!!

and like ok maybe im projecting bc i grew up with a lot of internalized homophobia that i had to work out of (i grew up muslim and i still sometimes thinkim going to hell for being queer but like Whatever) but i swear ive always been fairly good at smelling the repressed queerness in people and i see it in both hax and infume but especially hax.

like i mean ok lets start with infume. i believe infume has mentioned before that he's not religious or anything but that there's a lot of christian names in his family so i can only assume that his family is religious enough for it to stick out to him a little bit bc its sooo easy to latch onto religion when you start feeling scared (which is why religion is a thing in the first place. its all just an organized cult tbh) and i dont think infume has ever like seriously prayed or anything like that, but i do think he has small moments of "i will go to hell for this" when he thinks sexually about a man. i genuinely do think infume is like... Mostly Straight but i think he has like . Considered being in a relationship with a man or like occasionally had romantic/sexual thoughts about men he knows. i think its moreso in like a "i dont think i would mind being in a relationship with this guy?" and then he got so scared that he could possibly like a man that he had to start convincing himself he's straight. like i think it would take a Lot for infume to actually come out like i dont think he ever will actually date a man or anything bc he just views himself as heterosexual, but i think it's there as like a very small possibility for him and it scares him. like he's not homophobic or anything but i think he very much sees it as a "i love gay people and its okay to be gay but i am not because i'm not allowed to be". and i think a slight religious backgorund might come into that for him. i dont see him every rlly getting over that but i mean a lot of people dont! sexuality is a lot more fluid than people think and just because you label yourself as straight doesnt mean you can't occasionally have a same-sex crush and like thats okay. and thats kinda how i see infume. definitely some internalized homophobia. i think he's mostly okay with ideas of like desire and stuff like that, it's just the queerness that scares him. i think another element is probably how anxious he is and he's so scared of being thought of as Weird or Out of the Ordinary like infume cares soooo much about what other people think of him (he egoscrolls twitter so much) and the idea of possibly being queer just freaks him out bc he views it as something Not Normal. its okay for others, but if he was queer? no, that wouldnt be normal! that would be weird! and infume's not weird, right? he's just your average, typical, cishet white guy!! he's so normal and ordinary! no he doesn't think about his male friends in a sexual manner at all! what would make you think that? he's never even thought about feinberg like that, he swears!

i mean, i even think that for infume, this kind of idea of being scared to be weird probably leans into his sexual preferences as well. like i know we all write abt infume being the ultimate sub or whatever, but i can imagine that irl, he's too scared to actually be submissive in a relationship and he would really try to force himself to be dominant bc he believes that the Man should be the protector and whatever the fuck. like in that stream with ghostie and shane where they made infume do the "am i a feminist" quiz and he started talking about how his parents taught him to protect women and he doesnt mean it in a misogynist way, he just wants to protect women bc that's what men should do! and he's just so scared of being perceived as something strange and breaking out of the arbitrary rules that he assigns for himself.

so tldr i think infume is like Mostly straight but he has some weird ideas about queerness and he's probably had some kind of romantic thoughts about men before but they scared him so bad and made him think he was going to hell.

hax on the other hand... god does he intrigue me. there's so much about hax that i want to know (what the fuck is his relationship with his uncle... he lied to his uncle to go to rowl's house, his uncle didn't even know about twitchcon, he has a doorbell that rings when its time for dinner, whatever im getting distracted im just so intrigued). hax has always given me the idea that he's really scared of acknowledging that he has sexual desires. like i think a lot of it stems from cultural values and him believing that there are certain ideals he needs to live up to (similar to infume but with a lot more added external pressure rather than it mostly being internal like it is for infume) and he gets afraid that he's being weird and a freak. hax i genuinely could see being some type of queer. maybe bisexual or something mspec if i thought labels mattered (i dont really) but i genuinely could see him having full fledged romantic feelings for other men. i think he does have full fledged romantic feelings for men. not in the way that im describing for infume where it's like ohh he's had some thoughts about men like that before but not really seriously but in the way where it's like. i think hax could see himself dating and marrying a man. if he wasn't too scared of it. and he's surrounded by queer people and he doesnt think its bad to be gay but he's not! he's not!!

i think he has so much shame associated with desire even when it comes to women and i think a lot of it stems from a kind of internalized homophobia. he needs to be sucessful and marry a woman and have children because he doesn't want to bring shame to his family. and this is like . typical thought process for immigrant children (improbably projecting who Cares) but i think hax rlly feels it. hes just so scared to admit that He has desire because its something so inherently shameful to him. like he's probably kinda scared of porn and stuff ilke that. i think he's also so insecure and that affects a lot of it. like he cant fathom anyone actually being into him and he just doesnt know how to handle any sort of want or desire. like he probably feels like a creep when he has a crush on someone bc he cant ever imagine them liking him back bc he's just so insecure about it (and yes i know he's had a girlfriend before (still has? im unsure of if theyve broken up bc i know she deactivated and hax hasnt mentioned her on stream in a really long time nor has she been in chat but whatever) but he's said that she was the one who dmed him first and thats a big factor). like i definitely think hax is some kind of queer but his internalized homophobia wont let him think for too long about it to figure it out. like he starts thinking about dating a man and he starts freaking out so bad that he immediately turns on minecraft and speedruns for 12 hours straight bc he needs to distract himself. and honestly it feels like he's kinda getting better at it? thats even more speculative but i think getting involved with max and the brighton crew (who are so openly queer and not ashamed of it) could help him kinda have that breakthrough that he needs to have if he doesnt want to live sad and ashamed for the rest of his life.