Never Fade Away || Virgil and Richie (original) (raw)

[	mood	|	accomplished	]

One of the ways people tend to "disprove" slash pairings - which, the way I'm using the term, are same-sex pairings that aren't absolute canon in the series/movie of choice. For instance, I don't consider Brian/Justin from "Queer as Folk" a slash pairing, because it actually DOES exist in the series; I'm not sure if this is colloquially agreed upon, so I just wanted to clarify - is to scoff that so-and-so "isn't gay", so that is that. Which is lame in and of itself because sexuality exists along a spectrum, blah blah preferences blah you don't have to read it blah fuck blah. Yeah.

But anyway. Since I'm jonesing on Static Shock a lot right now, and one of its popular slash pairings, specifically, I've been doing a lot of Google searches. For me, what makes Virgil/Richie a very canon-realistic pairing is that Richie's comic book counterpart, Rick, actually IS gay. As in, it is an ONGOING STORY ARC in which Virgil finds out and deals with it and other conflicts that arise because of it. And finally, after a LOT of searching, I stumbled on a website that offers up brief yet helpful summaries of the 45 volumes of comics, as well as the four-part "Rebirth of the Cool" that was released shortly after the original comics went out of syndication.

I posted a more fangirlish (friends-locked) version of this in my personal journal, but I thought it would be potentially interesting here, too. So without further ado: ( The proof is in the pudding.Collapse )

Obviously, mileage is still gonna vary on this; there's always the argument that the cartoon is only loosely based off the comic books after all. However, Virgil and Richie are a lot closer in the cartoon than they are even in the comics; it's obvious the cartoon was meant to showcase their being a duo, rather than Virgil belonging to a larger group of friends. So while Rick doesn't necessarily equate to Richie in every way, an argument can certainly be made that his homosexuality was meant to carry over, albeit subtly, into the show. Also, Dwayne McDuffie, the creator, says so ("It'll never come up in the show because it's Y-7 but as far as I'm concerned, Richie is gay"), and that's good enough for me.

Feel free to add your own thoughts/perspectives on this, particularly if you've actually read the issues in question!

* Cross-posted to dakota_bangs and the_gas_station.