Literary Rips and Entendre Slips

when is tearing your dress not just making a slit?

The L Word, Queer As Folk, Pose, etc, are about how groups of specifically queer characters engage with their social circles. Heartstopper, Vida, etc. have main stories involve a character’s gay awakening, a central queer romance, etc., even if many of the characters aren’t queer.

But Legends of Tomorrow was (still is, by essentially any count) the queerest TV show not centered around queerness.

Legends about time-traveling don’t-call-them-superhero misfits saving (depending on the season): the world; all of history; the city of New York; themselves; the integrity of The Timeline; the universe (again); and each other.

In the midst of all that going down, Legends is not a whit shy about sexualities across the spectrum: ace, bi, pan, genderqueer, you name it.

But it’s sexy, sexual, and queer in more than labels — characters flirt and have sex with various fictional and historical figures, sexes and genders, people and (sometimes) aliens and demons and warlocks and fairy godmothers and (often) clones and (not often enough) smoking hot corporeal manifestations of computer ship programs.

Because it’s essentially ‘kid-friendly’ network TV, suggestion and euphemism do a lot of heavy lifting. Even the threesomes are PG-13, though some implications they manage to sneak past the Morality Police are delightfully filthy.

Uhhh where were we?

Right.

It’s not just sex and hard drugs which Legends has to imply; as Standards and Practice detail Constantine cannot actively smoke on screen, they develop many creative workarounds and outright cig-blocking:

When Legends crosses over with the other Arrowverse shows there’s an even tighter leash than usual (which Mick probably enjoys).

But out of restriction comes creativity, so we get things like the above runner of Sara edging Constantine’s nicotine habit, and this:

Let’s back up.

I’ve touched on what makes Legends a bit more free and ridiculous than its other Arrowverse entries.This means while it may be happily frank (if mostly-clothed) about its proclivities and appetites, crossovers with the more On Brand shows have to be especially, ah, circumspect.

We get Alex and Sara in bed together as part of a ‘morning of’ montage:

Closely followed by this delightful, awkward, Kara-filled exchange right before this universe-crossover wedding kicks off:

But there’s no action, y’know? Even as close to action as Legends get; like telling us Ava’s safe word (iykyk), or bringing Rory’s alien fanfic to larger-than-life, or confirming the Queen of France was very much bisexual.

When you combine deference to Arrowverse’s circumspection with the Legends’ desire for innuendo, we get Sara and Alex emphatically ripping their skirts.

Does it look like much, or even show more skin than the above ‘waking up next to each other’ scene? No.

But does it cheekily enjoy showing a visual metaphor of something graphic it couldn’t actually show from the night before? Absolutely.

If you think I wouldn’t write paragraphs upon paragraphs in leadup to a semi-obscure Jane Austen reference simply to declare to all assembled that a semi-reformed assassin and a commander of a top-secret paranormal organisation had sex even though it was already clear to all including their friends / sister . . . do you know me at all?

And if you don’t think Legends writers know exactly what they’re doing, consider this room went of their way to make blink-and-you-miss-it Oscar Wilde jokes, to broadcast people were in fact getting down and gay in Régence France and Puritan so-called America, who bring Sisqo in to sing a world-saving Thong Song complete with shake-weight. Point being, this writer’s room is like Shakespeare (someone else the Legends met!) in that if you don’t think there’s innuendo in a scene, you’re right: there’s three innuendos.

But a skirt rip is just to make fighting more expedient! Of course, it is also that, but putting the two of them and JUST the two of them in frame, well!

Pride and Prejudice is hardly prudish, but it is circumspect; overt bawdiness would be not merely scandal, but death to chances of publication.

So when Austen tells us the audience that Lydia has had sex with Wickham, it’s via Lydia telling her sisters she had sex with Wickham, and via “a great slit in my worked muslin gown.”

Oh, it got worked all right.

Is it more practical for Sara and Alex to fight if their dresses are torn? Yeah, but it’s imminently more practical for one or both of them to have worn pantsuits or flowing fight-worthy skirts (especially as none of their alter-ego wardrobes involve dresses), and neither of them are.

Ergo, it’s a conscious choice to give them both rend-able dresses particularly to make this joke slash declaration. Puns all intended.

Sure this is Oliver Queen’s wedding, but being a Legend means making sure whatever’s happening, the gay characters have fun, kick ass, and get laid, too.