Cristina had been back in Seattle for just about a month now and she was very much getting back into the swing of things there. With being the head of cardio she had so many ideas and Bailey was loving it. Her and Meredith had re-connected and she was pretty much living with her and helping with the kids. There was one person though that she just could not re-connect with and that was Owen. He was avoiding her and she knew it. She understood why but she just wanted to fix it with him. She needed to fix it. Seeing his face everyday was hard and not being able to just talk like they used to or joke like they used to was horrible.
Cristina grabbed 2 coffees from the coffee cart and headed inside to Owen’s office in trauma. She knocked once and then opened the door. “Hey, I uhhh just thought I would bring you some coffee and thought maybe we could just chat for a bit? I don’t have any surgeries this morning.” She felt awkward asking her ex-husband to “chat” but she had to get past this awkwardness with Owen.
I think comparatively, since the 1990′s there’s been a slow upward trend in lgbtqa representation, it’s gone from relatively few and negative images to a much more visible and positive representation. However, that isn’t to say the media doesn’t have a long way to go in providing more appropriate and positive healthy portrayals of lgbqa people. My main bug bear when it comes to queer representation is the trend of f/f storylines or even subtext f/f is still geared towards the straight male gaze. ( holla for hetero privilege yall can we say H E T E R O N O R M A T I V I T Y ).
Another issue with lgbtqa storylines is that they can often be delivered in a way that is palatable to the masses eg. the trope of pairing male gay characters with a heterosexual female counterpart - will & grace is like the PERFECT albeit a little dated example of this- by making the gay male character the female leads homo-platonic pseudo husband ( and even with will & grace fight me if there wasn’t this over whelming implication that they’d end up together by the fandom ).
THIS GETS LONG…. so I’mma read more it!!
Let’s talk Buffy the Vampire Slayer; so this show was literally at the forefront of queer portrayals imo. the willow and tara love story was so beautifully crafted, and delivered with grace. it grew so naturally and, i know now from interviews with Wheadon that it was his intention from very early on to take Willow’s story down that route. and this was in the last 90′s, a lesbian full frontal kiss on primetime television, it was fucking visionary, and because of this show and this story line I was less afraid to explore my own feelings for the same sex. Their romance would die ( literally when Tara died and oh god that hurt ) but what they did after that is arguable so important – and as much as I hated it at the time looking back now, giving Willow another female love interest, after Tara was so important. They didn’t just leave her to grieve and be alone, they gave her hope, a new beginning. And you might slate BTVS for a lot of things, but how they played out that story line in the late 90′s early noughties was spectacular. and they were anything but apologetic about it.
Now let’s talk about Grey’s Anatomy; this show has done wonderful at queer representation. I might have such a love hate relationship with a lot of aspects of GA but queer rep is one thing is does exceptionally well, and it isn’t afraid to tackle very REAL problems that lgbtqa people face. the marriage story line with Callie & Arizona was so tasteful and so REALISTICALLY done. Callie’s religious parents didn’t accept her. her mother didn’t show up to her wedding; their wedding wasn’t legal because at the time the state of washington didn’t have marriage equality. While i think it’s very important to show healthy, stable relationships between same sex couples, what is even more important is to show their struggles. This gives lgbtqa people something they can relate to. Another story line i though was super important was the one with Ben Warren’s transgender MtF sister. Ben struggled to come to terms with it, and displayed some wholly disgusting transphobic attitudes and comments. which, although enraged me to watch was relatable, and a true representation to a lot of trans* individuals face when coming out to their families. And finally, the Calzona court battle, gave such hope to not only same sex couples facing awful custody battles but ALSO to adoptive parents. I was extremely well executed. So well done grey’s you’re doing pretty damn good at this.
Other noteable, good examples of positive and realistic portrays is definitely Shameless (US) the Gallavich storyline. A story of two rough kids from shitty neighbourhoods figuring shit out. And while their relationship was toxic at some points, the growth and character development within it was intense. They loved each other very much, too much even, and in the end that love wasn’t enough to keep them together. it broke my heart i won’t lie. watching how far they came from Mickey’s outright refusal to label himself gay to standing up in the middle of the Alibi and declaring it everyone was fucking beautiful. Also, Shout out to Shameless also for their Poly representation.
And the NOT so good, trend of QUEER BAITING. two of my favorite shows are guilty of this. They pull you in with this hint of a beautiful queer ship. ( Lexa and Clarke; Betty & Veronica ). maybe they even give you a kissing scene. a little development and then BAM they rip it away. In t100′s case by killing of a queer character for nothing more than shock value. or in Riverdale’s case,a little girl on girl for the ‘shock factor’ of attention whoring. With little consideration for how much that would piss off there queer fans… another Riverdale problem is Jughead’s asexual erasure, which, no isn’t just me pissed off at BUGHEAD. (i lowkey ship it; it gives a girl Literati feels okay??) i know that only one incarnation of the comics confirmed outright his status as asexual. but, for anyone who’d read the comics that doesn’t need to be said, it’s very evident without the outright language that Jughead is ace. What i would have liked to see was that being explored within a relationship. There is no reason why, Jughead, as an asexual could not be in a relationship. I would have prefered to see was how his sexuality would have affected said relationship, be that with Betty or anyone else for that matter, but unfortunately that isn’t a route CW wanted to take for his character, and as someone who identifies somewhere on the ace spectrum ( lil bi-demi right here yo ) that’s kinda sad to me.
So yeah, in summary, we do have some very positive example of queer representation in the media, but even in those positive examples there is still heteronormative subtext. there’s still a lot of biphobia, transphobia and out right sexualities being erased entirely to make the content more appealing. ( everyone loves a romance plot, right?? ) what i would like to see more of is strong and important friendships between queer characters. platonic relationships are important, not everyone needs to be fucking everyone to make good viewing. I would like to see more development of queer characters outside of the confines of BEING a queer character ( eg. Kevin Keller, can someone give that boy a decent storyline next season please. )
Vincent hadn’t been working for the Seattle Grey Sloan Memorial for very long; a few months at best and the first few weeks he’d barely even seen the inside of it, which wasn’t really much of a problem. He did the work because he loved it, not because he saw the inside of the hospital they dropped people off. He was mostly happy here, away from Beacon Hills where only tragedy awaited his return.
He’d caught a scent on the parking lot a few times before, but never actually went to investigate it until this day, where he was supposed to make his way back to the car outside, but he decided to roam for just a little bit. Problem was, the scent was everywhere - spread out all over the emergency room, so pinpointing it on one of the doctors was impossible. He was curious, yes, but it didn’t matter all that much, because he’d already made a friend of sorts he thought. Alright, maybe friend was a bit too strong of a word to describe the thing they had. An acquaintance? Probably more accurate, but it didn’t matter. Contact of all kinds was good and he liked spending his breaks with the doctors at the hospital. Most of them were pretty nice and some even greeted him by now.
There was only one of them today, the others were probably busy, so Vincent strode over quietly, “Turkey sandwich?” He held out a paper bag, wiggling it seductively.
