Icarus by K. Ancrum spoilers below the cut.
So, the book constantly points out that Icarus looks and moves like his father. Has been trained to have the same skills. Has the same medical condition. At the very beginning Icarus says he's ugly because he looks like his father and is father is ugly.
(Helios also looks like his father, but other than that I don't think similarities between them are specifically emphasized.)
Both of these fathers are bad fathers and bad men. But Icarus father does love Icarus, although that does not negate the neglect and abuse he put Icarus through.
Anyways, one of their similarities is that when someone they love nervously confesses a hidden part of their identity — braced for rejection — both Icarus and his father Angus have similar responses.
Here we have Helios revealing to Icarus that he's intersex:
And here we have Icarus letting Angus figure out that the person he's in love with is a man (context: they're Catholic but don't go to church because (I think) there aren't Catholic churches in their town, but also the practices of Catholicism Angus raised Icarus in seem... um... off, but I've never been Catholic):
They are both gentle about it, they both are aware of the vulnerability of the moment. Both of them reassure the person they love that this would never make a difference in their feelings, and that it shouldn't ever make a difference, without implying that the person revealing a hidden part of themself had no reason to be scared.
And both Icarus and Angus give the reason that being intersex and queer are normal because of their presence in art history.
There is probably something to be said that Icarus compares Helios to works of art, while Angus compares Icarus to artists. The obvious answer is that intersex conditions (specifically very rare ones where someone has fully developed both form of external genitalia*) have been represented more in art, being treated more as a theological hypothetical or metaphor than a state real mortals can exist in, and intersex artists historically probably kept such info to themselves if they knew. Whereas it's easier to state that historical figures with patterns of behavior were queer than it is to discern that from a single image. But there's probably a more symbolic reading one could get out of this contrast.
I don't have a conclusion. I don't think that being similar in this aspect of showing love means that Icarus is doomed to treat any children he may have the same way Angus treated him. But it's been sticking with me for days and I wanted to show other people.
*My reading of this scene is that Helios has ambiguous genitalia but in case I'm reading this wrong because Ancrum's writing is poetic and sometimes I misinterpret subtleties, and he is supposed to look like the philosophical/theological "hermaphrodite", I just want to point out that Ancrum herself is intersex and well aware that it's an umbrella category that covers far more than this one presentation.
