basically what it says on the tin: i watched the first episode of fellow travelers, immediately spent the weekend reading the book, got my heart broken a million different ways, and now we're here. i'll be comparing the book to the show a lot, but i'll make sure to tag possible spoilers.
i can't think of many instances that require a tw/cw, but if there ever is and i don't tag it correctly -- please let me know so i can change it and watch out for it in the future.
as always, homophobes, terfs, and general bigots: mind your business, no one's forcing you to interact with things you don't want to. don't waste your time. go love someone for a change.
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context: [december 23, 1953] this is the scene where we're first introduced to the cufflinks. it's christmas and they're serving post-coital realness (i have no other way of explaining this rn).
this is one of the most dramatic differences between the book and the series, because what on earth. this is such a tender moment of rare openness from hawk in the series. it's such a clear declaration of love with the implication of possession and a what's-mine-is-yours kind of deal.
yes, there's tenderness in hawk giving the cufflinks to tim and going as far as putting them into his dress shirt himself -- but the number of times tim doesn't even let himself believe that it's a special thing for him is awful. he thinks he's so undeserving that, in the end, he convinces himself that they were his reward for not showing his emotions! and to add hawk's passiveness with "'i'm going to be late, skippy.'" β don't get me started. the coldest cherry on top -- agh!
overall, this scene makes me feel sick. it's not at all like the series -- and thank god for that! the show made it so much more heartwarming and loving. they look happy, they look like they both love what the cufflinks symbolize -- they adore each other!
context: [april 7, 1954] this never made it into the series, but tim has a boss named tommy mcintyre who is very aware of the situation between tim and hawk, but doesn't really mind it. (this character kind of grew into the roy cohn moment which i thought was ridiculous but this is not the post for that.) klein is another assistant to a different senator who pops up like thrice when they're talking politics.
i really liked tommy as a character, i felt he had really great moments in the book i wished they'd kept in the series, but oh well. again, he knew about tim and hawk and would go as far as to tease them about it. anyway, this is a great example of tim's lies that "people like himself learned to construct a dozen times a day."
context: [december 25, 1954/april 22, 1957] tim is home for the holidays with his sister, frances, at their grandmother's. frances is older and is married with children.
how do i... like how do i even begin.
i put it best in my notes:
honestly, favorite character? absolutely tim's sister. she does everything i wish i could have done for tim -- she's such a supportive force of nature for him, it's so nice to see.
in the show, she's there for him while he's suffering from aids, so she's fully aware of the fact that he's gay and completely devotes all of her time to him anyway. in the book, she shows this unconditional love toward him in the best way she can when she recognizes he's in love with another man.
this is heartbreaking because, in my opinion, that was their escape. she was there and so willing to welcome hawk into her home -- without having ever met him -- because she saw how much tim loved and treasured him. she was ready to love him, too, and to include him in their family. i wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if she had actually ever met him. if that would've ever made a difference in hawk's decisions and the fate of their relationship.
and because tim can't be normal and recognize his self-worth for one second:
also! the difference in using the cufflinks to inflict pain! tim uses it to distract himself, but she uses it to anchor him to the present and pay attention to what she's telling him.
context: [october 16, 1991] hawk is on the phone with his old employee, mary, where she's telling him details of tim's life and death.
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when I first watched episode 1, I read Hawk's reaction to the news of Tim being sick as concerned but also maybe a bit distant. now, after 6 more episodes of knowing his character and especially in the context of episode 7 and what happened between them the last time they met, I'm picking up on all these little details that show that he's devastated but trying to repress what he's feeling: the shake in his voice when he asks how long tim has, the way he looks away when Marcus said that something kept getting in the way of Tim's romances that never lasted, that tiny little nod he gives when Marcus says that Tim doesn't want to hear from him, because that's what he expected, that Tim's done with him. And then when he opens the box and sees the paperweight, he lets out this sharp involuntary sigh - that detail has been haunting me ever since I noticed it.
it's just been really fascinating rewatching the 80s scenes now that we know most of what happened before, especially in the 70s - it explains so much of why Hawk was acting so hesitant and unsure around Tim at specific moments, not wanting to push too hard but not wanting to be chased away.
absolutely. i had wondered why they would go the route of jumping from one timeline to another. they could have easily done it completely chronologically or the way the book did it by having a glimpse of 1991 in the beginning, telling their story in the 50s, and then back to 1991.
this way makes it so much more interesting. in the beginning, you don't know why hawk is acting a certain way or why tim and his sister are apprehensive about hawk. it's all piecing the puzzle pieces together and it makes it super engaging!!
i'll definitely be watching the series over and over to see those small details, too!
I can't stop thinking about the similarities between Hawk breaking down right after Tim leaves in episode 7 and his breakdown in the bathroom in episode 3 after Tim discusses his illness in detail and Hawk can no longer be in denial... it's such a masterful parallel but so damn painful π
yes!!! tim has such a way of bringing hawk back to reality and making him face the music. it's something that i admire about their relationship and it shows me that there's true mutual respect there, outside of love and physical attraction. tim's not scared of telling hawk how he truly feels and hawk has an anchor in tim that he doesn't have with anyone else. it makes this loss so much more heartbreaking!
i think that they could've easily written the 80s where hawk simply receives the news about tim having died already, or hawk arrives to sf too late and tim has died already, and it affects hawk and he still ends up with the same ending which will happen in the finale. but since they chose to have tim alive too, i think it's only logical that while he will inevitably die in the finale, there will be at least something positive between them.
Yeah to me if they were simply gonna go about ending it only sad then they would have just made it so Hawk figures out in 1991 that Tim died and that he hasn't seen him since 1957 like in the book (or smth similar to what you said about him being too late). But since they decided to create these original story lines after the 50s and it makes me think that they are doing it so we will get some kind of reconciliation or closure in the story that we never got in the book. There would just be no reason at all to make the 1980s storyline or even the 70s and 60s to be honest if they weren't going to give us something
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