#that said I think we should all rewrite Luca to make it explicitly gay | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 7 years

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So since a lot of people have been asking lately as we got closer to the end of Teen Wolf, I’m gonna go ahead and finally update Lighting Crashes this week even though I’m not quuuuuuuite done with the fic. But whatever, it’s been forever.

Anyway, just to answer a couple other questions people have been asking about whether the direction the show took has changed where I was taking the fic.....not really. I mean, I’ve incorporated stuff from the last couple seasons into it, but the fic is AU so its not like I consider myself to be reliant on following the later seasons canon. Specifically though, people have asked if the fic is going to reflect the show pairing Scott with Malia and Jackson being gay and with Ethan.

The answer to the first is hell no, the answer to the second....not really?

Like first off, the fic is Scira. It doesn’t work as anything but Scira. Like I’ve mentioned before, it’s a few hundred thousand words of writing at this point, lmfao. I’m not rewriting that shit just because the show didn’t know how to appreciate Kira. Plus there’s the fact that while I love Malia, Scott/Malia just doesn’t work for me at all. So nope. It’s Scott and Kira from start to finish. (As the show should have finished BUT I DIGRESS ahem. Where was I.)

As for the second....I’ve mentioned in the past that my plans for the fic included Malia and Jackson eventually hooking up. However, what I actually have posted doesn’t include any of that yet, obviously, so I could actually revamp things and have Jackson end up with a guy in the fic - not Ethan, because Danny/Ethan is one of the core pairings as well, and I started the fic with the firm intention of there being at least ONE long fic in TW fandom that treated the show’s first gay pairing as being as deserving of in depth exploration and plot relevance as fandom loves to give certain other mlm ships starring white faves. So there was no chance I was going to pair Ethan with Jackson.

I did however consider not pairing Jackson and Malia after all, and pairing him with someone else, when they first announced months ago that Jackson would be out in the final season of TW. Ultimately however, I decided not to, and to keep it as it was. I had specific reasons for this.

First is, the show (nor Davis outside of the show) never said that Jackson was gay. Much like with Brett, in fact, they went out of their way to do that obnoxious little ‘imply with a vague look and joke’ thing that’s meant to suggest that Jackson and Brett were bisexual, without ever actually using the word bisexual or engaging in any kind of actual bisexual representation. Which you know, is a BIG pet peeve of mine.

I’m a big believer in letting actual canon representation stand. If they had ever actually explicitly stated that Jackson is gay, that his relationship with Lydia was due to denial, not fully understanding himself yet, etc, then I would make him gay in my fics, all of them, no matter how much rewriting that took. Making a character who isn’t part of a marginalized group (like a presumed-straight character or a white character) marginalized in fanfic is one thing, a thing I’m all for. Making a character who IS part of a marginalized group part of another, different marginalized group is another thing entirely, something I’m NOT all for, because it takes canon representation away from a group that doesn’t have rep to spare just to prop up another group and that never leads anywhere good.

It’s like with Bobby Drake, from the X-Men comics. I’ve spoken before about how he’s one of my all time fave characters, how I headcanoned him as bi for decades, and how much I HATED the story where Bendis wrote him coming out as ‘full gay, definitely not bi’ because of how clumsy it was, and how shitty it is for a straight writer who clearly doesn’t give much of a fuck about actual representation to engage in obnoxious, harmful behavior like bi erasure and biphobia in the process of OKAY SORRY GETTING OFF TRACK AGAIN.

Point is. I loathe the actual story in which Bobby comes out in the comics, but that doesn’t mean I hate him being gay, nor does it mean I’m willing to write or headcanon him as bi anymore despite the fact that before Bendis’ shitty story, I would have sworn up and down he was perfect for bi representation and none of that material actually changed just because Bendis wrote a story that disagreed with my reading of it. What did change however is that Bobby is no longer a presumed-straight character I can headcanon as bi without taking away representation from another marginalized group. Now Bobby is canon representation for gay men, and that’s not something I’m interested in fucking with, even if I dislike the reasons Bendis had for making him part of that marginalized group instead of representation for my own personal marginalization, a bisexual man. So I don’t write or headcanon Bobby as anythig but gay now, and never will.

That isn’t the case though with Jackson. He’s in canon in a relationship with another guy, but has not explicitly self-identified as gay, the way Danny has. Call it a loophole if you want, but its a loophole I’m perfectly comfortable driving a truck through while making a case for another canon bi character (even if I wouldn’t call him bi representation, because representation requires The Powers That Be actually have a character identify as and thus REPRESENT a certain group).

And since yeah, a bi guy in fiction, much like a bi guy in reality, can in fact be in a relationship with a woman, Jackson will be with Malia in Lightning Crashes. Fandom is pretty shitty about remembering that little detail, and Teen Wolf fandom in particular is NOTORIOUS about that shit. For years now I, and other bi members of fandom, have had to put up with shippers loudly campaigning for certain characters to be bi in order to be LGBTQ+ representation, only to then make it crystal clear that while they say bi, they really only want that character with another man, and like....that is so fucking irritating, I swear to god. Like, if you want a certain character to be gay, for whatever reason? That’s FINE. Go ahead. Headcanon that. Petition for that. It’s FINE. But if you headcanon and petition for that character to be bi and then lose your fucking shit if anyone suggests pairing that character then with anyone other than another (white) man......like...that’s not fine? Fuck you? Don’t fucking use a call to arms for more representation for me and my marginalized identity when really all you want is more ammo for your fave white guys to get it on in canon, you fetishistic fuckers?

Not saying that this is true of everyone who’s made a case for characters on the show to be bi, just that this has happened a lot in this fandom, and it’s been bugging the crap out of me for years. The irony is....even if Jackson or other characters on the show were specifically labeled as bi in canon, I would not want them then hooking up with a girl IN CANON. Sounds hypocritical, but its really just a matter of having different expectations of source material and of transformative fandom material. Let’s be real, the rare RARE times we see bisexual guys in mainstream media, their bisexuality is mentioned but rarely seen, because it’s a way to ‘score points’ with progressive audiences without actually committing to content likely to ‘offend’ other audience members. Fanfic has the potential for more. In this particular case, with Lightning Crashes, I’m comfortable writing Jackson as bi and with Malia, because the fic ALSO includes Danny/Ethan, Lucas/Corey and Brett/Mason, all in prominent roles. In addition, Brett is written as bi as well, so I’ve made a point to write Jackson as aware he is probably bi himself, just more comfortable with Malia for now, because I was never writing them as endgame anyway, more just two fucked up teenagers turning to each other for comfort and not looking for any more than that from it.

The truth is, I’ve always headcanoned and written Jackson as bi to begin with (and there’s a few other stories I hope to post over the rest of the year, one shots and other things where Jackson’s with various guys) - so point is, ultimately, this didn’t change all that much for me. At least not as far as my interpretation of the character and how I write him goes. I just had to decide where I fell in regards to calling him representation, and how to treat that. At the end of the day, this is what I decided. I don’t think what we saw in canon refutes my interpretation of him as bi, and so I’m okay with writing him with a girl in this particular fic, so long as I make clear that he is at the very least bi-curious, and still a teenager exploring himself and his own sexuality - which I was already doing anyway.

It’s cool if you disagree, this isn’t a clear cut matter and just one more reason to be annoyed with Davis and not give him post-mortem brownie points for doing the bare minimum when it comes to representation on this show. Being deliberately vague in regards to identities that marginalized groups are hungry to see represented isn’t a cute nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of a deal, it’s just content creators having no balls, and I definitely see his vague ‘well, technically we never said whether Jackson (or Brett) is gay or bi’ responses in recent interviews as more of the latter.

Anyway, those are my musings, muse on them as you will.

#kalen writes fanfiction #lightning crashes

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