i’ll put this properly + in more detail in malcolm’s page at some point but, the brief points of the canon divergence are covered in that, and here’s the why: — malcolm is gay now because i want him to be (that’s literally the only reason) + the thing with trish never happened because there was no indications of him having an interest in trish until it was suddenly convenient for the storyline to pair them off. it’s not romantic, it’s not cute, coupling them off was lazy and they both deserve better than that. also having him sleep with her when she’s high is ugly? it doesn’t matter that he didn’t realise she was on something in that moment. ugly scenario. — the entire relapse storyline was .. written in a wildly insulting way to both trish and malcolm. to pinch how z put it, the whole thing was just nasty ~addict drama~, it wasn’t handled with any kind of care. there was no sensitivity to the writing, and they didn’t even give any time to malcolm after he took a huff of the inhaler? that’s not fair. — the ‘trading one addiction for another’ thing was handled sloppily and with no sensitivity. esp since it was included as a bit exclusively so that jessica could easily find him later in the season, that’s garbage. he’s still recovering, he is constantly recovering, and it’s very possible for malcolm to fall into a sex addiction to replace his drug addiction — but laying that on the show’s only main black character and handling it with all the tact of a brick through a window? that’s shitty, i don’t have time for it. i might incorporate it, but not like an asshole. at the moment i incorporate it to the extent that he nearly compulsively goes out on dates, but it’s not sex-driven, it’s more I Need Something To Do And This Is A Good Way To Meet New People — basically the only good things that happened to malcolm in season two were his haircut and jessica making him an associate (although i hold to the idea that he’s working elsewhere right now, Possibly with cheng although i have issues with that concept by itself bc its unnecessarily spiteful, to grow as a person and investigator whilst jessica works her stuff out)