Tag: love simon

fixyourwritinghabits:

thelibrawrian:

edgeof17s:

this is how you ally.

I’m so glad I came across this because I just finished Simon last night and I have to admit that that small moment, a throwaway comment really, did ping my radar as annoying and just wrong. It’s the kind of thing that would make me rev up for a fight IRL, but in the book, I do think that it’s a fairly believable viewpoint for a 17 year-old white boy from Georgia to have. It’s great to see Becky discussing the impact of that line though and recognizing that it’s not something she wants to perpetuate in the future, even if it was meant to be a faulty 17 year-old opinion in-verse.

This is a really good example of something we’ve talked about a lot (and is frequently misunderstood). Characters should have misconceptions and false ideas about their world. That’s what makes them people. If they go unchallenged, though, even if what you intended to be clearly wrong may not come off that way. 

There was a really interesting and popular post some time ago that was the exact opposite of this. I can’t find it at the moment but you might have come across it, it technically questioned why it’s important to challenge these misconceptions. Why must an author immediately add a correction and thus figuratively hold the readers’ hand and explain why bad things are bad and why you shouldn’t agree with them despite a fictional, flawed character representing those ideals.

I had a bit of a double feeling about that post that I can’t quite word well, but it’s probably because there’s a difference between a character saying “torturing animals is fun and everybody should do it!” and that going unchallenged, and something as subtle as this example above, a gay character furthering a subtle yet harmful stereotype in an otherwise neutral environment going unchallenged. The contexts are very different, the target audience, the environment, the emotional charge of these kinds of stories and how they are being read, and who knows what else can alter the need for challenging these ideals.

I think this is why you can’t pull a universal blanket over expressing harmful ideals through characters. “They should always be challenged!” vs “No author is obliged to teach you morals.” I think it’s up to what the author even wants to achieve by including these microaggressions.

Anyway, I do appreciate this thread though I just got reminded of this other post that gained a bit of traction some weeks ago.

themacklemorebrothers:

hey buddy hey pal i don’t give two shits if you hate love simon or think it’s boring cause my gay ass did not sit through a thousand straight rom coms and bunches of tragic depressing bury your gays dumpster fires to have you dump all over the first gay happy ending rom com i’ve ever seen just cause it’s not ~deep~ enough for u

johnohboyega:

“I’ve been thinking about why I haven’t come out yet. Maybe part of me wants to hold onto who’ve I’ve always been, just a little longer. No matter what who you are to the world is pretty terrifying because what if the world doesn’t like you?”

sevrobarca:

it’s amazing how straight people think teens don’t need a movie like love, simon when the director who is married and has been out for 20+ years cried when he saw the final movie because even he needed this movie. his husband also cried, countless lgbt teens have cried. one of the main actors came out because of this movie. many of the actors have friends that came out because of this movie, nick’s little brother came out to him after he found out he was doing this movie. i do not want to hear another straight person talk about this movie because frankly y’all will never understand what coming out is. so like shut the fuck up and let us cry and laugh our hearts out with a movie that loves and supports all of us. and that knows coming out will never be easy or a once in a life experience.

jennyslateswife:

while i get and agree with the fact that gay people should probably play gay people and gay stories are best written by gay people, the fervor to prove that “straight people shouldn’t play gay characters!!” is what the interviewer used to forcibly out lee pace so like

idk maybe slow your roll and realize that like… actors can be closeted, content creators can be closeted, and tbh this “you can only write your own experiences, never write someone else’s” rhetoric is also a bigot’s fucking wet dream?? like the perfect excuse to never write diverse characters?? and to say that they have nothing in common with people who don’t look/love/exist the same way as them??

yeah, the author of simon vs the homo sapien’s agenda is a cis straight woman, which means love, simon (though directed by a married gay man with multiple gay characters played by gay/bi actors) is based on a novel written by a straight woman… but this straight woman literally ends her book acknowledging the LGBT teens who helped her write the book and make sure she was writing it appropriately.

this is the content we want

listen… EVERY SINGLE piece of media EVER involves some level of writing about experiences that are not your own, especially if it’s diverse. even bland stories just about white people involves an author writing about genders that are not their own. if you want a story with characters of color, white authors are going to have to write about those perspectives. if you want gay characters in every story, straight authors are gonna have to write about those perspectives. even LGBT narratives might involve gay authors writing about bi characters or cis authors writing about trans characters.

what we HOPE FOR when they do that is that they talk to people… actually belonging to those groups to learn what is and isn’t appropriate and true to life. which is what the author of simon vs the homo sapien’s agenda did.

it’s exactly what she did. she literally worked in a support group for LGBT and GNC kids, saw they did not have cute love stories written for them after they told her this, and then worked with them to give them the love story they craved.

this is a good thing. this is progress for lgbt people. this is the path we need to walk towards getting LGBT content created by LGBT authors.

when you attempt to take the ~moral ground on protesting this film, all you’re doing is telling people who fund these projects that gay products don’t sell. they don’t get the nuance of what you’re going for. and, chances are, you’re looking like a fucking hypocrite, because i can promise you most of the canon gay characters you stan profit a cishet somehow (if they’re even canon).

so, y’unno, as someone who has read simon vs the homo sapien’s agenda AND seen the fucking movie let me tell you!! it’s fine!! it’s diverse beyond having gay character, it’s written respectively, and it hit home on a lot of experiences i WISH i had as a gay teen. it’s corny, it’s silly, and it’s all i ever would have wanted at 13, 14, 15

if you don’t want to see it, just fucking say so! but don’t act like you’re doing it on moral grounds. you can just… not like a movie or not want to see it without it being some moral victory.

gaysun:

when i got out of the advanced screening of love simon, two thirteen, maybe fourteen year olds really shyly asked me to take a picture of them in front of the movie poster. the one who gave me their phone got a twitter notification from someone with a rainbow flag and their pronouns in their name while i was taking the picture and i just feel like we’re headed in the right direction and gay kids are being told more and more that they deserve to be loved and accepted and i can’t tell u how much that warms my heart. like im probably only 5/6 years older than them but when i was their age i was hiding in my bedroom watching gay rom coms not seeing them in theaters (and even the watching them in my bedroom part was hard). it’s obviously not everything and ill never claim it is but it made me feel so hopeful !!