At Clex­a­Con, a moment of anger turned into action for LGBTQ+ women

It was the last straw, and it had been a long time com­ing. The show was The 100, and the char­ac­ters were Clarke and Lexa. Based on the pop­u­lar book series that was part of the recent YA sci-fi boom, a trend that briefly set the box office alight before dis­ap­pear­ing with a fiz­zle, The 100 quick­ly took root in its intend­ed audi­ence. They adored the show, where delin­quent teens are the first the return to earth 97 years after a nuclear apoc­a­lypse, find­ing that they, born on ​‘The Ark’ (‘sky peo­ple’) in space share the earth with those born there (‘grounders’).

A war ensues between the two sides. But despite bat­tle, love blooms when Clarke (Eliza Tay­lor), from the sky, falls for grounder Com­man­der Lexa (Ali­cia Deb­nam-Carey). There is an unde­ni­able attrac­tion between them until, imme­di­ate­ly after they first have sex, Lexa is killed. Some argued that queer female char­ac­ters shouldn’t be immune to tragedy, and indeed real­i­ty. But in truth Lexa’s untime­ly death is just the lat­est inci­dent in a long and sad his­to­ry of queer women on screen.

The 100’s fans respond­ed with rage and action. Young, con­nect­ed, and pre­dom­i­nate­ly female, they’d also watched char­ac­ters like Orphan Black’s Del­phine and The Walk­ing Dead’s Denise per­ish before their eyes, and they’d had enough. The hash­tag #LGBT­fans­de­serve­bet­ter trend­ed dur­ing the fol­low­ing week’s episode of The 100, and a cam­paign to raise mon­ey for LGBTQ+ char­i­ty The Trevor Project was launched. The back­lash could have last­ed min­utes, quick­ly fiz­zling out as the internet’s atten­tion was drawn else­where. But at Clex­a­Con, which ran from March 3 – 5 in Las Vegas, the fight continued.

Asked why Lexa’s death led to such an upris­ing, the organ­is­ers of Clex­a­Con respond­ed: ​“It is always dif­fi­cult to pin­point what spurs a move­ment at a giv­en time and place. Social media and fan­doms most cer­tain­ly had a vital role to play. If the inter­net of today exist­ed when Tara was killed on Buffy, or when Xena was killed off at the end of that series, it seems like­ly that this rev­o­lu­tion would have start­ed a lot soon­er. Lexa was a beloved char­ac­ter, and the feel­ings of shock and loss the com­mu­ni­ty expe­ri­enced were like­ly just the tip­ping point – when the queer com­mu­ni­ty final­ly had enough of the ​‘bury your gays’ trope and decid­ed to do some­thing about it.”

On the sur­face of it, Clex­a­Con looks like just anoth­er fan con­ven­tion. There are meet and greets with spe­cial guests, pan­el dis­cus­sions, a film fes­ti­val and a cos­play con­test. Except Clex­a­Con is dif­fer­ent. This year’s guests includ­ed actors Amy Ack­er and Sarah Shahi (whose char­ac­ter in Per­son of Inter­est was con­tro­ver­sial­ly killed around the same time as Lexa), Kather­ine Bar­rell and Dominique Provost-Chalk­ley (from Wynon­na Earp), and Elise Bau­man and Natasha Nego­v­an­lis (from the web series Carmil­la) – all of whom play queer char­ac­ters on TV.

Unlike most fan con­ven­tions, how­ev­er, wider issues are dis­cussed at Clex­a­Con, with the con­ver­sa­tion at this year’s event turn­ing to how fans can not only love what they watch but become involved, writ­ing and shap­ing their own sto­ries. ​“At most con­ven­tions you’re hard-pressed to find actress­es and con­tent that are LGBT+ friend­ly, let alone geared specif­i­cal­ly toward LGBT+ audi­ences,” say the organ­is­ers. Andras hosts a work­shop about writ­ing ​“damn good TV for women”, and there are oth­ers on speed pitch­ing and devel­op­ing ideas for film, TV, stream­ing and print.

There’s plen­ty of open debate about rep­re­sen­ta­tion, too, from youth per­spec­tives as well as the state of rep­re­sen­ta­tions of bisex­u­als, trans women and women of colour. Lexa’s lega­cy, and how to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going, was also high on the agen­da. ​“An event like this also allows pub­lic fig­ures with large fol­low­ings to help pro­mote the fact that every­one deserves to see heroes they can iden­ti­fy with, and I think that’s a beau­ti­ful thing,” says Carmil­la star Natasha Nego­v­an­lis. ​“I also think it’s up to author­i­ty fig­ures, and to any­one in the pub­lic eye, to speak up and be lead­ers for the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty and its allies. It’s a respon­si­bil­i­ty I do not take light­ly, and I think any­one who has a strong voice or a plat­form should use it to influ­ence oth­ers to diver­si­fy on-screen rep­re­sen­ta­tion on all fronts.”

She con­tin­ues, ​“Carmil­la is much more glob­al­ly acces­si­ble than main­stream tele­vi­sion due to the nature of dig­i­tal series and how they are shared. This is vital for LGBT+ mem­bers who live in coun­tries where being any­thing but straight is out­lawed. They are able to find escape and a sense of com­mu­ni­ty online because of our ​‘lit­tle web series that could’ and it’s great to know that our work is help­ing people.”

Excit­ing­ly, the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed in the wake of Lexa’s death was entire­ly fan-dri­ven, some­thing that the organ­is­ers of Clex­a­Con, which grew from a small group of friends dis­cussing rep­re­sen­ta­tion on Twit­ter, aims to mir­ror. ​“As the idea grew and the word spread that we were plan­ning the event, many peo­ple reached out want­i­ng to help,” they say. ​“There would be no Clex­a­Con with­out the fans. This move­ment began because of the fans. Tele­vi­sion, film, and oth­er media are made for fans. The ener­gy, excite­ment, bril­liance, and togeth­er­ness of the fan­dom is what will make Clex­a­Con a success.”

“Art should always be polit­i­cal, I don’t think there is a way to sep­a­rate the two,” says Carmill’s Elise Bau­man, who plays Lau­ra, a first year uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent who falls for her room­mate (who hap­pens to be a vam­pire) in the pop­u­lar web series. Carmil­la is one of an increas­ing num­ber of shows that fea­ture queer female char­ac­ters, helped by a diver­si­fy­ing, mul­ti­plat­form media land­scape in both the main­stream and low­er bud­get spheres.

Carmil­la is based on the 19^th cen­tu­ry novel­la of the same name by Sheri­dan Le Fanu, trans­pos­ing the sto­ry to a mod­ern uni­ver­si­ty and reclaim­ing past neg­a­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the process. ​“The book keeps with the god-fear­ing times of por­tray­ing the attrac­tion between Lau­ra and Carmil­la as a cau­tion­ary tale of lust between women,” Bau­man says. ​“Of course, I believe it’s impor­tant to lit­er­al­ly change the nar­ra­tive of a sto­ry that seem­ing­ly con­demns female sex­u­al­i­ty and turn it into a pos­i­tive thing.”

Where once there was Buffy, now there is Carmil­la, Wynon­na Earp, Super­girl and oth­er shows cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent gen­res and made for all ages which place queer women front and cen­tre. ​“If the only sto­ries that are being told in the media are ones that fur­ther per­pe­trate the nar­ra­tive that peo­ple of cer­tain sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, race and class are some­how dif­fer­ent and less than, then that is what will keep being believed and act­ed out in the world,” Bau­man says. ​“I think it’s so impor­tant for the screen to reflect all peo­ple and aspects of life.”

So why was Lexa’s death the final straw? ​“I think peo­ple felt betrayed and angry when the few queer char­ac­ters they had found on screen kept dis­ap­pear­ing,” Bau­man observes. ​“As queer sto­ries are becom­ing more main­stream, I have seen shows try to cap­i­talise on that by intro­duc­ing queer char­ac­ters as a way to entice new view­ers, but not giv­ing them prop­er screen time. One of my least favourite things is when a series has been run­ning for a while, and then all of a sud­den it’s revealed that one of the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters is gay, but they don’t even show a same-sex kiss on screen.”

Nego­v­an­lis agrees: ​“I think that’s chang­ing, but we still have so much fur­ther to go. Fans were aching to see a tele­vised rela­tion­ship that reflect­ed their own expe­ri­ences. It had been quite some time since a healthy, les­bian rela­tion­ship was por­trayed on a his­tor­i­cal­ly het­ero­nor­ma­tive net­work, so see­ing ​‘Clexa’ filled peo­ple with much need­ed hope. But by killing off yet anoth­er gay female char­ac­ter, it stripped away that hope and left peo­ple feel­ing vio­lat­ed. Some­thing I often hear from fans is the sense of com­mu­ni­ty they have found in the Carmil­la fan­dom fam­i­ly, that being part of the self-dubbed ​‘cream­puffs’ have helped them feel accept­ed and less alone.”

Belong­ing is what Clex­a­Con is all about – the sin­cere belief that togeth­er a com­mu­ni­ty can change their fate on screen. ​“We want to see an increase of pos­i­tive LGBT+ rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media,” Nego­v­an­lis con­cludes, ​“and hope that Clex­a­Con will be a place where cre­ators can net­work and breathe life into char­ac­ters and sto­ries that rep­re­sent the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty in pos­i­tive ways. Our world is diverse. Our media should reflect that. Clex­a­Con is for those of us who have placed our hope in a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter just to have been let down. We are pow­er­ful and we are impor­tant. It’s time our com­mu­ni­ty felt that. It’s time we are the change we want to see in the world.”