Anne Shirley, Trudy Whyatt and Coming Out Story
Ok I was going to wait to articulate my thoughts better to write this but Charlie Sloane of all freakin characters is spurring me on to write it so here goes. In the past week, Anne from Project Green Gables admitted to having a crush on her bosomfriend Diana, and Trudy from The Grey Tarmac Road hinted that she Might Not Be Straight ™.
And jfc I love the creators of these shows, not just for giving these characters queer narratives but for doing it in this specific way. With both of these there are different reactions surrounding them. Trudy is surrounded by non cishet characters, and more than that particularly Informed ones. Hell, Leone’s advice to her includes saying that having feelings for any gender or none at all is fine, and that there are a lot of ways to experience attraction.
Anne on the other hand is acquainted with pretty much exclusively straight cis white kids (as far as we know anyway) and in their reactions it shows. Their immediate thoughts in discovering that Anne likes girls is that she’s just gay, and they don’t seem to be using this as an umbrella term. Josie Pye, an antagonistic character, goes the “ew what if she likes ME route”, while Ruby tweets “same love by macklemore”. Which while supportive is more than a little cringey. And Charlie Sloane. Charlie freakin Sloane. Tweets a photo that reads “Why are the cute ones always gay”. Which is very true to life and absolutely a great storytelling aspect but it makes me so mad and worried for Anne, because even though from his perspective he’s getting over a crush, from everyone else’s he’s taking her orientation (or what he perceives as her orientation) and making it about him.
But really, aside from some steep learning opportunities, I don’t expect these two to encounter a disproportionate amount of stress as a direct result of their orientations, not least because they are both the main character of their respective shows. But that’s what I love about this. We NEED narratives like this. It’s all very well having pre-packaged already out completely at ease with themselves lgbtq side characters in Web series (although don’t get me wrong we could use more of those two), but this type, the character realising that they aren’t straight and dealing with that in a gentle, relatively angst free way is remarkably absent from the media at large. Because these are literary inspired, we already know this isn’t the main story thread, and Anne and Trudy aren’t going to get sidelined for straight people’s narratives because they’re the Main Freakin Characters.
And this addition does so much for both characters and their stories. Anne Shirley is a black wlw foster kid and she runs into obstacles because of this. She isn’t defined by it, but after seeing So Many Anne Shirley’s complaining about just how hard it is to be adopted and to have red hair it’s amazing to have one who’s traits resonate more with what type of people get discriminated against right now. And Trudy’s the opposite, a child of privilege, white and wealthy, who already doesn’t fit the mold her background has set out for her by being neurodivergent realising she might not be straight and only being able to discover this and be accepted because of the new place she’s gone to brings a whole new angle to the fish out of water Oz storyline.
Tl;dr: this is a variation on the Coming Out Story trope I can absolutely get behind and I’m really excited to see Anne and Trudy -and their identities- grow from here on :)
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