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a-little-slice-of-fandom · 3 years

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In derry girls, what did you think of the episode where clare came out? Im irish (republic) and gay so i love that it was included, but some of the language used makes me uncomfortable i guess? I get that NI in the 90s wasnt very accepting but the directors have said that they already portrayed it through rose coloured glasses so having michelle say d*ke feels unnecessary. I love the show though and can certainly look past it! I was just interested in what you thought :)))

Hey anon!

Personally I love this episode of Derry Girls! In fact it’s probably my favourite episodes. I already liked Clare as a character throughout the series, probably because I relate to her a bit too much, so to have her be revealed as gay was just like the icing on the cake. Good representation for northern Irish characters are few and far between, and gay northern Irish characters are basically non existent. Derry Girls was this hit TV show that provided many with the first chance to see themselves represented meaningfully on TV, and that includes myself.

However, I think there’s a lot of really important stuff in this episode that people either don’t notice or just don’t really talk about, which I do understand because Derry Girls is, at the end of the day, a comedy and it’s much more fun to quote characters like Aunt Sarah saying “you cannot move for lesbians these days” than to think about the darker side of Northern Ireland.

(T/W for homophobia discussion!!!)

(Also this sort of turned into a ramble about acceptance by the end of the post but I just have a lot of feelings on what Derry girls represents and I feel like non northern Irish viewers maybe don’t catch onto that because they don’t have the necessary context)

Derry Girls, as a show, is so interesting and personal to me because it manages to perfectly strike the balance between presenting Northern Ireland as a deeply flawed and divided country, but also presenting it as a place where people can be happy and live their lives to the fullest despite the ever present danger of the troubles. And that’s a genuinely refreshing portrayal of N.I that we usually don’t get. However I’d argue that if Derry Girls doesn’t at least try and illustrate, to some extent, the causal and very rampant homophobia of northern Ireland then it runs the risk of romanticising Northern Ireland at the time, which I think is incredibly dangerous. I do think that the show is intentionally more digestible and does filter things through rose tinted glasses, however I’d argue that simply glossing over the homophobia would have actually been a bit disrespectful to the queer history of Northern Ireland and could erase the experiences and struggles of the LGBTQ community in N.I, both then and now. If the show doesn’t acknowledge that things were shitty then we paint an inaccurate picture of what it was like, and arguably still is like, to be gay in Northern Ireland. And considering that Derry Girls is one of the very few good depictions of Northern Ireland, it’s incredibly important that it’s an honest depiction.

You specifically asked about Michelle, but I think it’s important to talk about Michelle and Erin in relation to one another, and how they are both products of their time and of a deeply homophobic society.

(Now I’m going to briefly discuss Michelle’s use of the d-slur here however I just want to acknowledge that I’m probably not the best person to talk about this since it’s a lesbian specific slur and I’m not a lesbian. I welcome any additions to this post!)

I think Michelle sort of represents the overt and “loud” homophobia that’s present in our society. Michelle saying the d-slur is far from the first homophobic thing she says. I mean It’s literally a running gag in series one that she calls James “gay” constantly. And the sad thing is that Michelle’s off handed comments throughout the series are incredibly realistic to what you’d hear in Northern Ireland even today. I remember the f-slur being chanted during break time at my primary school, without anyone fully understanding what that word meant. Michelle is a representation of the homophobia that’s deeply ingrained into N.I to the point where it’s not even thought about or even seen as an issue. I mean...no one ever really talks about Michelle’s comments. Now whether or not they had to include her saying a slur specifically to illustrate the homophobia of N.I is not for me to say. You could change that sentence in the script and I think the point of Michelle representing “loud” and homophobia would still stand.

On the other hand...I think Erin represents the much more insidious and “quiet” homophobia.

Firstly, she has no issue with capitalising off a very personal essay for her own gain, shrugs off any protests that this might be wrong and doesn’t consider how her actions may hurt the writer of this piece (who is later revealed to be Clare).

Even the language she uses is a bit uncomfortable, saying that “a real life lesbian walks among us”. Are lesbians wild animals or mythical creatures? That seems to be what Erin is implying here. Plus Erin tries to make it out to others such as Sister Michael that she’s doing this because she genuinely believes in equal rights and wishes to stick up for the LGBT community, but when Clare actually tries to come out Erin is clearly confused and she reacts very badly. I mean, Erin literally says she doesn’t want Clare to come out and demands she get back in the closet, and you can see how hurt Clare is by this reaction. And this scene is kind of played for laughs and I think that straight viewers probably found Erin’s reaction quite funny...but this scene hit way too close to home for me. It’s the classic “I have nothing against gay people, but I’d just rather I didn’t have a gay friend/child/co-worker because they make me uncomfortable” that’s way too common in Northern Ireland. It’s the idea that people can present themselves as liberal and open minded, but when finally confronted with something that doesn’t fit their narrative, their societal conditioning kicks in.

As a queer woman, it was never Michelle’s causal homophobia that made me uncomfortable, it was Erin’s reaction...because it hit way too close to home. It’s a perfect representation of the “quiet” homophobia that’s still a massive issue in Northern Ireland today.

(Also the context of when Derry Girls was released is super important! Series one of Derry Girls was released in 2018...but Gay marriage wasn’t actually legalised in Northern Ireland until January of 2020 and even then it was quite contested by conservatives. Now I’m not saying there’s social commentary here but that’s absolutely what I’m saying.)

Now I’m not saying that Michelle or Erin themselves are homophobic, nor am I saying that they’re bad people. I think that they are teenagers that have absorbed a lot of homophobic rhetoric due to the time and the society that they live in. Although Erin’s reaction to Clare trying to come out was painful to watch because it felt so real, I don’t think her reaction was malicious. Erin is a teenager who has grown up in a homophobic society and now doesn’t really know how to react to this new reality and probably didn’t realise how hurtful she was being to Clare. (This isn’t me trying to excuse her reaction, again I am part of the LGBT community and I’ve experienced that exact same reaction from people, it’s me trying to understand Erin’s reaction). Erin and Michelle have both absorbed rhetoric from their deeply homophobic society, and unfortunately this rhetoric continues.

Plus I just want to comment on this idea of acceptance and change in Derry Girls. Derry Girls is set in the time of great change in Northern Ireland, where people were sort of starting to accept that people are allowed to be British or Irish or both. But this process was messy and it wasn’t instantaneous. And the acceptance of the LGBTQ community in Northern Ireland was the exact same. It didn’t just happen overnight. It was a slow and messy process of change, of people re-evaluating their previous beliefs and being given the chance to grow as people and to learn how to accept others. That’s not to say people haven’t made mistakes in the past, because they have, but they’re willing to take the steps to change. I‘ve always thought the LGBTQ subplot of Derry Girls is sort of a parallel to the overall process of change in Northern Ireland in a political sense. And I think that flies over so many people’s heads because they don’t have that context of the political situation in N.I.

(And this theme of acceptance is seen again in the series finale of series 2 with James! ✨ Thematic consistency ✨ )

Because at the end of the day, Clare is accepted by the group. In fact, we see both the teenagers and the adults actively take steps to make her feel loved, welcome and accepted. My favourite moment will always be Granda Joe saying “you’re a very talented people” to Clare in the most earnest voice. Clare is still loved by her friends and although they don’t exactly know what they’re doing, they do try and show their support for her. They absolutely make mistakes, and they did hurt Clare, but they’re trying and I think that stands for a lot, especially at the time.

And I think all of what I discussed was absolutely necessary to Derry Girls. Derry Girls might be a somewhat rose tinted portrayal of Derry in the troubles, but it never tries to romanticise the situation that the teenagers were in (because no one should be romanticising the troubles). I think that this stance of portraying the harsh reality of homophobia in N.I is equally important to the narrative of Derry Girls. I see my own experiences in Clare, despite the fact it’s 30 years later, so if they didn’t at least attempt to show the homophobia in Ireland it would have felt disingenuous and too “perfect”. Again, I’m not saying that Michelle using the d slur was the right way to go about showing the “loud” homophobia of Northern Ireland. That’s not my decision to make. However, just because Derry Girls is making efforts to present Northern Ireland in a more digestible way to audiences (especially non northern Irish audiences) doesn’t mean they shouldn’t also acknowledge the reality of Northern Ireland at the time.

(This all kind of makes it sound like I want Clare to get hate crimed which I obviously do not want. I think the way that Derry Girls showed the issues in Northern Ireland were perfect and very much necessary, minus the use of the d-slur specifically which wasn’t necessary to the plot.)

Anyway thank you so much for the ask anon! This was much more rambly than my usual posts but I just really have a lot of opinions on Derry girls because it does mean a lot to me and it often does hit close to home.

#derry girls #michelle mallon #erin quinn #clare devlin #enya discusses: derry girls #long post

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aparoxysm · 7 years

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3,5,7,8,9,12,15,18,19,20

✿ Does anyone in real life know about your RPing hobby and what, if anything, have they said about it?

My parents know, because for as long as I’ve been on the internet, they’ve known that I like to write and write with friends overseas. My dad still calls it fanfiction somtimes to other people, like he’s proud of me or something, and that’s enough to make me want to never talk to him again out of embarrassment, ha, but I deal with it. Because I truly do love writing more than anything. Other than that, my boyfriend knows, but he doesn’t care about it / ask questions and I don’t really like to tell him about it either. I’m not as embarrassed about RP as I used to be, but I still feel like it’s just something for me that other people wouldn’t really understand the mechanics of. The only times my boyfriend and I do acknowledge it is when I start talking about an RP friend he hasn’t heard about before like a real life friend, so he’s like who dat and im like oh, new rp friend from > insert country

That being said, he actually did surprise me the other week and I have been holding onto it for fear life. We were complaining about a friend who literally just sleeps and watches Netflix all day when she’s not working, and he’s like “I don’t get how you can do that” and im like “Well I have friends online who claim to do that a lot. Me, personally, I’d get too bored.” and hes like “I just don’t get how people can do nothing all the time? Like at least with you and your online stuff, that’s still doing something. I just feel like that’s actually a hobby.” and I kind of didn’t hear whatever else it is he said because he actually ??? referred to my RP addiction as something valid and worthy??? and all this time i’ve assumed he didn’t get it and thought it was dumb??? IDK, it made me feel good.

✿ Have you considered writing professionally or do you have plans to?

Always. But I never will, I don’t think.

✿ How do you handle the toxicity sometimes found in the roleplaying community, particularly in fandoms?How has roleplaying, specifically, impacted your life?

I use tumblr savior to blacklist a lot, because it really gets too much for me to be exposed to it a lot, and it makes me feel shitty and not want to rp with certain people because of how they behave, or makes me feel guilty for how I behave… I usually drift away from things that give me major negative vibes, otherwise I become in great, exponential danger of saying something i’ll regret. I’ve hated Tumblr RP a lot in this last year. It’s nowhere near as relaxed as it used to be, and I know there’s a lot of political debate on the topic of equality but I am not comfortable in a space where I have to edit everything I do and say or just not do or say it at all. When it gets like that level, a good dose of the unfollow button and keeping my mouth shut is what I find the most helpful.

✿ How has writing improved your life and do you see yourself sticking with it?

When I graduated high school, I went to college for art and animation, and it basically ruined my creative life. Before RP, I used to be an avid drawer, I sketched every day, I improved my skills and motivation so much, everyone knew me as the girl who drew in class instead of did her work, the girl who was going to grow up and be a famous artist, and when I went to college, it killed that for me. My ego took a big blow because the tech side of the course absolutely annihilated me, i couldn’t do it. so after that (and that was 2 years ago now) i haven’t really drawn since. but the silver lining was that I took on RP more dedicatedly after that, and found that I truly adored writing. Try as I might, I’ve never really comitted to a personal writing project, and it’s only in the recent times that I’ve taken the pressure off for me to do it, but. RP makes me happy, it makes me feel like I’m doing something good when I reply to people or make new friendships, it makes me feel like I’m wanted and needed, that my characters and plots are valid and that other people would care if I’m here or not. It was a big boost for my self confidence, and it’s also made me so much more privy to the creative world, which i needed after that. so yeah, i see myself sticking with writing.

✿ Is there a quote from a piece of literature that holds great value to you? What is it and why is it important to you?

She stood in front of her closet mirror in her T-shirt and twisted this way and that. What’s wrong with me? She wondered. There was nothing the matter that she could see. She was tall and leggy, like her mother, with full breasts, small waist, and slim hips that curved enough to show she was female. Her skin was gently golden; it was always golden, sun or not, and her tawny hair was thick and long and wild. So why was it that groups of girls stopped talking when she approached them at school and answered her openings with tense words that killed the conversations she tried to start? Was she too good-looking? Was that possible? Was that the threat they saw?

Legitimately, this was the first and pretty much only female protagonist I had ever read about who fully and whole-heartedly loved herself where it mattered. Sure, she still had her shortcomings and moments of weakness, but god damn, Vivian was so proud of herself and what she stood for, and that was so refreshing to see during that period of young adult fiction. It’s why she became my first favourite character from a book. And has pretty much inspired me to write feirce, aggressive, self-assured female characters ever since. I was just so inspired by her way of thinking as a young girl, it appealed to me so much and so that moment in the book plus a whole lot of others, really stuck with me.

✿ What do you typically look for in a roleplay partner?

Cliche, but chemistry. And not always in the writing kind but a lot in the OOC kind. I like people who I can talk to super easily, who write in the same tumblr language I do, who reference memes and are not afraid to hit me up with IMs and head canons, etc. I just love it because it makes me feel comfortable with a person, and like I’m not being a bother. The better I get to know a player, the better I get to know their character away from IC interactions. Likewise, I adore it when players get to know me so well that they read the patterns in my characters easily, and I don’t feel like I have to explain them all the time? It’s like they just know, and they know what path I want to put them on. I also look for honesty, people who are down to tell me what they’re feeling about a situation or whether something bothers them, or is able to voice if I’m doing something wrong. Most importantly though, I look for decisive people. Not overly decisive but it’s just so important for me to have someone who is like “yes that sounds good, i can start a thing for you if you want” or “i dont think that really fits, how about this plot idea instead?” I really cannot stand sending IMs to people about plots and characters and them just agreeing off the bat the whole time, but never really deciding on anything either, and so it makes me feel like i’m just paddling in a circle until i make all the decisions for us. To me, that’s not what RP is about. It involves teamwork, and effort, and to me, that’s not putting in effort. It gets me really frustrated.

✿ What made you want to join the roleplaying community?

I kept seeing bios in celebrity tags, and so when i sussed out what group rp was on tumblr, i was like holy shit there is a name for the thing i have been doing with friends over email for so many years???? and you can use PICTURES? i gotta get on this.

so somehow, i found a group rp that allowed mythical creatures, i wanted to be a peter pan mermaid, and the rest is history~~

✿ What one piece of literature has been most inspirational/life changing for you? Why?

(( Blood & Chocolate, by Anette Curtis Klause — because of the main character, as per mentioned. She’s inspired me to write full-on, aggressive, assertive, don’t-tell-me-what-i-can-and-cant-do female characters without apology. ))

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen — it’s hard to explain exactly why, and it doesnt even just involve ONE of her books either, but they’ve kind of shaped my whole general character story directions?? her books always follow a pattern and i really admire that pattern, even if it is repetitive, and i am secretly a hopeless romantic so i really like how her love stories evolve. it’s always slow burning, the boy is usually a direct surprising love interest, and the girl always gains new friends and family out of it, and the stories always involve a nice little reoccurring theme. In the Truth About Forever, it’s a game that she and a boy plays throughout the entire book, which eventually leads to a shift from friendship to something more. THAT PLOT HAS APPEALED TO ME EVERY SINCE. the example of a teeny, tiny, otherwise-completely-average moment greatly impacting the rest of a characters life with someone else… i am weAK for this concept ok. her females are always usally feircely independent too and that gets me ♥

✿ Who are your top three favorite fictional characters and why?

Vivian Gandillon (Blood & Chocolate) — i swear i could go on repeat forever haha, but i’ve basically already mentioned why.

Jace Herondale (Shadowhunter Series) — back when the first like, two books had only been published, i super fell hard for this series and it was straight up because of the commentary done by Jace and his ability to senselessly bicker with everybody in his path. his comments to me, were always absolutely hysterical. i was so in love with his wry and witty comments, especially the way he kept at ease and casual through super distressing situations, and i really wish id kept reading the rest of the series as it was published, but i seriously fell behind. then the movie came out. then the netflix series. now i’ve grown too far out of it and having to see the cast on my dash every second of every day makes me want to burn the books.

Shane Collins (Morganville Vampire Series) — this is an oooold old series that i used to read religiously, and it was more in the style of anita blake and buffy vampires~ rather than twilight and true blood -esque content. it got really weird and complicated though so i gave up on it, but for a time, i adored it. and i loved shane because he was hilariously human, he hated everybody except his housemates (though sometimes that could be questioned) and nobody held a grudge better than him. he had a knack for getting in trouble, usually on his own accord, was feircely protective and spent most of his time just being a genuine nuisance and temper tantrum thrower. i saw a lot of me in him, and idk. i just like people with tempers, i think it makes them super fun to read.

#me af #psa; ooc #psa; my library #shehasnoears

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