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Post by DavidAMorse1701 on Dec 15, 2023 22:09:21 GMT -5
I loved the story, it's a new angle for an episode to take, although I have seen real life brothers both come out. I think the drama has many issues to explore if Tim does determine he's gay as well.
It would be great to watch their parents really have to struggle with Timothy coming out. They've never loved Garret so even if he'd been straight nothing would be affected within his family.
But Timothy was always their golden child and to have him also turn out to be an abomination and unnatural in their eyes would be great to watch develop. I hope sincerely that you are planning or will consider making this the direction future episodes will go.
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Post by Dabeagle on Dec 16, 2023 13:02:12 GMT -5
I'm so glad you enjoyed Tim's story! Readers did suggest wanting more of him and it set my mind to wandering. Unfortunately, that's kind of how I work - my mind wanders and I get an idea in my head. For instance my late4st serial, now in editing, the entire finale came up while I was in the shower. I was thinking about the story and what would be coming down the road and the idea came to me and it was perfect. Well, you may not agree with me once you read it, but I thought it was :-)
So as far as Tim's future, we'll see when and if my mind picks that up again - or if readers are keeping tabs on him I may be forced to try and see what happens.
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Post by mattyboy on Feb 12, 2024 19:36:58 GMT -5
I really enjoyed this story, and I'm one of the people that was intrigued by the line at the end of the last Garrett story where Tim asked "what's it like?"
I noticed an undercurrent in this, that's something I've liked about the SS stories since I first encountered them. Dabeagle's commented somewhere on here that he tries not to mention car model years, as they lock-in dates for stories that makes them age.
But Sanitaria Springs and the "linebacker with two amazing dads" line was very much a story of its literary-historical moment in 2015-2016. It was still hard then to come out in high school, but it was an era when there were out high-schoolers, and public beefing about going to proms, and coming-out stories about athletes. Just a few years before, getting outed was the great fear in most HS stories, and it was right around when SS came out that it was changing to "something to be managed" rather than a disaster. (see also: Lucien's story, and Chase having to push Kale a bit to come out)
SS was also written at a time when people were thinking a lot about toxic masculinity, and what some of the alternative paths might be out of it. (And we still are, of course, but in a different way). I think in various stories both Sean Kelly and Trace Harries narrate thoughts that the Kirkwood gang is remarkably nice and toxin-free.
Hamster was maybe the first story in the series about this, and a bit of a model for Tim. Austin hadn't thought much about his sexuality, and didn't have many positive role models. Neither his mother or his father offered anything he'd be likely to want. But Chase sure did, and so it was pretty angst-free for Hamster to start dating Derek.(And a lot of the little Phil storyline highlights that contrast as well)
That theme of improving masculinities comes up in Candy&Kisses a bit as well. Everyone in that story grew up a bit, but also the world turned under their feet as they did, and J&B became possible.
Which brings us to where Tim is now. I don't think it's nailed down that he's entirely or essentially gay, but he has very negative role models in front of him in his parents and a lot of his church, and the really nice relationship between Garrett and Sterling to compare those to, and so an option is open to him, and he doesn't have to be scared of it or have much angst about it.
The world and in particular the US has changed a lot since 2016, and in some ways there have been big upswings in some kinds of nastiness on social media and even mainstream media (i.e Ruby Franke and the Q-people). For all those disturbing trends, there's something rather nice alongside:
in 1998 Tim French would have been an unrealistic and unbelievable character. Today, he's not.
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Post by Dabeagle on Feb 13, 2024 0:14:54 GMT -5
You make a strong point. As much as I do try to limit the amount of items that date a story, it's nearly impossible. You can avoid some things that are more obvious - songs, cars, etc - but attitudes that were more prevalent are beyond my own abilities. Even speech has changed, as it always does with a living language, and the youth have words that make little to no sense to older people. I've always been curious about how bisexual people feel, and I try to be sensitive to crafting those characters to be full people and not boxed in by who they are dating at the time. I do, of course, pair them with other guys and explore that side of things.
I think, also, that Tim doesn't care what his parents think anymore. That's harder to achieve than one may think, to completely disregard the opinion of others - and not always wise. If, for instance, Tim's parents did kick out Garrett and clamp down on Tim, things could be very bad for him with no other influence outside of his toxic parents. There are parts of the US that are very, very backward and uncivilized and not as well known as Florida or Alabama.
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