That's the best representation. When it's just there. No hetero romances are advertised as "look we have hetero representation!" It's just there It should be the same with queer media. Focused on the story, not the fact of queerness. Having lgbt characters, either main or side, is normal. Just normal. It has all the rights to be there. No need to put a label on it. It's really refreshing to have a show which just does what it does, develops an awesome gay romance and doesn't focus on it being gay. As it should be.

As a lesbian I’m incredibly grateful for the wlw rep in cartoons but ofc it does come with the context that wlw relationships are seen as like… less real than mlw or mlm ones and that’s not fun. It’s also weirdly hard to find good wlw rep in shows that aren’t animated

The thing that's always bothered me most about Kurt Hummel's character has been his real world origin story: Chris Colfer, his actor, auditioned for the role of Artie, the disabled nerd. Chris Colfer himself was a closeted gay man and was shy, wry, and super geeky. He didn't get the role, but the singing at his audition was so impressive that they erased their token Indian character and made a character just for him, inspired by the audition. Was the character a nerd? Was he shy or sardonic? No, he wasn't. In fact he had almost nothing in common with Chris himself because the only thing they cared about was that Chris had a high pitched, feminine voice, and it made him "sound gay." They wrote a gay character defined by stereotypes because they clocked a young, closeted, gay man based on the *pitch of his voice.* Then they stereotyped him in front of the entire world. The character of Kurt Hummel wasn't just about stereotyping the gay community as a whole - it stemmed from incorrectly stereotyping a gay man to his own face.

I understand this, but I think some of that basic homophobes bad stuff is surprisingly important. My dad watched glee with my mom and that was the point he started questioning his homophobia. If Glee didn’t exist coming out to him as trans would not have gone well. I understand the need for queer stories for queer people, but queer stories for straight audiences have a real impact on not only straight people but the queer people in their lives.

The thing that stood out to me the most about OFMD is that the characters are messy and very much not the best people, and yet it never takes away their ability to either give or receive love for it. I find that a lot of media that tries to sell queer representation ends up valorizing queer characters by always making them the "nicest" or most supportive people in the cast and by grinding away their flaws, which often unintentionally poses an argument that gay romance is only "deserved" or "acceptable" if gay people are morally superior (i.e. by being kinder, quieter, or less violent) than the straight people surrounding them. I felt so deeply seen when OFMD was like "maybe these characters are super flawed, and yet they fall in love anyway in-part because of those flaws, and they aren't less deserving of it just because they're imperfect". Furthermore, the characters won't be "fixed" by hooking up, and their flaws are associated with yet not directly caused by their sexualities. I related so much to the ways both Stede and Ed struggled to believe that they were deserving of love once love unexpectedly entered their lives, and it's so cathartic to finally see a show nail why I struggled with my own sexuality for so long.

Not yet done with the video but THE EFFORT of printing that much stuff and cutting up all THAT. Truly inspiring by itself

“How quickly we forget where we came from, and the importance that most of us will one day live to an age hundreds of thousands of our people never got to see.” Good fuck, that almost made me cry

So often sapphic relationships in animation are seen as innocent and inoffensive. It's awesome that we are finally getting more and more confirmed sapphic relationships, but there are so many ones that are just "gals being pals". I related so much to your explanation on how queerbaiting can lead to feeling gaslit. There are many shows (especially anime) I could name that use these relationships between girls to push this innocence narrative and not confirm their relationship. Besties that are ride or die for each other. To point I question "can I say this couple is canon" because their emotions appear romantic, yet there is no official confirmation but also nothing denying it. So which is it? And it sucks have these couples in limbo.

As someone who’s studied Sociology, I really wish I had this channel. I’m happy someone out there is making Sociology the cool subject it is.

I thought it was interesting that you chose driving as the example of a behavior that doesn’t get incorporated into an identity because you’re right that people don’t see the world through a driving lens but I think that’s because driving is the heterosexuality of transportation. Many cyclists, on the other hand, do incorporate that into their identities because it goes against the normative expectation that everyone should drive.

I am not technically represented in OFMD. I’m a Lesbian, there are no Lesbians on the show. Hell, there’s hardly any women. That being said, I feel wayyyy more represented, and on a very personal and somehow sentimental level, with OFMD than I ever have with all of the cartoon lesbians…who I honestly feel less than nothing about. (HOWEVER, still keeping my fingers crossed for actual historical lesbian pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reed who lived at the same time and in the same place as Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard to happen in the show) Love your channel and all that you do. Keep up the good work my friend. 💗

the thing i think has affected me most about rainbow capitalism is that when i was younger, i saw a rainbow bandana or pin or whatever in a backpack and thought "oh! gay. or ally. safe person". now when i see it i cant be sure if they are lgbtq+ or allies or its just a fashion statement. they took away our icons that we used to form community, and comodify them

I also hate when businesses promote their “pride”. It’s so fake, I seriously question if anyone buys their products. I don’t want Redbubble interrupting my podcast with an ad telling me how much they support gay people.

I feel like the erasure of Jughead's asexualty in Riverdale was a big unintentional mask off moment for the showrunners and writers of live action teen/adult shows and just how they did not care to write about queerness. Unlike animated TV shows for kids where some research shows the creators of these shows expressing how they often fought tooth and nail for queer rep (Alex Hirsch even recently revealed that he used 'bromance' logic to trick the high ups and censors at disney into keeping a scene where a male character has his arm over another male character, characters who did later turned out to be gay) live action shows don't really have those same stories of being censored by higher ups. It has always been assumed that it would be easier for the showrunners of live action shows to have openly queer main characters approved, and it's assumed cause we don't have much evidence of them actually trying. Cause at the end of the day like how they had little interest in exploring how Jughead's asexualty and how that informs his high school expierence where his peers are constanly getting into relationships with one another or even researching ways that Jughead could still be in romantic relationships (though him also being aromantic is a popular fancanon) these writers have little interest in writing a gay man realizing his past relationship with women have been a bit preformative, or just writing a bisexual character. Because they wanted to write straight men, but you can get a lot of money from queers being in your fandom so just queerbait them. And when the show ends you can turn around to the fans you strung along your ultimately mediocre show and tell them "you know, it's people like you who are the reason why men can't have close friendships." Which is why our flag means death is so important to not only queer folk but queer folk who were in fandoms of live action shows that maliciously queerbaited them, or the queer folks in animated fandoms who lamented with the creators of animated kids TV shows that all they could get was a kiss at then end. Cause for the first time in a long time for a lot of these people they can let their guard down and are free to make queer headcanons. The fandom has even inspired the actor who plays Jim, Vico Ortiz, to pursue their own top surgery because of a popular fancanon of Jim getting top surgery from the chief/doctor crewmate helped assure Ortiz that getting top surgery wouldn't disrupt the show. And even if OFMD didn't get a season 2 the fans would have still gotten a canon nonbinary character, a scene where an entire pirate ship says they don't care if their very gay crewmate is sleeping around with everyone else, and a kiss from the two main characters that proved that the happiness they gave each other wasn't just 'bromance.' Oh my, I wrote a lot. . . Happy pride month gays!!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️

I fear America will never get 'representation' right, not just with gays but in general. The ruling that Hollywood had to include a certain PERCENTAGE of x number of minorities in every film to qualify for the Oscars (or whatever that was) is proof that the focus is all wrong. Nobody wants to be a token. Or maybe they do. I don't. Rules like that guarantee the focus will be on unnatural, forced inclusion rather than quality storylines. You can't focus on two things at once and give both equal attention. They already have proven that they can't do the diversity thing right, now there's a literal quota. Ugh. Excellent vid by the way.

This is brilliant-you perfectly encapsulated why Our Flag Means Death felt like such a victory and such a beautiful RELIEF. I especially appreciated the discussion of queerbaiting-watching OFMD for the first time, I genuinely didn’t believe that they were really going to confirm the romance until the beach kiss. We’ve all been burned before, and I was afraid to let myself hope that this time would be different. I want to send this video to everyone I know. I want to somehow convince all of my straight friends who “Don’t Get It” to watch it.

I absolutely love this video, I've always hated the "gay kid comes out and gets bullied" trope (despite being that kid) and you finally put a reason to why, thank you.

i hate to say it... i've been checking the channel everyday waiting for this video......... THE ANTICIPATION

That queerbaiting subject made me realized how much I doubt myself when I pick up on queer characters and most times it is actually right! Once I was watching this series and it was mainly about a gay couple but then they introduced a new woman character who had romantic clues towards another woman in the show. I watched it with suspicion like is this gonna be a lesbian couple?? But I was like nah, I’m overthinking it, they would never. And then they ACTUALLY did make them a couple and I doubted myself until it was confirmed! Like as a queer woman Ik what attraction towards another woman can look like and I was STILL doubting myself cuz of the amount of queerbaiting there is in media

I think someone mentioned it down below, but you kinda did glossed over just how normal The Owl House was about queer rep. Yes, a lesbian relationship was at the forefront of the story but there was other rep as well (a non binary character having a long standing relationship with the main protag’s female caretaker with mutual feelings. That female caretaker’s sister being aspec. And one of the main protag’s best friends causally having two dads.) I understand what you meant by lesbian relationships being treated as more “pure” than mlm relationships and I agree. But if we take into consideration of TOH existing, the normalizing of queerness didn’t start at OFMD. It probably didn’t even start with TOH, but normalizing queerness took a huge step with TOH and it continued with OFMD.

Ugh, the rhetoric about being chastised for reading queer subtext hit hard. I used to find it so damaging when my heterosexual friends and family would talk down to me about it. Worst still, I would feel like I couldn't be apart of that Media, that those characters and their experiences "couldn't" be mine; they were heterosexual exclusive.

Speaking of queerbaiting and capitalism, a lot of anime utilizing this appealing to queer audiences (and honestly straight women) with heavily coded male characters. It allows a homophobic country to appeal to representation-starved fans from another homophobic country. Official art fuels this as many of them depict not-so-subtle and not-so-canon male relationships (getbackers, neon genesis, and bsd are all guilty of this)

I genuinely believe that the worst thing to come out of capitalism is the idea of “the only motivation to make Art is to make profit”. I want to make Art for Art’s sake. I want to create because that is what I want to do with my life. I want to tell a story for the sake of getting it out there. It cuts me to the core to see so many artists and animators and writers and creatives having to compromise their vision for the sake of someone else’s wallet. What I love about OFMD is that it feels like no compromises were made. It felt like it was telling exactly the story that it wanted to. I hope that one day, hopefully in my lifetime, we get to a point where money isn’t a part of the creative process. Where not only *everyone* can afford to create, not just the rich and well off. But the things that they do create are made on their own terms. Without compromise. Where people are allowed to just… make.

“but in the spirit of gay piracy I'm also scamming you” sorry I needed to write this down it made me laugh a little more than normal

the frase "hey, gay! u wanna act gaily daily?" has been stuck in my head for two days now. thanks for the video, it was really interesting and inspiring, and its quality... so good! I'm going to rewatch OFMG now :^

for me this whole story is so wild. we all have heard about black beard and all his adventures, but it was only after the show that we get to know that the "gentleman pirate" was real, and he and blackbeard met (and maybe something else happened). i know "they were good friends" erases A LOT of queer stories, but it makes me sad to really think about it and imagine all the great stories that we won't ever know. i'm so glad to be alive to see this show being so successful

it feels like alex had a certain quota he had to hit in terms of mentioning james mcavoy

I've been watching AreTheyGay for a very long time now, since the AreTheyGay johnlock video to this one. Seeing how much this channel has improved and how much the quality and just everything has improved makes me really happy. I cannot express how much this channel has just taken all my thoughts out of my head and put it into words that makes sense. This video is now probably one of my favorite. A genuine thank you for this channel from a fellow queer :)

I was the person in my friend group that checked OFMD out first, so I went into it not knowing it was a gay pride show but when Ed and Stede had that beautiful moment in the bathtub (I guess only Ed was in the bathtub) I…was…TERRIFIED! Because, because I had been burned by queerbaiting more times than I wanted to think about and with everything going on currently, I knew my heart just couldn’t take it. So I stopped watching it. I waited until I heard confirmation of their relationship and I took a chance on the writers, creators, actors and it’s the most scared I’ve been. It felt like they were revealing a secret to the world, that we ARE just like everyone else. That we aren’t magic and we still fuck up like everyone else. But also that we can find love as well, just like anyone else. Moving forward, I was the one to tell my friends to check it out with the tagline (anything the story clearly promises on, they deliver. No queerbaiting) and it’s sad that I had to do that but Hollywood used and abused our community to the point that no one trusts them when they say it’s queer/gay (which is probably why they themselves didn’t advertise the show as #lgbtq)

there's something that has always bothered me about queerbaiting. it's usually marketed toward straight cis women, isn't it? and that's why the couple or the characters depicted as potentially gay are usually male. of course it attracts both queer people and straight women, but there are more straight women overall, so they're the focus. i feel like people kinda don't talk about that side of it enough

Companies June 1st: Hi gay 👋 July 1st: Bye ***** 🖕

Hello, I'm black and queer (a republicans jumpscare as I call myself), and I really enjoyed this video. I bring up being black because a while ago I watched a video (I think called "How to back"?) that delved into how to write a black (or any POC) character. The summary of the whole thing was that you don't always have to write a black character. You can just write a character that happens to be black. There doesn't always need to be a commentary on racism in the same way we don't constantly want to watch queer people be sad. Like... company organized pride parades and owning a denim jacket compares the same way that representations of "the hood" do to waking up to R&B on a Saturday cause you need to clean the house. One has a queer (black) aesthetic, while the other is a queer (black) experience. Great job as always, I've got Taxes to evade, peace out

I will never stop being absoluetly amazed at your gay excellence! Keep up the hard work! Your youtube channel is amazing!

Gracias por el video! I've been talking about rainbow capitalism with my fellow queer friends ever since the beginning of the month because this year in Italy we are going back to the "traditional" pride with an insane amount of multinational trying to rainbow wash themselves. Last year because of covid regulations it was just a sit in and no multinational thought it was worth it to promote their business, but this year, it's going back to the usual capitalism-filled and cop-friendly pride parade and I'm do tired of it. Also being a latina I feel like most white lgbt+ people especially in Europe do not really understand why it makes me uncomfortable to see Nestlé at pride while being surrounded by cops. But anyway, great video as usual! Thank you for always bringing extremely structured and information-filled videos.

On gay men in cartoons - Owl House, which you mentioned, had Willow and her two dads. Same in The Dragon Prince with Rayla's two dads. Also, while not a cartoon, Eternals come to mind, which had one of the Eternals being in a gay relationship with a man and they adopted this boy... Now that I think of it, there are a lot of dads amongst gay men in modern media.

I'm a cishet man, but I grew up surrounded by queer people, and to this day a majority of my friends are LGBT+. I heard about Our Flag Means Death and immediately made my friends watch it with me, and we immediately fell in love with the show. It's just amazing how, for once, a show is just showing love the way that I've always seen it growing up; people fall in love with who they fall in love with, and no one questions it. While there's merit to a lot of other queer media, I'm nonetheless exhausted by all the 3-hour misery simulators that just seem to capitalize on queer trauma or dramatize it for a cishet audience. This video is really well made, and, as a hardcore socialist and a history Master's degree student, I really do love all the work and attention to detail.

Exactly what I needed for the sociology exam I have in a week lmao for real tho, this video is amazing and really shows how much effort you've put in it 🏴‍☠️🏳️‍🌈

I love pirates I love them enought that I started to write a whole movie with 3 main poly characters, I have wrote around 25 characters for it, gave all of them ther own stories from small to big simply becuse I love pirates that much Long live pirates (Also shout out to them for just absorbing abelism It just didn't exist for them as long as you coud kick ass or make a plan you were good)

Worth noting that in Owl House, Willow has two dads, and the show's not afraid to give them screen time. And that's to say nothing of Raine. It's just that the protagonist of the show happens to be female, and here we are. Though given how hard Dana Terrace had to fight with Disney over this representation, only to later get cancelled for "not fitting the Disney brand" (hella sus), I definitely wouldn't deny that a mlm protag relationship wouldn't have gotten past the censor.

Half of the whole reason I stopped consuming TV/Movie Media’s was because I didn’t see any normalization of Queer men and Trans women. I appreciate this video, thank you for your work. x

THE PRODUCTION VALUE.... Chef's kiss

I’m having a really tremendously shit day and “J. Edgar Hoover, yaaas!” made it a good bit better. Thanks for bringing a smile to a gay commie’s face

I maintain that the Dean and Castiel thing is the most baffling phobic thing I've ever seen in fandom. Like... One's an angel who literally fell from grace for this guy and would do it again, the other considers this angel, a supernatural being, something he's been trained to hate, to be one of the best people he knows, and someone worth fighting anything or anyone to try and help. That's not subtext, that's text. It can absolutely be homoromantic. Hell, it's one of those rare beautiful things in a show dedicated to the Winchesters having the most f*ked up relationships with their family, the world, each other... Pretty much everything.

The worst part of Love Simon is it's based on a book that's not just about coming out, it's about a happy gay relationship, it's about acceptance of self, coming out is a smaller part of the plot. And the movie turns the characters into empty shells of their personality. It just really bothers me.

The amount of work you had to put into this video is amazing to me. From the paper animation, to your research, editing, lighting, etc. Bro!

Im pretty sure Karl Marx was gay tbh

I guess, in my head, I like to boil this down to being about telling queer stories without always turning them into queerphobia stories. You were kinda dismissive of Owl House here, but I feel like it's a great example of exactly that - an escapist fantasy world where queer characters get to exist without being oppressed for being queer. It's valuable because it gives one a glimpse into the oppression-free world we are working towards and makes it seem reachable within a reasonable time frame. The point you made about animated lesbians being the safest option to go for does stand, though, I'm inclined to agree.

On a less content-focused note, i really enjoyed the "effects" and the way you animated everything (really not sure what terms to use but it looked v good and worked really well)

"Karl Marx was not...gay" well, I'll let Engels be the judge of that

Alex please iron your unnaturally large rainbow flag background

while you were talking about the lack of representation of relationships between more aged people, I remembered Love is Strange. It's a beautiful and very gentle movie about two senior gentlemen deciding to get married after many years of being together. It speaks of some serious matter, like rekindling a long relationship like that or managing grief, but never paints it in drama or tragedy. On the contrary, it's one of the softest movies i've ever seen.

I was totally with you till you said "Queerbaiting isn't a thing that usually happens to 2 women" and I'm sorry Rizzoli & Isles, Once Upon a Time, Supergirl. Queerbaiting is all over and we've both suffered from it.

"that Queen phase in high school" don't read me like that

When you said that the visibility isn't really enough and doesn't lead to the help we need... I agree. I feel my life is falling apart, I've been in the closet my whole life, and despite being the most visible lgbtq people have ever been, there are still barely any resources to help us even stay alive. What resources do exist are underfunded and not wide reaching. What has target ever done for me when half my mental health issues are related to being lgbt+, and maybe a good portion of my problems stems from the owner class that rules the huge corporation trying to feed off of my lack of acceptance and steal my money. My money that does not exist

Thanks, your script gave me this internal monologue: "Wow, I'd love to have homosexual propagandist as a job title...but that feels a bit too close to influencer or thought leader, which perpetuate capitalist hierarchies that are fundamentally anti-queer. I wonder how much 'propagandist' it takes before it crosses the line into perpetuating the same things it would fundamentally oppose or if it can even be reconciled in a...Oh shit, the deadline my boss gave me for that project is in 40 minutes"

This show felt so different from the start. But the scene where Stede's wife is talking about what love feels like for her and says she hopes he finds it and he says he thinks he has. And then she asks "What's her name" and he says, "His name is Ed". That scene blew me away. It's the first time I've ever seen a coming out scene that didn't feel forced. It just felt so natural and beautiful.

After this show the bar has been set so high I feel like I can't watch anything else without being disappointed

I'm so here for the new anarcho-communist revolution arc of AreTheyGay

My god the presentation is so fun to watch. So creative, supports the video, doesn't distract. This must have been a brutal amount of work and time.

I was terrified from this thumbnail that the point of the video was that the horrifying rightward creep of the Overton window meant that appealing to the gay consumer was no longer as profitable as appealing to the homophobe, and we were gonna see businesses stop bothering to do even what they do. Relief to see it wasn't that. The right hates their presence, I hate their omnipresence. The right hates me and my friends, I hate things that crowd out the stories and lives of me and the friends I love. Disney doesn't want gay characters, they want Their First Gay Character. There's a difference. Queerbaiting for brownie points, but not with the presence of queerness, but baiting with the importance of queerness. We deserve to watch something and know that someone can't edit our existence out for the Russian Market and no one would notice the missing two seconds of footage. Is there a word for that?

"if you don't speak 2014 tumblr..." I CHOKED

This channel is such a gem!!! Just discovered you and you should have triple the subs you currently have.

i'm only like 5 minutes in but this is already the best video you've ever made?? the craft and quality of this??? hello???? this must have taken forever - and it was so worth it!!

People keep asking for official merch for OFMD but I think that's also what I love about it, it's not marketed to make the most t-shirt sales or what makes the best lego model but instead tells a great story that in turn inspired hundreds of creators to make things out of love for the show & the characters and share them with each other.

As a nonbinary lesbian, I love the representation that I’ve found in animation - because in my experience, a large majority of it is actually *made* by lesbian or other wlw writers. Writers who had to fight tooth and fucking nail to get the representation in. In some ways, I feel lumping shows like She-Ra together with something like LoK misses some nuance. In my opinion, sapphic love is allowed to be shown in two instances: one, when a sapphic person has to physically fight a room full of executives to the death. Two, under the condition that the sapphics can be read around, dismissed as “just friends” and ABOVE ALL, remain 100% accessible to men. I see this happen especially with rep of bisexual women, and it breaks my fucking heart. Straight men will slap the label bisexual on a woman so they can center her narrative around men, show romantic involvement with men, while being suspiciously silent when it comes to her relationships with women - platonic OR romantic. I feel this is a problem something like Legend of Korra suffers from. Our Flag Means Death is unequivocally amazing for representation - but it isn’t flawless either. There are precious few women in the show, and sapphic rep is nowhere to be seen. I’m not saying that it should be “”””cancelled”””” or whatever - but as much as I enjoy it, OFMD is not the universal queer rep people act like it is, and I have to wonder if it would ever have been taken seriously if the story featured lesbians in the starring role instead. I am so glad that OFMD got made - things can be flawed and still be really good! This is just my critique from a sapphic perspective. Godspeed to all the mlm out there who are FINALLY getting to have some incredible compassionate representation, and here’s hoping future seasons will give some badass lady pirates too :)

ahh i got so excited when i saw the notification! and was then crushed by my weak human body’s need for sleep. i can’t wait to watch tomorrow and hope you have an excellent day!! you create brilliant videos and i love your sense of humour!

i had a conversation with someone i know recently and they said that they think women are more likely to fall towards bisexuality while i personally thought that women aren't necesarilly more bisexual just more permissable of intimate relationships with eachother and they couldn't understand that so i had to explain to them that probably a lot of men do want to fool around and find out but that they won't want to anymore if it gets verbally or physically beaten out of them because any male intimacy is automatically seen as gay and often bad or atleast less good i think this fits here

I literally got an Amazon pride month as before this video, where they said that they explain to their workers what it means to be queer?? My guy, you won’t let them pee

Fantastic video, such laborious backgrounds and stuff! It supportes your voice over in a very natural way. Cutting out all those logos is such an effort and I very much appreciate the work you put in your videos. Loved it

Gentleman Jack is too underrated. Like, OFMD is a bona-fide Classic, but man. C'mon.

I'm only 17 or so minutes into this video so far, but I love how you're able to incorporate humor while still communicating a serious message!

"An obsession with reading gay subtext in everything" that says it right there, when I was younger I thought other people were just obsessed with thinking everything has something to do with gayness. Its only as i've gotten older that i've realized these shows really were trying to make people think there was something going on that wasn't

i watched the new season of the umbrella academy yesterday, and i loved that Victor just came out, and that was it, it's Victor now. Truly transition goals. and it reminds of the natural, just existing vibe from OFMD. no tension about x-phobia just existing as a queer person.

I was just wondering why this one took awhile but YOUR PRODUCTION QUALITY! This is amazing and so well worth the wait!

Something about the way you've described OFMD reminds me of Xena, which, being the 90s, did have to dance around censors, but shows a surprisingly wonderful and romantic adventure couple travelling the anachronistic ancient world they were living in and being in love.

As well-researched, deeply interesting, and hilarious as always - I always walk away from your videos feeling like I understand more about the world.

I’ve been waiting so long to see a video essay on this channel and you know what, it’s worth the wait.

this video also somehow led me to thinking about the show 'barry' and it's character NoHo Hank. they do a similar thing with him in that his sexuality is largely undiscussed but to a queer audience he slowly seems more and more gay as the show progresses. at one point, he does express attraction to a man (hilariously, might i add) and this could have easily been queerbaiting, but instead the show literally just paired the two guys up in a very straightforward way (the newest season just starts with them as an established couple) and then treated them with the same level of respect and playfulness as any other character on the show. no homophobia or need to come out, although it being set in modern times, there is the implied consequence of homophobia in the context of their jobs, but that hasnt even occured so far. and the show itself isnt at all about sexuality, nor is hank just seen as 'the gay one'. i dont think it's as subversive as ofmd but i really hope this kind of gay representation catches on! great vid btw!!

As someone who is Ace and Aro, media has pretty much forgotten we exist :( (and we have to pretend to be ok with the world thinking that we are all Sheldon from Big Bang Theory). Really enjoyed the video, and could relate to many of the frustrations you expressed!

Dammm, that production quality!

i have been camping in your account since you started teasing this video

Just got piratebaited into a sociology lecture 😮

I had no clue that this was about Our Flag Means Death until just before you started advertising your merch. I legit just thought this was an analysis of our current society but kinda gay.

The evolution of this channel lights my life

53:00 idk if I'm included in gay community. I'm closeted straight passing national minority girl in Russia. So i cant belong to my national community, cause sadly it doesn't exist (or too underground). Also i can't associate with russian gay community, which more open to russian gay guys. So I'm part of internet LGBTQ community, cause it's only way to connect to my identity in safe way. But am i seen, cause i can only communicate to KZfaq algorithm.

Also the characters that are more palpable, usually perform theur gender in the "normal" way, like it's pretty unusual to see a butch woman, or even a flamboyant gay man, like Lucius, the maximum a gay man can be feminine in tv, is usually Kurt Hummel. Also, wlw to be seen as predatory, it depends usually on how they perform gender, like a butch or androgynous women are seen as predatory a lot of the time. Oh yeah, and for the adventure time and legend of korra things, they only managed to show it in the end, because the networks didn't want to show "that" in a kids show, AT had confirmed that they had a relationship about 5 years earlier, and the legend of korra creators wanted a kiss, but had to settle for them holding hands

I think the Sherlock issue gets into an overlooked issue that when left ambiguous obvious asexual characters are assumed to be gay. Leaving basically no asexual representation in media.

I’ve never been this early wtf

For some reason I didn’t expect this to be about ofmd when I clicked on it, but I’m so delighted that it is 😭

37:00 love the bisexual lighting

I'm a sociologist and this video is just honey to my ears. 🥰I fell in love with your channel after the video about Hannibal, you always do a thorough analysis. Thanks for the great content!✨

flexing that sociology degree i see

I love your videos so much. Like the more recent ones especially! Love the social theory bits about it.

I wish I was a high school teacher so I could play this for my students on the last day of school which is also in June in this universe

I think you make a really good point about how our society is more permissive of wlw relationships in kids shows (and for the most part, only kids shows) because it sees femininity as less predatory. It’s just really evident in the way that these wlw relationships present; both of the women are always incredibly feminine. Don’t get me wrong, as a lesbian I appreciate the representation, but it always just feels so fake. Like, yay the sapphics got together, but they don’t actually look like myself or any of my sapphic friends. The sapphic community, and especially the lesbian community, is missing so fucking much of our personality and history when you take away our masculinity. The only sapphic character I can think of who you could maybe consider butch is Netossa from SPOP, and she’s barely even a side character. (You can make an argument for Catra too, but I feel like it’s also very telling that the lesbian who is allowed to be masculine is the villain for 90% of the show.) At the end of the day, we’re allowed to be lesbian if and only if we look and act exactly like cishet women

Seriously, your videos are an enrichment to my life. This one again was mindblowingly well researched and explained, putting into words what I've been thinking (or maybe more feeling) about vaguely and I just wanted to thank you for that. Keep on rocking on

As a wanna-be writer/story builder, who is also GAY, this is absolutely important to me, I am watching this twice!!

Vou comentar em português mesmo. Que aula amigos, deu até vontade de estudar sociologia. Eu ainda não vi a série mas pretendo mudar isso logo depois de ver esse vídeo. Fico muito contente em ver a evolução dele ao longo dos anos que acompanho o canal.

The love and care you put into your work with these videos really shine through. Thank you for talking about these subjects in such an innovative way!!

Ok, this seems very out of place next to all the other comments but i’ve been waiting for this for about 2 months and omg it was so worth it!!! I love this video so much and i just want to say THANK YOU.