queer signalling: louis and harry living their beautiful queer lives, collected by me
since we must take note of our fellow queers when they signal that they are very much one of us, despite being closeted. since i've had a very very queer few years thanks to them, thanks to their signalling, thanks to them being brave.
(!! this list isn't exhaustive, and if i've forgotten your favorite, by all means let me know. there's always room for another edition. it's been a while since i made a compilation and felt there was a need of a new one on my blog. this one goes a few years back, since my last one dates from 2021 :'o. so yeah. here we go.)
harry in my policeman, playing a closeted queer man, based on the book that's long been one of his favorites. lauded by the director and co-stars for how well he portrayed this character, how well he understood.
harry wearing a green flower on his chest for the mp premiere, placing himself (once again) in the same line of history as oscar wilde.
louis's green flowers on his initial 28clothing jersey at the first afhf, which includes bonus roses and 28s all around
the entire late night talking mv bc!!!!!
louis's rainbow stage lights during sibwawc. he really did that. every single night.
the entire dazed magazine happening. “I’ve always tried to compartmentalise my personal life and my working life,” he explains. / “I have unlocked an ability to be myself completely, unapologetically,” he says with conviction." / “I think through my own sense of self and personal journey, I am realising that happiness isn’t this kind of end state.”
louis's gay exit songs: most notably 'ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn't've)'
harry flirting with stanley tucci
louis and his gay ass tank tops !!! we must point it out !!!!!!
all along
harry kissing a pride flag during harry's house ono in nyc
rainbow flare during the btm mv
harry being gifted a mask of his own face at munich n2, which prompted him to say that he feels like he's wearing a mask sometimes
28 in a triangle for 28clothing!!!!!!!!
kit connor soft launching 28 clothing. a young actor starring in a queer coming-of-age series, who was forced to come out after being accused of queerbaiting. he was the first one, besides louis, to wear 28clothing
harry's grammy's speech "people like me" (which ppl sadly misunderstood), echoing what he's been saying on tour for years. this doesn't happen to people like him. if they only knew, right?
harry's freddie-inspired outfit for the grammy carpet (which also brought back his theme for clown/jester fits, like harryween 2021 n2. wonder why)
louis's merch graphic where a boy is trying to smash a glass ceiling
harry posing for david hockney, actual living legend, gay artist of the ages. "Styles seems to know how lucky he is, adding, with a tinge of disbelief: “I’m in awe of the man with enough one-liners for a lifetime.” As to what those one-liners might be? Styles and Hockney’s mutual silence on that question suggests that what happens in the studio, stays in the studio."
louis having suspicious visuals during back to you, the only visuals of that type on tour
harry's 2022 harryween outfit: dressed as danny (literally. he did that. he went grease on us.) but wearing sandy's jacket
louis at barricade aka held safely in the arms of strong security personnel
harry singing man, i feel like a woman and still the one with shania twain. while wearing a rainbow discoball jumpsuit (parallel with kacey musgraves wearing a rainbow dress to sing it with him years ago.)
louis's gay ass merch for the away from home festival
harry dressed in nina ricci by harris reed, an explicitly gender-fluid line. "At 18 I found myself living in london creating ruffle blouses, corsets, fabric flowers and flares from my kitchen floor (...). My creations at the time were met with nothing but criticism for being “too feminine” or “costume”, teachers said I should focus on “menswear” or “womenswear”. l remember it really wasn’t until I started dressing for myself and who I was that it all clicked. @harrystyles was my first ever client who embraced the fun, fluid and expressive clothing I was creating."
continuous bluegreening. to name a few: harry's werchter fit, all this time lights, satellite caps in two colors only, louis's smiley flickering bluegreen on tour in 2022, the james cordon shit, louis in uncasville. enjoy this post here
harry's snl shoot unseens: him as ariel
louis out in amsterdam at a gay bar
harry going to the women's only swimming pond (on a day it was open for men, but this is important to me okay)
harry's use of orchids in his visuals during 'she' during love on tour '23
the 'hairy mermaid' tour visuals
harry as a mermaid during the mfasr mv. as a supreme physical manifestation of harry as the mermaid he truly is inside. but in his true form he gets chopped up and consumed. literally
as it was mv and its parallels with the matrix, hints to harry as the woman with the red dress.
louis jumping up on barricade against the one spot where a pride flag was draped over it
oh yeah that exact same thing happened in 2022 too
harry forming a skirt with a pride flag in brasil after his pants ripped
that gay ass denim getup with the fur collar?? while wearing the fucking peace ring????
harry and phoebe breaking gender norms in the tpwk mv dance. no i'm not over it yet shut up
louis wearing a basquiat t-shirt, another famously queer artist joining the ranks
harry bought an actual genuine basquiat. flex
harry dressed in skirts for gucci
"happy pride! happy pride! 'tis the season! can you tell i'm relaxed?"
"isn't all of this sparkly bi music?"
satellite mv rainbow planet tshirt
louis's bigger than me promo where he's literally george michael like??? IM SORRY???????
harry kissing lewis capaldi at the brits
harry kissing nick kroll at the dwd premiere. lol
and... harry as friend of D O R O T H Y. sang over the rainbow. we all cried. especially me at this clip of harry glancing in relief at his band after over the rainbow.
112 notes
·
View notes
But anyway, Stranger Things Steve and Robin story where things are Pretty Bad in Hawkins for a while after season 4, to the tune of regular monster incursions and more bumps and bruises and stitches and possible concussions than generally standard
and maybe six months in, after graduation, as Hawkins has come up with more and more unlikely stories to try and pretend that they're not sitting athwart a rising apocalypse, after Robin has deferred college for a year, if they all even live that long, because she loves Steve with every last corner of her heart and she won't, can't leave him here
and it's been another bumpy week in a string of bumpy weeks, and Steve doesn't have another concussion, thank god, but Mike needed seventeen stitches and Nancy has a new burn scar curling up over her left shoulder--
Robin goes to find Steve somewhere in the middle of the third load of laundry in the house where his parents haven't set foot since the "earthquakes" happened. Where she has her own permanent guest room, but just crawls in with Steve most nights anyway, because she cannot handle going home to face her own parents and their questions and their 'constructive criticism' and their attempts to be helpful any more.
And she just immediately starts pacing, back and forth across the basement while Steve tries to fold yet another fitted sheet that she could definitely be helping him with, and she says,
"So look, I have been having this really crazy idea, and I need you to tell me that it's a crazy idea, and I should just forget it, except that every time I try to think down that path I keep thinking of reasons that it's not a crazy idea, and it's actually a really good idea with very minimal drawbacks, at least in the near or foreseeable future, and if it ever does start to have drawbacks we can just undo it, because Indiana's had a no-fault divorce law since 1973, and all we'd have to do would be filing some paperwork, and you're just looking at me like I'm babbling again."
"Just like it, huh?" Steve asks, eyebrows raised with a little bit of 'really?' and all the affection of his heart, and when she stops, giving him that slightly-desperate look, he adds, "So, who's getting a divorce?"
"Us," Robin says, planting her feet and looking straight at him. "Eventually. Hopefully. Someday."
"Ooookay, kinda worried you're already planning my eventual divorce when I haven't had sex since Vecna showed up," Steve says, still not really sure where this is going but willing to follow the train at least a little farther, and Robin just shakes her head, eyes wide and focused.
"No," she says. "I mean you and me. I think we should get married."
Yeah, that makes about as much sense as anybody's crazy plans these days. Steve misses the days when he would have been too confused to keep up. He's still confused, he just so rarely expects to be anything else any more that it doesn't really make that much of a difference.
"Robin," he says, a whole sentence in one word, and then she's pacing again.
"Look," she says, wringing her hands the way she does when she's actually pretty upset about something. "Look, I know it's a stupid, crazy, stupid idea, and this isn't me coming on to you, you know this isn't me coming on to you, this is actually a really hard and scary thing for me to think about asking, but it's still like fifty times less hard and scary than what we do every week just living in this town and knowing what we know, because one of the things we know about living in this town is how dangerous it is, how many bad things could happen at any time, and-- and-- and--"
"Robin," Steve says again, and puts down the sheet in a heap to get in her path. He doesn't usually cut her off, but when she gets so worked up she runs out of words, that's when it's time to help Robin get back out of her own way. She lowers her hands into his and Steve squeezes them. "Hey. What's going on?"
"I'm scared," Robin says.
"Yeah, me too," Steve agrees, easily, because the sky outside is a hazy sort of blue-green that goes red-purple at night when it's not black, and when rain falls it sometimes leaves streaks of slick grime on everything it touches, and there are bludgeoning weapons and loaded firearms tucked into corners all over this house. He's been scared more on than off since 1983, and he hasn't bothered pretending not know it since '85.
"I'm scared for you," she says. "And I'm scared for me. I'm scared that none of us knew what was up with Nancy at the hospital for two hours the other day, because her mom showed up for Mike and they told her everything and Karen Wheeler hates us."
"Nancy's fine," Steve promises; her left arm's gonna be bandaged for a while, but she can still steady a rifle, and sometimes he thinks that's two-thirds of all Nancy really cares about any more. It's probably close to half of what all any of them have time and space to care about these days, which is a pretty depressing thought. But that's not a forever state of events, right? "She just got a little banged up. She's okay."
"Steve, what happens if you get hurt?" Robin asks. "Like, really hurt? If you get sick, or concussed again, or you need surgery like Max or Eddie, and you're not conscious enough to make your own medical decisions?"
"I don't know, I guess they call my parents, don't get an answer, and then operate anyway," Steve says, blowing it off like he always does. "Robin, I'm fine."
She's shaking her head, though, no, "I've just, I've been thinking, and I've been reading, and you know how hospitals are, it's been happening all over where people get sick and their friends, partners, can't even get in to see them, and families they haven't even talked to in years get to make medical decisions, because they're not married."
And Steve's not exactly smart but he's not completely dumb. Robin leaves absolutely anything that might even suggest she's a lesbian at Steve's house so her parents won't find it at home, which means there's a whole pile of blurry xeroxed zines and pamphlets and gay newsletters on his once-unused bedroom desk, shoved under a Russian-English dictionary, three spiral notebooks, and a book by some guy called Jung-pronounced-Young. Steve isn't really sure where they come from, because they only make maybe one supply run to Indianapolis a week between the whole group of them and Robin doesn't even usually go, but the newsletters keep multiplying. He's glanced at them before. He's heard Robin talk. He knows what she's thinking about.
"That's not what's happening here," Steve says, promises. "You know that's not the same thing. Nobody's getting sick."
"No, just...torn up by demobats, or haunted, or possessed, or who knows what else," Robin says. "Steve, I don't want my parents to be the ones visiting me if I'm in the hospital. I don't want them to be the ones in charge of deciding what happens to me. I don't want to wake up from a coma one day to find out I've been transferred to some hospital in another state because they decided Hawkins was too dangerous and now I never get to see you again."
"So you want me to be the one doing that?" Steve asks, and Robin looks up at him, hands still tight in his, and she says,
"Yes," like it's obvious. Like it's everything.
For one brief, bright-aching moment, Steve lets himself regret. He's not in love with Robin. Not like that, never like that, but -- there was a minute, once, where it could've been, for him. And it never could have been, for her, he knows that, and that's fine, that's great, because Robin still loves him more than anybody else in his entire life has ever loved him. And it is everything, and it's never going to be like that, and probably nobody is ever going to love him like that even half as much as Robin loves him like this.
"Sure," Steve says.
"And -- and look, it's selfish, and it's stupid, and it's terrible and I hate myself for thinking it, but if you die out there, and half of us are basically living in your house, and I know your parents don't want this house but they can't sell it because it's Hawkins and the housing market sucks, and you don't technically own it but it's all tied up in your trust fund, and if we were married that would give us at least the length of a court case to figure out where else to go, and we'd be able to take care of Max, and--"
"Robin, yeah," Steve says. "I'll do it. Sure, let's get married."
"Wait, really?" Steve doesn't know why she sounds so startled when it was her insane idea, unless she really did want to be talked out of it, but if she'd actually wanted to be talked out of it she should've gone to Nancy. Steve's not the guy who talks Robin out of things. He's the guy who talks Robin into her own brilliant ideas and all the things she desperately wants and doesn't think she can have. "Like, really?"
"Yeah, sure, let's go tomorrow," Steve says. It's a Tuesday, the little gremlins'll all be in school and their shift at Family Video doesn't start until five. "Do we need to get, like, a license or something?"
It's not like Steve doesn't get that this is a weird thing to do, and not a thing that most people would do with their platonic lesbian best friends, but honestly...like, Robin hadn't wanted to say it, but Steve knows he's probably more likely to die in the next couple of years than most other people they know. Doesn't matter how much he plays it off, Steve's always going to be there sticking his body between whichever kid or girl or random civilian and the danger of the day. He's not always there, which is how Mike ends up with a gash up his arm that better not be getting infected with Upside Down rot while Karen Wheeler is too busy pretending that Hawkins is still a normal town, how Nancy gets caught in the blowback from a molotov cocktail thrown just a little too short. Sometimes it feels like Steve's blaming himself in the middle of the night for not being there a little more every year. But he tries.
And if it gets him killed, the least he can do is make sure his stupid trust fund goes to Robin instead of back to his fucking parents. He's not dumb enough to think him dying wouldn't wreck at least Robin, at least for a little while, but he has to figure a pile of cash would make it a little better. He doesn't think it would make things worse.
Besides, Steve lets him think for just a second, what if they do actually figure out how to stop Henry Creel and all his Upside Down bullshit? If they find a way out of Hawkins without leaving the kids behind to die, and move on with their lives? Would being super-platonically married to Robin actually be that bad? He could put her through college with that stupid fucking trust fund while she got whatever genius degree she wanted, maybe end up her slacker house husband and fold all the goddamn fitted sheets by himself while she's off at work. Adopt a couple of kids, maybe, if he could talk her into it. Road trip over the summer in that Winnebago.
Not like Robin could marry someone she's actually in love with. He'd make it clear to whatever girlfriend she gets in the future that he's just there as window dressing and live-in laundry service. Not like Steve's ever going to find a girl who loves him half as much as Robin does, who gets it when the nightmares jolt him awake at three in the morning, who'll believe a single thing he says about the waking nightmare that is Hawkins, Indiana.
Really, it just means that Robin can't leave him behind. Which isn't fair to her, maybe, but it's her idea. She'll be the one slapping divorce papers down in front of him if she ever gets tired of it.
"Um, yeah," Robin says, still a little surprised for some fucking reason, but starting to soften into that smile she sometimes gets when they're being sincere, every once in a while. "Yeah, we just need birth certificates and ID, and like ten dollars for the license fee, and we can go right down to the courthouse tomorrow. Be done in time for work."
"Honeymoon at Family Video?" Steve asks, and yeah, maybe it's not the wedding he once would've pictured for himself, but fuck that guy anyway. This is Robin.
"We'll put on Back To The Future and actually watch it this time," Robin says, and she's grinning now, and Steve is starting to grin too, thinking about the bright hazy beautiful parts of a godawful night, the worst best bathroom floor in Indiana, about marrying the who-the-fuck-cares-if-it's-not-actually-romantic love of his life.
"Throw in some popcorn and you've got yourself a deal, Buckley," he says, and Robin lunges forward into him, wrapping her arms around him. Steve's arms fold around her shoulders like she belongs there.
He's almost not even annoyed that they kick over the laundry basket and send the goddamn sheets spilling out over the floor in the process.
888 notes
·
View notes
Reasons why I don't buy into "posh, aristocratic, and/or bigot Pharma" headcanons
Listed in no particular order, mostly prompted by a conversation with a mutual (that I've also had many times in the past with other mutuals)
For some reason people assume that being a flight frame is what would make Pharma so prideful and disdainful towards everyone else? But in IDW1 canon, flight frames are actually an oppressed class who were restricted by functionism to only be allowed to be soldiers or cargo lifters. The only flight frames who got to go outside of that mold were ones who got special exemptions (Jetfire) or ones who schemed and took advantage of politics (Starscream). If anything, being a flight frame would be a source of self-consciousness/annoyance for Pharma, since he would be seen as unusual and probably get constant "wow I didn't know flight frames could be doctors" type comments that single him out because of his body and not because of his actual skill or personality. It's possible that he might be proud of being a flight frame AND being a doctor, like being so good of a doctor that being a flight frame doesn't matter. But Pharma certainly wouldn't feel prideful or entitled to anything JUST for being a flight frame.
Re: bigoted and/or functionist Pharma: I think this headcanon comes from the fact that Pharma worked at the New Institute yes, but so did other characters such as Chromedome, Rung, and Brainstorm who are neither posh nor functionists. It seems rather unfair to assume that Pharma specifically must be a functionist or hate the lower class because he worked at the New Institute, when other characters who were in the exact same situation weren't presumed to be bigots just because they worked at a shitty place. Also as my point above states, why would Pharma be a functionist when functionism is the institution that would've kept him from being a doctor if he (presumably) wasn't forged with medic hands?
Speaking of bigotry, it's canon that Pharma and Ratchet were best friends since they worked at the DMF together, which was pre-war; how in the hell would it be in-character for Ratchet to be best friends with Pharma if he was an open bigot and a functionist? Ratchet would literally never. Plus, secondarily, Pharma is canonically in love with Ratchet, so if he were some sort of posh aristocrat, it'd be pretty odd for him to be best friends and shack up with a guy that's as down-to-earth and rude as Ratchet is. Not impossible, but for me personally, it counts as a mark against posh!Pharma because I think the fact that Pharma was best friends with Ratchet means that we can form a broad outline of his personality based on the type of person that Ratchet would like enough to be best friends with.
Pharma's diction and way of speaking isn't "high class" at all. He pretty much speaks like any other "normal" character in MTMTE does, but what's more, there are actually a couple of instances where he speaks in a much more casual and loose way. Little details where he says "coz" instead of "cause/because", uses words like "chap", that time he chainsaws someone and says "Feels rough, doesn't it?" I wouldn't say that Pharma is lower class or anything, but when looking for evidence that he's posh or stuck up, his diction/manner of speaking is a good place to start, but there's really no evidence of any poshness there at all. MAYBE that one time he talks to Ratchet talking about "instruments" and making an analogy between a surgeon and a musician, but in that case he was just using a metaphor to make a point to Ratchet.
In general, the only notable thing about Pharma that anyone talks about related to him (besides "going insane and killing patients") is the fact that he's a good doctor and all the various feats he's pulled off. One would think that if he was some sort of posh bigot, people would complain about it or bring it up when talking about their memories of Pharma, but no. Literally Pharma's primary trait is that he's a hella fucking good doctor. I GUESS you could argue that since a lot of doctors IRL are rich bc they get paid a huge amount of money, that means Pharma is also rich and sees himself as above everyone else, but that seems like a rather large leap to make from what little we know about Pharma. And everything we DO know about Pharma points to the fact that being a doctor was his entire life, and the only specific case where he wants to be seen as "superior" is with regards to Ratchet, another doctor who Pharma feels insecure in comparison to. So again, canon points us to the fact that Pharma really only cares about practicing medicine, and the only person he wants to feel superior to is Ratchet, because Ratchet is a better doctor than he is.
41 notes
·
View notes