I'm Talking To The Walls

I am not going to deny it: Scott in the book is... nice enough, as Steve Rogers cutouts go, but a bit dull. Francois Arnaud's depiction of Scott in Heated Rivalry, however, is the single most accurate description, to me, of how it feels to be a more 'masculine' gay man in the closet. I am not an athlete (am chronically ill, in fact), nor am I an orphan, but even still, Scott Hunter is exactly who I have been.

One thing which I think is difficult to understand, unless you've been a closeted gay man, is just how toxic masculinity and homophobia intersect internally. It's not just about being afraid of your sexuality coming out: it's a fear of anything which could even tangentially seem gay. It's a constant internal struggle: you know you're not a real man (because you're gay, the worst thing you can be) but you also know that you want to be. You're not able to wear high heels and makeup and be friends with the girls, even if you want to (in my case, whilst I did want to and did eventually become friends with the girls, I never wanted to experiment with femininity in my personal appearance, though how much of that is socialised and how much of it I come by naturally, I don't know). Because those things look gay.

Every single thing you ever do - the way you look, talk, dress, the tv shows you watch, the music you listen to, the foods you eat - all get filtered under the "will this make me look gay" fear. You can't be friends with girls, because that's gay. You can't express your feelings to your male friends, because that's gay. Liking girls as people is queer and feminine, and liking them as sexual objects is not something you are capable of (despite what Hollywood will tell you, most gay men are not comfortable pretending to be straight, even the masculine-presenting ones). This doesn't start when you consciously realise you're gay, by the way: it starts years before you even know why you're doing it, when you're in that awkward stage of not quite knowing, but not quite not knowing either.

What this leads to is... crippling loneliness. You don't have friends, other than a few men you spend time with but cannot confide in. You learn to keep your mouth shut and go with the flow - someone is saying nice things about gay people in front of you? Silence. Because if you say something, that's suspicious. Someone is saying awful things about gay people in front of you? Also silence. Because you're afraid to say anything. But you can't admit that you're miserable, because that would mean making changes in your life that you genuinely are not capable of. I couldn't come out, and feel safe, because I would be homeless. So I had to learn to be okay with the misery. That it was normal, and I was happy.

Scott Hunter is, to me, the ultimate manifestation of that process. He's been in the closet so long that not only is he terrified of being perceived as gay, but terrified of being perceived at all. He wants to fade away. He listens to podcasts that neg the shit out of him, because he needs to know if they've spotted the gay thing yet (and also because Scott Hunter appears to be the most OCD and OCPD coded character of all time, but I will save that for another post). He clings to the first person he has a real interest in because he knows how few chances he'll get to do that in his life. He has a big, empty home that he's worked hard for, proof of his Masculine Credentials, but no one to share it with. He has friends, and he could confide in them, but he's so fucking scared, because if the wrong person somehow hears, it's all over.

He does this, incidentally, despite being a very clearly masculine man. He drinks whisky and plays hockey and furnishes his home in mahogany and chrome. He dresses well, but he'd never wear make-up. He also, it must be said, does this and manages to remain kind. Yeah, he's quiet, he thinks hard before he speaks, but he's managed to shed enough of his toxic masculinity to be kind to others, to speak of empathy and giving back, to be funny and self-abnegating and selfless... whilst maintaining all that inwardly-pointed self-hatred.

All of this comes through not just in Jacob Tierney's incredible writing, which transforms Scott from a caricature to a human, but also Francois Arnaud's unbelievable acting. The little hint of gay panic when Kip makes that hot lumberjacks comment, and we see Scott go through an entire odyssey before our eyes - shock, fear, confusion, anxiety, and then tentative, yet reckless hope. A "fuck it, might as well". The reaction to Carter's words in Sochi: trying not to appear too interested, because he doesn't want anyone to guess at what he is, and even his best friend being so accepting won't change anything. The sheer agony in his eyes as Kip leaves him, and he realises that he can't say a word to stop him, because Kip is right (and, you come to realise, he expected this all along). The outright panic attack in the art gallery date, Scott trying so hard to be inconspicuous that he becomes insanely obvious? It's obviously a little spoof of Captain America 2, but it's also... kind of telling that in Cap 2, Steve is hiding from the government, and in HR, Scott is hiding from the mere implication of homosexuality. And then going back to his apartment, dropping the walls, and even in the midst of his panic attack, still apologising to Kip, because he knows he was in the wrong? It's heartbreaking. It's devastating, in fact. And it's so fucking real.

I'm not going to read too much into Francois Arnaud's personal life, because I don't know him personally. However, I do know that he's an openly bisexual man who came out at 35. And I do know that the way he depicts Scott Hunter is the most accurate depiction of what it is to be closeted that I have ever seen.

(It also must be said that this is massively supported by the changes to Kip which occur between the book and the show, for which Jacob Tierney and Robert GK deserve equal credit. Book Kip is kind of a brat, who wants Scott to come out after a two month relationship, ruining his career in the process. Show Kip understands. He knows Scott's behaviour isn't his fault, and when he leaves, it's not a big fight: it's laced with empathy and understanding, because he has been there. They're not breaking up because either of them have done anything wrong. They're breaking up because the world won't let two men be queer, but it especially won't let masculine men be queer.)

And, to touch briefly on the fandom for a moment: this isn't a hypothetical. The fanbase of HR, a show featuring gay men in a relationship, is desperate to cast one as the "woman" in the relationship. Why else would Shane, a man of equal size of Ilya, played by a literal mixed martial artist in Hudson Williams, be so consistently reduced to a "twink" with "bottom eyes"? Why else would Francois Arnaud, the only openly queer actor in the show's main cast, be confronted with a hate campaign so severe that he had to move address? Why else would reports come out constantly of gay men being excluded from HR spaces by (mostly) straight, cis women, who seem to believe gay men are only acceptable when they come in perfect, non-confrontational, feminine packages? This is the fanbase for a show literally about gay men. Imagine, compared to this, how homophobic the rest of the world is?

So many people seem to not understand the purpose of Skip in the story. They think Jacob rammed it in because he desperately wanted to adapt Game Changer (ridiculous: if he wanted to adapt Game Changer, he could have. Reducing it to a single episode in HR basically destroys any chance at a real GC adaptation). The reality is, Scott and Kip are essential to Hollanov's story because they prove that even if Ilya and Shane did everything right, they would still be unable to be themselves. Scott is a beloved athlete, desperately trying at all times to be perfect, with a decade plus long career, dating a man who is masculine and muscular, who has nothing to do with hockey. He is doing everything right: he even has the classic hockey-player courtship period, of meeting and marrying within a few years. And yet, purely because of his sexuality, he is being crushed. Not because he's done anything wrong: he's a good person, as is Kip. He's done nothing to deserve being unable to love Kip in public. And nor has Kip. Both of them work to the bone in service of others, both are wonderful, kind, upstanding, generous people, and they're being destroyed because of homophobia. It highlights just how massive and pervasive homophobia is.

(Skip doesn't detract from Hollanov at all, FYI. The show is 6 episodes long because that's what Jacob Tierney chose, and having read Heated Rivalry, I do not see any scenes which were skipped (and I can see quite a few which were extended or created) in the show. Skip deliberately highlights the position that Ilya and Shane are in. Sure, Jacob could have just written the kiss, about Scott Hunter, a character we barely see. But if you don't understand just how difficult that was for him, just how broken and desperate he became in trying to become that Game Changer, how can you understand just why Ilya and Shane couldn't do that? If ep 3 weren't about Skip, I have no idea what that time would be filled with to tell that same story. But I digress.)

Watching Scott in HR, I see exactly what I could have become. Someone who is kind to others, who does everything to keep others happy, but who is broken and miserable because he cannot express who he is... and barely even knows it. Sure, he'll say he's fucked up, but he also can't understand just how miserable he is when Elena asks, because he's the happiest he's ever been! It just so happens that "the happiest he's ever been" is still not very happy, because he's been dealing with this shit his whole life.

Seeing his actual, genuine happiness in the speech in ep 6? Seeing him honestly encapsulating, in a single speech, the single worst part about being gay in this world: the loneliness? It's the most heartfelt and meaningful thing I've ever watched. Hollanov has a great many strengths, story wise, but whilst Jacob Tierney cut down and edited enough of Skip to make what I feel is a genuinely incredible depiction of what it is to be closeted, Hollanov is still predominately Rachel Reid's story (and I am far from a RR hater, but I do think she doesn't quite get the nuances of how it is to be closeted, which is, to me, the one weakness in Hollanov. I am a massive Hollanov fan, don't get me wrong! Jacob, Rachel, Hudson, and Connor combined to create something which deserves every accolade it receives. But every story has it's weaknesses, and for me, the depiction of the closet, re Hollanov, reads a little bit awkwardly. Hence why Skip is so important to the story: it smooths over a lot of those gaps, in a way that makes it feel like Ilya and Shane's experiences are unique to their own characters, rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be a gay man by the author.)