#plugging my weird queer fiction again

[bethany-sensei]

I heard y’all wanted some aspec characters. Well maybe I can interest you in:

Tempest—arospec, first appears in Balances as… ok Tempest is kind of hard to explain, because he’s very lazy and also an extremely adept (read: ridiculously op) magic user, so calling him deuteragonist to the main character Akieryon would be inaccurate. Because he rarely has problems that he doesn’t solve in ten minutes or less often with bloodshed. He used to be a bodyguard, but he’s doing some light ambassador work these days. If you like Murderbot, you may enjoy Tempest as well.

Seikhiel—asexual, first appears in The Shadow Prince as a possible antagonist (though if you’ve been here long enough, you may already know him from Outside In). He’s a 5000yo Demonslayer who likes quiet nights at home with good tea and a good book. His entire world is about to be upended because there’s one particular individual who causes him to act without thinking, when really he’s old enough to know better.

Dani—aromantic, supporting cast in Balances. For a butch no-nonsense captain of the guard, she causes a surprising amount of nonsense.

[bogkeep]

hmmmmmmmmmm maybe i’ll write an Introspective Musing Post about my relationship to religion and their depiction in stories because i’ve pondering about this topic lately

so for those who are reading this and DON’T know what’s been going on...  there’s this webcomic i fell in love with some years ago, about six years actually, that depicts a post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror adventure set in the nordic countries. it had, and has still, some very uncomfortable flaws regarding racial representation, and the creator has historically not dealt very well with criticism towards it. it’s a whole Thing. my relationship with this comic has fluctuated a lot, since there are a lot of elements in it i DO love and i still feel very nostalgic about, and like idk i felt like i trust my skills in critical thinking enough to keep reading. aaand then the creator went a teensy bit off the deep end created a whole minicomic which is like... a lukewarm social media dystopia where christians are oppressed (and also everyone is a cute bunny, including our lord and saviour jesus christ). which is already tonedeaf enough considering there are religious people who DO get prosecuted for their faith, like, that’s an actual reality for a lot of people - but as far as i can tell, usually not christians. and then there’s an afterword that’s like, “anyway i got recently converted and realized i’m a disgusting human being full of sin who doesn’t deserve redemption but jesus loves me so i’ll be fine!! remember to repent for your sins xoxo” and a bunch of other stuff and IT’S KIND OF REALLY CONCERNING i have, uh, been habitually looking at the reactions to and discussions around this, maybe it’s not very self care of me but there’s a lot of overwhelming things rn and it’s fantastically distracting, yknow? like, overall this situation is fairly reminiscent of the whole jkr thing. creator of a series that is Fairly Beloved, does something hurtful, handles backlash in a weird way, a lot of people start taking distance from Beloved Series or find ways to enjoy it on their own terms, creator later reveals to have been fully radicalized and releases a whole manifesto, and any and all criticism gets framed as harassment and proving them right. of course, one of them is a super rich person with a LOT of media power and a topic that is a lot more destructive in our current zeitgeist, and the other is an independent webcomic creator, so it’s  not the same situation. just similar vibez ya feel as a result of this, i have been Thinking. and just this feels like some sort of defeat like god dammit she got me i AM thinking about the topic she wrote about!!! i should dismiss the whole thing!!! but thinking about topics is probably a good thing so hey lets go. me, i’m agnostic. i understand that this is a ‘lazy’ position to take, but it’s what works for me. i simply do not vibe with organized religion, personally. (i had the wikipedia page for ‘chaos magic’ open in a tab for several weeks, if that helps.) i was raised by atheists in a majorly atheist culture. christian atheist, i should specify. norway has been mostly and historically lutheran, and religion has usually been a private and personal thing. it turns out the teacher i had in 7th grade was mormon, but i ONLY found out because he showed up in a tv series discussing religious groups in norway later, and he was honestly one of the best teachers i have ever had - he reignited the whole class’ interest in science, math, and dungeons and dragons. it was a real “wait WHAT” moment for my teenage self. i think i was briefly converted to christianity by my friend when i was like 7, who grew up in a christian family (i visited them a couple times and always forgot they do prayers before dinner. oops!), but like, she ALSO made me believe she was the guardian of a secret magic orb that controls the entire world and if i told anybody the world would burn down in 3 seconds. i only suspected something was off when one day the Orb ran on batteries, and another day the Orb had to be plugged in to charge. in my defense i really wanted to be part of a cool fantasy plot. i had no idea how to be a christian beyond “uuuuh believe in god i guess” so it just faded away on its own. when i met this friend several years later, she was no longer christian. i think every childhood friend of mine who grew up in a christian family, was no longer christian when they grew up. most notably my closest internet friend whose family was catholic - she had several siblings, and each of them took a wildly different path, from hippie treehugger to laveyan satanist or something in that area. (i joined them for a sermon in a church when they visited my town. my phone went off during it because i had forgotten to silence it. oops!) ((i also really liked their mother’s interpretation of purgatory. she explained it as a bath, not fire. i like that.)) i have never had any personal negative experiences with christianity, despite being openly queer/gay/trans. the only time someone has directly told me i’m going to hell was some guy who saw me wearing a hoodie on norway’s constitution day. yeah i still remember that you bastard i’ve sworn to be spiteful about it till the day i die!! i’ve actually had much more insufferable interactions with the obnoxious kind of atheists - like yes yes i agree with you on a lot but that doesn’t diminish your ability to be an absolute hypocrite, it turns out? i remember going to see the movie ‘noah’ with a friend who had recently discovered reddit atheism and it was just really exhausting to discuss it with her. one of these Obnoxious Atheists is my Own Mother. which is a little strange, honestly, because she LOVES visiting churches for the Aesthetic and Architecture. we cannot go anywhere without having to stop by a pretty church to Admire and Explore. I’VE BEEN IN SO MANY CHURCHES FOR AN ATHEIST RAISED NON-CHRISTIAN. i’ve been to the vatican TWICE (i genuinely don’t even know how much of my extended family is christian. up north in the tiny village i come from, i believe my uncle is the churchkeeper, and it’s the only building in the area that did not get burnt down by the the nazis during ww2 - mostly because soldiers needed a place to sleep. still don’t know whether or not said uncle believes or not, because hey, it’s Personal) i think my biggest personal relationship to religion, and christianity specifically, has been academic. yeah, we learned a brief synopsis of world religions at school (and i remember the class used to be called ‘christianity, religion, and ethics’ and got changed to ‘religion, beliefs, and ethics’ which is cool. it was probably a big discourse but i was a teen who didnt care), but also my bachelor degree is in art history, specifically western art history because it’s a vast sprawling topic and they had to distill it as best they could SIGHS. western art history is deeply entangled with the history of the church, and i think the most i’ve ever learnt about christianity is through these classes (one of my professors wrote an article about how jesus can be interpreted as queer which i Deeply Appreciate). i also specifically tried to diversify my academic input by picking classes such as ‘depiction of muslims and jewish people in western medieval art’ and ‘art and religion’ when i was an exchange student in canada, along with 101 classes in anthropology and archaeology. because i think human diversity and culture is very cool and i want to absorb that knowledge as best as i can. i think my exchange semester in canada was the most religiously diverse space have ever been in, to be honest. now as an adult i have more christian friends again, but friends who chose it for themselves, and who practice in ways that sound good and healthy, like a place of solace and community for them. the vast majority of my friends are queer too, yknow?? i’ve known too many people who have seen these identities as fated opposites, but they aren’t, they’re just parts of who people are. it’s like... i genuinely love people having their faiths and beliefs so much. i love people finding that space where they belong and feel safe in. i love people having communities and heritages and connections. i deeply respect and admire opening up that space for faith within any other communities, like... if i’m going to listen to a podcast about scepticism and cults, i am not going to listen to it if it’s just an excuse to bash religion. i think the search for truth needs to be compassionate, always. you can acknowledge that crystals are cool and make people happy AND that multi level marketing schemes are deeply harmful and prey on people in vulnerable situaitons. YOU KNOW???? so now’s when i bring up Apocalypse Comic again. one of the things i really did like about it was, ironically, how it handled religion. in its setting, people have returned to old gods, and their magic drew power from their religion. characters from different regions had different beliefs and sources. in the first arc, they meet the spirit of a lutheran pastor, who ends up helping them with her powers. it was treated as, in the creators own words, ‘just another mythology’. and honestly? i love that. it was one of the nicest depictions i’ve seen of christianity in fiction, and as something that could coexist with other faiths. I Vibe With That. and then, uh, then... bunny dystopia comic. it just... it just straight up tells you christianity is literally the only way to..?? be a good person??? i guess?? i’m still kind of struggling to parse what exactly it wanted to say. the evil social media overlord bird tells you the bible makes you a DANGEROUS FREETHINKER, but the comic also treats rewriting the bible or finding your own way to faith as something,, Bad. The Bible Must Remain Unsullied. Never Criticize The Bible. also, doing good things just for social media clout is bad and selfish. you should do good things so you don’t burn in hell instead. is that the message? it reads a lot like the comic creator already had the idea for the comic, but only got the urge to make it after she was converted and needed to spread the good word. you do you i guess!! i understand that she’s new to this and probably Going Through Something, and this is just a step on her journey. but the absolute self-loathing she described in her afterword... it does not sound good. i’m just some agnostic kid so what do i know, but i do not think that kind of self-flagellating is a kind faith to have for yourself. i might not ever have been properly religious, but you know what i AM familiar with? a brain wired for ocd and intrusive thoughts. for a lot of my life i’ve struggled with my own kind of purity complex. i’ve had this really strange sensitivity for things that felt ‘tainted’. i’ve experienced having to remove more and more words from my vocabulary because they were Bad and i did not want to sully my sentences. it stacked, too - if a word turned out to be an euphemism for something, i could never feel comfortable saying it again. i still struggle a bit with these things, but i have confronted these things within myself. i’ve had to make myself comfortable with imperfection and ‘tainted’ things and accept that these are just, arbitrary categories my mind made up. maybe that’s the reason i can’t do organized religion even if i found one that fit for me - just like diets can trigger disordered eating, i think it would carve some bad brainpaths for me. so yeah i’m worried i guess! i’m worried when people think it’s so good that she finally found the correct faith even if it’s causing all this self-hate. is there really not a better way? or are they just trusting she’ll find it? and yeah it’s none of my concern, it’s like, i worry for jkr too but i do not want her within miles of my trans self thANKS. so like, i DO enjoy media that explores faith and what it means for you. my favourite band is the oh hellos, which DOES draw on faith and the songwriter’s experience with it. because of my religious iliteracy most of it has flown over my head for years and i’m like “oh hey this is gay” and then only later realize it was about god all along Probably. i like what they’ve done with the place. also, stormlight archive - i had NO idea sanderson was mormon, the way he writes his characters, many of whom actively discuss religion and their relationship to it. i love that about the books, honestly. Media That Explores Religion In A Complex And Compassionate Way... we like that i’ve been thinking about my own stories too, and how i might want to explore faith in them. most of my settings are based on magic and it’s like, what role does religion have in a world where gods are real and makes u magic. in sparrow spellcaster’s story, xe creates? summons? an old god - brings them to life out of the idea of them. it’s a story about hubris, mostly. then there’s iphimery, the story where i am actively fleshing out a pantheon. there’s no doubt the gods are real in the fantasy version of iphimery, they are the source of magic and sustain themselves on slivers of humanity in exchange. but in the modern version, where they are mostly forgotten? that’s some room for me to explore, i think. especially the character of timian, who comes from a smaller town and moves to a large and diverse city. in the fantasy story, the guardian deity chooses his sister as a vessel. in the modern setting, that does not happen, and i don’t yet know what does, but i really want timian to be someone who struggles with his identity - his faith, his sexuality, the expectations cast upon him by his hometown... i’m sure it’s a cliché story retold through a million gay characters but i want to do it too okay. i want to see him carve out his own way of existing within the world because i care him and want to see him thrive!!! alrighty i THINK that’s all i wanted to write. thanks if you read all of this, and if you didn’t that’s super cool have a nice day !

[rabdoidal]

i know you listen to a lot of podcasts and ive found some of my favourites from hearing you talk about them! do you have any favourites?

under the cut! my top 10 podcasts at the moment:

Alice Isn’t Dead Genre: horror, thriller, drama, Lovecraftian, Americana Episode count: 30 (completed) Description: A truck driver searches across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman. Thoughts: This podcast is, to me at least, completely flawless in every way. I would consider myself a person that listens to a lot of horror podcasts, but Alice Isn’t Dead takes the cake for its depictions of liminal middle America, the horror that is capitalism, and the most tender, realistic depiction of lesbians in any podcast. Anything else I could say would spoil it and for this, I don’t want to spoil it because I want every person alive that can stomach horror to listen to this.

Archive 81 Genre: horror, comedy, sci-fi, Lovecraftian Episode count: 35 (ongoing) Description: Archive 81 is a found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound. Thoughts: The latest podcast I’ve tried, and it’s definitely one that grows on you. The audio mixing is some of the best I’ve heard in any podcast, and every bump and scratch and hum of frequency weaves to form moments that are truly and viscerally gory. Season 3 and Left of The Dial are my favorites because again, I love Americana horror, and anything that involves family!

Artificial Ghost Radio Genre: non-fiction, discussion, comedy Episode count: 75 (ongoing) Description: Our Sisyphean music recommendation challenge with hosts Miles (he/him) and Jupiter (she/they) challenge each other to find songs based on arbitrary themes and to spin the WHEEL OF DISCORD to talk about a random song from their library! They can be found on twitter @artghostpod. Thoughts: Gotta plug my own podcast! We’re still small, but the people I’ve met from doing AGR has made my life richer and fuller, even through the ups and downs. I recommend starting with #58: Songs about Aliens ft. our friend Liz (@thescaryjokes)!

EOS 10 Genre: medical drama, comedy, sci-fi Episode count: 34 (ongoing) Description: Doctors in space, a deposed alien prince, a super gay space pirate and a fiery nurse who'll help you win your bar fight. Thoughts: It’s been a hot minute since I listened, but as someone that inherently loves things like Star Trek and procedural comedies, EOS 10 is a quick and hilarious listen! Fair warning some of the earlier stuff is a little bit ignorant when it comes to their LGBT characters, but it gets a lot better over time.

King Falls AM Genre: horror, comedy, Lovecraftian Episode count: 100 (ongoing) Description: King Falls AM centers on a lonely little mountain town's late-night AM talk radio show and its paranormal, peculiar happenings and inhabitants Thoughts: I’m a bit behind, but again, gotta love some Alpine American horror! King Falls AM perfectly captures the feeling and sound of listening to a small late night radio show with two bros, but it really goes from typical dude dialogue to heart wrenching found family alien conspiracy real quick. Same as EOS 10, fair warning for some ignorant language and LGBT stereotypes, but they address it and it gets better as it progresses.

Not Another D&D Podcast Genre: actual play Dungeons and Dragons, TTRPG, comedy Episode count: 128 (ongoing) Description: Welcome to the campaign after the campaign! Three unlikely adventurers attempt to right the wrongs caused by a party of legendary heroes who screwed up the world while trying to save it. Thoughts: I’m only like 40 episodes in because they’re thick, meaty ‘sodes, but god is NADDPOD fucking hilarious. I’ve tried a fair few TTRPG shows, but the chemistry and care that the cast has together is unmatched by others in the genre. I’m a complete sucker for shows that are so funny and so tragic in equal measures, and the entire concept of a D&D game set after the world has been so drastically changed by a different D&D game is so unique!

The Faculty of Horror Genre: non-fiction, horror, philosophy, sociology, feminism Episode count: 86 (ongoing) Description: Tackling all things horror with a slash of analysis and research, horror journalists and occasional academics Andrea Subissati and Alexandra West are your hosts for brain-plumping discussions on all things that go bump in the night. Thoughts: A little non-fiction in this list of fiction podcasts! The Faculty of Horror is a concise and educated intersectional feminist podcast, and it’s a breath of fresh air to listen to anyone that isn’t a cishet white guy talk about horror. I highly recommend the episode on Cabin in The Woods or Jennifer’s Body!

The Magnus Archives Genre: horror, office comedy Episode count: 180 (ongoing) Description: The Magnus Archives is a weekly horror fiction anthology podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organization dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join new head archivist Jonathan Sims as he attempts to bring a seemingly neglected collection of supernatural statements up to date, converting them to audio and supplementing them with follow-up work from his small but dedicated team. Thoughts: TMA is, similarly to A81, a bit of a slow burn to get into, but I think once you listen to a few episodes you’ll know if you want to continue. It’s a pretty standard prompt for a narrative, but the sheer amount of individual short horror stories they’ve managed to write is insane! And I love the slow break down between recording statements and the stuff happening within the archives. Also one of the best redemption stories in a character that starts off as such a grumpy fuck!

The Penumbra Podcast Genre: sci-fi, neo-noir, romance, comedy, found family, magic, medieval fantasy, adventure, mystery Episode count: 75 (ongoing) Description: At the Penumbra, you might follow Juno Steel, a brooding, sharp-witted private eye on Mars, as he tangles with an elusive homme fatale, tracks dangerous artifacts of an ancient alien civilization, and faces his three greatest fears: heights, blood, and relationships. Or you might enter the world of the Second Citadel, where the merciless Sir Caroline must corral a team of emotionally distraught all-male knights to defend their city against mind-manipulating monsters...even the ones they’ve fallen in love with. Thoughts: On god TPP was a life changing podcast for me. Having creators that are genuinely concerned with accurately representing minorities with care and dedication makes me feel spoiled when I try listen to anything else. The two main universes are so different with their own set of histories and cultures, but I love them both so completely. If you want LGBT+ representation, this is the seminal podcast for everything non-binary, trans, queer, and people that aren’t afraid to change and have that change be known! I haven’t listened to another podcast that actually depicts transitioning like they do, absolute king shit.

Wolf 359 Genre: space drama, comedy, action Episode count: 61 (completed) Description: WOLF 359 is a radio drama in the tradition of Golden Age of Radio shows. Set on board the U.S.S. Hephaestus space station, the dysfunctional crew deals with daily life-or-death emergencies, while searching for signs of alien life and discovering there might be more to their mission than they thought Thoughts: Wolf 359 is like if you fell down the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs was a bear trap, and then after you step in the bear trap someone helps you take off that beartrap, but then they kick you in the nuts. Just replace physical pain with emotional pain. It can be so funny but also so fucking stressful and sad – w359 isn’t afraid to kill its darlings, and it will break your heart but you will still say thank you.

[ronbegleyformayor]

So this is going to be a long post—your question gets to the larger topic that is episode 100. Also to anyone reading this I would appreciate if you took a minute or two to read the whole thing—I purposefully waited a while to respond to this so my response would come across as measured as possible.

So anyone plugged into queer theory and media has probably heard of the term “bury your gays”. It’s a trope that goes at least as far back as lesbian pulp fiction novels from the early 20th century, and for a number of reasons that I’m not remotely qualified to comment on the trope has persisted into modern media. As the name implies, bury your gays is the implicit belief that for a story about gay people to end correctly, usually one or both members of a gay couple are killed before the it ends. Whether intentional or not, the trope is rooted in the idea that gay couples are not supposed to be together, that queer love is a temporary fantasy that must be righted by the end of the story. A weird kind of offshoot of this is the causing of gay characters to suffer through loneliness or separation from a partner, and it comes from the underlying idea that gay=alone. Frequently this manifests in queer characters feeling that they have to choose between family and friends and the “"gay lifestyle”“ when in reality those two things frequently are not mutually exclusive. A subset of this trope is featuring a gay character (or frequently the partner of a more-established gay character) as possessed by some form of “evil” to emphasize which side of the temptation is “correct” and which isn’t.

I’m guessing you can see what I’m teeing up here, so I’ll just add as a caveat that most writers (especially straight writers) do not necessarily agree with the homophobia behind these tropes, nor is it (usually) their intent to perpetuate negative stereotypes about gay people. That being said the legacy of this trope is alive in a lot of media, and intentional or not: gay people suffering is entrenched in how we think about writing them.

Now to be extra clear, I’m not (necessarily) saying this is what King Falls is doing. So far the writing of queer themes and homophobia has been nuanced and has avoided a lot of the pitfalls that have come to be expected, but I would also be lying if I didn’t say episode 100 didn’t rub me the wrong way, and for a couple of specific reasons, too.

For me what that boils down to is characterization and timing.

Let’s talk about characterization first.

Just think about this for a second: what do you know about Jack Wright? No really, can you name anything beyond the bare minimum of characteristics? He’s a journalist and radio host, has a belief in the paranormal, and loves Sammy. He has a sister and a fiancé, has black hair and brown eyes, and plays rugby. I can’t think of a single other concrete fact we’ve learned about him specifically, and being generous like less than half of the things on that list don’t directly have to do with Sammy. Now we could extrapolate bits of his personality based on the two very short clips we’ve ever heard of him and from what’s implied by Sammy and Lily, but that’s also kind of the point: everything we know about Jack Wright is almost exclusively based off his sister and his fiancé, both of whom are anything but unbiased. Did you notice how Lily trashed Sammy and Jack’s radio show in the first King Falls Chronicles but then went on to call Jack smart and prolific in his field like five minutes later? It’s a(n understandable) level of cognitive dissonance for someone who was going through the difficult process of grieving. Both Sammy and Lily are biased sources of information because both care very deeply for Jack. On it’s own that really isn’t a problem—in fact I would say it’s an opportunity for an interesting bit of narrative contrast between the perception of Jack and the reality of when we actually get to meet him.

That at least was my opinion.

Instead we have this ”“dark”“ version of Jack, a lover just out of reach who’s trying to tempt Sammy into leaving his family and friends for the “freedom” of the void. This is a situation that, if I’m being honest, has some homophobic tinges, and hearing the dialogue played out the way it was kind of made my stomach turn (and not in the fun, scared-to-death at 3AM way I’m used to).

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think this is what the writers were intending, nor do I think that there is anything necessarily wrong with having a normally good character occupy a “bad guy” role. When done correctly it can be interesting and compelling, and help tease out different aspects of a character or relationship dynamic. The issue isn’t that we’re seeing a “bad” version of Jack, the issue is that a. the specific wording of his interaction made my homophobia alarm bells go off, and more critically b. this “bad” version of of Jack is the only true version of him we know. Having him in a “bad” role outside his norm would be interesting if we actually had a real-time, in-person Jack with which to compare him. We might have a constructed idea of who he is from descriptions of biased sources close to him or tapes that are probably a decade old, but we only need to hear from this ”“shadow”“ Jack two more times and it’ll be more times than we’ve heard even recordings of the real Jack.

Emily, for example, had a baseline character established before her abduction. We got to know her as a character before she went missing, so when we eventually saw her as a different version of herself, we had a baseline understanding of how she typically acts in a situation, which is something we just don’t have with Jack.

Also, do you notice how Jack never directly spoke to Lily? He talked about her, but never to her, and can we take a moment to appreciate the gravity of that moment? Jack (or whatever was controlling him) had the opportunity to lure one of the four members of the "named” in the prophecy in the book, and instead of choosing his sister, the person he has known for his entire life and the only flesh and blood family with whom he’s in contact, and he chose to lure Sammy instead, to make Sammy choose between a gay relationship and the support system he’s built up.

Can you understand why this kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth? It feels a little like the “love the sinner” (Jack), hate the sin (being “bad”, trying to make Sammy have to decide between romance and a family), and that’s an adage that queer people tend to get tired of really quickly.

Again, because I really don’t want to be misunderstood, I don’t think this is what the writers intended; in fact I’m guessing the thought probably never even crossed their minds. But at the end of the day that’s kind of the point: if you’re going to make a show that subverts homophobic tropes (which I will readily say that they have done up until this point), you have to make sure not to accidentally fall into any of them yourself.

This leads me into my other issue with the episode: the timing.

My opinion toward the show right now would be considerably less harsh if this was not the last episode before a hiatus. I’m not saying the show can’t take breaks, but ending after this episode specifically? We are left with a very specific image of who Jack is, and exactly what kind of influence he has on Sammy. We’re left with the impression that Sammy has to choose between his found family and a gay relationship, and just to put icing on the cake we’re being told there is going to be another hiatus, prolonging the suffering of a character who has been through quite a lot already.

If this wasn’t the episode before a hiatus, I wouldn’t be as unhappy because we would have more immediate reactions to what had happened. We would have the four of them discussing it in detail. Maybe we even would have gotten a chance to hear Sammy himself say that this wasn’t Jack, and even get to hear more detail from him about who Jack is, if not what we heard. Maybe we would have actually gotten to see them get a step closer to getting Jack back instead of now knowing that the void has been opened, and we have to wait for another few months to see if the gay characters will ever get something even resembling a happy ending.

But we didn’t get any of that. Instead we got a cold, empty laugh that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since.

This isn’t to say that the show is headed in a bad direction. I think because this was not the intent that there is still plenty potential for things to stay on the rails. But what it looks like from here is that we are just continuing to prolong the suffering of the gay couple that sits at the emotional heart of the show’s main plotline. I’m just getting to a point where I’m starting to lose faith that we will see anything but it.

also huge thanks to @calebmichaels and @deputytroy. a lot of these points were the distillation of conversations between us, and if you think that I made a particularly interesting point at all in this post, it was probably their idea, not mine.