well i am that dragon 🤸🤸

I wrote down my thoughts as soon as I could after watching because I wanted to ramble about this movie very badly in here. These are some of them:

- The fact that this entity works so well because the teenagers can’t even tell “trusted adults” about it. Religion has a hold of this community, everyone knows everyone, you’re effectively trapped in a nightmare and you can’t talk about it because then they’ll find out that who you desire most is another boy. Naim tells someone and the lady not only doesn’t believe him, she immediately betrays his trust. He tries multiple times to get his mom’s help but she refuses to listen and the twist being that Naim’s own mother knew all along and let it happen? I was flabbergasted. She kept saying how fear is something you need. Live your life in fear, who in this community hasn’t heard that one before. It was absolutely revolting to watch. No adult actually cares, they seem to know about this practice and allow it. Even if they didn’t know, as long as the “cure” worked I don’t think they would mind. Would the police even care? It’s wild.

- It works like a chain of outing. One kid tells on someone and then another kid tells on someone else and it keeps going and going. When your church rewards you for exposing your peers, either because you were raised homophobic as hell or you’re trying very hard not to give yourself away, I can imagine how terrifyingly effective that ends up being. Izzie appears to be on their side only to lead them into being hate-crimed ffs 😭

- Naim in NO WAY knew that a whole ass demonic entity would end up cursing them just because he snitched on Ryan and Hunter, please give that boy so much grace. He’s like 17 or something? At most he thought they would make them stop seeing each other! Which is what his impulsive teenage self wanted because he felt hurt! Not even Hunter and Ryan were too worried when they brought them to the church for the ritual, thinking it was going to be some bullshit spectacle. Naim also clearly doesn’t have experience with living in a place like this before and it’s so apparent. Small towns make you turn on each other by design, I won’t stand for anyone calling Naim a villain when the clear villains are right there! Like the Deliverance Healer and all the adults? I know there will inevitably be some people who dislike Naim for outing them, I understand it as your first emotional reaction, but that in no way should be what you come out of the movie with. Hopefully I’m fighting ghosts and no one hates my boy 🙏

- Hunter talks about how the ritual actually worked for a couple of people, who ended up having kids and living the “normal” life. I was gagged again by how the concept of conversion therapy via demonic entity works so well. The entity makes you afraid of the person you desire most, it drives a wedge between you, tainting your love. Naim licks Ryan’s ear in one scene and as the audience your heart is fluttering, but then on the very next scene the entity bites Ryan’s ear in the exact same spot, leaving him bleeding and terrified, and your heart breaks for these two who can’t have one good thing. The entity uses that growing affection to learn how to best manipulate you. It gets better at imitating touch the more time you spend with the person, like the girl said. Eventually the only way to save yourself is to cut the other person off and that is so viscerally tragic.

- Ryan said “I want it to look like you” and I knew this was a true horror-romance. They choose each other at the end, they choose loving and staying together in spite of everything. It’s not like all their problems have been solved now, because sure they have lighters to defend themselves with and they may develop some countermeasures, but the entity remains. They will have to keep living with some modicum of fear for the rest of their lives and work through the feelings of hurt and betrayal between them. And yet! And yet they have each other. They have that sweet, sweet love that no one can take away from them anymore. Their entities will keep looking like them as yet another symbol of their affection. Those people didn’t succeed in making them give up their love and that is so important to me.

- The entity actually stopped when Naim caressed it? Can I hear everyone’s theory about this? Because it’s probably the thing I’m most curious about. Can it… feel affection? Does it have a need for it? I don’t even know man.

- The way Hunter and Ryan can only communicate through aggression is such a contrast to Naim and Ryan’s relationship. Their repression manifests as hurting each other, while Naim and Ryan are hesitant but they don’t want to hurt each other. They want to explore and be soft and sometimes playfully rough, and it’s clear enough that their relationship is just instantly deeper and stronger. I’m sorry Hunter 😔 Ryan was already seeing the entity as Naim, who I’m sure he met fairly recently compared to you (I think they may have grown together?)

- The tragedy of Hunter is very obvious to me however. Being the pastor’s son in a church like that? Yeah I would also develop some psychosexual tendencies. They didn’t need to show me his head ugh

- I love how they made a point of Naim being constantly scared. He’s scared of the snake, he’s scared of heights, and he’s scared of letting Ryan give him a handjob, jolting as soon as he looks at his reflection while in the middle of the act. Fear is a central theme of the movie, “they wanted us to be scared”. Naim has to overcome so much to reach that moment in which he is able to confront the entity head-on, and a big part of that journey is thanks to Ryan and how much Naim cares for him. It’s what leds him to investigate the situation in the first place, to confess his involvement in the whole thing and to try to save Ryan. He’s able to finally let go and offer himself to the pleasure at Ryan’s hands in that bus scene, growing a little with each experience. At last, he confronts the entity and we see him look completely at peace on that final scene, heading to who knows where with Ryan’s head in his shoulder.

- Frank Ocean needle drop was perfection 💯

- Sustained long shots are one of my favorite filmmaking techniques and that’s basically 60% of this movie so I was delighted by the cinematography.

- Maybe I’ve gotten better at horror than I thought because I wasn’t really scared, I was just sad and appalled all the time lol. I think part of it is that I had already spoiled myself on all entity Ryan appearances except for one (which did get me to jump a little).

- I need so many post-canon fics cuz I’m pretty sure they won’t be making a sequel for this (fingers crossed though) and I’d like to read Ryanaim live as happily ever after as they can after all that.

- The one scene the five people at my screening laughed at was Naim asking the cashier to stay with him while looking completely out of his mind, tbh I also chuckled and I think that was the intention anyway lol

- Ryan is such a fascinating character, I really thought for a second he might leave Naim to be beaten after that revelation, but he didn’t. Everything is told from Naim’s perspective so Ryan remains a little mysterious throughout it. I wish this was adapted from a book so I could just go and read all his inner monologues.

- It could’ve done with a longer runtime and a bigger climax but I understand budgeting and it’s incredible this was made in the first place. I loved it all the same. Unlike some reviews I’ve seen, I don’t think I needed the entity to be explained more than it was. A final appearance from the Deliverance Healer is what I felt missing but tbf that only makes it creepier, the idea that he’s still out there, just cursing more gay people oh god

- it’s not quite like It Follows, now that I think about it. In It Follows the entity has to walk the distance and it shows up regardless of if you’re alone or not.

- Joe Bird’s talent truly is shedding tears while still looking pretty af, Stacy’s talent is looking fantastic while covered in blood <3

- Naim’s name being from the actual Leviticus is such a neat detail that I need everyone to know.

The OG: 

Antonin Rimbaud (I Killed my Mother): FA’s first queer character was in his first real film. I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes to rave reviews in 2009, when scenes of same-sex intimacy were still a rarity (and they still are!). Young handsome Antonin’s easy relationship with his sexuality and easier relationship with his slightly flighty mother are a balm and a foil to his character’s boyfriend, the angsty Hubert. Antonin put FA on the map and remains a piece of queer cinematic history.

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Antonin is the love interest of the main character, and while this isn’t the kind of movie where characters say identity labels at the screen, the young men’s intimacy is the emotional catharsis of the film. If you haven’t seen the gifsets of the painting scene, just scroll tumblr for a while. You’ll find them. 

💔💔: This movie is serious cinema about a young man’s fraught relationship with his mother. His being homosexual is a factor in that (and the fact that he’s accidentally outed to her without his knowledge). That said, the conflicts in the movie are largely internal, and the relationship of Antonin to Hubert has moments of real sweetness. General angst, minimal sadçois.

Period Pieces:

The most distinct thing about these queer characters is their relationship to the specific historical moment in which they exist (yes, I am including Heated Rivalry here. It’s a period film about the 2010s. Deal with it lol)

Scott Hunter (Heated Rivalry): If somehow you found this list, have an interest in seeing FA play an absolutely shredded gay man with sad eyes who finds the love of his life, and haven’t seen Heated Rivalry, I have great news for you. This is possibly the greatest day of your young life. Exit this list, get your friends HBO Max password and go watch Heated Rivalry right now. Go!

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Heated Rivalry is a gay romance show. Scott is in this show because he is gay. His problems are because he is gay, and his ultimate happiness is a result of him being gay. Good for him. Good for Scott Hunter. 

💔💔.5: This is a romance about professional athletes, which means it is a show about the closet, and the hard choices that entail coming out of it (if at all). For me the HEA (for Scott) makes the sadçois moments (and boy are they sad) a delicious part of a journey. Overall it’s a show about queer people finding happiness together, and while the specter of homophobia is very present, the setting of HR (see it is a period piece!) makes this a gentler world than others on this list.  

Paul (Yellowjackets): Paul, you exquisite document of late 90s gay fashion. The high-waisted jeans. The silk VEST. The EARRING. It’s incredible to behold in the brief foray Yellowjackets takes into the past and wishful hallucinations of Coach Ben. Paul is the boyfriend poor closeted Ben left behind in order to accompany a girl’s soccer team to nationals, only to have their plane go down in the Canadian wilderness. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much else about the show. Paul’s appearance is brief, strewn across a few episodes of season two, but FA delivers.

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Paul exists in order to show us the out and proud gay possibilities that Ben is too timid to pursue. He’s queer, tender, and I can’t say enough about his clothes. Remember in 1996 how everyone was dressing like a lesbian? Good times. Ben’s wishful imaginings of couples activities with Paul like playing charades are sweet moments of queer joy with a historical flavor. 

💔💔💔💔💔: Nothing bad happens to Paul, who lbr mostly only exists on screen as part of Ben’s fever dreams. That context is enough to make this queer character fairly sad. However, this is also Yellowjackets, and uh, from what I hear, things don’t go great for Coach Ben (though his character’s fate isn’t due to homophobia). Paul’s final appearance is juicy sadçois, and whatever happens to Coach Ben in the wilderness takes place much later in the show. My advice if you aren’t into Yellowjackets: watch the Paul scenes as a sweet short film with a bittersweet and ambiguous ending and call it a day.

Curtis Bailey (Quantum Leap): I enjoyed the tenderness and hopefulness of this character, who admittedly does hit some of the more traditional sad historical gay beats common to network television. A one-off guest spot on a show about time travel, Curtis is an American soldier in 1978 who because of his accidental outing following the death of his partner (implied to have died towards the end of the Vietnam War), has been assigned to a suicide-squad-type secret mission. Curtis is a well-meaning attempt at a queer Born of the Fourth of July scenario (he feels betrayed by his country despite trying to serve it) but the show isn’t really dark or political enough to get too deep into all that.

🌈🌈🌈🌈: Curtis is definitely gay, and definitely loved his boyfriend very much. He says this in monologues at least three times. Those monologues aren’t bad, I just have to take one rainbow away for the show’s slightly cheapskate commitment to “tell don’t show.” Like one good flashback to Curtis’ happier times with his partner would have made all the difference. 

💔💔💔💔: the premise of Curtis is that he loved and lost, and that his partner’s unexpected death directly led to him being outed to the military. That’s some heavy stuff. However, I want to give credit to the hopeful beats given to this character, who tries to sacrifice himself for the group and in a pleasant subversion of the Bury Your Gays trope (Heroic Flavor) gets rescued through the power of non-homophobic teamwork. It was a little saccharine but it did my heart good. Some valuable sadçois brought depth to a character that could have been expected and bland.

Gays with Ethically Questionable Business Practices:

If I had a nickel for every time François Arnaud played a gay guy with very few moral boundaries when it came to getting ahead in his corporate job, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Patrick Landry (Plan B): Patrick is a dedicated family man who I think would really benefit from a Xanax. This bilingual lawyer is the third billed character in a remake of a Quebecois sci-fi show where the (terrible) main character uses a time traveling service to go back in time and try to make the perfect life. Patrick goes through some really interesting iterations thanks to this process, but his motivations are always to get ahead at his law firm in order to better support his family (so he says). This includes some ethically dubious shit that at one point puts him and his family in (threatened) danger. That said, he’s a great brother and a great dad and he holds a special place in my heart.

🌈🌈🌈: Patrick has a husband who he kisses on screen and two beautiful (surrogate?) children. For plot reasons he literally says “I’m gay. I have a husband” to another character. This is as textual as it gets. That being said, other than a little extra mustard that FA puts on some of his line deliveries Patrick’s sexuality isn’t super relevant to the story. It’s important that his character have a spouse, not a husband. It made me wonder, and what do you know, in the original Francophone Plan B, the Patrick character has a wife and kids instead. The switch isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’d be curious to do a side-by-side watch someday and see what making Patrick gay does to change his story, if at all.

💔💔:This is a tough call, because infidelity is a factor in Patrick’s story, but not in the way you might expect. It is very clear that Patrick sees his actions as coming from a place of devotion toward his family. Frankly, as far as tragic shit in this show goes, Patrick and Eric’s marriage is doing great. This show also features some fantastic sadçois that is unrelated to Patrick’s sexuality.

Harrison (Surface): Surface is not about Harrison, the male lead’s work friend (possibly best friend, which is sad) who just so happens to be gay (and everyone is fine with it. Seriously!! No need to discuss it AT ALL, bro.) Harrison’s role in the show is “do borderline financial crimes to help the main character.” He doesn’t even have a last name, but look! He has a boyfriend! This show appeals to many demographics! Memorable sad line (i’m paraphrasing): “c’mon let’s get you out of the house. I’ll even suffer through a strip club with you.” 

🌈:This is just a hunch but I think at some point in production they realized “oh this show is set in San Fran. we’re legally obligated to have a gay character” and Harrison was the only guy with blank spots on his “Traits and Abilities” sheet. The difference between Harrison and Dan Moody is a few hundred grand in net worth.

💔: I feel sadness in my heart for this underdeveloped character, but neither Harrison nor the people who wrote him seem to clock that his life is tragic.

Scene-y LA guys:

The name of this category is a JOKE based on a JOKE that FA made in an interview ONE TIME. It is TONGUE IN CHEEK. That being said, these are very contemporary characters living in big cities who seem to be very comfortable with queer culture and have little to no relationship to the closet. Good for them!

Sebastian Raine (Schitt’s Creek): Every actor should have a self-parody character, and I believe in my heart that this is François’. Every doubt in his mind telling him he’s abandoned good, noble Montreal in order to chase shallow fame in LA lives in Sebastian Raine, whose mild villainy is only outdone by his atrocious and no doubt expensive sweater. He takes his sexuality (and his sexiness) for granted. People are just material to be churned into his artistic vision. I love him. He appears in one episode of Schitt’s Creek as David Rose’s dreaded ex, and he should have won an Emmy for the accent alone. 

🌈🌈🌈: Sexuality is never much of an issue on Schitt’s Creek, so it’s not like Sebastian needs to worry about homophobia. Whether he’s gay, bi, or pan is left to the imagination as far as i recall, but he and David definitely get up to something offscreen and they verbally and hilariously acknowledge their past relationship. Sebastian being queer is by far the least objectionable thing about him, so it’s not much of a role in the plot. 

-💔: negative broken hearts, because Sebastian’s therapist says he should never feel sorrow. 

Sam(my) (Twinless): First of all, go watch this movie. It rules. Secondly, we have Sammy, essentially a cameo and a comedic lesson in why straight people shouldn’t introduce the only two gay people they know and assume they’ll fall in love. Sammy in a short time has some funny lines in a great movie set in Portland that explores a few different (admittedly cosmopolitan and upper-middle class) facets of gay life in the 2020s. You get to see FA in a sexy mailman costume. It’s great. 

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Sammy is “the gay guy” Roman knows from work. He should totally introduce you! Shout out to Sammy’s sexy halloween costume and his upfront acknowledgement that he’s not into “nice.” 

💔: one broken heart as fair warning that this movie is about the death of a queer character. That death has nothing to do with FA’s role, and I hope it doesn't turn you off of this movie. It would be unfair to apply Bury Your Gays to a film thats really about the complex relationships between its characters, several of whom are queer. 

Connor Fontaine (Paint): Okay, I’m going to be real: I’m not actually sure that this character is meant to be understood as queer. HOWEVER, according to a strict reading of the text, at least one woman and one man verbally confirm having sucked his dick. That’s good enough for me. I didn’t really love the rest of this movie because (shocker) the art market sucks. Connor pops up a little over halfway through, tells some inappropriate stories, does some cocaine, and tries to hook up with one of the female artist characters who briefly debates whether she wants to fuck him or sell him paintings (and girl you are valid). 

🌈🌈: Again, while I believe in my heart that Connor is bi based on dialogue, his role in the movie is about class, not sexuality. He’s there as the heir to an art collector who reminds the artist characters that there are people out there who just play by different rules because of money they were born into. He does wear a cunty earring.

💔: eh, again whether or not he’s queer has little to do with the fact that Connor is kind of a dick. It’s not clear how seriously the audience should take a story he tells that implies his father once touched him inappropriately as a kind of macho bullying.

Honorable Mention: The Subtext Gang

These characters are not textually queer. However, for the discerning viewer, there is some very Modern Literature available on Ao3 speculating on various queer identities they might be referencing via subtext, costuming, or just pure transformative efforts by their fans. 

Cesare Borgia (The Borgias): Shoutout Lucrezia, but Cesare is on here because of Micheletto. The Borgias canon gay character has a relationship of deep trust with FA’s Cesare, and when he departs after the death of his lover in season 3, Cesare’s grief is very real. Toss in a lot of homoerotic sword fighting, cute banter (Cesare meets Micheletto’s mom!), and tense dialogue over Micheletto’s other partners and you’ve got the recipe for a classic slash ship.

🌈: A courtesy rainbow, for “you must keep on loving this boy.”

💔: *closes wikipedia* haha nothing bad ever happens to Cesare Borgia! Jesus loves him! 

Manfred Bernardo (Midnight Texas): Manfred the medium/fortune teller/scam artist is on this subtext list for two reasons: 1) there’s just no way he’s heterosexual and 2) He spends all of season one of Midnight Texas wearing ace rings. So we have two equally fun (and not contradictory) subtext possibilities here. Whether it was a happy accident in the costuming department or an intentional shout out to a niche community, we have the possibility that Manfred isn’t interested in sex, and that he’s definitely curious about many of the beautiful men and women that inhabit a sleepy and supernatural Texas town. Anything is better than poor Creek. 

🌈🌈: please Manfred. You have so many choices. Please. 

The OG: 

Antonin Rimbaud (I Killed my Mother): FA’s first queer character was in his first real film. I Killed My Mother premiered at Cannes to rave reviews in 2009, when scenes of same-sex intimacy were still a rarity (and they still are!). Young handsome Antonin’s easy relationship with his sexuality and easier relationship with his slightly flighty mother are a balm and a foil to his character’s boyfriend, the angsty Hubert. Antonin put FA on the map and remains a piece of queer cinematic history.

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Antonin is the love interest of the main character, and while this isn’t the kind of movie where characters say identity labels at the screen, the young men’s intimacy is the emotional catharsis of the film. If you haven’t seen the gifsets of the painting scene, just scroll tumblr for a while. You’ll find them. 

💔💔: This movie is serious cinema about a young man’s fraught relationship with his mother. His being homosexual is a factor in that (and the fact that he’s accidentally outed to her without his knowledge). That said, the conflicts in the movie are largely internal, and the relationship of Antonin to Hubert has moments of real sweetness. General angst, minimal sadçois.

Period Pieces:

The most distinct thing about these queer characters is their relationship to the specific historical moment in which they exist (yes, I am including Heated Rivalry here. It’s a period film about the 2010s. Deal with it lol)

Scott Hunter (Heated Rivalry): If somehow you found this list, have an interest in seeing FA play an absolutely shredded gay man with sad eyes who finds the love of his life, and haven’t seen Heated Rivalry, I have great news for you. This is possibly the greatest day of your young life. Exit this list, get your friends HBO Max password and go watch Heated Rivalry right now. Go!

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Heated Rivalry is a gay romance show. Scott is in this show because he is gay. His problems are because he is gay, and his ultimate happiness is a result of him being gay. Good for him. Good for Scott Hunter. 

💔💔.5: This is a romance about professional athletes, which means it is a show about the closet, and the hard choices that entail coming out of it (if at all). For me the HEA (for Scott) makes the sadçois moments (and boy are they sad) a delicious part of a journey. Overall it’s a show about queer people finding happiness together, and while the specter of homophobia is very present, the setting of HR (see it is a period piece!) makes this a gentler world than others on this list.  

Paul (Yellowjackets): Paul, you exquisite document of late 90s gay fashion. The high-waisted jeans. The silk VEST. The EARRING. It’s incredible to behold in the brief foray Yellowjackets takes into the past and wishful hallucinations of Coach Ben. Paul is the boyfriend poor closeted Ben left behind in order to accompany a girl’s soccer team to nationals, only to have their plane go down in the Canadian wilderness. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much else about the show. Paul’s appearance is brief, strewn across a few episodes of season two, but FA delivers.

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Paul exists in order to show us the out and proud gay possibilities that Ben is too timid to pursue. He’s queer, tender, and I can’t say enough about his clothes. Remember in 1996 how everyone was dressing like a lesbian? Good times. Ben’s wishful imaginings of couples activities with Paul like playing charades are sweet moments of queer joy with a historical flavor. 

💔💔💔💔💔: Nothing bad happens to Paul, who lbr mostly only exists on screen as part of Ben’s fever dreams. That context is enough to make this queer character fairly sad. However, this is also Yellowjackets, and uh, from what I hear, things don’t go great for Coach Ben (though his character’s fate isn’t due to homophobia). Paul’s final appearance is juicy sadçois, and whatever happens to Coach Ben in the wilderness takes place much later in the show. My advice if you aren’t into Yellowjackets: watch the Paul scenes as a sweet short film with a bittersweet and ambiguous ending and call it a day.

Curtis Bailey (Quantum Leap): I enjoyed the tenderness and hopefulness of this character, who admittedly does hit some of the more traditional sad historical gay beats common to network television. A one-off guest spot on a show about time travel, Curtis is an American soldier in 1978 who because of his accidental outing following the death of his partner (implied to have died towards the end of the Vietnam War), has been assigned to a suicide-squad-type secret mission. Curtis is a well-meaning attempt at a queer Born of the Fourth of July scenario (he feels betrayed by his country despite trying to serve it) but the show isn’t really dark or political enough to get too deep into all that.

🌈🌈🌈🌈: Curtis is definitely gay, and definitely loved his boyfriend very much. He says this in monologues at least three times. Those monologues aren’t bad, I just have to take one rainbow away for the show’s slightly cheapskate commitment to “tell don’t show.” Like one good flashback to Curtis’ happier times with his partner would have made all the difference. 

💔💔💔💔: the premise of Curtis is that he loved and lost, and that his partner’s unexpected death directly led to him being outed to the military. That’s some heavy stuff. However, I want to give credit to the hopeful beats given to this character, who tries to sacrifice himself for the group and in a pleasant subversion of the Bury Your Gays trope (Heroic Flavor) gets rescued through the power of non-homophobic teamwork. It was a little saccharine but it did my heart good. Some valuable sadçois brought depth to a character that could have been expected and bland.

Gays with Ethically Questionable Business Practices:

If I had a nickel for every time François Arnaud played a gay guy with very few moral boundaries when it came to getting ahead in his corporate job, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Patrick Landry (Plan B): Patrick is a dedicated family man who I think would really benefit from a Xanax. This bilingual lawyer is the third billed character in a remake of a Quebecois sci-fi show where the (terrible) main character uses a time traveling service to go back in time and try to make the perfect life. Patrick goes through some really interesting iterations thanks to this process, but his motivations are always to get ahead at his law firm in order to better support his family (so he says). This includes some ethically dubious shit that at one point puts him and his family in (threatened) danger. That said, he’s a great brother and a great dad and he holds a special place in my heart.

🌈🌈🌈: Patrick has a husband who he kisses on screen and two beautiful (surrogate?) children. For plot reasons he literally says “I’m gay. I have a husband” to another character. This is as textual as it gets. That being said, other than a little extra mustard that FA puts on some of his line deliveries Patrick’s sexuality isn’t super relevant to the story. It’s important that his character have a spouse, not a husband. It made me wonder, and what do you know, in the original Francophone Plan B, the Patrick character has a wife and kids instead. The switch isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’d be curious to do a side-by-side watch someday and see what making Patrick gay does to change his story, if at all.

💔💔:This is a tough call, because infidelity is a factor in Patrick’s story, but not in the way you might expect. It is very clear that Patrick sees his actions as coming from a place of devotion toward his family. Frankly, as far as tragic shit in this show goes, Patrick and Eric’s marriage is doing great. This show also features some fantastic sadçois that is unrelated to Patrick’s sexuality.

Harrison (Surface): Surface is not about Harrison, the male lead’s work friend (possibly best friend, which is sad) who just so happens to be gay (and everyone is fine with it. Seriously!! No need to discuss it AT ALL, bro.) Harrison’s role in the show is “do borderline financial crimes to help the main character.” He doesn’t even have a last name, but look! He has a boyfriend! This show appeals to many demographics! Memorable sad line (i’m paraphrasing): “c’mon let’s get you out of the house. I’ll even suffer through a strip club with you.” 

🌈:This is just a hunch but I think at some point in production they realized “oh this show is set in San Fran. we’re legally obligated to have a gay character” and Harrison was the only guy with blank spots on his “Traits and Abilities” sheet. The difference between Harrison and Dan Moody is a few hundred grand in net worth.

💔: I feel sadness in my heart for this underdeveloped character, but neither Harrison nor the people who wrote him seem to clock that his life is tragic.

Scene-y LA guys:

The name of this category is a JOKE based on a JOKE that FA made in an interview ONE TIME. It is TONGUE IN CHEEK. That being said, these are very contemporary characters living in big cities who seem to be very comfortable with queer culture and have little to no relationship to the closet. Good for them!

Sebastian Raine (Schitt’s Creek): Every actor should have a self-parody character, and I believe in my heart that this is François’. Every doubt in his mind telling him he’s abandoned good, noble Montreal in order to chase shallow fame in LA lives in Sebastian Raine, whose mild villainy is only outdone by his atrocious and no doubt expensive sweater. He takes his sexuality (and his sexiness) for granted. People are just material to be churned into his artistic vision. I love him. He appears in one episode of Schitt’s Creek as David Rose’s dreaded ex, and he should have won an Emmy for the accent alone. 

🌈🌈🌈: Sexuality is never much of an issue on Schitt’s Creek, so it’s not like Sebastian needs to worry about homophobia. Whether he’s gay, bi, or pan is left to the imagination as far as i recall, but he and David definitely get up to something offscreen and they verbally and hilariously acknowledge their past relationship. Sebastian being queer is by far the least objectionable thing about him, so it’s not much of a role in the plot. 

-💔: negative broken hearts, because Sebastian’s therapist says he should never feel sorrow. 

Sam(my) (Twinless): First of all, go watch this movie. It rules. Secondly, we have Sammy, essentially a cameo and a comedic lesson in why straight people shouldn’t introduce the only two gay people they know and assume they’ll fall in love. Sammy in a short time has some funny lines in a great movie set in Portland that explores a few different (admittedly cosmopolitan and upper-middle class) facets of gay life in the 2020s. You get to see FA in a sexy mailman costume. It’s great. 

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈: Sammy is “the gay guy” Roman knows from work. He should totally introduce you! Shout out to Sammy’s sexy halloween costume and his upfront acknowledgement that he’s not into “nice.” 

💔: one broken heart as fair warning that this movie is about the death of a queer character. That death has nothing to do with FA’s role, and I hope it doesn't turn you off of this movie. It would be unfair to apply Bury Your Gays to a film thats really about the complex relationships between its characters, several of whom are queer. 

Connor Fontaine (Paint): Okay, I’m going to be real: I’m not actually sure that this character is meant to be understood as queer. HOWEVER, according to a strict reading of the text, at least one woman and one man verbally confirm having sucked his dick. That’s good enough for me. I didn’t really love the rest of this movie because (shocker) the art market sucks. Connor pops up a little over halfway through, tells some inappropriate stories, does some cocaine, and tries to hook up with one of the female artist characters who briefly debates whether she wants to fuck him or sell him paintings (and girl you are valid). 

🌈🌈: Again, while I believe in my heart that Connor is bi based on dialogue, his role in the movie is about class, not sexuality. He’s there as the heir to an art collector who reminds the artist characters that there are people out there who just play by different rules because of money they were born into. He does wear a cunty earring.

💔: eh, again whether or not he’s queer has little to do with the fact that Connor is kind of a dick. It’s not clear how seriously the audience should take a story he tells that implies his father once touched him inappropriately as a kind of macho bullying.

Honorable Mention: The Subtext Gang

These characters are not textually queer. However, for the discerning viewer, there is some very Modern Literature available on Ao3 speculating on various queer identities they might be referencing via subtext, costuming, or just pure transformative efforts by their fans. 

Cesare Borgia (The Borgias): Shoutout Lucrezia, but Cesare is on here because of Micheletto. The Borgias canon gay character has a relationship of deep trust with FA’s Cesare, and when he departs after the death of his lover in season 3, Cesare’s grief is very real. Toss in a lot of homoerotic sword fighting, cute banter (Cesare meets Micheletto’s mom!), and tense dialogue over Micheletto’s other partners and you’ve got the recipe for a classic slash ship.

🌈: A courtesy rainbow, for “you must keep on loving this boy.”

💔: *closes wikipedia* haha nothing bad ever happens to Cesare Borgia! Jesus loves him! 

Manfred Bernardo (Midnight Texas): Manfred the medium/fortune teller/scam artist is on this subtext list for two reasons: 1) there’s just no way he’s heterosexual and 2) He spends all of season one of Midnight Texas wearing ace rings. So we have two equally fun (and not contradictory) subtext possibilities here. Whether it was a happy accident in the costuming department or an intentional shout out to a niche community, we have the possibility that Manfred isn’t interested in sex, and that he’s definitely curious about many of the beautiful men and women that inhabit a sleepy and supernatural Texas town. Anything is better than poor Creek. 

🌈🌈: please Manfred. You have so many choices. Please.