Smth That's Lingers On My Mind Is How The Greasers Are Really Poor (great Observation) But Also A Lot

thinking about baby sodapop who was a sensory seeking child who would just eat everything

mama catches him gnawing on the counters, has to snatch him up and give him something else to chew on — she thought maybe he was just teething for an extra period of time than normal

which yeah, technically so, but it admittedly got a bit confusing at times when pops had reached for something one day only to find out his coke bottle was covered in spit. and little soda was sat there with his tongue stuck out like

"sodiepop, now what in the world are you doin'?"

"ah :D" replies baby soda, who smacks his head against the chair on accident as he goes to start on his next chewing victim

Gay people can't say "I love you" they have to sing a song about running away together and getting to watch the sunset and have a garden together then singing about how they ony feel alive because of each other. And they won't leave each other

MY BABBBYYY

lowkey feel bad bc I killed her parents but.. its fineee (@elsberryy for the idea ily <3)

Darry Curtis was always gay- the musical just makes it more obvious.

I know it was never Hinton’s INTENTION for any of her characters to be perceived as queer, she claims she didn’t write them that way, and that’s fine. In fact, I think reading The Outsiders as a group of straight men who have the bonds they do is actually a really great critique of toxic masculinity, in that we would see the contrast between their interactions one on one or alone with the group, compared to their macho, hyper masculine personas they showcase in public. HOWEVER, I think it’s incredibly hard to read it that way because Hinton accidentally and completely unintentionally made Darry Curtis one of the gayest characters in modern literature. It’s not far fetched. It’s not a stretch. I’m saying that if you have even a surface level understanding of subtext that it is obvious. Darry’s queerness is as open  in the novel as he is in his life- that is, it’s never said explicitly, but it’s VERY easy to see the signs. In fact, the way it’s threaded into the narrative but very talked around leads me to believe that even though Darry wasn’t out, it might have been an open secret within the gang- or at the very least they probably had some suspicions. 

For one, in the book Darry is never mentioned even once to have had a girlfriend, or even to have gone on dates, but we know he was popular and well liked. You can’t convince me that a handsome, popular football player, whose peers liked him enough to vote him Boy of The Year, didn’t have more than a few girls interested in him, but Pony’s narration never even alludes to Darry having been interested in one. For all he talks up Darry’s achievements, the scholarship he won, the future he could have had and everything he gave up, women/a girlfriend were never a part of it- which, given the time period and Darry’s reliance on hyper masculine social scripts, seems highly uncharacteristic unless there was a plausible explanation for his complete disinterest (ie. being gay). Now, examine this hyper masculinity a little further, and you can see it for what it is, a) a defence mechanism (because it separates him from stereotypes of what a gay men are like, so if he’s ‘manly’ enough no one will ever suspect or discover what he is) and b) the unfortunate complete opposite of that. Just like how hyper femininity characteristic to femme lesbians is off putting to men, the same is true to some degree about hyper masculine men being somewhat off putting to women. Not to the same degree, and probably not as obviously, but Darry’s  over the top masculinity might be the one thing effective in keeping (some) women away for reasons they can’t quite put their finger on. Point is, Darry was never a ladies man, to a degree that is very not heterosexual, especially for the time period.

So, now that we’ve established Darry’s complete disinterest in dating women,  his hypermasculine personality and it’s possible implications, let’s turn to other textual support for his queerness: his relationships with other male characters. I’m not talking about the gang- his interactions with all of them are very friendly/familial-  but he has a bond with Tim Shepard that is clear on the page but left largely unexplained (their weird eye contact and high mutual respect, the fact Tim was at their house once with no explanation), and his homoerotic run in/fight with Paul at the rumble. Both these relationships have plausible deniability- they’re not explicitly gay, but they’re also not NOT gay. Again, Hinton didn’t intentionally make Darry gay, but he very much is, and as far as closeted gay characters go, he’s a fairly well written one, because the subtext is very much THERE if you know what you’re looking for, but the queerness of his interactions is shrouded in this very real this COULD mean nothing characteristic of a lot of closeted queer interactions. 

Having said all this, I think the musical making Darry and Paul’s fight (somehow) even more charged and homoerotic than it is in the book was a wise choice, because a lot of the rest of the subtext was changed/missing from the musical adaptation. I’ve seen the ritfr analysis looking at the lyrics as they relate to Darry’s queerness, and I do think they follow the veiled/subtextual theme, but I don’t think they’re as explicitly gay as they’re touted to be. However, I do think the musical does a good job of highlighting Darry’s queerness given the medium they’re working with, and the actors do an amazing job portraying it without saying it outright, making it more obvious than it is on the page- but Darry was canonically gay in the book too, and let’s not pretend otherwise.

(Lmk if you want to see my analysis of the other Curtis’ queerness as it related to the book + musical).

💔

darrel curtis....

hey g- [was about to say “girlboss” reflexively but then realizes you’re transgender and i don’t wanna misgender you]boyboss- [remembers the patriarchy] boss- [remembers i hate capitalism] king- [remembers i hate the monarchy] friend. how’s it going?

Is Tumblr interested in Italian Brainrot?

I need to discuss the Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Tung Sahur and Ballerina Capputina ship

my they/them child named miso :3