The Meteor Shower (3) : It wouldn’t be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. This time of year is unnaturally clear and it’s incredibly easy to see the stars. Most meteor fragments appear to be little white or yellow lights streaming across the sky, but if you watch closely enough you may find that some of them seem to be a whole rainbow of colors. The scientists have reported that it’s just different components burning up as they enter the atmosphere, but there’s something undeniably magical about it.
Saturday was a hectic nightmare.
Not that this was saying much, honestly. Reiki’s Saturdays were always a hectic nightmare during June. He’d only arranged things so that tomorrow wouldn’t be because Dad, Ojiisan, and Uncle Mitch had all specifically requested that as their Father’s Day presents. “I do want you, Haruhi, and Cersei to come over for brunch,” Dad had said, “but you don’t need to come too early or anything. I’d rather have you show up a little bit late but decently rested than on time and still exhausted from the night before.”
To that end, Reiki wasn’t really patrolling on his way home, either. He’d mostly powered up for three reasons: 1. tossing his drag bag and wig case into his subspace was so much easier than carrying them; 2. powering up made the trip home go by quicker and with significantly less effort; and 3. no, seriously: powering up, then down again, was the best way to take off his makeup after a show. Reiki was creating so much less waste, with fewer washcloths to pray he could get clean of the cosmetics stains! Easier for him and better for the environment! Honestly, such a win-win. Thank you, magical girl superpowers!
True, Reiki needed to get home and sleep……but he could spare a few moments for a meteor shower, right? Pausing on the roof of a little coffee-shop he knew, Reiki turned his eyes on the sky, watching the bright lights come rushing down to Earth. In one of the rare examples of Destiny City life not being kinda garbage, the meteors came down in colors that they probably shouldn’t have. Maybe it meant that something was amiss—considering everything Reiki had learned about the greater cosmic magical girl war, that seemed more than likely—but……damn, if it wasn’t beautiful to watch.
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 10:28 pm
Amsvartnir was out on patrol, not really having any particular kind of day. It was hot as hell, but otherwise boring. Nothing was happening tonight, not magically, anyway. He hadn't heard of anything yet.
But... there was supposed to be a meteor shower. And Amsvartnir loved the stars. They were really one of the few constants in life, and spending so much of his last few years sleeping under them, he couldn't help but love them.
So he went to find a good roof to watch from and paused, sensing what he now recognized as a Dark Mirror Senshi aura. Huh. He paused in his search of the sky to sweep over the roofs, and seeing—oh, crap.
Well... he needed to see if the guy would let him apologize. So he took a deep breath and landed primly on the roof of the coffee shop from a nearby one.
"Good evening," he greeted, staying a safe distance away (he hoped).
Reiki perked up a little, feeling a White Moon aura coming his way, but……deep breaths, he told himself. Calm.… Serenity.… Patience like Ojiisan always shows you, like he’s always trying to get you to channel.…
His last several run-ins with Order senshi had gone very well, he thought—triggering both Fang and Kerberos notwithstanding.… Even those incidents, while terrible, hadn’t been something that Reiki couldn’t clean up and move forward from, or anyway, Fang and Kerberos had allowed him the chance to own what he’d done, apologize, and do better by them in the future. Yeah, okay, Angelica had come in hot, throwing an attack and all kinds of accusations at him, but……she was hurting. Sappho had screwed up with her and knew it. How Angelica acted hadn’t been about Reiki; she’d just been lashing out from the pain. Really, there probably wasn’t any reason to be hostile to these goody-goody weirdos.
Then, he turned and saw exactly which goody-goody weirdo it was. Rolling his eyes, Reiki folded his arms over his chest. “Alles klar, Herr Kommissar? Or do I need to present my papers just to watch a meteor shower?”
genovianprince
Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:58 pm
Amsvartnir blinked at the hostility, hand gripping his cane tightly as he stared at the guy. What? The ********? He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and frankly, he wasn't so sure it couldn't have been something very bad. Especially since he knew he'd dropped a Hebrew term last time they had met.
"Is that some antisemitic joke I haven't had the pleasure of hearing yet?" he asked, lip curling a bit, "I had been coming down to apologize, but what the hell was that, man?"
He wouldn't have thought this guy would say something like that, whatever it actually meant, but he supposed there was a reason appearances weren't everything. He really wasn't sure what the phrase meant, but he could certainly pick up on some meanings with the context, and he didn't like what he was hearing at all.
……Well, that had distinctly not been the reaction that Reiki had expected, and for a longish moment, all he could do was gape as Mr. Amsvartnir of Cosmos with the open mouth of Gay Shock and the dull eyes of a homosexual who could not believe what he was hearing on this day. On some level, Reiki realized that this was unfair of him—but goddamn, why was he ever subjected to the shenanigans of teenagers? Thanks, he hated it.
Groaning softly, he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not antisemitic, Space Dandy; it’s just German.” …But. Deep breaths. Not being a completely hostile little b***h. Reiki did want to go home and sleep at some point tonight, considering his Dad, Ojiisan, and godfather had all asked for that. “Specifically, it’s a line from a song that came out before either of us was born, that you can probably hear at least once a day on the local classic rock station—y’know, in between all the repeats of ‘Old Time Rock ’n‘ Roll,’ ‘Born In The USA,’ and ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ Song is called ‘Der Kommissar.’ It’s about a coke addict and her dealer boyfriend running from the cops, but a lot of people in the States think it was some subversive political statement about life under Soviet rule in East Berlin……except the guy who wrote it was from Vienna and ‘Kommissar’ is literally just the German word for ‘law enforcement officer.’”
Which was significantly more deal than Amsvartnir had requested, sure, but……Reiki had been raised by historians. “Also, the Nazis aren’t the only tinpot dictatorship who made people flash their citizenship papers in order to just go about their lives. Most dictatorships get around to doing something like that, eventually. They get off on having and exercising the supreme power to decide who does or doesn’t have the right to exist.”
Honestly, Reiki could have gone on for a while—and probably risked outing himself, if he got going about Ojiisan’s work on the French Revolution, the Terror, and a jumped up, paranoiac country lawyer with delusions of grandeur named Maximilien Robespierre. So, it was probably for the best that his throat scratched at him to shut up for a little bit, prompting him to pull his chilled metal water bottle out of his subspace. A deeply petty part of him didn’t want to reach for the backup plastic bottles he had there as well, ******** Hell, it had been hot lately. Who knew how long Amsvartnir had been out on patrol? And the plastic bottles were all still sealed, same as they’d been in the bulk packaging when Reiki bought them, so this most likely couldn’t be twisted around into some nefarious gesture (Reiki hoped).
Sighing deeply, and looking off in the exact opposite direction of Amsvartnir, Reiki proffered the little Cosmos dandy a bottle of water.
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 10:23 am
Space Dandy? Amsvartnir was just... getting more and more confused by the second, blinking at Murikabushi like a puppy being told to 'sit' for the first time.
"I don't really listen to the radio," he said softly, eyes flitting to the sky streaked with meteors in embarrassment over what he'd assumed. "Look, I'm sorry for making that assumption. I just, uh..."
He trailed off with a sigh, then looked back at Murikabushi to see the proffered water bottle, and he reached out to take it.
"Thanks. I, um. I'm also sorry for the way I treated you the last time we met, making... eheh. Assumptions about your intent for bad-guy-ness," he said with a sheepish smile, scratching at his goatee. "And today, too."
He cracked the bottle open and sipped at it before he asked a question that had begun burning in the back of his mind as Murikabushi had talked.
"What do you mean most dictatorships?" he asked quietly, face already lighting up red from the embarrassment of having to ask the question. "I mean, I know about the Nazis, obviously, and when the USSR was a thing... North Korea, too. But...?"
He coughed softly, looking up at the sky again. He wanted to say something more, but he was already stretching his embarrassment nerves to their limit, and admitting to... heh, some of his backstory in life sounded like a bad idea only reserved for friends, not... whatever this was.
CW’s: discussion of torture, genocide, curtailing of civil rights and basic freedoms, and general Things A Lot Of Dictatorships Do (particularly re: situations in Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines).
This is going to take more patience than I thought, isn’t it? Reiki mused silently, hugging himself (as much as he could) and forcing himself to breathe deeply. Slowly. Clear skies, clear skies… With a focus on staying calm and not flying off the handle at a guy who couldn’t possibly have been older than nineteen or maybe twenty, who probably hadn’t been raised by three history professors, a mechanical engineer, a political scientist, a physicist, an art teacher, and a drag queen.
“Well. To go in reverse order, here? You’ve got the greatest hits for dictatorships on your list, yeah. But unfortunately, there have been—and actively are, at this moment—several more than those in human history. Like, right now, have you heard about the ‘Free Hong Kong’ movement? It’s pretty complicated with a long history that goes back to colonialism and imperialism, especially British imperialism, but the big central bullet point is that mainland China is very much a dictatorship at the moment, and they aren’t supposed to be able to crack down in Hong Kong like they’ve been doing? Hong Kong is supposed to have more freedom, relative to mainland China. But that’s not the reality of things anymore. People in Hong Kong have been getting arrested and taken for reeducation—state-sanctioned prison torture—over so-called crimes like expressing mild criticism of the government and writing gay fanfiction.
“When China first became a dictatorship depends a bit on who you ask for an opinion? President Pooh Bear isn’t the first leader of the People’s Republic to do some absolutely ******** up s**t to his people. There’s been a push for Tibetan independence for decades because the Tibetan people didn’t want to be oppressed by the Chinese government. But by pretty much everyone’s standards, Xi Jinping has made things infinitely worse for people in China. If you ever feel up to it—and seriously, it’s okay if you don’t want to read about the specifics of this s**t; they’re horrific—look up the Uyghurs and what the Chinese government’s been doing to them. It’s a genocide, going on right now, but China has so much of the global economy by the balls, so to speak, that most people just look the other way about it.”
A huff, a sip of water, and then Reiki added, “Or else, a lot of people care? But they literally can’t do anything to help, because they’re too busy just trying to eke out enough of a living to survive under, if not an outright dictatorship, then the absolute ******** of late-stage corporate capitalism.”
Another, longer drink, during which he tucked his fringe behind his ear. “Then, in the Philippines—for one thing, the US has basically been doing colonialism there with our military bases, long after we allegedly stopped. Our government acts like just because we swooped in to beat up Emperor Hirohito’s forces at the end of World War Two, we’re entitled to continue exploiting the Philippines and the Filipino people. But somewhat more immediately? Their president from 1965 to 1989 was a guy named Ferdinand Marcos. He and his wife, Imelda, extorted a <********> of money, living the high-life while their people starved, and for fourteen years, Marcos kept the Philippines under martial law so he could justify doing basically whatever he wanted to whoever he felt like hurting. He got violently ousted, but his son, Bong-Bong, just got elected president.
“And his immediate predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte? He was a ******** piece of work, too. He pulled a Nixon-Reagan move and spent years using a quote-unquote ‘war on drugs’—” Were the sarcastic finger-quotes necessary? No, definitely not. But ******** it, they made Reiki feel better. “—to justify all kinds of crackdowns on people’s civil rights, especially queer people and people criticizing the government. But Bong-Bong Marcos and his campaign have been weaponizing Tiktok and Whatsapp, among other social media platforms, to pretty much rewrite history in the public’s minds. Like, you know how this country has our line about the Civil War being over ‘states’ rights’ and a lot of people just pretend like the ‘states’ right’ in question wasn’t literally enslaving Black people? The pro-Bong-Bong propaganda is getting to that level of pervasive, especially among younger Filipinos—like people your age or mine—and the propaganda spreads lies about how good the Filipino people had it under martial law.”
As he paused for another drink, it occurred to Reiki that…two odd things he’d said, and one unintentional similarity between his cases, probably required some additional explanation. “Also, uh. In case you’re confused: Xi Jinping is ‘President Pooh Bear’ because he’s apparently really insecure about an alleged physical resemblance to Winnie the Pooh. It’s such a whole thing that activists in mainland China actually use Pooh Bear merch as symbols of resistance. Then, the current Filipino president is actually named Ferdinand Marcos Jr.? But his nickname in the press has been ‘Bong-Bong’ since his father was still in office. God only knows why.
“And…I know both of these examples are Asian countries? And the next two that come to mind for me are Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Narendra Modi in India, so also Asian? But please don’t think, like? There’s something wrong with Asian countries, or with Asian peoples, that makes us more prone to dictatorships? It’s not like that, and that’s not what I’m trying to say, I promise. I just……” Reiki waved a hand up and down his own frame. “My family’s Japanese. And I know plenty about other dictatorships, from Caligula in Ancient Rome, to Robespierre and Napoleon in France, to Juan Perón in Argentina, to Idi Amin in Uganda? But…Asian histories and current events are important to me, especially because the versions my mom’s family tried to teach me as a kid were just Japanese supremacist propaganda that acts like we never committed any atrocities or war crimes in China, Korea, and the Philippines, which we did, so…”
Reiki shrugged. Took another long drink of water. And then remembered—“Also……why? Are you apologizing to me, exactly? I mean. It’s not like I was exactly kind to you, last time we ran into each other.… Not to put too fine a point on it, but I was kind of a heinous b***h? And you didn’t even really do anything?”
genovianprince
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2022 8:55 pm
Wow, okay. That.... that was a lot. Amsvartnir struggled to absorb all the information, with Murikabushi talking so much and so fast, but it all sounded so important... He just couldn't keep up. Still, he tried to look like he understood it all at least, leaning on his cane and looking at Murikabushi and making the appropriate listening noises.
Then he registered he was asked a question and he shrugged. "Neither did you," he said softly, "And I walked in there treating you like a criminal. That wasn't okay. So, I'm sorry."
Some part of Reiki, and he didn’t know how powerful that part of himself was, expected Amsvartnir to just ******** off, rather than letting him continue talking. Honestly, what else was a reasonable response to getting an impromptu lecture about the barest of bare basics about how ******** up things were in Hong Kong, mainland China, and the Philippines right now? Which was still crazy ******** up and apparently flying in the face of your belief that humanity’s love affair with dictatorships consisted entirely of Nazi Germany, the USSR under Josef Stalin, and North Korea?
“Well, uh.” Fumbling over his words didn’t suit Reiki and he hated it. But……well. Amsvartnir was still here when he’d had every good excuse to just leave, which had left Reiki’s brain to stagger around like a drunk moron at a frat party. “……First of all, I—I’m sorry I just…dropped all of that on you right now? I—” He cut himself short of saying I was raised by historians, remembering just in time that this particular fact was probably a good way to point to his civilian identity. “I like history.… Even though it’s regularly ******** up and depressing.… It’s important s**t to know if you ever want to address any of the problems going on in the world—which? Honestly, leaves me kinda floundering, with the magical stuff, because it’s new for me, and I know there has to be history here, but I. don’t. know. it yet. Frustrating…”
Sighing, he hit himself with another long drink of water. His bottle was getting a bit low……but the meteor shower was still going on, with the falling stars above them coming down in purples like Reiki’s fuku-overlay, pink like the fluffy petticoats beneath his skirt, orange like……well. an orange (********, it was late, wasn’t it?), and two different shades of blue, like Levi’s perfect hair.
“…For what it’s worth,” he said, fussing with his long fringe again, “I’m sorry, too. I…had some ideas about your team, which I haven’t entirely been disabused of? But……some interactions with others from your team have, let’s say, nuanced things a bit for me……and shown me that I probably just plain wasn’t right about some of said ideas. And either way, it wasn’t fair to take that out on you.” A pensive hum, then he added, “I don’t know if you know him or not? But I get the feeling that one of Eternal Sparkly Kerberos-chan’s hobbies is just swooping in like the goddamn Batman, or maybe sitting on his bench, and being all……soft, and kind, and whatever until you notice that something or other is either simpler or more complicated than you thought.
“…Also? Alles klar, Herr Kommisar? literally just means ‘Everything alright, officer?’ Useful phrase to know if you’re ever s**t-faced in Berlin with a bunch of theater kids and attract the attention of a cop who, frankly, looks like he walked straight out of a cheesy porno.”
Man……that night in undergrad had been fun.
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 4:36 pm
He snorted at the cheesy porno joke, but at Kerberos's name, Amsvartnir's eyes lit up and his back straightened. "You met Kerberos? Oh, isn't he awesome? He gave me some really solid advice about how, um..." he trailed off a second, blushing and looking away again.
"I made a lot of bad decisions in the Negaverse. Dating someone being one of them," he continued quietly, hand tightening on his cane. "His name is Albite. And he was a real sweetie to me, y'know? Charming. And I hurt him, when I left. I don't think he's a bad guy, really, just... Someone I can't help. I tried. But... He wasn't good for me, y'know? When I needed to leave. I had to go figure myself out, and Kerberos helped with that. He's really... honestly, one of the best people I've ever met."
He grinned cheekily. "So I don't think I'd describe him as the Batman. He's too spooky. Superman, really. All the charm and sweetness of farm boy Clark Kent."
……Huh. It appeared that Reiki had found the secret to getting into Amsvartnir’s best graces—which was sort of hilarious, since his somewhat more active attempt at making something-adjacent-to-friends with Captain Phoenix Force over similar subject matter had spectacularly blown up in his face. But, seriously, the boy in the pastel rainbow poufy sleeves was all lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree over this, even while sharing his tragic backstory. (Speaking of which……? why? was he doing this? Bringing up Kerberos was not the same as reaching level four friendship!)
Still, being snarky about that story definitely would’ve made Reiki the a*****e in this situation, so he gave himself a few moments to breathe deeply and think, instead. “Well, I certainly get the impression that Kerberos makes an effort, which puts him miles ahead of the vast majority of humanity,” he finally said. “Which, by the way? Is logic that you should also extend to yourself.… Getting away from someone who you love, but who’s being terrible for you? Standing up for yourself and your boundaries in the face of someone you care about? It’s not……I mean, you know it’s not easy; you’ve done it. But……it doesn’t get easier. And you probably got out sooner than some people in similar situations, which is something to be proud of.”
Some people, here, having the meaning of Reiki himself, and similar situations having the meaning of Greg. But they weren’t talking about Reiki, or his bullshit problems, or his trashcan ex who he should never have dated in the first place—except, then, he might not have met Levi, which……ugh, the alternate reality where he never met Levi sounded like a terrible, miserable place that Reiki hoped to never visit, ever.
Worrying his fingers through his long fringe, Reiki sighed. “As for the rest of Kerberos, I mostly likened him to Batman because the first time we met, he swooped down on me out of ******** nowhere, acting like it was no big deal. Which……okay, cool, I guess that’s an opinion he’s allowed to have about the phenomenal cosmic power that he radiates? But it is not an opinion that my gay a** agrees with. Especially not when he is, as mentioned, swooping down on a b***h out of nowhere, all like ‘Not up to anything nasty, are you.’”
Hopefully illustrating what he thought of that question, now that he knew Kerberos probably wasn’t planning to lay him to waste like an angry god, Reiki rolled his eyes……but a discontented sound soon followed as guilt wound itself around his lungs, over the fact that he was, once again, s**t-talking someone who’d been nothing but nice to him (and whose original flight from their meeting, Reiki had massively misunderstood at the time). “Well. Either way, I definitely wouldn’t compare him to Superman because, as a fellow femboy? Clark Kent is way too butch. He only wishes that he could be Kerberos.”
A moment’s consideration, then Reiki added, “Loki has the necessary amount of ethereal beauty, and regularly has long enough hair in the comics. And he has the turn away from being with the Negaverse—or Thanos, at least in the continuity that has had, what, five ‘first queer representation’ characters by now, and only one of them was a main character with a ******** name—and into being good.… Blue Steel is probably snarky enough to match Loki, underneath all of his perfectly practiced calm.”
……And now that the thought had occurred to him, Reiki had to wonder: A. was he correct about this, and B. how much prodding would Kerberos need to help him find out?
genovianprince
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 11:33 pm
Amsvartnir nodded, feeling heartened by Murikabushi's response. It was nice to have someone else believe in him like that. To say he should be proud of his own accomplishments, in as many words, too.
It almost made him shiver, because... he'd never had anyone say that about him before. He'd been working so hard, making it all out on his own, never having... a single person like that. Kerberos was wonderful, but he hadn't said in so many words that Amsvartnir should be proud of his difficult decision.
"Hmm, that's fair," he said, nodding thoughtfully, "I'm, uh, weeeelll....."
He grimaced down at his outfit. "I'm more, uh. Butch. In my civvies. This, uh. It's a little bit good-guy-femme for my tastes, but it's not that hot in the outfit, so..." He shrugged. "I'll take it over what some of these poor saps have to wear. I've seen people dressed in furs for pete's sake! But Loki's a nice comparison for Kerberos, yeah. I don't know who Blue Steel is, I, uh. I've only seen a couple of the Marvel movies."
……Oh, good god, this kid really didn’t know anything about anything, did he. Or at the very least, he didn’t know enough about any of the myriad cultural references that Reiki spoke like a second language and regularly threw around with reckless abandon. Being a butch gay guy, that was perfectly acceptable; he couldn’t help how he felt the most euphoria in himself any more than Reiki could help being a femme fairy princess.
But, Jesus H. Christ, did queer teenagers these days watch literally anything that wasn’t Drag Race and ******** TikTok?
“‘Blue Steel’ isn’t a Marvel superhero,” Reiki explained, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s a thing from a movie that has nothing to do with Marvel. Zoolander. It……it’s honestly probably older than you are.” An absolutely horrifying prospect that made Reiki want to hop down to the sidewalk and vomit in a trash-can (if only he could have done so without risk of dehydrating and/or kicking himself in a massive trigger). “Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson play these just……absolutely ridiculous male models. Will Ferrell plays the villain, who is equally ridiculous and crazy. And Ben Stiller’s character, Derek Zoolander, has a quote-unquote ‘signature look’ that he calls ‘Blue Steel’—which I’m not going to try to demonstrate because……you just have to see him do it to really understand why it’s funny, okay.”
None of which did much to answer the unasked question of why Reiki had brought up the name Blue Steel in the first place. “For our purposes right now, though? Blue Steel is, y’know, him.… Kerberos.…… I was really freaked out when I first called him that, and I latched on to his blue hair, and……well. So it goes.”
Please, Jesus. Please, Buddha. Please, Oscar Wilde, George Michael, and St. Sebastian. Please, whoever might look out for me: do. not. make me explain ******** Slaughterhouse Five to this poor teenager in the middle of the ******** night. I need to go to sleep.
genovianprince
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:02 am
Amsvartnir nodded, humming slightly in thought and tapping his chin. "I'll have to put it on my to watch playlist then. That sounds... well. Interesting, to say the least."
He paused. "Wait, Owen Wilson? The hwow guy? Didn't he also play that, uh... Jedidiah, in those museum movies, really queer with the little Roman fella?" he asked, brightening up a bit again, "I liked those movies. Always kinda wished I could be Jed. He tries so hard to be a big manly man. A real sweetheart to his 'best friend'."
He looked back up to the meteors streaking across the sky, leaning on his cane again and enjoying the streaks of color. Wondering...just about how wonderful the universe really was. Vast and deep and beautiful.
“Please tell me you know what the Jedidiah-Octavius ‘I ain’t quittin’ you’ line is a reference to,” Reiki deadpanned as he put his empty water bottle back into his subspace and joined the boy in looking back up at the meteor shower. “And if you don’t know, I……”
Hugging himself, he felt the urge to be a sarcastic b***h ebbing out of him faster than Usain Bolt. “I honestly don’t know if I can justify telling you to watch the movie it’s referencing, or to read the book it’s based on. They’re both gorgeous—absolutely beautiful work all around, from Annie Proulx, Ang Lee, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the late Heath Ledger? But……”
Reiki sighed deeply. “It’s a rough story, regardless of what version you go for. Like, my grandmother? She used to do a little book club thing with me because I was always bored to death at school. And one of the books we read together was that one? She gave me a lot of ******** up stuff to read because she knew I was interested in it anyway and she thought ‘Well, at least if I read it with him, I can provide context for things and help him learn to think critically about what he’s reading.’ But even though some of the other stuff we read together included the books that Game of Thrones is based on? Nothing wrecked me harder than the book that the ‘I ain’t quittin’ you’ line originally traces back from.… Hence why I’m not sure I can recommend it to you in good conscience.”
There were also several debates to be had about, among other things, the quality of the representation, the arguable appropriation of queer suffering for a cishet white lady to open up some kind of larger conversation about white American rural cishet masculinity, and whether or not she’d opened up that conversation well……but. Baby steps were clearly necessary, here. Reiki couldn’t just drop a ******** of queer theory and queer academia on this poor kid at four in the ******** morning and expect it to go well for either of them.
