Thirst tweets have gotten bizarre these days. There is a new style of attractive on primary. It has the tone of a sexual fantasy, however what it is requesting is decidedly unsexy, cartoonishly excessive violence. This isn’t Fifty Shades tie-me-up-and-spank-me foreplay. Folks on Twitter need their crushes to step on them, set them on fireplace, throw them off rooftops.
Though it isn’t distinctive to the LGBTQ neighborhood, there’s something queer about this self-directed bloodlust. Jill Gutowitz speculated that the apparently widespread fantasy of being punched by Brie Larson “is a darkish and chasmal need that spurs from years of painstaking sexual repression.” Gabrielle Paiella says of this type of thirst that “there isn’t a precise sexual exercise concerned, but it surely conveys a catastrophic degree of need.” Catastrophic but sexless: what an ideal encapsulation of being queer, closeted, and hopelessly in love.
Literature has usually blurred the strains between “ladies who wish to kill different ladies” and “ladies who wish to f— different ladies,” courting again at the least so far as Carmilla (1872). In 1950s lesbian pulp novels, femmes fatales lure harmless ladies to their destruction. “Destruction” may imply dying, insanity, or simply actually good Sapphic intercourse — all had been equally devastating to white middle-class heterosexual femininity. If being queer places you in mortal peril, then the item of queer need is each an unattainable dream and an implement of self-harm. And if loving ladies is inherently harmful, why not love harmful ladies?
The self-immolating attract of queer need hadn’t occurred to me in 1998, when Eliza Dushku joined the forged of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because the impulsive, irrepressible new Slayer, Religion. I used to be in sixth grade, and I did not know I used to be bisexual but, though I am removed from the one lady to have had her first glimmerings of queer awareness as a direct response to Eliza Dushku. However I knew there was one thing occurring between Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s Buffy and her counterpart, one thing that nobody would say out loud. One thing sexually harmless, but catastrophic.
Religion fought evil alongside Buffy, however they by no means fairly made a pure group, all the time both out of sync or uncomfortably enmeshed. Religion sparked with a rage born of pissed off need, a rage that rapidly took her down a path of violence and chaos. Perhaps she was jealous of the issues Buffy had that she did not — a secure residence life, a dwelling Watcher, pals. That is one of the best rationalization the narrative affords for her eventual defection to evil. However the plot has a gap in its middle that by no means completely coalesces till you notice, in fact, Religion was in love with Buffy.
These emotions might by no means be safely expressed. The one bodily intimacy Buffy and Religion might share was preventing aspect by aspect, and later preventing one another. They danced collectively as soon as; it was stunning and horny and free and ideal. Then Religion pretended — as numerous queer ladies have earlier than and since — that she was simply exhibiting off for the boys surrounding them.
Each time Buffy begins to get near Religion, one thing pulls her away — her different pals, her vampire boyfriend, her personal distrust of something that feels too good. Religion represents abandon, leaping with out trying, performing on id. When Buffy lets her personal wild instincts rise as much as meet Religion’s, folks get harm. With none precise f—ing, Religion continues to be the seductress of the lesbian pulp novel, threatening to derail Buffy’s sunshiny Southern California life. And when Buffy rejects her, Religion’s love curdles into one thing darkish and consuming.
On the time I used to be too younger to grasp this violent, hungry dance, but it surely was the scaffolding upon which I constructed my understanding of affection and lust between ladies for years to return. Falling for one more lady would destroy you. As a substitute of scaring me away, that solely made me romanticize and crave destruction.
Twenty years after Religion swaggered into the Bronze, one other queer lady with f—ed-up boundaries deigned to grace our screens, however this time the subtext has turn out to be the textual content. Jodie Comer‘s Villanelle onKilling Eve has some apparent parallels together with her Slayer predecessor: a obscure however traumatic previous, authorized difficulties, an older man telling her who to kill. Her fixation with Sandra Oh‘s Eve is each bit as damaging as Religion’s with Buffy, but it surely’s an important deal extra trustworthy. Religion makes a multitude of her life, and everybody else’s round her, as a result of she will’t admit she needs to be with Buffy; Villanelle makes a multitude as a result of it is price it if she will get to be with Eve. (OK, and since she enjoys it.) They each have a nihilistic streak, however whereas Religion’s is born of despair, Villanelle’s is born of a twisted hope.
Like Buffy, Eve is each drawn to and repelled by her counterpart’s violence. She needs to cease Villanelle, however she’s additionally fascinated by her ability, her panache, her audacity. Villanelle embodies the ethos articulated by Religion twenty years earlier: “Need, take, have.” And what she needs most is Eve.
Eve needs to grasp Villanelle, ostensibly to assist her, however maybe extra actually to grasp and management her personal darkest needs. If Eve can rein in Villanelle’s damaging tendencies, maybe she will stand up to her personal; Buffy hoped for one thing comparable with Religion. Like Religion, Villanelle shuns any makes an attempt to investigate, diagnose, or appropriate her. She’s not all for becoming a member of the White Hats or utilizing her powers for a better objective. She simply needs the gratification of give up, whether or not by way of intercourse or violence — and you’ll see in her excited face as she watches her victims’ final breaths that these two impulses are uncomfortably shut collectively.
Villanelle sees the darkness in Eve, and he or she digs it. “I’ve masturbated about you numerous,” she says once they’re lastly head to head. The primary time she meets Buffy, Religion says “Is not it loopy how slaying all the time makes you hungry and attractive?” Eve and Buffy are each stunned, however you see one thing flicker of their eyes: Sure, I do know you, you are like me. You are the elements of me I do not wish to identify or acknowledge.
To be a queer lady is usually to lust after your shadow self, to seek out again and again that who you need overlaps uncomfortably with who you wish to be: because the poet Daphne Gottlieb puts it, “I do not know/whether or not I need/to be/her, fuck her/or borrow her garments.” There is a wrongness to the intimacy that grows between these fictional ladies, who perceive one another so a lot better than the opposing powers they ostensibly serve. It is a sensuous sort of trespass, as we see when Eve wears the costume Villanelle gave her. Is it a present or a risk? She seems stunning; Eve runs her fingers over her physique, discovering what Villanelle already knew was there. Religion’s eyes sparkle with approval when Buffy involves kill her. “Have a look at you,” she says. “All dressed up in massive sister’s garments.”
The climax of Killing Eve Season 1 parallels the ultimate showdown between Buffy and Religion so neatly it is exhausting to imagine it is not intentional. After weeks of cat-and-mouse video games, Eve lastly tracks down Villanelle’s house. (Buffy arrives at Religion’s door.) They face one another finally, lastly admitting their mutual fascination. (They face one another finally, making ready to combat.) The partitions between them shatter, they usually lie down aspect by aspect on Villanelle’s mattress. (They shatter a large window and land aspect by aspect on Religion’s balcony.) Villanelle sees her personal knife in Eve’s hand. (Religion sees her personal knife in Buffy’s hand.) “That is impolite,” Villanelle says. (“That is mine,” Religion says.) And the knife goes into her stomach. (And the knife goes into her stomach.)
The death-by-thirst-object fantasy is one in all completely one-sided intimacy, providing up whole bodily submission with out requiring any vulnerability in return. The fantasist is annihilated by the depth of their need whereas the fantasy is unchanged, usually actually untouched (“run me over with a truck,” “kill me with a sword”). However Buffy and Eve each notice, within the second they draw blood, that there isn’t a such factor. Violence would not break these bonds; it solely tangles them additional. Religion and Villanelle should not, in reality, destroyed. These unspeakable emotions cannot be purged in a single second. This love leaves scars.
In 2019, we’re alleged to need wholesome, optimistic queer illustration in our fiction: secure relationships, chance fashions. However being queer continues to be harmful, even right here, even now. Admitting need nonetheless feels, generally, like wielding a weapon. Buffy hinted at this, maybe unintentionally, however Killing Eve says it proper out loud. It may not be aspirational, but it surely speaks to one thing with deep roots in me and lots of different queer ladies. It is for all of us who’ve seemed into an attractive face and thought, “This might be how I die.”
This text was initially printed June 10, 2019. Lindsay King-Miller’s writing has appeared in Glamour Journal, The Guardian, Them.us, Vice.com, and quite a few different publications. She lives in Denver together with her companion, their two youngsters, and a completely horrible cat. She is the creator of Ask A Queer Chick: A Information to Intercourse, Love, and Life for Ladies who Dig Ladies (Plume, 2016).