I dont think I truly understood how much elena means to me as representation, but to see a young lesbian who proudly defines herself by her sexuality and is the very encapsulation of what it is to be a baby lesbian is wonderful. Elena is the epitome of baby dykery, where you’re so excited to tell the world you’re a lesbian and you make everything gay to the point where people think it’s annoying. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that reflected in a tv character?
Like anyone who thinks elena is annoying for being “too gay” doesn’t seem to understand how fucking rare it is to see a character who isn’t just gay, but is aggressively and unapologetically gay. We’ve had to slog through so many arcs of ashamed lesbians or women who “don’t like labels” or women whose identity as a lesbian begins and ends with her relationship to a lady she has subzero chemistry with, and how fucking NICE is it that Elena gets to be overtly, proudly, obnoxiously gay? Because out of most lesbian characters I’ve seen, elena is the first one that feels like a an almost direct reflection of what it was like to discover my sexuality. And I can tell whoever writes this show did their homework and I am extremely grateful for that.
I think a big problem is that there’s just not a lot of lgbt creators to begin with, but even well meaning straight creators are often plagued by the “it doesn’t matter that my character is gay, they aren’t defined by it” mentality, which to many of these creators probably does seem genuinely progressive. Unfortunately that mentality only contributes to the “it doesn’t matter that you’re gay (so don’t ever talk about it or show that you are because it makes me uncomfortable)” mentality that most straight people have. “Acceptance” as long as we’re quiet about it. As long as we don’t “shove it down their throats.” But i’ve seen enough people bitching about how there’s “too many gay characters these days” when they’re literally just mad that their are any gay characters at all. So you understand how much I appreciate a character like Elena, because too many gay characters have been created with that sense of apologetic appeasement to the people who would prefer we not exist in their fictional stories.
