there was a rly good post about how iwtv was treating a gay love story as something doomed and corrupt, tvl was progressing to seeing it as more just scandalous and titillating, and how this progression was in line with the times, but i wanna continue and say qotd and devils minion went to the next level
devils minion isnt doomed bc they cant really love each other, and it isnt a rascally walk on the wild side: its the AIDS era and all of a sudden gay love is very much normal love, but what dooms it is circumstance
and everything in that chapter is a part of gay life, gay marriage, gay culture. ballet. philosophy. domesticity. exploring the world together and revelling in everything, everything two people can enjoy together. a compressed vision of a whole community, a whole generation. making a dream home together, filled with art. making friends. introducing each other to new things, sampling all of life together. its like a little zip file of the potentialities of gay life. and the threat waking up isnt their fault or a feature of their 'unnatural' love - its unrelated. AIDS happened. akasha woke up. not a moral judgement on them as they gorge themselves on pleasure and delight. daniel is terrified hes going to die; armand realises he cant be saved. daniel is immortalised as a beautiful young man, katasterized, frozen in time like so many others
'there was never any springtime for us' - no kidding. an entire generation of gay love and joy is compressed into a little 12 year segment, and then the thread is cut. its a tragedy because its so full of grief at something lost that was only just coming in to flower.




















