Another kind of "no heterosexual explanation" moments

[epershand]

TFV's post on "no heterosexual explanation" moments, where it is hard to come up with an in-canon explanation for a certain character's behavior unless it's them being in love with another character, got me thinking about another kind of moment I experience periodically.

It's the moment where my own tendency to read queer subtext in everything blinds me to the fact that there is really obvious textual queerness going on. I am so used to thinking of the way I read queerness into everything that sometimes I just don't realize that it's not just me.

Case in point: the blowjob scene in Nico and Dani. I thought it was just an awkward film about two teenage boys who were maybe getting each other off a little bit, no homo here unless you're a slasher! And then... blowjobs! (Honestly, I still sort of think that my university's Spanish department selected its films with an intent to troll the firsties. Poor little bb!epershand was like "Did you just fade to black and keep the screen black for like a minute while keeping the blowjob noises on? European film, you... you confuse me.")

Dumbledore's "outing" was another one of those moments for me. Because... of course I'd been slashing Dumbledore/Grindlewald, GAY OLDER MENTORS is my favorite trope. But finding out that JKR also slashed them came at me out of nowhere.

Editing this to add one more example: in Farthing it took me way too long to figure out that all those intense conversations about what kind of tea people drank that sounded like obscure euphemisms for homosexuality? Were obscure euphemisms for homosexuality. ("Do you like INDIA tea or CHINA tea? Personally, I like China tea... with lemon. You look like a man who... also likes lemon in his tea.")

So, what are your "being a slasher made me not notice obvious canon queer characters" moments? What are the texts that you only belatedly realized didn't need queering?

Comments

[lea_hazel]

Joining the metafandom resuscitation party.

I know this happens to me a lot, especially since I started talking about subtext to my brother, who provides an external perspective. It used to be that he shot me down all the time, and mostly he was right. I would hear his explanation shooting me down in my head when I started to think "they would be cute together." A few times I was vindicated. These days he can anticipate what I'll see, and sometimes he sees it too.

The most obvious example was in the comic Runaways where I knew that Karolina had a one-sided crush on Nico and that Nico was definitely straight and oblivious. Another one is in an execrable fantasy novel that I forgot the name of, which was written by a straight man and included one woman giving a much younger woman the "coming out slash mutant pride speech" before trying to suck her soul out sexily.

Oh, and even though I was forewarned about the pervasive bisexuality of the Kushiel books, I was still taken aback by the intensity of the heroine's relationship with her nemesis.

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[(Anonymous)]

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