As some may have noticed, the screen capture gallery has been taken down completely. This is due to the constant deletion of the WINRAR files by our host. They believe that it’s an illegal form of pirating and has asked for us to stop. We complied and did attempted a different avenue with MegaUpload.

If you’re familiar with the current tech news then you are aware that MegaUpload has gone the way of the dinosaurs and now that avenue has closed. The screen capture gallery may return in the future but for right now we are letting the dead stay dead while we attempt to look for other ways we can pursue  having a screen cap site. In the meantime, this has just become a blog for myself while hosting all our fan fiction, original works and art. Sorry for the inconvenience guys.

Let me start this post by saying I consider myself a fan of every tv show I mention here. This is also a post primarily, if not solely, about gay rights and issues. If that offends you, don’t bother commenting. Just get off our site. If what I say here inspires you to comment, maybe start a debate, please go right ahead.

Like the subject title says, Glee is important. At first glance, the character of Kurt Hummel is nothing more than your usual fashion-obsessed stereotype of a gay teenager. In fact, for a portion of season one, that was all he seemed to be. It’s in the season one episode Preggers that Kurt comes out and for all the show’s faults, it does this so right. We initially see Burt as this quiet, forboring father figure who could easily not be happy to have a gay son. The fact that we’re led to believe this as the audience is deliberate, because we’re supposed to see what Kurt sees. As much as he loves Burt, every gay teenager at least considers the worst when they’re thinking about coming out. It was easily the most realistic storyline of those early episodes.

Of course, Kurt’s progression didn’t stop there. He developed a crush on the straightest guy in school, which is almost a rite of passage for a gay teen, dealt with bullying and found himself a boyfriend. The bullying itself, and the bully, is a subject I feel strongly about, and will no doubt be explored in another post. Spoiler: I like Dave Karofsky.

So, to the point of this post. Glee has Kurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson, Brittany S. Pierce, and Santana Lopez. Two gay guys, a bisexual woman and a lesbian. The show is a smorgasbord of the top four sexualities and identities, which is quite frankly, an amazing thing to see on tv. Yes, its 2011, the 21st century. And not to beat a dead horse, but you know what? Its not fucking enough.

Glee is popular, but it has its naysayers. That’s fine, a musical tv show about high school students is obviously not going to be everyones cup of tea. So let’s look at LGBT characters in other tv shows. I’ll preface this by saying its in no way a comprehensive list.

Battlestar Galactica, the reimagined series. A perfect example of a medium squandering the chance to show a healthly queer relationship. In the case of Galactica, that chance is ruined twice. We have the main series, which has no queer interaction between its primary characters. But if you happened to catch the webisodes, you’d see Gaita climbed out of a bunk he shared with a nameless, neverbeforeseen man. If by chance you saw the tv movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor, you’d know that Admiral Cain, played by the supremely talented Michelle Forbes, had a relationship with Gina, a number Six cylon. Like I said a couple of paragraphs ago, its not fucking enough.

Millions watched Galactica as it aired. Less would have seen the movie, and much less would have seen the webisodes. If something doesn’t appear in the narration of the main series, to be blunt, it doesn’t count. These are extras, pleasant to look at, but they don’t contribute to the main content. Simply put, its meaningless. I liked the Cain/Gina relationship, it was perfect in its fucked-upness and it gave extra creepiness to the abuse Gina suffered at the hands of the Pegasus crew, but that creepiness should have been conveyed to the viewers of the series, not just the hardcore fans who sought out the extra content.

Almost the same thing can be said for Stargate Atlantis. In the seventh episode of season five, we were introduced to the character of Captain Alicia Vega. In the original script, she essentially asks out the character of Jennifer Keller. In a world still under the rule of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, this would have so many interesting repercussions that until then, would have been relegated to the realms of fanfiction. However, this scene was cut and we only know Captain Vega was intended to be gay because producer Joseph Mallozi posted on his blog to tell us all this news. Of course, Captain Vega was promptly killed off.

Keeping with Atlantis for now, Mallozi also let it drop that he considered a character who had been on the show for years to be gay. (I would like not to link to his blog and give this jackass traffic, but unfortunately, I can’t find an article on the subject) Many fans consider this possible gay character to be Major Lorne, as he’s never been shown to have a girlfriend and he paints, which makes him sensitive. Excuse me while I roll my eyes ad nauseum. Mallozi has also been quoted, though an example of it eludes me now, as saying the reason this character has never been revealed, is because sexuality doesn’t matter. Its not an important issue.

Excuse my french once again, but fuck that. It shouldn’t be important, but it is. Still is. From season one of Atlantis, we have straight characters expressing their sexuality. Elizabeth angsts over leaving her boyfriend on Earth, John flirts with any woman with a pulse, and Rodney has two girlfriends over the course of five seasons. Though it was offscreen, Teyla actually has sex and gets pregnant by someone she’d only just started dating. All these things are expressions of sexuality, that Joseph Mallozi feels are not important. These “unimportant” storylines filled up a lot of screen time. But of course, these characters are straight and as such, Mallozi holds them to a different set of ideals.

The Stargate franchise redeemed itself in this aspect when it came to Stargate Universe, a mere year after the debacle of Captain Vega. The character of Camille Wray is set up to get in between the two male leads, as she works for an agency on Earth who have their own agenda. When she gets to go back to Earth every so often, she goes back to her partner, Sharon. Here we have this interesting character, who takes no crap from any of the strong men around her, but all she really wants is to get back home to her woman. She’s a very well written character, and one of my favourite on the show. It’s a genuine shame this incarnation of Stargate won’t continue past season two.

These two examples I’ve given are from huge shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was arguably bigger in its impact on popular culture than both Battlestar Galactica or Stargate in any of its incarnations, though an arguement could absolutely be made for SG-1. I grew up on BtVS, and it shaped who I was. I knew, and still do, all the main plot points, relationships and one liners. The show gave us Willow going through sexual experimentation in college and finding love with Tara, and later, affection with Kennedy. (Even later, for fans of the comic, with a cool-looking snake demon.) Later on, after Angel ended, we get what was my first introduction to authorial intent.

The character of Spike joined the cast of Angel the Series in its last season. Spike has a lot of history with the main character, Angel. Joss Whedon, creator of both Buffy and Angel, was heard to say on a commentary for the season five DVDs, “They were together for a very long time. You really think they never…”, in reference to Angel and Spike’s constant subtext throughout both series. Another example of authorial intent is the interview J.K. Rowling gave after the last Harry Potter book was published. She gave lots of details about her character post-Deathly Hallows, including who they ended up with. This included the news that Dumbledore was gay. The closest we came to knowing this from the actual source material was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when Dumbledore spent a lot of time with his “friend” Grindelwald, specifically in his bedroom.

While you could have seen this relationship as romantic, another person could have read it as a friendship. I don’t understand the point of either of these examples of authorial intent. They gain nothing. If you’re watching that commentary, you’ve already spent your money on the DVDs. If Joss thought that Angel and Spike had a sexual history, why wasn’t that shown on the show? I can only imagine its because they aired on the WB network, which prevented Willow and Tara from kissing until a year after they first got together. If you read the interview with J.K. Rowling, then you’ve probably read the books. Did these revelations add anything to a fan’s enjoyment of either Angel or Harry Potter? Not too much. I had already assumed Angel and Spike had hooked up at some point, though it was nice to hear my opinion validated by Joss.

Authorial intent, in these examples, has no agenda. The issues came earlier, behind the scenes of the source material. With Angel, the writers were limited by their network. J.K. Rowling didn’t explore Dumbledore’s relationship further because, while the books got progressively darker, they remained immensely popular with children and I’m sure she would rather have sold books than allow the last book in her series become a hotbed for a gay rights arguement.

All of this shows why Glee is important. Glee is out there. Its showing the world what its like to be a gay teenager. How scary it is to come out to your loved ones, how hard it is to be yourself and how you can actually accept who you are. More than that, it shows how a gay person can just simply be that: a person. Joseph Mallozi, please listen. A gay person could be a soldier, gay people ARE soldiers, and it would be okay to explore that on television. Battlestar, your show was glorious and gritty and while you tackled the issue of not allow abortions in a society that needed as many pregnancies as possible, surely you should have had the balls to tackle gay characters in your main body of work.

This is why Glee is superior to me. They have balls.