ass.

How great is that? Finally, a heroine is being given the same strengths as a hero: she wants to learn to be strong, and she does. She gets to quip at the bad guys before proving she's stronger than they are. This is what we want: women who get to kick ass, who get to be funny, who get to be the same kind of wish fulfillment as the male characters. Escapist fantasy is, after all, a form of wish fulfillment: we want to be Peter Quill, or Robin Hood, or one of the Three Musketeers. When you were a kid, did you ever play games based on whatever TV or movies you watched? I did. Power Rangers was a popular choice, and so was Pokemon. I notice, however, that the older boys and girls get- once they reach school age or so- their forms of fantasy diverge. My female friends and I increasingly made up our own stories, independent of what we saw when we got home from school and turned on the TV. Our male classmates were still playing at Star Wars and Indiana Jones, squabbling over who got to be Indy or Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. When girls joined in those games, we often made up new characters to play (my character's name when we played Indiana Jones was "Sarah.") After all, it's not like heroines were thick on the ground; Star Wars fans got to be Leia (and to be reminded by geek culture that their value still boiled down to how they looked in a gold bikini) and if you were into Indiana Jones, there was Marion Ravenwood. (There were two other prominent women in the movies- the screeching Willie Scott, or Elsa the Nazi seductress. Neither held much appeal for would-be adventurers.) Meanwhile if you were a boy, you could be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo or Indiana Jones or Indiana's father Henry or Lando Calrissian, or Chewbacca, or . . .

You get my point.

You thought you boyfriend would respect you and your choices?
That's adorable.

So tying this back around to The Musketeers: Constance's arc wasn't perfect, and her primary narrative function was to be a love interest for d'Artagnan, but she still had her own stuff going on. Then season two happened, and it all went to complete shit. Constance, trapped in an abusive
marriage, was berated by her husband on one side and her would-be lover on the other, being called a "coward" for being afraid of being branded an adulteress and/or being hurt by her husband. She didn't get to pick up any more swords. Instead, chastised, she admitted that she was in the wrong for wanting to dictate the course of her own life, and for being constrained by the endless restrictions applied to women's lives. "Hypocrite" was the specific word she used. And then, having been thoroughly humbled by a man who knew what she wanted better than she did, she married him, and they're going to live happily ever after!

What . . .  the . . . fuck.

Where did my Constance go? Where was the heroine I'd wanted so badly as a child? Where was the woman who kicked ass and took names and stood up for her friends- and more importantly, stood up for herself? Why were her thoughts and needs and desires being treated as subordinate to her boyfriend's feelings? Where was the woman who, if I'd been fifteen years younger, I would have been playing with my friends at recess? Doesn't that little girl- all the little girls now who watch the show- get a heroine too?

And it wasn't just Constance: it seemed like this season was an endless parade of women being abused, murdered, tossed aside, and forgotten. The most egregious example is probably the nameless sex worker murdered by the season big bad (even in the end credits, she was only credited as "Prostitute") but she certainly wasn't an anomaly. There was Marguerite, seduced by one of the leads, subsequently abandoned and then blackmailed, and finally succumbing to despair and taking her own life. Marguerite was never her own character; she was an object to move the story along, someone to provide angst for her lover (when he remembered that she existed) and plot fodder when the villain needed a way to move forward. Then there was Queen Anne, a secondary player in her own story: having birthed a secretly illegitimate child, her role was to be threatened with exposure and sexually assaulted by the villain. The villain, by the way, made a habit of that; scarcely an episode went by when he wasn't choking a woman, or forcing her to undress for him, or creeping into Anne's personal space while she was powerless to turn him away. And there were the countless female guest stars- Samara and Emilie this season, Adele and Isabelle and Flea and Agnes last season- who vanished entirely from the show after providing one of the four main men with whatever information or emotion they needed for their own character arcs. Women in this show don't get to be heroes anymore; they get to make heroes of men, often being hurt or dying horribly in the process.

I don't mean to pick on this show specifically- well okay, yes I do, because I loved season one and it was crushing to see how far the second season fell. But it's far from the only culprit. On another BBC show, Robin Hood, the female lead was brutally stabbed to death by a spurned lover stalker. On the CW's The Flash, Barry Allen's mother was murdered before the show even started, spurring him to seek out her murderer and accidentally become a superhero in the process, all while lying to and gaslighting his love interest, Iris. The Evil Dead franchise- which saw a revival in 2013, and has plans for a new TV show- valorized Ash Williams, while the leading lady of the series is best remembered for being raped by a tree. Twice. (I can accept that Sam Raimi, being young and immature in 1981 when the first film was made, didn't consider the implications; I have a harder time swallowing the fact that when remaking the movie over twenty years later, he chose to do it again.) Incidentally, Evil Dead has also been made into a musical- featuring a grand finale entitled "Blew The Bitch Away." I don't think that the men responsible for all these creative decisions actively hate women, and are doing this to spite us: I think it's worse. They write this way because it's never occurred to them to do otherwise.

We write what we know. The people (men) who write genre shows are aping the conventions they saw in shows growing up- Star Trek, Lost In Space, The Lone Ranger. They write their heroes being complex and cool and badass because it's what they were raised to identify with. They want this generation of boys to grow up idolizing the characters they've created. But, in a failure of empathy on a massive scale, it doesn't seem to have occured to them to do the same for women. Boys get to play at being Will Robinson or Captain Kirk; girls get to be green alien space babes. On one level, it's a repetition of sexist attitudes that flourished in the media when they were growing up. On another, it's simply that they don't think that women want heroes too. They don't think women want to wink and blow smoke off a gun after blasting the bad guy away. They don't think women want to be dashing romantics who sweep their partners off their feet. (That's the men's job, after all. And the idea that heroes could romance men, and heroines women? Doesn't even enter their minds.) They don't think women want to see heroines they can look up to, who exemplify all the things we want to be. I don't think they realize that we want anything.

The real world is hard, and unfair. It's true for everyone, and even more so for people of marginalized identities. Battles aren't won with grand sweeping gestures, but with endless grinding work that only advances us a few inches at the time. Even when the grand gestures are made, there's no guarantee that they'll stick: I remember being glued to the livestream of Wendy Davis's 2013 filibuster, tears pouring down my face as the women in the gallery screamed down the male senators trying to force Davis into silence. In that case, the gesture worked; she won. Except she didn't, because a few months later, the bill she was filibustering against passed anyway. The erosion of your humanity, little by little, will kill you in the end. So don't we deserve something better to aspire to? Don't we deserve to see our heroines succeed, not just because the heroes get to as well, but because we need that sense of hope to keep ourselves going? If we can't expect women in a fantasy world to triumph, how can we ever raise our spirits enough to get up and keep fighting?

And why the fuck is everyone obsessed with Leia in that bikini?

The CBC and diversity

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a fan of Strange Empire, which is why I was distressed earlier this week to hear that it had been cancelled after a single season. The CBC has given no direct reason for this decision, but cited the fact that it was a "difficult" choice and insisted that ratings were not at issue. The CBC representative interviewed also mentioned a desire to make room for new programming, which I admit to finding a bit puzzling. Of their returning shows, two (Heartland and Murdoch Mysteries) are in their eighth season, another (Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays) is in its fifth and yet another (Mr. D) in its fourth. If the network wants to make space for new scripted programming, why not retire shows that have already had a long run rather than cancelling those that have only aired thirteen episodes?  They also re-affirmed their committment to diversity, as the network intends to air a miniseries based on Ines Choi's play Kim's Convenience in the 2015-2016 season, and recently wrapped up The Book of Negroes earlier this year. While I'm happy to hear it, I remain unconvinced that a miniseries demonstrates a long-lasting committment to anything, because it is simply that- a miniseries. It will last only a few weeks, and when it is finished, it will have made no permanent change to the diversity of the CBC landscape. 

With that in mind, I decided to comb through the casting lineups of the CBC's original scripted programming, in order to see how diversely populated these casts actually are. I did this by looking up each show on IMDB, and counting through every actor with a significant enough role to appear on the show's homepage. These shows make up about half of scripted programming on the network: six other new shows have been announced, but their cast list has not yet been released to the public. This breakdown also only includes gender and race, as I have not watched all of these shows and cannot verify the dis/ability or sexual orientation status of the characters. This is what I found:

White male 

5 (Chris Potter, Graham Wardle, Shaun Johnston, Kerry James, Gabriel Hogan)

White female

2 (Amber Marshall, Jessica Amlee)

Nonwhite male

1 (Nathaniel Arcand, Cree First Nations)

Nonwhite female

1 (Michelle Morgan, Chilean-Canadian)

Murdoch Mysteries

White male

4 (Yannick Bisson, Thomas Craig, Jonny Harris, Lachlan Murdoch)

White female

2 (Helene Joy, Georgina Riley)

White male

8 (Jack Laskey, Warren Brown, Connor Price, Hugh Dillon, Dustin Milligan, Torben Liebrecht, Adrian Lukis, Julian Michael Deuster)

White female

3 (Evelyne Brochu, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Lili Bordan)

White male 

4 (Bob Martin, Matt Watts, Edward Asner, Dan Demarbre)

White female

3 (Tommie-Amber Pirie, Martha Burns, Jennifer Irwin)

Nonwhite male

2 (Al Karim, Middle Eastern; Pablo Silveira, Latino)

Schitt's Creek

White male

5 (Eugene Levy, Dan Levy, John Hemphill, Tim Rozon, Chris Elliot)

White female

5 (Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy, Jennifer Robertson, Emily Hampshire, Sarah Levy)

Nonwhite female 

1 (Karen Robinson, Afro-Canadian)

White male

9 (Gerry Dee, Jonathan Torrens, Booth Savage, Darrin Rose, Mark Forward, Mark Little, Liam Cyr, Hans Pettersen, Matt Tolton)

White female

4 Lauren Hammersley, Bette MacDonald, Naomi Snieckus, Kassidy Mattera)

Nonwhite male

2 (Wes Williams, Afro-Canadian; Suresh John, Asian-Canadian)

Nonwhite female

1 (Isabelle Beaupre, not specified)

In total:

White male: 35

White female: 19

Nonwhite male: 5

Nonwhite female: 3

Further reading:

CBC renews Schitt's Creek and Murdoch Mysteries, cancels Strange Empire

"I am different too:" on Strange Empire and being lovable

To call media representation of autistic people a "mixed bag" is overstating the case slightly. We have occasionally been granted representations of autistic people shown in a positive light- though they're usually tinged with the narrative of tragic disability, a la Rain Man- but more often, we hear stories of how difficult autistic people are to deal with, how hard we are to love. On ABC's (late, lamented) "Selfie," John Cho's Henry scolds his co-worker for not dedicating herself to "solving the world's problems . . . like autism." The biggest news story currently concerning autistic people is of a mother who threw her six-year-old child off a bridge. She was described as "patient and loving" in dealing with her son. This is considered an anomaly. Autistic children learn quickly and often that we are not easy to love.

When the CBC's Strange Empire was announced, I immediately planned to watch it. It combined a multitude of fictional aspects that I'm drawn to- history, women and the ties between them, the building of communities, and the ways in which we view our own past. But what I didn't know until after I'd watched the pilot was that one of the three main characters- Rebecca Blithely, the medical protege- was actually written and played as an autistic woman. Once I'd been told, I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it sooner. Rebecca's mannerisms, speech patterns, and general demeanour are all aspects of a life I am intimately familier with- my own. In the supplementary website The Curiosities of Rebecca Blithely, she describes feeling overwhelmed by the weight and texture of a necklace given to her by her husband; I have many memories of breaking down in tears because something in the texture of what I was wearing overwhelmed me. (At one point in my childhood, I recall having a meltdown because one of my boots felt tighter than the other; when asked what was wrong, all I could do was wail "it's uncomfortable!") When Rebecca speaks, she stops and starts, sometimes struggling for the correct words, often hushed by the husband who claims to love her by being told that she is being inappropriate. This is a bitterly familiar experience for people on the autism spectrum; being told we are too loud, too impassioned, too annoying. She wrestles with finding the right words, and with gauging the correct level of discourse for any given situation; again, something I am intimately familiar with. Rebecca Blithely and I share a story: of moving through a world not built for us, attempting to master a language that seems rife with traps and potholes that can easily be fallen into for the unwary.

Rebecca is brilliant, impassioned, and yet unhappily stifled. She is recently married to a fellow doctor, a man who doubles as her adoptive father- a dynamic that the show has not shied away from (although happily, they have refrained from introducing sexuality into the relationship.) She desires knowledge, endless knowledge, and finding herself suddenly stranded in a shanty town outside the constrictions of Victorian society, she is finally given the opportunity to explore. Up until this point, she explains in the pilot, her ability to practice medicine has been limited to papers published under her husband's name ("of course," she says; the suggestion that she be allowed to take credit for her own genius does not appear to have been posed to her) and a series of scientific conventions in which her husband/father put her on display as an abnormal prodigy. "They tell me my abilities derive from my head, which is too small, and my brain, which is overlarge and presses acutely against my skull," she explains. This zooification of an living human being may seem barbaric to viewers now, but it hasn't been so long since the mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent were locked up in asylums and gawked at by spectators. And this legacy is part of Rebecca's story too: she began life being committed to Bedlam, where she spent her childhod prior to being adopted by Thomas Blithely and his wife. Rebecca's backstory puts on display all the ways in which the different have been dehumanized, denied autonomy, and treated as "less than." But her entrance into the world of Strange Empire means that a change is coming for her. There are no asylums on the frontier. There are no doctors anxious to measure her skull or poke and prod her to see how she'll react. Freed from the society she was born to, Rebecca is finally being given the opportunity to thrive.

And thrive she does- in Janestown, Rebecca comes into her own. She performs a ceasarian section, saving the life of both mother and child. She begins to explore the possibilities of electricity. She is frustrated when she cannot save a patient, but continually offered new opportunities to improve. But in some ways, Rebecca;s intellectual blossoming takes backseat- for me- to what happens to her socially. Rebecca Blithely, a lifelong outcast and freak show, is treated for the first time with unconditional love. In the pilot, when she talks to Kat Loving (a fascinating character in her own right, and due an essay of her own) she sometimes stumbles over her words and rambles without knowing when to cut herself off, but Kat never does it for her: she smiles, congratulates Rebecca on her accomplishments, and generally offers her respect and kindness. Later, in the third episode- after her husband has slapped and berated her for trying to save a patient- she confesses to Kat that she longs to learn more about the human body, and that she disdains the religion she was raised with. All through this scene, Rebecca's posture is tense, her voice clipped; undoubtedly she is expecting another slap, or at least a cold shoulder. But she recieves neither. Instead, Kat smiles at her, and asks her to go for a walk with her. Rebecca, neurodivergent and noticeably different as she is, is accepted unconditionally into Kat's family. And the example Kat sets is followed by others: in the scene after this, Kat's daughter Robin impulsively grabs Rebecca's hand and smiles at her. The step Kat has taken- without doubts, without fear- has started the ball rolling for everyone in Rebecca's social circle to treat her exactly as she should be treated: as a valuable member of the community, who deserves love and respect without reservation.

Rebecca's discovery of a loving home for herself is reflected all throughout the show: we are being presented with a narrative about social outcasts and misfits finding their place. This is made explicit in episode four, where the main storyline is largely concerned with racism against First Nations people. When Rebecca's husband gawks at a Native woman, suggesting that she does not feel pain as white people do- that she is somehow "different-" Rebecca quietly retorts, "I am different too." Seeing the way this woman, Nuttah, is treated, she draws the connection between the two- both have been classified as less than by the likes of Thomas Blithely, and both are worth more than the categorization he offers. Later, when Kat announces her intention to leave her adoptive white children behind for their own good, Rebecca insists that she not do it: "They will see your value," she pleads. The intrinsic value of women like Kat and Rebecca has not been recognized by the world they live in, but here- in Janestown, surrounded by other outcasts and misfits, they are being offered for the first time a chance for untempered acceptance. In the world we live in now- where the different are still treated with hostility and suspicion- is it important beyond the telling of it that we are able to turn on our televisions every Monday and see these women, hearing the statement the narrative is making loud and clear: they are different. And they are valuable.

An open letter to Bomb Girls

Let's talk about queerbaiting.

Googling the term, you'll find a lot of contradictory definitions and think pieces and Sherlock macros, so I'll just save you the time and lay out a quick definition here and now: queerbaiting is when a show (or book, or movie) heavily implies that a character is queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender) but never fully commits to the process. It allows the writers to claim representation and queer-friendliness while never taking the potential audience-alienating step of actually including a queer character. It's plausible deniability. "Oh, I absolutely believe these characters love each other [long pause] as friends." Queer audience members can spend years hooked on a show, convinced that one of these days the show will actually fulfill its promise and give them a queer character. It never comes true. But what do the writers care? The ratings are going to stay up.

That brings me to Bomb Girls.

When Bomb Girls first premiered in January of 2012, I- and a lot of other people- were wildly excited, for a whole bunch of reasons. Chief among them was the heavy implication in the pilot episode that Betty (Ali Liebert) and Kate (Charlotte Hegele) were being set up as the show's primary romantic pairing. Just in that first episode, they danced together, Betty eyed Kate in the shower, Kate stroked another woman's legs, and Betty promised that "whatever you're running from, you're safe here now. I'll make sure." Between those hints and the fact that the showrunner, Michael MacLennan, had a history of working on queer-themed projects (Queer as Folk and Prom Queen: The Marc Hall Story being the most prominent) it seemed like good things were on the horizon. Of course, we had to wait awhile- the show was set in the 1940s, when homosexuality was still illegal in Canada. Added to that, Kate came from a fundamentalist Christian background and was struggling to find her way in the world. The characters needed time to reach a point where they would feel comfortable entering a relationship. That was okay. We could wait. (You get really good at waiting when you want queer characters on TV.)

That first season did some amazing things- I remember episode four, "Bringing Up Bombshell," especially for depicting how queerness was erased from history by propagandists and people intent on presenting a heteronormative view of the world. Kate's assurance to Betty that "you don't need everyone liking you- just the ones that matter" at the end of the episode seemed like yet more evidence that we were on to something. Even when the first season ended in disaster- Kate, re-discovered by her abusive father, panicked when Betty kissed her and fled- it didn't seem like all hope was lost. There were plenty of chances for the storyline to progress- the show had already been picked up for a second season. We could keep waiting.

And then season two happened. And we started to realize that things were going wrong.

First of all, while Betty's sexuality was undeniable at this point- she had, after all, made a very romantic move on her best friend- Kate's remained shrouded in ambiguity. Her attempts at dating male co-workers all ended in disaster, and she remained close to Betty, but it was never stated outright what she felt. She kept casting longing looks at her friend, but continued to pretend that the kiss had never happened. When Betty finally confronted her, at the midseason finale, she still refused to disclose what she felt about it. And when the show came back after the break, she faded even further into obscurity, emerging only to become engaged to a co-worker and find her missing mother. Meanwhile, Betty went on to briefly date a servicewoman, a romance which ended when her girlfriend was posted away from Toronto. Betty and Kate barely shared screentime anymore. Sure, when they did, the show kept on hinting, but what good were hints by this point? We'd survived two seasons on hints; surely by this point we'd earned more than that. The show evidently didn't think so, though, because when the second season ended, their relationship had still not been resolved in any way. Then came the news that the show had been cancelled. Then came the news that all was not lost- the network had agreed to air a two-hour movie to wrap up all the remaining plotlines. There was still hope! Sure Michael MacLennan tweeted that he'd left the production, citing creative differences, but- well, he'd been responsible for the mess that was season two. Maybe the new writers were going to fix things.

Spoiler alert: they did not fix anything.

The movie aired last night, to a resounding "wait, what?" from fans. Betty and Kate's storyline went completely unresolved, except for the fact that they moved in together- "until you meet the man of your dreams," Betty assured her friend. The majority of the runtime was taken up with a spy storyline that few of the viewers cared about. One character died, which presented a whole host of other issues (killing sexually active female characters is a long and ignoble tradition going back to the Hays Code) and we closed with no resolution and no satisfaction.

So: queerbaiting.

It's hard not to see the way Kate's storyline was handled as an extreme example of queerbaiting, and one I thought this show was better than. She's given an endless litany of side-glances and giggles meant to imply- what? That she's maybe, possibly interested in women, but will never openly express this interest in the narrative? After a certain point, "slow-burning romance" is no longer a defence. We didn't need to see Kate and Betty declaring eternal love for each other. We just needed to know that the love was more than pathetically, eternally one-sided. The tragically pining queer character is a stock one in Western literature- a way of writers to make their character sympathetic while still avoiding the controversy of a queer romance. But this is 2014. We may not be past homophobia, but queer couples exist on TV. One of the exists on ABC Family Another exists on Fox, the notoriously conservative network that also features Bill O'Reilly. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005. So what's this show's excuse for refusing to give Kate and Betty a happy ending? What reason do they have for toying with queer audience members for two seasons and a movie but dodging responsibility for Kate's sexuality at the last minute? What's their defence for leaving their only canonical queer character in a state of lifelong romantic limbo? 

I loved this show for a very long time, and I defended it- all through the cheesy plotlines and writing ups and downs- because I believed in what it promised. I was so sure we were finally going to get what we wanted. After all the waiting and watching and hoping, what we finally got feels like a slap across the face. It's a reminder that watching shows for queer characters and hoping that they get happy endings is more often than not an exercise in futility- hints are there to be grasped at, but at the end of the day, the writers can still retreat safely into their position of assumed heterosexuality. Why not? No one's going to call them on it.

So I'm calling them on it now. What's your excuse, Adrienne Mitchell? What's your explanation, Donald Martin? Michael MacLennan, why did you wait so long? I know you knew we were watching. Did you ever care? Or were we just a convenient ratings boost for you?

Someone else's story

I went to see Philomena with my mother today. It was an excellent film, fully deserving of the praise it's received, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But something about it stuck out for me, in a way that the filmmakers may or may not have intended- the question of who has the right to tell a story that isn't theirs.

For those not familiar with the film, Philomena is about a woman who was sent to a Magdalene asylum as a teenager in the 1950s, and subsequently forced to give her child up for adoption. Where the film picks up is fiftysome years later, when a journalist offers to cover the story of what happened to her and help her find her son. The story is undoubtedly hers'- it revolves around her life and her feelings- but it's primarily seen through the eyes of the reporter helping her. At one point, he explodes at the nuns who took Philomena's child, furious at their actions. She reprimands him, and when he responds "what happened was awful," she replies "Yes, but it happened to me. I'm the one who has to deal with it."

Obviously the story in the film (which is based on true events) is not a one-to-one analogy for people like me, who write fiction- all my characters came out of my head. But no character, fictional or biographical, comes without social and historical baggage. My current play, Sister Veronica, is about the Inquisition, queerness, and faith- none of the characters would do the things they do had I not been influenced by the existing history of all these things. Unless you're writing about an undiscoverd planet populated by an alien species that shares no morals, history, or social structure with humanity, your story is going to cross over with someone's real, lived experience. Maybe not directly- almost certainly there are no living survivors of the Inquisition- but thematically. The Inquisition no longer exists, but certainly queer people struggling with their faith do. Women who try to make a place for themselves in male-dominated religion do. And with these people existing, and potentially seeing my play, it raises the question of who has the right to tell a story so close to their hearts.

I read an article recently about Canadian playwright Colleen Murphy's "Pig Girl," a play about the serial killer Robert Pickton and the final days of one of his victims. The article's author praised the play for being an amazing, provocative experience, but raised the issue- also raised by audience members- of why white Colleen Murphy chose to write a play about violence against Aboriginal women and call it "Pig Girl."It was disrespectful, the audience argued, for Murphy to try and speak for women who have advocated in their own community- a community that is frequently overlooked in Canadian culture and politics. What right does she have to tell that story? What right does her entirely non-Aboriginal cast have to tell it? When does artistic freedom become artistic recklessness? Murphy, for her part, abjectly refused to answer any of these questions, citing her artistic vision as the reason the play was written. But just because you think of something doesn't mean you have to write it down. If we accept that art is powerful, then we also accept that it has the potential to cause harm, and we have to weigh that harm against the potential benefits. Not doing so is irresponsible.

Last year, I read a play called Leave of Absence by Lucia Frangione. It was the story of a young woman in a small, conservative town struggling with her sexuality as the adults around her tried to figure out what to do with her. I'm going to be honest with you: I found it abhorrent. Firstly because the young queer girl was not truly the focal point of the play- the main character was the priest who worked at her school and agonized over his duty to his parishoners versus his church. Secondly, because of the ending. Leave of Absence ends with the young lesbian, Blake, being brutally and graphically raped to death, after which a grieving priest packs up and leaves the school and all of Blake's (heterosexual) adult authorities wring their hands over what happened. It, like Pig Girl, is meant to be about the complacency of people who should have stepped in to help a victim. It, like Pig Girl, shows its "othered" character (racially othered in Murphy's play, sexually othered in Frangione's) being brutally murdered. It, like Pig Girl, hurt and offended the people it tried to represent by not fully grasping their viewpoint. It's brutally offensive, for precisely that reason. 

As an artist, I don't ever want to be Colleen Murphy or Lucia Frangione. I like to think I'm someone with a solid sense of self, but that sense stops at the point where I run the risk of hurting someone else. I'm smart enough to know I don't know everything. I'm also smart enough not to claim otherwise.

Everyone has a story. Not everybody has a right to someone else's.

Why I won't be watching Bitten, as a devoted fan of the books it's based on

A thing you should probably know about me is that I am a huge, huge fan of Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series. I read the first book, Bitten, when I was fourteen and finished the series with Thirteen last year at the age of twenty-one. I grew up with these characters- in some cases, quite literally. I know some of them probably better than I know members of my extended family, and the books have helped me through some really tough times. So when Bell Media announced that they were making a TV show based on the first book in the series, saying I was thrilled is a bit of an understatement.

Then they announced the casting. One of the main characters, Jeremy Danvers, is being played by this guy:

Now I've never seen this actor in anything before; I have no feelings on him as a person. But in this case, I am gravely disappointed by his casting, and the racism shown by the showrunners in their choice of him to play a character textually described as Asian-American.

You could argue (I mean you shouldn't, but you could) that since Jeremy's backstory and heritage aren't explicitly referred to in Bitten, then the production team simply didn't know that he was not white. I might be inclined to agree- I don't want to believe that the production team intentionally whitewashed a character, after all- but the excuse doesn't hold water. SPACE, the channel producing and running the show, also posted this image to their Facebook page. It's a family tree of the character who appear in Bitten- including Jeremy. This information could only be discovered by reading the novels and novellas in which his parentage, race, and appearance is described in-depth. If they cared enough to do that extra reading and find out what everyone looked like and who their ancestors were, there's no excuse for not offering the role to a talented actor of Asian descent rather than erasing this important part of Jeremy's character.

It's not like issues of representation in the media haven't been at the forefront for the past few years; there's a whole website, Racebending.com, dedicated to raising awareness of these issues. And the long and the short of it is, the industry is incredibly rough on actors of colour. You don't need to take my word for it- check out the local movie listings. How many movies playing at your local multiplex star non-white actors in leading roles? And why, when so few roles are offered to nonwhite actors, would Bell Media make the decision to take another potential role and give it to a white actor?

So I'm not watching Bitten. I'm pretty sad about it, to be honest; I was so excited when the series was first announced. But I can't in good conscience support racist casting practices like this. I love the books as much as I always did, but for me, the cons of watching the show simply outweigh the pros. Casting practices like these may proliferate in the entertainment industry, but I don't need to support them. Sorry, SPACE and Bell Media; you've lost yourself a viewer.

Female suffering and the myth of "realism"

There’s a scene in Martin McDonagh’s film Seven Psychopaths where Christopher Walken’s character confronts Colin Farrell’s screenwriter on his terrible handling of female characters: “None of them have anything to say for themselves, and most of them get shot or stabbed to death within five minutes.” Farrell’s character (named “Marty-“ yes, we see what you did there, Mr. McDonagh) defends his creative choices by claiming that he’s trying to show how terribly the world treats women, but Walken scoffs “yeah, it’s a hard world for women, but most of the ones I know can string a sentence together.” I found the placement of the scene to be a little eyebrow-raising- suffice to say that as a writer, Martin McDonagh shares more than a name with his character- but it’s funny, and it’s true. And it ties in to something I’ve been thinking about lately: the idea of “realism” and how often it seems to tie into “we’re going to beat the ever-loving SHIT out of our female characters.”

I’ve been watching AMC’s The Killing lately, because someone described the main characters’ dynamic as “Mulder/Scully-esque” and it piqued my interest. I really should have remembered that “Mulder/Scully-esque” generally implies “season upon season of unresolved sexual/romantic tension until it finally descends into weirdness with alien babies” and fled screaming into the night before watching the pilot, but hindsight is twenty/twenty, and I’m the kind of person who finishes every show she starts. (No, really; the only show that’s managed to break my streak is Hemlock Grove, because even I had to bail after the angel pregnancy started.) The Killing is- well, really not a good show, in terms of writing. A third of the screentime is taken up by a storyline that could be best described as “The West Wing: Municipal Politics Edition,” and another third is given over to watching the family of our main murdered girl slowly going to pieces. Sad, yes; compelling, not really. The remaining third is given to Scully and Mulder- er, Linden and Holder (look, it’s a tiny redheaded no-nonsense officer paired with a snarky, pop-culture-spouting partner; SOMEONE had to say it) trying to navigate the central question of “who killed Rosie Larsen?” And something this show really loves- something I didn’t notice until the latest season, but which was impossible to ignore when I DID notice it- is beating their female characters down. Over. And over. And over.

Now this is what you call a “hyper-realistic” show, which usually translates to “incredibly depressing,” because many writers (not me) think that the real world is dark man, dark, and the only way to show this is to make the most miserable shows possible. I may not agree, but hey, it’s their prerogative, just as it’s mine to take Craig Ferguson as a writing compass. Point is, this show glories in realism; despite my X-Files references, there are no aliens, nor any hint of them. Despite the obvious Twin Peaks comparison (teenaged girl is murdered; show revolves around reactions to and investigations into her death) there is no BOB or Black Lodge or Bookhouse Boys. The colour palette is drained nearly to the point of black and white (it’s set in Seattle, and filmed in Vancouver.) But the most salient issue is, everyone on this show is miserable. These people don’t have skeletons in the closet so much as they have entire mortuaries. Holder, the main character’s partner, is a recovering meth addict who is estranged from his only remaining family after stealing from his six-year-old nephew while on a bender. Our main, Linden, fares slightly better at first (although really, “no meth” is kind of a sad standard of “better”) but over the course of the show to date, she loses custody of her son- after being investigated by child services- gets dumped by her fiancé, gets tossed in a mental ward (under false pretenses, of course, because it’s that kind of show) loses her job, loses ANOTHER boyfriend, gets kidnapped by a gun-wielding street preacher, has an affair with a married man, discovers that- spoilers!- said married man, another police officer, is actually the serial killer she’s been chasing and is driven to murder him in cold blood, after his coverup leads to an innocent man (who she arrested) being executed.

God DAMN.

Now I’m not going to argue that nothing bad should happen to Linden, ever; this show is called The Killing, not My Little Pony: Murder Is Magic. I’ll allow the kidnapping, and even the psychiatric commitment (though in general I am sick to death of the “BUT THEY’RE NOT REALLY CRAZY” trope, seeing as how rarely actual people with actual mental illnesses are seen on TV.) Hell, I’ll even allow for the lost custody; the character had to be gotten off the show SOMEHOW. What bothers me in all this is that she’s so rarely given something good to counterbalance the bad. I didn’t mention, by the way, that all of this is preceded by her frequently alluded-to miserable childhood in foster care, which is implied to have damaged her ability to hold functional relationships; thanks for that, show. But let’s tally it up- three (3) lost love interests, two of who were lost in fairly traumatic ways (the fiancé dumped her after the false commitment incident, literally taking off so that she could come out of her room and find that she'd been abandoned), a lost child, a lost childhood, murder, more murder, and frequent abuse at the hands of her suspects. Shit, if I were her, I would have crawled into a blanket fort and refused to come out by this point. I suppose it’s arguable that bad shit happens to Holder, too- see the aforementioned methhead backstory. (By the way, has anyone ever seen a meth addict who looked like this guy? Yeah. Yeah, no. Check out what meth does to a person's face sometime; I garuntee you will be scared straight for life.) But the thing about Holder’s story that’s so lacking in Linden’s is that he gets actual happy endings to balance out all the crap. As of the end of season three, he has a girlfriend who knows about and accepts his status as a recovering addict; he’s on the road to reconciling with his sister and nephew; he’s edging towards a promotion to police sergeant. God knows there’s still plenty for him to angst about, but there’s also an incentive to get out of bed in the morning. Linden’s long since lost that; the fact that she’s still functioning at all is not much short of a miracle.

"I have a good luck charm. It's called 'being a cismale.' You
can't have it, sorry."

Realistic? Well, maybe. Plenty of crap DOES happen to people who don’t deserve it, and they DO keep on dragging themselves through the day, because what the hell else can they do? Watching the narrative constantly heap abuse on Linden isn’t fun, but I can’t argue that it couldn’t possibly happen in real life. But then there’s the way the rest of the female characters on the show get treated: we have poor dead Rosie Larsen, her aunt the unwitting murderer (as the result of a chain of events that severely stretches this show’s claim of realism), her mother the bereaved parent, the political campaign aide who, it’s revealed, was molested as a teenager . . . it goes on and on. And that’s just the first two seasons. The third and latest season, which revolves around the disappearance of a series of (female) street children, features Kallie, our primary victim who doesn’t even get the dignity of a confirmed death or a proper burial; Bullet, Kallie’s friend who is tragically in love with a straight girl and is eventually fridged to give Holder manpain; Kallie’s mother, whose name I don’t remember, who is condemned repeatedly (and not entirely unfairly) as a Bad Mother and is last seen still desperately searching for her lost child; multiple nameless victims who suffer the added indignity of being mutilated pre-mortem (“he took my left finger,” one surviving victim says pitifully, “what if someone wants to marry me? Will it matter?”); the past victim who had her throat slit “so deep he nearly cut her head off;” and, of course, Linden, who loses two boyfriends, one of whom ends up being The Killer. I have neither the inclination nor the patience to count down the female versus male body count of this show, but I can tell you right damn now, the former outweighs the latter. Because . . . realism?

Look. Women face a lot of violence. Women face constant questioning regarding their parenting skills. Women are vulnerable to sexual assault, especially when homeless and queer. (Oh, I forgot to mention; Bullet, Kallie’s friend, is also raped early on in the season for reasons that remain a total narrative mystery to me.) And yeah, sometimes cops and other authority figures turn out to be bad guys; remember Russell Williams? But if you try to tell me that a serial killer cop AND a secret web of political corruption that lead to a teenager being unwittingly murdered by her own aunt AND an evil Native American chief colluding with the corrupt City Hall politicians (did I mention this show is racist? Yeah, it’s really super racist) AND a guy getting mistaken for a murderer because he was trying to smuggle a potential female circumcision victim out of the country AND the primary investigating officer turns out to have been unknowingly schtupping the secret serial killer cop is totally realistic . . . but a woman having something nice happen to her for once is just out of the sphere of reality, I kind of have to wonder what version of reality you’ve been living in. Mostly so I can make sure to never, ever go there.

(Another repeat offender in this category is A Game of Thrones, which is so terrible to its women and in so many ways that I couldn’t even begin to list them here. “But it’s based on the Middle Ages! Things really were awful for women back then!” Yeah, you know what they didn’t have in the Middle Ages? FUCKING DRAGONS.)

The charming kook has left the building

16224 / 50000 words. 32% done!

In fairness, this is not the thousand words a day I promised when I first started working on this project. But I have been busy! Oh, how busy I have been. Running to classes, running from classes, running to meetings, running home to cook dinner, catching up on my readings from the class I just swapped into (protip: if ever you should switch classes after a semester starts, don't switch into an English class), visiting home, getting my computer fixed- well, you get the idea. And the upcoming week does not look any calmer- tomorrow I have two regular classes, one dance class, and one audition ending at eleven at night, and then I'm up again at nine the next morning for class. I feel a bit like that episode of Nostalgia Critic where he's screaming "I'M THE ADULT! I DO THE ADULT THINGS!"

I've arrived at a point in my novel now that I didn't expect to reach for at least several thousand more words- the main character's breakdown/panic attack. See, as I've mentioned, the narrator of the novel has OCD and takes medication to control it. It goes missing halfway through her roap trip, and what happens? Boom. Panic. I originally planned for this to be more around the middle of the book, but I've been restructuring the plot lately, and realized that my idea of the trip taking up two-thirds of the plot makes no sense. No one wants to read 30 000 words of getting on and off buses. So the panic attack comes just before the halfway point, and as such, I've been revisiting my own illness, reading over descriptions of what panic attacks feel like, and generally trying to get a sense of what's going on in my main character's head. Ironically enough, part of my inspiration came from the TV I've been watching lately.

I'm sorry, were you looking for the sweet, pliant
abuse victim/PTSD sufferer? WRONG NUMBER.

When I get back to my room at night, I'm generally too tired to read or write, so instead I flop on the couch and catch an hour of TV before I go to bed. My latest hour's worth of entertainment has been BBC America's Copper, a show which seems almost uniquely designed to appeal to me: it's a period drama, it's a diaspora story, it's about the underprivileged class that history generally ignores. Also it's kind of like Gangs of New York, but if the screenwriter had had a firmer grasp on the idea of "characterization."

At first glance, the show has exactly zip to do with my book, and honestly, it doesn't- different types of characters, different plots, a sad lack of telepaths. (I feel like every form of media could be improved with telepaths.) What impresses me so much about the show is the way it deals with mental illness, and specifically PTSD. It has two characters with obvious, overt symptoms, and several others who display more subdued reactions. It does well by them, I think- making sure they're sympathetic without turning them into victimized caricatures. And most importantly of all (to me) it says something that a lot of media surrounding mentally ill people never address: being mentally ill does not automatically make you a nice person.

We have a tendency, I think, to valorize those with mental illnesses- we have our Rain Mans and our I Am Sams and our Beautiful Minds where the lead might be crazy, but it's okay! They're a genius so that makes up for it. Or you'll get the Inspirationally Mentally Ill/Disabled character, who is so gosh-darn sweet and kind and self-sacrificing that you'd swear they escaped from a Candyland board. I understand why this happens- to most, disability and illness seem like terrible things, so they try to find some way of "fixing the afflicted," so to speak. They may hear voices, but they're so good at math! They may have flashbacks, but they're so stoic and hot! They may never be able to live independently, but they're so sweet and cuddly!

If the words "just get over it" leave your mouth,
I will shoot you in the EYE.

Except . . . no. No, that's not how it works, and I wouldn't want it to anyway. Making disabled or sick characters one-dimensional angels fails on a writing level- no one is a one-dimensional angel unless they're on an episode of Supernatural- and on a basic human level, because reducing us to that stereotype robs us of our basic humanity. The disabled are still human. We have bad days. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we snap and yell at people. Sometimes we react to our problems badly and take it out on others. Sometimes we don't have good coping mechanisms. That's what makes us people. And disability does not rob us of our basic personhood. If you think that, you're a crappy writer, and also a pretty crappy person. And that- among other things- is part of what I'm trying to do with this book. People with disabilities and mental illnesses exist. Some of us are teenagers. Some of us are even on your YA bookshelves.

You drive me crazy . . . by telling me I'm not

12071 / 50000 words. 24% done!

Look at that! One percentage point away from 25%! I AM THE CHAMPION, MY FRIENDS.

I'm at a point in the novel which is simultaneously easier and more difficult to write. Easier because the characters (who, up to this point, have been deeply wary about opening up to each other) have started to become close, and harder because the opening-up of the relationship means more information is being passed between the two, which makes the plot move faster. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, but then you realize that more conversation equals the plot moving forward, and the plot moving forward means my wordcount shrinking. I am finding that the writing itself feels more smooth and natural now that the characters are communicating, but I'm worrying that now the plot will move too quickly. There are some things they're still keeping from each other, but they're definitely being more open.

One of the things that's kept them- and consequently, me- from being communicative so far is the fact that one of them has depression and OCD. This was one of the foundational building blocks of her character- not "she's mentally ill and that's all there is to her," but "she's mentally ill, and her illness + the experiences resulting from this have influenced her personality and opinions." 

That's how this book got started, actually. I'd been reading a bunch of books (by different authors) that all operated on the premise "X character is diagnosed as mentally ill. But really, they have MAGIC POWERS! The diagnosis is just society keeping them down!" And, you know, that's great! But it doesn't do much for mentally ill teens who are reading these books looking for some characters they can relate to. So I started to ponder- what if a character had powers and was mentally ill? I'd never read a book like that. And as we all know "If there's a book you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." I struggled with depression in high school, and OCD since I was fairly young, so it seemed natural to give my heroine the same two problems. (They tend to go hand in hand, especially if Illness #1 isn't being properly treated and leads to Illness #2.) This led to a few problems. I don't know if you've ever had depression, but contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't just mean "being sad." Often it means being tired and quiet. If you're depressed, you sleep a lot, and not in the "I'm sad and going to curl up in bed-" it's because it's a massive feat of energy to get out of bed at all. Plot-advancing actions are frequently beyond you. 

And then there's the attendant issue, that people tend to confront someone with a diagnosis by saying "well you don't SEEM X." When I was originally diagnosed with anxiety (misdiagnosis, long story) and told a friend about it, his first response was "well you don't seem anxious." (Note to readers: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, DO THIS. It takes a lot of courage to be open about a diagnosis of such a muddied, misunderstood illness, and dismissing them when they say it is a massive slap in the face.) Mental illnesses are frequently misunderstood and mischaracterized by the general public, spurred on by inaccurate depictions in mass media.

No

Absolutely not.

You think "OCD" you think "compulsive cleaning," right? Maybe "fixated on small details?" Actually, wrong. Some people with the disorder do clean compulsively, but it's not a solitary symptom. OCD is characterized by the presence of intrusive thoughts, a sort of mental CD skipping that repeats the same unwanted thought over and over and over. Sometimes the thoughts are religious ("I'm going to hell") sometimes violent ("One day I'm going to snap and shoot someone.") and sometimes sexual ("I'm attracted to my family members/animals/children.") There's no accompanying compulsion to act on these thoughts- people with violent I.T.s aren't actually a threat, and people with sexual ones aren't really attracted to animals or children. They might even understand this on an intellectual level, if they're familiar with the fact that they have an illness, but the sheer amount of misinformation keeps a lot of people from seeking help in the first place. They don't know they have an illness, because they don't know what that illness entails. I didn't. My character got lucky in that she has medically trained people in her family who recognized her symptoms, but even though she gets a proper diagnosis (prior to the story's beginning- the plot proper involves running away from evil scientists and their brainwashed minions) that doesn't necessarily mean the readers will recognize her symptoms when they manifest. And not least of the problems is the fact that "crazy" is so often used as a shorthard for "violent/dangerous," so when she repeats the internalized idea that being crazy (and telekinetic, but that's a different problem entirely) means being a threat to the people she cares about, the readers might not.

Possibly my worries are overblown; definitely they're premature. I'm not even halfway through the first draft. But just looking at my own experiences and the way the majority of pop culture views mental illness (either "it doesn't exist" or "it exists as portrayed by these guys") I suspect they aren't. I also suspect that I'd be worrying whether I was writing a book or not. 

In which I get serious, and more than a little mad

I read a book today. I'm not going to mention the title or author, because honestly, they're both beside the point. I've read this book before. I've read hundreds of this book before. It varies in content and genre and reading level, but one thing remains consistent no matter what the variables: it always, always has a Tragic Gay.

Case in point.

The Tragic Gay (always gay- bisexuals don't exist in the universes this book takes place in, and transpeople aren't even considered) sometimes exists during the timeline of the story, and sometimes is only a footnote in the main characters' backstory. Sometimes they even get to be a main character. Sometimes they're the protagonist, sometimes the antagonist. The one common thread in this parade of gays is that they are Tragic. Often they're victims of bullying, usually they have some unrequited passion for a straight person, and frequently they commit suicide. Very frequently, they end up in the great refrigerator in the sky, and our mains weep and beat the ground with their fists and cry many straight person tears for their poor Tragic Gay friend. Then they go off and save the world with their magic, heterosexual powers and the Tragic Gay smiles beatifically from heaven or wherever they've been shuffled off to. For lo, they have served their purpose;  the author can feel good about themselves for "representation," and the audience can cry for the plight of those poor Tragic Gays and the queer audience . . . um . . . well gosh, you just can't please some people! But some will no doubt eat from the plate they've given, because even if the food is rotten, it's better than starving.

I have read- and seen- this story so many times, and I am beyond goddamn sick of it. Hey powers that be, know why our kids keep killing themselves? Because you're telling them to. Tell someone a story often enough, and they start to believe it. Tell someone that being gay automatically equals a lifetime of noble suffering often enough, and they start to understand that this is what they can expect their life to be. Is it true? Not necessarily. I'm not one for the empty platitudes of the It Gets Better project- well to be honest, I'm not one for Dan Savage in general- but I do think that when you create art, you have a responsibility to consider what cultural and sociological impact art has. We tell stories because they mean something to us- they tell us who we are and where we come from. They tell us not to talk to strangers and to be kind and keep our promises. They tell us what we can expect from the world, and what is happening around us. Do you think it's a coincidence that in the eighties and nineties, we had so many stories about gay men dying of AIDS? Did a bunch of artists wake up one morning, isolated from all current affairs, and say "I'm gonna write an AIDS story?" Of course not. They wrote it because they saw the issues being faced in the world around them and said "I want to explore this story with my art." And now, on the heels of several well-publicized suicides of gay teenagers, we have stories about attempted suicide. And people- children- are surrounded by these stories and decide that this is what they can expect from life. Can we blame them? It's not like we offer them alternatives.

If I never have to watch another outing story or bullying narrative, if I never have to read another book where the main character's sidekick is defined by being gay and persecuted, if I never have to watch another goddamned episode of goddamned Downton Abbey where the lone gay character sits in a corner and cries because his love interest slashed his wrists- if you agree, if you're sick of this shit too, here's what you can do.

Don't write it.

It's as simple as that.

Don't write it. It's more than possible to write stories about gay people- or, shock of shocks- queer people who are NOT gay without drowning them in misery and calling it inspirational. It's been done. It's been done well! (Although how fucking depressing is it that two of those books had to be self-published? Mainstream publishers, you need to STEP UP YOUR SHIT.) I know Annie on My Mind and Keeping You A Secret were important when they were released, and I'm grateful for what they accomplished. But it's not enough anymore. If you agree? Then say so. Comment right here, comment on your blog, comment in your writing that you're not participating in this any longer. It has to stop.

This quote here? It's by E.M. Forster, the author of Maurice. His book wasn't published until the 1970s, because the idea of gay characters having a happily ever after was so anathema in the time it was written, he didn't dare try publish it. It's not the 1970s anymore. I think we can do better.

"A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood. I dedicated it ‘To a Happier Year’ and not altogether vainly. Happiness is its keynote – which by the way . . . has made the book more difficult to publish. If it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well . . . but the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime."