I was hit with a profoundly irritating sense of deja vu this week. It struck me where I’d seen this before. I’m a gay man and I’m sick to death of HBO portraying people like me as wimpy, weak, helpless, and cowardly. Repeatedly using characters who are gay men as props for “edgy” straight male characters to brutalize just to showcase their violence and vamp off our victimhood is genuinely pissing me the fuck off.
Alby is not a gangly dork, and he just got done telling Bambi how he’d gotten his ass kicked every day growing up. You’d think he’d have learned to fight right?
In House of the Dragon, Laenors “best friend” (boyfriend) who is a renowned knight is inexplicably displayed as totally helpless against a randomly barbaric attack by a big bad straight man with big bad straight man feelings and we watch as his skull gets bashed in and he’s murdered at Laenor’s wedding which Laenor, another famously adept warrior, is also inexplicably unable to prevent, stop, or avenge in any way. The character that does it? Chad main character energy, faces no consequence, and walks around openly taunting Laenor the now PRINCE!!! years later, who does nothing, takes no revenge, and soon literally runs away from the show altogether.
What purpose does this serve? Gay people are not weak fodder for straight boy crashouts. It seems like I’m supposed to accept as a gay man that I’m going to be violently maimed and I should just take it??? Not happening.
No way did I just watch ANOTHER helpless gay couple get one of their heads bashed in as they are utterly powerless against a single dude to prevent it. NO WAY did I just see two grown ass men cower in fear at their own wedding because of one big bad straight boy crashing when they have everyone around them. Friendly reminder here that gay men are men and we CAN in fact fight, we are not your helpless victims. Try it IRL and see if you get these type of results. HBO has a homophobic violence fantasy.