Edinburgh Fringe blog: Why queer superheroes wouldn’t save the city

I don’t think queer superheroes would be saving the city.

I think they’d be saving themselves from texting someone named Jacob who has both a family and a ketamine addiction.

They’d be saving middle school kids in the middle of nowhere America from pastors teaching entire youth groups that gay people are damned to hell. The hero would fly there dramatically at the last second, attempt a heartfelt speech about acceptance, get annoyed halfway through, and shoot the pastor with a gun.

Gay superheroes wouldn’t be that different from straight superheroes, except they’d complain less. If they got bitten by a radioactive spider, they wouldn’t go fight crime; they’d go to the free clinic because now they’ve got another mysterious rash. If they fell into a vat of acid, they’d try to scoop some into a mason jar because somebody at the club said you can smoke it.

They wouldn’t spend all their time fighting villains either. Half the time, they’d be helping sew a supervillain’s cape back together because the villain has a drag set tonight and their look has to be perfect.

The real villains would be less cartoonish. Shame. Small towns. Your uncle telling you tap dancing is “too gay” while forcing his son to gut a deer at age 11 to prove he won’t grow up using a basic moisturiser. The kind of people who think masculinity is stored in camouflage cargo shorts and only allow tears to leave their eyes in the privacy of their man cave.

And honestly, queer superheroes probably wouldn’t have the cleanest moral compass either. They’d absolutely want to save people, but they’d also know when to cut their losses — because they have years of experience dragging their blackout drunk friend out of a bar before abandoning them safely in an Uber with a plastic cup filled with warm water and a prayer.

I don’t want a perfect queer hero. I want one who feels real. Someone vain, reckless, mid-boner, mid-breakdown, maybe even a little pathetic. A hero whose day starts with buying poppers at noon and ends with stopping a hate crime outside a club while wearing a leather harness and one dangling earring.

Straight superheroes are allowed to be narcissists, alcoholics, billionaires with rage issues, or literal vigilantes who beat people unconscious in alleyways, and audiences still view them as heroic. Queer characters, meanwhile, are often expected to be inspirational first and human second.

A queer superhero probably wouldn’t even consider themselves the hero. They’d just be thrilled to finally be allowed to tell a full story that doesn’t end in a lesson.

Queer people deserve to see themselves in mythology even when they’re a blistering mess. Because for a lot of queer people, survival already feels superhuman.

Friendliest plays at Gilded Balloon (The Nook) from 8 to 31 August (not 18)