The Ins and Outs & Whys and Hows
Hello!
Welcome to our blog - an inside look into the making of It Shouldn’t Be This Hard: LGBTQ+ Representation and The Fandoms Who Fight For It. I’m Amber, the creator/director/producer of this docuseries and I look forward to sharing the ins and outs and whys and hows of this timely project. Our goal is to have a new post available every Monday; something to look forward to as you start a new week! So, if you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe so you won’t miss a thing!
Being our first post I thought I would talk a bit about how this project came to be and how it has evolved through time from its original conception. I’ll be honest, I could never have dreamed the journey we have been on, but I wouldn’t change a note.
In January 2021 I was recovering from a surgery and felt as though there just couldn’t possibly be anything new to watch on any of the gazillion streaming networks out there. Woe was me. I was getting restless. Then a friend recommended Wynonna Earp which I remembered once squashing back into the “remember to watch this” file in what clearly was the unretrievable depths of my brain. I gave it a whirl. Having once been a diehard Buffy The Vampire Slayer I knew I could get into the genre of it but I never could have guessed how much deeper the show went, emotionally. The writing inspired me to tell stories again after years of thinking the creative part of me had its door shut and locked long ago.
After some rabbit hole googling researching the writers which led to the cast which naturally led to the fans I couldn’t have predicted what I found there. It was a world unto itself. A community of people who felt seen and represented and understood… by a sci fi western show about killing demons in the modern day Canadian rockies. But it was so much more than that. The show was about found family and the love and commitment between sisters and female strength and empowerment. The show had unapologetic LGBTQ+ representation. A fandom was forged for life and once I heard one of the actors say, “The cameras are pointing the wrong way” - that’s when it struck me. The cameras were pointing the wrong way and the stories of this community was where the heart and soul existed.
I immediately began considering the possibility of telling these stories. Honest, authentic, human stories became my inspiration and there was no turning back.
From there I secured a crew and did a small amount of initial fundraising and spent the majority of that year in pre-production. In early 2022 we were off filming one of our subjects in their home in Pittsburgh and then the entirety of the summer in different cities following the fandom from Earp convention to Earp convention. It was a magical experience and one I will not soon forget. I have been changed by this journey thus far and I by no means believe that won’t continue to be the case.
There was a shift that happened, however, in the media that summer where shows with positive LGBTQ+ representation started getting canceled. One, and then another, and then another. And now we are here, April of 2023 and it keeps happening. Queer fans don’t feel safe; they feel abandoned. We’re angry and sad and confused. We deserve to be seen and now we need to fight to be heard.
There were many points throughout our filming I was asked if there was any chance to “make this into a series”. At those points I wasn’t sure that made sense. It was an intriguing thought but one I wasn’t certain I could fulfill. Then one night whilst trying yet again to stop thinking about the film and fall asleep, it hit me. The story is bigger. It’s massive. It’s not simply about one amazing fandom fighting for a show and representation. It’s about an entire community of people in this world fighting to be seen and heard and respected. It’s a much larger fight and I’m going to do my absolute best to document it, do it justice, and show why representation matters. Because it does. It really, truly does.
It shouldn’t be this hard. It is so very exhausting and disappointing that it is. As the days and weeks go by it has become fairly evident that this is our mantra. It shouldn’t be this hard. Because it shouldn’t. Personally, I am sick and tired of this fight. But, there is no way I am going to quit fighting, quit trying to be heard, or quit gathering the stories and voices of others who need the help and support in sharing them.
This is my fight too. This is my family and my community and I’ll be damned if we are not heard. So, I am committed to this project. We’re all in this together and there is nothing more powerful than that. I promise to do my best in holding place for these stories, in telling them in a respectful and nurturing way. I am committed to doing everything in my power to make it less hard.
