I love being asexual. I love how it lets me understand the world. I love the ace community. I love headcanoning characters as ace. I love finding value in friendships and interests and knowing there’s more to passion than just sexual attraction. I love making dumb sex jokes despite being ace. I love flipping off purity culture by being ace and still advocating for the rights of allo queer people. I love accepting myself. I love being silly about society’s view of sex. I love how being ace lets me interpret and create art in unique ways. I love being able to live my ace life
I don’t know if I ever posted this shot from the desert in February 2018 of Michael and David (he’s getting mic'ed up, not mugged). It was the kind of panoramic shot that decides that Michael is a big floating giant head.
something I don’t really see mentioned or acknowledged at all is that “being in the closet” is a spectrum.
some people are only out to themselves.
some people are only out online.
some people are only out on specific websites or accounts.
some people are only out on a specific space on an account, such as a discord server.
some people are only out irl.
some people are only out when they’re in an area they don’t live in (such as the next city over, or on vacation).
some people are only out to their therapist and/or medical team.
some people are only out at school/uni.
some people are only out at work.
some people are only out to their family.
some people are only out to their friends.
some people are only out to their partner(s).
some people are only out to specific family/friends/partners.
some people express a muted or more “palatable” version of their identity in some or all spaces, not necessarily expressing the fullness of their identity anywhere but to themselves.
some people are partially or fully expressing their gender and/or sexuality, but not expressing other identity signifiers such as new pronouns or name.
or the above but express different versions of these signifiers in different circumstances or spaces.
some people express their identity fully, but don’t correct anyone who is “wrong” or tell anyone the full extent of their identity, with some answering when asked and others not.
some people have come out “fully”, and gone back into the closet “fully.”
some people are stealth, and are very cautious about who they allow (if anyone) to know their full identity.
and most queer people are incredibly complex mixtures of all of the above scenarios, and many more. I can’t possibly list them all.
we cannot meaningfully divide experiences between those who are “in/out of the closet” (full stop) because individual experience is way more nuanced than that. and everyone’s definition of either in/out is going to be different, ranging from “if 1 other person knows, you’re out of the closet” to “unless everybody knows the full extent of your identity, you’re not out of the closet.”
I wanted to talk about The Broken Wing Job and a thing I noticed about Parker.
I think we all know that Parker is definitely Autistic-coded, though to exactly what extent that was directly intentional depends largely on who you ask.
What I noticed is Parker’s initial hostility toward Amy. She gets upset because Amy is trying to be friendly towards her in a way Parker interprets as insincere.
I think a lot of Autistic people can relate to the experience of being suspicious towards people who act friendly, especially if it might be insincere, because social interaction can be filled with invisible landmines. This can result in people who do the opposite of masking. Basically, seeing conversation/ friendly overtures as a type of conflict and refusing to play the game. Rather than try to figure out the rules for optimal conversation (and risk getting them wrong and being ostracized), they just skip to choosing to make things as uncomfortable for the other person to avoid trying and failing.
I think we see Parker do this a lot throughout the series. I mean, her first instinct when she feels social conflict while grifting is literally to start stabbing. She never masks to make the team more comfortable, even when she learns how to play the game to grift.
So, when it comes to The Broken Wing Job, Parker acts as weirdly as possible. See: “Best meal I ever had was in French prison.” I see this as her trying to communicate ‘I am not like you’ in an attempt to get Amy to acknowledge the communication barrier and leave her alone.
HOWEVER, as the episode goes along, Amy not only accepts all the strange Parker gives off, but shows Parker some of her own strangeness back. (See: all of the people watching).
Amy met Parker on her level and communicated in a way Parker understood.
This is really important because even her teammates sometimes fail to do this. They don’t always 'get’ Parker, and because of this they can sometimes dismiss her. I think Eliot and Sophie are the worst about this.
Sophie gets Parker sometimes, but as a grifter she relies on the rules of neurotypical interaction, and can sometimes get frustrated with Parker, or try to get her to do it the “normal” way.
Eliot out of all of them is the most stereotypical man out of all of them, and as such he has a strong tendency to enforce this worldview. He does this to Hardison, at least originally, when he sincerely does not value computer skills because he deems them “geeky/ nerdy”. Similarly, he is the one who most frequently chides Parker to get her to be less weird. That said, he tends to speak straight forwardly, say what he means, and honor his word. So out of all of them, he may be the one she understands the best.
