#(i'll take it. i love overanalyzing this little webcomic.)

[aristocrating]

Bitty grew up in the Deep South and I feel like his “ideals” may have been a bit skewed towards slightly Christian. While we know bitty is gay and had sex before marriage, marrying the first person you fall in love with seems to be more in line with southern Baptist culture (I don’t mean this to be offensive, it’s just something i picked up on)

(I assume this is in response to the anon from earlier about Bitty not dating around and marrying straight out of college.)

Oh yeah, I mean I agree, I think a lot of ideas Bitty has about relationships are informed by his upbringing. It absolutely makes sense that that is something a character who's presented to us as so entrenched in that culture would do, and maybe even aspire to.

Where I personally wish the comic did something – not even necessarily different, just more – is explore how someone like Bitty would unpack how his upbringing and what he wants his life and relationships to look like, compare to his experience of queerness. Samwell is the "1 in 4" college yet we never really see any other queer perspectives, save for Jack who just goes along with Bitty, Kent who isn't on screen for long enough to really say anything and Whiskey who is mostly concerned with the closet. We don't see a lot of delving into what happens to you after you come out, how it changes you as a person, we hardly learn anything about Bitty's internal life other than that the comic tells us he and Jack are happy together. Did he have to grapple with internalized homophobia? How does he reconcile wanting culturally traditional values with having an identity that people would call anything but traditional? Did he have any thoughts, feelings or reactions to same-sex marriage being legalized in 2015?

I do think there is a lot of potential in a queer character with traditional Christian values, and it's so intriguing to me that the comic never really seemed interested in exploring that.

Edit: one part I do actually think is handled really well is Bitty's confrontation with his dad. there's a lot of complexity in that one strip and it's one of the times i think the comic really hit on something. again, lots of potential.