The Tradëscan Codex

It's interesting you say that, because I never read Andrew as anything but very, very gay (in presentation, if not orientation), regardless of season. His adoration of Warren was played up in Season 6 (as was the triangle between Warren, Andrew, and Jonathan), which made him perhaps seem much gayer, since he had no romantic interest in Season 7.

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When I watch re-watch the series, I can see all the supposed indicators of Andrew's queerness, and it becomes difficult to maintain my reading of him as straight (since those indicators do go beyond mere mannerisms at times). It's like actual gay and lesbian students I knew while in college--once I realized their orientation (I hung out a lot in the Women's Studies Center, so the topic came up a lot), I saw how their dress and other elements could be seen as indicators, but it never occurred to me to read them that way until I knew for sure (or pretty much for sure).

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It's like actual gay and lesbian students I knew while in college

I think that's exactly it: I noticed immediately because I've been trained, growing up gay near San Francisco, that there are certain indicators which are designed to communicate certain things to other people. (Rumor has it there is {used to be?} a complicated scarf code, involving colors and pockets, to easier pick people up without having to engage in awkward conversations.)

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executrix.livejournal.com

thelastgoodname: it was called a "hanky code," with bandannas--like the key code, only more elaborate. The transatlantic fun part was that in the US, left pocket meant top, right pocket bottom, but in the UK, t'other way around.

alixtii: I think of being camp and being a gay male, or being butch and being a lesbian, as overlapping circles in a Venn diagram--i.e., there are camp straight men and very macho gay men. And, as a complicating factor, a man who wants to be attractive to men has to observe other gay men not only to learn etiquette but to behave in the way potential partners find arousing. (Same for women who want to attract women.) And just because someone thinks of zeself as highly masculine doesn't mean anyone else agrees.

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I think of being camp and being a gay male, or being butch and being a lesbian, as overlapping circles in a Venn diagram--i.e., there are camp straight men and very macho gay men.

I agree with this very much. Still, in the midst of all this complexity, it is sometimes required of us to be able to tell the difference. I'm reminded of something

beccaelizabeth said the other wrt mindreading: "This model human doesn't come with that feature."

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Thank you (and I did not know about the US/UK differences; I bet that made for some very interesting cross-Atlantic interactions).

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executrix.livejournal.com

"Well, what can you expect, they DRIVE on the wrong side."

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wisdomeagle

Andrew was in love with Xander in S7 and had a crush on Spike.

(The latter might be debatable, but I can't read the scene where Andrew watches his recording of a Xander/Anya love scene and recites Anya's lines as anything but the former.)

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I remembered the crush on Spike, but not the stuff with Xander. So: there is a great deal of Andrew's gayness in the text for those of us who are looking for it.

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Well, in the metafandom discussion, on portrayals of gayness in (British?) media culture, he was put forward as the archetype of flamboyant queerness. And I remember him from television spots, but I always thought he was just being, you know, entertaining.

Apparently, little do I know.

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booster17.livejournal.com

*blink*

*examines post for extreme sarcasm*

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No sarcasm involved!

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Astonishing! I would have thought that Graham Norton was about as obviously queer as, say, Jack in Will & Grace (that's the camp one's name, right?) It may be to do with you not having seen his show (presumably) – he comes on flanked by half-naked young men and salivates over ever male actor in sight, as well as all the less explicitly sex-related markers of gay male flamboyance he displays.

Reading Andrew as gay definitely requires one at least to be paying some attention... on the basis of his TV show, though perhaps not of his appearances on US TV (which probably have to be toned down just because of the difference between UK and US mainstream media), Graham Norton is about as out as it is possible to be. And about as far form being portrayed as a serious human being as it is possible to be, too – all preening self-deprecation and sexuality represented as a big joke, which is what the metafandom'd poster was complaining about.

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Well, Jack is a special case--half of what I probably known about queer stereotypes I've learned from W&G (and I never even really watched the show). Knowing what I know now, yes I probably could recognize him as a stereotype. But that's with all the information at hand.

And even if I didn't recognize Jack as gay, I'd recognize him as queer in the older sense of out of the ordinary (the way Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox are "queer" in their respective books). There's no reason that's readily apparent to a straight, unconsciously heteronormative person like me why Jack should behave the way he does, so I'd be tempted to dig deeper. But Norton's an entertainer, and Andrew is a geek, so it wouldn't automatically occur to me that there should be any additional reason why their masculinity should represent itself in non-traditional ways.

But in retrospect, in all three cases, it seems blindingly obvious.

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I think that if you'd grown up on Graham Norton, he would have become one of your main learning sources for queer stereotypes! Apart from anything, because on his show he does explicitly link his campy behaviour to a flamboyantly expressed desire for men. At least when I last saw it (which is a few years ago) his show is kind of Camp Gayness 101... I don't know where I learned to read those codes, really, but I know that when I was 11 or so I had a conversation with my mother about which of her friends were gay and I had somehow managed to pick up on them well enough to read her camp gay male friend and her butch dyke friend correctly... :)

I didn't pay much attention to Andrew's queerness on first watching Buffy S6, either – I hated the Trio then and barely differentiated him from the others, reading his attitude to Warren as geek hero-worship. If you'd asked me I probably wouldn't have thought of him as straight, but I didn't give it much thought. I recently rewatched Buffy feeling much more forgiving of the Trio and enjoying their geekiness, and Andrew's queerness was extremely obvious this time. :)

(You say you don't pick up on gay male signals – so how did you react to the first appearances of Willow/Tara subtext on Buffy? Or is attraction between people a different thing than gender expression-based difference?)

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Well, remember I saw season 7 first, alongside as many downloads as I could get my hands on, most of them being from season 6 or 5. So Willow/Tara subtext isn't a wonderful example. If I had seen it in order, I probably would have seen a homoerotic subtext the same way I'd see one in, say, the Sam/Frodo relationship--but I wouldn't recognize that the text wanted me (if you'll excuse my ascribing that level of agency to the text for a moment) to interpret that subtext literally as text until the text made the literal reading explicit.

I have a sense of what is potentially slashable, but I don't think I'd be able to recognize unexpressed attraction as a real thing(-in-itself?). Just like the two kids at church I see through my 'cest goggles presumably aren't sleeping with each other, either.

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I forgot you saw S7 first. Yeah, that wouldn't work so well...

I knew Willow/Tara was coming (we got Buffy way later than America and I never had any spoiler willpower...) so I don't know how I would have read it if I hadn't, whether I would have just seen 'pure' subtext or recognised that it was going to become text. As it was, I watched the whole beginning of S4 going 'When is she going to become a lesbian? When? When?" :)

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I mean, I recognized Riley as Buffy's love interest, but that was because his position in the text didn't make any sense except qua love-interest. But real life doesn't always fit genre conventions.

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Ah, if only one's love-interests were so easy to spot in RL! ;)

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Amen!

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the way Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox are "queer" in their respective books

Didn't you have a story idea once about one of them being queer in the more modern sense? Did that ever get written?

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I tend to bring my 'cest glasses to bear on those two characters more often than my slash glasses--FHB herself practically ships Sara with her father, and I've long had a musicalverse plotbunny where I'd ship Mary with her uncle's brother. (In general, incest really makes sense within FHB's universes, since they focus so strongly on super-autonomous children.) The Secret Garden doesn't lend itself to femslash, since while at Misselthwaite Mary really doesn't interact with any girls her age--although Martha might be young enough to make it work--but A Little Princess is screaming out for femslash, as it's set at a seminary for young girls and focuses on quite a number of intense homosocial relationships, in particular Sara/Becky and Sara/Ermengarde.

The Mary/Neville fic will hopefully get written one day. As for Sara/Becky or Sara/Ermengarde, I'd need a plot first.

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I think perhaps I was thinking of the Mary/Neville fic. I wonder what it says about my version of Neville that I could translate him into a lesbian in my memory so easily.

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Dr. Neville Craven is many things, not all of them pleasant. He is not a lesbian, though--unless he is, I guess, but that's not the story I have in me to tell.

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Nevermind, then: what it says is that I have a very well-developed sense of crossover potential, because you are not in Harry Potter, but I always think that Neville means Neville Longbottom from HP (and I'm sure I made this exact same mistake the last time you mentioned this idea).

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I'm sure I made this exact same mistake the last time you mentioned this idea

Yes, you did; I remember. I had hoped this time the context in which I had explicitly stated above that I 'shipped Mary with her uncle would make things clear, but I guess I was wrong.

And I'll take this opportunity to say once again how much I love Dr. Neville Craven as a character.

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And now I suddenly want to write Jessie/Lavinia. Fortunately, I'm about to go to bed and I suspect that when I wake up in the morning, the urge will have passed.

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