Once upon a time...
In our 'Carrie', our Prom King is crowned not just for popularity or grades, but after competing in a series of competitions. These include of course the all important speedo walk across the stage. His fellow students vote on confidence, strut, and of course how well he fills out the spandex.
Most of us grew up up in a mostly heteronormative work where children's stories, fairy tales and even holiday characters are depicted as being straight. Sure, we had our suspicious when we looked at some characters and TV special, (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) but they were still created for a mostly heteronormative world.
Carrie
One of the themes I have loved exploring the last few years is putting a homonormative twist on traditional stories and characters, I was inspired in large part though artist Richard Rothstein's series of homonormative fairy tales in which the New York photographer put his own stamp of The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood and Beauty & The Beast. In those stories, the ending was always about the princess finding their prince.
This narrow scope of story made it difficult for many of us growing to see ourselves in the stories we heard and read. It makes sense then, we would find a way to include ourselves somewhere within the series. Like so many young guys, when I was alone outside, I wasn't running to take a leap likes Superman, I was twirling into my Wonder Woman suit.
When it comes to the work of Stephen King, there isn't a lot of representation. Even when their is, it isn't often positive. The few gay characters within King's world are often stereotypes, and usually don't make it to the end of the story. (think IT.) That's why I knew when I decided to make King's work a focus, I needed to put a homonormative twist on some of the stories.
Pet Semetary
This post began the same way most of my stories do, with one images. I saw an image of a hot guy tied to a bed and thought it reminded me a bit of King's Misery. I searched and found another ten or so images, and thought that would be it. That was until, I discovered the work of Harlekinno The Host.
It was actually Harlekinno's Misery inspired art work (below) that led me to reach out to him about featuring the image. He responded by sending me back several other King inspired images created from his own point of view. So sure, King's work maybe mostly set in an heteronormative world, but like every story we read growing up, we as readers, not only interpret, but visualize the story and characters in a way that fits and makes sense for us.
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