The Mary Sue on DC Universe’s Young Justice: “What’s With All the Heterosexuality?”
The Mary Sue writer Katie Peter disparaged DC Universe’s Young Justice series for its lack of LGBTQ+ relationships questioning, “What’s with all the heterosexuality?”
Peter, while for the most part praising the show, decided to deride it based off its apparent lack of LGBTQ+ representation. She would describe the show as having an “intriguing and exciting plot.”
However, that didn’t appear to satisfy her as she noted, “The one thing the original seasons consistently dropped the ball on was LGBTQ+ representation.”
She would then flat out lie about the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in superhero media writing, “There are middle-ground stories going untold, and queer people exist everywhere in culture, not just where it makes a story more interesting. It would be refreshing to see that in superhero media, but executives insist that there isn’t any room for it.”
Peter apparently has never watched any of the Arrowverse shows on The CW at all. Many of the main characters in the Arrowverse are LGBTQ+. They include: Sara Lance, Nyssa al Ghul, Alex Danvers, Nia Nal, Curtis Holt aka Mr. Terrific, Leo Snart, Nora West-Allen, and Hartley Rathaway among others. And it’s not limited to these major players there are a number of minor characters that are LGBTQ+ as well.
In fact, the Arrowverse is actually introducing Batwoman as an LGBTQ+ lead in her own series played by Ruby Rose.
Deadpool 2 also featured a lesbian relationship between Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio.
Fox’s Gotham also features a number of LGBTQ+ characters. They include Penguin, Barbara Kean, Tabitha Galavan, and Renee Montoya.
The DC Universe’s Doom Patrol also features Larry Trainor aka Negative Man as a gay man.
There definitely doesn’t appear to be an aversion from executives to include LGBTQ+ stories.
Peter moves on and interestingly enough she admits that comics featuring LGBTQ+ characters get cancelled rather quickly, “What few LGBTQ+-led comics there are get cancelled relatively quickly, and these characters’ sexualities get erased from their onscreen counterparts. It’s exhausting, and at this point, it’s just improbable.”
Many critics of recent LGBTQ+-led comics will point out that the comics treat the characters as tokens. Their identity is all the character, they don’t have any heart and are basically an empty shell. Readers just don’t relate to those types of characters and the sales figures show that; it’s why the books get cancelled.
As for their onscreen counterparts seeing their sexualities erased, that’s another big whopper. In fact, it’s the opposite. Negative Man was not gay in the comics. Penguin was not gay in the comics. Nyssa al Ghul was hooking up with Oliver Queen in the comics. Michael Holt, the current Mr. Terrific in the comics is not gay. He had a wife and an unborn child.
After dropping a couple of big whoppers, Peter moves on to complaining about one of the most recent episodes of Young Justice where there are three kisses at the end of the episode. The episode in question is titled “Nightmare Monkeys.”
“The first kiss was between Beast Boy and his girlfriend and was mostly earned by the events of the episode, and that’s totally fine. The second was in response to the first, and was wholly unnecessary and also genuinely weird. The third was completely unprompted and took place between two characters who weren’t even in a relationship and who, aside from one semi-shared trauma, really have nothing in common.”
The second kiss is actually between Miss Martian and Conner Kent. The two have been an item since the first season and had been looking forward to a date since they’ve been stuck babysitting all the new kids on the team. There’s nothing weird about it.
As for the third kiss, it’s between Geoforce and Halo. It is an extremely quick scene, but is pay off after 12 episodes of the two characters beating around the bush.
After that, Peter points to a potential relationship between what she describes as “the space bug and the semi-female, semi-sentient martian spaceship.” She adds, “If Outsiders tries to sell me a heterosexual spaceship, I’m going to riot.”
The bug she is referring to is Forager from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Comics.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I’m pretty sure being attracted to a spaceship is called pansexual, at least that’s what they were calling Lando Calrissian in the Solo movie.
What do you make of Katie Peter’s disparagement of DC Universe’s Young Justice? Do you think the show has too many heterosexual relationships? What do you make of her ideas on executives not wanting to include LGBTQ+ relationships?
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