The ‘Just Like Us’ Characters
The ‘Just Like Us’ portrayal of queer characters was originally a response to the harmful stereotypes of queer people. By writing their portrayal as heteronormative, the narratives challenge such stereotypes by a (shallow) attempt to ”normalize” queerness. 1/12
That ‘Just Like Us’ characters stem from a push away from harmful stereotypes indicates that its target audience is heteronormative. This mirrors the history of the boys’ love genre, including Heart of Thomas, whose audience was women, mostly teenagers and adults. 2/12
Wallace and Alexander note that such an attempt enforces heteronormativity, “even the most seemingly progressive notions of rhetorical agency create critical blindspots for themselves by overlooking the heteronormative erasure of queerness in literacy development.” 3/12
Directed deviancy from the ‘Just Like Us’ writing of queer characters can function as a measure of queerness within a narrative. Characters written under the ‘Just Like Us’ style are fundamentally going to be heteronormative in their portrayal. 5/12
The more complexity expressed within the characters, and the more deviance there is from the dominant culture, the easier it is to read the narrative as queer. 6/12
Heart of Thomas does not really deviate much from the ‘Just Like Us’ framework of queer narratives. While there is deviancy from the traditional nuclear family, it is not in an attempt to introduce queer familial structures, but more out of dramatic circumstance. 7/12
Oskar’s father finds out he is not the biological father of his child, kills his wife, and drops Oskar off at Schlotterbach. Marie goes through a few suitors until finding and marrying Julius Schwarz, who later adopts Erich, acting as his father. 8/12
The characters’ love for each other is mostly singular, devoted to one person. The major exception to this is Juli’s love for both Thomas and Siegfried, a love which then leads to his abuse and torture at the hands of Siegfried. 9/12
These do not challenge the idea of the nuclear family and are merely a portrayal of unfortunate circumstance. Siegfried’s villainy towards Juli can be seen as dissuasion against polyamory, enforcing the idea that romantic love should be restricted to a singular recipient. 10/12
Institutional deviancy is shown through Siegfried. The villainization and failure of Siegfried portrays the strength and stability the church maintains. Such stability is indicative of the heteronormativity in Heart of Thomas. 11/12
Heart of Thomas very closely follows the ‘Just Like Us’ framework to its setting and writing of queer characters. Its inclusion of queer characters, even as the primary characters of the story, is ultimately an inclusion into a heteronormative narrative. 12/12