Jolene Meghan

Basically, the author is upset with the growing popularity of the word "queer" as it's too vague (too welcoming, one might argue he was carefully avoiding saying) and scares conservatives too much. It rings with biphobia when the author expresses displeasure that people who are "unlikely to ever pursue a same-sex relationship" are still part of the community. It's reminiscent of conservatives' arguments of queer people being predators when the author says under the umbrella public sex could be considered queer. (There's also a smattering of shaming sex workers in there too, because why not while he's at it, right?)

I think the author, who introduces himself by explaining the conservative environment he grew up in, has some internalized queerphobia he would do well to examine in private rather than take it out on the people who views as being too weird to possibly share a label with. We should not have to conform, to be "normal," to be accepted and respected.

I do think there's a bit of a point somewhere in there, that I don't think he intended to make, or at least be taken in this way: there is, at least in my mind, a difference between being gay and being queer. Being gay is a sexual orientation. Being queer is how you see the world. You can be both, or one, or neither. But people like him need to realize that being just gay won't protect them for long.

It was queer people -- queer -- who fought for our rights (whether or not they used the label themselves when it had a different meaning then, they fit the meaning he uses today). They were trans women of color, homeless, sex workers, mentally ill. Silvia Rivera called out a similar divide pushing people like her to the side.

This is some wild backstory to get in a single paragraph that never comes up again, lol. Yeah, Katniss accidentally acquired a pet bobcat for a brief time until she killed it. No big deal.

then the transfusion fails. the doctors are baffled by the speed of it. 'it's like his blood transformed in daniel's veins.' daniel dies. margaret and philip look at evan and hiss to each other that that is Not their child.

and margaret and philip try, after that, to give evan up. leave him in the woods for whatever made him to take him back into the earth. but he keeps reappearing in his crib. once, they try another time, and this time he's not in his crib. and they're so relieved for a second, until they realize that maddie's gone too. and they look and look and hours later maddie comes out of the woods with bloody soles and a swaddle of blankets in her arms.

the buckley parents get the message that they'll take away both their kids if they keep trying. maddie always tells buck 'you got lost, and i knew i had to find you again'.

(maddie doesn't remember much herself. she remembers being half-awake. seeing her brother's crib empty. she remembers thinking that she can't lose another brother. she remembers making a wish. she remembers someone asking her if it's worth it. she remembers telling them that he's the only brother that she has left. that they can't have him. she remembers laughter, a whisper of something that could be a blessing or a curse. she remembers most clearly evan giggling in her arms, little hand touching her face.

that's the important part, she thinks.)

and sometimes when it's at its worst and he thinks it would be better if he did, that he's making everyone around him play pretend when they don't want to, he remembers how maddie always makes sure to tell him stories about fake things that become real because of magic, because of love, which is the same thing. for many years he is real only because of maddie. when she leaves he is a shadow on the wallpaper, a voice trapped in a music box.

when he finds out the truth he feels betrayed by her because you were the one who chose for me to be real and then you left. you gave me a taste of being real and then made me a clay doll again. if i wasn't supposed to be real i would've rather not have known what it was like at all.

(but of course that's not true. buck buckley is a boy made out of clay and leaves and a wish gone sour and for a long time his heart was a story a little girl whispered into his ear. but now his heart is also made out of bobby's recipe cards. chimney's movie references. hen's red velvet cupcake. eddie's housekey. christopher's glasses.