*Spies* S - _super sexy,_ P - _pretty,_ I - _immensely gay,_ E - _enormously homosexual_ S - _spies_

The whole “curt not wanting his information out on the newly formed internet” and “owen thinking that if everyone’s information was out then no one would care he was gay” will be a headcanon I will scream into the void until I die

"definitely, 100% straight protagonist:" [cut] "i can't get drunk" me: [WHEEZE] "...anyway,"

i think im going to use "very heterosexual dancing" in my daily vocabulary

Curt’s line “That’s not your secret to tell” hits so differently now.

I can’t believe as you said “an 100% straight protagonist” I was like....”Steve Rogers” and then it cut to the first avenger lmaooo

I love how you're talking about some serious historical document and then suddenly sneak in sarcasm "comPLETELY HETEROSEXUAL"

I tought it was strange when he calls Owen "partner" 'cause they are from different agencies,so it couldn't be in work ways

"When you make stories about LGTB characters set in the past, the history is already baked into the narrative." That is an amazing quote! This was a VERY enjoyable education. Thanks!!!

“The last few scenes are where it comes together,” no it does not All come together. My heart is in pieces. Everywhere. Like a glass window being jumped through

Gays: *exist* Everyone in the 1950's: And I oop-

I love smart people having smart opinions on my dumb interests. Great video ❤️

Owen and Curt's standoff at the end was straight up the best best BEST scene in the show.

i dry heaved a little when you said '1995.' 1995??!! this is why we need pride people

When you flashed to Captain America first avenger I literally snorted

“Spies are forever. It’s a musical about spies” Me: you don’t say....

"some very heterosexual dancing" "whats gay about this?" im wh e ezin g (awesome video, btw!!!)

No one can tell me that Joe Walker wasn’t the hottest thing ever in Spies are Forever

Jesus christ, I did not expect it to go t h I s d e e p. Also, the part where she says "has a double meaning? I don't know," killed me, I was laughing for a solid 2 minutes.

One thing I found funny when watching the first episode for the first time was that I could immediately tell he was gay. It was an immediate obvious thing in my head. But I fully thought that I'd be tricked out of having a homosexual character by him finding Tatiana. I'm so glad that didn't happen. I just wish we could have seen more of Owen and curt's relationship.

You did a hell of a lot of research and I just need to applaud that 👏👏 it gives a whole new level to the musical

"Unfortunate hetero normative interlude" is the most relatable thing

As soon as you said "His journey started not by, say, the death of a sexy lady but by the death of his male partner" my brain immediately linked back to Steve then you showed him and I started cracking up

this is on a somewhat unrelated note but the Deadliest Man Alive and Owen are the only characters with an English accent; so that alludes to the real identity of the Deadliest Man Alive before the reveal even occurs just something that I’ve picked up on that I wanted to share if someone has also thought about that or someone may not have noticed that at first

The beginning really shocked me because love is love

When Joey's character was making out with Susan then realised he was a man he says "my career, my children!", just something I picked up after watching this. I'd no idea the exact extent of the discrimination, nor even heard about the Lavender Scare, so it was really interesting re-watching Spies with the exact context in mind, thanks :)

I accidentally deleted someone's comment, so if that was you, I am so sorry, there wasn't anything wrong with it, I just clicked the wrong button.

In the intelligence community, a partner would be someone of your own agency, that you always work closely with. It is clear that Kurt and Owen worked for different agencies, and simply wouldn’t be made “partners” in their jobs. Therefor this is semi clearly stating that yes they had a romantic relationship!

at 12:22 ish i NEVER picked up on why he neglects to say “i’m gay” and instead says she’s “not his type”, it would make so much sense if the word gay has such a horrible rep. PLUS he looks so happy when she says “til the end” GOD he was probably terrified to even hint at it

Sis,,, you snapped with this video. It’s actually blowing my mind and I’m so invested. Catch me watching this a million times over.

“Curt Mega as Agent Curt Mega” is creativity at its peak

The first time I saw the Tortue Tango scene I sat there wondering if there was actually some subtext in the scene or if it was just Joe Walker being Joe walker

Idk if anyone’s pointed this out yet, but the title of the video has a double meaning too, “decoded” as in de-queer coded, which was the purpose and decoded as in spies decoding things, very clever, kudos

I count Spy Again as a love song and you can’t prove me wrong

You forgot to mention how everything is completely and directly confirmed with the line “It’s never easy to bury your ex lover come back from the dead to kill you...” as I saw a few people who hadn’t gotten through the entire musical and still tried to interpret Curt as straight (i don’t know how). Other than that, wonderful video! Over here in the UK Alan Turing only recently officially got the recognition in the eyes of the government for all he did. It’s so sad that talented wonderful people like him were left jobless and scorned, and in his case, felt there was nothing left for them in this world. When I realised Curt was genuinely gay and it wasn’t just subtext i was so happy. Peace ✌️

Yes Captain Steve Rogers America is definitely one hundred (100) percent straight of course no homosexual behaviour there at all no no

Another thing I noticed with the Torture Tango is that Owen is the one torturing him and he says "I've been waiting for this moment for such a long time" he is hurting just as much as Curt and this also adds to the whole revenge factor. Also the line " I probably spent as much time hating you as you did" is sad because he feels betrayed and the creators did such a good job of rounding out the feelings between the two, the ones that were there and the ones that are now there. It's honestly such an amazing show.

Spies are forever definitely has my favorite starkid/tcb lgbt rep. I love the story and the songs are pretty great too (we love the prince). I like how they use the song doing this as a “romantic” song and they really reference the heteronormativity of that trope and then they don’t do it. I love that Tatiana and Curt were able to have that great friendship you outlined in this video and even though Barb doesn’t completely get it she’s pretty cool too. I enjoyed the part of the video where you looked at Torture Tango because that is a great scene and along with the homoeroticness of that moment you also feel a bit of bitterness that Owen holds for Curt. This was a good video

14:48 I don't know if it was intentional, but "beard" is slang for a closeted gay person's opposite-gender partner, so that could absolutely be a double meaning

I was questioning why this *amazingly put together* video didn't have more veiws but then I realized it was only posted today aksjdhfskjdf

Gotta love Owen

Okay I’m impressed. I normally care absolutely not at all about history but this was genuinely riveting.

Hi, I'd like to share my thought on your awesome vid! In the scene where Tati told Curt that 'he doesn't have to hide behind a beard to look cool', I feel like they were directly referencing to a term called a 'beard'. Based on what I know, a 'beard' is a person who is pretending to date a homosexual in order to mask their true sexuality. When I saw the scene a second time, I began to think about it a bit more. I think Tati was suggesting that of course, he never actually had to pretend to like her similarly like he did in Doing This. I was thinking that it might be a signal that he can feel safe to be himself around Tati. But anyway, that's just what I think. Nice vid by the way! I loved it!

Considering showing this to my "LGBTQ History through Film" elective tomorrow! We just finished watching SAF (after I wouldn't shut up about it for four weeks) and this video does a great job of providing historical context and highlighting everything I love about this show. Keep up the good work!

i really loved your sondheim video, can you do one about The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals? or maybe a character analysis? idk i just want smart content on tgwdlm lol

This mustve been so much work, but it was definitely worth it

There was a song form the musical that came on my Spotify and I was like??? Wait, are they???? Are they gay??? And I'm glad it wasn't just in my head. And THANK YOU FOR THE EDUCATION ON GAY HISTORY

That’s why he can’t just tell Barb why he’s not interested in her! I always wondered why I he didn’t just tell her what was going on.

another moment that could be added to the part around 4:55 is when owen calls curt 'love' -- "pass me one of the charges, Love." could just be a british thing, but it's most definitely a gay thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh my god, I hope someone from TCB sees this. This is so well done! I love these kind of things.

I truly loved this musical. Starkid and Tin can bros are really good at representation and dare I say it: saying gay rights. They had a gay relationship as part of the main plot but not making it comedic. Though the whole musical was comedic ish, it was still serious when it came to curts sexuality but it wasn’t made fun of. It was respected and understanding. Truly awesome.

Ahhh, this is such an interesting and well-made video! Even though I obviously knew that being a gay government employee in 1961 would have been a ~very~ dangerous situation, I didn’t know any of the history of the Lavender Scare so I really appreciate being educated on the historical context. I love when people take the time to deep-dive into content that seems silly to a lot of people on the surface, and I especially love it when that content involves one of my favorite musicals, LGBTQ history, and examinations of representation! Thank you for sharing with us!!!

”starring a definitely 100% straight protagonist.” cuts to Captain America

I really hope Joey, Brian, Corey and the rest of the cast and crew see this. What a fantastic video! Your videos are always so amazing and well-researched and well-made. Keep up the great work!

oh i LOVE the comparison to captain america.... the whole plot is so similar to the winter soldier too

Such A Great video! What adds to this is the fact that in the First song Owen calls Curt by "love" in one of The dialogs

I just realized, if the story was written in a way that would completely emulate James Bond, if Curt and Tatiana got together, the Spies Are Forever version of the Bond Girl would be the Mega Girl

A very interesting situation about Spies are forever is also that many of the viewers who picked up on the subtext early in the musical still only realized that Mega is actually a gay character later on because we have been used to so many shows only having subtext and nothing further. I think this is a picture of not only this musical but our time in general. In the past a lot of viewers were so starved for gay content in media that a lot of us accepted that all we got was longing glances and innuendos. We now have more and more shows with actually positive gay representation and quite a few are mainstream shows. But for a lot of us it doesn’t feel as the norm yet and therefore I think a lot of us went through the beginning of the musical thinking it was part of the old formula of gay subtext (possibly also because of the James Bond parallels).

I found this in a KZfaq comment that gave me in a crisis where they mentioned it’s ALSO important to note that since Curt and Owen worked for two different organizations means they most likely wouldn’t have been partners in the professional sense

“A definitely 100% straight protagonist” *shows Captain America* I SQUEALED

you’re so right steve and bucky are exactly like curt and owen wow

Daaang. You didn’t have to go that hard but you DID and I’m so glad you did. This was such an intriguing video. Also, the line “a spy is a spy” kind of hits differently at the end.. Could it be interpreted as the idea that a spy is a spy no matter their sexuality?

This is a great video but I just wanted to say that you forgot the great line at the end of the show where Tatiana literally says “ It’s no easy task burying your ex-lover returned from the grave to kill you.” Which really just solidifies the point.

I’ve watched this show so many times, and yet so many of the lyric mirroring you brought up I never noticed (specifically “Your heart, he’ll break” and “You know you broke my heart”). This entire video is very clever, amazing job.

I thought this was going to be a fun crack video but now I’ve got to go rant to all my friends about gay rights in the sixties.

I love learning about LGBTQ history. Thank you for analyzing one of my favorite musical and teaching me something!

I love song rankings and other compilations as much as anyone but these type of in depth videos are the Best!!!

I just watched Spies Are Forever and now am getting all the good video recs!!! Super great video. Somehow I didn't realize how big a deal it was that the intelligence network would reveal every queer person. I also noticed the whole "partner" thing that many people have commented. I loved the subversion of the Bond girl trope-- in the opening number, the "time to get the girl" obviously seems to reference Bond girls, but then in Cynthia's first scene, she yells at Curt to "go get the girl." This time she means Tatiana, and she means it as in "go get the enemy agent," and I thought that was another really cool subversion where Mega goal is still to "get the girl" but not in a romantic way. Also, the whole "spies, master of disguise" hits harder after watching this video and thinking about the daily disguise Curt, Owen, and other government people would have to do to hide their queerness if they still wanted to work. Thanks for a fantastic video!!

I watched this with my father recently and was shocked when he didn’t seem to notice the romantic history between Curt and Owen- I sometimes forget that straights don’t automatically scan for queer subtext like we do.

More TCB/Starkid Video Essays pls. This is a sub-genre I never thought I needed in my life

Fellas is it gay to have a mom?

Since Owen worked for England, and Curt worked for America, they would not have been "Partners" in the way that two American spies would be "Partners", which means he never really hid that they dated, it was mostly just misunderstandings from other people. Owen and Curt could not have been work Partners but they were definitely "Partners".

actually... the parallels between captain america and spies are forever...

Tatiana and Curt are my favorite best friends

"Doing this" is such a masterpiece, I love it (And also how can anyone read that scene of the Bond movie as homoerotic, it made me extremely uncomfortable aysudneifndiene)

I know this comment is like a year late, but I've kinda noticed another parallel between Curt and Steve with what happens to Owen and Bucky, in that they both 'die' a similar way, only to return a number of years later on the enemy side and trying to kill Curt/Steve. idk Anyway, your videos are pretty cool and its interesting in this one how you compare it to actual attitudes during the cold war.

Your video essays are so great!

I just find it interesting that 30 years ago I would’ve been a “threat to the country” for who I love

I can’t lie, I didn’t pick up on ANYTHING until the final reveal about Curt and Owen being together and watching this video. I feel really dumb...

I keep coming back to this video because I just love SAF so much, and we need more video essays about this amazing show I edited my comment and lost the heart :(

I was texting my friend (who had already seen it) all of my reactions and i find it pretty funny that one of my first texts while watching the first scene was “wait are curt and Owen partners or are they p a r t n e r s” like it was so obvious to me that they were definitely not straight, but I was expecting for them to be left as subtext, cause every other time two characters are clearly gay the writers are like nope no homosexuality here there is no gay in Ba sing se then of course my next texts were all keysmashes when Owen “died”

I adore the way they subvert the bond's womanizer trope with Tatiana because they literally make Tatiana and Curt besties! Tatiana as a character feels very lesbian coded, which is really sweet because they genuinely both accept each other! This is a great video essay by the way, i enjoyed watching it!

1. The stairs scene has a lot of clever things on it but the line that stood for me at the time was Curt’s, “Some secrets aren’t yours to share. What about our secret?” At the time, I thought, “Well, duh, it’s the 60s. That kind of bigotry is common at the time.” But you actually manage to put them into historical contexts. Thank you for tickling my history nerd brain. 2. You mentioned how UK had anti-LGBT laws that were bad but not as bad as their American counterparts. When you mentioned how Owen’s plan is basically the prelude to the internet, it reminded me of Alan Turing, the father of the internet itself. In the 40s, when WW2 is at the highest, Alan Turing, a mathematician, was hired by MI6 to break Germany’s code machine. It was estimated that his works shortened the war by two years. Unfortunately, at age 39 he was arrested when it was found out that he was gay. Due to his work, he was offered two options: prison or probation, which involves hormonal treatments. He died of suicide at the age of 41. Anyway, this video is fantastic and you somehow made Spies Are Forever even cooler than before

Oh hell yeah, I've been waiting for this

I don’t know why but having ppl decide things/read too much into things/explain lore is rly interesting and soothing so I hope u make more vids like this for sk musicals

Things they don’t teach in history classes and they should. 1- this.

I laughed so hard when you said "and some very heterosexual dancing" omg Edit: LMAO I just saw that EVERYONE else talked about this too😂

This musical is one of my favorite things and this analysis makes me love it even more but dang it I wish Owen had a redemption arc so my heart wouldn't be shattered from this

Ive literally been doing this for years. Ive been trying to analyze it. But I’m so happy that you have finally brought it all together into a beautiful gay present. I love this show wayyyyyy to much. I appreciate this amazing, in-depth look into how smart this group of writers is. I feel like people just see this group as funny writers who don’t make meaningful things. But this show and many others show just how important these shows are and how these writers aren’t just hilarious(because they are) but also extremely smart and hides subtext within shows that people might think of as just funny fluff pieces

Starkid and time can brothers are both very good at having casual lgbtq characters who are confirmed within the musical itself

this video made me love the show so much more :’) as always, you are so eloquent and smart and gosh i just really love this video. you’re killing it!

This is one of the videos I keep coming back to every time my SAF obsession rears it’s head again. Thank you for this lovely and well thought out look into the historical and narrative context around Curt Mega

I love your videos! I’ve been hoping for so long that someone would make analysis videos about starkid/tincanbros musicals for so long, and your videos have been so well made and interesting! Thank you for your wonderful content! :D

This has got to be one of my favorite videos of all time. I just utterly LOVE that you put in the time, the research, and the effort to make this video. I am such a huge history nerd, and the fact that this combines such a great musical with historical fact just is amazing. I really love how you promoted the historical context of the show and demonstrated how it was applied. Also, the jokes about "Completely heterosexual dancing" and "A definitely 100% straight protagonist" were great. Love it! You mentioned coding in Disney villains i would love to see a video on that!

this is so goood!! i love this so much perhaps an analysis on the interactive nature of The Trail to Oregon? or just a video essay on starship-these vids are so good

I died at the CA:TFA thing!😂😂😂😂😂

ngl when I clicked on this in my recommended the opening gave me whiplash bc I was expecting like.. one of those crackhead starkid edits lmao

How are you so smart and articulate? I love you so much!!!

This was phenomenal. I can really tell you did research, and managed to explain everything so incredibly well. Not only did you manage to make this deep, emotional, and accurate, you also made it funny! Thanks so much for making this :)

Whatever you do in the rumpus room ... If this about Owen ...