I guess if I am going to gather my thoughts about Link and the Eagle, I first have to gather my thoughts about Link and gender and expression. I have been through a lot of fandoms, I have been through a lot of ships, and I have always been against the oft-pervading logic that “This man is gay because [insert stereotypes of gay men performing femininized behaviors or underperforming masculinized behaviors].” One of the reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as #my lesbian queen link neal is – well, okay, because it’s nonsensical and funny, but also because I specifically do not really want to fanon that he is gay because he wears a purse or whatever. One of the other reasons I interpret my feelings on Link and gender as a joke about being a queer female is because when Link says he is an unserious man I feel that unseriousness in manhood as hewing close to my own experience as a queer female; I recognize a lot of my own self or at least my own self’s willingness to be “weird” (i.e., plainly honest) about gender and sexuality and affection in the idiosyncratic ways he expresses these things as well.
The main thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was finding out that they grew up in the Southern conservative Evangelical culture in the ‘90s. Something that I think about a lot is how Rhett has talked about how Link was the weird kid, how people found him annoying, how he stayed at home and played with his wrestling dolls, how the moment they really became best friends was when Rhett punched that kid for making fun of Link. How in high school everyone thought they were gay. Rhett spent almost all his time with Link anyway. How even now Rhett talks about having to protect Link from himself, from embarrassing himself. And how Link talks about himself as someone who commits faux pas, and about liking that he has a safety net in Rhett, someone who will watch out for him.
Like the thing about Rhett is he performs the masculinity they grew up with well, and apparently always has: good grades, good athlete, just enough unexamined toxicity to his masculinity that he often doesn’t pass my vibe check. I didn’t grow up in the South or in Christianity but I grew up in the late '90s and I was steeped in enough of same culture of gender that I can recognize the mannerisms that Link has even today that would have been labeled as “weird,” and the names he might have been called: sissy, mama’s boy, fag. Rhett could have gone through life without ever encountering that, but he didn’t. He chose to stick with Link, and he chose specifically to stick with a conception of himself as protecting Link.
And the thing with Link is he continued to be the way he was. He kept enough of those same mannerisms and ways of expressing himself that even now, as a grown man, he is the one a fandom will say is gay, is the twink, is the bottom. Whether he explicitly chose not to change, or is just one of those people who is incapable of not being exactly himself, I don’t know. Probably both? Most of us who are queer (in the sense of sexuality or in the sense of being seen as strange) are both.
I also think sometimes of what Link’s conception of himself would be if he weren’t surrounded by people who have known him forever, or people who know someone who’s known him forever. If everybody’s first impression of him wasn’t mediated by a bunch of people who carry around his old teenage self crystallized in amber, who grew up in the same culture that thought he was weird, who still spend their time thinking they need to run interference for the way he talks and acts and feels. Because another thing that hooked me into Rhett & Link was how nearly every person in every piece of media they produce says “This guy is weird and awkward and makes people feel bad” when everything I took from watching him was This guy is honest and open and makes me feel good. Like if you just met him, on your own, would you even think anything was strange? If it was just him, without his past, would anybody think he wasn’t enough?
I'm Heather (she/they/fae) \\More than just a little queer// \\You are welcome here// My personal Rhett & Link + Rhink blog. (Header: mythicalgays/icon: sketchingdeer)
Emergency contact: missingparentheses
