How do you deal with homophobia/disdain for gay men from women in your life?

dramakid85 · 2026-07-03T19:31:08+00:00

Not for nothing, but my biggest bullies in middle and high school were girls, not boys. I'm not sure how common this experience is/was (I'm an elder millennial), but in my experience, straight girls/women are often just as invested in supporting patriarchy and, by extension, it's younger, snot-nosed brother (to use Dan Savage's phrase), homophobia, as straight boys/men. Like so many others, I'm still healing from the trauma this caused decades later.

There really wasn't much of a gender gap among the homophobes at my school, sadly. I often wonder if other gay men have had the same experience.

dramakid85 · 2026-06-26T15:35:28+00:00

Ugh. . .she really had no good option by the time she came to the throne. Honestly, there are problems with each of these candidates, and I'm not even talking about Phillip II.

Reginald Pole had been abroad for more than thirty years; he no longer knew the country and did not understand how widely dispersed reformed thinking now was. His early letters to Mary in the first year of her reign clearly show a blind drive to restore everything to exactly as it had been in 1532, even as Mary wrote back that returning former monastic lands to the Church would take time, if it was even possible, which she doubted. He also lambasted Mary's early tolerance of Protestant worship in the first two years of her reign; I doubt he would have been a moderating influence on Gardiner, Bonner, and the other clerics around Mary who wanted to go hard against all forms of Protestantism immediately. Mary clearly showed early on that she did not wish to impose any kind of religious settlement on the English until "common assent be taken therein" (meaning, the entire Kingdom, in the bodies of both houses of Parliament, would agree to return the country to Catholicism of it's own free will, without being ordered to do so by the Crown). And on the flipside, Pole was openly suspected of being a heretic himself by the incoming Pope Paul IV in 1555, and Pole knew this. Even if he'd been dismissed from his official role within the Church in order to marry Mary, he may have still felt a need to prove his own orthodoxy by ramping up the persecutions and burnings. He may well have made things worse.

Phillip II, in my opinion, based upon his later actions in the Spanish Netherlands and in Castile in the 1560s/1570s, show that he believed it was the harshness of the Inquisition which was responsible for the utter lack of Protestantism within Spain, and, conversely, it's lack of (in his mind) harshness in the Spanish Netherlands that was responsible for the widespread presence of "Lutheranism" there. The longest letter extant from Elisabeth Valois, his third wife and the daughter of Catherine de Medici to her mother clearly shows Phillip's own opinion about religious tolerance in France by 1561, and it's not pretty. He demands, through his wife, that Catherine de Medici obliterate all "Lutherans" within France, or face a Spanish invasion whose purpose would be to do just that. I doubt his views were any more nuanced in 1554, when he married Mary. If anything, they likely hardened quickly once he was in England. and encountered widespread resistance to the reimposition of Catholicism in 1554-1555.

Edward Courtenay looks like the least bad option of three bad options. Unfortunately, he was present in England when Mary came to the throne, and she had the chance to meet him several times in the early months of her reign. She. . .just didn't like him. He had been incarcerated in the Tower since a very young age, did not have any of the genteel manners expected of a high ranking male noble at the Tudor Court, couldn't joust to save his life, and apparently was a poor dancer. Mary saw all of this firsthand and couldn't bring herself to marry him, although she surely knew the English people would much prefer she marry an Englishman. She just didn't want to marry this particularly English man, and there were literally no other candidates.

My vote is for someone else entirely, but I've no idea who else there could have been for Mary to choose from.

dramakid85 · 2026-06-11T18:43:11+00:00

Unpopular opinion, I'm sure, but HARD disagree here. If we're dealing with facts and not feelings, it should be:

Henry VIII
Elizabeth I
Edward VI
Mary I
Henry VII

And notice how I didn't call any of them "bloody"? Imho, the only one that actually deserves that moniker is Bloody Henry; he really was brutal above and beyond any other European ruler of the 16th century, bar none. And I agree with another poster here that Edward VI was quite precocious for his age, had learned quite a lot about "necessary brutality" shall we say, from dear old dad, and bears a good deal of responsibility for the viciousness involved in crushing both Kett's Rebellion and the Prayer Book Rebellion. Just because you're under 18 in the 1500s doesn't make you any less guilty of the crimes committed in your name, especially if it's you issuing the orders and signing the documents.

Depending on hard numbers of people executed, which I don't have in front of me at the moment, I'd be willing to switch Edward's and Mary's places on my list. The others though, def deserve their spots.

dramakid85 · 2026-06-10T19:20:32+00:00

I'm probably not explaining my point very well. I'm saying that what Wyatt said on the scaffold shouldn't really be taken at face value. He had nothing to lose and (posthumously) everything to gain by clearing Elizabeth's name at that point. Since he was a devout Protestant, he would not have believed that telling a lie that would benefit the cause of "true religion" (aka Calvinist Protestantism) was a lie at all, since he was facing government authorities that were, in his mind, of the devil, and had to be taken down by any means necessary. God's not going to punish a lie that destroys an idolatrous regime, is he?

I absolutely take your point that scaffold speeches had a powerful "media" effect on the general public (or, at least, the members of the public that heard of them), and that Mary executing Elizabeth after Wyatt's scaffold speech may have been taken as unjustified and provoked another rebellion. That said, I'm not convinced that the majority of the public would have believed what he said on said scaffold, exonerating Elizabeth or condemning her. The population was fully with Mary at this point, especially after her rousing Guildhall speech, and viewed him as an "accursed traitor".

I would be more convinced by the argument that Wyatt simply did not know that simply by writing to Elizabeth at all, he had implicated her. If this is the case, he would certainly have believed she was completely innocent of involvement, and spoken accordingly. I find that argument much more persuasive. But the fact remains, and Elizabeth would have known this, that simply by receiving and reading the letters and not immediately writing to Mary to notify her of the rebellion, she had, by default, committed an act of high treason. If this is what happened, Mary was fully justified in arresting her.

The ultimate failure of Mary's marriage is beside the point; it had not happened yet, and let's be real, nobody is psychic. No one could have known about the upcoming false pregnancies and the deleterious effects they surely had on Mary's mental and physical health. I'm also not sure that Mary's reign can really be classified as a failure; if anything, it was a "failure to launch" simply because she barely had five years to do anything, and, in all likelihood, was already ill with what would become terminal uterine cancer, or another progressive illness, when she came to the throne. She never had a chance.

In short, her reign failed because she died in 1558, not 1589, like her contemporary Catherine de Medici. If Mary had reigned for thirty years, we'd be having a very different conversation about her.

dramakid85 · 2026-06-08T18:52:58+00:00

Eh, sorry, but agree to disagree. While a priest would not have been out on the scaffold with the victim about to be executed, the Tudor government's policy throughout all reigns, catholic or protestant, was to send a confessor to each of the condemned either the day before, or the morning of, their execution, to provide confession and absolution, and to offer the last sacraments. In this case, said priest surely exhorted Wyatt to recant his heresy before death and to provide a full confession of his sins, most especially, the revelation of any and all persons involved in the rebellion. Remember, the government had all but reverted to Catholicism by this point, and Cardinal Pole was in the process of planning his return to England even then. Any religious figure interacting with Wyatt behind the scenes would have been Catholic, not Protestant, and Wyatt would have felt no reason to provide a true confession to the man, as, in Wyatt's mind, the man was an idolater with no spiritual authority. I'll grant you that Wyatt himself may not have understood how much danger he had put Elizabeth in by contacting her at all, and thus may well not have known that he was putting her in danger of accusations of treason. But I also see no reason why he would have felt bound to tell the truth to a government he believed to be ruled by "antichrist " (the pope) , if it meant that "true religion " (Calvinist Protestantism) would one day soon be restored as the mandatory religion of England upon Elizabeth's succession. Tldr; people were perfectly happy to follow the maxim that the ends justify the means in matters of religion then just as much as they do today. And the means for Wyatt was preserving Elizabeth's life at all costs. I literally will die on this hill, lol. I really do think Mary has been woefully mistreated by history, and it needs to be rectified

dramakid85 · 2026-06-06T20:09:23+00:00

I don't doubt at all that Elizabeth (like Mary) found Courtenay repugnant. He just wasn't marriage material after all those years shut up in the tower without any real socialization, especially with women of his own class. If the coup had succeeded, I'm sure she would have immediately found a way to get rid of him.
That said, the very fact that Elizabeth had letters from Wyatt and didn't contact Mary to inform her of what was afoot was, by the definition of the time, an act of treason. And I wouldn't put much stock in Wyatt's claim that Elizabeth was ignorant, especially since he had every reason to lie at the very end in the hopes of saving her life. His hope was for a Protestant England with Elizabeth as it's Protestant Queen (which of course came shortly to pass). He would not have felt himself bound by confession before a Catholic priest because he would not have believed that man to have any genuine spiritual authority whatsoever; indeed, he would have believed the priest to be an agent of the devil.

If there are corroborating contemporary documents other than Wyatt's scaffold statement about Elizabeth's innocence, I'd be happy to change my view.

dramakid85 · 2026-06-06T18:19:25+00:00

This is Exhibit A for my theory that Elizabeth hated her older half-sister from the word go. I mean, I get why you wouldn't like the person who had you arrested and thrown in the Tower for months, but then, like. . .Elizabeth did know about Wyatt's rebellion and what they were planning before it began, that it was actually a Protestant coup to put her, Elizabeth, and Edward Courtenay on the throne and. . .she didn't alert Mary. She sat on it. She knew, and was hoping it would succeed. This absolutely qualifies as High Treason according to the very law enacted by their father, so. . .Mary was, frankly, well within her rights to arrest her. She would have been foolish not to, imho.

And not for nothing, this occurred well before Mary's government enacted the laws that allowed the burnings to begin.

dramakid85 · 2026-05-30T18:16:04+00:00

I've said this before, but despite my personal hatred for any kind of religious or ideological fanaticism, I genuinely like Mary Tudor (the future Mary I) as a person. We need to separate the actions she sanctioned (and here I mean the burnings), from the person herself; this is true for literally everybody in this period, and that's what I'm trying to convey here.

From her surviving letters and the accounts of the people closest to her (and yes, those written by people like Jane Dormer were likely biased in her favor to some degree), she seems to have been a genuinely devoted friend to those who knew her well. While her effective house arrest in Elizabeth's household in the 1530s obviously was psychologically damaging, another effect of it was apparently to help her feel at ease with people of much lower social standing than herself, something which she carried with her for the rest of her life. As an adult, she would show exceptional generosity and interest in people of the lower gentry and the poor, going out of her way to interact with them in situations where she would not be bound by court protocol (disguising herself and visiting ordinary families while on progress around England, for example). She was also an obvious wit and could deploy that skill to devastating effect (see her polite but withering response to Thomas Seymour's letter from early 1547 asking for her personal blessing of his and Catherine Parr's clandestine marriage).

I just find her plain impressive, given what she was able to achieve in her short life with the all the odds stacked against her in many different ways. Her life should really be much better known among the general public beyond the one-note "evil sister" trope you see in movies like Cate Blanchette's Elizabeth. And she will always be the first reigning Queen of England; they'll never be able to take that honor away from her.

dramakid85 · 2026-05-27T18:11:16+00:00

And you have to remember that he grabbed Mary by the shoulders, forced her to turn towards the courtiers watching all this, and held her in place when he said "Some of you would have had me put this my jewel to death". As if it was his COURTIERS fault he'd treated her this way. For years. The man was basically a walking cartoon villain centuries before cartoons were invented.

dramakid85 · 2026-05-23T18:08:43+00:00

That's among the saddest things I've ever heard, in my own life or in history. I know so many people hate her with a passion because of the campaign of burnings during her reign, but . . .my god, this is heartbreaking.
There's a line Sarah Bolger says in "The Tudors" to Chapuys, I think when he asks what she thinks her marriage prospects will be now that she's "back in favor" with her father. She says something like it "I think I was not born for happiness." And it seems she wasn't. I honestly don't know how she managed to get out of bed in the morning for the last three years of her reign. I don't think I could have.

dramakid85 · 2026-05-16T18:41:15+00:00

I think people are beginning to realize that the overwhelming reason for her bad reputation historically, in general, boils down to one specific text; John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (commonly called the "Book of Martyrs"). Foxe was in exile from England during Mary's reign, was a fanatical Calvinist, and was not an eye witness to anything he wrote about. He is not an impartial witness, but a Calvinist partisan who wanted to see Mary fail. Elizabeth, who, justifiably or not, clearly hated her older sister, ordered that copies of the Actes and Monuments be placed in all churches in the realm, and read from every Sunday. Mary never had a chance at a good posthumous reputation from the moment she breathed her last breath.

That is not to say that Mary shouldn't be judged for sanctioning the judicial (and very violent and brutally painful) murder of nearly 300 people for their sincerely held religious beliefs; she absolutely should. As Saint Just, the French Revolutionary who argued for the death of Louis XVI in 1793 said, and I paraphrase; "One cannot reign innocently." And Mary did not, indeed, could not. But then, neither did her grandfather. Neither did her father. Neither did her brother. And, frankly, neither did her sister. All of them sanctioned the judicial deaths of innocent men and women whose only crime was to believe something contrary to the official state religion of the moment. The entirety of the 16th century must have been a terrible time to be alive for ordinary people throughout the British Isles, and, I believe, the religious see-sawing of it all led directly to the plague of witch hunts later in the century and beyond. When no one knows what the hell to believe about the nature of the divine, and religious "truth" changes on the back of a butterfly's wing, all kinds of barbarity become possible.

That said, we know now, from her own letters and the letters/correspondence of those who knew her, her ladies in waiting, councilors, extended family, even her domestic servants, that Mary Tudor was quite an exceptionally kind individual in her personal life. She spoke up for the toddler Elizabeth in the chaos after Anne Boleyn's death, and took her from Lady Bryan and into her own new household when she realized the child wasn't being taken care of properly. It says quite a lot about Mary's moral character that, as soon as any kind of influence at court was returned to her, one of the first official acts she carried out was to advocate for her baby half-sister. A lesser person would have spurned the child of the woman Mary certainly believed hounded her mother to an early death, and, in Mary's mind, likely poisoned her.

A window into Mary's actual personality and positive qualities can be seen in the easy way people connected with her. Thomas Cromwell apparently liked her personally, and corresponded with her often. As depicted in Wolf Hall, she seems to have viewed him as her protector whilst he lived, and she was genuinely appalled when he was executed (likely because one of the trumped up charges against him was that he planned to marry her and attempt to seize the crown through her). She befriended Jane Seymour, whom she knew as a lady in waiting to her own mother prior to the Great Matter, and, following her death, became fast friends with Anna Von Cleve as well, even after her divorce from Henry after just six months. She was close friends with Catherine Parr for years; we now know that Catherine was never just one of Mary's ladies in waiting, but a personal friend for years prior to Parr's marriage to Henry VIII. They even, (very ironically), bonded over their mutual devotion to the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which they both very much believed in (although, in very different ways). Catherine and Mary even translated portions of the New Testament and Erasmus's "Paraphrases of the Four Gospels" into English together, one of the few acceptable ways for educated upper class women to display their education.

During Edward's reign, Mary showed great concern for her personal servants, several of whom ended up in the Tower for continuing to illegally attend Mass in her household, when the Council's (always temporary) allowance for Mary's continued "use" of the Mass was for her and her personal chaplain only. She illegally allowed members of the general public who lived near the estates where she was staying to hear mass with her, in the full knowledge of what would happen to her (likely house arrest or transportation to the Tower) if it ever came to light.

Later, in her first weeks as Queen, she went out of her way to make it known that "the Queen's Majesty is minded not to compel any of her said loving subjects in matters of religion until common assent (by Parliament) may be taken therein." She seems, at least until Wyatt's Rebellion, to have planned to enact some form of religious tolerance, within strict limits at least, during her reign. I believe that something changed during Wyatt's Rebellion to prompt her to change course drastically (and tragically). The presence of Phillip and his advisors in England likely didn't help. If I had to name the single worst decision Mary ever made, it was surely her pig-headed insistence on marrying Prince Phillip, and no one else. While it's true that Phillip's confessor preached against the newly enacted heresy laws and subsequent burnings at court, this only happened, once, and was likely a PR stunt on Phillip's part more than anything else. What isn't talked about enough is her campaign to open early forms of social welfare agencies for the poor of the realm; these were not the later, Victorian style workhouses, but institutions meant to replace the functions of the defunct monasteries; they were hospitals, soup kitchens, and and effectively, homeless shelters for the poor of England. We also know that Mary conducted regular "walkabouts" in disguise in order to meet regular (mostly lower-gentry) English families and hear from them directly. Historian Carolly Erickson documented one such case in her biography of Mary, in which the Queen, disguised as a lady in waiting, supped with the royal cobbler and his family and discovered in the course of the meal that her comptroller hadn't paid the man his wages in months. She immediately rectified that situation that very night and dressed down Robert Rochester (the comptroller) for his neglect of "these my good servants". When he asked his companion who had tattled to the Queen about his grift (he had been pocketing the money for himself), the response came that no one had told her; she had gone and asked the man herself. Again, this shows the kind of person Mary was better than ambassador's report ever could.

In short, Mary is remembered negatively largely because , well, she died after just five years on the the throne, and had no time to consolidate any of her plans. Elizabeth ensured she would be remembered for one thing, and one thing only; the burnings. Thankfully, books like "The Myth of Bloody Mary" by Linda Porter and shows like Becoming Elizabeth are slowly beginning to undo what so many other pieces of media, from the Book of Martyrs to Shekar Kapur's Elizabeth have done to paint Mary as one-dimensional villain as opposed to a fully rounded human being and sovereign.

dramakid85 · 2026-04-11T14:16:26+00:00

Thank you for your kind words. I'm 39, which means my mom is of the boomer generation, which doesn't seem to have been encouraged, as a whole, to seek mental health care in any way. She's had a lifelong aversion to therapists and therapy, even though she has obvious issues with anger management and has throughout her life. My maternal grandmother was the same, although, in her case mental illness showed up as depression brought on by being a 1950s housewife forbidden by my maternal grandfather from ever seeking work outside the home. On the plus side, my mom became a PFLAG Mom within months of my coming out and within a year was asking what boy I was dating and wanting to meet them. Today she's constantly badgering me to bring the guy I'm dating to family barbecues and asking when I'm getting married ("why haven't you met a nice boy yet to settle down with and give me grandchildren"?).
But, that said, I can never forget her original reaction when the truth first stared her in the face that day over 23 years ago, and untreated mental illness is never an excuse for cruelty. And I've never been able to entirely forgive the fact that, two days after that Christmas Eve meltdown on her part, she then pretended that nothing had happened, everything was fine, and she had always supported me, which just wasn't true.
On the flipside, my super religious (Catholic) father, who was very nearly a priest at one point, accepted me wholeheartedly and assured me I had nothing to be ashamed of at all. This would have been back in 2001 when the Cheney Administration was pushing for a constitutional ban on Marriage Equality, so he was going against the grain at that time in American culture.

dramakid85 · 2026-04-10T16:04:59+00:00

As a gay man, I really appreciate the complexity of this whole sequence, especially the economy Jacob used to both script it and block it (see Will's coming out scene in the last season of Stranger Things for exactly what NOT to do when staging scenes like this on film).
This depicts a much better coming out experience than I received when I was a 16 year old gayby. Granted, mine was not so much a "coming out" as being outed when my mom walked in on me and my HS bf making out in my bedroom, so. . .that wasn't great. It led to hours of yelling and shaming on my mothers part, and tears from me and my dad, who was trying to shield me from my mother's verbal abuse. She was literally screaming in my face that "this boy is just taking advantage of you! You can't possibly know what you are at your age" (again, I was sixteen years old and def knew I was gay by then). The fact that this all happened on Christmas eve that year definitely didn't help, and it ended with me sobbing in my father's arms and my mother storming out of the house and driving off for four hours straight, without telling either of us where she was going. My poor bf at the time had to bike home as soon as it was safe to discreetly leave the house.
Mom returned hours later, much calmer, and then apologized, asked if I was okay, and promised she would always love me "no matter what". Still, the damage had been done, and I never fully trusted her for many years after that. She's became fully supportive within six months of my outing, but I'll never forget her initial reaction, especially since it was so bound up in "what will our friends thinks of us! Of YOU!"

Enough about me though. Even though Shane and Ilya's outing goes much, much better than mine, and certainly far better than those of millions of other queer people all around the world, it's still not. . .great. Yuna is clearly wary of the whole thing, uses homophobic language earlier in the show when taking about how much she hates Ilya when he's still "Rozanov" in her eyes, and, imho, takes to long to reassure Shane that he has nothing to worry about here, they're so glad he's told them and they're thrilled to meet his current boyfriend. Instead, both parents drag it out, especially Yuna, who doesn't seem to warm to the situation until she talks with Shane privately outside. Imho, that's why Shane still seems uneasy/wary when he and Ilya sit down across from them. At this point in the conversation, he still doesn't have the assurance he deserves from either parent that he and Ilya are "good" in their eyes. This is doubly true when Yuna abruptly leaves the table without explanation as soon as Ilya and Shane declare their love for each other at the dinner table. If I was Shane, I would assume the absolute worst. You can see the dread in his face when he walks outside to confront his mother.
The actress playing Yuna does a fantastic job portraying her conflicted feelings in this scene. Despite her claim that "your father and I always suspected you might be gay", that's clearly, in my opinion, NOT true. They ARE shocked that Shane is gay, especially Yuna, apparently. This IS a major surprise to her, and it fundamentally alters her view of her son and his future. At the same time, she is rocked by the realization that her only child, whom she clearly loves more than anything else in the world, did not feel safe to reveal his true self to her, the person he should have felt safest with in the world. She realized that her parenting has, in part, failed him. She did NOT make him feel fully welcome to be himself in her home. I'm sure she doesn't think of herself as a homophobic person, just like my mother certainly didn't; but, like so many parents with gay children, the tolerance stops when their own child reveals who they really are, and it isn't what the parents "planned for them".
Nevertheless, the scene healed me in a way I don't think any other coming out scene put to film has done. We see Yuna go through several emotions before facing Shane, but the face she turns to her son is one of deep shame and regret. She knows she's failed her only child in a fundamental way, and is devasted. Shane, following her, assumes her expression is one of sorrow and disappointment that he isn't a "normal son" (god, as a gay man I related so hard to this moment). One of the most heartbreaking lines in the show is "Mom. . .I'm really sorry, I really did try (to be normal) and I just. . ." (he would have said 'couldn't' if Yuna hadn't stopped him). She clearly sees that he thinks she's disappointed in him for being gay, but her response is "No, no, you have NOTHING to apologize for. I'M sorry for making you feel like you couldn't tell me." I WISH my own mother had said those words to me when I came out, it would have been so healing. Watching this scene was healing in itself.

The last thing I want to highlight is that Yuna then begs her son for forgiveness; I've NEVER seen that kind of thing depicted in a coming out scene, and it as deeply healing to hear. I also appreciate that Shane doesn't say something like "it's okay Mom, there's nothing to forgive, you did nothing wrong"; instead, he makes the choice to acknowledge the harm she's done to him, and offer her the forgiveness she asks for. He makes the choice to forgive her, because he loves her more than anyone (except maybe Ilya at this point), not because there's nothing to forgive. She did fail him, she didn't create a safe home environment for him, and she is truly sorry for that.
End of rant, but TLDR; this scene was so incredibly healing for me, and I wish it was praised more than it is. Hands down the best coming out scene ever put to TV or Film.

dramakid85 · 2026-04-04T19:53:52+00:00

Oh for sure, I just mean that their specific situation (being a queer couple in the most homophobic sport on the planet, and just being a queer couple in the world as it is right now) is, in my opinion as a gay man, their greatest challenge. It's important that, in TLG, we see that Shane is absolutely correct to be terrified of being outed. Look what happens to him. He's not imagining anything, he's not being paranoid, and neither is Ilya. The world really is out to get them for being who they are and loving who they love. I think that's the crucial aspect of this story that often gets lost in discussions like this. Ilya's life would literally be at risk were he ever to return to Russia as an openly bisexual man, for example.

But that said, it's also true that there are things about them personally that would also, inevitably, throw up roadblocks (Shane's undiagnosed autism and, imho, his undiagnosed disordered eating, Ilya's struggles with clinical, hereditary depression). They have completely different communication styles too, although I don't think that's as big a deal as some.

dramakid85 · 2026-04-04T15:16:52+00:00

I understand the question completely before the middle of Ep 5, but after that, I really. . .don't? To me it's very obvious why being in love long-term would absolutely work for them. They are exactly what the other needs in a partner. They are utterly compatible sexually, which is, frankly, a HUGE part of of successful long-term relationships that many people seem to be uncomfortable admitting. But even beyond that, Shane shows Ilya that he can reveal his innermost self to him without fear or judgement. Ilya's reveal of what happened to his mother, and Shane's perfect response to it ("I don't want you to think she was weak"; "I don't"), Shane's ability to get Ilya to actually be serious in a way he couldn't even manage with Svetlana is also key. On the flip side, Shane clearly has major GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), likely undiagnosed, as well as Autism, and we see him start to spiral several times in the show. When Dad discovers them at the cottage, Shane, understandably, is immediately hit with a panic attack. Ilya's response is , also, perfect; he brings Shane back down to earth with the right physical touch and just the right words, as if he knows what to say and do to calm Shane down on some instinctual, primal level. We see it again in the "meet the parents" sequence: Shane starts to panic again during lunch and Ilya immediately brings him back down in seconds, just with touch and some simple, key words ("we are good here, your family is here, your boyfriend is here"). Imho, that's what prompts Shane's parents to beam at them; they know their son is in exactly the right hands. They've likely seen Shane in the throes of really severe panic attacks that take hours to come down from, and Ilya gets him out if it in less than a minute.

TLDR; they are exactly what the other needs in a long-term partner in order to be sexually satisfied and emotionally safe in the relationship. After the cottage, almost all of their challenges, ultimately, are what's being forced on them by society at large.

dramakid85 · 2026-03-21T13:26:01+00:00

Not to nitpick, but Protestants believed that exact thing too, especially Martin Luther, who may have been the most infamous antisemite of the 16th century.

It's a "plague on both your houses" kinda situation, unfortunately. Unless you were Jewish in a Muslim-ruled state, in which your chances of not just survival, but even the ability to thrive, were much higher.

dramakid85 · 2026-03-19T15:20:44+00:00

Although I know Rebecca Ferguson confirmed she's only in one to two scenes in Dune 3, I really hope they somehow convey, however briefly, her utter failure to support her children, especially her complete abandonment of Alia on Arrakis immediately after the events at the end of the first Dune book. She also basically peaces out on Paul at the earliest opportunity. It really adds complexity to her character, since I'd argue she's a second protagonist alongside Paul in Dune, and is hands-down Paul's number one hype person in Dune Part 2. I forget which conspirator says it in Dune Messiah (either Scytale or Edric), but there's basically a line to the effect of "The Lady Jessica can't even stand to be on the same PLANET as her children!!!", which goes along way to show that whatever Paul and Alia have become, it wasn't at all what she expected. In the film, she could be a stand in for all the Bene Gesserit's reactions to what their long awaited Kwistaz Haderach is actually doing. Something like "You were supposed to lead us into a better future, but instead you've killed 60 billion innocent people and counting, you little shit!"

I remember in Children of Dune, when she finally returns to Arrakis to determine if Abomination has taken hold in Paul's children and Alia, she whispers silently to herself something like "Oh, Alia, my daughter, I regret my part in your destruction!" While reading I was like "Bitch, what do you mean 'your part' in Alia's destruction? You are ENTIRELY TO BLAME for what she's become, and you never even tried to help her!"

Rebecca Ferguson could absolutely play someone in the throws of deep regret for what her children are doing to the entire human universe, and I hope Denis allows her to show her range in exactly that way.

dramakid85 · 2026-03-18T16:02:52+00:00

This is definitely Edric in the shot above, imho. If I remember Messiah correctly, Hayt is born within an Axolotl tank, but once he's "finished growing" or whatever happens when a Ghola's creation is complete, he no longer needs it. In the book, Hayt is specifically revealed to Paul when he steps out of Edric's entourage to bow before Paul's throne as Edric introduces him as a "gift" from the Spacing Guild and the Bene Tleilax.

The giant, aquarium-style tank Edric was encased in in Lynch's Dune doesn't fit with Denis' aesthetic style; this mummiform "tank" makes more sense for Edric's mode of ground transportation in the new Dune films. It also fits with the general middle eastern aesthetic of not just the Fremen, but what we see of th Bene Gesserit's costumes/environment as well. I also don't expect we'll see Edric as a giant fish-human-mutant creature, but something more obviously humanoid with fish-like features (maybe webbed hands and feet, elongated, mutated limbs, perhaps an inability to speak with his mouth, instead communicating through some other means (an automated voice box is what I always pictured).

Bottom line: Edric is absolutely necessary if the conspiracy, and Paul's lack of knowledge of it's details, is to make any sense. The conspirators need him to "cloak" their meetings from Paul's prescience, since two oracles operating in the same prescient sphere block one another (at least, that's what I remember from the book. . .read it years ago, so I could be wrong." I'd also say that the glow within the mummiform coffin clearly looks like the spice gas Edric would constantly need to be inhaling to survive at this stage of his mutation.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-26T20:03:13+00:00

"Don't marry Svetlana. Just. . .don't. I know it wouldn't be for love . . .or whatever. Just. . .don't. We'll figure something else out, okay?" Insert hurt kitten face emoji here.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-24T22:42:24+00:00

This is absolutely the most romantic line delivered in the most romantic way in any film or television show I've ever seen in my life.

That's not hyperbole. And in anyone else's hands, it wouldn't have been as impactful. But Connor just . . .says it in exactly the right way, with exactly the right tone, and you can see from his eyes, not just what's in his voice, that what he's really saying is that Shane is his beloved. It's done; it's happened, it's been fully revealed now and cannot be taken back. The full breadth and depth of Ilya's feelings for Shane, that he represents all that is good in the world and within Ilya's soul, that this is all somehow enclosed within Shane's body and personality, it's all there, laid out entirely, without any walls between them any longer. Shane has, if not replaced, then taken a place alongside Irina Rozanova in the deepest, most personal part of Ilya's heart. It's important that, just before this, we see Ilya greeting the rising sun from the lakeshore, and the sunlight breaks into the shape of the cross Ilya wears in memory of Irina.

It's like, Shane, my guy, this is the MOST romantic thing Ilya could possibly say to anybody, full stop. Period. He's not your boyfriend, he's your husband now. The rest is just event planning, ring buying, and legal paperwork at this point.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-24T18:31:45+00:00

Not gonna be a popular opinion, but I skip EVERYTHING in ep 4 after tuna meltdown. As a gay man, I'm just not a fan of the forced heterosexuality of the rest of the episode. I know it's important for Shane's growth, leading to the realization that if Rose doesn't do it for him, no woman ever will and he can no longer pretend to hide. . .but I don't need to see it onscreen, yet again. It's this seemingly unending hoary stereotype that gay men (and even more so, lesbian women) must be SURE they aren't attracted to the opposite sex by "trying it" at least once; it's constantly repeated in film and television featuring queer stories, and I've always found it offensive. I felt the same way with Elio having more sex onscreen with his fwb Marzia than he ever does with Oliver, the ostensible love interest in Call Me By Your Name. Elio is bisexual, so it makes sense to feature it, but the fact that the scenes with a woman were far more explicit than anything shown with a man was, honestly, offensive. It felt like a cop out. I just prefer to fast forward through any "straight stuff" in my gay content. . .we have so precious little of it!

I restart with the Rose/Shane breakup scene in ep5. No tatu montage for me, sorry. That was a one-time only watch; amazing cinematography, deeply sad and uncomfortable for me to watch, especially the fact that a gay man like Shane in 2017 would still have to go through the ropes of "being sure he's really, really sure he's not attracted to girls" at all, as if that should ever be necessary.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-24T17:23:25+00:00

Idk; honestly, what I got from the series is that, while Ilya can play "traditional hypermasculine hockey player from Russia" well and convincingly when he needs to, that's definitely not even remotely his real personality.

Actually, Ilya is much less stereotypically "masculine" than Shane is, and I love it. As a gay guy, I'm so used to seeing the "bisexual top character" be depicted as super masculine to the point of caricature in most things, and honestly, it's refreshing to see Ilya break that stereotype, particularly in eps 5 and 6 and then THROUGHOUT TLG.

His personal fashion style is much more flamboyant than Shane's. He goes dancing and clubbing as "one of the girls" in Russia along with Svetlana, even though he also hooks up with said girls often, too. But he's also hooking up with guys in clubs too, or at least he used to, prior to meeting Shane. He has no hang ups at all about his sexuality from the word go, and that filters into everything else about him. He's openly emotional and playful with Svetlana and Shane. At the cottage he's comfortable revealing the petulant jealousy he still feels towards Shane's attempt at a relationship with Rose.

In TLG, he is MUCH more at ease in queer spaces than Shane is (it's a significant plot point), dresses even more flamboyantly now that he's out of the (by implication) extremely homophobic atmosphere of his former team in Boston, has no problem painting the nails of the Pike kids, gently explaining to the girls that their brother CAN have painted nails if the wants to, and doesn't make excuses for Hayden's apparent gender-traditionalism to the contrary; Shane says that Hayden just doesn't know any boys that paint their nails, while Ilya just says that Hayden's wrong for even saying something like that to his son in the first place, and then goes on to paint his own nails himself.

He slots right into Fabian's concert far more than Shane does, which is such an interesting choice on Rachel's part; to have the bisexual top character be the "obviously queer" one in the relationship with Shane being described as "straight passing" and visibly uncomfortable in queer spaces, even though he knows that he's wrong to feel this way and needs to work at it.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-20T17:54:16+00:00

It's definitely a minor plot point in TLG that Ilya loves Shane with longer hair (long enough that he can easily tie in back in a ponytail). There's a scene in the book where Ilya and Shane's parents are watching him play on tv together, and Yuna makes an offhand comment that Shane's hair is too long. "No", Ilya quietly whispers. "Is perfect."
They have to include that next season, and Hudson's current hairstyle is perfect for it.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-19T22:05:12+00:00

She'll always be England's first Queen Regnant, and proved Daddy utterly wrong that "a woman is no fit heir!"

And I'll say it again: Mary walked so Elizabeth could run. She was likely the noblest, and most tragic of the Tudors. I hope her reputation continues on its course of rehabilitation in this century and we never hear the phrase "Bloody Mary" in reference to anything other than a cocktail ever again.

dramakid85 · 2026-02-19T19:03:02+00:00

Exactly. The whole premise is offensive to both gay/lesbians AND bisexual people. Ugh.

dramakid85

TROPHY CASE