Fangs For The Fantasy

Well, it’s finally here, a new season of Lost Girl.

Bo walks into an alley and is confronted by two men.  She takes them on with a bag of all things and leaves them lying on the ground. She then walks up to a line of men waiting to get into a bar, sucks essence from the bouncer and then throws money from her bag at the crowd.   Bo is then chased into  Trick’s bar by Dyson, who wants to know if there is any fae law that she hasn’t broken in the last three weeks.  Kenzi attempts to intervene but Vex uses his power to stop her. Dyson slams Bo on the table and handcuffs her.  Bo makes a quip about begging for sanctuary and Trick tells her that he is not going to fall for that again and doesn’t know who she is.  Yeah, I smell a set up.

Bo is taken to a lockup where her possessions including a watch and a pocket rocket are taken. She is then forced to shower and is led down the prison block to a cell. Her cellmate is Sylvie and she claims to be nervous and admits that she is in prison because she stole some bread to feed her family. Bo of course makes a reference to Les Misérables. Would it really have been that hard to come up with a realistic crime and still have Sylvie be sympathetic?  Sylvie then hands her a stack of letters that she wrote to her mother, which apparently have been returned unanswered. Bo asks, “what’s the deal with the feminazi’s?”  Really, in 2013 we’re still using that hateful term to apply to strong women, on a show apparently about a strong woman.  Sylvie says that the guards are all Amazons and apparently not only do they not like men, they refuse to take orders from men. Once every few years, the Amazons search out men to mate with and then abandon any male babies in the woods to their fate.

Their conversation is interrupted when Bo is led away for work detail.  Surprise, surprise, Bo is taken to the medical lab, where Lauren is in charge. As soon as they are alone, it’s clear that it’s a scam. Lauren has coated herself in some noxious product to pass as fae.  Bo’s mission it seems is to go undercover to deal with “sadistic man hating Berthas.” Lauren is also concerned that her mentor is missing. They banter back and forth about whether or not they are in a relationship, until they are interrupted by the warden. Despite Lauren’s suggestion that she needs Bo, the warden reassigns her.

At the bar, Kenzi is freaking out firm in the belief that the plan they have concocted is not going to work. Kenzi marches up to Hale and tells him that he needs to fix this because he is the Ashe now.  Considering Hale’s limited role in previous seasons, I cannot help but think that this is nothing more than a promotion to obscurity.  Kenzi says that she didn’t like the plan but went along with it anyway and now she is concerned that Bo has no one to act as backup but Lauren. Trick tries to reassure her about Lauren’s resourcefulness.  Hale reminds Kenzi that he is only the acting Ashe and explains that does not want to go up the line to get one of the female elders to intervene.  Trick suggests that this is the perfect opportunity for Hale to make a name for himself.

Kenzi looks down at the prison plans and learns that it is built on ley lines, which means that Bo has been stripped of her powers.  Dyson assures her that everything is going to be fine because Lauren slipped Bo a stone, which will allow access to her powers.  Apparently, all of the Amazons carry these stones, which is information that Trick is not happy that Hale revealed.  Trick then reminds Hale that he is has to be careful about what information he gives out as the acting Ashe. Dyson calls Kenzi over and says that Bo can handle herself.

Back at the prison, Bo is scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees and is scantily clad. The warden goes into her office where she is confronted by another Amazon, who wants to know how long she is going to keep up with her ongoing activities.  The warden says that she does what she has to, to keep the Amazons strong.

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Anne Frank? Really? You’re going there American Horror Story?

There’s a new patient in Briarcliff – she has no identification and wouldn’t talk to the police who found her so they dropped her at the asylum “involuntary psychiatric hold” since it cuts down on the paperwork. Sister Jude goes to interview her new patient and we learned she reacted vehemently in response to an anti-Semitic remark. The woman points out they made an offensive joke – and it is through these dehumanising jokes that persecution starts. Sister Jude asks if she’d lost anyone in the war – and she starts whistling.

And poor Shelley is still in Dr. Arden’s… “care” being experimented on. He’s been a busy bee, has Arden, as Kit tells Grace Arden’s been looking for the little 6 legged chip in his body again. Grace gives him her “I totally believe you honest” rely but we hear her story – because it’s important to them to have their story known and believed in a building full of people who doubt them and think them insane. It seems she heard a commotion at night and went to explore a room newly decorated in streaks of blood red – and a man chopping her father into pieces with an axe. She ran from him –into a closet filled with pieces of her step-mother. The next day, her sister accused her of murdering them, she was the axe-murderer’s lover and they wanted the farm. They framed Grace for the murder.

Dr. Oliver interviews Lana about where she went during the film – but she knows better than to answer. He says she doesn’t belong in the asylum since she isn’t a danger to anyone but Lana is scornful – she points out that the psychiatric profession considers her sick, diseased for being a lesbian. Dr. Oliver offers to help her – if she can convince them he has cured her they have to release her. Lana, visibly restraining anger, tells the Doctor she has been a lesbian for as long as she can remember – there is no cure. But he’s only there for a week and he may be her only ticket out of there.

To the common room (AAAAAARGH that damn nun song is playing again?! You make me listen to that on a permanent loop, I’d be a danger to myself and others) and  the new patient is writing a letter to someone called Kitty in which she refers to how they didn’t give up in Amsterdam and how everyone around her – crazy and diseased – is resigned to die. Lana approaches her and warns her about writing. She offers friendship but is rebuffed – this is when Dr. Arden enters the room. She says he was there in Auschwitz – and attacks him, calling him a Nazi. She says her name is Ann Frank.

Sister Jude interviews Anne, clearly thinking that she is delusional. Anne tells her story – she survived the camps but was thought dead due to the sheer number of bodies. She explains why she’s in the US and why she kept silent - her book would be more impactful and teach more people about the atrocities of the holocaust if she remained a martyred, 15 year old girl. Sister Jude calls her story “indecent” (which is the LEAST of the words I have for this storyline) and Anne calls Jude indecent since she has a war criminal working for her. She tells Jude that Arden was a doctor in Auschwitz called Groper who experimented on the inmates. Jude doubts her – and Anne shows the tattooed number on her arm.

Dr. Oliver is having another ethical dilemma – he doesn’t think Kit is insane, but nor does he think he’s evil. He thinks Kit did the murders because society forced him to and then succumbed to a delusion to deny doing something so against his character. He says he’s willing to lie for Kit – so long as Kit is willing to face the truth. The “truth” that Kit killed women and skinned and decapitated them, removing them of signs of race and identity, the things society was punishing Alma, his Black wife for – and later he turned on his wife in bottled up rage (including a brutal depiction of Alma’s murder which is so far from what we’ve seen in their relationship and was beyond gratuitous). Wait, didn’t Dr. Oliver tell Lana last week she didn’t think Kit did it?

A new season of American Horror story and it’s a complete revamp, nothing from the old series applies, with a whole new setting, a whole new cast and a whole new concept.

And this is introduced by Leo and Teresa, newly weds. She’s a horror buff so on their honey moon they’re doing a tour of the most haunted locations in America and having sex in all of them. That’s one way to celebrate. Which brings them to the ruins of Briarcliff. Teresa’s research says it used to be the largest tuberculosis ward on east coast in which 46,000 people died – and they shuttled the bodies out in and underground tunnel called the death chute, nice. After that it was bought by the Catholic church and turned into sanatorium for the criminally insane. They walk through the halls and find it extremely spooky with extra creepiness with discarded clothes and graffiti – including a reference to “Bloody Face” a brutal serial killer and most notorious resident of the asylum.

They’re quickly distracted by a bed with restraints which attracts the horny couple. Leo ties Teresa down and they begin to roleplay and have sex – but are interrupted by a noise. She wants to go investigate and bribes him with repeated offers of sex to go check it out. They reach a large metal door that’s closed – but it has a hatch on it. Following more inducements from Teresa, Leo agrees to stick his arm inside – and promptly gets it ripped off (silly boy)

From there we zap back to 1964, where Kit is working in a petrol station and just closing up for the night. After a moment where everyone gasps at how cheap it was back then, Kit gets a visit from his friends who want to borrow his boss’s gun. They want it to threaten a Black person (yes the word used was N-word) they accuse of being with one of their sisters. There follows a series of not-very-subtle racist allusions (does he have a made, some comments about chocolate) that suggest Kit is in an interracial relationship. Kit ignores them and refuses to join them.

He goes home to Alma, his wife, a Black woman. He puts on his wedding ring that he took off for work – they had to leave the state, to Provincetown to get married and he has to keep it secret. He talks about wishing he could tell the world, that they broke no laws – but she says it’s not safe and they have to hide – the world is wrong and the world will change one day. They have sex before dinner and are an extremely affection couple.

Then lights appear in garden – fearing his friends are there to harass him, Kit grabs a shotgun and runs outside, telling Alma to stay inside. But the light is in the sky – he tries shooting it but it does nothing. He runs back into the house where Alma screams for help. He is overwhelmed by the light and the noise that drives him to the floor. It goes briefly quiet before everything in the house – including him – is pulled up to the ceiling – followed by a brief flash of light and a green, alien hand reaching for him. Alien abduction? Really American Horror Story? That’s not jumping the shark, that’s vaulting the damn whale.

Off to Briarcliff, still in 1964, to follow Lana, a journalist, going to the asylum to do a news report on their bakery (yeah right). She’s greeted by Sister Mary Eunice of the Wet Lettuce and lead through the asylum where the poor people incarcerated are presented as scary and repulsive – and not just the treatment of them – sort it out AHS, this kind of portrayal of the mentally ill should be done away with. Sister Eunice takes her to see the ruler of the asylum – Sister Jude who is busy shaving a woman’s hair.

With the Wet Lettuce and the shaved women being removed from the room, it’s time for Sister Jude to share her vision of the world with Lana the journalist. Sally, the woman who she was shaving, is a nymphomaniac and Jude is trying to shame her. Lana is troubled by this by Jude dismisses psychiatry “mental illness is the fashionable explanation for sin,” alllll righty then, there’s Sister Jude explained pretty close. She runs the asylum for Monsignor Howard according to his three principles – Productivity, Prayer and Purification.

Having the asymlum’s credentials well and truly smashed into pieces, it’s time for Sister Wet Lettuce to burst in and advance the story – the “Bad Man” is here. That would be Bloody Face, the notorious serial killer who decapitated 3 women while wearing a mask of human flesh who has been sent to the asylum while the courts decide if he is fit to plead. Jude and Lana but heads when it becomes clear that Lana couldn’t give a damn about the bakery and its maple bread and is really here to get the inside scoop on Bloody Face.

To the front door where Bloody Face is escorted in in restraints – it’s Kit. And he goes through the less than pleasant admissions procedure which contains the harsh “hygiene” these institutions inflicted on new arrivals. He wakes in a bed with Sister Jude looming over him who lets him know she’s not happy with holding him for the court and she intends make him repent to god instead. He doesn’t believe in god after the horrors he’s seen but she isn’t buying his tales of little green men. Then, because absolutely everyone who ever meets Kit has to do so, she makes a racist comment about his dead wife (one of the murder victims) and Kit spits on her. In response, she has him caned.

After this Kit gets to go to the common room with the other inmates where we find the next item of utter cruelty the asylum forces on them – listening to “Dominique” played over and over again. Talk about breaking spirits. In the common room, Sally makes a pass at Kit until he pushes her away and we see more of the inmates presented as freaky or disturbing – enough now American Horror Story, a season of this will get very old, very fast. Kit walks over to the record player but another inmate, Grace, intervenes. Claiming sanity she warns him that if he breaks the rules – like stopping the damned music, he’ll be beaten and any of the inmates will rat him out for a treat. It’s then that another inmate, Spivey, realises that we haven’t had a crude racist reference to Kit’s dead wife in like, 5 minutes, so quickly rushes in to add his. Kit and Spivey fight, broken off when Jude and the orderlies come in and one of the orderlies knock Kit unconscious.

He’s in solitary confinement, remembering his wife, but Grace brings him food and a cigarette as a random act of kindness. We learn she is accused of having chopped up her family but, like him, she denies her guilt and her insanity. She also says if he isn’t insane that’s bad for him – because he’ll be executed.

One of the saddest things we can come across with any media is something we love - but has a massive problematic issue in the middle of it that slowly poisons it for us. The Parasol Protectorate is a series of books we love and adore for so many reasons. We love Lady Alexia Macon, she’s funny and powerful, we love her relationship, the setting and the plot. Who wouldn’t want to read more about Ivy’s antics? This could be one of those series that racks up nothing but 5 fang reviews all through - but there was a problem that started in the first book and just grew with each extra novel to intolerable degrees.

Lord Akeldama. And, from that, all of the gay characters in this series.

From the onset of this story, Madame Lefoux wears masculine clothing. She is strong, and highly intelligent.  In and of itself, this character isn’t problematic, until one realises that she is juxtaposed to Lord Akeldama.  The fact that she is so masculine, underscores Akeldama’s femininity and that makes them both read as highly stereotypical.  Again, there are certainly lesbians who are exactly like Madame Lefoux but this is predominantly the image of lesbians in media, unless they are being used as sexual eye candy.

In the first book, Soulless,  Lord Akeldama starts off as very stereotypical gay male. He is extremely effeminate and while there are gay men who are like this, the problem with this type of representation, is that it has come to define gay male sexuality in the media.  To make matters worse, though he is resourceful, he functions as nothing more than the typical gay best friend to Alexia.  Akeldama put the dandies to work for Alexia as well and though we are told they are capable and devious, they, like their leader, are also effeminate.  Biffy for instance, is more than familiar with women’s toilette and is up to date on the latest hairstyles and fashions. All of this is bad enough, but the fact that Carriger then had the dandies working as wedding planners moves their representation from stereotypical, to downright mockery.

This should have been a warning about what is to come.  By Heartless, Lord Akeldama has gone completely off the rails.  What follows is a quote from our review of Heartless.

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This is something I’ll watch with interest and suspicion - not least of which because the comics media in general is probably the third worst culprit when it comes to erasing GBLT people (I’d put children’s literature/programming and computer games ahead) and there has been a whole lot of problems in the past (already both DC’s Green Lantern, with extra gay-death and Northstar’s wedding, now with marital problems, look like they’re getting shaky) so I’m disinclined to jump up and down just yet.

Still, I do like the idea of a strong gay male character - especially an action character which is very rare.

I’m just not sure why he’s “Billy the Vampire Slayer” it seems cutesy, and rather silly. Especially since, in the Buffyverse, “Slayer” has a meaning - it’s not just someone who fights vampires, it’s someone with these ancestral ancient powers - which, they’ve made clear, Billy (or any man) will not have.

Which I approve of - I actually would be against Billy having powers that are reserved for women as it would be degendering and happens so many times with gay men (hi Ann McCaffrey and your thrice be damned Green Riders) if you’re going to have gendered abilities then deciding that the gay characters cross them feels more than a little “they aren’t REAL men/women” to me. Though a trans slayer? That would be awesome.

But it does make this quote from Jane Espenson “What if someone in high school is looking up to Buffy as a role model, and we’re saying: You can’t be a Slayer”

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When it comes to the portrayal of GBLT people, the Anita Blake series is a classic warning that quantity is never a substitution for quality and that mere number of portrayals does not make a book, TV series or film friendly to GBLT people. We’ve seen this in True Blood as well, where, again, sheer number of portrayals doesn’t change the very large problems with those portrayals.

I can understand the reaction. Most books and series simply don’t have any GBL inclusion at all. And when they do it’s usually one or two characters, in minor roles (usually as best friends and support staff - barely even side kicks). We have started praising even the tiniest inclusion - it’s depressing when we see even progressive blogs analysing media, praising Teen Wolf for its single bit-token gay character, while criticising it for its portrayals of other, more numerous, minorities. So when we see a series that has several GBL characters it is extremely rare and it is tempting to praise it - especially when tiny, virtually characterless tokens are seemingly due fawning.

But quality matters. A book with a terrible, trope laden stereotypes is bad, problematic and prejudiced. The mere fact you have a hundred of them rather than just one doesn’t makes these terrible, trope laden stereotypes ok. And this is abundantly clear in the Anita Blake series.

The easiest place to begin is to look at some of the villains of the Anita Blake series, because I think I spot a pattern:

•     Asher, bisexual – was a villain but was redeemed to the good guys by the sweet love and gentleness of Anita (behold the power of a straight woman’s love!) Its bitter, implied sadistic and now confines 99% of his sexing to Anita.
•     Raina, bisexual. Sadist, rapist, murderer, torturer and generally not a nice woman. Also rapes straight women. Is portrayed as “perverse”.
•     Gabriel: Bisexual, sadist, rapist, torturer, pimp and generally not a nice man. Rapes straight men. Is also portrayed as “perverse”.
•     Chimera: gay or bisexual. Sadist, rapist, torturer. Is more than implied that the reason why he is a sadistic murdering, multiple personality (yes there’s ableism there) rapist is because of his rejection of his own sexuality.
•     Belle Morte: Bisexual, rapist, makes straight people have sex with their own gender for her amusement.
•     Traveller: Gay. Uses his power to possess straight men so he can have sex in their bodies (i.e. rapes them).
•     Niley: Gay, rapes straight men. And tortures them. Bonus points, deals with daemons and is actually looking for a holy relic to defile it.

Did you catch the pattern? When you have more GBL rapists in a series than you can count on the fingers of one hand? There’s a problem.

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It’s not a new idea - we’ve certainly seen it raising its ugly head in media repeatedly, but it’s become popular again - the “flipped prejudice” fiction. Victoria Foyt’s racist Save the Pearls  did it for race and we now have the homophobic versions: a kickstarter for the book Out by Laura Preble and the film Love is all You Need. I hate linking to them but they need to be seen. They both have the same premise: an all gay world that persecutes the straight minority.

So that’s more appropriating the issues we live with, our history, our suffering and then shitting on it all by making us the perpetrators of the violations committed against us. How can they not see how offensive this is? How can they not see how offensive taking the severe bigotry thrown at us every day and throughout history, bigotry that has cost us so much and then making our oppressors the victims and us the attackers, is? This is appropriative, this is offensive, it’s disrespectful and it’s outright bigoted.

Y’know, if you actually want to talk about prejudice and persecution and how they can affect people’s lives, why not use actual marginalised people? You want to show how a person navigates a society that has extreme prejudice against their skin colour? Why not make your protagonist a POC? You want to show a society that persecutes people based on who they’re attracted to and who they love? Why not make your protagonist gay?

Oh, but then that becomes a specialist subject, right? A “niche”, dealing with marginalised issues. A POC book. A Gay/Lesbian book. Totally inappropriate for mainstream audience – when we can take the same story and flip it to bizarre bigot world and make the poor straight, white person the persecuted victim and we’re back in mainstream land. Funny, that.

Is that what this is? This whole offensive, bullshit trend (I mean, apart from prejudiced arsehattery, which kind of goes without saying)? A desire to use prejudice as a plot point but not sully your main character by making them an actual minority?

And don’t tell me it will help straight/white people understand oppression. Because if a privileged person will only hear about prejudiced issues when it comes from a privileged mouth then what is the point? I’ve said this before when we’ve had similar bullshit, how are you going to encourage people to address prejudice and marginalisation while at the same time training them that it’s only worth listening to privileged people?

Because that’s what I hear when this excuse is trawled out. Straight, white people can’t possibly empathise with a POC or GBLT protagonist so we have to present these prejudiced issues through a privileged lens, from a privileged mouth. Either by making being privileged a marginalisation like in the examples above - or by making up an entirely new, fictional prejudice. As we’ve mentioned before with the appropriation of magrinalised groups for “fantastic prejudice” where vampires/fae/witches are persecuted for not being mundane humans. This can even be doubly offensive when we mix both offensive appropriations - such as in Lost Girl - with the white Kenzi being oppressed by the Black fae for being human.

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Adams died in the 1950s. When he was alive he was a detective, not just a detective, but a poster child detective straight out of film noir, every cliché faithfully followed. His afterlife was less than ideal, having died with corruptive sins on his soul, he was banished to the Abstract realms where the Enigma tested him over and over to try and give him a chance to ascend and join the collective whole. It was better than the damned in the pit, but even so Adams was becoming desperate as his ascension is stalled and he risks dissolving into shadow.

But the powers that be have a task for him. The son of a Pit Lord has been killed on Earth – not just killed, but his soul has gone missing as well. The Pit Lords don’t trust the usual enforcement arm of the Process, the Enforcers, to investigate the death – so the task falls to Adams. Only he only has a day to do it in. And he’s 60 years out of date.

Not only does he have to get up to date quickly and delve into the very depths of the Hollywood sex trade, it also becomes apparent that the conspiracy is far deeper than he imagined, going up to the very top of the Process and an actual civil war between the entities that control the Process may be on the cards – if the Process itself and the very structure of the afterlife isn’t irrevocably changed. And, on a personal note, it’s a plot that comes round to touch his own afterlife, and that of his loved ones.

It’s a wonderful game of who to trust, find the red herring and see what the true plot behind this death – or deaths as the body count rises – truly is.

This book is genuinely unique – and that’s a rare thing in the genre where so many books seem completely formulaic.

The world, with the different echelons of celestials each with their own remits, is not something I’ve seen before. Even the method of the process with the different factions fighting and sniping at each other, is fascinating. I love the rivalry between the pit lords and the enforcers and the really real sense of conflict and tension brewing between them all. I also like that we have a lot of world hinted at – with an original goddess and a nod to the mind set of the absent leader of the council.

And the world is challenged, even the nature of torturing the souls in the pit progresses from “they get what they deserved” to a realisation of how many of them were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s also good to see a genuine detective novel. Not a “I’m going to be a nuisance until someone tries to kill me” investigation that we see so often. Not even a “I’m going to use my woo-woo to find the answers.” But a good old film noir detective slog, following leads, chasing down clues, following up even the slightest piece of evidence all the while with forces working against you. I love his stubborn refusal to follow the advice of the people trying to manipulate him and I love how he bounces off Jenn – his erstwhile assistant who works so well into his story, especially at bringing him up to date.

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There is an ongoing conversation in various venues about the identity of writers - specifically, marginalised writers and whether or not it truly matters whether a writeR is a POC, GBLT, disabled or holds another marginalisation. We know a whole lot of people are quick to ask who cares whether an author is POC, GBLT et al? Why is this relevant?

Well, we do, and it is relevant. It’s usually one of the first things we try to find out when coming across a new author.

We’ve spoken before about the gatekeepers that marginalised authors face. We’ve seen the drama in YA trying to exclude gay characters, we’ve seen the white washing that covers face if they presume to show a POC. This is one of the reasons we’re supportive of webisodes and self-publishing, because there are a lot of gatekeepers out there that make it hard for maginalised people to be traditionally published. With these gatekeepers, it is reasonable for marginalised people and their allies to try and turn the tide by deliberately going out of their way to support marginalised authors.

Even when marginalised authors do write about their own marginalisation and are published, it greatly increases the chance the book will be shelved as niche and considered undesirable for mainstream consumption. It becomes all the more important to buy the book, support the author and to say this book belongs on the shelves.

There’s also a matter of authenticity. And this doesn’t mean that privileged people can’t write marginalised characters. In fact, we don’t even think it’s hard for privileged people to write marginalised characters - but it’s a very common excuse not to do so. Which is a reason why we seek marginalised authors because so many privileged authors keep writing trope laden stereotypes that it has frequently reached a point where we wish these authors would erase us; erasure would be preferably to the offensive portrayals they create.

But even aside from that, there is power in a marginalised person telling their own story. There is a power in authenticity. It matters, in genres that are erased, where our own writers are so rare, to be able to pick up a book about us, by us. In so much of life our stories, the narratives of our lives, are either completely ignored or are framed and shaped by the oppressor. It is white people who we repeatedly see talking about race. It is straight people declaiming their opinions on GBLT people. It is the able bodied who speak on disability. Our lives are common property to be picked over and we are often not considered to be experts or experienced in our own lives.

We know this authenticity is valued, because we know there are a horrendous number of privileged writers appropriating marginalised identities in order to claim it. In the M/M genre we saw this with numerous authors who weren’t gay men, pretending to be gay men; but it’s hardly unique to the genre - People of Colour (The Education of Little Tree, anyone?) and disabled people have faced the same identity appropriation. By pretending to be marginalised, they deceive the community that is seeking this authenticity, the community that is seeking a shared experience, a shared culture or just a shared understanding.

With these people peddling fake authenticity, it becomes even more important for marginalised people to find actual marginalised authors - if nothing else but to actually make sure they are noticed among the fakes.

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On Fangs for the Fantasy we’ve covered some of the many ways to dodge around actual inclusion of minorities in TV shows and books - usually the writers just throw tokens at us, or erase us entirely. But when it comes to GBLT inclusion there is a new crafty tactic on the horizon - the suggestive Bromance. And no show has mastered this more than Teen Wolf. Teen Wolf has already set itself apart because it is one of the few shows on television wherein the male characters are overtly sexualised and the women are not. This, in addition to being an excellent twist on the gender roles we see, unfortunately also gives perfect fodder for these Bromances and faux inclusion seen through “slash goggles.”

What is slash? Slash is fiction, usually fanfiction, which places two male characters into romantic/sexual relationships usually for the purposes of fetishization. “Slash goggles” is a term developed to refer to watching a show and looking for hints of anything (a touch, a gesture, a look, anything) that would back up these characters being a couple.

So, what is the problem with this? Well, aside from the problem of fetishisation, appropriation and homophobia that are unfortunate issues within slash, there’s a huge problem with ambiguity encouraging erasure.

For too long, writers have been using character ambiguity as an excuse to avoid including GBLT chaarcters. Rather than overtly say a character is GBLT, they can imply it - and get praise for inclusion from people desperate for inclusion (or desperate to see hot guys get it on) when they haven’t actually included anyone, or only made the slightest gestures of inclusion.

Teen Wolf doesn’t just subtly cater to this - but is probably the most blatant in pandering to it. Don’t believe me? Look at this little video made by Dylan O’Brien and Tyler Hoechlin.

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