A Muppet fanfic is going viral for the gayest of reasons.
Penned by playwright Briandaniel Oglesby in a Facebook comment, the imagined backstory of critics and hecklers Statler and Waldorf has struck a chord with many LGBTQ+ folks.
It all began on a post from someone named Robert Anderson, who wrote, "I don't get why people think Bert and Ernie are the gay Muppets when Statler and Waldorf are right there, throwing shade from a BOX SEAT AT THE THEATRE."
Oglesby responded to his Facebook friend with a rather touching imagination of the two Muppets' backstories. "Bert and Ernie are a gay couple," it begins. "Statler and Waldorf are both old queens, but they are not a couple."
Anyone else immediately hooked? The rest reads:
"They hooked up once in the early 80s, back then Statler was a muscle queen and Waldorf was kind of just beyond his twink years, not that he was all that twinkish, but they were, um, not really compatible. Every once in a while, they'd get high and make out at a party thrown for yet another young up-and-coming poet in the New York literati scene. Waldorf was secretly more into those moments than Statler and would count how many martinis Statler downed at these things. Statler met a young sailor named Jerry in /82, and they weren't exclusive, but that didn't matter. Statler was in love. They moved in together in Queens. Meanwhile, Walfdork kept going to shows and dating around, usually actors who would make him feel loved but would disappear after the third date. Nothing seemed to stick. He was trying to write plays at the time. When Jerry got sick, Statler took care of him. And when Jerry died, Waldorf took care of Statler. Waldorf later turned their late-night talks into a play titled The Broken Heart, which had an extended run at an off-off-Broadway theater. The critics didn't like it, so it killed his career; Statlet went to see it and never said anything about it. Waldorf was hurt but also felt guilty. They didn't talk for a year after that, and Waldorf stopped writing. They probably would have stayed apart, but then they happened to both be in the audience of an absolute fiasco - a remount of A Streetcar Named Desire with Miss Piggy playing Blanche. They couldn't stand it, and during the intermission, the two of them ripped it to shreds. They've gotten older, bonding over shared, performative hatred of the shows they see, never acknowledging what they had."
He shared the fanfic on Twitter where it now has nearly 80,000 likes.
The fanfic made many Twitter users emotional.
"Well I used to just like their catty bullshit but now I am aching inside," wrote one user.
"I’m oddly touched and emotional after reading your gay Muppet fanfic' is a sentence I never thought I’d write, but here we are anyway," said another.
Others are calling for it to become a TV series or a real play. We would definitely watch!
