For The Record I Still Ship OliCharles Mostly Just To Be Silly (and My Fanfiction Often Does Include

for the record I still ship OliCharles mostly just to be silly (and my fanfiction often does include some cheating) but this is so real </3333

People who act like Only Murders in the Building isn't Queer anymore because either their old man yaoi ship didn't happen or because Mabel isn't currently dating a woman need to get over themselves immediately. Bi people are still Bi when they're in a "straight passing" relationship. And yes, Oliver and Charles would make an adorable couple, but Oliver and Loretta are the sweetest couple ever and you're depriving yourself of enjoying a wonderful storyline for no reason. (And if rep is what you're after, how about supporting the rep that is older women getting quality roles, let alone quality ROMANTIC roles, because Hollywood treats women over the age of 35 like garbage and this relationship is like seeing a unicorn in the wild lmfao).

Mabel and Alice dated. That's a thing that happened. Pretending it didn't or doesn't count so you can be performatively mad at the show for no reason is literally Bi phobia, stop it.

Mabel has a new love interest every season! How cool is that? That never happens for Women! Unless they're the joke "slut character" that the show doesn't really respect. But this show does respect Mabel and treats it as a normal, unremarkable, unremarked upon amount of dating for a young woman. Usually that's a "man thing" like James Bond and his Bond Girls who come and go through each storyline. How rad is it that we get these great storylines for female characters now?

Sazz Pataki (pretty sure she's a lesbian but definitely some flavor of queer) is Charles' oldest friend and stunt double and has dated TWO of his girlfriend's lmfao. Jan Bellows is queer, and Cookie is also queer! Howard (the cat guy) and his boyfriend Johnathan are right there and so are Detective Donna Williams and her wife Kiara and son Keith.

Not to mention the tragedy of whatever Uma and Bunny were to each other because it was definitely something. (Ok maybe that one is just my shipper goggles at work but tell me you don't see it I dare you).

Honorable mention to Charles' kinda daughter Lucy who might be thinking about various pronouns aka also casual Queer rep.

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I also want to talk about the weird edge to some of the commentary about Oliver and even Martin Short as a real person. If you think about it, some of it is both weirdly homophobic and also inadvertently trying to press toxic masculinity standards onto straight men. I'm referring to the "Wow I can't believe that Martin is straight! There's NO WAY that man is straight! There's no straight explanation for that!" kind of things. Or the "Oliver dating Loretta is so unrealistic, that is a gay man right there! The show is ruined!" people. I get the jokes about how flamboyant Oliver is and a lot of them are fun, but some of them really do end up sounding like the same tired tropes of "emotional flamboyant man likes theater = gay and woman likes sports and cars and flannel = lesbian, uugg uugg."

As for the comments about Martin, look, his chemistry with Steve is off the charts, I get it, but they've been best friends for a thousand years and frankly if your friendship doesn't look a little gay from the outside, is it even really a friendship? lol. Martin Short is a real human being who was with a woman he clearly adored for 36 years, his wife Nancy Dolman, until she died of cancer. He's a confident and charming performer who's comfortable with himself.

I enjoy viewing the character of Oliver through a queer lens, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he at least did some experimenting in the 70's. (He mentioned orgies at some point, are you telling me he was the ONLY guy at the orgies? Come on Oliver!) I'd enjoy it if they explored some element of queerness to the character on the show and I wouldn't be that surprised if they did eventually do that. But there's a difference between that and a forceful attitude of; THERE IS NO WAY A MAN WHO BEHAVES LIKE THAT IS STRAIGHT!!! END OF STORY!!!

First of all, it's just not true. Lots of straight men in the performing arts (or just life in general) are incredibly flamboyant and comfortable with both themselves and things traditionally seen as "queer" and aren't afraid to express themselves beyond the narrow box traditional masculine values would limit them too. Circling back to my earlier points of old man yaoi and biphobia, just because your specific ship didn't happen on the show, it doesn't automatically make the character NOT queer. Again, Bi/Pan people exist. Oliver being in a relationship with Loretta doesn't automatically make him straight, why do I have to explain this on the queer people website?

Also Oliver has two hands, and this is what fanfiction is for. The fact that there aren't a ton of Oliver/Loretta/Charles fics on AO3 is astonishing to me.