paul wears his wedding suit to val’s funeral. why not. one of the great injustices of life you can choose your friends but you’re stuck with your mother #forever even in her death you’re tied to the life she made you live yay
hiiii beloved mutual :)))) you've covered this quite a bit already hope this isn't too much of a rehash ! ..but im curious about your overall thoughts on it.. how much do you think the gray/paul/perdy/katie etc etc sl and what it's interested in/ the way it's been constructed is specific to the era/ context it was being made in ? if it was a part of current emmerdale (if you can even imagine that as a possibility!) what kind of changes do you think there would be/ what else might they bring in or reference ? hope that makes sense ! ...the way any kind of gay characters /sls have been portrayed in different eras of the show is ofc soo interesting to me and your posts have been soo fun and awesome to read regarding it all ..im interested how much you feel the time period (and any other external factors) shaped it / what kind of messages they were interested in expressing and exploring then ← is there a coherent One overall it's kind of going for or generally lots of conflicting / competing ideas perhaps .. idk ? loving the posts <33
hello sweet mutual this is an incredible ask that i got incredibly carried away with and i probs could talk on it forever as you will see this is Ridiculously long i’m so sorry but this topic truly is just endlessly fascinating so thank u for giving me the opportunity to ramble <33
main point of it all is that pursuing acceptability will not save you, and it explores this through the understandable failure of grayson to live straightly but then also through the less computable idea that paul fails to be happy living gayly, specifically that his gay marriage doesn’t cure him of all the problems he condemns grayson for creating for himself, etc. from what i can tell, it’s built out of the state of progressiveness at the time which is that gay people aren’t actually perverts, they’re upstanding members of society, meaning that if their love falls outside of the realm of what’s acceptable they now have to be miserable like everyone else bc it’s still wrong and more than that it’s bad representation gay people aren’t perverts!!! <- ie they Can’t be
plot then is trying to deconstruct that notion, reconsider what a pervert is, gray fits the bill as this archaic/traditional gay guy idea, ie one that’s still acceptable to hate, one that exposes the reasons why people have hated gays (and therefore still can) (ruin straightness, dirty/illicit sexual expression, incapable of love) (and the forum accuses him of being “stereotyping” but the show is not stereotyping, the audience is, they’re the ones refusing to see the humanity/nuance/emotion the show is actually giving him ->) gray is classic pervert but only to demonstrate that underneath he isn’t, he just hasn’t been allowed to express his love in any other way bc of the history of all gay being perverted. vs paul ofc has escaped perversity, so the idea he would reenter it is inconceivable and offensive, why would anyone want to? why should we be writing stories where they are? why can’t gay people be normal and acceptable like everyone else??? homophobia obscures the recognition of Love, pure love, this plot argues that the processes behind homophobia still exist even with gay marriage, specifically the alienness of the concept of non-conditional love, the idea it could exist outside of how we’ve come to believe it could. but the audience did not i think pick up on this, tooo radical a concept what do u mean marriage isn’t just love!! etc and bc they can’t accept paul’s perversity they can’t accept gray’s lack of it, vs
robron allows for perversity and people Got it more, rooted for it, understood the love within it, but also their perversity isn’t Gay necessarily, it’s manly and not a direct metaphor, it isn’t built out of easily recognised symbols of traditional(/stereotypical) gayness, and they’re also allowed moments/symbols of traditional love (barn bed) to highlight their “real” love, slash really the potential of future acceptability. difficult to completely compare robron and graul bc of the starkk differences in tone and temperament and gay presentation <- but that in itself potentially says something, maybe about writing but almost definitely about audience, that gay is more liked when it’s manly, when it’s between hot young people, when it’s “wrong” but in a way that’s fun and sexy as opposed to traditionally classically Unrewardingly perverted, the audience are getting something out of it that they weren’t getting with paul and gray. i do think there was an increased appreciation for how love can fall beyond established borders, but if robron were exactly paul and gray i don’t think they would’ve had that same reception, and i’d loveee to know how conscious the writers were of this, part of me thinks they had to have been at least bit bc
robron have to kill a person to make their love illegal/illicit, it’s also volatile and harmful in itself, whereas paul and gray on their own are healthy and fine and normal and happy. their only crime is love and a subsequent One Night of infidelity. killing katie almost excused(?) robert from coming out.. like after it, instead of getting mad he isn’t telling people you recognise that he now can’t, but again that recloseting isn’t a direct gay metaphor bc he didn’t kill katie out of lust or need, it just recreated the conditions of an illegal affair but doesn’t actually make the affair itself illegal. it was also used to keep aaron quiet, bc he doesn’t have the same respectability to try and uphold (as robert orr as paul ->) compared to paul’s argument resting on the perfection of his awful straightgay marriage, aaron makes far more of a valid argument that robert should be out, slash ig it is that argument that kills katie but only bc robert’s resisting, what aaron is arguing for is far more secure than what paul is. they don’t problematise outness anywhere nearrr as much with robron (at least during affair), it’s presented as the inevitable Good conclusion. bad for robert but ultimately better, vs gay marriage in 2008 did not save you (<- 2017 kinda another beast but like. gay marriage by this point is accepted as equal to straight (due to 2008 warning failing </3) and so it’s then about exploring heteropatriarchal power within that etc, it similarly is about how gay doesn’t solve every problem but here it’s bc of its remaining connection to power structures, vs gay marriage doesn’t fix paul and jonny bc it doesn’t separate them from expectation and acceptability, it actually encloses them within it, robron’s issue is straight power complexes, paul and jonny’s is repression <- which is more of a classic simple homophobia idea, vs it feels like robron operates on the acceptance of what paul gray jonny tried to criticise, so then seeks out what issues that “equality” has then produced further <- 2017 really was Doing Thingss it maybe feels like a successor in this regard in how particular and great its recognition of often unnoticed issues and subsequent exploration was).
it’s paul’s love itself that is the crime, the wrongness, and while aaron’s love is viewed the same by some, generally robron’s love is the light, it’s the thing that can get them out (slash robert, that’s another difference in how his happiness is often prioritised over aaron’s, vs paul’s was over gray’s, but robcentring’s based also on lots of other things so i’ll leave that), robron’s love is the gem in amongst all of the bad, it’s what exists to get people to root for them, vs no one noticed or accepted that paul and gray were in actual love, it was entirely this weird perverse predatory crush that threatened paul’s perfect gay life! there’s more of an appreciation for how robron are determined by circumstance despite them actually being far less than paul and gray, they’re not as “stuck with their mothers” (during affair at least.. interesting how 2016 sticks them with their dads after the fact.. the affair itself though isn’t built around them being trapped by external gift) they have seemingly more autonomy than paul or gray are written to have (they get to sleep with each other Multiple Times!) yet they’re blamed less, bc they’re not seen as existing as something Bad bad, just in a bad circumstance, their love is good, with paul and gray there’s nothing to “get out of there” bc it’s not good it’s gross!!!!! just very little recognition that their love is real at all bc it’s a reproduction of the “gay” that has been (and continues to be) read as wrong and perverted and incomprehensible. exists how it does to expose the still present homophobia, to argue that you have to forgive it even when it’s perverted ie you have to get rid of categorising love as acceptable vs wrong at alllll
one of my favourite themes on the 2007 forum was the “ugh another gay plot.. gay is boring! homophobia doesn’t exist anymore!!” an idea i think is less felt with robron (although i’m comparing generally straight forum to gay fandom so it might not be (but also as far as i’ve seen there was no gay fandom for graul so existence of robron’s suggests new popularity of concept)). robert and gray have the same reason for staying closeted, they want a straight public life and the benefits it gives them, and the argument in both cases is that being gay compromises the ability to retain that. but whilst robert is saved from the closet by love, gray is thrown out of it by perversion. robert is oppressed, gray is poisonous. i want to believe and i think in part do that the show knows this, although might come back when i’ve finished gray (and then paul) to see just how much silent sympathy they gave him through his downfall, what i am quite sure on is that the general audience will not have cared, he was an evil gay ruining straightness (inc paul’s) getting his comeuppance, and since he doesn’t get shot to allow for a blossoming of self acceptance and redemption i’m fairly sure the argument ends at: closet cases ruin others’ lives and so ultimately their own, homophobia is too great to escape; fairly sure the show’s argument is not that it’s “his fault”, but the audience’s seems to mostly be, so ofc gray gets the ending the world (his and ourss) wants him to get. <- and so i think does paul. gets his happy ever after after 2 years of “this is not what he should be wanting” but he’s married so! again this might all change when i actually get to watch their endings im sooo excited to see how fully they fix paul and jonny but the early plot certainly did not design them for a “happy ending” between them to be actually happy.
another thing is how the homophobia mostly exists in robert’s head (enter jack retcon. have to invent past homophobia bc there isn’t that much (obvious) actively happening in the village (ofc it’s there underneath but that ofc isn’t generally seen)) whereas the village was homophobicccc in 2007 at least in the sense that gay was treated as Different from straight, paul was accepted (which actually means it was within its time basically the same as robert’s experience, with what counts as “not homophobic” just including more of what we would consider homophobia; even with this though i do think there was a greater volume of even secret homophobia ->) there are so many shots of people noticeably Reacting to he and jonny’s physical affection or their engagement etc, it knew Gay was this big different thing, but bc not all of that reaction was (seen as) insulting, gray still didn’t have an excuse for his closet, even though watching it with our eyes it’s clearly made so much more obvious why gray can’t be out than why robert can’t be, but it’s like people understood the pressures of homophobia more in 2015 than 2007 (incredible news for my representation is better when it’s about homophobia agenda but anyway), robert is given sympathy and gray is not, even though gray also has paul existing the way he does to argue that being out doesn’t save you, so gray is kept by All angles in his closet, until he’s forced out of it, he’s the unsaveable gay, robert, bc recognition and reaction have improved (at least on the ssurface) by 2014/15/16, and bc it would be seen more as homophobic if robert’s life was ruined by being gay (vs that recognition was masked by homophobia in 2008) he gets to be a success story, a story about how gay doesn’t ruin you! bc in 2014 gay marriage fullll gay marriage is legal and slash shipping’s at its peak and robert’s hot and young and funnn ignore the fact he committed Far more devastation from his closet than gray did (katie existing as a Direct Comparision 😵💫) nooo robert was just made evil by his closet!! vs gray was uniquely perverted and it was all his evil fault even though his mother spends a year coercing him into dating katie and robert by himself pushed her through the floor
it feels in many ways that the show/writers/whoever didn’t necessarily improve/change their own cognition, just adjusted how they deployed it to fit the time, bc i really think graul really was that woke. again, might change with endings, but also the endings are inseparable from audience input, and the beginning of the plot reallyy is that wokee, it constructs this uncomfortable (if/when noticed) argument (with paul and gray as its sides) about whether equality>< is doing all it can, conclusion being that no, no structure’s actually been fought, the processes haven’t been dismantled, they’re still being used to oppress love, so gray can’t Be Out and happy in the end bc it would conclude that there’d been a fix, which there hasn’t. maybe they make paul genuinely happy with jonny which would be a fix, but ik it gets worse before it gets better, but also whatever they do secretly, on the surface they give them the happy ending they initially argued wasn’t a happy ending, gaydale set on its path to heartstopperness along with the rest of the world which
to compare it to Today, vinny/gabby/lewis thoughts are that: the obstacle is the destruction of Other people’s straight desires more than one’s own, the whole thing is kinda light and loose and Short, the marriage is then almost frivolous, bad straight marriage is clearly nothing solid enough to restrict or withstand gay truth, knowledge of its instability is known by all atp, there are no good arguments left. out and proudness then isss questioned, whether it’ll get you beaten up, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel which paul and jonny (try to) squash. marriage between people of genders fitting their sexualities is (due to pauljonny’s failed failure) the established unquestioned happy end, and whilst aaron has his chainss interjection there’s no consistent weight given to that concept, we’ll again have to see if they problematise vinny and lewis’ heartstopper love, but as of now there doesn’t exist at all the same genuine argument against/obstacles to gay guy freeing himself from straight closet marriage and existing out and proud and happy. there’s belief in that process, that it’s something that, whilst has suffering on the way, is the trajectory that will get you to happiness. bc 2008 failed to start a revolution about it. we’re stuck on this train and to be presentable the show has to board it too. wwouldn’t put it past them to crash it at some point though And kinda alongside it they were also doing
beautiful johnron which main thing with is that its dysfunction is not particularly specifically Gay related (not even 2017 robron way), marriage has now been equalised between sexualities and this is unchallenged, aaron wants marriage and is offered it, there’s no commentary on how this is As bad as a Straight marriage, it’s just bad in itself. 2007/8 wanted gay marriage to not be turned into the same evil, to not allow gay marriage to endanger the exact same way straight does (2017 robron again fights this same fight with different weapons, says gay marriage can’t be good bc of its especially horrible use of powers, but again not listened to bc why would it be marriage is perfect) but end of 2008 seems to be it acknowledging that that equality was going to be further cemented and kinda already had been, 2024/5 is operating uncritically on that now really grounded truth. gay marriage is here and it’s still bad but not bc it’s gay, just bc it’s marriage. (john/gordon complicates its Straightness, but this is more aaron specific i feel than commentary on anything beyond it, the more common problems in their marriage (and what enables the gordoning) are not uniquely gay or gay related, the man/man of it affects things, they have slightly different powers than husband/wife, but nothing’s really given/taken away/adjusted by Sexuality in itself.. i think. there might be some stuff but it’s at least not loud).
also thinking about like. alex and aaron is similar to pauljonny in its recloseting, robert existing as the gay metaphor, but yeah that metaphor isn’t built out of specific shapes of Evil Gay. robert is wrong and harmful and unaccepted, gray is all that but also a guy who fucks men in the park and uses the script of gay predation to first kiss paul and is camp when he wants to be (when it’s useful) (forum complained about his camp voice when trying to kiss paul as if that isn’t the whole point); it’s the katie murder again. let’s make robron adjacent to perverted gays, they’re representing the same things, but they’re built in different shapes to explore those issues but ultimately save them from the fate that those they’re representing have/will always succumb to. paul and gray are vaguely reshaped, ie with paul’s gay marriage, but their affair is just still too traditionally perverse, which i Love, i love that they didn’t straightcode it to make it understood bc it keeps that message far stronger, robron succeed and survive in part bc they gave them the tools to, tools that compromise their representational abilities, bc i think if they were fulllly Gay slash maybe Queer.. if they were entirely the target of (evolved/evolving) heterosexist persecution then they (in emdale) couldn’t be anything other than its victims. show about social issues that will win until they’re fixed, only way to escape them is to not be completely their enemy. robron, vinnylewis, whoever else who’s won, they win bc they fit at least partially into shapes of what’s acceptable, both to straights and gays. paul and gray weren’t acceptable to anyone; it was offensive to make paul perverted, it was incomprehensible that gray wasn’t, they weren’t in love bc it was perverted and perversity isn’t love, etc. basically in 2008 the only/main comprehensible/acceptable gay love was one that could (and should) easily visibly lead to marriage, in 2015 gay love could be found and seen and enjoyed in a more transgressive form (but it was also given the potential of leading to marriage, and then did (thrice 😆)), in 2026 gay love that would previously have been transgressive (vinny kammy kiss) is instead now known to be just a puppy that needs saving, the purity of it underneath is immediately understood, and it needs to be rescued to it can live freely (and eventually be finalised in marriage).
so. 2008 plot about how the pursuit of acceptability is the evil itself, that no expanding of its criteria will ever account for everyone, especially not those who are forced out of fitting it by a still very (just now blind to itself) homophobic world…. didn’t really do anything ! its point could and should still be made today, but it generally feels it Needs to be made less bc look how much we’ve expanded what’s acceptable!! sooo much fits inside of it look at all these happy gay people!!! it was the very narrow ideal of what paul had to be to be acceptable that allowed the argument that acceptability was incredibly restrictive and destructive to be made so poignantly and easily and unproblematically (<- to me) (it wasn’t this argument though that was deemed problematic, it was the plot around the argument that people misread bc they completely missed the central point), paul and gray could not get a happy ending in that world, specifically bc of their clear ties to/metaphor of gayness and the quite obvious (to us/me) homophobia on display. today.. the dispersing of those things… the infinitely more complicated ways in which gayness and homophobia exist (2017!!!), due to half assimilation and the reworking but not undoing of core/initial/base structures/processes/logics…..
there is still such thing as too gay, as perversely gay, but now there are (believed to be) more things that fit an established good than fit that bad, the gays the show shows generally don’t fit that bad, slash if they do they get punished. enter kevbert <- even though they made them acceptable, their sweet little prison marriage, there was still too much air of perversity to allow it. so the argument’s still pertinent today, but the show could never atp i dont think make as simple a point as they were making with paul and gray, bc they created this neat little fork in the road of should gays pursue normality or should they try and deconstruct the concept, and the path of acceptability was so restrictive that it was easy to make an argument against, vs today it would maybe be seen as condemning too much, as restricting progress <- just as it was also seen as in 2008. paul and jonny needed to be healthy representation! gays cant be promiscuous! the first gay marriage needs to work!! paul’s oppression by his world mirrors his oppression by ours etc, that’s the whole pointtt, what emdale is built on, but it’s the reaction’s missing of the point that makes emmerdale go round, everyone’s trapped forever etc, just in new ways which
show has kinda continually been arguing this same thing since, what’s equal rights ever got you❤️❤️❤️❤️ centre of everything forever. it’s gonna continue to demonstrate the issues in pursuing acceptability/normalcy bc that’s what it does. it’s difficult for me to tell how Obvious its argument was in 2008 compared to every other story you can read this argument into since, bc i’m too zoned in on it, what i do know is that most people did not see this, as they continue to not see it, bc tv show is not gonna ever fix the world </3
in many ways they’re then doing this plot rn with robron’s evil farm, they did it with johnron’s marital ideal, with kevbert’s surprisingly nonrapey but still believed to be rapey prison marriage, etc etc etc, equality continues to mean nothing bc if something isn’t equal it doesn’t get to exist and if it is equal and does get to exist it sucks bc what it’s equal to sucks. which we know
they (i don’t think) have done a relationship as Gay as paul and grayson since. gay in the sense of oppressed by normality, but it’s also fun that they’re (at least one of) the most gay acting on gay acting ships.. almost like the more traditionally gay something is the more it’s unacceptable….. almost like homophobia still exists……..
as far as perdy and katie go.. they both survive. perdy gets her baby. katie gets her life. which presumably is built out of the whole.. the less explicit they’ve been allowed to be about evils the more those evils become Evil, they tortured perdy and katie overtly, knowing exactly what they were doing, and then gave them the happy ending, argued that it was the men’s fault, made it clear it was, and that they shouldn’t be stuck to that (particular) evil forever etc, vs chrissie and rebecca and katie (false release!) are dead and gabby’s getting nothing and everything else. i wanna say they explicitly tortured perdy and katie more but idek if that’s true. gray was certainly more overt in his misogyny than robert was with chrissie, but that ofc meant perdy and katie were more overt in pointing it out etc i don’t think it’s an insightful outlier of misogynydale it’s just its same story althoughh again i haven’t finished it so i might update when i do
ultimately, every year has gotten more heartstopper, an assimilationist ideal that graul existed to criticise, so its message remains pertinent and often readable but less and less overt. secret gaydale is always gonna be our secret gaydale, robron 2017 is always to us gonna be about robert’s ties to heteropatriarchal power, there is very much a pro gay marriage point to 2008 but it’s fascinating and so fun that it completely contradicted the “real” point, that they recloseted paul to explore still existing homophobia that people failed to recognise still existed, which like. robron 2026. happy farm marriage!! queer couple at the centre of the show!!! running a farm!!!! they’re gonna fix everything!!!!! we’re in the same place they’re telling the same story people are still watching the same different story etcccc there is just even more belief in gay marriage = gay love, in part bc it’s more solidified now, but also bc mr and mr three gay marriages do Actually love each other. doing horrible things to the cause bc they can make their marriage as baddd as they want and there’s still love there and johnron and kevbert were just blipss ultimately nothing will destroy people’s belief in (gay) marriage despite in many ways the show making the same slash necessarily evolved argument over and over and over again
they’d never do gray now the way they did him back then, it would be considered farrr too homophobic bc of stereotyping and perversity and doom, which it was also back then, but it would be worse now, so we’re really fixing things ! they also wouldn’t do paul the same, evidenced by alex and john both failing for aaron, more people see that “wrong” love can be real, even if the parameters for wrongness are still restrictive in a way that i believe would restrict paul and gray even now, another reason they probs wouldn’t do it
but also robert is in so many ways the worse gray and aaron is the more suffering paul, and so much of the difference in reception i think honestly just boils down to they’re straighter. among other things like greater recognition of oppression but also . they’re just straighter. despite in many ways taking the metaphorical gayness further, it’s mixed into its straightness. paul and grayson were just too Gay gay for their time (slash again maybe even for now). gray’s predator tableau of their first kiss vs robert’s manly pushing of aaron up against the car. same thing to us but occupy really different spaces to most. also thinking about graul kiss vs vinnylewis’ moment in front of sheep and cain. the village would’ve killed them if they’d seen that kiss. the audience killed them bc they saw that kiss. pauljonny wedding fine but yeah. can’t handle Real gay people. which robron toe that really interesting line betweeeen they operate in some between world where they’re incredible gaydale but also lousy gaydale whereas i think paul and grayson are more gaydale than anything else i’ve seen has been (although i need to watch jason so might be completely wrong but rn i wanna say that) they started it. started full proper what’s equal rights ever got you gaydale
i could ramble forever i’m mostly repeating atp but show no longer compares gay marriages to straight to say this shouldn’t exist it compares them to explore how it Does, the damage has been done, plot couldn’t exist in the same capacity bc we can’t stop anything :D it tried to ! but nope <3
final summary promise is that gray doesn’t get his sebastian which i still can’t believe his imaginary heir was called sebastian i refuse to believe it wasn’t intentional but yeah he doesn’t get his seb bc he shouldn’t he’s gay and tries to be straight and despite the plot’s best efforts to forgive him for this, explain that it isn’t his fault it’s his mother’s slash the world’s and coming out willll not save him ! he gets outed as punishment and gets abandoned by everyone and loses everything. vs robert’s getting gay married for the fourth time. and got his sebastian
ok just realised i didn’t talk about lawrence at all but this is long enough and that would triple it so i’ll sit on that bc idek what my thoughts are yet but robrence probably extends this more than anything.. but this is very much enough for today thank u again for the ask as u can tell i enjoyed it <33333
