So last night I heard it from the horse's mouth. Gale Harold is not gay.
It was disappointing to hear it, but I figure, if at this point in time, after I don't know how many seasons of Queer as Folk, Randy Harrison hasn't managed to make him gay, nothing will. That is one man confident in his heterosexuality.
Then I had a strange thought. I wondered how my Unified Theory of Michael Shanks would be affected if MS played Brian Kinney instead of Gale Harold. Without going into all the details of the Theory, I can guess it could go one of two ways. Either Michelle Clunie gets knocked up with Baby Shanks #3 (like she's not totally his type?), or Michael drags Randy off to the courthouse to make an honest man out of him.
Of course, I would have to expand the fertility subchapter of the Theory since it's unlikely Brian Kinney would actually have sex with Lindsey on the show or in any way be romantically involved. They can barely stand each other. And since he can't get Randy pregnant (no matter what the fanfic writers might say -- and do NOT show me where I can find any QaF mpreg because I will not read it), I suppose we'll find a fourth variant of the Theory. Someone he co-starred with, fell in love with, married, but did not fertilise.
I might have to start seriously writing this shit down.
Don't ask me how I got from Gale Harold being straight to the MS Theory. Half the time I don't know what my brain does or why.
I tease because I love. ;)
----
It was disappointing to hear it, but I figure, if at this point in time, after I don't know how many seasons of Queer as Folk, Randy Harrison hasn't managed to make him gay, nothing will. That is one man confident in his heterosexuality.
Then I had a strange thought. I wondered how my Unified Theory of Michael Shanks would be affected if MS played Brian Kinney instead of Gale Harold. Without going into all the details of the Theory, I can guess it could go one of two ways. Either Michelle Clunie gets knocked up with Baby Shanks #3 (like she's not totally his type?), or Michael drags Randy off to the courthouse to make an honest man out of him.
Of course, I would have to expand the fertility subchapter of the Theory since it's unlikely Brian Kinney would actually have sex with Lindsey on the show or in any way be romantically involved. They can barely stand each other. And since he can't get Randy pregnant (no matter what the fanfic writers might say -- and do NOT show me where I can find any QaF mpreg because I will not read it), I suppose we'll find a fourth variant of the Theory. Someone he co-starred with, fell in love with, married, but did not fertilise.
I might have to start seriously writing this shit down.
Don't ask me how I got from Gale Harold being straight to the MS Theory. Half the time I don't know what my brain does or why.
I tease because I love. ;)
----
- Current Mood:
crazy
Comments
I think what I like about the series is how it demonstrates that "gay issues" aren't really any different than anyone else's problems in so many ways.
Brian's obsession to be "the hottest" isn't really any different than straight guys who have based most of their self esteem on what's in their pants too. He's the gay Wilt Chamberlain, with a scoreboard above his bed, figuratively speaking. And he thinks he's so unique. The least unique thing about him is his promiscuity. Is it a such a distinctively American thing to go for quantity over quality in everything from food to cars to sex? Sure, he has lots of sex, but most of it's crummy, risky, backroom stuff.
He may be the most interesting character on the show, though, because even though you want to bitch slap him, he's the most damaged in some ways and has the most adjusting and learning about life to do. You can't help but want to see that.
He's trying now to balance growing more independent with trying to still see in Brian what he originally saw. He might even outgrow Brian, which is what sometimes happens when you grow up, and I think he's just beginning to realize that. They want different things now and I don't see it lasting, not unless Brian gets over his heterophobia.
The series has done a good job of showing the variety of philosophies and influences on gay culture, all the way from the "we want to settle down in the suburbs and raise a family" gay yuppie couple(would you call them "guppies"?) to the "Gay is about sexual freedom apart from issues of reproduction, monogamy and traditional morality is for straights and breeders" individual.
Actually Brian is wrong about thinking that monogamy is something most people wouldn't choose, because monogamy seems to be biologically inherent, at least some degree of it. It's not a surprise that a lot of gay people have long term monogamous relationship too, according to PFLAG stats. The percentages are the same for gay or straight people.
It's the default sexual arrangement in most cultures, with polygamy a far behind second choice. Monogamy probably has a lot more to do with biology than morality according to evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists.
Personally, I still haven't made up my mind on monogamy. I think yeah, to some extend we're drawn to it, but I don't think we're penguins. I wonder if humans aren't meant to be serially monogamous rather than mate for life, and that the 'till death do us part' was a concept imposed by the patriarchy.
But what the hell do I know?
There are some valid biological reasons for it, because no matter how complex we get, sex originally was to propagate the species, even though we've gotten more sophisticated than just reproduction as a sexual incentive (us and all the higher mammals). But, if it doesn't accomplish keeping the species going, we're pretty much screwed.
Any behavior or trait that is successful will be reinforced genetically to some degree, but nothing is written in stone.
Homosexuality has some genetic benefit or it wouldn't have survived as a trait for eons.
Some researchers believe that it's a genetic alternative to keep us from breeding ourselves off the planet. You still get an outlet for the sex drive without overpopulating. And gay people who want to be parents often care for children that don't share their genes, so that's a good strategy for child survival too.
That's what I've thought about homosexuality too. Especially since we're not allowed to eat our young when there's too many of them anymore.
Which explains why an about a quarter of the human males in the world are raising some other guy's kid.
A woman might sleep with a guy like that, but he'll never be around to help her raise the offspring that result. So, you find a more monogamous type to settle down with.
That's a genetic thing too. Men with a high adventure threshhold(adrenaline junkies) often father more children, but aren't around to raise them, so not as many of their kids survive to adulthood to propagate themselves.
Nature often has more than one survival strategy, but humans take so long to mature, the nurturing strategy, which is easier with a monogamous partner, works better than just having a lot of kids and hoping one or two of them will make it.
Whatever combination of traits make people incline to serial monogamy has won out, and also, cultures that promote it will win out. So, it's nature and nurture working together, like most things.
Politics and economics has killed a lot more people than nature ever did.
There's enough of everything even at the earth's current rather high population, more than enough, but the people who need it aren't getting it, and some people are getting more than what's good for them.
You've seen that, people starving in one part of the world while people are dying of obesity and other diseases of excess in others.
It's more of a "we've failed the earth" situation, not "the earth failed us".
Wordy McWordsword.
To me it's never a case of how many humans we can feed. We could feed all 7 billion if we managed everything right. But that's still too many humans. I just feel rather strongly that humanity should not survive at the expense of other species. Extinction is inevitable, and is not manmade in all cases, but anything that we do to accelerate the disappearance of other species is just something I can't tolerate. Which is why I would rather see a human population of at the most 3 billion. Leaving enough land free of human strain and agriculture for other species to inhabit freely.
I don't see any reason why human beings would be exempt from the next one, if we're still around.
Some paleontologists and anthropologists have a theory that during the last ice age, the human population got down to a mere 20,000 or so, that's why so many of us have the same DNA. It took us quite a while to get the population back up to the 3 or 4 million it might have been before that.
Sure, it's bad for humans to artificially accelerate extinction, because we do it for all the wrong reasons. Nature seems to do it because it's a self-limiting system. Humans do it because they consume more than they put back.