#this is so real to me yanno -- sry i'm just feeling a lot rn

[queen-mabs-revenge]

ok but the thing that is really meaning a lot to me right now about Gay Mentor™ trent crimm is that... he might actually not be?

if we're picking up what they're putting down and assuming correctly that up until at least his daughter's birth Trent's hasn't fully confronted his own sexuality, and that his accepting his own queerness, and changing his life because of it is at the very most a 6 year old journey, colin in a lot of ways might be the more experienced, more comfortable navigating in queer circles (even if that circle is completely alien from his work life).

that trent as a gen-xer might actually be less experienced than gen-z colin? that trent was becoming an adult in a hugely reactionary period -- the overall politics of the post-cold war period, esp with queerness as a life-or-death battlefield under the systematic violence of governments using AIDS as a weapon, and the destruction that wrought on queer communities and acceptance of queerness. the way that would have been ever present as he tried to make a name for himself in his early 20s in an incredibly homophobic field. the way that even if he felt there was something he was shoving into the closet, the context in which he was becoming an adult was very different from the era we're in right now.

that colin, having grown up in a generation more openly queer than ever might have accepted his own queerness earlier, but might feel so much more of an ache because of that -- that his peers around him are getting to be openly queer in all forms and he can't be that because of what his body is good at doing. that bodily physicality of it all -- that his natural physical talent means that he has to deny his sexuality? 'i am a strong and capable man' takes on so much more when you know that his physical capability is the thing that's denying him physical and emotional wholeness? fuck me fuck me fuck me

but yeah the way that that all means that colin seems to have accepted his queerness long before trent has, even if he can't live it openly? that they can both share and support each other in their different experiences and points in life? that the show is telling a story of an person who by all appearances should be an 'elder gay' but who is in a lot of ways just taking their first steps? who has an entire life to unpack, reassess, and maybe feel that they have to make up for as they step into this new, honest, phase?